German angst over immigration
I am in Germany, preparing a profile of the Pope - but all the talk is about a politician and banker who has caused outrage by his comments on immigration.
Thilo Sarrazin has written a book called Germany Abolishes Itself. He is a member of the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) and on the board of the Bundesbank. His concern is that immigrants who do not integrate are undermining German identity. It is an echo that can be heard in many European countries.
But in comments at the start of a book tour he mentioned that, in his opinion, "all Jews share a certain gene". It is not acceptable in Germany to make comments like this - with all their resonances of the past - and condemnation came swiftly. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the remarks were "completely unacceptable" and has called for his removal from the bank.
The thrust of the book, however, is aimed at immigrants that do not integrate and, in particular, at Muslim groups. He points out that only 3% of men of Turkish origin and only 8% of women of Turkish origin marry Germans. This compares badly with other groups, he says. He says that in Berlin 20% of all acts of violence are carried out by only 1,000 Turkish and Arab youths; a population group that makes up only 0.03% of the actual population in Berlin.
He says of Islam that "with no other religion is there such a fluid connection between violence, dictatorship and terrorism as there is with Islam". He says "boys are taught an exaggerated idea of the readiness to be violent... for the sake of honour you must take the role all the more seriously the less successful you are in the school system".
He goes on to argue that Muslim immigrants are "unwilling or incapable of integrating into Western society".
A leading member of the Turkish community said "this is pure racism". The Council of Muslims called him "the embodiment of an ugly German". The boss of Siemens, Peter Loescher, says the comments "are damaging the international reputation of Germany as a business location".
His remarks have been widely rejected, but they have stirred up real debate too. In the German tabloid Bild, Prof Ernst Elitz, one of the founders of Deutschland Radio, writes that Thilo Sarrazin is a scandalous author but he also speaks the truth about Germany - "too many headscarves. Too many unemployment benefit receivers, with society not getting enough back."
"The real scandal," the professor goes on, "is that this is all known (what Sarrazin says) but nothing has been done about it in Germany". The first 40,000 copies of the book have already been sold.
Similar fears have been expressed in many parts of Europe. In the past they have largely been confined to the fringes of society, but in countries from France to Switzerland to the Netherlands they have entered more mainstream debate. At their root is unease at the speed with which society is changing and a concern that societies may develop separate, parallel communities.
I'm 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~54~RS~)
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It had to be a Banker didn't it!
What are the Bankers trying to do ... destroy Civilisation as we have known it?
The trouble with the truth is that no Politician will ever like to talk about the truth, speak the truth, hear the truth or ever do anything about the truth and the truth is that there is too much and too rapid net immigration into Europe and the ratio of immigrants to indigenous populations has reached a tipping point where integration of the newcomers is no longer possible.
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The program I watched yesterday suggested that the rise of Hitler was also down to the bankers wanting to keep communism out at any cost.
On a more upbeat note, of course we also have a similar problem, ghettos of 'ethnic minorities' refusing to integrate in any way. We even allow this to happen - the 'black police federation' is a good example, the 'muslim council of Great Britain' is another. I am not against 'foreigners' after all just about everyone in Britain is exactly that - in fact given my hair colour I am - but I believe I am reasonably integrated despite the racially motivated bullying (again about the hair colour).
I am afraid that if all you ever do is to stick to your own then you will end up an issolated group, and if the original people bend over backwards to do everything for you even when you proclaim to hate them (as a recent court case in the UK proved) then you will eventually cause problems. We don't want the Nazi style eradication of an ethnic or religious group or two, but equally we don't want people coming to our country and proclaiming they hate us, want our benefits, will take over the world, will rule us and will stone our 'prostitutes' to death... Those members of groups like that who claim to be less antagonistic, more mixed, more able to integrate need to take a lead, integrate, mix and control the others.
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"He says that in Berlin 20% of all acts of violence are carried out by only 1,000 Turkish and Arab youths; a population group that makes up only 0.03% of the actual population in Berlin." Which, admittedly is a problem.
But the 1,000 Turkish and Arab youths also make up just 0.12% of the total Berlin migrant population (470,000 inhabitants of foreign nationality, and 394,000 citizens who are descendants of international migrants, but have been naturalized or born in Germany - figures from 2008). The other 99.88% of migrants are largely peaceful, tax-paying and law-obeying citizens.
Of course the problem of violence and criminal behavior among the male youth needs to be tackled. But condemning 1/4 of the Berlin population will not solve anything.
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Oh, and by the way: Sarrazin isn't exactly a German name either. A little research on names in Europe shows that it seems to stem from Huguenot immigrants to Germany, but originally goes back to 'Saracen' ([Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]). Which, to quote Wikipedia, "was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to people who inhabited the deserts near the Roman province of Syria and who were distinct from Arabs. The term was later applied to Arab peoples and by the time of European chroniclers during the time of the Crusades came to be synonymous with Muslim."
How's that for irony?
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Mathiasen! QOT!
Hello!
Will You be giving another of Your profound versions of how Germany has made such a break with the past?
You know, the version where poor, sad UK doesn't reflect the 'new' EUrope of 'ever closer union'!
Okay, ok, I am only teasing. This particular chap cannot be taken as anymore representative of the German populace than such people who are found in every society across the EU27.
Nevertheless, it is quite remarkable how many German Citizens & parts of the media have joined in the general debate & not all have distanced themselves from Herr Sarrazin's views.
Essentially I have 2 main points on the immediate reaction to Sarrazin:
1) Germany's Governments' 'multi-culturalism' experiment would appear to have been about as unrealistic as that of most of Europe & the UK,
and,
2) The Articles on the 'EUro-zone', 'Cameron & the EU', 'Burkha', 'Roma' & now 'Sarrazin' are yet more examples of the utterly duplicitous wishful thinking of the EU-Brussels entity about its attainment of 'ever closer union' - - i.e. there is almost none in the mindset of EUropeans - - 'Nationality' predominates in all the average EU Citizens' thinking & concerns.
When I was enjoying my volcanic ash enforced sojourn in Brussels I regularly drove by a Jewish School: I was struck each time by the massive security fences, electronic gates and at start-end of schoolday there were always armed Police nearby!
I'm not saying this is a reflection of the EU per se as regrettably there are wider 'terrorism' implications for all such premises.
However, IMO, taken with the subject of Sarrazin's book, is it not all part of a general trend of divisiveness within EUropean society (e.g. UK-BNP, Gert Wilders, Burkha bans etc.)?
There seem to me to be 4 strands:
1) The EU-Brussels entity & National Governments who for the most part pronounce how much 'closer' ties are than ever before between Peoples and regularly announce spending Billions on 'Integrationist' schemes that seem to disappear in a welter of good intentions and overdose of Political Correctness.
2) The great majority general historic-indigenous EUropean population who have and are trying for the most part to make the best of the massive societal-changes brought about by deliberate Government policies on 'Immigration' and the consequent disruption-dislocation of 'traditional' European cultural dominance.
3) The prominent and growing 'minority' ethnic-faith communities across Europe & British Isles for whom the aspiration of a better life was the mainspring for their emigration and yet so little has been considered or done about making them aware of the need to 'integrate'. UK or Austria or Netherlands etc. print copious leaflets in foreign languages to inform 'newcomers' of their Rights & available 'Services' and yet surely of equal necessity (& it does seem largely to have been overlooked by Governments/Support-Groups/Charities etc.) was a repetitious insistence on the newcomers' Responsibilities to their new 'Homeland'.
4) The still few, but worryingly, rising numbers of EUropean Citizens (& as Sarkozy to Wilders to Griffin to Sarrazzin demonstrates, from all social-political strata) being attracted to and vocalising support for more extreme measures to counteract, and/or to remove 'multiculturalism' from the Continent-British Isles.
My final point would be to state yet again how wrong it is of some 'pro-EU' on this Blog, e.g. QOT, JeanLuc, GorgeG1 etc. to continually point the finger in 1 direction (at National Governance). The EU-Brussels entity also bears great responsibility for not properly recognising or accepting its 'social policies' for 20 years have also been found wanting by the Citizens.
If they had been anywhere near as successful as EU-Brussels regularly claims then in ultra-pro-EU & pro-'ever closer union' Germany, Herr Sarrazin's Book would NOT be at the Top of the Best Seller list even before publication!
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Men like this are surely the problem for every country wishing to have a serious but balanced debate on immigration, migrant populations and integration. It is because of Sarazzin et al. that every time such a debate is started someone will cry racism. It IS possible to discuss immigration to a country and how it should be controlled without being racist.
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UK Muslim's seem to have so many indifferent attitude's to English way of life.
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So, Thilo Sarrazin has written a book called "Germany Abolishes Itself". Apparently his concern is that immigrants who do not integrate are undermining German identity.
In comments at the start of a book tour he mentioned that, in his opinion, "all Jews share a certain gene".
AND ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!
Why?
Thilo Sarrazin has only repeated what has been found in the research of the Einstein Institute, which concluded (in a major surprise) the closeness of genetics between "THE" two Jewish communities of Europe, the Ashkenazim & the Sephardim. The Ashkenazim lived in Northern & Eastern Europe until Hitler regime; now live mostly in the United States and Israel. The Sephardim were exiled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 and relocated to the Ottoman Empire - North Africa and the Netherlands.
This study appeared to refute the suggestion made by the Historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. Sand said that Jews have no common origin but are just a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times.
Jewish communities from Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus all have common genetic ancestry that traces back to the Levant.
The key research was conducted by Gil Atzmon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Harry Ostrer of New York University. The reesults appear in the current American Journal of Human Genetics. Atzmon and Ostrer have developed a methodology of timing historical events from the genetic elements shared in specific Jewish communities. Their calculations show that Iraqi and Iranian Jews separated from each other about 2,500 years ago. This genetic finding presumably reflects a historical event, the destruction of the First Temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. and the exile of many Jews to the capital at Babylon.
The shared genetic material suggest that members of any Jewish community are related to one another as closely as are 4th or 5th cousins - which is about 10 times higher than the relationship between two people chosen at random off the streets. Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews have roughly 30% European ancestry, with most of the rest from the Middle East. One explanation is that they come from the same Jewish source in Europe. The genomic signature of Ashkenazim and Sephardim was very similar to that of Italian Jews, suggesting that an historical population in northern Italy of Jews intermarried with Italians. The Ashkenazim first appear in Northern Europe around A.D. 800, but historians suspect that they arrived there from Italy.
Anyway, this is all (I think you will agree) very interesting & scientific. Those persons who knee-jerk to the word "JEW" and jump to anti-semitism need to slow down and take a breath. Is there truth in what is being said? Why is it as soon as you use the word "JEW", so many people get up in arms and/or call you anti-semitic? You can have an interest in research; you can even have legitimate questions about Jews and/or Israel without being anti-semitic.
So I am puzzled that a bright and capable politician such as Chancellor Angela Merkel would be so quick to call Thilo Sarrazin’s little remark "completely unacceptable"?
The thrust of the book, however, is aimed at immigrants that do not integrate and, in particular, Muslims. As for Sarrazin’s remarks about Muslims. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about Muslims in Germany to assess veracity.
I know that Europe has @ 20M Muslims with largest concentration in France followed by Germany, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. I know that it was Europe that invited Muslims after WW2, especially those from Turkey and North Africa to rebuild destroyed European economies. Apparently the cost-benefit ratio was in favour of the Muslim immigrants vs home-grown Europeans. (Cheaper?)
Whether or not Muslims assimilate, Muslims are OVERWHELMINGLY
- hostile to extremism,
- support democracy, and
- try to assimilate.
This is true of second and third generation Muslims who suffer from a kind of tortorous pull because
a) the native European society refuses to integrate them fully and
b) they cannot relate to the countries where they were born.
The tendency of some "intellectuals: to band together all sects of Islam as one determined to fight the West is fallacious, cruel and biased. It does not speak to me of "intellectualism". It speaks bigotry, religious intollerance, and unjustified hatred.
The days of quarrels based on religion alone should be shunned by the civilized world. Homo sapiens "sapiens" should be debating about ways to establish a better world where people are accepted for what they are regardless of race, nationality or creed.
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In any village newcomers have always suffered the same discrimination. However as time passes and generations pass by the newcomers merge with the previous inhabitants and become the established population, but always newcomers suffer the same fate! Unfortunately the newcomers are often the most vociferous about the next generation of newcomers!
(Anyone know where Thilo Sarrazin came from? looked him up - Born in Gera in 1945 (since 1920 in Thuringia) in an area of the Holy Roman Empire populated by Slavs when it was Reuss and later subjugated by the Germans - he sounds a bit 'foreign' to me and not really a proper German!)
This 'German' is unfortuantely part of one of the most despised groups, 'bankers' so nothing he says can possibly be right! But with the passage of time the indigenous population merges with incomers as it has happened throughout history. True there are ups and downs, and the level of hatred between the groups sometimes causes tension. Everyone is entitled to lebensraum somewhere or other, preferably near where they work - that is the way of the World. There are no chosen people - only human beings.
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In the interview, which appeared in the cultural magazine Lettre International, he also said that "a large number of Arabs and Turks in (Berlin) ... have no productive function other than in the fruit and vegetable trade." In the same interview, he claimed that the Turks were "conquering Germany ... through a higher birthrate."
Sarrazin makes abundantly clear, that demise comes as a result of immigration.
In the excerpts that have been published, Sarrazin writes that Germany's Muslim immigrant families have profited from social welfare payments to a far greater degree than they have contributed to German prosperity.
He also has raised the spectre of the country's Muslim population, due to what he claims are much higher birth rates among immigrants, soon overtaking that of the country's "autochthonous" population -- a term roughly synonymous with "indigenous."
"If the fertility rate of German autochthons remains at the level it has been at for the past 40 years, then in the course of the next three or four generations, the number of the Germans will sink to 20 million,"
he writes in the book.
"And, incidentally, it is absolutely realistic that the Muslim population, through a combination of a higher birth rate and continuation of immigration, could grow by 2100 to 35 million."
In another passage, he writes:
"I don't want the country of my grandchildren and great grandchildren to be largely Muslim, or that Turkish or Arabic will be spoken in large areas, that women will wear headscarves and the daily rhythm is set by the call of the muezzin. If I want to experience that, I can just take a vacation in the Orient."
In another passage, Sarrazin seems to suggest that Muslim immigrants would rather work under the table than legally.
or
immigrants sponge off the state, are incapable of integrating themselves into German society and "constantly produce little girls in headscarves."
In a contribution for the mass-circulation tabloid Bild, Sarrazin wrote, in reference to the relative lack of success that immigrants have had in German schools and the country's low birth rates, "we are simply accepting that Germany is becoming smaller and dumber." Two months ago, Sarrazin created similar headlines by saying "we are becoming ... on average dumber" and linked that claim with immigration "from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa."
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bluesberry wrote:
"Thilo Sarrazin has only repeated what has been found in the research of the Einstein Institute, which concluded (in a major surprise) the closeness of genetics between "THE" two Jewish communities of Europe, the Ashkenazim & the Sephardim. The Ashkenazim lived in Northern & Eastern Europe until Hitler regime; now live mostly in the United States and Israel. The Sephardim were exiled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 and relocated to the Ottoman Empire - North Africa and the Netherlands.
This study appeared to refute the suggestion made by the Historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. Sand said that Jews have no common origin but are just a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times."
Shlomo Sand is awesome. I totally recommend his work to everyone. He is undoubtedly one of the very great intellectual figures to have come out of Israel. The man is lucid, sincere and extremely convincing. If anyone wants to know what is really going on in Israel, and what challenges it faces (not Iran!) in the near future, Shlomo is your one stop shop.
As for this bogus science of jewish genes........ it is absurdity, pure and simple.
Think for a minute. If a manchester United supporter came out with a "Scientific study" that argued that manchester united supporters had a genetic base, what would you think? Why would you think that?
If a Frenchman came out with a "scientific study" that said that everyone with a French passport shared genes, what would you say, and why?
If an astronaut came out with a "scientific study" that said that all astronauts shares a genetic profile, what would you say, and why?
If an anglican came out with a "scientific study" that said that all anglicans shared a genetic profile, what would you say, and why?
The answer to all of the above is exactly the same answer as we ought to have for the utterly absurd claim that jews share a genetic makeup. It's ridiculous. Judaism, like all the other examples above, is a matter of conscious choice for adults. Nobody is born into a faith they cannot reject as an adult. More importantly, from the point of view of "science", no faith or profession exists which is somehow closed to new adherents from ANY genetic background.
Anybody can be a jew. Literally anyone at all. And they can be one tomorrow. All they have to do is call themselves a jew, and they are a jew. Because it means a professed belief in something undefined, and that is all it has ever meant.
Now that offends those who seek to bolster their own reputations by claiming to belong to something awesome and profoundly important, but so what? It is also blindingly obvious. All you have to do in order to test this hypothesis is consider what the words mean. Being a jew means professing a belief in "judasim", whatever that means in your part of the world. So who makes the rules for that? God? Maybe. The chief Rabbi in New York, or Israel? No. Clearly not. If that were the case, there could be no jews, because not so long ago there was no chief rabbi in either New York or Israel. So where is the chief rabbi, and how does he test each new adherent to the faith?
Clearly, there is none, and there is no test.
In fact there are currently not less than six rabbis in Israel who all claim the exclusive right to ordain and accept "true jews". It is a farce of monty pythonesque proportion. You'd have to be stupid and crazy to accept it as a reasonable behaviour. The very great majority of jews do not, and openly ridicule the way the religion is thrown around like a demented child's toy.
But the issue of whether a characteristic is genetic or not has an even more fundamental and basic test.
Consider, if you have naturally black hair, can you choose to have naturally blonde hair?
If you have blue eyes, can you choose to have naturally brown eyes?
If you are five foot tall at maturity, can you choose to be naturally 7 foot tall?
If you have white skin, can you choose to be born with black skin and make it happen merely by professing a belief?
If you deaf because both your parents were deaf, can you choose to hear because you do not wish to be deaf?
That which is genetic cannot be a matter of choice for the individual. We cannot choose our genes, and that is the very best reason for never persecuting anybody for a genetically inherited characteristic. It is why racists are such deplorably unfair and vile people. They condemn others for the way they were born.
But that which we can choose, these things cannot be genetic. What we believe, which god we have faith in.... these can be chosen. Sure, some folks are too weak to break away from what their peers profess, but that does not negate the fact that some folks can do so. When a characteristic is genetic, NOBODY can EVER change it by strength of will.
This understanding of what is genetic and what cannot possibly be genetic is fundamental to understanding science itself, and we should all be very, very skeptical of "scientific studies" concerning religion.
It is almost impossible to make a truly scientific study of any religion, because every religion naturally fears and loathes the scientific method. Science, after all, rejects the entire concept of faith, so crucial to the business of worship. And so when we hear of "scientific studies" into this religion or that religion, ask yourself how they did that. How did these "scientists" get access to so many faithful, and test them so rigorously?
This goes 100 fold for "genetic" studies. Genetics is a very new science, and very little is actually understood about how genes operate. By that I mean that the general public understand very little. There are a few scientists who understand a great deal, but if you read their books (and I have) you find that they constantly stress how little is actually known and how much of what is believed is conjecture. Consequently, it is no surprise that every few weeks another crackpot comes out with a theory about how genes create human behaviour, and a whole lot of folks buy into it.
My father, a scientist and engineer, always told me that folks will always be able to sell books and newspaper articles about bogus genetic causes for human behaviour, because there is a constant demand for the supply. His argument was based on the premise that every unhappy marriage with children in jail or dead from drug abuse has both parents with very strong motivations towards blaming their spouse for their own sins of poor parenting. As this sort of person is by character wont to blame others rather than accept responsibility for their own faults, they will rush to believe any sort of genetic argument which lays blame. It serves them, and they will serve it with their custom.
And that wisdom sheds light on why we always see the spectre of racism and intolerance for minorities in human society. It also sheds light on why the most worthless people in the world join political parties and hate campaigns. They need the shelter of the larger group, because they are such low types that they fear being left to own devices. Traditionally it has been the church, the army and the political organization who would take in the most worthless folks when every other club had rejected them. These days the army has higher standards, and the church and political parties get the dregs of society.
On that note, in my next post I will move on to why Germany is the way that it is!
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So, why is germany full of hate for minorities?
It is, by the way. Anybody who thinks germans are a happy and pleasant culture of folks has never been there for any length of time, and does not know any germans.
This is not to say germans are not good folk. Some of my very best friends in the world are German, not least because they have cultural traits of courage and loyalty which make for excellent friends.
But to get a good german, you need first to take him out of germany. Germany does hideous things to good germans, and it does so politically.
To understand this process of degradation of the german individual, it is necessary to understand that germans inhabit a real fascist state. Nobody liked it when German exported its fascism, but nobody really cares if they keep it going at home. And how they do!
Germany is a country owned by corporations, and it has possibly the most sadistic and brutal police force in the world. The idea of human rights in germany is a joke for the police. They know enough to keep away from foreigners most of the time, but the way the german police treat their own people, or people of colour, is horrendous. And this attitude of brutal disrespect for ordinary folks pervades all officers of the state, from the schools to the cabinet. In germany, power is raw power and nice ideals are a joke, things fools believe in. After all, Germany lost the war and then watched history being written as a fable the victors found agreeable. In that culture, any nice idea has the taste of something perverse and dishonest. The truth, from the german point of view, is black and hard and cold.
And Germans work hard, exceedingly hard, for very little take home pay. Such is the fate of an industrious people forced to endure the chains of corporate feudalism. The corporations who rule germany are foreign owned and supported by a brutal and corrupt state. This adds to the german malaise, and adds to the intolerance and brutality of the inhabitants.
It is small wonder the ordinary german people are willing and ready to persecute a minority at the drop of a hat. They live in an ugly world, and they have no respite or rights of their own which are not coloured by absurdity and a brutal police state.
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My previous post, upon reflection, is a bit strong. To issue full disclosure, my recent experiences with the German constabulary and state have been less than ideal.
However the general ideas I have articulate are, in my view, in the correct direction.
Germany has massive taxation which supports privately owned corporations who control the political system utterly through a party based political economy. That is fascism, pure and simple.
Germany is also occupied by foreign troops to this day.
It is not the happy democracy it is made out to be, either by its own press or by foreign spectators who celebrate the beauty of a beast of their own creation.
This is one of the reasons I cannot endorse an EU created in the image, and by the owners, of the German state. First Europe needs to learn the rule of law and human rights, then they and the British need to learn the virtues of real democracy. THEN they would make a union so strong, and so enlightened, that any sane European would rush to be a part of it.
Until then, and with the current EU institutions being what they are, the EU is a step backwards into hateful feudal rule, ignorance and conflict.
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I have stayed away from this blog for some time because I’m tired of the limited scope of subjects here.
Thilo Sarrazin’s book is not a new subject but instead one of the few subjects - together with the Euro that is being discussed here time and again.
Secondly I see that CBW would like to me to comment on a hundred of different things, but I am not going to. I shall keep the unity of the content.
1) Sarrazin has said and written a lot of stupid things. He might now lose his seat in Bundesbank on that background. The chancellor is advocating this, and as Mr. Hewitt writes, SPD would like to get rid of him.
2) Sarrazin has no solutions to the issues of immigration and integration.
3) Usually I don’t comment on this issue. I have heard about it the last fifteen years, and most of it is so stupid that it is not worth spending time on it. If it wasn’t for that fact that other human beings make it a topic and are prepared to raise a fire on it. Most of what I have heard reveals only one thing: Lack of inside in human beings.
4) Gentlemen, read the European literature. I recommend Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch, particularly to the British advocate in Switzerland. Both writers know a lot about fire raisers.
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I am here in the UK and having not read Herr Sarrazin's book I can not comment directly on German's reaction to his book, however with friends across Europe and as a descendent of immigrants a comment on Europe's general current angst over immigration is more appropriate.
Following the mass destruction of most of Western Europe during World War II, Europe searched for workers to meet its labour shortages.
Many like my parents answered the call from their then colonial leaders to come to their mother countries and as good citizens and help to rebuild THEIR country. Germany went to Turkey, offering Turks citizenship in return for help in rebuilding Germany.
Their arrival like those of Europe's many immigrants over the centuries was not welcoming. In the UK the "No Blacks, Irish or Dogs" notice led many, like my parents, to live in multiple occupancy houses with other arrivals, a pattern repeated across Europe and across the centuries.
The arrivals found that straying outside their community was dangerous; a good kicking could be had for messing around with the host community. Integration is often requested but the host communities actively discourage the best sign of it, inter-marriage, initially.
With globalisation from the late 80's onwards, the movement of goods and people increased with more Europeans moving out to the Far East, America and Australia in search of highly skilled work, while more of the worlds poor moved to fill the low skill/low pay jobs in the West and the developing economies.
In addition the outsourcing of production, call centres, etc., to the developing economies has further squeezed the poor of Europe as they compete with the motivated and cheap immigrant communities.
With a global depression Europe finds itself unable to meet it's debts. As spending is cut and jobs lost across Europe everyone needs someone to blame. It is easy to blame the "other" the immigrant.
• They who have the drive and determination to better their lives and undertake the upheaval to move for work.
• They who are willing to accept work Europeans will not do at all or at the rates of pay.
• They who ensure that many of the services Europeans see as a right (e.g. UK NHS) operate.
In the 1920's the Far Right blamed the Jews for the Depression and all it's resulting problems, now following a similar global downturn it is the "immigrants".
It is far harder to address Europe's real problems of social & economic decline and I pray that our leaders do so soon, before the simplistic solutions of the Far Right are sought as they were 70 years ago.
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I am white, german descendant Brazilian and also suffered discrimination in the market place, although I have a MBA, several IT certificates and 10 years of experience in the area I was applying for a job.
So this is not restricted to Muslims, black people or whatever.
If you don’t speak perfect German you are simply an idiot. No matter how many languages you speak, the experience of have or whatever. They look to you as if you were inferior. Whenever I went to buy things in a shop speaking in German (which is not bad “Advanced certificate”) they generally used to be very unpolite. But if I talk to them in English, the situation changes completely.
I know several good people who can’t get a job work due to recruiters who only look for Grammar errors. Germany wastes several immigrants who are well prepared and willing to work. In the end, the government will have to finance those immigrants by paying the social benefits such as Hartz IV.
Not so smart.
Hopefully they open their eyes and make use of those people to build a stronger Germany.
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Without entering into the details of what this man Sarrazin wrote, I will only mention that he raised the highly contentious issue of the unwillingness - and total lack of desire - of certain immigrant communities to integrate into German society.
This pattern is replicated throughout many European countries, including the UK.
This matter will not go away, but will grow and fester with highly unpleasant results unless addressed.
Ignoring it, engaging in self-delusional denial, or castigating as 'racist' those who do raise this issue, won't make this issue 'disappear'.
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@11 democracythreat wrote:
"This understanding of what is genetic and what cannot possibly be genetic is fundamental to understanding science itself, and we should all be very, very skeptical of "scientific studies" concerning religion.
"It is almost impossible to make a truly scientific study of any religion, because every religion naturally fears and loathes the scientific method".
Have we been reading the same blog? On a first reading I didn't notice any mention of religion in connection with the research findings BB reported on. Having read your tract, I thought I must have been mistaken, so I checked. No, no mention at all.
So what are you on about? You don't like science when its findings don't chime with your preconceptions?
Anyone who is engaged in carrying-out science doesn't assume that his results are unchallengeable: quite the reverse. Scientific knowledge grows by accretion, new research results challenge earlier ones and (usually) lead to some kind of synthesis which then may become generally accepted as "the current state of knowledge", until such time as it in its turn is displaced by something thought to improve upon it. The quest never ends. Nobody is likely to suppose that the findings which BB refers us to will become "the last word" on this subject. But it does seem pretty clear that they and Sand's hypothesis are not reconcilable. Evidently, that's what has got up your nose. So you solve that problem by simply refusing to give them any credence: bully for you! You are qualified to make such a judgment, I suppose, about the validity of genetic research results?
There were once a lot of people who believed the Earth was flat. Have you heard? - scientific knowledge advanced a bit and it turned out they'd been wrong.
"My father, a scientist and engineer, always told me that folks will always be able to sell books and newspaper articles about bogus genetic causes for human behaviour".
Another total red herring.
For my money, BB's post was a model of good sense, reasonableness and moderation, and was most informative into the bargain. That must be some sort of record for this blog. Three cheers!
"On that note, in my next post I will move on to why Germany is the way that it is!"
Thanks for the warning. I'll now be able to save myself having to wade through more turgid verbiage searching for something even remotely to the point.
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democracythreat @11,
You write:
My understanding of Judaism is that - according to Jewish law ('Hallachah') - a Jew is one born to a Jewish Mother, or one who has converted to Judaism.
As Judaism is not an evangelical religion, conversion to Judaism is actually a very hard and protracted process and not handed out like candy to anyone who wants some.
One can no more "call themselves a Jew" and become a Jew, than I can call myself a banana and become a banana. (One can, however, become a muslim simply by repeating the basic tenet of Islam - the Shahada - a number of times and, without further ado, one is a muslim).
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My understanding was the their was two uses for the word 'Jew.'
1) A person of Jewish faith
2) Someone descended from the Jewish people who historically dwelt in Palestine (now Israel.)
I can only assume the genetic study relates to the latter definition and no miracle gene of religion has been discovered.
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@19 MaxSceptic
I believe you are correct about the Shahada. Indeed, a single honest recititation is all that is required by most major strands of the religion to convert to Islam.
However, conversion brings with it certain subsidiary obligations, one of which is:
"To understand, practice, and promote His Sunnah in the best way possible without creating any chaos, emnity or harm."
From what I have read I thinks a fair interpretation of "His Sunnah" would be the Prophet's understanding.
This is only one of many subsidiary obligations so convertion to Islam is not something to be undertaken lightly.
It strikes me that some of the more extreme strands of Islam appear to have overlooked this particular obligation when one considers their expressed attitudes to the west.
Just a thought.
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Thilo Sarrazin is a member of the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) - oh you mean a socialist. And he is expressing overtly racist philosophies - in other words, a nationalist.
Now - is everyone concentrating? - what do you get when you put a nationalist together with a socialist? Well done - a National Socialist.
And what do we do with National Socialists (or Nazis for short)? Well one of two things - you either laugh them out of court now or wait until they have destroyed countless millions of lives and hang them.
OK, ironic comment over -
#20 - Lord_P
Thilo Sarrazin needs to be very careful indeed. There is, as far as I know, no gene which predisposes anyone to one or other religious faith but there are most certainly genetic factors which are common to the Semitic races and many of the very people he is criticising carry it.
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the BBC Europe blog is like the x-factor. a few very good, and many forgettable comments, but the real entertainment comes from the completely deluded bunch who seem to live on another planet without knowing it. but the reason why I still like watching the x-factor auditions but hardly read the comments on here anymore, is that there everyone has just one go at proudly displaying their deluded selves, whereas here it's always the same people, with always the same 'material'. democracythreat, MarcusAureliusII etc is all we've got. if the BBC wants to increase page hits on this blog, all it needs to do is to wait at the x-factor exit door and give the particularly hilarious people a 3-week contract to write comments on here.
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#13. At 6:51pm on 31 Aug 2010, democracythreat,
Your comment had a sort of reason until you said "then they and the British need to learn the virtues of real democracy."
Would you like to explain what 'real democracy' is throughout Europe as it's quite obviously been a lost cause for many years.
Maybe it's better on Mars, beam me up Scotty!
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#8. At 4:09pm on 31 Aug 2010, BluesBerry,
"Whether or not Muslims assimilate, Muslims are OVERWHELMINGLY
- hostile to extremism,
- support democracy, and
- try to assimilate.
This is true of second and third generation Muslims who suffer from a kind of tortorous pull because
a) the native European society refuses to integrate them fully and
b) they cannot relate to the countries where they were born. "
Please elucidate just which planet you live on.
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24 Buzet23
--✄-- Your comment had a sort of reason until you said "then they and the British need to learn the virtues of real democracy."
Would you like to explain what 'real democracy' is throughout Europe as it's quite obviously been a lost cause for many years. --✄--
1) UK is a constitutional monarchy and unitary state consisting of four countries that means not a real democracy.
2) Greece is a is a parliamentary republic even if for the last 40 years we have an "oikogeniokratia"...New political system based on Patrilineality democracy (3 - 5 families clans government carried out either directly by the peoples vote) so not a real democracy
3) Switzerland is a REAL DEMOCRACY...through referendums, citizens may challenge any law passed by parliament and through initiatives, introduce amendments to the federal constitution, thus making Switzerland a direct democracy. The President of the Confederation is elected by the Assembly from among the seven members, traditionally in rotation and for a one-year term. The Swiss government has been a coalition of the four major political parties since 1959, each party having a number of seats that reflects its share of electorate and representation in the federal parliament.
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"Thilo Sarrazin has written a book called Germany Abolishes Itself. He is a member of the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) and on the board of the Bundesbank. His concern is that immigrants who do not integrate are undermining German identity. It is an echo that can be heard in many European countries."
It's just one more thing the US does extremely well that Europe cannot do at all. That alone would be sufficient to make the telling difference between the success of American society in sharp contrast to the failure of Europe.
Europe as usual tried to copy something it doesn't undrstand and now must live with the dire consequences of its blunder. Trying to copy America is hopeless for Europe, Europe can never be America, it is not constructed in any way that is remotely comparable.
Europeans are Germans, French, Italians, British because of their ties to the land, ties to a common history, ties to a common culture, a common everything. That is how those societies define themselves. The United States by contrast is defined by a common set of core values. Therefore anyone can become an American simply by adopting those values into their lives while only someone born of German parents can be a true German. No matter what a piece of paper says conferring citizenship unless they are part of the tribe they will always be regarded by the mainstream society as outsiders, never absorbed and accepted by it as part of them. The attempt to force it to create a political and economic superstate has turned Europe into a cultural ticking time bomb. Only one of many that will one day explode into violence again. It isn't clear how it could ever be resolved.
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'He is right'
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--✄-- Europe can never be America... --✄--
Thanks god!...
--✄-- Europeans are Germans, French, Italians, British because of their ties to the land, ties to a common history, ties to a common culture, a common everything. That is how those societies define themselves. --✄--
Youknow Europeans as much as i know Martians.
Just some examples:
Yugoslavia? Peacefully created, common history, ties to a common culture, a common everything...Result? Divided trough wars
Italians? common history, ties to a common culture, a common everything Result? Italy created trough wars. Today they hardly sing their national anthem, they despise but they savagely battle for their pasta
Great Britain? common history, ties to a common culture, a common everything Result? When a foreigner thinks of Brits, they thing of the English. Since Scotland is a country in Great Britain, you could call a scottish person british?...yet that doesn't seem to happen quite often within Britain itself. Scots are scots, northern irish are themselves, as are the welsh.
Austrians are Austrians? Don't seemed so since they happily annexed by the Germans in WWII as well as Czechoslovakia and Denmark (only a dozen of Germans conquered the whole nation in one day...same destiny with the Albanians by the Italians) and so on...
--✄-- Trying to copy the United States (defined by a common set of core values) is hopeless for Europe. --✄--
What core values? You must be kidding!...BTW without knowing it, for me as a E.U citizen...that's a big compliment from you.
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Whether we like it or not he spoke the truth but truth is no longer a positive value for Europeans. Instead, Europeans like to mire themselves with evasions, half truths and obfuscations. Plain speaking is dead because there is no honesty left.
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1. "His concern is that immigrants who do not integrate are undermining German identity."
That is a popular cliché in Europe, but does it actually mean anything? Constitutional democracy exists to protect individual rights from abuse by government, other individuals and the majority population. It does not exist to ensure that the world and the society's "identity" will always remain the same. In a contitutional democracy, individuals are free to pursue their life choices which cannot be imposed on them by the government or the majority. Nothing like an unchangeable German identity exists; a free society constantly evolves and is nothing but a sum of the individuals of whom it is made up. Where laws are not obeyed, they need to be enforced using the due process of law; but the fact that a law-abiding person has a different culture, lifestyle, religion or language from the prevailing one is not a problem, that is what a free society is all about. There is no need to "integrate" a non-conforming person to become like the majority. Any legal or political pressure to do so should be called what it is, namely infringement of individual rights, assimilation policy and abuse by the majority.
2. "Muslim immigrants are unwilling or incapable of integrating into Western society."
Logics 101 teaches us to beware circular reasoning. If I define Western society as one which is not majority Muslim, then no wonder I have to conclude that Muslims cannot integrate. He is alarmed that his grandchildren might one day be Muslim or speak Turkish, but the truth is that in a free open society that is an entirely plausible possibility which no one can rule out in advance. If he wants to eliminate the freedom of his children to choose their religion or to speak which language(s) they wish to use, then he should come out openly and tell us about his scheme to restrict individual freedoms instead of hiding behind meaningless buzzwords.
3. "Too many unemployment benefit receivers, with society not getting enough back."
Ironic, coming from a socialist. What a hypocrite. I guess when an "indigenous" German receives a benefit, that is called "social justice", but when the recipient is a German of Turkish origin, that is called "welfare abuse". The thing to take away from this: the best way of preventing welfare abuse, for those that are so concerned about this, is cutting unnecessary welfare benefits. It works 100%.
4. "At their root is unease at the speed with which society is changing and a concern that societies may develop separate, parallel communities."
In a contitutional democracy, individuals are free to pursue their life choices which cannot be imposed on them by the government or the majority. A free society constantly evolves and is nothing but a sum of the individuals of whom it is made up. In a constitutional democracy laws should be enacted in order to protect individual rights (eg to prevent assault or damage to an individual) and the common resources (eg to prevent environmental damage), but should not be used to enact private moral or religious beliefs, culture or lifestyle of the majority. Moral opprobrium by the majority, no matter how long-standing, is not enough to justify discriminatory treatment of minorities. A state cannot have a legitimate interest in disadvantaging an unpopular minority group simply because the group is unpopular. Fundamental rights of individuals cannot be put to popular vote, otherwise the majority (especially in situations where the majority knows that it will likely never be in the position of the minority - eg, as regards ethnicity) could use legislation as a weapon against the minority in violation of individual fundamental rights.
So this is really nothing but the paranoia of old-fashioned European etatists who dread anything that is not controlled by the government but (if we disregard situations where segregation is imposed on minorities by the majority population) results from spontaneous activities of individuals who freely choose to associate in religious or social organizations or communities, which is their basic right. Unless of course these proponents of a closed society believe that such parallel communities are a sign that state institutions are failing - but then the thing to do is stop whining about separate parallel communities and ensure that legal institutions and law enforcement work properly. Ironically, in doing so, one would also contribute to safeguarding the individuals rights of minority members who will unlike today not be shut out from the protection of law. Not easy in practice, but conceptually this should be fairly easy to achieve: simply avoid delegating state power to parallel private institutions (e.g., Muslim courts with binding competence or special family law regimes for Muslims) and see to it that public officials do their jobs.
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It has become a trend that the proponents of a closed society wave the flag of liberalism in order to assault multiculturalism. That is an intentional misrepresentation of liberalism. It is in the nature of human beings that, if they are given freedom together with the means to meet their immediate material needs, they have a natural tendency to make their own individual choices. Thus, multiculturalism (or pluralism, to use a less unpopular expression) is a natural result of liberalism. Its opposite, which I assume must then be monoculturalism or homogenous society is the unnatural result of coercion. It is not by accident that totalitarian regimes are among the most closed and homogenous societies on Earth, and once the totalitarian rule is overthrown, those societies gradually tend to become more diverse again.
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iancheese
Re #30
"...he (sarrazin)..spoke the truth.. evasions, half truths and obfuscations.. plain speaking is dead because there is no honesty left."
Would that be the 'truth' that tries to label every member of the Jewish as possessor of one specific gene?
If so, that is a deliberate misuse/misconception of genuine facts: Basic dishonesty!
Would that be the 'evasions, half-truths and obfuscations' that tries to explain EUropean society's majority criminal problems as essentially stemming from a minority within a minority?
If so, that is a deliberate misuse/misconception of genuine facts: Basic dishonesty!
In 'plain speaking' Herr Sarrazin's ideas are wrong almost from start to finish.
That does not mean I do not sympathise with his, Your & others' view that something has gone badly amiss in the 'multi-cultural' policy-making of EUrope-UK especially in recent years.
Sarrazin's points strike a note of realism because 'multi-culturalism' across EUrope-UK has been badly mishandled: The full implications of virtually unchecked immigration from regions of the World unfamiliar with the EUropean-British cultural-political lifestyle are only now becoming clear to National & supra-National Governments.
Declaring 'immigration' was vital to the Economy the European-UK Leadership encouraged years of ill-planned, uninformed immigration at an increasing pace. The 'Leadership' did it despite only minimal approval of the indigenous Citizens: And almost always, if there were objections by those Citizens they were conveniently labelled in a manner Sarrazin & You might be by some on here.
For far too many years these 'Leadership' imagined that because the non-EUropean immigrants were entering the Continent for a better life than in their own areas that more-or-less automatically, by some sort of osmosis the 'newcomers' would transform into traditional EUropeans & Britons without any serious, meaningful demands made on them to do so.
When we actually logically consider this non-policy of 'integration' it is actually effective only in reverse, it is 'non-integration': Where EU-UK hands-out its largesse from the moment of entry to one & all without requiring the recipient even bother to learn the national language of their new Homeland it beggars belief there has not been a far more dramatic breakdown within the various societies!?
One wonders how it was ever possible for mainstream European-UK Political Parties & their various Institutions plus Charitable concerns to envisage any other result than the present antipathy?
To take just one clear-cut example: Immigrant Females to EUrope-UK. How could anyone responsible for a Nation's policies in this area knowing the primary societal importance-impact of Family think non-intervention would assist Females to break free from their general 'second class' status in most of those non-European societies!? The naivety of EUropean-UK Leadership in this area is astonishing! Because of supposed Human Rights/Privacy issues Europe-UK left whole swathes of Females unable to escape the dogma of 'patriarchal' domination!
Alongside that it also left the EUropean-British societies' traditional views open to debate - - there are numerous examples of Europeans-Britons being told they must be 'more accepting' 'more accomodating' of alternative views - - it was/is a spectacular collapse of standing up for basic Equality principles! Those who argued for greater understanding, toleration, celebration of 'foreign' cultural perspectives did so on grounds of 'equality' that by their tolerance-policies they directly & effectively were denying to masses of 'newcomers'.
Absurdity ad nauseum!
So, ian cheese, whilst I find Sarrazin's views are gross over-simplifications, I have no doubt they resonate with many indigenous Europeans-Britons such as You (& me, in a manner) because at basic level the ordinary Citizen senses things have got out of hand, but typically looks for the cheapest, quick-shot solution (generally known as the 'blame game') when it is National & supra-National Government policy where the true blame and the remedy lies.
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# 4 Cybergabi:
"How's that for irony?"
If "Sarrazin" indeed comes from "Saracen" then there's no irony at all and it even ads more credence to what he says, because he seems to be a very well integrated immigrant to Germany (a long time ago), as opposed to immigrants who don't bother to integrate.
It's regrettable that Sarazzin included this Jew comment (althought from the point of view of genetics this may be true in the same way that Germans, Poles, Italians or Brits might have the same genes as well - modern genetics can trace these genes and find out what place on earth someone originally was from) because this let his opponents dismiss his book entirely and on the spot. But it is interesting to see how this not-long-ago-entirely-dismissed notion of the failure of multiculturalism enters the mainstream. People speak more and more loudly about this and the politicians can no longer pretend there's no problem. If the Belgians and French could do something about it (burka ban), why not Germans?
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"I am in Germany, preparing a profile of the Pope - but all the talk is about a politician and banker who has caused outrage by his comments on immigration."
A great deal of the talk in Germany at the moment is about what is going on in Stuttgart.
50,000 people demonstrated there last Friday. The city is seeing Germany's biggest popular uprising since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The German government is delighted that the foreign media are indulging in a feeding frenzy over the Sarrazin story rather than asking awkward and embarrassing questions about why one of the country's most prosperous cities is at war with its inhabitants.
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"The boss of Siemens, Peter Loescher, says the comments "are damaging the international reputation of Germany as a business location".
They can easily fix that just bribe politicians to abuy their products!!
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8. At 4:09pm on 31 Aug 2010, BluesBerry wrote:
"""Thilo Sarrazin has only repeated what has been found in the research of the Einstein Institute, which concluded (in a major surprise) the closeness of genetics between "THE" two Jewish communities of Europe, the Ashkenazim & the Sephardim."""
Some of the Jewish are really a funny lot. On the one hand they protest against every single other nation doing a research about its ancestry as being a sign of racism, on the other hand, they go out loud to proclaim the unbelievable that all Jewish are one nation.
No I am sorry they are not. The fact that they share one common gene will not say anything as Lapons and Thailandese, both of the general Mongolian anthropologic race also share more than 1 gene so should be bunched as one group of people too. ALL of Europe (including Turkey) must have some Nordic genes due to the late-Roman times expansion of the northern tribes and ALL of Europe (including Sweden & Finland) must have some Greek genes due to the ancient colonisation of central and western Mediterranean and sometimes out of it, as well as late medieval times refugees in western & northern & eastern Europe.
"""The Ashkenazim lived in Northern & Eastern Europe until Hitler regime; now live mostly in the United States and Israel."""
...and they are largely blond with blue eyes due to the extensive inclusion of central asiatic-ukrainian tribes of which the most known are the Khazars.
"""The Sephardim were exiled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 and relocated to the Ottoman Empire - North Africa and the Netherlands."""
... and they are largely black haired, dark-eyed.
Askenazim traditionally look like Eastern Europens. Sefardim look like North Africans. I would not describe easily a Polish and a Moroccan as being of the same nation. Said this, given that both groups derived out of the 2000 years old despersion of Israeli people from the region of Palestine it is well expected to always find some loose connection but as said such links can be easily made among really distant groups of people too. If anything, modern Palestinians, by genes are much more close to ancient Jewish people than modern Jewish.
"""This study appeared to refute the suggestion made by the Historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. Sand said that Jews have no common origin but are just a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times."""
I do not like the word random. What happened simply is that judaism, a religion and not a nation in itself (the initial nation was that of Israel), which is a traditionally closed religion, closed society at various times at various places tended to be more open and sometimes quite open in introducing more members inside. Also the fact that jewish are traditionally matriarchal and thus the line passes from the mother side, meant that even at relatively closed periods there was always an inwards movement rather than an outwards hence arriving in today when Jewish present several 10s of millions of people around the world, much more than other historic nations.
"""You can have an interest in research; you can even have legitimate questions about Jews and/or Israel without being anti-semitic.
So I am puzzled that a bright and capable politician such as Chancellor Angela Merkel would be so quick to call Thilo Sarrazin’s little remark "completely unacceptable"?"""
Agreed. That is what I did above.
Now if I take the above research and apply it for the nation of Greeks, then talking of 1 gene I could find some 600,000,000 around the world (most of Europeans and European descendants in other continents) and if talking for more than 10 genes - i.e. there refering to a real close resemblance - I could find to about 100,000,000 million people (what you would call Mediterranean people).
If Mongols do the same they will be talking in billions of people terms when half of Asia is called Khan... (only the descendants of the grandfather of Jenkis Han have been measured in several millions you know from Mongolia and China to India, Iran, Turkey and Saoudi Arabia...).
There you understand that picking a magic gene and raising such questions is pretty much useless. Not only useless, it is not even proper science but pure mis-information. If people wanted to talk on such issues of anthropology & ethnology they should stick to a more proper scientific methodology.
"""Sarrazin’s remarks about Muslims. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about Muslims in Germany to assess veracity."""
Sarrazin by his name (unless it had been a nickname of an ancestor of his but then judging by his face he is not a typical German either...) is a living proof of integration in Germany! But also a proof that such integration takes 100s of years and of course necessarily includes smaller populations.
"""...I know that it was Europe that invited Muslims after WW2, especially those from Turkey and North Africa to rebuild destroyed European economies. Apparently the cost-benefit ratio was in favour of the Muslim immigrants vs home-grown Europeans. (Cheaper?)"""
Muslims started to arrive in Europe in observable numbers since the late 60s early 70s and thus much after had already been constructed and already passed its first recession. Hence they contributed absolutely nothing in these terms. The cost-effectiveness of their presence has never been measured openly which of course is a hugely strong sign of the largely negative effect on the balance of the European economies.
"""Whether or not Muslims assimilate, Muslims are OVERWHELMINGLY
- hostile to extremism,"""
Only if it hurts their societies. Otherwise they do not care much, trust me in that: when you are not a muslim, your life is not their priority (here I speak generally and in %). You will never see muslims protesting against the wrongdoings of muslims against infidels but they will jump to do it in the first minor injustice of an infidel against a muslim.
"""- support democracy, and"""
They are not so much occupied with such issues.
- try to assimilate.
On the overall? Absolutely not. Driving a used BMW with state aid is not my definition of assimilation. If they were trying to be assimilated we would see some of them serving in the German army fighting in Afganistan for example. Go figure out that yourself...
"""This is true of second and third generation Muslims who suffer from a kind of tortorous pull because
a) the native European society refuses to integrate them fully and"""
Do Germans say the same for all foreigners?
"""b) they cannot relate to the countries where they were born."""
Evidently.
"""The tendency of some "intellectuals: to band together all sects of Islam as one determined to fight the West is fallacious, cruel and biased. It does not speak to me of "intellectualism". It speaks bigotry, religious intollerance, and unjustified hatred."""
No it is part of the social mechanics. Muslims are to be used as a weapon against western societies for their easier manipulation. As such muslims are both victims as well as collaborators to the crime of social manipulation. Divide and conquer.
"""The days of quarrels based on religion alone should be shunned by the civilized world."""
Go tell that to the 99% of the muslim religious teachers that still talk about the difference of being a muslim and an "infidel".
"""Homo sapiens "sapiens" should be debating about ways to establish a better world where people are accepted for what they are regardless of race, nationality or creed."""
Right. Let us say start from forbiding the mothers to love their children more than the neighbours' children...
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#31. At 08:09am on 01 Sep 2010, oulematu wrote:
"In a contitutional democracy, individuals are free to pursue their life choices which cannot be imposed on them by the government or the majority."
Wrong for a number of reasons, democracy means the will of the people decides what is accepted and what is not, whether that be laws, behaviour, healthcare etc. Your words suggest that it would be ok in a democracy for an anarchist to destroy the structure of a society because of their contrary views, which is plainly absurd, likewise any group or minority which seek to impose their lifestyle on the majority by use of those infamous words human rights. Nobody has the right to have rights by right, within a society rights are earned and with them goes responsibilities for the welfare and benefit of the society as a whole. If someone or a minority wish to live outside a Societies bounds they they should not attempt to accrue the benefits of the society they abhor so much, i.e. they have no rights.
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Hi everyone,
I'm half German, half Dutch. I have two passports. I grew up in Germany and I study here. My friends are mostly German. I read German papers. And I have to admit that Sarrazin's book caused a new wave of indignation as well as another outbreak of the debate. We have a big muslim (mostly turkish) community here. When these people came as Gastarbeiter in the sixties, they didn't get the German citizenship, as someone wrote here. They were meant to do the job and leave again. But they didn't. So from the beginning on there was a misunderstanding that explains why deep into the 1990’s there was no substantial integration policy. Only then politicians realised that Germany was what is was and what it is: an immigration country. So there are German courses and other means that might help people to settle in only since very recently. Regarding that, I am surprised that it worked out so well. We don't have burning cars here like in France. We have a number of mosques that work together with the christian community (for example Duisburg Marxloh and Munich), we have a majority of immigrants that go to work, build families. During the last world cup, I went to a turkish retaurant in Cologne in an area where mostly people of Turkish descent live. They put a German flag over their Atatürk picture. Last week I was in the same area and when they broke their fast they put out chairs and tables and lots of food and invited everyone to eat with them and explained Ramadan over dried figs and tea to old German ladies and a hungry party crowd. And this is why I am so upset with Sarrazin. If he only stepped out of his airconditioned office at the Bundesbank he could see the effort people make every day. He could see that everything is far from perfect, but that people try hard to make it better! And the very few who don't are not only muslim, but also German. There are people who just got used to not working. That is a problem, but not one for immigration policy, but education policy. No other country offers opportunities for advancement as bad as Germany. If you're born poor and your parents are uneducated you will have a very hard time getting out of tis milieu. Of course I'm not the first to see that this is the real problem, most papers in Germany right now are pointing exactly at this circumstance. Only Sarrazin closes his eyes to reality. Of course it is easier blaming others than admit that you yourself made mistakes. But where blaming others takes you especially Germans should know better than anyone else.
@oulematu: I loved your comments. Thanks for the effort!
@democracythread: Germany is of course not occupied by the allies anymore, there are some British and American military bases still. But I thought by now GB and the USA are our friends and not our occupiers anymore. Germany is not owned by companies. There is lobbyism and probably too much of it, like in every European country and the EU itself, but the politicians are of course free in their decision. That the German police is brutal and corrupt is absurd. We probably have the highest hurdles here for the police to be allowed to act. Of course the international human rights charta is applicable and enforcable by and before German courts. Of course individually there are policemen that behave badly, but a state cannot make laws to prevent bad character. I am a member of Amnesty International now for some years and of course there are occasionally infringements of human rights in Germany, Just like in the UK or France or anywhere in the world, but those infringements are not accepted and you can go to court. I don't know what else you want? The GDR was probably not owned by companies in your point of view. But ask my friends who still can remember their parents lowering their voice any time a policeman was around, whos parents remember feeling scared that their children would be taken away from them if they didn't turn up to SED meetings, who remember that they couldn't even trust their neighbours. What do you think, would they want to live in the GDR or the Bundesrepublik? As to your idea of direct democracy. It's a splendid idea. But now you tell me how that should work with 82.2 million people? All right, representative democracy is not perfect, but as good as we can do, as far as I can see. Plus, democracy does not mean, in my opinion that whatever the majority says has to happen. It also includes the protection of minority rights. Everything else would be tyranny of the masses and not democracy.
@Nik: "Go tell that to the 99% of the muslim religious teachers that still talk about the difference of being a muslim and an "infidel"."
Gee, seriuosly. 99%. Always those people who turn their own limited world view into solid numbers. And even if it was a 100%, that would not give you the right to act like an fool yourself. Anything else would be worth of a new book: The West Abolishes Itself. And as far as I remember Germanys presence in Afghanistan is not exactly popular among biological Germans either. So why would you ask from an immigrant going there fighting when as a matter of fact 55% of Germans are against it? That immigrant would act against the will of the majority. (btw, I didn't make that number up)
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#37 wrote "Right. Let us say start from forbiding the mothers to love their children more than the neighbours' children..."
That is an extremely twisted and demagogical argument which I have seen you apply several times on this blog. Most parents love their children. Parents are also responsible for feeding their babies/changing diapers/taking care of them, and failure to do so is child abuse. But that does not mean that parents should be abusive to other children. If you ever visit a children's playground, you will see that a good part of what the parents must do there is to teach their babies to be civil to other babies and ensuring there are no fights or injuries to anyone involved.
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35. At 09:28am on 01 Sep 2010, Feuerbach99 wrote:
"""A great deal of the talk in Germany at the moment is about what is going on in Stuttgart. 50,000 people demonstrated there last Friday....The German government is delighted that the foreign media are indulging in a feeding frenzy over the Sarrazin story rather than asking awkward and embarrassing questions about why one of the country's most prosperous cities is at war with its inhabitants."""
What do you think the gipsy-trick in France is? I have repeatedly commented on the use of the Julia-phenomena as weapons of social manipulation. What is "Julia"? Let me tell you:
In Greece, till October 3, i.e. just one day before elections, US-citizen, president of PASOK socialist party, grandson and son of prime ministers, prime minister candidate Jeffrey Papandreou advertised vehemently a social programme claiming that "there are money out there for his programme".
October 4 was the day of elections. By October 5 Jeffrey - via his ministers - comes out and tells people word-by-word that "there is no more saliva" (a disgusting slung-kitch way of saying "there are no money") and that not only he will not do a single of his promises but he will actually enforce the financially & socially most brutal programme ever imposed upon Greeks.
At the same time, throughout September, in media - oh, and I am not referring to tabloids but mainly the mainstream news and newspapers - there was a visible over-advertishment of a call-it-model, call-it-actress, blond starlet called Julia. Right after the announcement of Jeffrey, there go out the rumours of Julia of having done a porno movie or of participating with in "high-class" people orgy-parties. And then there come out the porno movies. And it seemed that all the country was occupied more with Julia than with the oncoming onslaught.
Wrong. In reality it was not the country. It was the media. Media in Greece is 90% to 95% absolutely controlled (that is how you have PASOK in government again and again, how about it!), people don't have any alternative but to watch what is forcefed on them. Only alternative is to close the tv but then you see, ironing for the housewife will be much more boring if you like, that is how it goes.
Hence, gipsies and Thilo are both the Julias of late August-early September 2010. Tomorrow they will find a new "issue".
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36. At 10:12am on 01 Sep 2010, ChrisArta wrote:
"""The boss of Siemens, Peter Loescher, says the comments "are damaging the international reputation of Germany as a business location"."""
Hmmm... it is mostly him that cares. Turks of Germany would not care much about it nor would the socially exlcuded masses of Germans.
Epic comment by ChrisArta:
"""They can easily fix that just bribe politicians to abuy their products!!"""
Plain epic!
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Oulematu
Re #31 & #32
Have to take issue with You on this key point:
"..there is no need to 'integrate' a non-conforming person to become like the majority.."
You present the case for the Individual and I certainly have to accept it is along my lines of grounds for opposition to the EU-Brussels entity´in which I fear for Individual Citizen & State identity being submerged/coalesced against the Free-will.
However, there are limitations to all such matters: My support of the Citizen's Rights & Responsibilities does not extend to acceptance of any & everything they might wish to do.
At an extreme, no sane, sensible person and so far as I am aware there is no Society-Community-Faith would allow paedophilia, rape or other perceived total aberrations of conduct within the norms of society.
Therefore, we are discussing the less obvious and much more problematic issue of within the ethical confines of a Civilised-Liberal structured society, 'where do my Rights end because I owe Responsibility to other individuals & the general community?'
Here, IMO, it gets very difficult: For into the mix comes the Individual's perception of what is deemed socially permissible as well as the position taken by their Society/Community (in the Democratic Nations, usually via Elected Government).
Thus, there is always DEBATE within an informed Democratic Society: E.g. we have perfectly upright, decent Citizens arguing for the Legalisation of Drugs and others of equal standing arguing such a measure would be wrong. Government takes account of all the opinions, considers effects & influences, weighs costs, and forms a view on which Laws are made about Drugs.
Democracy functions on this 'key' point as the Citizen must then make that individual choice about their social behaviour: To be 'inside' or 'outside' the prescribed Law.
For the Democratic tradition to continue to flourish there can be no challenge on this issue: The Individual Citizen must accept the Law of the land and only work through those Laws to have them altered - - and at the sharp-end of this 'multi-cultural' dispute - - let there be no doubt no Citizen bound/influenced by their Faith has any more or less Right & Responsibility to follow the Law of their chosen Nation.
No Almighty/God/Allah whatever may come before Democracy. Any Citizen that disputes/denies this point is simply incapable of being 'integrated' into EUropean-British society.
Your line about 'Social justice' (indigenous German recipient) on the one hand and 'Welfare abuse' (Turkish recipient) on the other is very well made. However, surely where the issue arises in the view of many indigenous EUropeans & Britons is in 'qualification' for that 'welfare cheque'.
Into that 'qualification' comes not only whether a recipient has literally, physically paid their 'Dues/Taxes' into the system, but also the much more complex consideration of is the recipient a fully functioning, regular Member of Society - - really, it is what we are all debating - - the amorphous & ultimately unmeasurable 'one of us' or, 'one of them' syndrome!? We cannot duck this central issue: Is the Turkish-German first & foremost a member of Germany's society, or, is that Individual continuing to hold with, support and show allegiance to a Turkish society? Some will say, 'it doesn't matter,' & 'they're entitled,' which is a fair though weak point, as it obviously does matter or there would be no accusation of, 'welfare abuse', and no outraged reaction from any quarter.
Democratic Laws have been passed entitling the German & Turkish-German to benefits when in need: Compliance with those Laws simply requires that both recipients have matched claimant criteria.
Compliance with the Societal criteria which are generally unwritten & unvoiced is not required and yet in the eyes of some (at least) indigenous Germans (& I assume, within every other indigenous EU Nation's Population) that qualification is as, if not more desirable than the paying of monetary 'dues'. Germany's indigenous Citizen reflects on what & to whom is the 'welfare' being paid to assist? It would seem some (perhaps many) have concluded the money is going toward a Societal-Community who are at best ambivalent and at worst openly hostile to all that traditional German Society-Community has lived by.
Failure to get over this hurdle is the glaring malfunction at the core of National & supra-National 'multi-cultural' policy-making for several decades.
You write quite fairly & accurately that, "..nothing like an unchangeable German identity exists..", and is not the same as nothing German will exist; nevertheless, many indigenous Germans have that as a concern if not an actual fear. You may say 'ridiculous', aren't we in Germany, the German language is everywhere etc.. So, if it is so ridiculous and so obvious that Germany's traditions will not disappear, but simply evolve as surely as the abdication of the Kaiser or WW2 defeat did not mean the end of Germany, then why and how did indigenous Germans arrive at such a state of mind!? The idea, the thoughts behind such notions must have come from somewhere: Well, we have to be straight and state that it is very largely as a result of the emergence & effects on Germany of 'Immigration' & 'Multi-culturalism' policies. There is no getting away from that conclusion.
For You to then conveniently label that as, "..really nothing but the paranoia of old-fashioned European elitists who dread anything that is not controlled by the Government.." is IMO a critical misconception.
I do not have an answer to the conumdrum: How to blend entirely different and in parts entirely oppositional Social-cultural traditions to bring about a cohesive, stable Community of Individual Citizens?
I do believe 'multi-culturalism' as foisted & enacted on the Citizens of EUrope-UK by their various woefully out-of-touch & unscrupulous Governments has been an ongoing failure of epic proportions.
What success there has been was/is largely down to the immense sanity & sensibility of Individuals & Communities, indigenous (traditional) & immigrant ('newcomer'), across the Continent & British Isles. They have made the best of a very ill-thought-out 'integration' over 5 to 6 decades whose longterm effects are only just emerging and finally being appreciated by the cocooned, supposedly know-all Leadership of this geo-political region.
IMO, You're entirely correct when saying, "...moral opprobrium by the majority, no matter how long-standing, is not enough to justify discriminatory treatment, of minorities..".
It therefore begs the question what is deemed 'discriminatory' within a Democratic tradition? Don't take offence (read on): Drug users are a 'minority' and Laws 'discriminate' against them; those Laws stem from a 'majority' view (we must assume) that drugs are harmful to the useful, purposeful functioning of the Individual and the Community.
So, again we face the dichotomy of when is Democratically arrived at Law intruding on general personal behaviour to the point that it is breeching an Individual's Democratic Rights & Responsibilities?
We can and IMO should pose the same question in reverse to the 'immigrant' Individual & to their Community: When do their 'traditions' (those custom & practise which You write earlier no indigenous German should think exist in perpetuity) intrude on general Communal behaviour to the point that it is breeching a Nation's Democratic Rights & Responsibilities?
Afterall, if it is accepted (& I believe it is) that "..nothing like unchangeable identity... exists.." for any Individual or Group or Nation then it is surely all the more reason to pose the idea within Democracy (which itself is an ever changing tool - - hence my loathing of the EU) that if nothing & no one lasts forever why should a 'majority' not insist on certain changes/conditions/requirements (the labels are endless - - the ultimate intention the same) about how a 'minority' conduct themselves within that Societal structure?
When all is said and done it is North Korea where the 'great leader' will live forever, but in Continental EUrope & the British Isles it is the 'majority' whose views prevail for a time and then pass on as 'Democracy' takes its course: What was acceptable, e.g. Capital Punishment is no longer, what was a social stigma, e.g. homosexuality is no longer, what were determining perspectives, e.g. Christianity, Judaism no longer do hold sway.
And, surely that is how it must be with those many millions of decent, aspiring 'immigrant' populations - - what they brought with them from their native lands will be assimilated in part and some portions will be disgarded by the 'newcomer' themselves and others by considered, debated and Democratically arrived Law.
Which returns us to Your 'non-conforming' person and their 'integration': In the prevailing Democracy they have that non-conformist Right and may make subject to legal considerations their Free-will choices. Similarly, it is the Responsibility & role of the State's Elected Government to respond at times to those non-conformist activities when there is sufficient grounds via other Citizens' expressed viewpoints. Of course the State may (& has done) take the side of the 'minority'/'Individual': One of the immense strengths of Democracy over all the other methods of Governance is that it does leave room for the non-conformists or at least what are considered by a 'majority' to be in a 'minority' category.
Even so it is within Communities and the general lifestyle that the 'integration' of sorts will come about: Thus, in the London Underground carriage, the Paris Metro etc. (& unlike almost anywhere the 'immigrant' will have come from) a Punk, a HariKrishna, a Student, a Pensioner, a Disabled, a Girl, a Boy, a Priest, a Lawyer, a Housewife, an Unemployed, a family of immigrants and so on may all sit in the same carriage without let or hindrance for their caste, creed, race, gender, sexuality, age etc.
Think about it: How many of the above would find themselves sat apart if not outright banned from sharing a carriage in any non-Democratic conforming Nation or part of the World?
In the eyes of some that 'carriage' is a blasphemy, i.e. the work of the 'devil'!
Now that really is non-conformist and 'We' would both want Laws to prevent that sort of 'integrationist' view taking hold, wouldn't we?
For so long as Democracy prevails somehow, I cannot foresee a time when a division of the people in that 'carriage' will ever be acceptable in EUrope or UK: Integration will occur, but it will be done by the People inspite of the prejudice, incompetence & maladministration found in the so-called Leadership from every Community.
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Aliena$$
"Youknow Europeans as much as i know Martians.
Just some examples:
Yugoslavia? Peacefully created, common history, ties to a common culture, a common everything...Result? Divided trough wars"
Yougoslavia wasn't even a real counrtry anymore than Czechoslovakia or Iraq were. They were absurd European constructs held together by force just like the EU and as soon as that force was relaxed the constitutent countries that were conscripted to to become part of those constructs immediately flew apart, in the case of Yuogoslavia, with typical European violence fueled by ethnic hatred.
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Turks can move to Germany, nominally become citizens, and five generations later they are still viewed by most Germans as Turks, not as Germans. Same for anyone else not born there. Similar for most other European nations. In France many see Sarkozy as a Hungarian not a Frenchman. And this expects to compete with the United States of America on an equal footing? Give me a break.
BTW, whether it is through similarities of certain aspects of culture or asssimilation, Sarkozy is every bit as crazy and out of touch with reality as any other Frenchman. Vive la difference.
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I was in Stockholm over the weekend, speaking to a Bosnian Muslim who is married to a Finn. He was saying he was thinking of moving to another part of the city because where he was there were 'too many immigrants'. I guess there are two points here. Firstly, old-wave immigrants who may have been in a country for around 20 years resent the invasion of 'new-wave' immigrants. Let's face it, most of us are descended from old-wave immigrants if we look back far enough, and there's always the temptation to say 'pull up the drawbridge, I'm safely on board' Secondly, the area he was talking about is not entirely social housing, and it is not political action that has forced people to live there. The fact is that most immigrants are on low paid jobs and do not have access to inherited property, so even if they can afford their own property they tend to gravitate to the low -cost areas (which, due to their presence, become even lower-cost areas) In other words, the creation of immigration 'ghettos' is more a result of market forces than social planning.
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What "force" exactly holds the EU together?
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CBW... can you not be slightly more concise?
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2. At 2:18pm on 31 Aug 2010, anotherfakename wrote:
"The program I watched yesterday suggested that the rise of Hitler was also down to the bankers wanting to keep communism out at any cost.
On a more upbeat note, of course we also have a similar problem, ghettos of 'ethnic minorities' refusing to integrate in any way...."
EUpris: I am going by my memory of reading "Hitler's Vienna" By Brigitte Hamann. I believe it to be an excellent book and people in Vienna agree with me. She is German. For Austrians to say something good about a German is a rare event.
The Jews in Vienna, when Hitler was there, were not refusing to integrate. A Jewish family used to give him Sunday lunch. When he was in power, Hitler helped them to escape. Hitler lived in a tramps home funded by a Jew. A Jewish doctor was very kind to Hitler's mum. He helped the doctor to escape to New York.
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@37 Nik.
"Only if it hurts their societies. Otherwise they do not care much, trust me in that: when you are not a muslim, your life is not their priority (here I speak generally and in %). You will never see muslims protesting against the wrongdoings of muslims against infidels but they will jump to do it in the first minor injustice of an infidel against a muslim."
It was in the news, quite a while ago now I think, about how a Muslim man stopped some Christian thugs from assaulting a Jewish man.
(I think they attacked him over the insanely stupid reason, that as a Jew he was responsible for killing Jesus.)
(There are some links of the web, but the original story has gone. Must have quite a while ago.)
(Anyway yeah, generalizations are bad, that was my point.)
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40. At 11:21am on 01 Sep 2010, oulematu wrote:
In 37 I wrote "Right. Let us say start from forbiding the mothers to love their children more than the neighbours' children..."
And how could Oulematu counter-argue with it?
"""That is an extremely twisted and demagogical argument..."""
Oooooo no Oulematu. It is the heart of the issue. You are merely trying to hide the elephant behind the tree pushing him with your little fingers.
"""Most parents love their children."""
You are not completing your phrase:
"Most (=the vast majority of) parents love their children more than they love the neighbours' children".
And I say that this is the prime definition of racism.
Apparently you need to go back to school to have a few lessons on the basics of language, semiology, the meaning of words and all that.
Race, nation, ethnos, tribe, family are all linked in an organic way (to varying degrees) to the parents' preferance to their children than others' children. As such the primary root of racism is parents' love and preference for their children.
Arguing with it is like arguing with the basics not only of the human spiece, not only of mammals but actually the majority of vertebrates. The fact that you went to school where you received whatever education, the fact that you speak a language or two, the fact that you drive a Skoda or a BMW, the fact that you type a word or two on the internet, the fact that you keep a Visa or a Maestro or both in your wallet and the fact that all these were developed by your spiece does not erase the fact that you (like the rest 7 billions of your spiece) are a live organism that was born and will die and during that time will follow the basic laws of life.
"""Parents are also responsible for feeding their babies/changing diapers/taking care of them, and failure to do so is child abuse."""
Have you ever wondered "why should they be responsible"? Why don't they give once and for all the responsibility to mass-nurseries?
"""But that does not mean that parents should be abusive to other children."""
Of course they are abusive to other children when they are not prepared to permit other children inherit a part of their property. Don't argue with the evident.
"""If you ever visit a children's playground, you will see that a good part of what the parents must do there is to teach their babies to be civil to other babies and ensuring there are no fights or injuries to anyone involved."""
Which roots down to self-preservation. Has been analysed in studies on human spieces competing tactics of co-operation and betrayal.
31. At 08:09am on 01 Sep 2010, oulematu wrote:
"""Constitutional democracy exists to protect individual rights from abuse by government, other individuals and the majority population."""
Wrong. It is a form of government which has been accepted at known (and very recent) historic times by specific people as a means of governance. By no means constitutional democracy (especially after its long time de-masking as yet another power-game) can become the end-game of societies nor has it presented anything basically more moral than previous types of government since down to basic it cannot be anything else than elected oligarchy. No need to analyse this further but it this phrase of yours is yet another prime example of wooden speech.
"""It does not exist to ensure that the world and the society's "identity" will always remain the same."""
Really? How about affecting the lifes of people in a direction that the vast majority of people either openly or through their acts (as I saw none of the gauche-caviar buying a house in "that" neighbourhood and sending his kids to those "schools") esteem as absolutely negative? Not only its role is to preserve the identity but it actually goes against the basic demand of people to preserve whatever they consider as an identity of theirs. The majority of governments of the majority of states do so since they are fascist oligarchies imposed by internationalised financial circles and their interests. This is the modern face of fascism and that is what you seem not only to not mind but also to support.
"""In a contitutional democracy, individuals are free to pursue their life choices which cannot be imposed on them by the government or the majority."""
No they are not. A prime example is that they are forced to pay others they shouldn't be forced to pay. Another is that they are forced to change place of living, way of life against their will while they would not had done it had they been free - that coming as a result of the given oligarchical policies you seem 100% ok with. I do not need to say more.
"""Nothing like an unchangeable German identity exists;"""
But that is up to the German people to work. Not others.
"""a free society constantly evolves and is nothing but a sum of the individuals of whom it is made up."""
yes yes... random walking meat... we got the idea...
"""Where laws are not obeyed, they need to be enforced using the due process of law; but the fact that a law-abiding person has a different culture, lifestyle, religion or language from the prevailing one is not a problem, that is what a free society is all about."""
Almost biblical!!!!!! The law! The Law! I will let aside the fact that 99% of the times the law is not even applied but only when it serves the interests of the fascist (i.e. union of interests) oligarchy: the law is a human construction and as a human construction changes. People demand a change of laws to fit better the will of the majority. That is what does not happen.
2. "Muslim immigrants are unwilling or incapable of integrating into Western society."
"""He is alarmed that his grandchildren might one day be Muslim or speak Turkish, but the truth is that in a free open society that is an entirely plausible possibility which no one can rule out in advance."""
Oh no. In a free and open society that would not had been the outcome as the democratic will of people would had been expressed in legislation thus eliminating the case of millions of Turks enterring Germany for no reason.
"""If he wants to eliminate the freedom of his children to choose their religion or to speak which language(s) they wish to use, then he should come out openly and tell us about his scheme to restrict individual freedoms instead of hiding behind meaningless buzzwords."""
Wooden language. You understand that the above is laughable when there is no such thing as "freedom of choosing religion and language". Do you want me to bring the examples of reality to debase you yet another time?
3. "Too many unemployment benefit receivers, with society not getting enough back."
"""Ironic, coming from a socialist. What a hypocrite. I guess when an "indigenous" German receives a benefit, that is called "social justice", but when the recipient is a German of Turkish origin, that is called "welfare abuse"."""
Of course you forgot to check the % involved.
"""In a constitutional democracy laws should be enacted in order to protect individual rights (eg to prevent assault or damage to an individual) and the common resources (eg to prevent environmental damage), but should not be used to enact private moral or religious beliefs, culture or lifestyle of the majority."""
Neither of the minority. You keep on forgetting it. Have you got any personal problem with the majority dear?
"""Moral opprobrium by the majority, no matter how long-standing, is not enough to justify discriminatory treatment of minorities."""
And again. Neither of the minority. You keep on forgetting it. Have you got any personal problem with the majority dear?
You understand that as you present it there should be not ever had been voted a law about "racism" while no policy specialised for "minorities" should had even been deployed since everything should had been dealt through the common civil law code and through policies applied to the totality of society regardless of background. You just got in the circle of vice unmasking the poverty of your argumentation.
"""A state cannot have a legitimate interest in disadvantaging an unpopular minority group simply because the group is unpopular."""
Disadvantaging it? Like how?
"""Fundamental rights of individuals cannot be put to popular vote"""
Yes they can be placed. What you call "fundamental rights" are human constructions to be used whenever there is an interest. I can pinpoint you 100s of paradigms where you would openly vote for the complete disregard of the fundamendal rights of people. For example I place the guess (as said, I place a guess here that I cannot prove but you also cannot refuse either - it is all out of my long experience of dealing with wooden-language people like you) that you were 100% ok with the creation of Bosnia and were ok with Bosnians fighting violently for it while you were 100% against the creation of Banja Luka and Serbians fighting for it despite the fact that historically, legally and even morally Bosnian Serbians had more right to create Banja Luka than Bosnian muslim had to create Bosnia Erzegovina.
"""So this is really nothing but the paranoia of old-fashioned European etatists who dread anything that is not controlled by the government but results from spontaneous activities of individuals who freely choose to associate in religious or social organizations or communities, which is their basic right."""
You are getting hilarious when you refer to "not controlled by the government" and to "spontaneous" and to "free choice of associating to religious or social communities". So it happened by itself? Really, just like that? European oligarchical states had nothing to do with it eh? Spontaneously millions of muslims from mainly Turkey, gathered in Germany. The river brought them there.
Oulematu, when I call you a wooden language speaker I mean it. It is the most kind thing of telling you and that is because I do not care of doing any personal attacks because I do not care about you in particular. But in case you really believe all that I just find your ideas laughable.
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Dear Cool_Brush_Work: There are no Turkish-Germans. Double citizenship is due to ius sanguis only possible for people whos parents are German + X. If both of your parents are Turkish citizens you can become German, but you've got to get rid of your Turkish passport before. A very unfair and stupid law. And that a part of Germans are worried about Germany changing drastically in the future is not because of the immigrants behaviour. Rapid change always raises fears and if it's just the fear of a possible rapid change itself. Look at the USA. That mosque debate is just along the line of minarett- and burqua bans and this godforsaken book Sarrazin wrote. No MarkusAurelius. You folks aren't immune to xenophobia and fear of change just because you don't have distinct nations, you have this ugly ghost sitting three blocks away from Ground Zero. First you had black people, then you had communists, today you have muslims and Mexicans. So no, you don't have ius sanguis in the USA but do I recall right that about two weeks ago a bunch of republicans began a debate about anchor-babies that found great response in the media? And aren't your immgration restrictions actually just as strict as those of European countries? Our history is different, the outcome is unfortunately similiar.
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50. At 12:42pm on 01 Sep 2010, Benefactor wrote:
"""It was in the news, quite a while ago now I think, about how a Muslim man stopped some Christian thugs from assaulting a Jewish man."""
"""(Anyway yeah, generalizations are bad, that was my point.)"""
... and avoiding to see the general picture is "badder" than generalisations being bad.
To avoid giving more strong examples I will use a simple one:
Due to work I have been to Holland many times last year. Since my company pays it, I preferred to take the car (for more freedom, I am not any victim of eco-fascists by the way...) than the train. My route happened to pass from the ring of Rotterdam. On 8 out of 10 times there was 1 car trying to side my car aggressively, if I did nothing, they would go in front of me braking slowly, if I braked first they would braek so usually I passed them and accelerated (sometimes to more than 200km/hr - and I do not care about the Dutch laws on speed when the Dutch do not care about more basic laws than the personal safety & integrity...) they would try to follow up to some point they could. 8 out of 10 times is really a high frequence.
Do I see their faces? Yes. 10 out of 10 times out of the 8 out of 10 times it happens are North-African like people. Non of them has ever been Dutch-faced.
Note again I am not even a local Dutch while I fully respect Dutch and their history and their colourful culture I am not in any crusade to lift their flag either. I am an outside observer.
Now you understand Benefactor that you can take your argument and put it wherever else than anywhere near me.
PS: If there are any Dutch out there, I would like to ask them what these people want exactly. To do a speed race? To sell drugs? I have asked my Dutch collegues and either they describe it as "accidental incident" or that they have never heard of it which is of course laughably unbelievable (they just try to not "over-generalise" obviously...).
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Benefactor
Re #48
I'm sorry! Is it hard to read & follow the points being made?
Here is a thought: Perhaps it is precisely because some do not care to read & consider issues in full detail that the 'issue' arises in the first place!
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@31 oulematu wrote:
"Not easy in practice, but conceptually this should be fairly easy to achieve: simply avoid delegating state power to parallel private institutions (e.g., Muslim courts with binding competence or special family law regimes for Muslims) and see to it that public officials do their jobs".
I find that particularly interesting, having only recently tumbled (I'm out of touch these days with what goes on at the grass-roots in Britain) to the fact that shariah law is already practised there, it being entirely in accordance with English (and Scottish?) law that it may so long as the litigants have agreed and - I have taken as read (correctly I trust) - subject to appeal to a higher court.
Before some idiot starts foaming at the mouth at an imaginary imminent prospect of hands being chopped off and public stonings to death for adulterers, PLEASE understand that the scope of such proceedings is strictly delimited by the legislation to arbitration (if I've understood right) in marital and property disputes and other domestic matters where Islamic jurisprudence regarding social/ethical issues (comprising just like England/Scotland's of centuries of practice and precedent) diverges from English/Scottish - both systems alike seeking to dispense "justice", each according to its own lights (naturally). Also that Muslim lawyers base their right to make use of the legislation for that purpose upon the exactly analogous use already made of it for many years by some within the Jewish community in Britain, without any problems having been caused thereby.
I don't really see how you can reconcile wanting to put an end to this freely-chosen practice with the rest of what you say in your (imo very well-argued) case.
My other comment is a more general one. In my head I find it hard not to agree in principle with almost everything you've written. But if I'm honest I have to face the fact that in my gut I rebel against it. The sight, for instance, of a woman in a burqa walking down a familiar street in my own country repels me - sorry, but to me it embodies everything about a certain strand within Islam that, from what little I actually know about its fundamentalist tenets, I most strongly disapprove of. That reaction, as you'll underatand, need have no connection whatever with racism or exclusion but arises out of a repugnance felt towards an alien, oppressive and authoritarian set of values which I'm unable to come to terms with. It's simply too far removed from everything my own culture values.
Most members of the native culture in any country cannot help but value the culture they grew-up in, and wish to preserve their own familiar culture. Of course that's futile because all cultures constantly change all the time - and especially has ours done so in recent decades, at an ever-increasing rate. In the process it has in fact become vastly more open, on the whole, to "outsiders" than it used to be.
The question, I suggest, is the same as it always was:- is an indigenous, majority, culture justified in adopting assimilation as its goal (which, as you rightly say, involves an element of pressure on a minority/ies to conform) or must it in the name of "individual liberty" or "pluralism" tolerate what to natives is outrageouly deviant behaviour affonting their own sense of right and wrong (polygamy for instance, forced marriages, male dominance...)? The right answer, probably, is:- neither, but rather some finely-balanced compromise between the two extremes which because it's a dynamic process of continual mutual adjustment constantly mutates. But it's so easy to prescribe that remedy in theory and a lot more difficult to actually bring it to fruition and, in the process, heads tend to get broken unfortunately.
During the 19th and earlier part of the 20th century America went bald-headed at the first approach, starting from the moment when each shipload of new immigrants tied-up at the quayside. Any with an "unpronounceable foreign" name were promptly allocated a brand-new "American" one. As in the (apocryphal?) story about the immigrant with a Polish-Jewish name who, having been given a new name by the first immigration officer, upon being asked for his name by a second and having become bewildered replied, in German, "I've forgotten" (excuse my spelling - "schon vergessen") and thereafter became - a Jew straight from the stetl - "Shaun Fergusson"!
That kind of crass high-handed behaviour didn't mean that the USA's was an intolerant society. Far from it: on the whole (aside from its treatment of the blacks, which arose out of entirely different historical circumstances) it was a lot more open and tolerant of minorities than contemporary European society. All the same that no-nonsense approach came in more recent times to be seen as not only outmoded but as no longer even effective because - as in Europe - immigrants were starting to assert their right to their own individuality.
That experience only goes to show that a simplistic assimilation policy just won't work any more (as you argue too, coming at the problem from a more idealistic angle). I only wish we knew what WOULD work instead!
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Re #53
No, any sensible 'Dutch colleague' just doesn't want to get involved in any discussion with someone who already knows it all & is now starting to see into the future as incorrectly as he did the past!
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SpreeLeni
Re #52
Thank You.
Actually, I used the term 'Turkish-Germans' to specify what Sarrazin was alluding to and to avoid using lengthy terminology in already (see Benfactor) over-long contribution, but not in order to give any nationality as such.
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@Nik
you said "Right. Let us say start from forbiding the mothers to love their children more than the neighbours' children..."
Exactly with this we did long ago. Your picture is not very well chosen, but to stay in it: Our ancestors told us from experience of war not to love people of your own race or religion or nationality more than others. This found it's echo first in the Magna Charta, then in the American and French constitutions and today in supranational statements of human rights and in every single constitution in the Western world and even many outside of our own cultural lagacy. It means exactly that: Don't love your own children more than your neighbours children, one child is just as loveable as the next. You might see now why this metaphor was badly chosen, individual love for your children cannot be compared to the political and social statement "same rights for everyone". If you move away from this statement, you have apartheid.
Your explanation why fundamental rights can be put to public vote is entirely insufficient. Waging a war has nothing to do with a fundamental right, as in human right. Nowhere it says: You are allowed to build your own state. You should read more. Maybe on the train the next time you go to the Netherlands (Holland is just a province). I suggest Alexis Clérel de Tocqueville or/and John Stuart Mill. And if your employer pays anyway: Take the train for the whole way. It's faster and better for our planet.
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If we substitute the words "Muslim", "German", etc., with the words "German", "EU", etc., we get "The Fall of Rome", a title which best describes the subject. Nothing has changed throughout the history. Too many immigrants banging on the door, too few indigenous inhabitants to maintain the standard of the rich, too weak walls to keep the differencies from being mingled.
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@CBW :D What do you thank me for? For correcting you were there was no need to correct you? I love you British. So polite! Gern geschehen!
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Gavin,
Perhaps you and many contributors to your blog should read comments made by Col. Qaddafi in Rome about a real threat of Europe becoming "black".
As well as his suggestions that for a quite a few billions of $$$$ he could help Europe defend itself against an onslaught of "ignorant barbarians".
Yes, you can read about Libyaan leader's offer here, in BBC portal.
[Mr Berlusconi reportedly did not react so far. At least publicly.]
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bbony
Re #59
Hmm, Gibbons' 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire': The so short You missed it version!
I think not.
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58. At 2:05pm on 01 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni wrote:
"""Your picture is not very well chosen, but to stay in it: Our ancestors told us from experience of war not to love people of your own race or religion or nationality more than others. This found it's echo first in the Magna Charta, then in the American and French constitutions and today in supranational statements of human rights and in every single constitution in the Western world and even many outside of our own
cultural lagacy."""
I cannot make the direct link of Magna Carta with what you refer too about it being a first step of """not to love people of your own race or religion or nationality more than others""". If anything none of its creators or the people upon which it was applied would had thought of it that way. Both Magna Carta and the later constitutions were creations of their times. I.e. human constructions of momentary value that no matter if served certain interests of a wider part of society, they basically represented the interests of the oligarchies. As such they have less value as examples of what you say but even if what you say holds some truth (it might do, I never emphasised on them, I find Magna Carta and the French constitution as mere localised examples of the will of oligarchies to renovate the violent enforcement of their rule) but on the contrary more value as initial attempts to attack the notion of family bonds especially among the middle and lower classes who are natually getting more vulnerable if hit that way.
There is nothing more basic to human being than its members sticking to blood bonds. It is primal and it predates mankind as this is a trait found in all mammals and it developed millions of years ago. From there on, while the primary homo sapiens (as mammal) strategy is to stick to this basic trait, the question of betraying it is often posed and not rarely found to occur (among animals as well). This particular case is also engulfed in the collaboration-betrayal dilema studied by anthropologists.
"""You might see now why this metaphor was badly chosen, individual love for your children cannot be compared to the political and social statement "same rights for everyone"."""
Yes it can. You (and 1000 times more Oulematu) seem to forget that the state is the collective property of its citizens and as such it is passed to the sons of the citizens. It is up to the right of no elected member to steal a part of the property of citizens to give it to others - this when happening is a blatant imperialistic and oligarchical move. Thos abiding to it have no excuse, they are not interested either in what they call "law" or "constitution" or "democracy".
"""If you move away from this statement, you have apartheid."""
No you do not. You have a socially more coherent society. When you stick to that statement you have oligarchy and Empire.
"""Your explanation why fundamental rights can be put to public vote is entirely insufficient. Waging a war has nothing to do with a fundamental right, as in human right."""
"""Nowhere it says: You are allowed to build your own state. You should read more. Maybe on the train the next time you go to the Netherlands (Holland is just a province)."""
Yes I know. In my langugae the whole country is named by that province, a historic remnant in the same way you call my country Greece out of a small tribe of Epirot Greeks that first populated South Italy as well as most Asians call it Yunan out of only one Hellenic tribe that had hugely populated Minor Asia but not so much mainland Greece. "Ollanthia" as a name is much more beautiful than "Netherlanthia" (what would Netherlands be called in Greek pronounciatoin). In the same way we wall Germany "Yermania" and not "Theuslanthia" what would be Deutchland in Greek pronounciation though "Teutonia" would be just fine.
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"Germany went to Turkey, offering Turks citizenship in return for help in rebuilding Germany."
West Germany (that's what we are speaking of) has done not such thing.
Potential Turkish Gastarbeiters were never offered German citizienship.
Nor was one promised to their children, even if born in BRD.
Unlike in France, where children of Gastarbeiters from Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Tunesia, etc., are French citizens by birth.
And as such can hardly be expelled even if they burn cars, schools and public libraries. Or kill policemen.
The same goes for British-born children of Pakistani immigrants who cannot be expelled even if they bomb metro trains and buses in London.
That's why Ms. Merkel's problem is IMHO much smaller than the one Messrs. Cameron and Sarkozy have.
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Powermeerkat
Re #64
I really cannot say much about the France situation vis-a-vis its ethnic minorities (though I sense their's is about the same perspective & experience as UK), but for sure the UK does not have the sort of 'problem' You seem to be alluding to with its immigrant 'Muslim' population.
Why would UK consider any sort of expulsion of Muslims whether of British or other Citizenship who are legitimately residing in it?
Those pitifully misguided, few individuals who wrought such destruction in London on 7th July 2005 were representative of only a very small fraction of the followers of Islam residing in the UK.
There is no doubt such Citizens, wanting to cause harm, still exist within British society, just as there are a few extremist Irish with the same intent. I dare say some extremists from overseas have also come to the UK with the express intention of creating misery & havoc, but their message of hate falls on deaf ears across the wider British Islamic community as does the extremist-fanatical Irish call to arms. They have nothing to offer but negativity & destruction whilst the vast majority of Muslims like their Irish counterparts want nothing to do with it because they want to progress & build.
Great Britain has risen above all that sort of stuff over centuries and no Muslim can use the excuse of 'discriminating' laws or possible expulsion anymore than any other Briton of England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland as justification for such terroristic-barbarism.
I think You are confusing the UK with some of the Nations of the EU where racially divisive laws are in the process of being considered/introduced.
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MAII observes: Yougoslavia wasn't even a real country anymore than Czechoslovakia or Iraq were.
Much better example : SOVIET UNION.
It took West European 'fellow travellers' almost 70 years to realize that, official Moscow propaganda notwithstanding, there never was such a thing as the 'Soviet man' (or woman) or 'Soviet identitity'; simply a bunch of weaker nations subjugated by imperial Russia.
The moment Armenians, Azeris, Belorussians, Estonians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Lithuanians, Tajiks, Turkmen, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, etc. could go their separate way - they did.
And they are not looking back.
Yugoslavia's subjugated peoples have simply followed suite.
Ask Bosniaks, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, etc. whether they'd like to be ruled by Belgrade again.
If, for some strange reason, you don't know the answer already.
P.S. Once at it, ask the Flemish whether they want to live in the same country with Walloons.
[Belgium being a microcosm of the things to come]
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@Nik:
I appreciate your effort but just trying is sometimes not good enough.
First I will provide you the direct link between not making a differnce between humans to the Magna Charta. What follows is a quotation: "We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right." This is still valid today. You might feel reminded of the often used phrase of humans being born with certain rights that cannot be sold (prevents slavery), that cannot be legally denied (prevents tyranny)and that cannot be passed on. You and I are bron with those rights and even if we wanted to, we could not get rid of them. And it says "no man". So your your race or religion is of no matter. Of course back than by "no man" only a part of the population was meant, but today "no man" means exactly that. Race, religion, gender, nationality do not matter a thing. You just have to be an offsping of two homo sapiens sapiens.
You seem to see civil rights and human rights granting personal freedom to the individual as an act of oligarchies, trying to impose their will upon to masses. The opposite is the correct. If "oligarchies" (or what you probably mean: people in power, be it monarchs or elected representatives) had it their way, there were no human rights. because then tehy could enslave the masses without having anything to fear.
I have to admit I have not often been confronted with opinions as crude as yours. What you say about families and blood bonds sounds like it comes right out of a time when GB was still the British Empire. It sounds like a fantastic excuse for shooting the black guys trying to steal from your property and keeping apartheit in South Africa or elsewhere. If I get you wrong, correct me, but you leave me no choice understanding what you say the way I understood it. What do you want? Anarchy with families doing what they like on their property? That is not the vision of a modern state, I am sorry. I still suggest you read Alexis Clérel de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.
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CBW: "Those pitifully misguided, few individuals who wrought such destruction in London on 7th July 2005 were representative of only a very small fraction of the followers of Islam residing in the UK.[...]
but their message of hate falls on deaf ears across the wider British Islamic community as does the extremist-fanatical Irish call to arms. They have nothing to offer but negativity & destruction whilst the vast majority of Muslims like their Irish counterparts want nothing to do with it because they want to progress & build."
I wish you were right, BUT:
According to MI5 quite a few British madrassas still promulgate hatred and jihad against 'infidels'; according to MI6 more than few misguided individualds regularly travel back to Pakistan for terrorist training in al-Qaida's camps; and according to Scotland Yard [check] not many British Muslims are cooperating with British authorities by reporting suspicious acitvities and are willing to get rid of fanatical extremists in their midst although, more often than not, they know them well. :(
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56. At 1:57pm on 01 Sep 2010, cool_brush_work wrote:
"""Re #53
No, any sensible 'Dutch colleague' just doesn't want to get involved in any discussion with someone who already knows it all & is now starting to see into the future as incorrectly as he did the past!"""
Haha CBW. You are British, you are supposed to maintain a basic sense of humour. They are Dutch they are supposed to keep distances and not be so expressive of what they know and feel. And I am Greek and I am supposed to know more than you and speak freely on them.
58. At 2:05pm on 01 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni wrote:
"""I suggest Alexis Clérel de Tocqueville or/and John Stuart Mill. And if your employer pays anyway: Take the train for the whole way. It's faster and better for our planet."""
1+1=2
A trajectory where the train gets faster than the car is the Paris-Marseil link where you have no change, 1 single rapid train and you do 800km in less than 3 hours which is impossible even with a Lamborgini With my car (which has an autonomy of about 800km with a fill up of 52litters/60-65 euros of ) I would do it running between 150-170km and lowering to 130km in radars and to 50km in intersections and to 0 in toll stations at an average speed of 120-130km per hour which means it would take me at minimum some 6 hours while the road toll that is more than 50 euros added to the 65 euros fill up and to the usage of the car and doubled for the return is well above the limit of 200 euros and above the price of the train ticket that is of course also on average more than 200 euros!. Hands down train wins even if I calculate the 1 hour before and 30 minutes of going and leaving the train station (that in case the station is near the places you want to come from and move).
In the example of say Paris-Rotterdam however this is about 500km and I would do it on the train in minimum 3 hours of train trajectory (more if changes are invovled) to which I have to add the minimum 1 hour before and 30 minutes after for the "to" and "from" trajectories while the train price with return cannot fall below 120 euros unless you buy it in advance (which is also lost money, you can't buy everything in advance...). With the car it is 4 hours (averaging a speed of 120-130km) from door to door costing less than 40 euros of diesel and less than 15 euros of toll tax i.e. about 50 euros per way, thus 100 euros to go and return. Even if you include the car usuage which would raise this to 130 euros it is still cheaper than the tickets that go above 150 euros. Hands down the train loses.
From there on, it is not my fault if I do harm the environment. Already I bought my car with diesel engine which pollutes relatively less (apart specific harmful to human but not so much to nature particles) and consumes less compared to a petrol one. It is not my fault that it is strictly forbidden (and severely punished) to produce my own biodiesel which would cut the emissions by 75%. And it is not my fault that 100 years after its febrication, there is still not any electrical car of recyclable battery charged by a tiny turboless single-speed diesel engine running on biodiesel that would cut emissions at a rate of 95% if compared to standard diesel and 98% if compared to petrol plus saving an important part of the oil ending up in the seas (oil has to be recycled or burnt rather than ending up in the water...).
You understand that none will make me feel guilty of any kind of "wrong doing against nature". In fact my way of living is not natures nightmare but rather capitalism's! I use my phone, my laptop and my car several years until they break down. I bought a new car only to do a lot of kilometers with a bit more tranquility, not for the shake of buying a new (a used one would do for me). I do not buy cloths, my wife buys them when she sees my stocks are getting shrinked. I do not buy shoes before wearing out - and I do repair the 1 in 3 of my rather small collection before wearing it out completely.
Do not take it the wrong way. I am not badly dressed (I am Greek, not German) and not stingy (I am Greek, not Dutch) - joking of course, but I will be the last to really be ironic to Germans and Dutch in these matters. It is just that my lifestyle is really not so over-consuming apart the car and the flights and that is something that is not up to my hand*.
PS: ... though I think it seriously of making biodiesel when the guarantee of my car ends. I do not care about abiding to anyone's law in that terms. My car, my problem what I put inside. It should be the state's problem only if they detect any illegally emission but as said biodiesel is just 75% cleaner, no way they can find such (it is just all to make you pay the enormous tax). If police gets me, I will bribe the amount of fine like Germans do isn't it?
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To SpreeLeni: You can follow the debate on "Maybritt Illner" (ZDF) on Thursday.
To everybody else: Facts about immigrants in Germany can be read on the website of ARD.
Bundesbank (where Sarrazin has a seat) will not make any statements on this side of Thursday, it has announced. In the meantime all politicals camps in Germany are dissociating themselves from Sarrazin, ARD writes on its website. (Must be with the exception of the far right, where Sarrazin can find many friends).
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@62 cool_brush_work
I'm just saying the loss of natural purity is inevitable. There is no such thing like genetically proven individual representative of a nation. To keep away "barbarians", in order to maintain "natural" members of a nation, or a superstate, is fruitless endeavour. That is well known from the history. And Rome has been an exemplar. Trying to act oppositely leads to "the fall". Even such nazy idiots, which emerge from time to time to decorate the newspapers columns, have modified their rhetoric to comply with the situation.
On the contrary, to keep alive all the cultural traits, which in fact make a nation, it is necessary to mingle the natural differences. I completely agree with democracythreat (11) elaboration.
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to torpare, #55:
Your first comment: I agree with you. What I meant is that we should avoid creating parallel institutions with binding competence to decide matters against the will of one of the parties. I find it ok for a special institution to decide a dispute where both litigants agree with its jurisdiction (this is basically an alternative arbitration or dispute resolution procedure) or for special rules to apply with the agreement of both parties in matters that are not governed by mandatory laws (this is basically a short-hand incorporation of those rules into a contract). A borderline situation could be cases involving minors (can they validly consent to this?) What I am clearly not ok with is where (i) a litigant would be compelled, based on the litigant's ethnicity or faith, to be bound by such jurisdiction against the litigant's will, or where (ii) special rules would apply to a person based on its ethnicity or faith in the absence of such agreement. For example, I believe there was an outcry about a recent case in Germany where the German court (I think it was in a divorce or domestic abuse case) ruled that a wife of North African origin does not benefit from the standards that apply to a German spouse and that the husband was right to treat the wife according to what he argued were the standards applicable in his "culture". I can totally see why this would cause an outcry.
Your second comment: I think it is reasonable to draw the line as follows: It is legitimate (and even sometimes necessary) to enact and apply laws in order to protect individual rights (eg to prevent assault or damage to an individual) and the common resources (eg to prevent environmental damage), but laws should not be used to enact private moral or religious beliefs, culture or lifestyle of the majority. These are general but relatively clear principles, which are not only idealistic but also have the virtue of being quite practical (as it happens, if something does not violate someone's individual rights or the common resources, it is usually not that harmful so as to warrant a legislative ban). As regards your examples: Clearly, forced marriage or male dominance should not be tolerated as it interferes with someone's basic individual rights. The issue of consensual polygamy may not be so crystal clear at first sight pursuant to the above principles, but I think it can be safely argued that the state may legitimately insist on marriage being a union of two people. Marriage is a special union of two people concluded for the purposes of living together and sometimes raising children. This union creates various quite onerous and durable responsibilities and expectations for the spouses which should not be imposed on a spouse (not even with his/her knowing consent) as a participant in a polygamous union. I think this can be seen in terms of protecting the basic rights of the spouses and their biological or adoptive children, and those basic rights cannot be given up even with the spouses' consent. Menage a trois is ok, but should not be called marriage and should not come with the privileges and responsibilities of marriage. It will also be interesting to follow the judicial battle in the US over gay marriage. Personally I would draw the line as follows: gay marriage - yes; consensual polygamous marriage - no. There was an interesting discussion in the New York Times on the recent gay marriage ruling.
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MaxSceptic wrote:
"democracythreat @11,
You write:
"Anybody can be a jew. Literally anyone at all. And they can be one tomorrow. All they have to do is call themselves a jew, and they are a jew."
My understanding of Judaism is that - according to Jewish law ('Hallachah') - a Jew is one born to a Jewish Mother, or one who has converted to Judaism.
As Judaism is not an evangelical religion, conversion to Judaism is actually a very hard and protracted process and not handed out like candy to anyone who wants some.
One can no more "call themselves a Jew" and become a Jew, than I can call myself a banana and become a banana. (One can, however, become a muslim simply by repeating the basic tenet of Islam - the Shahada - a number of times and, without further ado, one is a muslim)."
An interesting appeal to the purity and durability of "Jewish law". Unfortunately, the history of the jewish people confounds the possibility of such a reality.
Even if there were a universally recognized institution regarded as the true source of jewish law, which there is not, a short examination of how jews came to be the way they are in Europe destroys the idea that one needed to pass any kind of test to be a jew in times past.
Consider that in the middle ages before Hebrew or the printing press (Hebrew is a recently invented language, as every educated jews knows very well), jews inhabited every city in europe. So how could a centralized power possibly have stopped new converts, or even radicals adopting the name of the creed as a business strategy, have stopped anyone at all proclaiming themselves a jew? Clearly there was no such central power, equally clearly anyone at all could have proclaimed themselves jewish for any number of reasons, and no doubt a great many people did just that.
So even if there is some accepted source of true jewish law, it is a very recent invention.
Lord P wrote:
"My understanding was the their was two uses for the word 'Jew.'
1) A person of Jewish faith
2) Someone descended from the Jewish people who historically dwelt in Palestine (now Israel.)
I can only assume the genetic study relates to the latter definition and no miracle gene of religion has been discovered."
This gets closer to the decision of the House of Lords on the issue, wherein those worthies decided that there was actually no such thing as a race, in scientific terms, and possibly no such thing as a jew either, and so given that we have race hatred laws it seems reasonable to call jews a race and apply those law to that tribe.
However, this reasoning that being a jew can mean two things is spurious in the extreme, not least because some jews take it to mean one very specific thing, and that is that they are god's chosen people.
But the logical basis of arguing that jews are "those who descended from ancient jews" is broken down even more simply. Consider that, in antiquity, Judaism WAS a club for folks who held a professed belief in common. OK, so if it was a club that anyone could join, way back when, then how can there possibly be a genetic signature for it? If everyone from a given region, especially a region as heavily populated by nomads and transient merchants as the middle east in antiquity, was able to join this club at that time, then it follows that there cannot possibly be a genetic signature.
To understand why, you need to understand how and why genetic profiling works. It only works when one group of a species has been isolated from other sub groups of the same species for a biologically significant period of time. Think of Darwin's finches here. Certain finches on the islands of Galapagos had evolved peculiar methods of hunting and getting around, and thus sub groups had become almost distinct species through the evolution of their genes.
But this happened over a biologically significant period of time, and it happened due to complete isolation of the various groups.
Jews have not been around for a biologically significant period of time, and nor have they ever been isolated from other human beings. And for those who claim that the insular nature of the jewish community is proof that they have been isolated, I would reiterate the wisdom that there are witnesses to a birth but none to a conception, and that biology being what it is a professed isolation will not suffice. To get a divergence of genetic profile within a species you need isolation for very long periods of time. We are talking about tens of thousands of years, many hundreds of generations.
No, this attempt to bend science with politics is bunk. It is as ridiculous as pretending that Yiddish was the true language of the ancient jews.
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67. At 4:05pm on 01 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni wrote:
"""I have to admit I have not often been confronted with opinions as crude as yours."""
Crude = challenging? Do not worry. Contrary to what you might imagine I am neither a far-right, nor what people term "racist" in the traditional sense, nor any obnoxious that just tries to find a counter-argument for everything without proposing something concrete. Nor do I speak of utopias and such. See, CBW already got the idea and in the inability to propose something better refuges to calling me mad.
"""You might feel reminded of the often used phrase of humans being born with certain rights that cannot be sold (prevents slavery), that cannot be legally denied (prevents tyranny)and that cannot be passed on."""
There is nothing like "human rights". You were not asked when, where and how you were born nor will you be asked how you will die unless you bypass by suicide. "Human rights" is inscribed in the same category as "common law", "war law" etc. and gives a basic framework to streamline peoples' and groups of peoples' relations. There is nothing fundamendal about them they are all human creations more close to religion (i.e. constructed and artificial). They are evoked and applied only when it is up to the interest of the prevailing oligarchy. Do not search for
Go to Saoudi Arabia, Bahrein or Quatar and see how the "fighters of democracy"
"""You and I are bron with those rights and even if we wanted to, we could not get rid of them."""
We are born naked and extremely vulnerable and accompagnied by no specific rights other than what protection we may receive from our family. That is how our spieces work.
From there on, it is not up to you to decide whether the one who has the power to take out "these fundamendal rights" from you will do so or not but up to him. It is up to you only to raise yourself in position of not being an easy target for anyone that wishes to take these "rights" from you.
"""And it says "no man". So your your race or religion is of no matter."""
While I do not scale-up in a simplistic and direct manner, it effectively is of a huge matter and you see it everyday around you. The basic root is the parents preference to their own offspring than to the offspring of the neighbour, let alone to that of a complete stranger.
"""You seem to see civil rights and human rights granting personal freedom to the individual as an act of oligarchies, trying to impose their will upon to masses."""
Precisely. I do not know how you translate that but to put it in a simple example, you should take it in the same sense as the 90% of those fanatic ecologists that are in fact funded and represent the planets worst polluters (hence my contempt for pseudo-ecological questioning, yet another manipulation of the masses).
"""The opposite is the correct. If "oligarchies" (or what you probably mean: people in power, be it monarchs or elected representatives) had it their way, there were no human rights. because then tehy could enslave the masses without having anything to fear."""
You are unaware of how power is established. I will give you a historic example which might be more easy for you to understand: panem et circus. Why would Roman Emperors spend huge amounts of money to provide to the Roman masses lavish games if they could rule with the iron fist? At the end, they stopped having the money to do so and they used religion. Long standing power rarely can be established with a police state and the extensive use of arms. With the rise of literacy from the 18th century onwards in western Europe and later in other parts of the world, the "human rights" became simply a new "panem et circus".
"""What you say about families and blood bonds sounds like it comes right out of a time when GB was still the British Empire."""
On the contrary, the Empire is the exact opposite of "families and blood", though do not over-estimate my concentration on blood and family to link me with ideas and ideals I do not adopt. Empire is all about the rule of an oligarchy over a mass people. This can be done only by playing done the role of family. It is not accidental that the classic role of family had been fought against by all Empires including the modern ones. Nevertheless, oligarchies themselves are very sensitive on their own lineage - the essence of power.
"""If I get you wrong, correct me, but you leave me no choice understanding what you say the way I understood it. What do you want? Anarchy with families doing what they like on their property? That is not the vision of a modern state, I am sorry. I still suggest you read Alexis Clérel de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill."""
Thanks for the suggestions. I have read none of the two writers - will keep it in mind. As for misunderstanding me that is natural. I cannot fully present my ideas on such issues here, and getting bits and parts of my opinions is always easy.
Far from calling for anarchy I do g oback to the basics.
1)The human being like all mammal spieces is bound to be both a collaborative and a fiercely competitive one within its own spiece let alone with other spieces. Just as its sexuality is oscillating between monogamy and polygamy with the latter notably more pronounced among men for obvious biologic reasons. Just as the love of parents to their offspring stems out of purely biological reasons. That is not up to humans to do something about. That is the reality of life. Anyone going down to that level is bound to lose the ball. Anyone who tries to convince you of the opposite has certainly back thoughts.
2) You and your siblings are the extension of your parents, all consisting a family. A family is the cell of all human societies*.
*... avoid bringing me examples of tribes raising their offspring in community rather than in family, especially when the 100% of them are all about extremely small communities that are not enough populated to be called a village and where everyone is relative to the other...hehe! I had heard that argument in the past.
3) The families linked to your family consist along with you a tribe and the tribes linked to your tribe consist a bigger tribe and the tribes linked to it may construct an ethnos with the original form of the meaning. The "link" while initially at the birth of the procedure is essentialy geographic is not of course solely geographic but depends largely on the perception of sharing a genetic tie. You will never feel that tie with a person that does not share this with you no matter how you will lie to yourself. And statistically people will relate more to people they look like them than people who do not. Why do you think the Latin American people instantly relate better to Greeks in statistical comparison to Germans or Dutch, when they have even less historic and cultural touch (and share opposing religions) Greeks than they have with Germans and Dutch? Weather or economical explanations are not an excuse, the same was 200 years back and the same will be in future no matter the weather or future economic situation of each.
Thus don't try to extend the above into whatever political thoughts accept it as it is. All that is a living thing, something very real and not up to humans to change the way it works.
4) The above is not related to theoretics on state construction, governance. I kept referring to the basics of the human & mammal spieces Nothing much to argue about, other than what science has observed. And that of course taking also into consideration all obeservations like the case of offspring betraying their parents and parents not loving their offspring which is of course not unkonwn - it is not unknown in nature too, it is also part of the spieces.
5) From there one everything else is plain human constructions: nations, states, governments, religions, ideologies etc. There is no axiom according to which every ethnos and every tribe should have self-governance or something. There is also no axiom that every state has to be multiethnical. Afterall it is most often than not the decision of oligarchies. In fact today, the vast majority of nations are multiethnic and even those that are largely monoethnic are artificial (there was never any "French" nation: Bretagne had little to do with Nice or Alsace and there was no logic behind them bunched together apart the will of French rulers. Spain is another good example. However, there is a vast difference between monoethnic and polyethnic states: in the vast majority in the latter case they were imposed on violence while that is less the case for the first case where power can be formed out out of the common consensus built on ethnic, tribal and family connections. You should not be blurred of the notion of tribe and ethnos being fluid through time since that is not what matters, what matters is how this is perceived by people at a given time.
6) Going up to our original question: no matter what is your preference of the state, monoethnic/monocultural, multiethnic/multicultural you cannot erase the artificiality of states and laws and the naturality of the sense of tribal belonging.
7) Asking me of my preferences on the above is useless. I speak not of what others on the other side of the planet should do. I would do it if I was oriented in building my own Empire. If you ask myself, U am very much cosmopolitan and adaptable but having tasted both monoethnic and multiethnic societies I do agree that the advantages of the first by far exceed the advantages of the other in terms of societal consensus. The whatever endo-tribal issues might arise seem jokes in front of the issues that arise in multi-ethnic societies (eg. you do not want to start a discussion on ethnically oriented crimes like rape for example - which is a staple of almost all multi-ethnic states explaining why rape is much more prominent in multiethnic societies of all kinds rather than monoethnic of all kinds - and there are lots of other examples).
You also saw I prefer the term monoethnic and multiethnic than mono-cultural, multi-cultural which is of course simply wooden language to confuse people in the exact way as religions are mentioned to day in % of countries (like phrases that say "muslim religion is rising in France" - well no it is not rising itself, it is the ethnic Moroccan/Algerian people that rise in numbers and these are in their totality muslims. On the contrary you may say that in post-WWII Korea the christian religion rose as it was the ethnic Koreans that adopted it - independent of the aid of western missionaries and companies).
8) Whatever monoethnic or multethnic and I chose morally none of the two, a fact that 99,999% of people keep forgeting is that the state is a much more linear scale up of the notion of private property (yet another basic notion of humans and mammals!) than the ethnos is for family. Whether you think of it or not, the state lands and property and money are yours, you have a direct private property part on them hence it is up to you to deal with it along with your co-proprietors. Change your title "citizen" to "co-proprietor" and it changes much more things than the change from "subject" to "citizen".
Point 8 should be clear enough for you to have the essence of my view on the issue. Whatever else is nothing different to lowly christianomoralities taught to Romans to eliminate re-raising their position from subjects back to citizens (let alone co-proprietors).
You want it directly? It is not up to even an elected oligarchy, nor up to the will of the cloudy pseudo-political and pseudo-intellectual mminorities (let alone the representatives of the newly introduced populations) to decide on the issue: it is up to the majority of the people to decide if they wish the enlarging of their population to include foreign ones. From there on, if it happens it is all about imposing upon the majority the rule of the oligarchy. It has no moral basis, and no moral scope, it works not in the direction of making people finding a consensus since it really aims at creating new divisions rather than uniting people, and the only explanation behind this it is the basic need of the oligarchy to remain on power and reproduce itself as long as possible. The most powerfull current oligarchies are 100% un-national and internationalised (but with perfect knowledge of family ancestry and sticking to family interests themselves - something they want you not to do for youself of course asking you to do the opposite) and found in multiple countries and they have been doing it for at least some 400 years of monitored history in western Europe.
... not finished. Not started actually. That is why I advice you not to get too deep. A long text like that is never enough.
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71. At 5:12pm on 01 Sep 2010, bbony wrote:
"""I'm just saying the loss of natural purity is inevitable."""
This is the usual hobbyhorse. There is nothing as natural purity. And nothing like national purity. This becomes an excuse to enforce the socially (if not integrally) violent imposition of the acceptance of new imbedded populations. Pseudo-financial needs are the accompagning excuse.
"""There is no such thing like genetically proven individual representative of a nation."""
There can be an average of a given population though. People that consciously belong to an ethnos measure up themselves according to that. From there on, not even brothers and sisters are the same, there is no argumentation there.
"""To keep away "barbarians", in order to maintain "natural" members of a nation, or a superstate, is fruitless endeavour."""
Since the tedency is always towards Empire. This is natural. It is well in the human spiece that an oligarchy will strive for total supremacy at the expence not only of foreigners but also often of its equals, sometimes more of the latter ones.
"""Trying to act oppositely leads to "the fall". Even such nazy idiots, which emerge from time to time to decorate the newspapers columns, have modified their rhetoric to comply with the situation."""
The other solution of course will be to fall to every wisher.
"""On the contrary, to keep alive all the cultural traits, which in fact make a nation, it is necessary to mingle the natural differences. I completely agree with democracythreat (11) elaboration."""
Meangling is a long historic process that is measured not even in centuries and even milenia, not months or years. Go tell that to the "suburbs"...
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@ Nik: Sorry, but I wasn't debating about this topic and I am not interested in calculations regarding diesel, gas stations and what not. Granted, car is faster. I can't believe you put so much thought into it! Because it wasn't the point.
@ Mathiasen: Giving you the benefit of the doubt I suppose you wanted to say "SpreeLeni, if you are interested, there is a Maybritt Illner show tomorrow night that you might want to watch". - Thanks for the tip. I might. Or I go to that nice Iranian restaurant, enjoy their delicious food and probably learn more about immigration there than by listening to Hendryk M. Broder.
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democracythreat @ 73 wrote:
"(Hebrew is a recently invented language, as every educated jews knows very well)"
Hmmmm... I don't know whether I am educated (or a Jew), but I do know that although modern Hebrew was re-invented in the past hundred years, it is linguistically closer to biblical Hebrew than modern English is to Chaucer's English.
Hebrew script has changed a lot in the past couple of thousand years, but the language itself is substantially the same. Most Israelis can read - and understand - the Bible (Old Testament, of course. The New Testament was written in ancient Greek).
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@76. At 7:28pm on 01 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni
I was apparently writing to short: It is new to me, that Mrs. Illnear reacts to quickly to this "developing news". I consider "Maybritt Illner" as an update on positions in the Federal Republic.
Whether you want to hear it or not is of course a personal matter and matter of scheduling, only if you don't know you cannot choose...
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If the EU is to ever live up to it's potential Europeans are going to have to come to terms with the idea that they are going to be living in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religion society. It can be done without the "new Europeans" destroying the cultural identity of the "old Europeans".
More friction is caused by lack of economic opportunities than by actual cultural differences between immigrants and native born.
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@73 democracythreat
I *suspect* but can't put it more strongly than that, not myself being a geneticist or a biologist (are you? - I strongly doubt it) that you are talking rubbish. If so, not for the first time.
The Old Testament is, I would have thought, evidence as incontrovertible as any open-minded person (ie not including you) could reasonably demand that since antiquity the Jews have consciously and consistently aimed to preserve their racial separateness and purity.
"...equally clearly anyone at all could have proclaimed themselves jewish for any number of reasons, and no doubt a great many people did just that".
No, that's anything but "clearly" the case. You are (again!) using your favourite trick of imposing your predetermined schema upon the historical record and distorting the latter to fit the former.
Again:
"OK, so if it was a club that anyone could join, way back when, then how can there possibly be a genetic signature for it?"
It wasn't a club that anyone could join, from that time at the latest when the Jews ("Israelites") split away from other nomadic semitic tribes and began the long process of differentiating themselves ever more clearly from the others, basing that differentiation upon their own unique monotheistic religion. The culmination of that phase was the building of the first, Solomonic, temple housing the Ark of the Covenant. That would have been occurring far too soon after the cultural-religious split for it to have given rise to any genetic differentiation by then. The Diaspora, however, occurred at least 1,500-2,000 years later by when genetic variation would have had time to develop.
But of course it's perfectly possible that the hypothesis you favour could be right all the same. Intermarriage with non-Jews *could* have been going on like crazy all along, despite all the prohibitions and discrimination against it - improbable but possible. Non-Jews could have been flocking in droves to the nearest synogogue, unable to restrain themselves from becoming Jews (though quite why they would want to do this is a little hard to grasp - inferiority complex maybe? - and we know from the historical record that nothing remotely like that was happening for several centuries following the Roman Catholic church achieving complete ascendancy in the West and the Orthodox faith in the East).
But like any other hypothesis, yours is only a hypothesis - not a proven fact. Meanwhile a piece of modern genetic research appears to refute it pretty conclusively. Your reaction: the research MUST be wrong, because it doesn't accord with what you've already made up your mind is "the truth".
The research may indeed be wrong; research quite often is - partly, though not often so totally and completely as you're flatly asserting. But it demands to be evaluated on a basis no less scientifically rigorous than that on which it was arrived-at. Just repeating: "it can't be true" won't do.
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@ Nik:
I get that family bonds are important to you. Fair enough, I love my family too. And I am sure as soon as I have children I will love them best in the world. Only I seriously do still not have a clue what all of this has to do with immigration policy. There are so many inconsistencies in your argumentation, I don't know where to start. One is that you call "cultural" "ethnic", because you say multicultural is just another word for multiethnical. You say it's wooden language. You confuse culture with religion. You also say that it is better for "tribes" to stay among themselves. And I say that this comes very close to eugenics. Your views are always on the verge to racism and are certainly cultural-pessimistic. You do not offer solutions you only offer your world view that is crude, not challenging, but crude. It is fatalistic, because what can we do? We cannot chose our family or "tribe" so we don't have a choice. The connection with "oligarchy" is still totally obscure. There are families that don't own land. And deviding the land between the sons didn't work out the last time in the middle ages, when this led into slavery?! I hope you can sleep still with this chaos in your thoughts.
@Mathiasen: You are right, Maybritt Illner really is something else..maybe the worst host of a political talkshow available, but not really unsympathetic..well. Maybe I'll watch it, now that I have the choice.
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"@79. At 9:02pm on 01 Sep 2010, Scott0962 wrote:
If the EU is to ever live up to it's potential...."
I'm not quite sure why people even write things like this.As if the EU is not finished already.The EU has the highest standards of living in the entire world.It's finished and it's good the way it is.
This man seems to bring attention to what many in Europe are seeing already.A Muslim minority that just doesn't integrate and performs worse in all social indicators (education,employment,crime,social benefits) then all other immigrant groups.And trying to get a debate going about immigration and integration in general.
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73. d_t
You said "clearly anyone at all could have proclaimed themselves Jewish for any number of reasons".
There is one "little" thing you forgot. The foreskin. If a man intends on being a Jew it has to go. I'm not Jewish but mine went. I didn't have a say in the matter. I guess if your young enough and can't remember, it doesn't amount to much but I'd hate to it have it done as an adult without modern anesthetics. Even having it done as a infant has probably caused me some kind of trauma I have jet to get over. I'm pretty sure the doc cut to much off.
Second thought.
What could have been gained by claiming to be a Jew, in Europe, in the middle ages?
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This is so complex a problem, but
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I am back again. There is a problem with compatibility and my ASUS laptop. Darnnnn.
I just realized whom you are trying to be like, NIK.
Plato. "A conversation with your self?" :))
Anyway, a gene for Jews ...how stuuuuupid can one get and still call oneself an intellectual....stunning.
What does happen in America.....certain things are not allowed to be said. This is called Political Correctness.
I call it Political Politeness. And appreciate it alot. People learn to not express their own monumental ignorance.
Yea!
Except for times of war and anti-war views are stifled by the majority...then PC is YUK.
But, this German political person will get his just deserts ...a life of comparitive (rich) economic freedom but without public respect...
poor lil unfortunate person.
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Hi Web Alice, Gen. Franco, and Nik, POakTree and others, I hate being locked out of here....what is the deal....oh well :)
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Im not "touching" that one...MaudDib
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Democracy Threat,
You might like the musical from Broadway...The Producers :)
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Strangely, for a different perspective,
German individuals are very nice and talkative and open about many things (the people I've met online)
Also, a German woman works at my credit union and she is so much fun to chat with :)
So, how can all this Germany bashing just be generalized as truth and then filed away?
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Sarrazin is quite correct that populations don't integrate equally. Politicians need to realise what scientists quietly acknowledge, that different populations have average cognitive and behavioural differences. Accordingly, they will differ in crime and academic outcomes.
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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@90, Bruno
Thilo Sarrazin has mobilized the society of researchers in genetics since he has used the typical vulgar interpretation of genetics, which allows him to combine genetics, intelligence, and religion. A wonderful cocktail. Sarrazin had to admit yesterday on live television that he has no clue on genetics or the two other areas for that matter.
Secondly, it was revealed that the statistician Sarrazin is pretending to know about demography. Therefore, he has also mobilized the society of researchers in that field. They are now explaining Sarrazin the difference between statistics and demographic theories.
As an academic and as a politician Thilo Sarrazin is a disaster. He is too as a German, and that is what among others SPD and Bundesbank are telling him.
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T@89. At 01:31am on 02 Sep 2010, DavidStvn
The last week’s edition of Die Zeit the former Italian ambassador in Germany, signor Purini, had an article concerning the political future of EU with the head line "The hour of Angela Merkel has arrived". False generalisations about Germans, which can be read here in some contributions, reflect the important role of the country too only in a negative sense, and a country of that kind, - not to mention its history, will always be a topic of discussion and it SHOULD be.
Actually, I am positively surprised by another thing: The many contributions here that reflect a balanced observation of the Federal Republic, and contributions that are based on the principle “the same measure” when we compare and discuss individual European countries.
Absolutely no reason to complain.
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bbony
Re #71 & #11
Thanks for clarification.
Yes, I agree with You and also with DemocThreat's main points.
Cheers.
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DavidStvn
Re #85
Back again!
1 real reason: You missed WebAlice, didn't You?
Go on, we all got hooked on her comments.
Cheers
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MaudDib
Re #83
Why did people in the Middle Ages of their own volition choose a 'religion'?
I guess for the reasons people do still make that choice despite all the history, science & experience of Humanity etc. that has me choosing to be a complete Aetheist.
They did/do it from personal conviction, for love, to belong, to escape & some as a crutch against life's pitfalls (as in, "..next year...in Jerusalem.."), plus the cynics as a hedge-bet against there really being 'something' out there other than endless space...
Infinite 'Space' always seems more appealing to my enquiring mind.
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Re SpreeLeni's #67
Quote, "...have to admit I have not often been confronted with opinions as crude as yours (Nik)"
and,
Re, the Greek's #74 & his other contributions
Quote, "Crude = challenge?"
No, no 'challenge': SpreeLeni meant 'crude' and that fairly much sums up how a number of us assess Your comments: Predominantly baseless notions expressing unpleasant generalisations about fellow Humans.
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to Buzet23, #38:
Ordinary policy decisions are taken by majority vote, but those seeking to restrict basic rights require a special justification. Proportional restrictions of basic rights may be legitimate if necessary to protect other basic rights or common resources, but not to impose the moral, religious views, culture or lifestyle of the majority. Basic rights are not earned but acquired by birth. Laws should undergo a rigorous constitutional review. Individuals are required to comply with laws, but not with the majority views, lifestyle, culture or morality of the society. The fact that someone is different does not make him "abhor" society, and there are also examples of serial killers who appeared to share the majority lifestyle and culture of the society. The fact that someone may "abhor" society (how do you measure that, anyway?), does not make him lose him basic rights.
to cool brush work, #43:
Ordinary policy decisions are taken by majority vote, but those seeking to restrict basic rights require a special justification. Proportional restrictions of basic rights may be legitimate if necessary to protect other basic rights or common resources, but not to impose the moral, religious views, culture or lifestyle of the majority. Laws should undergo a rigorous constitutional review. Individuals are required to comply with laws, but not with the majority views, lifestyle, culture or morality of the society. In a functioning constitutional democracy, laws that seek to restrict religious or other liberties without a sufficient justification need to be struck down upon judicial review.
You arguing with something I did not say. It is legitimate (and even necessary) to ban paedophilia, rape and other forms of violence, because they infringe on the victims' basic rights. It is usually not that legitimate to ban behaviors that diverge from the majority perception of what is socially permissible but without infringing on basic rights or common resources. There needs to be a democractic debate on policy decisions, but it needs to be keep in check through constitutional review, otherwise the majority (especially in situations where the majority is unlikely to ever find itself in the position of minority, such as as regards ethnicity and religion) could use majority voting as a weapon to take away the basic rights of minority members. If we relied solely on majority voting, ethnic and religious minorities would likely be treated as second-class humans.
As a policy matter, I am generally in favor of reducing welfare benefits. Conditions of eligibility for welfare benefits need to be objective and non-discriminatory. It would not be legitimate to deny welfare benefits on the basis of someone's ethnicity or religion. It is fair to require the recipient of unemployment benefits to attend requalification courses or carry out community work, but to require "allegiance to the society" is so vague that it is both discriminatory and utterly impractical. The "unwritten & unvoiced" expectations of the majority society on welfare claimants, as you put it, need to be expressed in objective terms that are aimed at achieving some legitimate policy goal. It is not always convenient, but that is the standard to which a civilized rule-of-law state needs to adhere.
Human diversity (multiculturalism, pluralism, whatever you want to call it) is not the result of a government conspiracy, but is the natural outcome of the functioning of a free society based on liberal constitutional values. Diversity places higher requirements on state institutions (which need to ensure law and order) and on citizens (which need to learn the principles of a free constitutional society and must be able to tolerate other people's moral and religious beliefs, culture and lifestyle even if they are unpopular), but that is the standard to which a civilized free constitutional society is committed. There are many societies in the world that do not adhere to the standards of a civilized free constitutional society.
The mere fact that you have a diverse bunch of people on the underground/metro is encouraging, but IMO does not in itself necessarily speak to the quality of minority protection in a free constitutional society; urban transportation in large metropolitan areas can be quite diverse even in some societies that may not have high standards of constitutional protection.
As you say, the identity of a nation or state is subject to change. It is a descriptive category (i.e., a society at any given point is what it is) not a prescriptive one (i.e., there can no assurance or expectation that it will always stay the same). Some people may not like it and have to get used to that, but that is what a free society is about.
As regards your point on the prohibition of drugs, that is an interesting one. I happen to think that it is legitimate to ban some drugs and regulate some others to the extent drug abuse harms other people or even the drug abuser himself. The current policy is very permissive as regards alcohol and tobacco (even to the point that non-drinkers and non-smokers must sometimes patiently suffer abuse from drunkards or smokers) but very repressive as regards marijuana. I am not sure whether this raises to the level of a breach of basic rights (although sometimes it might, e.g., some of the cases of incarceration of marijuana users), but it does raise legitimate questions of policy consistency and rationality.
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to MarcusAurelius II, #44:
"Yougoslavia wasn't even a real counrtry anymore than Czechoslovakia or Iraq were. They were absurd European constructs held together by force just like the EU and as soon as that force was relaxed the constitutent countries that were conscripted to to become part of those constructs immediately flew apart"
I would say the example of Czechoslovakia is a poor one in this context. There was little pressure needed in 1918 from Czechs to convince Slovaks to form Czechoslovakia as an alternative to Slovaks' inclusion in Hungary. Czechoslovakia was a real country not any less than its neighbors. In 1993, the federation did not fly apart but the countries hesitantly split apart while keeping a common customs union and privileged relationships in a number of areas. It might even be fair to say that the break-up was engineered by certain politicians without any referendum and, to my recollection, without clear election campaigning. The inexperience of the newly democratic federation in handling basic democratic processes (e.g., budget approval) may have also been a contributing factor. I am leaving aside that the break-up was also abused by the authorities in order to attempt to render certain Czechoslovak citizens (primarily some of the Roma) apatride by refusing to grant them either the Czech or the Slovak citizenship.
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Powermeerkat
Re #68
'Madrassas' are a misunderstood Islamic centre in the minds of many non-Muslim.
They are not only a place to worship but also community centres, places of learning & schooling, and in the majority non-Muslim Nations of EUrope-UK they have become sort of 'arks' that carry the Islamic faithful along in often strange, difficult, sometimes hostile and for sure 'foreign' circumstances.
Therefore, it is no wonder some who use them may be of the extremist persuasion & preach/discuss/propose the 'Jihad' in the 'west' nonsense.
It also not generally recognised that Madrassas & Mosques are run by their local 'muslim communities' and therefore the great majority do not get involved in anything of that radically aggressive kind.
Occasionally, a centre may fall under the control of the more extreme elements, but these are closely monitored and has happened they can be dealt with by the authorities if it is needed. Infact, most 'security' would prefer such places remain open as it is then easier to record any developing radical individuals/groups & the patterns of leadership.
There are almost 2 million Muslims in the UK: They may all have heard (how could they not!?) about 'Jihadist' movements, but there is nothing to suggest more than a very small % actually are attracted to that form of Islamic Fundamentalism.
I suppose I am basically saying on a daily basis I don't (maybe 'didn't' is fairer as I've lived in Finland since '07) fear Muslims anymore than anyone else in the UK community.
My experience was (and this will make MargaretHoward jeer) a Friday/Saturday night around the UK 'community centres' otherwise known as pubs & clubs was infinitely more likely to be a threat than anything from my law-abiding, tee-total Muslim neighbours!
NB: I am not saying I agree in any way with the tenets of Islam which IMO are to some extent wholly incompatible with the EUropean-UK cultural-political lifestyle: However, that is an issue where IMO the Fundamentalist Islamic 'extremists' will do their cause & their Faith no good at all in the long-term no matter what they attempt via Madrassas and on the streets.
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So other than the Jewish comment, there is nothing controversial in the book.
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Oulematu
Re #97
Quote, "...the identity of a nation or state is subject to change.. some people may not like it and have to get used to that, but that is what a free society is about."
Which as You say & agree was my point.
So, if the 'society' via Democratic Law calls upon the followers of Islam, or the 'Roma', or the English methodists etc. to comply with new criteria then they should do so and work to change those Laws if they do not agree. My point being why are You writing as though it is the European 'tradition' that must be expected/required to change? Why is not the 'tradition' of the Muslim etc. to be changed to suit their nation or state?
Unsure, I follow Your point about "..if we relied on majority-voting..", because in the modern Democracy that is simply not the practical case of Governance: Alongside the periodic Election of Government open to participtaion by all Citizens there is recourse to Judiciary for any Citizen. Surely one of the most remarkably appealing things about post-WW2 Europe-UK Democratic evolution that has contributed to the influx of Peoples from 'foreign' cultures is as You elsewhere admit, "..there are many societies in the World that do not adhere to the standards of a free constitutinal society."
My 'diverse bunch' on the Underground was to point up that there are those who would disagree fundamentally with the proposition of the unescorted Female, a 'boy' & a 'girl' travelling together, the eccentric ('Punk') being there at all, and other 'Faiths' being allowed etc.
It is in Democratic EUrope-UK these People & this diversity (pluralism) is allowed to exist: It is so because there is indeed a Constitutional requirement that it be so, but also because all those People in that carriage (subject to 'qualification') may participate in that Democratic journey in the literal and figurative sense.
If the 'minority' object to what they believe is 'discriminatory' Law then it is their Right to demonstrate their opposition in all sorts of ways. Democracy allows for and encourages oppositional viewpoints: Debate is at its heart and is the unique difference from those 'non-constitutional' society to which You refer. What is also clear is that the 'majority' have an equal Right to oppose any change to what they see as unwarranted intrusion/alteration of their lifestyle because in essence they perceive a change as being 'discriminatory' against their situation/interests.
The "..higher requirements.." within Society to which You allude that are set by 'diversity' of Peoples/Cultures is without question the challenge faced in EUrope-UK at the present time.
Whether You or I like it or not a part of that challenge is that it would appear many Peoples in EUrope-UK have differing perceptions/views on who/which sections of the Community should be required to give way? IMO the 'traditional' European-Briton may justifiably ask why their evolving Democratic tradition should be utilised to accomodate (and supplant is what I assume they fear) the perspectives/views of Peoples who left their native lands precisely because the prevailing 'traditions' in that original homeland were found to be wanting!?
Drugs etc? It was a part of my general thesis to explain where I was coming from at the Democratic level: It is not my intention to get into that debate too!
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@100 Lorentz
You should read the interview with the intelligence researcher Elsbeth Stern in Frankfurter Allgemeine today to learn more about controversies of the book.
The idea of extrapolating demographic statistics 120 years is not only horrific is it also suited to raise a fire on his demagogic foundation.
Would be a great idea if Sarrazin would realise that he is not a researcher. I expect Bundesbank to tell him.
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to nik, #51:
Re maternal love: I will not go back to school but to my pocket Webster which tells me that "racism" means "a belief that some races are by nature superior to others" or "discrimination based on such belief". I fail to see how parents (whether of a single race or a mixed race couple) who harbor parental love for their children but not for the neighbor's children can be by virtue of that mere fact regarded as racist. However, I agree with you that parents are living organisms. I also agree that most parents appear not to give up their parental responsibility to mass-nurseries although such option is available (e.g., the so-called "baby boxes" in operation in some EU states which enable the parents to anonymously depose an unwanted baby). Letting my family members inherit my assets does not constitute abuse of other children; those children do not have any legal right which would justify their claim on my assets after I die. Parents at the playground typically supervise their babies not only in order to ensure the "self-preservation" of their baby, but also to prevent harm to other babies. You may find this unnatural, but it is part of the educational process of turning the baby into a social human being. Maybe they do not it that way in Greek playgrounds, it is possible, I would not know. If so, that is probably is sufficient reason for me to refrain from visiting Greece.
Re #1: Constitutional democracy is not the only thinkable form of government (clearly not one you prefer). It is based on the principle that basic rights cannot be restricted unless there is a serious justification for it. People can esteem what they like but the point is that laws in a free constitutional society cannot be legitimately used to restrict basic rights on the account of the private moral or religious beliefs, culture or lifestyle of the majority. Individuals and families have their individual and family identity, they can own property and associate with other individuals, but they do not own an entire country or nation. Just because I am born to certain parents in a certain state does not mean that I am a prisoner of that state or my parents' culture or views. Individuals are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That does not mean that they could ignore law or economic reality, but it does mean that laws cannot restrict basic rights solely in order to impose the majority's version of happiness or morality, even where such restriction is not properly justified in order to protect other basic rights and the common resources. The German demos does not have unlimited discretion in adopting or enforcing rules. This discretion is limited amongst others by fundamental human rights, by the constitution and by international conventions. I agree that laws change, but there are certain fundamental rights which cannot be amended by law if the state is to remain a constitutional democracy.
Re #2: The fact that numerous Turkish immigrants legally moved to Germany to support its economic miracle was the outcome of the democratic process that you invoke. In a constitutional democracy, each individual does have the right to choose his/her religion (freedom of religion), and (freedom of speech) he/she may choose to communicate in a language acceptable to the participants of that communication.
Re #3: You need to define what constitutes welfare abuse. You cannot say that welfare abuse is when the recipient meets the eligibility conditions, but is of Turkish origin.
Re #4: I agree that laws should not be used solely to force anyone ("majority" or "minority" member) to adopt the religious or moral beliefs, culture or lifestyle of anyone else (majority or minority) unless there is a sufficient different justification for such laws (protection of other basic rights or the common resources). Minority members can be disadvantaged as a result of various practices, e.g., they can be declared slaves (e.g., US in the past) or, as part of a scheme of indirect discrimination, be disproportionately placed in schools for mentally handicapped children (e.g., the Roma in the Czech Republic as ruled by the ECHR court). Except in order to protect other fundamental rights or the common resources, fundamental rights cannot be restricted in a constitutional democracy. Social changes in European democracies are primarily the result of spontaneous activities of individuals and their organizations, and not the result of an oligarchical conspiracy. I am not ok with what happened in ex-Yugoslavia, IMO the events there did not meet the standards of constitutional democracy. The ideas of liberalism on which Europe's constitutional democracies are based are not laughable but represent the common glue that holds together the pluralist societies of Europe and the English-speaking world. Before jumping to conclusions about other people, you need to question your own understanding of the principles on which our society is based.
To nik, #63:
Re the paragraph where you mention that Oulematu "forgets that the state is the collective property of its citizens and as such it is passed to the sons of the citizens". Clearly the state is NOT the collective property of its citizens and as such it is NOT passed to the sons of the citizens. This vision of state as the collective property of its citizens was pioneered, amongst others, by the communist parties in the USSR and other countries, but failed to deliver not just on constitutional liberties, but also on economic performance and just about every other area of life.
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Re 96: CBW, be it my opinion is crude, what do you have to propose, if you have anything? I speak openly and specifically, you do not propose anything concrete, just everything hangs in the air to give the opportunity for further manipulation. Typical British diplomacy?
81. At 10:39pm on 01 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni wrote:
"""@ Nik:
I get that family bonds are important to you."""
They are not important to me because I chose it that way or because I am family-man or something and I do not at all do a moral teaching here. It is simply a basic thing because I am a homo sapiens and homo sapiens is a mammal. Upbrining is how our species work. It is part of the long term strategy of these species. No need to bring me paradigms of the numerous dissolved families existing; if anything even a quick statistical study of them would tell a lot of how much they fare in this world. Keep forgetting the fact that you are an animal like all others and you lose the point.
"""Fair enough, I love my family too. And I am sure as soon as I have children I will love them best in the world."""
As said, discussion is not up to that point. I am sure you love your family.
"""Only I seriously do still not have a clue what all of this has to do with immigration policy."""
Hmmm you ask a question that makes a logical leap while I haven't done this. Be it, I answer it. It has in many ways, but the extend of its visibility depends of course from country to country - for example immigration in the scarcely populated Siberia can under specific context (i.e. if it does not endangers the Russian state) be positive as it had been for US but certainly even there it will be resented strongly by local Siberian tribes who will be the super-losers just as the US natives were the super losers. In Germany's case, the massive Turkish immigration means that the Germans and especially the Germans' kids will be losers. Immigration benefits mainly the oligarchies since this aids their rule over the mass. When you are in favour or do not mind immigration or claim that "evething is going to be fine" you are repeating the same mistake that Romans did with Goths when they gave them asylum inside their Empire (under the justifications of 1) showing magnanimity 2) using them as workers 3) using them as soldiers ). At the end the local population will always lose, that is a reality of life. Why? Because. Go tell a lion to accept another lion in its territory. Not even a cat does so easily. Mammals are territorial. Do not try to bring this on a person to person level, that has nothing to do with you and your whatever-origin neighbour in particular. We speak on human populations here, and these are as much real as your neighbour, albeit a wholy different level.
"""There are so many inconsistencies in your argumentation, I don't know where to start. One is that you call "cultural" "ethnic", because you say multicultural is just another word for multiethnical."""
It is all down to your misunderstandings. I say that the term "multicultural" means absolutely nothing, it is a game-word to confuse the discussion and blur peoples' thought. I use the term multi-ethnic which reveals the reality and makes an easier bridge to the word "Empire". Multi-cultural exists predominantly either in caste societies or if talking of monoethnic countries as a group. Multi-ethnic states of today are largely fuzzy-cultural. See how a change of words changes the perception of reality? My descriptions are much closer to what you live every day: there are not many cultures in Germany. You do not have Germans having "many cultures" apart the whatever regional variation, say between Hamburg and Munich etc. There are however many nations alongside the old habitants, Germans. And them they have their own culture. Hence speaking of "multicultural" is wrong. Speaking of "multireligious" is can be right if you refer only to the old catholics/protestants division but wrong if you refer to muslims. Speaking of multiethnic is precise and gives you the reality. What is so difficult for you to comprehend in that?
"""You say it's wooden language."""
By all means. It is the weapon of propaganda.
"""You confuse culture with religion."""
Precisely I am not confusing either culture or religion. I speak only of ethnos. Neither religion nor culture jump out from nowhere but they have a specific origin no matter what is their later adoption. And since they have a specific origin, they do have a specific ethnic origin. No need to argue on that. A good example is the muslim religion in Germany. It is a religion with a very precise ethnic origin in Arab nomadic tribes of western Saoudi Arabia which was later spread in a rather horizontal line east and west. Turks (themselves of multiethnic origin) brought the religion in mass in Germany, hence its existence and all associeted cultures with it in Germany has a very precise ethnic origin. Speaking of cultures and religions is pointless, speaking of the ethnic ancestry of populations is much more precise.
"""You also say that it is better for "tribes" to stay among themselves."""
If you go back to my message to point 5 you will that I said:
5) From there one everything else is plain human constructions: nations, states, governments, religions, ideologies etc. There is no axiom according to which every ethnos and every tribe should have self-governance or something.
and added that:
There is also no axiom that every state has to be multiethnical.
Then jump to:
8) Whatever monoethnic or multethnic and I chose morally none of the two, a fact that 99,999% of people keep forgeting is that the state is a much more linear scale up of the notion of private property (yet another basic notion of humans and mammals!) than the ethnos is for family.
You should be already in position to get the essence of the line of thought, it is really very directly given.
"""And I say that this comes very close to eugenics."""
How can you make the link between what I said and eugenics? This become even more humoristic when in the reality the contrary happens: eugenics are practiced in modern multi-ethnic imperial states by the very same ruling classes that teach you (the mass) to accept social fuzzyness.
"""Your views are always on the verge to racism and are certainly cultural-pessimistic."""
What you said is empty of content. You use the word "racism" as religion. If anything judged from what I say is that I am very much cultural-optimistic.
"""You do not offer solutions you only offer your world view that is crude, not challenging, but crude."""
I did not offer solutions? Mercy! I proposed you the notion of co-propriety and you were not even able to understand what lies behind this. I am sorry what else can I do? Should I bring down the discussion to the level of asking you to write on my name half of your house to understand what is the notion of citizen tate-propriety?
"""It is fatalistic, because what can we do? We cannot chose our family or "tribe" so we don't have a choice."""
No, your view is fatalistic. You do not judge with an open mind what happens around you, you just accept and swallow everything that happens pathetically.
"""The connection with "oligarchy" is still totally obscure."""
Really? So you think that you decide on the fate of your society? How? By elections? You think your views are your own? You really think you did all that effort to analyse the world around you to have your own views? I do not think so, you are representing the oligarchy. You above used words as "religion" representing a line of thought that serves slavishly the interests of the international oligarchy (international bankoinvestor circles) which is known and very specific, thus obviously you have never asked yourself "why this" "why that", you just repeat slogans you were taught in school and you were brainwashed by media. They told you "racism " is bad and you believed it and repeat it like a parrot. I will bring this to the theory level: what is so bad in "racism" when by definition "racism" includes also mothers' preferance to her kids? Mind you, I am not supporing anything you think as "racist", I just describe you that what you think as "racism" does not exist, the word is completely empty of meaning and that is the exact reason that for something supposedly so age old you cannot find a lot of references and they are absent among mankinds' greatest minds from the beginning of mankind till WWII apart the fuzzy references of one "bright" exception: christianism which of course fantastically self-contradicted accepting the continuation of use of "chosen nations" and "particular lineages" which under what you think as racism hits red of course! No wonder christianism was soon used as an Imperial tool and ended up in fantastic violence.
"""There are families that don't own land. And deviding the land between the sons didn't work out the last time in the middle ages, when this led into slavery?!"""
Land property is the only essentially meaningful thing. However the notion of state hides also the value of the work output of people (I would not directly relate this to "money" or to the economy) and that has also to be taken into account. Eg. if a state electricity company gives free electricity to "some" and not to "all" then this is not so different to taking a piece of land from the "all" and giving it to "some".
"""I hope you can sleep still with this chaos in your thoughts."""
My thoughts are in perfect order. The chaos you speak is rather the incertainty of you when speaking with me. Relax.
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83. At 00:03am on 02 Sep 2010, MaudDib wrote:
"""Second thought.
What could have been gained by claiming to be a Jew, in Europe, in the middle ages?"""
A (no matter if dangerous) possibility to belong to the powerful castes of traders, importers and bankers for example?
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ou ou ou;
"I would say the example of Czechoslovakia is a poor one in this context. There was little pressure needed in 1918 from Czechs to convince Slovaks to form Czechoslovakia as an alternative to Slovaks' inclusion in Hungary."
The lesser of two evils, which one to be gobbled up by.
"Czechoslovakia was a real country not any less than its neighbors. In 1993, the federation did not fly apart but the countries hesitantly split apart while keeping a common customs union and privileged relationships in a number of areas. It might even be fair to say that the break-up was engineered by certain politicians without any referendum and, to my recollection, without clear election campaigning."
Well there's the European idea of a democracy for you in a nutshell. No referendum, no election, no public say in what kind of government or even what the country would be. Same as in Britain where there was no say when after the referendum to join a free trade group, the British people found themselves being governed by a supranational organization without their having any election to agree to it. Even the most despotic tyrannies like the USSR and Saddam Hussein's Iraq held the sham pretense of elections to give them some semblance of legitimacy. And why does this happen so regularly? Becuase the European state of mind is one in which real democracy has no place. To be a European is to hold a state of mind which cuts across national boundaries and local cultures. Perhaps it is the only thing that does.
"The inexperience of the newly democratic federation in handling basic democratic processes (e.g., budget approval) may have also been a contributing factor. I am leaving aside that the break-up was also abused by the authorities in order to attempt to render certain Czechoslovak citizens (primarily some of the Roma) apatride by refusing to grant them either the Czech or the Slovak citizenship."
So without any election, Roma citizens of Czechoslovakia were denied citizenship and the rights conferred by citizenship in both countries? People suddenly without a state? How very European. And then all we hear from Europe is noise about Palestinian refugees who for the most part actually fled Israel when it was first created on the insistance of Arab governments who were about to invade. But they left by choice. No matter because the ancestors of Jews in Israel were non persons and non citizens in the sames sense as the Roma. While the Chech and Slovaks can deny citizenship to an ethnic minority who were born there, Israel has no right to deny citizenship to an ethnic minority whose ancestors fled. More European hypocricy.
How could a more irrational and hypocritical place than Europe exist? I can't imagine it.
Speaking about irrational, it appears that the platitudes that were spouted about a united Europe that Euroepans bought into with all its trappings of multiculturalism in order to create a superstate to challenge the US as Chirac and deVillepin put it, are now translated into actual policies that have brought many Europeans into a rather nasty tight little corner they've painted themselves into. Are children of Turks born in Germany citiznes of Germany, Turkey, or citizens of no country at all? Can they be deported to a country they have no ties with except by ancestry? What is to become of them, the Roma, and all of the other people all over Europe who do not, will not, and can not be integrated into the mainstream of European society. Europe can't go backwards, won't move forwards. What will it do next? Or does these timebombs Europeans created for themselves just go on ticking as I suspect until they explode?
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103. At 10:58am on 02 Sep 2010, oulematu wrote:
"""to nik, #51:
Re maternal love: I will not go back to school but to my pocket Webster which tells me that "racism" means "a belief that some races are by nature superior to others" or "discrimination based on such belief"."""
Oouaou! The only people I know that openly said so where the British and Germans of late 19th and early 20th century. Yet you (you or people having similar opinions as you) keep using this term for anything that moves and speaks out an opinion different to yours. According to your definition you fail miserably to explain why you (you or other people expressing similar opinions) consider Thilo as a racist on the basis of these precise declarations of his.
"""I fail to see how parents (whether of a single race or a mixed race couple) who harbor parental love for their children but not for the neighbor's children can be by virtue of that mere fact regarded as racist."""
No you don't. You can see it very well, it just does not serve your failed argumentation.
"""However, I agree with you that parents are living organisms."""
And like families, tribes and nations are social living organisms. People are not colourless grey masses you know. This said, jumping from personal to social level is wrong. I repeatedly said that the scale up exists but it is not linear. Even at the basic nuclear level, the world if full of paradigms of destroyed families and of parents that have absolutely no parental feelings or offspring that show no affection to parents.
"""Letting my family members inherit my assets does not constitute abuse of other children;"""
Yes it does. Space is not yours, matter is not yours. It pre-existed since the creation of universe. You (and before you your ancestors along with their own people) jumped along and wrote it in their names.
"""those children do not have any legal right which would justify their claim on my assets after I die."""
Go say what you said to Palestinians, or Cypriots or Serbians, or Georgians or any other people of that great list of people that have been displaced (let alone been killed) and the world is only too happy to tell them "shut up"."Legal" and "Right" are momentary human constructions and evoked whenever there is interest. Forget about them using them as arguments.
"""Parents at the playground typically supervise their babies not only in order to ensure the "self-preservation" of their baby, but also to prevent harm to other babies. You may find this unnatural, but it is part of the educational process of turning the baby into a social human being. Maybe they do not it that way in Greek playgrounds, it is possible, I would not know. If so, that is probably is sufficient reason for me to refrain from visiting Greece*."""
No comment. Left this paragraph to give as an example of a sign of someone failing in a discussion.
* I still will ask you once more time to tell me your background roots too. Your failure to state so reveals a lot. What are you afraid of? Or you prefer to throw implicit insults on other people's roots and hide your own like you did above?
"""Constitutional democracy is not the only thinkable form of government (clearly not one you prefer)."""
Certainly not the one I prefer since it has no link to the group of forms of governship that could be called "democratic". Republic is a more correct word and this is simply another term for "elected oligarchy". Give me a reason why would I be attracted to it?
"""It is based on the principle that basic rights cannot be restricted unless there is a serious justification for it."""
Like profit for example as it is the case today.
"""People can esteem what they like but the point is that laws in a free constitutional society cannot be legitimately used to restrict basic rights on the account of the private moral or religious beliefs, culture or lifestyle of the majority."""
Failed again. Buy a plot of land next to Eiffel Tower and go get a permit to construct a tower that happens to be an Eiffel Tower-like metal structure on the inverse and I will tell you how much the "constitutionality" cannot be used legitimately to restict basic rights on the account of culture or lifestyle of the majority. Not just failed. Miserably failed.
"""Individuals and families have their individual and family identity, they can own property and associate with other individuals, but they do not own an entire country or nation."""
Really? So where taxes come into picture? Or do you just pay for other peoples' property? Can I ask you to pay for the renovation of my house for example? Or I guess you don't pay tax. Like so many others above you speak again and again with no sense; you just speak religion. You are not someone who discusses logically, you are preaching, you cannot present an argument, you present a prayer. You realise that what you say is close to saying that "state" and the "nation" are God's work on earth or something.
Well no, the state has very much the notion of collective property and that is not down to communism, another religion-like sibling of the religion-like capitalism along with fascism.
"""Just because I am born to certain parents in a certain state does not mean that I am a prisoner of that state or my parents' culture or views."""
And because I was born in a house without a piscine, that does not mean that I am a prisoner of it and I can't just enter next door where there is a piscine. Dream on.
"""Individuals are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."""
Religion.
"""That does not mean that they could ignore law or economic reality, but it does mean that laws cannot restrict basic rights solely in order to impose the majority's version of happiness or morality, even where such restriction is not properly justified in order to protect other basic rights and the common resources."""
Of course, according to you, only the oligarchy has the right to do so.
"""The German demos does not have unlimited discretion in adopting or enforcing rules."""
If they had a democracy they would do.
"""This discretion is limited amongst others by fundamental human rights, by the constitution and by international conventions."""
I.e. limited by oligarchy which will apply them according to their will as we have seen repeatedly.
"""The fact that numerous Turkish immigrants legally moved to Germany to support its economic miracle was the outcome of the democratic process that you invoke."""
Lie 1: No German ever was given the chance to express himself on it. Given the tedency, the vast majority of Germans would had voted against it even in full knowledge that Mercedes and Siemens would have less profit margins.
Lie 2: Turks started coming in meaningfull numbers after 1965 and became visible during the 1970s. The economic "miracle" (no miracle at all in reality...) had already happened and the first post-WWII international recession had already started. The "miracle" was not even thanx to the earlier E.German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Greek immigrants, it was thanks to the 95% intact industrial capacity of post-WWII W.Germany as opposed to the 80% destroyed infrastructure. I did not suppose you would know about it, learn it now.
"""In a constitutional democracy, each individual does have the right to choose his/her religion (freedom of religion), and (freedom of speech) he/she may choose to communicate in a language acceptable to the participants of that communication."""
... but even in a constitutional democracy he has not the right to ask
"""You need to define what constitutes welfare abuse. You cannot say that welfare abuse is when the recipient meets the eligibility conditions, but is of Turkish origin."""
I never concentrated on wellfare and the whatever abuses. I have simply mentioned that the massive presence of immigrants in most European countries has been on the overal detrimental to the countries economies. Had Germany or whatever Germany been democratic people would had long amended the laws. Current laws exist to perpetuate the situation. I never also did a moral lesson to Turks and just any Turks who profit from the current legislation, themselves they do fine to do so. I also do not find it rational to judge Germans for resenting that observable mass of Turks and whatever Turks receiving German state aid to do vacations in Turkey.
“””Social changes in European democracies are primarily the result of spontaneous activities of individuals and their organizations, and not the result of an oligarchical conspiracy.”””
I can only take that belief of yours as “religion”. Spontaneous activities of individuals and their organisations? What joke is that again? No need for great analysis. Take a non-political, non-religious example, that of WWF. A global environmental organisation. It has an important presence around the world which implies a significant budget. Who pays the bills dear? The spontaneous activities of individuals and orgainsations? And if this is not the case for WWF, guess how much for political and religious organisations. Wake up and see the world as it is, as it always has been.
“””Before jumping to conclusions about other people, you need to question your own understanding of the principles on which our society is based.”””
As you see my understanding is crystal clear and concrete solid. I speak specifically and openly referring to the basics, giving paradigms and avoiding (and fighting against) “religious-like” axiomatic views. No moral preaching either.
“””Clearly the state is NOT the collective property of its citizens and as such it is NOT passed to the sons of the citizens.”””
It belongs to Go perhaps? Or obviously to the oligarchies that you so obediently intellectually serve.
“””This vision of state as the collective property of its citizens was pioneered, amongst others, by the communist parties in the USSR”””
Wrong. It has been applied by all states since the dawn of mankind. States that had some democratic tendencies emphasised on the fact that the state comprises of the private properties of citizens and of state lands that belong t oall citizens (and none else – if they did they would not be part of the state!). Less democratic states directly wrote all the land in the name of kings and families. USSR was based on an imported capitalist-funded model applied by non-ethnic Russians Russian citizens foreign agents arriving on German military trains in the wake of the Russian onslaught against the German lines ready to collapse by 1917 but were really a part of a bigger international game where London and New York were equally involved as the Zurich bankers that funded it than rather a German trick. Open a book or two and get yourself some basic education on the matters before churning out an opinion.
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Re106:
"""Or does these timebombs Europeans created for themselves just go on ticking as I suspect until they explode?"""
Well it is not Europeans who created such for themselves. As you said for the example of EEC/EU, they have not voted on such issues.
Some of your argumentation is correct. However, when you speak of EU as if it ever tried to be an alternative to the US you fail miserably to see that on the very basis of EU lied the will of US to exert easier power upon Europe. Apart De Gaul, and a couple of forgotten names, the rest of EEC/EU flag bearers were openly served and serving the European circles most close to the EU. Much later anti-US circles would try to deflect the utility of the EU and these have clearly never gained the upper hand, especially when the 3rd most important country, UK fights off against it with nails and teeth all while in most European countries the pro-US financial circles still have the upper hand. European states since WWI have not been independent of US where by late 19th century the European financial epicenter had moved.
Stop thinking of states for a change MA when you refer to European states, EU and USA - there are simply conflicting and crossing interests there. Given this, you are partially right to pinpoint what you pinpoint as there is a part of European political and even financial circles that shout for going completely independent but these are actually roughly the same voices that call against immigration, in for a tightening of borders, of common defense and of autonimisation of European outsourcing, purchase of raw materials and production of energy. What you do above is that you link the "time bombs" with them while it is rather the traditional pro-US financial establishment that has created these timebombs to exert more easily power.
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Re #105
How typical!
To regurgitate the old, not to say ancient generalisation that characterises people of Jewish Faith as bound up with 'money-making'.
When in all reality the vast majority of Jews were and are ordinary people with no more access to money & privileged position in societies than any other members of the community.
It is certainly the case that because of the ancient 'Usury' Laws & Customs restricting christians & muslims charging interest/money-lending at a profit there were people of the jewish faith who made a living from such activities as they were similarly constrained.
It also equally true the centuries of 'Shylock'-laden caricature of jews is a disgrace as nothing of the sort was or is an accurate depiction of the lives of millions of people of the Jewish faith.
But then, given Your predeliction for labelling entire Peoples, it does not surprise me that was the only portion of their lifestyle to which You would associate them.
Use it before & You deserve it now: YUK!
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@75 nik
I think I have survived your thorough vivisection.
No natural purity -- it is extreme Darwinism. But I think your's hobbyhorse, in fact, has full support, extreme Calvinism as well.
First of all, I don't believe that any result of the natural sciences is 100% accurate. Believing in natural science as ultimate solution to everyday questions, particularly those of human relations, could lead to monstrous deeds. 1% error or maybe less suffices. And that is too very well known from the past. Science has its purpose, but the realm of the family, civil rights and culture is something else.
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109. At 12:49pm on 02 Sep 2010, cool_brush_work wrote:
"""Re #105
How typical!
To regurgitate the old, not to say ancient generalisation that characterises people of Jewish Faith as bound up with 'money-making'."""
CBW, there is no regurgitation of any generalisation. In western Europe the quasitotality of the import and bankoinvesting acitivities were largely in the hands of jewish families. Perhaps the simple fact (as you obviously know) is that for quite some time in late Middle Ages the catholic church prohibited christians from lending with interest all while the feudal leaders kept religio-social castes like the Jewish landless and on the move. Don't you think that the combination of these two explains well why historically there was that outcome?
There is no moral judgment of any of the above. These are facts of life and of the last millenium history. It is a generalisation to say that "all of jewish people" got occupied with bankoinvesting activities and trade but it will be a laughable lie to say that they were not over-represented in those areas. There is nothing more to say on it. Do you mind now studying history?
"""When in all reality the vast majority of Jews were and are ordinary people with no more access to money & privileged position in societies than any other members of the community."""
In a way you are belittling them. In the east this might had held true. In the west, they had been the most educated class of their times, their most wealthy were of the most wealthy, they were over represented in banking and trading sectors. There is nothing in there to see them as "ordinary" as compared to the local mass of the illiterate Europeans (eg. in 800 no more than 200 west Europeans knew how to read and write out of the millions of the Carolignian pseudo-roman Empire - want to compare this to the Jewish communities of the times?). On the muslim west, they were pretty much the master social class alongside the local emirs. Said this, there is nothing there to say that they were not ordinary people in themselves. They were such of course. Many of them illiterate, many of them poor and destitute too, in some countries (especially Ukraine and Poland) most of them had been actually farmers, others were occupied with arts. Jewish are a religion, not a specific caste or a nation no matter what Thilo said the day before.
"""It is certainly the case that because of the ancient 'Usury' Laws & Customs restricting christians & muslims charging interest/money-lending at a profit there were people of the jewish faith who made a living from such activities as they were similarly constrained."""
There you are getting to the point.
"""It also equally true the centuries of 'Shylock'-laden caricature of jews is a disgrace as nothing of the sort was or is an accurate depiction of the lives of millions of people of the Jewish faith."""
Shylock is indeed a caricature. But referring to the concentration of jewish - for whatever historico-social reasons - to the bankinvesting activity in a conversation on history does not need to refer to such caricatours. We are educated open minded people, relax.
"""But then, given Your predeliction for labelling entire Peoples, it does not surprise me that was the only portion of their lifestyle to which You would associate them."""
I label none. I refer to historic events and facts of life.
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I have followed the debate on German media with a lot of interest.
No matter what Sarrazin wrote, I am appaled yet again at how the right of free speech and opinion are ridiculed by the German political class.
Their complete and utter disregard of our most basic concepts of rule of law and human rights is appaling.
I for one find it hard to agree with Sarrazins claims about genetics and all that stuff.
But when it gets to our failure of immigration policy, he is spot on.
In Germany, the country which started WWII and ever since has been notorious for the holocaust, the majority of people have long struggled to voice their real opinion on how they see the massive immigration to Germany. Of course, this has suffocated any fruitful debate.
With WWII generations passing away, there will be a normalization.
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@ MarkusAurelis: "How could a more irrational and hypocritical place than Europe exist? I can't imagine it."
-Ah, let me think. The USA had a president. He told the world a funny story about mass-destruction weapons and started a war. US troops destroyed a country and the president spit in the face of friendly states when they said that they don't believe the funny story and that they would rather not be engaged in a breach of international law that forbids pre-emptive wars. These friendly states still help you cleaning up the mess you are leaving behind. Has anyone ever apologized for the CIA'a lie or incompetence? And now you have a new president who can't do his job because of the health care/muslim/anchor-babies bashing people you call republicans. Who cannot stop human rights infringement in Guantanamo because his state governors won't take prisoners for security reasons. Seriously, stop try teaching Europe. It's making mistakes, but don't pretend the USA are paradise, while EU is paradise lost. You are making a fool out of yourself.
@Nik:
"In Germany's case, the massive Turkish immigration means that the Germans and especially the Germans' kids will be losers. Immigration benefits mainly the oligarchies since this aids their rule over the mass."
- For me, as a German, (Turkish) immigration means a colourful life with more personal choice for everyone.
"At the end the local population will always lose, that is a reality of life. Why? Because. Go tell a lion to accept another lion in its territory."
-Supporting a weak point just saying "Because" makes it even weaker. And you do not seem to grasp the difference beween a lion and a human. Thomas Aquinas: Homo est animal rationale.
"there are not many cultures in Germany. You do not have Germans having "many cultures" apart the whatever regional variation...And since they have a specific origin, they do have a specific ethnic origin. No need to argue on that."
-Another thing you do not get: Yes, we are born into the caring or not so caring hands of our families, into a society. But we are human and we can reflect on the habits of our ethnic and social background. There come a point in life where we have to. And then we can chose if we like what our origins have given and taught us, or we can reject it. The best thing about being human is the capacity to use our brains and change! So yes, there is a need to argue on that, because exactly that makes you fatalistic, that you do not grand for example a muslim person the possibility to have a Western culture or a Greek person to get used to a totally different lifestyle than that he has experiencend in the shade of the Akropolis and and make it his own .
"I proposed you the notion of co-propriety and you were not even able to understand what lies behind this."
- And I told you before the last time we tried it was a desaster. It led to feudalism or soviet dictatorships but certainly to no society I would chose to live in.
"No, your view is fatalistic. You do not judge with an open mind what happens around you, you just accept and swallow everything that happens pathetically."
- Sweet. If you think saying "No YOU are wrong" is refuting me, take a logic course.
"thus obviously you have never asked yourself "why this" "why that", you just repeat slogans you were taught in school and you were brainwashed by media. They told you "racism " is bad and you believed it and repeat it like a parrot."
-Getting personal usually doesn't help either to convince people. I asked you a couple of whys already, just you fail to answer in a convincing way. To tell me then I'm a brainwashed parrot is a confession of failure.
"Land property is the only essentially meaningful thing." to be read combined with "
Race, nation, ethnos, tribe, family are all linked in an organic way to the parents' preferance to their children than others' children." and "Speaking of cultures and religions is pointless, speaking of the ethnic ancestry of populations is much more precise."
What do we get? BLOOD AND GROUND IDEOLOGY.
Congratulations, NOW you've made yourself clear. Just saying that racism is an empty term the media fed into my poor brainwashed head, not explaining why, just assuming randomly all kinds of things and making up statistics does not mean you are not a racist.
The funny thing about left wing and right wing ideologies is that they touch the more extreme they are. The Communists voted for Hitler, because they wanted to prevent democracy. Nationalsocialism they preferred over free, thinking, self-determined people. The far right and the far left tend to embrace each other tightly.
q.e.d. thanks to Nik.
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to cbw, #101:
As I stated many times already, I agree that people (regardless of their ethnicity or faith) need to comply with laws; but laws need to be written and applied in such a way that they do not restrict basic rights in order to enforce someone's moral or religious beliefs, culture or lifestyle unless such restrictions are proportionate and can be justified by the need to protect other basic rights or common resources. The point about majority-voting was that this is only one of the components of constitutional democracy and other components are also needed (e.g., judicial review). It seems that you agree with that. Individuals who live in a free constitutional society should be required to adopt the prevailing majority beliefs, habits or culture except to the extent required to comply with law and to safeguard the rights of other individuals. People are prisoners neither of the majority culture of the country in which they live, nor of any minority culture to which they may fully or partly belong.
to MarcusAureliusII, #106:
No need to start a new controversy. My narrow point was that Czechoslovakia was not an artificial construct held together by force any more than other countries. The decision to break it up in 1993 was met with a lot of hesitation and was not subjected to the level of democratic scrutiny that it would have deserved. It seems that you in principle agree with my comments. Just to be clear, there were free elections held in 1992, but the election campaign in my view did not address the prospect of the break-up with sufficient transparency, at least in the Czech part of the federation (whereas in Slovakia there were certain parties running on the independence platform, including Meciar who later became the semi-authoritarian ruler of Slovakia until 1998). I also agree with you that the life for small nations in Europe, including both Czechs and Slovaks, was not easy in the past. I have sympathy with claims that the German expulsion was wrong and that the Roma are not treated properly, but I do not agree that Slovaks were discriminated against in Czechoslovakia. I do not agree with your generalizations about Europeans. I agree that the treatment of minorities in Europe is not satisfactory. The solution does not lie in making Europe ethnically homogenous, but in improving Europe's liberal constitutional democractical system. This requires improvements to the institutions, but also better acceptance of constitutional democratic values by the European electorate. Ultimately, it is not possible to maintain a functional liberal democracy, unless a substantial part of the voters understands and supports it.
to Nik, #107:
I did not call him a racist although I do disagree with many of his statements. If "racism" means "a belief that some races are by nature superior to others" or "discrimination based on such belief", then I insist that I fail to see how parents (whether of a single race or a mixed race couple) who harbor parental love for their children but not for the neighbor's children can be by virtue of that mere fact regarded as racist. People who have a nationality or live in a country are not owned by it. I do insist that private property belongs to the owner and (regardless of how universe was created - not sure why you bring that up :-) strangers cannot take inheritance in the absence of a will. Most of my assets were not necessarily owned by my parents or their ancestors. I agree that unremedied injustices have been perpetrated and they should be remedied. I did reveal my background roots (Czechoslovakia) to you in the previous thread. Whatever your preference, you do have to get used to the idea of constitutional democracy, i.e., you cannot just treat other people like trash and trample on their basic rights simply because you do not like them. I agree with you that basic rights cannot be restricted solely for the purposes of profit. Zoning regulations, if non-discriminatory and applied with due process of law, are usually not a breach of basic rights. I do not claim any basic right to build a tower next to Eiffel Tower. People are not owned by their government, but may be taxed (to the extent the government is able to tax them). I do pay high taxes. I never claimed that state or nation are God's work on earth or something. If anything, I claimed that each human has certain unalienable rights acquired by birth, and I admit this belief in human liberty and dignity (and that individuals are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) is ultimately a matter of philosophical conviction, quite ingrained in European society (if this is not the main European value then I do not know what is). I take it to mean that you disagree with these principles. If you are born in a house without a swimming pool, you cannot use the neighbor's pool without his permission, but you may use a public pool or acquire or rent another house in the same or another town or country. Laws cannot restrict basic rights solely in order to impose the majority's (or minority's or oligarchy's) version of happiness or morality, even where such restriction is not properly justified in order to protect other basic rights and the common resources. The German demos does not have unlimited discretion in adopting or enforcing rules - that is why it is a constitutional democracy and not a tyranny of the people. Fundamental human rights, the constitution and international conventions are not the products of oligarchs. If legal immigrants came to Germany on the basis of relevant laws, you cannot somehow retroactively undo those laws by arguing that their adoption by the parliament was not preceded by a sufficient public debate. Whether there was sufficient public debate in Germany in the 1960s, I do not know but it is irrelevant now. I do not agree with your factual claim that the presence of immigrants has been negative for the economy. Social changes in European democracies are primarily the result of spontaneous activities of individuals and their organizations, and not the result of an oligarchical conspiracy. Before jumping to conclusions about other people, you need to question your own understanding of the principles on which our society is based. Owners own property. State is accountable to its people but must act withint the constraints of fundamental human rights.
The above are my last comments in this thread. All that could be said has been said and we are running in circles.
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110. At 1:32pm on 02 Sep 2010, bbony wrote:
"""@75 nik
I think I have survived your thorough vivisection."""
Hehe!
"""No natural purity -- it is extreme Darwinism. But I think your's hobbyhorse, in fact, has full support, extreme Calvinism as well."""
Actually it is the contrary of Darwinism. The essence of Darwinism is all about oligarchies telling you that you are a worthless tiny part of the worthless mass of people that have no other right than think and act in the way they impose you every time.
Social/ethnic/cultural Darwinism is about multinationals enterring the delta of Niger and treating the people as primitive decorative moving objects while taking the riches of the land and, the worst, destroying their place transforming it in an inhabitable place. Under my line of thought, Delta of Niger belongs to the locals and it is up to them to deal with it either refusing to do anythign about it continuing their way of life or inviting the friendliest possible technological power to collaborate (and not exploit) in the extraction of oil. You understand that I am the last that speaks of Darwinism here.
"""First of all, I don't believe that any result of the natural sciences is 100% accurate."""
... guess how much religion then!!!!
"""Believing in natural science as ultimate solution to everyday questions, particularly those of human relations, could lead to monstrous deeds."""
I spoke not of science. Say I belong to state A. State A has 1 million citizens and 130,000km² out of which 30,000km² is private estate lands and 100,000km² are public lands. Unless state A is a royalist-theocratic-tyrrant kind of state where the ruler declares all land on his name and family lineage, what the situation is it is that:
1) I have my private property as an outcome of the existence of state A and me being a citizen of it. No matter if I call this "my property" this is only my property because state A said so. As such, I cannot act on my own on my property, hence I have to follow law on my property and I am also confined of certain supposed personal liberties, i.e. I cannot built whatever I want (and I am not referring to building a polluting chemical plant, but for example building a 10 storey building in a traditional village). However I consciously accept this extreme handing of my personal freedom to build a 10 storey in the village given that in case state A fails, there is absolutely no guarantee that state B that might take over will esteem so.
2) My total property is my personal property + the 1/1Mth of the 100,000km² of public land, i.e. next to my personal possession (say 0,01km²) I also really possess a 0,1km² part of the public land. Given my 1/1Mth part I cannot decide on doing something about it but if we gather all the 1 million of us we can do. Now, nominally, one could go to the extreme as saying that it is unfair for one-child families as nominally the amount of public land belonging to them is less than the ones producing more children but then in reality the latter's children will lose in the more interesting family inheritance so this is not a serious case, especially if we count the fact that the family of more kids has produced also more supporters of state A and thus enlarged the possibility of survaval of the private and collective property of all.
However, when public land is given to a foreigner then that is a serious matter. Whatever that is the foreigner and whatever that is the land: be it a multinational getting for peanuts a huge plot of ressource rich land or a destitute financial immigrant being given humble housing. And since the state also concentrates the collection of the work of its citizens any other selective hand-out is also a similar question. The question of immigration is always followed by the question of "loss of space", and "hands out". No need to argue on that. Hence it had to be a matter of direct discussion and acceptance or not in any non-oligarchically, non-fascist, non-theocratically ruled country. The practically total absence of that reveals the state of affairs. People are attacked, robbed and told to say "sorry" too for not having thought to give the money to the robber earlier.
"""And that is too very well known from the past. Science has its purpose, but the realm of the family, civil rights and culture is something else."""
They only scientific thing I mentioned has been that human spiece is just another mammal. Nothing more nothing less. Above I talk not scientifically. I talk sense. 1+1=2. Hope you got the essence.
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Re #111
Not for the first time: A little knowledge and even less understanding!
Jews never were the predominant Economic-Fiscal families of the ancient, medieval, later middle ages, upto & including 19th-20th centuries.
The whole thing is bunkum history & You perpetuate it from no foundation, but all that 'supposition' I've pointed out before goes on in Your mind.
Historical fact: Despite the Christian & Muslim adjuration of 'usury' there were infinite ways to circumvent these regulations and christian businessmen in particular became adept at just such transactions: Hence the Mercantile development of the British Isles & Continental Europe rapidly out-paced the rest of the World.
True enough, from ancient through to the modern ages there were very substantial Jewish 'Houses-Families' (e.g. Crusader King Richard I's 'ransom' paid to his Austrian-German captors was in part borrowed from Jewish money-lenders - - one of the truly great ironies of History as at his Coronation Richard had provoked the London anti-Jewish riots that resulted in destruction of much of the Jewish area - - that he had 'christian' principles of purifying England is all part of the faith-based nastiness that went on spasmodically upto this present era in Britain & Europe!).
This known & rumoured Jewish 'wealth' is generally now taken by Historians as one of the prime factors in the occasional encouragement & perpetrating of mass outbreaks of anti-semitism across all Europe & Britain. A local Noble, a Monarch (Tsar), or indeed the Priest to Archbishop (& even the odd Pontiff) of the Roman & Protestant Churches, short of liquidity always had that additional route to extra funds. Of course, such violent activities carried into the Ghetto quarters were labelled all sorts, but 'pogrom' is as good as any. The Nazis were continuing that despicable behaviour only they added the fanatical racial-genocidal method. In so doing the Nazis included among their reasons the very same false allegation You have repeated, that Jewish people in general had/have access to monies & wealth beyond that of any other society.
It was a deliberate perversion of reality in ancient times, 1066, 1189, 1465, 1769, 1880, 1905, 1938, 1941 and still remains a total calumny.
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It is impossible here to paint a picture of the German debate after the publication of Thilo Sarrazin's book, but it has many aspects. It includes a double page in Die Zeit (this week) and an objection from the SPD basis against the exclusion of Sarrazin. Basis would like to hear his messages and journalists are very eager to report this, only there are no solutions in it. Just an old man's complaints.
The whole day through ARD has reported that Sarrazin will be asked to leave his seat in Bundesbank. The question is only how it can happen.
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DurtstigerMann, you are not up to date. "Massive" immogration is a complete exaggeration. The balance of those who came and those who left was negative last year. So we had by the end of last year 10.000 Turkish people less, than we had a year before.
Thilo Sarrazin is allowed to say whatever he likes. As a private person. But as a member of the social democratic party and as a member of the board of the Bundesbank he has to live with the consequences. So no, his human rights are not infringed. If you hold an office you have a responsibility that he neglected. Otherwise it would be totally suitable for a chancellor to say for example: Jews are dirty. And I seriously don't want a politician to say that, because he is representing me and the German people. If he is of that mistaken opinion as a private person, this is bad enough, but not in my name! That is why there is something called reason of state. Staatsräson, in German. And what Sarrazin said crossed the limit of German state of reason.
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to cbw: Apologies - just a correction. I dropped a "not". Obviously I meant "Individuals who live in a free constitutional society should NOT be required to adopt the prevailing majority beliefs, habits or culture except to the extent required to comply with law and to safeguard the rights of other individuals." Cheers
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Oulematu
Re #114
Agreed.
Cheers.
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@115 nik
"just another mammal"
The essence is you are swinging between Darwinism and Calvinism.
To help your understanding of the subject, here is a definition of the fascism: a state of barbarism a nation or superstate switches into, when it builds a wall strong enough to stop the barbarism. In this way, it could happen that genetically well bonded individuals had nothing culturally in common.
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It doesn't happen often: All parties in Bundestag from left to the right agrre and welcome the decision of Bundesbank to get rid of Thilo Sarrazin. It tells us something about the position Sarrazin has placed himself in.
He is in confrontation with the fundamental identity of the Federal Republic (and quite a few other countries for that matter).
In the meantime the discussion about immigration and society will continue...
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106 Homer Simpson writes:
"Can they be deported to a country they have no ties with except by ancestry? What is to become of them, the Roma, and all of the other people all over Europe who do not, will not, and can not be integrated into the mainstream of European society. Europe can't go backwards, won't move forwards. What will it do next? Or does these timebombs Europeans created for themselves just go on ticking as I suspect until they explode"
Brilliant idea Homer. Can you suggest another continent we can send them to? Like your beloved America did in the 19th century with your surplus African slaves and transported them to Liberia? People could see all these slaves would cause trouble at home - how true that proved to be. The thing is, there don't seem to be many continents left to welcome or accommodate troublesome people. Any idea what we should do?
Incidentally, the ticking time bomb you forecast. What will you bet me as to who will implode first, America or Europe? Don't forget we have existed thousands of years, you only a couple of hundred and you were nearly strangled at birth, so to speak, with that ugly civil war you suffered.
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The truth shall set you Spree;
"-Ah, let me think. The USA had a president. He told the world a funny story about mass-destruction weapons and started a war"
Um, not quite. The truth is...that the dodgy dossier was....British. It was MI5, British Intelligence (an oxymoron if ever there was one) was the source of much of that lie. But at least it had a happy ending. Mission accomplished. Just ask President Obama.
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TPT
"Don't forget we have existed thousands of years, you only a couple of hundred and you were nearly strangled at birth, so to speak, with that ugly civil war you suffered."
Yes America hasn't been around very long, hardly long enough for example to have a hundred years war even once yet. Just a blip in time for Europeans though. So many centuries, so many wars. The US Civil War was the worst war America ever suffered but hardly more than a minor incident compared to what Europe periodically goes through. While I'll bet the slaughter of 2 million Armenians, something those Europeans the Turks deny ever even happened saw far more deaths in a few short years than all the Americans who died in all the wars it ever fought combined.
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@MAII: non-sense. you know as well as i do that they worked together, ALL western intelligence agencies. This Drumheller guy even wrote a book about all the things that went wrong, and he is a cia guy. and as far as i know it was mi6. plus, what the hell do you have an intelligence for if they believe anything they are told?! no way, i'm not buying your cheap try to get rid of the usa's responsibilty. what else is obama supposed to do? let this become your second waterloo..ehr, sorry, vietnam? your country is running short on money, friend, he can't!
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@MAII:
Really, you saying "nono, Iraq is the Brits fault, the wrong informaton was theirs" is like me saying "Nono, WWII is the Austrians fault, the guy was theirs".
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I have mentioned a couple of times before that I arrived here in Germany fairly recently (it's been just over two years now). Very rarely do I notice any significant, let alone meaningful, difference in the ways people behave over here compared to what I am used to in England. All over the world, you get all sorts of people.
What irritates me is the level of support Sarrazin is getting from the German population. Yes, there are plenty of boring demagogues, bigots and racists just like him in Britain, too. But I do not think they would be able to rely on widespread popular support the way they are in Europe. The Dutch demagogue Geert Wilders is another example of this.
The other night was one of those rare occasions when I switched the TV on for a while to watch some German TV. "Hart aber fair" is one of those political forums. A bit like "Question Time", but without any questions from the audience. At the end of the show the host asked one of his assistants what people visiting the show's website had been saying and voting for. The support for Sarrazin was immense, something ranging in the 70s of percentage points, I think.
This is the same guy who, time and time again, implicitly and explicitly, claimed that Muslims are less intelligent than "inidgenous" Germans. The other day, he said that "all Jews share one particular gene". A few months ago, there was a very well-published interview, in which he said, "there is no way you can intigrate those people (i.e. Turks and Arabs) into German society."
This kind of demagoguery would only get you so far in Britain. It would definitely not gain you the kind of widespread support that Sarrazin is enjoying at the moment.
I have to say that, for the first time in two years, am very unpleasantly surprised and deeply disappointed. Having lived here for two years in what I consider to be a very relaxed, friendly, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and, above all, very enlightened society, I do not understand where this grudge against immigrants comes from.
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IMHO,
The USA comes from and the USA used European values and knowledge (and ideas) to create their nation and society. One hundred years (til their civil war over slavery) is a long time. And arguing about who is better (USA or Europe) is so ....Seinfeld or Cheers...which is best?
How many Angels can you put on the head of a pin, again?
:)
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Also, this Sarrazin guy (loser) will not be remembered in history except for his being fired from the Merkel government.
Let him TRY to create a movement and watch him and his followers closely like we do all creepy groups like the KKK.
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Spending Spree;
"what the hell do you have an intelligence for if they believe anything they are told?!"
Yes it is rather dumb of us to believe anything the British government says. Not only the dodgy dossier but later Megrahi as well, you'd think we'd have learned out lessen by then. But it could have been worse. The British people believed the British government and voted for what they thought was a free trade pact only to wake up one day and find that they'd actually given away the keys to the kingdom along with their sovereignty over themselves and are now ruled by a foreign power in Brussels. Talk about being sold a bag of magic beans in exchange for a cow.
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***What irritates me is the level of support Sarrazin is getting from the German population.***
Why does this surprise you? Is Sarrazin wrong about integration issues or welfare dependency by some groups? Is he wrong about the importance of skilled migrants? Try reading some studies by Joel Schneider & Garrett Jones on immigrant earnings & cognitive ability.
Also, where have you seen people asking to:
a) increase the influence of Islam in Europe?
b) increase non-european immigration?
Just because politicians are shamed by cries of 'racist' into avoiding these issues it doesn't mean people want the above things.
Certainly, you don't see many non-white countries seeking to bring in large numbers of people from different cultures. They realise it will create problems.
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Chris Camp,
These people are paranoid ...maybe, but, long term, they may settle down and be at peace and forget all these xenophobic "what ifs" AND,
IMO, the responsibility for integrating immigrants and different people into society is the local Society's.
It is not the responsibility of the immigrants to integrate....
Someone, an Asian-American, here, told me that when she went to Europe on tour, No One of the local Europeans would look at her with anything resembling interest or friendliness. So, she likes it here, better (in USA, hmmmm, omg, USA, a more likely place to settle?)
This is because, people speak to her, here and include her in conversations.
I wonder if other places tend to integrate "outsiders" better than Europe...and maybe Europe should study the practice of "integration" and how it is or can be achieved.
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***I wonder if other places tend to integrate "outsiders" better than Europe...and maybe Europe should study the practice of "integration" and how it is or can be achieved.***
Typical hand wringing nonsense. Do you really believe that middle eastern or asian countries integrate "outsiders" better?
***It is not the responsibility of the immigrants to integrate....***
Nor is it the responsibility of citizens to accept large scale immigration which changes the culture of their country.
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***But in comments at the start of a book tour he mentioned that, in his opinion, "all Jews share a certain gene". It is not acceptable in Germany to make comments like this ***
This comment by Sarrazin has been taken out of context by his opponsents. As John Rosenthal notes in the Weekly Standard:
"But when restored to their context, it is obvious that in using the six words, Sarrazin was merely attempting, however infelicitously, to express what is in fact a simple tautology: namely, that to the extent that we refer to “Jews” and are not doing so on the basis of religion, then we must be supposing some sort of common “genetic heritage” or, in other more colloquial terms, shared ancestry. Otherwise, the use of the word to refer to persons who are not religious makes no sense whatsoever....
At this point, it was in fact the interviewers who brought up genetics, asking “Is there also a genetic identity?” To this, Sarrazin replied matter-of-factly, “All Jews share a certain gene; Basques have certain genes, which distinguish them from other people.”
The hysteria of the reactions to this remark in the German media and among the German political elites appears to be a function of two distinct factors.
Firstly, the interview coincided with the publication of a new book by Sarrazin titled Deutschland schafft sich ab, which can be roughly translated as “Germany is Consigning Itself to Extinction.” The six words appear to have been exploited by Sarrazin’s opponents as the perfect “gotcha!” moment, in order to trouble the book launch. Never mind that Sarrazin’s prior record of comments about Jews is far more obviously philosemitic than anti-semitic. Thus in last autumn’s interview, for example, he described the Nazi expulsion and extermination of Germany’s Jewish population as “an enormous intellectual bloodletting” from which the country (and, in particular, the city of Berlin) has never recovered."
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128. At 01:06am on 03 Sep 2010, Chris Camp
If you are interested in an analytical answer to your question about the support of Sarrazin you can read the article “Where you have smoke you also have fire” in this week’s edition of Die Zeit.
The debate has entered the mainstream from France to Switzerland to the Netherlands, Mr. Hewitt writes. I can add that it is also the case in the Scandinavian countries Norway and Denmark, where parties that profit on this fear are playing a major role in the parliaments. That is not the case in Germany, but the debate and the positions are similar.
The right wing from Haider to Wilders to Kjaersgaard mixes genetics, race, intelligence, and ability to integrate with religion and traditional culture all the time, and the rhetoric figures are concerned with “the fatherland” and the division between the people and the elite (we have some here on this list too). It is their repertoire and the repertoire of their voters. The difference between Germany and other European countries is the history in the last century. The same moment anybody representing Germany starts to mix this cocktail he is out.
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133. At 03:26am on 03 Sep 2010, DavidStvn wrote:
"""Someone, an Asian-American, here, told me that when she went to Europe on tour, No One of the local Europeans would look at her with anything resembling interest or friendliness."""
This is common not just for oversees visitors but also for intra-European visitors. I have visited at least half the countries of Europe and I can say the same thing, but then I do not expect any particular friendliness when for example I pass 1 day from a random European city. However, Americans especially they have a problem on top, since for good or for bad are perceived as "superficial people" (the usual stereotype) so unless it is a lovely Californian Latino, or a blond Texan girl (or the opposite sex equivalents) none will be interested in opening a conversation. More over, the likes of French for example won't open a conversation anyway. British are anyway indifferent to you like everyone else and Germans are reserved, Swedish are downright shy. Greeks will be more open but then Greeks' directness and curiousness sometimes takes the un-informed tourist by surprise. In US, the waiters are overly-gentle and smiling, the customer is the boss. In France they won't smile, the waiter is the boss. In Germany or England they will give a first typical smile and then serve you quitely. In Greece they will look at you one by one (and you will feel intimidated), they will throw you a joke to light up the atmosphere (if you are uninformed you might get surprised) and they might ask you where you come from: Greeks always ask where you come from, refusal to reveal to them implies you are either rude or having something to hide and thus untrustworthy. American-Asians, British-Asians or German-Turks especially are prone to do the error of replying "I am from US, Britain, Germany" to which the new answer will come "Yes, but where from originally"... see, for Greeks it is unthinkable to be ashamed of your real roots and a sign of a complexed and thus unworthy person. Do not do the error. Just answer "I am from US, California, Los Angeles, parents from El Salvador" and you will pass the test!!! Hahaha!!!
Really it depends on which country.
"""This is because, people speak to her, here and include her in conversations."""
In US it is different. People in Europe are much more reserved in taking into the conversation especially a woman of Asian origins in case they'll have to deal later with the angry jealous husband... has become a reflex.
"""I wonder if other places tend to integrate "outsiders" better than Europe..."""
Certainly European countries have their own particular history. Would you expect Greece, Bulgaria or Serbia to integrate Asian muslims well? Of course not and good thing they do (still Greeks are way too tolerant to all what happens). On the other hand, the likes of Chechs and Polish were never a colonial power so up to now were not really used to see foreign people. Even up to quite recently you could sent an African to any town and people would even gather to see the "live specimen" of an African man from close. That does not mean they will be rude to him but certainly he would rather resolve to selling illegal Dvds rather than ask a proper job. But as said Chechs and Polish are not to be blamed, everything has to do with the historic and social background. Blame only when violence is included.
"""and maybe Europe should study the practice of "integration" and how it is or can be achieved."""
I do not think that any such study would help the likes of Greece which is threatened directly with war and in which more than half the illegal immigrants would prefer see it dismembered by fellow-muslim Turkey. I think that tells you very well the picture. Mind you, Chinese and christian Africans never had a problem in Greece and are well received by population where they have a relatively good fame despite doing solely "black market" jobs, for the single reason that they have not caused from their part a rise in criminality and they are gentle people while they do not threaten the integrity of the country. On the contrary neighbouring Albanians have a soaring criminal record followed by Pakistanis who rise too and Somalis (the African people that started spoiling the name of Africans). All by accident sunni muslims. Accident?
For once, one has to focus the study NOT on the local population but on the intruder (call it immigrant but an illegal immigrant is an intruder).
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Anyway, back to the subject. Some want now to cause Thilo lose his job for merely having expressed his freedom of speech on a matter that is not even related to his specific tasks in his job. German politicians of course have already fired a president a couple of months back for having said the simplest of truths, i.e. that the German military expendition in Afganistan as a part of the US allies forces serves merely Germany's geostrategic and financial interests implying of course that is the same for everyone beeing there (as proven once again by the recent revelation of the wikileaks site).
Who says that fascism died in WWII? Fascism is here with us and is after you when you dare stray-thinking.
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@138 Nik,
Glad to see a contribution from you that is not of epic dimensions.
President Köhler was not fired. To the surprise of everybody he declared that he wanted to leave office.
You don't see German television or read German media, I suppose. We have had a tsunami of interviews and programs with Sarrazin. There is no change in his freedom of speech only the Federal Republic would not like to be identified with his viewpoints.
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@ Mathiasen,
I watched Maybrit Illner yesterday. I tried. Broder was SO horrible again, but Naika Foroutan was just awesome. Stayed cool and academic, even when this Swiss right-wing journalist and our German right-wing journalist were so obviously trying to provoke her. And then Broder, this chauvi telling her in the end h didn't have anything against her, how could he, her being so beautiful. WHAT?! Yeah, she IS beautiful, but I thought most of all she was an academic with a profound opinion.
@ Nik,
I give up on you. Obviously you don't want to debate. because the freedom of opinion point you raised in #138 had been discussed several times before. You want to present your views to the world, good luck with it.
@MAII: I don't know how you do it. Suppress the truth so well. It must be nice, to have a closed world view and be ignorant to anything that doesn't fit in. I guess this was about the frame of mind the USA gouvernance needed to believe the mass destruction weapon story and starting a war, killing hundreds of thousands of people, without even double checking! Good luck to you too.
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Lending Spree;
"MAII: I don't know how you do it. Suppress the truth so well. It must be nice, to have a closed world view and be ignorant to anything that doesn't fit in."
Must be my "European gene" I inherited from my ancestry.
"I guess this was about the frame of mind the USA gouvernance needed to believe the mass destruction weapon story and starting a war, killing hundreds of thousands of people, without even double checking! Good luck to you too."
It seems they had a "European gene" in their ancestry too.
Now that we've defeated Iraq and stolen all their oil, I think we should go after Scotland next and steal all their Scotch. After all, you need something good to drink after driving all those free miles on stolen gasoline.
BTW, how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis do you think America killed? I lost track after it reached 600,000 the Lancet reported in the summer of 2006. That was just 3 years into what was a 7 year war. By now it should be somewhere around around 1.5 million. And how cleverly we hid all of the bodies. Surprising looking for hiding places we didn't come across the WMDs. They probably either left the country for Syria or didn't exist and Teriq Aziz told the truth for once in his life when he said they were destroyed without witnesses or documentation.
If that is true, does that mean we fought the whole thing for nothing? I hope we have a better reason next time. Practice makes perfect. I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities coming up to do better. Let's see how well our current president does in Afghanistan now that he can focus his attention on just one war at a time.
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Re #99 (CBW referencing PM's #68.)
In an "Independent"s article, linked to by BBC News one can read:
A year or so ago, a German report concluded that, contrary to forecasts, second- and third-generation Turkish Germans were marrying in Turkey, prompting a whole new, and unanticipated, wave of what we used to call primary immigration, which was serving as a brake on integration. Something similar applies with sections of the Pakistani and Bengali communities in Britain, which have reproduced their own village systems in parts of British towns, and seek their spouses from "home".
The notion that integration is a simple matter of generation has not been proved. Britain and France and Germany all sought labour, preferably cheap labour, abroad, and they got that. But by recruiting from rural areas in less developed countries, we effectively transplanted whole villages and imported microcosms of the backwardness we had overcome. With new brides, bridegrooms and the dependents they may legally bring from their home country, the UK now has a home-grown problem of corrupt voting, forced marriage, kidnapping, "honour" killing, and disability – as a recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme showed – caused by first-cousin marriages."
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#140. At 11:18am on 03 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni
Mrs. Naika Foroutan makes you wonder why some people seem to have everything, intelligence, education, style, classical looks, charm, and engagement.
With the exception of her insight in social statistics of Germany we probably didn’t get much deeper into the matter itself, but not least in relation to Sarrazin’s supporters Mrs. Illner’s invitations became an argument in itself since the audience and the viewers could listen to a group of very well integrated and insightful immigrants and - if they had any doubt - observe what the context of Sarrazin’s arguments is.
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140. At 11:18am on 03 Sep 2010, SpreeLeni wrote:
"""Yeah, she IS beautiful, but I thought most of all she was an academic with a profound opinion."""
Forget about televised discussions. 90% of the time are set and in 10% when "it goes wrong" someone will be fired just like it happened for your president recently.
I (and anyone following just any analytical approach) can take your beautiful academic and with my basic knowledge and nuderstanding make her reveal her ugly dual Scylla-Harybdis face. Don't you ever think of anything less than that. Here I write to pass enjoyably my time instead of doing a sport or something else more productive in personal life (I do not feel the need to do so, I am one of few needs). But I can ridicule any of that academic lot revealing their intellectual poverty as well as their usually getting the seat through connections rather than real work (their work, a copy of wish-lists of seat-givers) - and have done in on a few occasions. I am well trained in making people angry, even more when I just not only counter-argue but I propose things that are not that easily counter-argued as I did above.
Did you see anyone trying to directly counter any of my arguments? Only feeble side-efforts based on uncounsious and often conscious misunderstandings of my sayings.
"""@ Nik,
I give up on you."""
Not the first not the last. No hard feelings.
"""Obviously you don't want to debate."""
I do debate point on point.
"""because the freedom of opinion point you raised in #138 had been discussed several times before."""
Either you have it or not. In Germany obviously you do not have it.
"""You want to present your views to the world, good luck with it."""
You misunderstand me. I am not a preacher, nor a politician. I do not speak "religion" and don't try to convince anyone of anything. I am doing my hobby and pass some time of the day having fun.
"""@MAII: It must be nice, to have a closed world view and be ignorant to anything that doesn't fit in... I guess this was about the frame of mind the USA gouvernance needed to believe the mass destruction weapon story and starting a war, killing hundreds of thousands of people, without even double checking!"""
MAII has chosen his side and simply speaks as a supporter, a football fan. While essentially he is speaking "religion" too, he does not preach that much morally. As such, he is more sincere and somtimes he is more bound to understand the other sides too when they support their own "football teams" and thus does not find refuge to personal attacks.
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Folks,
can't say anhything clever :o)
except for - Look! how nice an empire can be :o)))))))))))
Russia We Lost
an (English) friend sent me a link today.... to photos of Russia an ordinary photographer (though technically clever must say) - simply walks around the house and simply takes home pictures.
I still know who is who on the pics before I read the sub-title
Got wrong just several times.
But that's about all that is left from a colourful vibrant place
Beware! on our example. As usual :o))))))))))
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
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Gavin Hewitt reports: "a modelling agency was hired to find several hundred young women to sit it on a Gaddafi lecture on Islam. They were paid between 70 and 80 euros to be there. Gaddafi told them "women are more respected in Libya than in the West and the United States". "Islam," he went on, "should be the religion of the whole of Europe". Three of them were apparently persuaded and converted."
And HOW were those 3 bimbos persuaded - specifically?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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# 146 Powermeerkat
You and me will convert for a million dollars apiece, won't we?
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@128 Chris Camp:
"The other night was one of those rare occasions when I switched the TV on for a while to watch some German TV. "Hart aber fair" is one of those political forums. A bit like "Question Time", but without any questions from the audience. At the end of the show the host asked one of his assistants what people visiting the show's website had been saying and voting for. The support for Sarrazin was immense, something ranging in the 70s of percentage points, I think.
This is the same guy who, time and time again, implicitly and explicitly, claimed that Muslims are less intelligent than "inidgenous" Germans. The other day, he said that "all Jews share one particular gene". A few months ago, there was a very well-published interview, in which he said, "there is no way you can intigrate those people (i.e. Turks and Arabs) into German society."
This kind of demagoguery would only get you so far in Britain. It would definitely not gain you the kind of widespread support that Sarrazin is enjoying at the moment.
I have to say that, for the first time in two years, am very unpleasantly surprised and deeply disappointed. Having lived here for two years in what I consider to be a very relaxed, friendly, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and, above all, very enlightened society, I do not understand where this grudge against immigrants comes from."
You have to understand first that most people have never ever read the book. Neither Sarrazins critics nor his supporters.
What people vote for is not his theory about genes or something fancy, but his claim that there was too much of an influx of uneducated muslims who are unwillig to integrate into our society.
This is not the time for any nazi drama, but for the beginning of a fruitful debate about islam within Europe.
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@118 SpreeLeni
"DurtstigerMann, you are not up to date. "Massive" immogration is a complete exaggeration. The balance of those who came and those who left was negative last year. So we had by the end of last year 10.000 Turkish people less, than we had a year before."
What would you call the child of a Turkish family which resents its new "home" country and feels more related to Turkey than Germany?
A German?
"Thilo Sarrazin is allowed to say whatever he likes. As a private person. But as a member of the social democratic party and as a member of the board of the Bundesbank he has to live with the consequences. So no, his human rights are not infringed. If you hold an office you have a responsibility that he neglected. Otherwise it would be totally suitable for a chancellor to say for example: Jews are dirty. And I seriously don't want a politician to say that, because he is representing me and the German people. If he is of that mistaken opinion as a private person, this is bad enough, but not in my name! That is why there is something called reason of state. Staatsräson, in German. And what Sarrazin said crossed the limit of German state of reason."
Sad thing for the Bundesbank is, that laying Sarrazin off will result in tremendous legal trouble. Because there is no legal reason to lay him off for that.
That most political leaders literally demand him to be layed off just shows an awful lot about the bigotted ways of our political class in Germany.
I for one rather have someone say what`s on his mind (earnest person) than ramble the usual conformist stuff which he doesn`t really mean (bigotted liar).
Sarrazin violated no law and, therefore, did nothing wrong. This is something that must be understood before talking about "Staatsräson".
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Re #144
Quote, "...I can ridicule any of that 'academic' lot.."
But that's just it!
You can't!
Only You are too unaware, too full of Yourself to appreciate almost all Your contributions 'ridicule' the author!
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MAscaridII
Re #124 & the rest of the 'dodgy' dossier allegations by You.
MAII, I'm getting concerned about You!
So, You are admitting the USA Secretary of State Colin Powell on the instruction of the President Bush and the Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld went & spoke on the floor of the United Nations' Security Council and revealed intelligence photos, played secret recordings, showed phials of anthrax etc. all about Saddam and the WMD on the strength of & using the content of a UK Intelligence document that had been presented to Parliament by PM Blair?
Yet earlier You wrote UK was a "..pimple on the US derriere..!
Well, that is an exceedingly pungent pimple that squirts its views clear across the CIA, NSA & takes primary control of US grounds for an invasion of Iraq!!!
Are You aware of anything about the workings of the Government of Your own Nation?
Surely, not even You can be that badly misinformed or desparate!?
This is the 3rd topic in a row You've got roasted by everyone!
I think You need to take rest: It has been creeping up on You for awhile now... Inertia, meaning an insufficient energy to summon up those shoddy but very clear-cut pronouncements on the rest of us that gratuitously shock & invigorate these Blogs at the same time.
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powermeerkat
Re #142
Those are certainly all 'home-grown' problems that have arisen froma multicultural British society which has many Muslims in that mix.
However, none of that has much if anything to do with 'Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, 'home-grown' or imported to the UK - - the Societal issues of 'integration' for the Muslim community are different from the 'Political-Zealot' Islamist dogma of creating a Caliphate across Europe & British Isles - - the issues You raise can all be dealt with by good Law, good Social interaction and most especially good Education.
Whereas, Your original allusions to 'Islamic terrorism' will require not only good Law, but the most determined efforts to confront & defeat it at every stage in every way not seen since the Nazis got put in their place for seeking to remove 'Democracy' from the Citizens' language.
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# 146 Powermeerkat
You and me will convert for a million dollars apiece, won't we?
Made a million long time ago.
Haven't converted to anything. Even to atheism.
[I professionally deal only with the falsifiable]
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Cbw, I enjoyed reading your post at 43 just now. I found it interesting and engaging.
I think you have neatly isolated one of the most profound challenges facing the legal community in enlightened countries, that of correctly identifying the boundary between the rights of the individual and the rights of the majority in a raw democracy.
This is one area where, with the greatest possible respect to civil law jurisdictions, i believe the common law has evolved to a position of preeminence. Having said that, there is no question that it could be better still.
My own take on why that is so, why the common law has proven to be a better protector of human rights than civil law, lies perhaps in the constitutional structure of the Westminster system. My view is that the Westminster system has a structural safeguard that can quite reasonably be described in engineering terminology. You will know, of course, of the practice of "double engineering", whereby a back up system is built into a design such that it automatically prevents system failure in the event of the primary system failing.
Well, the Westminster system of common law has a similar type of safeguard, via the serration of powers doctrine. If e government of the day, buoyed by popular insanity, begins to break the law of human rights, there exists an independent judiciary which is isolated from the factions of popular government. The judiciary can and does step in to permit the rule of democratic mandate only insofar as it does not infringe upon fundamental human rights.
The great and proven danger with systems of pure civil law is that the judiciary is inherently politicized. Their is great mischief in the common law maxim that in a common law market system one can have as much justice as one can afford, but there is even greater mischief in a system of civil law which prevents the market from determining outcomes through the control of the judiciary and us the entire fabric of the law by political groups.
The reason civil law systems are vulnerable to domination from political groups lies in the way the lawyers are paid.
In a market system, lawyers are paid for serving the needs of business folks. Some also work for the state, but these are the lowest paid of the bunch. I say nothing regarding their skills, except to observe that he who eats of the cheapest loaf may need extra sugar in his coffee.
In a civil system, lawyers do not advocate as adversaries representing business folks before a neutral judge. Rather, the role of the lawyer, or trainee judge, is to work for the state directly, and deal with disputes according to the published code of the state. The best paid lawyers in such systems do not earn so much by their service to the community, but they can ensure the thriving success of their families business by always interpreting the state code to suit members of their own party, or other political group.
Thus you may see that in the common law system the law is a trade, and those who rise highest do so in e service of the general business community. In the civil law tradition, you send your third son to study to become a judge, and provided you can pay his tuition fees, he will become one inevitably.
This difference in the ways of remuneration stems from the traditional separation of powers in English legals history. If one is prone to cynicism, which I am, it is possible to imagine that the English law developed the way it did because whilst the ancient English kings were plotting intrigue, the city lawyers were making absolute boatloads of money working for a living amongst traders. This may have given rise to an independent guild of lawyers who understood that becoming beholden to government of any kind meant the end of their wealth and power through market commerce.
That interpretation would seem to fit with the history I have read, and in any case it must be some kind of independent judiciary which provides a constitutional failsafe backup mechanism to curb the excesses of popularism in a real democracy. How we got there is curious, but not important. The important thing to consider is whether a proposed political union provides the same degree of legal and constitutional protection for individuals as one enjoys in the UK, and whether such a union can possibly be reasonable if it means stepping backwards in time to a civil law society, where all the best things about human rights are codified and preached loud and wide, and then torn up and forgotten whensoever the mob gets it rage on.
It is hugely important debate, easily the greatest challenge of European political and legal integration.
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145 WebAlice
Thank you for that enjoyable link.
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How is the weather in Russia? Web Alice:)
Our weather is like Fall has arrived
Thank you Mother Nature
:)
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cbw;
"So, You are admitting the USA Secretary of State Colin Powell on the instruction of the President Bush and the Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld went & spoke on the floor of the United Nations' Security Council and revealed intelligence photos, played secret recordings, showed phials of anthrax etc. all about Saddam and the WMD on the strength of & using the content of a UK Intelligence document that had been presented to Parliament by PM Blair?"
No not solely on that strength. We had our own fiction writers as well. Remember the yellowcake uranium story that was manufactured?
Think carefully. It was necessary to get rid of Saddam Hussein for many reasons, there is no doubt that it was in the direct national security interest of both the US and UK. If one that could not satisfy public opinion couldn't be found when it was needed, then it had to be fabricated. Why do you have a problem with that, I don't. He's gone, mission accomplished, case closed. In such matters meaningless gingerbread like international law is only for fools. Colin Powell's presentation to the UN would have been created if it had taken the talents of Walt Disney Studios or Light and Magic. Didn't you enjoy the show? BTW, had Al Gore been in office, he'd have done exactly the same.
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Marcus wrote:
"Think carefully. It was necessary to get rid of Saddam Hussein for many reasons, there is no doubt that it was in the direct national security interest of both the US and UK. If one that could not satisfy public opinion couldn't be found when it was needed, then it had to be fabricated. Why do you have a problem with that, I don't."
If the casual reader takes you up on the offer to think carefully about what follows on, Marcus, they discover the news that despite there being "many reasons" for invading Iraq, none could be found that satisfied public opinion. Now thinking carefully, this must mean that e set of things you class as reasonable, insofar as they constitute reasons for doing something certain to cost many thousands of young lives, must be very broad indeed. If you intend to include many reasons the public would not accept, the question is raised as to what depth of human perversion you might reach before you declared a justification unreasonable. I mean, who knows? You've just said that if the public object then the thing to is to fabricate a lie. And the consequence is death and suffering on a scale to put the worst mass murders into the shade. So if these things are to be secret and dishonest, who shall we entrust with the sacred role of being the trusted liar? You? The CIA? The guy next door?
There can never be a case for secrecy in the justification for war between states, Marcus, because war is an extension of the political process. As such, an appeal for secrecy and lies in the war planning of a state is an endorsement of secrecy and lies in the political structure of the society.
Size and past glory are no proof against decay. Ask the Brits.
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this is off topic, but,
here is a good story about an exhibition here in KC, Mo. on Germany in WWI...
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/09/02/2196247/exhibit-presents-world-war-i-from.html
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@158 democracythreat,
Karl von Clausewitz' dictum has in English been translated to:
"War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." (Oxford Quot. dict.).
The interesting thing is that this is no longer true for politics in Europe. The change began back in the 1950s with forerunner of EU, but now I am almost getting back to the topic of this blog, and that is probably not the intention.
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dt, you live in an insulated fantasy world in your Swiss chalet.
" Now thinking carefully, this must mean that e set of things you class as reasonable, insofar as they constitute reasons for doing something certain to cost many thousands of young lives, must be very broad indeed. If you intend to include many reasons the public would not accept, the question is raised as to what depth of human perversion you might reach before you declared a justification unreasonable."
This decision is made all over the world every day. For example, thousands of people die every year in China mining coal. It doesn't slow them down for one second. They will mine as much the day of a mine disaster as they did the day before and will the day after. And they couldn't care less what happens to people in other countries who mine the minerals they need even if many die getting it for them, that's the way of the world.
For someone who is a lawyer like you are, it may be hard to accept that in many places and instances laws are only selectively enforced. When, where, and how depends on the particular circumstances of each case. For example, from BBC;
"Six Portuguese men have been jailed after they were found guilty of sexual abuse at a state-run children's home."
Yet there are countless people who work for the Catholic Church in Ireland, many of them priests who committed the same crimes or worse on more victims for longer periods and will not be prosecuted at all. Some places enforce laws, some don't. The world is selective.
I recall a time when being arrested for the possession of marijuana received a long prison sentence in Texas, a $5 fine in Michigan. Same crime, entirely opposite punishments.
"There can never be a case for secrecy in the justification for war between states, Marcus, because war is an extension of the political process"
Again, delusional. All governments have secrets and tell lies including to protect their secrets. For example, the government of Switzerland has lied and protects the lying bankers who stole so much loot and hide so much loot stolen by dictators, terrorists, narcotics and human traffickers. Wars are fought all the time over what seems to outsiders like irrational or unjustifiable reasons. Why will Britain fight again over the defense of ownership of the Malvinas rocks in the South Atlantic, possibly with the loss of much British life? Why is Russia fighting in South Ossettia and Abhkhazia? In every case from the point of view of those initiating the war, their vital interests were at risk even if they couldn't be justified by some code drawn up by lawyers in Geneva or in New York City.
"Size and past glory are no proof against decay. Ask the Brits."
How would they know? They were never anything but a group of small islands in the North Sea. Everything they ever had or seemed to be belonged to someone else they stole from. Russia might have been a better example but it never fell into decay because although it is large, it was always primitive and corrupt, there was no height it ever reached to decay from.
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#161
"Everything they ever had or seemed to be belonged to someone else they stole from."
Your whole country and everything in it was stolen from someone else! The USA is a product of invasion, land grab, genocide, aggressive wars of expansion and slavery. Jeez louise, and you call DT delusional.
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nonsense offramp;
I can see why for someone whose life and view of the world is that of having existed in a piratical nation since borth it is impossible to understand that another nation can exist that has grown and prospered starting from nothing entirely through its own efforts. Left to its own devices, Europe is stagnating at best, more likely in terminal decline. There's nobody left for it to steal from, not even the banks.
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Last time I checked, German growth figures did a lot better than those of your beloved US, MAII.
=(
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Mathiasen
Re #160
I honestly, really hope You are right about that.
I honestly, really believe You are sadly mistaken.
I presume You base Your view largely on the the emergence of the EU.
You would be correct to assume I largely base my gloom on the emergence of that EU.
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Drugstore Man;
"Last time I checked, German growth figures did a lot better than those of your beloved US, MAII."
Last time I checked bank loan figures America hadn't made nearly as many bad loans to Greece as Germany had to finance the sale of goods that those growth figures are largely based on.
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From that point of view, you are certainly correct. Export to nations like the US is a lot higher than to nations like Greece. I mean, the US also run a debt driven economy, but they borrow their money in Asia, so we (zee Germanz) don`t even need to care about that issue!
And btw, the currenct economic boom in Germany mostly stems from increased demand in Asia. Not America and certainly not Greece.
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The implications of those loans to the US depends to a large extent on whether they were made in local currency (Euros or Yuan) or in US dollars. If they were made in US dollars, then when the US begins to print more of it like crazy as it will inevitably have to, the dollars that the loans are paid back in will be worth much less than the ones that were loaned out. That will be only one of many interesting dilemmas for countries around the world. American currency devaluation is not only unavoidable, it will be a key to the economic recovery of the world which cannot happen until it does. That is because there is no other way for Americans and their government to pay back the mountains of debt they have accumulated with the value of the currency at its present high value.
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Wow. I've just lost a couple of hours of my life I'll never get back reading with interest everyone's reasoned ( and not so ) arguments. It seems appropriate that the commentary appears to have come full circle - starting with genetics and ending with economics.
It was my ( very limited ) understanding that we humans shared the majority of our genes with pigs and that comments like Mr Sarrazin's only really spark flames in the wider community at times when we can't all get our snouts in the trough.
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margaret howard, @155 - You are very welcome.
For want of better things to show off with :o)))))) at least, good old pictures :o)))
grabatised by unknown M of course! in 1948! :o))))))))) as the site says
Dave stvn :o)))) Hello David dear.
:o)))))))))
The weather is awful disaster. I heard that in England it is simply fresh and snappy :o) in the mornings
but here it is plain autumn without any doubt
+4 last night in the dacha with leaking roof and fallen floors!
How is that for "weather"?!
At that, all leaves are still green and meteo-mum said it's yet again one more nature-trick since it's been this cold throughout whole second half of August... which is kind of mad again for the season
So, first I was roasting the dog in this dacha in July...
Now I am trying to freeze him up!
This is all called we are becoming more healthy with the dog :o)))))
living in the FRESH air :o) very FRESH heaps of oxygen :o)))) from all dacha holes!
plain disaster.
But Russian sea-men don't surrender you know only drown heroically :o)) so I am going to keep to the trend. while alive, that is.
unknown M what's those infra-red or carbon heaters or aluminum ones?
really anything to bother buying? warmer? than regulat electric radiators on small wheels on the floor or convectors that blow hot air?
from engineering point of view in view of cold season starting
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and an electric grill with a marble board on top of the? those curved iron tubes heated at 2 sm distance from them the marble plate
Do they really warm up enough to grill a piece of meat? I mean - it's cold marble, after all. And at a distance from those metal curves
I am in doubt.
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170 webAlice
"but here it is plain autumn without any doubt"
How odd, I have just read in yesterday's Times newspaper that eight more people died in wildfires in Southern Russia. 26 villages in Volgograd and Saratov provinces were involved fanned by high winds and drought. I suppose you get such a huge variety of weather patterns in such a vast country. Anyway, off to bed now - I need my eight hours sleep these days!
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"I can see why for someone whose life and view of the world is that of having existed in a piratical nation since birth"
No pirates! I looked for! I swear! So much hoped! was looking for! I was, like, Now I will re-unite with some of my kin :o)))))
accountants financiers all over! :o))))))))))))
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lawyers!
Well. I found some admirals family at least and eh nevermind
but one has to turn all stones upside down to see these!
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Margaret, I don't know, but my general understanding is along-the-lower-Volga' region has cooled down, since Aug 17th approx. And substantially.
My very mum took a trip there finally (after giving up on a serie of r/w tickets, bought one after another. for 2 months non-stop. awaiting the release of the weather grip on Volga region. but it was only spreading out, the hoovering effect, from that epicentre/ sucking in hot air from Middle Asia). We've got a Volgograd blogger in the chatter place, will ask. BTW the chap is ill, recovering after an infarction, and in middle-aged years! awful hot summer with an array of effects on all.
I am a Northerner, so all how to say, approx. as usual. cold swamp! :o))) More North than me in European Russia are Murmansk and Archangelsk only. Of name-places :o) At that, Murmansk has got a Golfstream somewhere there.
Why Golf? by the way?
_______
Powermeer I wonder if you managed to keep that million :o))))))))))))))
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172. At 00:12am on 06 Sep 2010, margaret howard wrote:
"""170 webAlice
"""I suppose you get such a huge variety of weather patterns in such a vast country."""
Naaaahhh... Russia is a wet and cold country. If it gets dry and windy it is again not more prone to fire than any Mediterranean place during a particularly wet place.
"""How odd, I have just read in yesterday's Times newspaper that eight more people died in wildfires in Southern Russia."""""
"""26 villages in Volgograd and Saratov provinces were involved fanned by high winds and drought."""
As you said: "how odd"". Weather is not "unrepeatable" so in the last 100 years you must be able to find another example of extended fires and fires that killed people and such. Why do I have the suspicion that there isn"t? And if there isn't what bigger proof of the fact that these fires are politically motivated - proven on top by the fact that since the first hours BBC CNN and the rest of falling standards of international journalism tried to link them with Vlado.
If you want to see why fires light up like that and people die just go see for yourself back in 2007 in Greece (anything from 800 to 1000% more fires than "normal", first time more than zero deaths with the deathtoll rising to 40-50 people). What had happened earlier and what followed?
Start thinking for a change.
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38. At 08:37am on 04 Sep 2010, MarcusAureliusII wrote:
"""It is said that Diogenes walked through the streets of Athens during the day carrying a lamp looking for an honest man. Had he encountered Nik, my hunch is that he wouldn't have even slowed down, not just for so much as one second."""
Haha... I had missed this one! Marcus, we are what we are and I happen to have a 2350 years advantage over Diogenes. He might had impressed the people of his times but for me he would not be anything more than an unlucky rich kid, stolen, sold as slave, freed by a compassionate man, ending up homeless in Corinth and there, marooned, refusing to do any decent work to get a home and improve his life but sticking to living as a clochard. If he held a lamp I would hold a mirror and Ellina's scissors!
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Nik, wrethed as Diogenes was, I still think he'd pass you by. At least he had his standards.
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175 Alice asks:
"Why Golf? by the way?"
It's called Gulf stream because it begins in the Gulf of Mexico.
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aaaa Thank you, Margaret. In Russian is pronounced as Golf-stream :o))) I thought because has something to do with Britain.
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And if a bird is flightless unflying? Non-flyable!? :o))
like a hen or an ostrich What is it in English, the adjective?
simply need to know
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"here is a good story about an exhibition here in KC, Mo. "
David? you better decipher for me this Mo in unequivocal terms. In case of you know disappearances. Is it Massachusets?
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181 Alice
It's 'flightless' as in the following extract:
Flightless birds are birds which lack the ability to fly, relying instead on their ability to run or swim, and are thought to have evolved from their flying ancestors. There are about forty species in existence today, the best known being the ostrich, emu, cassowary, rhea, kiwi, and penguin. It's believed by some that most flightless birds evolved in the absence of predators on islands, and lost the power of flight because they had few enemies — although this is likely not the case for the ratites; the ostrich, emu and cassowary, as all have claws on their feet to use as a weapon against predators."
Hope that helps.
Incidentally, tonight I watched the final part of Rigoletto, a marvellous production staged in the city of Mantua and shown over three days. Apparently the tv transmission was sold to 149 countries. Did you see it in Russia? I mention it because the part of Gilda was sung by Julia Novikova and she comes from St Petersburg. Isn't that where you live and is she well known there?
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MO means Missouri...its a state in the center of the USA.
And the Liberty Memorial is the only WWI memorial in the USA.
And if you look on a map, its right in the center (Kansas City is) and Missouri is next to Kansas.
Funny enough Germans settled in Missouri and I'm 1 half German (the other half is Scots/Irish. But, Germans did settle here because of all the hills and forests.
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Thank you, David and Margaret.
Aha.
(it's we stumbled in the chatter place over a Polish expression, that is translating it into English. Literally - a hen! Mother of a flightless eagle!
:o)))))) An exclamation in surprise.
A tricky thing as you see, as wiki doesn't include ordinary hens into flightless birds' category; it's mostly penquins Dodo and the like.
Morover, as that hen is a potential mother of an eagle :o)))))))) I mean, who ever saw flightless eagles
Well then that's what it is, must be. a surprise.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Nik, @137 wrote: "American-Asians, British-Asians or German-Turks especially are prone to do the error of replying "I am from US, Britain, Germany" to which the new answer will come "Yes, but where from originally"... see, for Greeks it is unthinkable to be ashamed of your real roots and a sign of a complexed and thus unworthy person. Do not do the error. Just answer "I am from US, California, Los Angeles, parents from El Salvador" and you will pass the test!!! Hahaha!!!"
Nik, you silly and foolish individual. If someone holds a US passport, that makes them an American, no questions asked. Your provocations are not only wrong on principle (as I explained to you many times) but are also an example of utmost rudeness and indiscretion. Not to mention that some people who look "colored" to you may not even know their ancestors' "original roots" or those "roots" are very complicated. What would you say to actress Rosario Dawson? (Imdb: "Rosario Dawson obviously acquired the best-looking genes from her multi-ethnic heritage, which includes Afro-Cuban, Puerto Rican, Native American and Irish, yet it is her gritty, powerhouse talent that stands out even more in edgy, urban filming that dates back to 1995 when she was only 16.") If this is how tourists are treated in Greece, a country which relies on tourism for much of its GDP, then I have zero (0) trust in Greece's ability to turn around its economy (as opposed to exploring the intricacies of the process of sovereign bankruptcy).
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"""Nik, you silly and foolish individual. If someone holds a US passport, that makes them an American, no questions asked."""
You do not need to be so honest and ask your complexes of inferiority. And second, start respecting other cultures and stop being so fascist in critiscising them. Greek culture is like that: it is expected that you answer the principal question "where you come from". If you do not, you are not trustworthy. The same applies to you here that you keep hiding your roots while you have the nerve to show utter hatred against my roots.
"""Your provocations are not only wrong on principle (as I explained to you many times) but are also an example of utmost rudeness and indiscretion."""
I saw your manners all the way long. Personal attacks, swearing, lies, bending my sayings. Quite revealing of "where you come from" and "where are you heading at".
"""What would you say to actress Rosario Dawson? (Imdb: "Rosario Dawson obviously acquired the best-looking genes from her multi-ethnic heritage, which includes Afro-Cuban, Puerto Rican, Native American and Irish, yet it is her gritty, powerhouse talent that stands out even more in edgy, urban filming that dates back to 1995 when she was only 16.")"""
For Greeks your proefession is of less interest. How much money you make is of less interest, they do not want to make business with you; they have a simple discussion with you. While Greeks are money-oriented just like any other people in this world, they do not really show any particular respect to people presenting wealth or success. This is a basic notion in our culture contrary to most western as well as eastern cultures where there is a more strict wealth-based hierarchy.
For Greeks, first of all counts where you come from and what you are. Questions on profession might follow if the discussion follows but certainly won't come if you are not willing to discuss the most basic. For Americans there is no such question, it is widely known that their majority is of extremely mixed backgrounds. But if say, a Siberian Mongol comes and says "I am Russian" then the natural question is "where from in Russia?". There is nothing bad and nothing indescrete in people asking such questions - in fact the opposite is rude (like your case here where you have even the nerve to be offensive to my roots while not asnwering the question on yours). You are not really expected to answer and if you don't you will still be served but in general they will consider you either as a complexed person or an nutrustworthy one. When I talk to people I always ask where they come from. If they do not want to say then I inherently do not trust them. End of story. For you this might be considered as rude (quite funny given how extremely rude you are yourself). Well, start respecting other peoples' cultures (and do something about your manners).
"""If this is how tourists are treated in Greece,"""
No they are not treated "like this". It is merely a question: "where you come from" and it is posed out of being gentle. You only ask people this question when you respect them and Greeks ask it in order to show respect even above any particular curiosity. When you do not respect the other you do not ask at all. If the other is not willing to answer it is his problem, there is no pressure to asnwer but neither is there any pressure on locals to consider this individual as trustworthy...
"""a country which relies on tourism for much of its GDP, then I have zero (0) trust in Greece's ability to turn around its economy (as opposed to exploring the intricacies of the process of sovereign bankruptcy)"""
For your information, even in the heights of tourism industry and including all black-economy around it this was less than 1/4th of the country and not even the most important sector. Still an important factor but also a factor of impedence of other sectors too so the superficial analysis of the benefits has always to be mitigated. And at the end of the day Greeks are not supposed to change hypocritically their own habbits in superficial ways just to please the tourists: this if it is done it is quite visible to the tourist. Greeks remain natural to the tourist and whoever likes it; customers will never cease to come. I have visited other countries (not so far...) and this superficiality and the hypocritic manners are visible and it is downright ridiculous.
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During my contacts in Germany with circle of the officials who work with foreigners - representatives of law, medicine, workers of prisons, Courts, "Department on Affairs of Foreigners", "Federal Department on Migration" and so on, I (from Russia) personally came across a “collective” - extremely skillfully selected - of sadists and furious nationalists ... Their place must be in prisons and madhouses - as prisoners and patients. But in Germany exactly they are occupied with foreigners’ matters, they make decisions in questions of another's health and destiny……. Just those people scoffed at me , subjected me to tortures…..
About this my story You can read from all of my official documents on the Internet - where they are placed in open access - [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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Nik @188
You know, funnily enough I had a similar encounter while I was on a cruise last year. Thanks for the explanation!
At the time, I went into one of the bars to order a couple of drinks. The gentleman behind the counter had asked me where I was from. It was pretty much just idle banter. I had assumed he meant where I had originally docked from, so I replied "Baltimore". He shook his head and said "No, no, where are you from?" Then I thought he meant where I lived -- "Uh, I live and work in D.C" He gave me a skeptical look and replied, "You are originally from D.C?"
At this point I was at a bit of a loss, so we stared at each other expectantly - it was almost comical. I had then assumed he meant where I was born. "I was born in Hawaii." I offered. He flashed a big grin and exclaimed "Ah, ok!" and served me my drink. I sat there puzzled for some time! I didn't realize at the time he meant my ethnicity. (I'm not Polynesian however, sorry to disappoint!)
So how does someone of mixed origins respond to that question, without sounding evasive? I don't suppose Greeks are familiar with the term, 'Hapa'? I think I'll use that next time just to avoid such an awkward conversation! :)
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curious Nik's "Where are you from?" :o))))))))) but I guess it's better to be warned in advance :o))))) Why not a sign in the airport
Welcome to Greece ,
now,
Where are you from? :o)
Russians, though, won't wink, I guess because cultures are closer.
I don't think we care asking :o))))))))) or about any thing else :o)))))))) but then I think we don't worry answering either :o))))))
and sure one will be pleased to give details if a hearty Greek wonders displays interest kind of cares for you yes, right.
Who cares these days?! :o)))) For a change will be pleasant.
Besides, it seems :o))))) any bit of geography will do :o))))) plus-minus fitting one's looks :o)))
Russian folks will be pleased to name regions because Russians themselves don't know their regions :o)))) so smaller places are pleased when somebody is interested.
For example, Nik and Margaret; Nik wrote Russia is a cold wet country. Yes, for the most part. But still I vaguely suspect we have warm places. For instance in the chatter place (aforementioned heaps of times) many bloggers complained it's plus 33C today.
Then 100% Vladivostok is roughly same latitude as Sochi same as London, one line I think so these are 15 degrees more South than normal people :o))))) all these have a very decent autumn.
Sochi will be plain bathe-able through to the end of Oct. "velvet season" twenty-ish... and they've got palm-trees and I in St. Pete will in snow starting from Oct 14th sharp ( local custom :o)
Then there is lower Volga (still hot there) and all.
But 30% of Russia is in permafrost area literally houses built on never melting down soil right. Except I think it doesn't count because apart from deer eh shepherd style people and oil obtainers type Gazprom - nobody lives there.
One is from Altay - and don't ask me where that is! :o))))) some place beyond Ural mountains... and must be South then?
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190. At 10:35pm on 09 Sep 2010, Malkava wrote:
"""Nik @188
You know, funnily enough I had a similar encounter while I was on a cruise last year. Thanks for the explanation!"""
Heheh Malkava. See, Greeks might have been the ones that defined Europe and western culture but themselves be it a small nation are a unique civilisation. They are not so much influenced by the western itchy-bitchy political correctness and colonialosorryfullness if you get the term. And Greeks up to 1900s were enslaved to one of the most regressive and barbaric cultures to have walked the face of the earth (Ottoman Empire), then they were genocided by young-turks and germans (with the implicit aid of British) and thus they have absolutely none to apologise to. And more than any other European Greeks are inherently friendly to the likes of colonial victims like various African or Asian nations. It goes without saying that "racism" exists in Greece but it is day and night different to other European "racisms" which are race-oriented (Greek one is ethnic-oriented) and different to Asiatic or African "racisms" in the sense that it is not offensive to other poeple, nor it demands the exploitation of other people nor it considers other people inferior or such. Anyway such cultural discussions are a long story to be discussed elsewhere.
Greeks like to scan other people. You will find out that people in Greece look each other in the eye directly. Among them they ask always where each other comes (due to recent genocides, immigrations and movements, Greeks are of mixed regional backgrounds and thus increasingly uniform in appearence and accents, differences are often imperceptible and thus the need to ask where one comes from...). For foreigners they do the same. You always have to remember that they do it out of showing interest to you and that is trying to be friendly to you and respecting you. If you do not respect someone, you just don't do that, you care not about the person anyway! But when you open a discussion with a foreigner, this is the first thing to do. Asking what job he does and such is considered as a more personal question that can come later. And don't think that if you are a very successful guy or if you have lots of money or if you are a genius Greeks will respect you - on the contrary, they will only judge you from how you talk and behave at that very moment you talk with them. Telling where you come from is something basic for them to understand you better. They won't judge at all your personality or your values or anything out of it (as said, they judge you from the way you talk), but they need to know what is your story before discussing anything else (and they are frustrated that you do not ask them back where they come from). Evidently for some other Europeans and Americans who carry more complexes of inferiority/superiority this is a difficult question but that cannot be blamed on Greeks. Afterall such questions fall only in socialising, no Greek working in bank, post-office or during a business meeting will ask you such questions (there you talk work/business). But in socialising you should not expect talking other details such as job, travel or hobbys without them asking such questions. If you are not in the mood of answering such questions you are not expected to do so. But in return you should not expect them to remain particularly friendly to you either, they will simply keep it cool and at distance. Greeks consider that if you want to hide your real background you are either suffering from complexes of inferiority or you are not trustworthy. And above you saw this in full action.
Now, considering your case - I had to type in wikipedia "Hapa" to get the info! (I am sorry, it is the other side of the globe, but now I know thanks to you!). I guess you are probably of East-asian origins born in Hawai, spent most of your life in Baltimore and living in the D.C. state. This is perfectly ok for your Greek interlocutor - him when he asks you "where are you from" he means "what roots you have". Where you live and work comes as secondary. Hence, a more experienced answer of you would say something like "I am Hapa Hawaian with (say...) Chinese roots, now working in D.C.". It is short, does not have to be long and it is just perfect. He might had considered "Hapa" as an indigenous tribe of Hawai or he might had asked you - out of sheer interest general knowledge - more info to which you could joke laughing "Hapas are the best among Hawaians and I am of the best Hapa you can find around now here! " which he would find funny and consider you a smart guy having humour. The reason he asked your roots was your (I guess) exotic face. Most Greeks, though good at peoples faces (as they look people in the eye), are not of course very accustomed with Hawaian faces and thus when you told him you are from Hawai it was alright for him. But a guy who is, say, Kurdish living in Britain could not answer "I am from Britain", it is a useless answer. If he answers "I am living in Britain" without wanting to say his roots we would understand that he has complexes of inferiority and we would feel sorry for him. If he says "I am Kurdish, living in Britain" it is perfectly alright. However, for Indian people of Britain it is not so much the case as Greeks know well that there lots of them in Britain and thus if they say "I am from Britain" they might not ask more - some a bit more curious might ask "Indian or Pakistani"?.
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191. At 00:24am on 10 Sep 2010, WebAliceinwonderland wrote:
"""curious Nik's "Where are you from?" :o))))))))) but I guess it's better to be warned in advance :o))))) Why not a sign in the airport"""
Ahahahah... no no, I told you, you are not supposed to answer the question "where you come from". But locals are not supposed either to continue talking to you. Greeks do not open discussions with people they do not want to talk with them. How do you think they became famous for courting women? Out of being rude or something? But when you are opening the discussion, you are expected to answer, if you don't they might not continue to talk a lot themselves too. If you want to continue, ask them back what are their roots.
"""Russians, though, won't wink, I guess because cultures are closer."""
Hmmm... I do not know if cultures are closer. Indeed Russians have a lot of common cultural traits with Greeks but still the two people look totally foreign! I remember now, my grandfather, born in 1898 (I am not that old, he married late, my father same, I might do as well the same!) as a subject in the Ottoman Empire, he then became Greek citizen when Macedonia was liberated, then he enterred military service at 1916 and at 1917 he was sent to Russia as part of the "white troops", since Greece was (forced to be) ally of Britain. More specifically he was in eastern Ukraine which back then did no exist of course (by the way all eastern Ukraine was integral part of Russia). There the small Greek detachment fought along with a British one and at some point they were attacked by bolsheviks and plenty of them captured, among them some Greeks, among them my grandfather. Bolsheviks as soon as they found out that these "whites" were British they started spitting them, beating them, hand-cuffed them and had them for torturing them for fun. But instantly they found among them the Greeks for which, no spitting, no handcuffs, nothing: "they were orthodox, good people!!!!". Which just shows the amount of lies these bolshevik Russians had been told - they were not ocmmunists, they were simply rebels used by communists, they knew nothing about communist ideology and such and about beint atheists and such. For them, British were the age old enemy of Russia, the barbaric invaders of the Crimean war that dared invade once again when Russian became weak due to its civil war. Greeks were the age-old friends, the orthodox, people of the 2nd Rome, them 3rd Rome. And as such they treated them as hosts, they stayed in the same rooms with them, eating the same food, playing music, drinking votka... amazing!
"""I don't think we care asking :o))))))))) or about any thing else :o)))))))) but then I think we don't worry answering either :o))))))"""
Yes, Russias do not care to ask. But yes they do not mind answering. But yes, I know Russians have no problem answering back. Ukrainians the same. I always ask a Ukrainian what are his deeper roots (cos a Polish catholic Ukrainian is not at all the same with a Ukrainian orthodox Ukrainian or a Russian orthodox Ukrainian - from my experience, Russian Ukrainians instantly say "I am basically Russian" while Polish-originated Galician catholics try to hide their real identity for a bit longer saying something like "No, I am Ukrainian, Ukrainians are not Russians", then I know he is catholic - Ukrainian-Ukrainians are a bit more moderate in that).
"""Russian folks will be pleased to name regions because Russians themselves don't know their regions :o)))) so smaller places are pleased when somebody is interested."""
Precisely, that is the idea.
"""For example, Nik and Margaret; Nik wrote Russia is a cold wet country. Yes, for the most part. But still I vaguely suspect we have warm places. For instance in the chatter place (aforementioned heaps of times) many bloggers complained it's plus 33C today."""
Yes, it depends on local variations. Black sea east coast gets particularly hot in the summer. Abkhasia must be the absolute tourist spot.
"""Sochi will be plain bathe-able through to the end of Oct. "velvet season" twenty-ish..."""
Aaaa... bathable means more than 30C! For Russians even 10C is bathable but that does not do for us! It is a matter of evolution hahaha!
"""...and they've got palm-trees..."""
No way! I am sure they have under-earth heaters to keep them alive!
""""and I in St. Pete will in snow starting from Oct 14th sharp ( local custom :o) Then there is lower Volga (still hot there) and all."""
Em! Such a large country, you have to pick your place wisely!
"""But 30% of Russia is in permafrost area"""
Brrrr....
"""literally houses built on never melting down soil right. Except I think it doesn't count because apart from deer eh shepherd style people and oil obtainers type Gazprom - nobody lives there."""
... yes but they extract the wrong type of fossil energy, gas. Gas is quite clean and contributes 75% less than petrol to global warming. They should extract oil, hoping that global warming might bring some much needed change! Haha!
"""One is from Altay - and don't ask me where that is!"""
Do not worry, we have the Turks next to us, they mumble all the time about Altay, they will tell us!
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to Nik, #188:
I am reassured that you will stick to your rude habits no matter what! It would be indeed very hypocritical of you not to, since you are so attached to them.
Not sure how I displayed a complex of inferiority - you mean when I wrote that each human has basic rights and dignity and is entitled to his/her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, while you apparently think that some people can be treated like cattle if that is what the majority of voters decide?!
Btw, when did I display hatred of your ethnic roots?! I dare say expressing conditional scepticism re the Greek economy or playground habits would not qualify as expressing ethnic hatred in the view of most psychologically healthy people! You should realize that through your rants you may be spreading in the readers of this blog an unfavorable impression of the average Greek person. My high-school classmate whom I liked had Czech and Greek parents but other than that I personally am not aware of any specific positive experiences I would be able to share about Greece or Greek people.
Based on your insistence I have also shared with the readers several times on this blog the irrelevant piece of information that my parents are/were from CS and I am from CZ, so what exactly is it you want from me and what is your problem?!
I will not comment further. Your nonsensical rants speak for themselves. I really have had enough of these discussions on this BBC blog.
to Malkava: thank you for your support. You provide a reasonable personal account and response in #190, but there you go, #192 will lecture you about how to behave properly/what to say about your own roots to gain other people's trust when you travel around Europe. I guess if your passport and your skin shade do not fit with the idea of someone ELSE's ethnic preconceptions, that must be somehow really untrustworthy of YOU. I think SOME people in Europe REALLY have a mental problem.
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194. At 1:10pm on 10 Sep 2010, oulematu wrote:
"""I am reassured that you will stick to your rude habits no matter what!"""
You were rude above referring to my background while you keep hiding yours. It is up to everyone to see. You are not going to teach manners now. Get yourself civilised first then get out to speak to the world.
"""Not sure how I displayed a complex of inferiority"""
You keep hiding your real root... (but give an extreme importance in other peoples' roots of course...). From there on I can deduce whatever I want. Clarify your position.
""" - you mean when I wrote that each human has basic rights and dignity and is entitled to his/her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, while you apparently think that some people can be treated like cattle if that is what the majority of voters decide?!"""
That is you that translate my sayings, bending their meanings. You are incapable of understanding anything of what I say not only because you are negatively positioned to anything I will say but also because you seem to lack the ability to grasp some basic notions related to human nature. Listening you is like listening to those hippies of the 1960s. You convince none.
"""Btw, when did I display hatred of your ethnic roots?!"""
You did give ironic comments about Greeks' cultural traits all while trying to keep you own cultural roots hidden. That shows your disposition to other cultures you are not accustomed to, let alone being extremely rude.
"""I dare say expressing conditional scepticism re the Greek economy or playground habits would not qualify as expressing ethnic hatred in the view of most psychologically healthy people!"""
You would not express openly your hatred when you try to speak of cheap hippy-loves here would you? However, your complexes of inferiority are there to see. And these are always accompagnied with hatred.
"""You should realize that through your rants you may be spreading in the readers of this blog an unfavorable impression of the average Greek person."""
So you really judge a whole group of people from an individual do you? Nice one there.
"""My high-school classmate whom I liked had Czech and Greek parents but other than that I personally am not aware of any specific positive experiences I would be able to share about Greece or Greek people."""
Really, I do not care at all about your disposition to Greek people. Nor did I ever represented Greek people here.
"""Based on your insistence I have also shared with the readers several times on this blog the irrelevant piece of information that my parents are/were from CS and I am from CZ, so what exactly is it you want from me and what is your problem?!"""
If you did in the past I had not seen. Now I know. You come from a country that has not yet learnt what it is to receive the invasion of people that seek "equal rights and the pursue of happyness" inside "your own house" with "your money". When it happens then come back to have this discussion.
"""I will not comment further. Your nonsensical rants speak for themselves. I really have had enough of these discussions on this BBC blog."""
As you wish.
"""I guess if your passport and your skin shade do not fit with the idea of someone ELSE's ethnic preconceptions, that must be somehow really untrustworthy of YOU. I think SOME people in Europe REALLY have a mental problem."""
If your nation has been genocided less than 100 years ago and if the killers are back at your yard you would have different world theories now. It is a well known fact that the one who is not in the dance knows a lot of songs.
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"""One is from Altay - and don't ask me where that is!"""
Nik wrote:
"Do not worry, we have the Turks next to us, they mumble all the time about Altay, they will tell us!"
If so, it is a tempo hallucination :o) of the Turkish mind :o) a dream place-names eh memorising learning the map abstractly exercise :o)
From what I see in photos placed by that Altay chap, and things he writes off-handedly :o)))) they are un-reachable and un-takeable :o)
Possibly, the second is due to the first.
Last week he's on hols busy fixing his "shed for coal".
Nik, it's a Brest fortress, red brick, in 3 bricks thikness. Take my word. I wish I had "a shed" like that to live in :o))))))
Solid Siberian habits. And I think one can take pretty solid eh fortress defending/shooting position :o))) on the upper eh fortification part of the "shed" :o))))))
I also think he can, he as an ex-pilot from "beyond the river" times. (Afgan)
And he says he taught his children "all I can do myself" :o)))))))))
Now, the coal itself he has not. Nobody can deliver!:o)))))))))
Always problems for say, means of transportation to reach them from Kuzbass coal basin:o)
The nearest, I guess. Don't ask me where that is :o)))))
Daily chancy messages are "has been this morn. to see the step-mother, 200 km, then for some shopping 300 km :o)))))))))) then we had a party of the old office in the restaurant (400 km away :o))))) - awful tired, just got back how are you?" :o))))))))))))))))
It steadily seems to me they have another concept of distances beyond Urals.
They beyond the Urals' folk steadily call us the rest and tease "you, E-Y-ropeans...." :o))))))
I think Turkey or whoever can relax.
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And they value some big and mighty Japanese cars there, forgot the brand.
They drive to buy them 700 and 800 km away when one is on sale like , without a second thought. Because there it's a life necessity it seems.
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Anyway, Oulematu, far from thinking I am here to confront you on everything or something (and I do not want to sit down and fight on pointless thingies of who is more rude - be it me if you like - while we lose the bigger picture), you need to relax, take a step back and see that we are in a situation where our opinions are bound to differ dramatically and that is because we have different bases. I will explain why:
You wrote:
"""... you mean when I wrote that each human has basic rights and dignity and is entitled to his/her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, while you apparently think that some people can be treated like cattle if that is what the majority of voters decide?!"""
You view the presence of humans in this world as being followed by universal rights regarding liberties and pursuit of happyness. I view the existence of humans in this world as no different to the existence of any other living organism: this existence is followed by no universal rights, it is simply characterised by natural traits and tedencies and in particular the tedency to possess and control, which is found in all animals and particularly pronounced in the human spiece. You do not take at all into account that. What you present is "religion" and like "religion" you preach it. You counter argue my arguments in a religious form and thus you think I am some sort of inhuman cynic. Yet far from being merely a realist, my wish is to be accurate.
There is no law in nature that prescribes any "basic rights and dignity" to people when they are born. Reference to "basic rights" is purely a human construction (and a quite recent one...), a moral motto presented in the form of "religion" to be used as a political tool. As such it has its value only in theoretical discussions on human morals rather than in political discussions. For someone to have rights, there has to be someone else (or himself) to enforce these rights by force. Rights are not enforced by themselfs nor are they coming "natural" to people. By whom are they enforced? By states and hyper-states and political alliances. You would not guess that they are enforced "for the good of mankind" would you? As such they can be another form of interventionism and as such are a form of infringement of the freedom of societies to organise themselves as they wish. It is not my interest to make moral discussions here nor do I have any particular problem with your motto "entitlement to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" only that one has to really pinpoint to where and how that applies.
What you present more or less is that there has to be a universality (which equals a first form of global governance) in the application of the above "religion", what I say is that such application has to come via a conscious inner decision from the society itself. There is nothing morally good but also nothing morally bad in what Thilo Sarazzin wrote in his book which personally I find simplistic but also an honest attempt without that meaning that I am not suspicious of other, completely different motives behind, motives that you are far from comprehending. But as it is, if the book expresses the views of the vast majority of German people (and it seems that this is the case either you want to admit it or not), you have to respect that choice of theirs and accept it as it is without moral teachings. If they do not like the presence of certain groups of people inside their country they have every right to do so and to speak of it without anyone else from outside be attacking that decision of theirs. You are entitled to your opinion but that is of no more value than the opinion of say Bhurmese rebels on Kolombia's FARC (i.e. they have no idea about it anyway, can say whatever...).
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About oulematu you are un-fair, how is it they don't know what is to be occupied. They were by us in peaceful times, and Slovakia part before by Germany.
Re those communists who your grandad encountered
when INVADING RUSSIA!!!!!!
!!!! oj ej jej dear Niki I express sincere hope you don't take after him!
I suppose they were not very learned :o))))))) "Das Kapital" is a thick book and all :o))))))) I siuppose a normal person btw 1917 and 1919 had no time plain to read much :o))))))) to say nothing of such a thick book. I think apart from "rob the robbed" (wealth) - no other slogans were understood :o)))))
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WebAlice, we may have a "heated" discussion and even a hard talk but that is all, why would I take after Oulematu, why should he do the same? Out logics stem from different bases and we cannot easily find cross-sections. My personal view is that Oulematu judges on the basis of an ethical code, I judge on the basis of a natural code without being implicated with ethics which I relate to religion rather than observation and judgement.
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I live in Germany and the recent debate does actually not turn around that there is a "angst" (= fear) over immigration, there are millions of immigration doing well and it is just about small groups of immigrants that do not want to integrate themselves by living in a so-called "parallel society", a society of their own isolated from the rest and no one else is supposed to join in.
The aim of this debate is to improve the immigrants´ situation, if they want to stay isolated without work by rejecting to learn German they are of course allowed to do, but it is then their own problem if they are unemployed because of this.
But they should not complain about being outsiders with no chance of social mobility!
Serious political problems with immigrations are right wing parties fe in the Netherlands, where the situation is much more heated up.
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anotherfakename
" we don't want people coming to our country and proclaiming they hate us, want our benefits, will take over the world, will rule us and will stone our 'prostitutes' to death. "
Very true. But you should something about it. Do you think that the politicians (Conservatives, Liberals, Labur) will do anything about it? With words, perhaps but they will deliberately leave loophoes - weasly words like "skilled" and "aging population" , set up "immigration appeals", create a squad of "immigrant baronesses"
A director of the German Central Bank has remarked that 1,000 immigrant Muslims, caused 20% of Berlin's crime. (He didn't even take noter of the immigrants' children which would have pushed the figure to 70 or 80%)
Are there 1,000 people in Britain prepared tp defy the appeasing festering bloc of PC politicians and media?
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new_germany
" The aim of this debate is to improve the immigrants´ situation"
The aim of the debate SHOULDN'T be to improve the immigrants' situation.
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