While Europe slept
The current riots in France are another indication that Europe is having difficulty dealing with a long-neglected problem: its huge and largely unassimilated Moslem immigrant population (originally of immigrants but now including their European-born children), bulging in its belly like the meal of a boa constrictor afflicted with terrible indigestion.
Some time ago I read this sobering and chilling article by Theodore Dalrymple entitled “Barbarians at the Gates of Paris,” describing some of the conditions that have led to this mess. It was written in the fall of 2002 and is very long, but here are some excerpts:
But what is the problem to which these housing projects, known as cités, are the solution, conceived by serene and lucid minds like Le Corbusier’s? It is the problem of providing an Habitation de Loyer Modéré””a House at Moderate Rent, shortened to HLM””for the workers, largely immigrant, whom the factories needed during France’s great industrial expansion from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the unemployment rate was 2 percent and cheap labor was much in demand. By the late eighties, however, the demand had evaporated, but the people whose labor had satisfied it had not; and together with their descendants and a constant influx of new hopefuls, they made the provision of cheap housing more necessary than ever…
A kind of anti-society has grown up in them””a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust””greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years””is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them…
When agents of official France come to the cités, the residents attack them. The police are hated: one young Malian, who comfortingly believed that he was unemployable in France because of the color of his skin, described how the police invariably arrived like a raiding party, with batons swinging””ready to beat whoever came within reach, irrespective of who he was or of his innocence of any crime, before retreating to safety to their commissariat….
Antagonism toward the police might appear understandable, but the conduct of the young inhabitants of the cités toward the firemen who come to rescue them from the fires that they have themselves started gives a dismaying glimpse into the depth of their hatred for mainstream society. They greet the admirable firemen (whose motto is Sauver ou périr, save or perish) with Molotov cocktails and hails of stones when they arrive on their mission of mercy, so that armored vehicles frequently have to protect the fire engines.
Benevolence inflames the anger of the young men of the cités as much as repression, because their rage is inseparable from their being. Ambulance men who take away a young man injured in an incident routinely find themselves surrounded by the man’s “friends,” and jostled, jeered at, and threatened: behavior that, according to one doctor I met, continues right into the hospital, even as the friends demand that their associate should be treated at once, before others…
Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975””and at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France.
Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order…
…imagine yourself a youth in Les Tarterets or Les Musiciens, intellectually alert but not well educated, believing yourself to be despised because of your origins by the larger society that you were born into, permanently condemned to unemployment by the system that contemptuously feeds and clothes you, and surrounded by a contemptible nihilistic culture of despair, violence, and crime. Is it not possible that you would seek a doctrine that would simultaneously explain your predicament, justify your wrath, point the way toward your revenge, and guarantee your salvation, especially if you were imprisoned? Would you not seek a “worthwhile” direction for the energy, hatred, and violence seething within you, a direction that would enable you to do evil in the name of ultimate good? It would require only a relatively few of like mind to cause havoc. Islamist proselytism flourishes in the prisons of France (where 60 percent of the inmates are of immigrant origin), as it does in British prisons; and it takes only a handful of Zacharias Moussaouis to start a conflagration.
That last paragraph can be read as though it is offering an excuse for this turn to violence and to violent Islamic supremism. If that’s the case, I certainly don’t support such an excuse. But I do think Dalrymple’s article represents a good description of the phenomenon, an explanation that makes a great deal of sense.
It seems to be no coincidence that the current French riots are said to have been set off by an incident in which two youths suspected of a crime were accidentally electrocuted and died while being chased by the police. Whether the police were in fact chasing them is still an open question, apparently, but in a sense it almost doesn’t matter. The belief that they were, and the antagonism towards the police in general, is very clear, as well as the impotence of those police in dealing with crime and/or unrest in these immigrant strongholds.
If you read to the botton of this article, you will discover that part of the underlying reason for the riots at this point in time is a reaction to a recent attempt at a general police crackdown on crime in these neighborhoods by the new interior minister, Sarkozy:
Sarkozy, who returned as the interior minister in late May, began a new crime offensive this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 problem neighborhoods in cities throughout France.
Opposition politicians say he has made things worse.
Laurent Fabius, a former Socialist prime minister and also a potential presidential candidate in 2007, mocked Sarkozy’s frequent visits to areas such as Clichy.
“When he announces that he’s going to visit such and such a commune or suburb every week, that’s not how we resolve those problems,” Fabius told Europe 1 radio.
“We need to act at the same time on prevention, repression, education, housing, jobs … and not play the cowboy.”
As one might expect, there is deep disagreement between those who believe only in prevention and think they have a kindler, gentler answer–the leftists and Socialists–and those who believe that the situation has gone on long enough and a firm and immediate crackdown is necessary. The latter group, of course, is labeled with that popular European epithet for what they see as the oh-so-simplistic law and order approach, American-style: “cowboy.”
I don’t have a solution, but common sense dictates it would have to involve approaches that are both long-term and immediate. A situation so long ignored is going to be all that much more difficult, if not impossible, to treat. As the Dalrymple article says, “Benevolence inflames the anger of the young men of the cités as much as repression, because their rage is inseparable from their being.” If this is true–and I believe it definitely is–it does not bode well for the future.
This article by Francis Fukuyama, appearing in today’s Wall Street Journal, contains a description of some short-term and long-term approaches. It’s a beginning, anyway:
New policies to reduce the separateness of the Muslim community, like laws discouraging the importation of brides from the Middle East, have been put in place in the Netherlands. The Dutch and British police have been given new powers to monitor, detain and expel inflammatory clerics. But the much more difficult problem remains of fashioning a national identity that will connect citizens of all religions and ethnicities in a common democratic culture, as the American creed has served to unite new immigrants to the United States.
Since van Gogh’s murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness. The Dutch have at least broken through the stifling barrier of political correctness that has prevented most other European countries from even beginning a discussion of the interconnected issues of identity, culture and immigration. But getting the national identity question right is a delicate and elusive task.
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Its nice to read you Americans are taking an interest in Europe at last. I’ve been warning people over here for years about these present troubles. Nobody took any notice, even laughed.I even wrote a book in a very mild manner but fell foul of the Politically Correct Thought Police. MY biggest fear is that all this trouble will encourage people to vote for the racial supremacists in UK and Europe. God help us all… What a mess!!
War is based on deception — the enemy is not who you think it is.
While the riots in France and Denmark are not linked to terrorism there are certainly strong interests who would wish to promote them or seize the opportunity to further an agenda. Im sure there are strong reasons for discontent in the communities but the step up to rioting requires instigators, these must be found and their employment revealed. A clue would be to look for people similar to the now jailed Haroon Aswat. For context, bear with me for a short off topic detour.
Haroon Aswat was the alleged mastermind and MI6 operative behind the London 7/7 bombings. For brevity, MP and ex-cabinet member Michael Meacher:
politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1566919,00.html
“Whether the hunt for those behind the London bombers can prevail against these powerful political forces remains to be seen. Indeed it may depend on whether Scotland Yard, in its attempts to uncover the truth, can prevail over MI6, which is trying to cover its tracks and in practice has every opportunity to operate beyond the law under the cover of national security.”
Rather than being of muslim origin, the case of Aswat and other cicumstances make the London bombings look more like Gladio style terrorism. Weeks before the bombings MI6 prepared media by pointing out who to blame.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1532011,00.html
“On Monday it was Chatham House. Yesterday it emerged that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (Jtac) – a group that combines the police, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – had filed a report three weeks before 7/7 that cited Iraq as a “motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK”.”
This is resonable to the 2/3 of the Brits who agree and oppose Tony Blair over the war, but the bombings didnt originate in Iraq but in Kosovo and London and despite al-quida videos and all may better be compared with precedents like this:
http://www.williambowles.info/spysrus/sword_play.html
“Indeed, it would not do for the families of the 85 people ripped apart by the Aug. 2, 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station to know that their loved ones had been murdered by “men inside Italian state institutions and … men linked to the structures of United States intelligence,” as the Italian Senate concluded after its investigation in 2000.”
“‘You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.””
Today the picture is sufficiently blurred by sick ideas like the ‘clash of civilization’ and media injections from MI6 and others to blame the wrong people and employ the wrong solutions. As this wicked and manufactured reality unfolds one may ask qui bono? -look for the ‘cash of civilizations’.
Sunny,
If you still care, I did live in India long enough to know that they treat their women better than the jihad-loving goat-lovers do.
Or maybe you believe in Islam. If that is the case, you need to get your friends into the 21st century…the mindset that allows a man to beat a woman just because HE screwed up is *so out*.
You would have to be a man, from the way that you write. No real woman would attempt to make the points that you foolishly mention.
But, if in fact you are a woman, you need to shut up and learn some manners before you taught the hard way.
Lisa
Is anyone counting how many Muslims are being killed by the American forces there? The Pentagon might not be, but trust me the Muslim world is.
The statistical evidence suggests that Ba’ath diehards and Islamists are responsible for the most Muslim deaths in Iraq. The former were of course reponsible for that before the invasion, and the latter have caused huge numbers of Muslim deaths in countries around the world. And that is a problem for them.
To Anonymous, I guess. And Sonny I guess, but anyone who wants to see what I wrote concerning Sunny may also be interested.
By the way, to say you ignore a variable you cannot change is tantamount to admiting defeat. One should be very thoughtful before admitting defeat.
It is not the same thing. Because you can ignore a variable you can’t change, and still acquire a solution. Admitting defeat is ignoring any attempts to find a solution in the first place.
Solutions have to be based upon reality, and it also has to be based upon what is possible and feasible, not just what is ideal.
Terrorism will likely go on long after Iraq is stablized.
The goal of America is to affect terrorism in such a way that it no longer threatens America. That may or may not mean the eradication of terrorism itself.
I do believe it’d be fine with us, if it keeps terrorizing Europe, so long as they are rendered incapable of doing us harm.
Terrorizing Europe, in the global sense, only does us harm if they acquire European nukes. That’s about it.
So the national security is very pragmatic. It’s aims in Iraq, though apparently idealistic to some, is about 100% realistic to others.
It may not be the ideal solution. But it is a solution America can live with, with emphasis on live.
Ymarsakar do you usually smoke crack when you type messages?
That’s pretty funny. Anyone else agree?
I can’t be asked to dignify your post.
Oh, goodness, I recognize it already. The utter defeat of someone living in degeneration, upon facing Absolute Moral Authority. And a couple of rock solid arguments.
Don’t feel demoralized, you can try again when you find another site with less adroit wordsmiths and propagandists.
Lower the bar, it’s too high to jump over, dontcha know.
Thanks for reading my points anyway.
What points? I read the quotes that everyone was quoting. They were your points? Oh okay, if you say so. Doesn’t really matter.
And then we have the war in Iraq, where a country is being liberated through “shock and awe”
Oh come on, don’t bullshit. I know very well we did not drop fuel air bombs on Iraq, or use nukes and gravitational distortion earthquake producing mantle penetrating missiles either.
Much as I wish we did, I absolutely know for a fact that we didn’t. So there goes your shock and awe. Ain’t no shock without the shockwave from a nuke, and no awe without the mushroom cloud.
Is anyone counting how many Muslims are being killed by the American forces there?
Ya, they suffer about… what was it again, 10 to 15 times the fatalities we suffer? Hard to tell, when the Pentagon are hiding the numbers from us, and the press corps are sucking up to the military by not finding out those same numbers. Very hard, but estimates are still possible.
And 50% of their casualties are fatalities, while ours are about 10%. So Fallujah had about 100 to 200 fatalities, they had about 3,000 something fatalities. Give or take a thousand.
So 2,000 casualties of ours compared to 6,000 well trained, fanatic idiots in Fallujah as casualties.
A factor of 3 in casualties for their hardcore, and a factor of about 15 to 1 in terms of fatalities. And these are the supposedly “hardcore jihadists”.
I don’t even include Z-man’s 50 man team that got blown up by a missile in Operation Restore Rights. That was funny, hearing about that.
Combat troops have 10 to 1 ratios. Very nice, what we expect from the Marine Corps and the Airborne. Rear echelon supply troops have a 2-1 ratio, still good, better than that Najaf cluster frack during the invasion.
10 dead ACMs for everyone one American, pretty good, by any standard. Which is probably higher, but the Pentagon is hiding the truth from America pretty well.
I love it when some Americans speculate about events in Europe. It sounds like a bunch of five year old kids discussing what sex must be like.
This is amazing, I find the same experience to be congruent when I hear Europeans or Internationalists talk about America and Iraq!! Ain’t that amazing.
The Pentagon might not be, but trust me the Muslim world is.
Oh ya, next time you go to a Muslim world. Be sure to send me the stats. I’m sure their 500 American dead for every Jihadist killed, will be funny stuff to the kids at the playground.
But to think Saudi Arabia is funding secret para-military groups that do a contract killing on people who speak out is just pure funny.
Didn’t somebody talk about how Bush and the Saudis both funding terrorism? Uh, nevermind.
I have a suggestion for you people. How about you tell your govt, yes those goddamn Republicans, to stop funding dictatorships in the Middle East that actually help the proliferation of the miltant groups, and give money to dangerous Mosques in Europe.
Hrm… maybe I was wrong. If America can fund terrorism in Saudi Arabia… why can’t Saudi Arabia fund paramilitary groups in Europe? Is Europe too sophisticated to be bum rushed by jihadists, is that it?
This is all great fun folks. For those who are getting tired, be sure to check out at the exit, and take your anti-nausea pills. Those should help.
I’m still good, ya know. It’s all good to me, a lot of this stuf f is good psychological and propaganda education for me. Learn how the other side sees it, ya know. Learn how the other side manipulates reality so that they can see it the way they wanna, that way too.
That way, not the highway.
Check out the debats opinions in today’s Le Figaro. Maybe the French finally get it.
jules: What you say is of great interest. It ties into a post I wrote after this one, about how some of the French, at least, seem to be fed up with their own leaders and press.
Now that the discussion is winding down, in the spirit of DC punditry and puffery, a prediction:
The French will build a wall of separation, erect checkpoints.begin targeted assassinations and fly over Muslim areas with Mirages at high speed to create deafening sonic booms.
Then, in the spirit of European conciliation, they will bombard the North African quarters with rancid cheese and stale baguettes to Frenchize them. Soap will be banned from all Muslim areas.
The Muslims will emerge either assimilated or start jihad, er–riot #2.
First time as tragedy, second time as farce.
I lived in Paris, France up to this May. I now live in relatively peaceful and V. Prosperous Australia.
A note of optimism: Sarkozy is tough and determined, and sending in Police. He may be the only one in the establishement, but the French like him: they are sick of being talked to like idiots by people either disconnected from reality or who don’t give a shit as long as they are in power. witness Le Pen almost elected in 2002.
Sarkozy has a good chance of being elected in 2007. And he beleives in UK style labor laws… hence fixing the economic problem – which is also doing untold damage to non-muslims, will also be adressed.
Kind of ironic that the French have to use the police after all their high minded critisism of the Irak war and the Israeli responses to palestinian bombs.
There is going to be a bloodbath in France at some point probably sooner than later. The Muslims in France will not assimilate and that causes friction and there is the natural anti-semitism of the French. (Remember that Arabs are Semites as are the Jews). The table is set. And then you have the French fascists in the wings.
Assistant Village Idiot: After a while it becomes apparent when a person wants to actually have a substantive discussion about differing views, and when he/she does not.
Take a look at Sunny’s answer to my point about Catholics. I wrote:
If Catholics were rioting, and murdering people by blowing themselves up in places as disparate and distant as Australia and Bali adn the US and Spain, and doing it at least partly in the name of Catholicism, I would indeed think we had a Catholic problem.
Sunny’s response?
Well, let’s see. We have Spanish terrorists in the form of ETA. We have the Catholic Pope causing untold emotional and physical damage by not letting Catholics use contraception. And then we have the war in Iraq, where a country is being liberated through “shock and awe”, based on evidence about WMD which subsequently turned out to be rubbish.
What an strange response. The Basque separatists are Catholic and Spain is Catholic; religion has never been cited in any way shape or form as playing a role in ETA terrorism. The terrorism is a local phenomenon and has no connection to any worldwide movement. The pope and contraception? Is there anyone on earth who can make a connection between this and the point I was making? I don’t even think Sunny believes it. And then there’s that famous Catholic war, the one in Iraq. What on earth could Catholicism arguably have to do with such a thing?
Many people feel it very important to ignore the fact that there are factions of Islam that have declared war on the infidel–a religious war. By ignoring this fact, they get to feel self-righteous, and they get to accuse the rest of us of bigotry.
The argument has grown tiresome. I think Sunny actually does make several points worth discussing, but s/he seems unable to deliver them without a sneer, or to attend carefully to what is being written in response. You tease with a discussion I would like to have, then elect to make speeches instead. It is a shame to miss something productive, but I will have to decline to go further.
Sunny
You say the “Paramilitary b*****t” makes you laugh. You seem oddly unconcerned about the fact that a member of the Dutch legislature must go into hiding, to be safe from attacks, and just go into more rantin’ and ravin’ about how it’s all America’s fault because we support the evil Saudis, and evil dictatorships in the Middle-East (um, didn’t we just topple Saddam Hussein? He was pretty evil, wasn’t he?)
I agree with you that parts of our government (i.e., the State Department) are too cuddly with the Saudis, but, even if we stopped buying any of their oil tomorrow, they’d could still sell to Europe and Asia, and nothing much would change. As for supporting dictators. . . You know, you’re right! I’m thinking of one in particular, an evil man, the father of modern terrorism, a man who murdered innocent civilians and robbed his own people blind.
I’m talking about Yassir Arafat, of course. You do agree we shouldn’t have supported him—yes?
But to think Saudi Arabia is funding secret para-military groups that do a contract killing on people who speak out is just pure funny. For a start we’d have a lot more killings going on regularly.
Not contract killing, an occupying army. I can’t believe you asked for links about this. Are you paying any attention to the news lately?
According to the Globe and Mail, prosecuters said that [Van Gogh’s killer] dreamed of replacing the Dutch government with an Islamic theocracy. He wanted to be held accountable for his actions, and sees them as part of a religious war. The Dutch media believe that Bouyeri attended the El Tawheed mosque, an institution that shared Bouyeri’s views. It is considered to be the epicenter of extremism in Amsterdam.
This mosque was previously associated with a Saudi-based charity, Al Haramain. Recently, the mosque has been criticized for selling books espousing extremist views, including female circumcision and the punishment of homosexuals by throwing them off tall buildings.
Read about the Influence of Wahhabi Influence in Hirsi Ali’s Somalia
From the Times online UK Territorial Army infiltrated by Al-Qaeda
“Patrick Mercer, the Tory homeland security spokesman and a former army officer, said Al-Qaeda terrorists could use TA passes to penetrate security at key MoD establishments such as the permanent joint headquarters at Northwood in Greater London.”
From Foreign policy research institute
“A May 2004 government report found that there were up to 10,000 active Al Qaeda supporters in the UK, while a joint report by the Home and Foreign Offices estimated that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity was “less than 1 percent” of Britain’s Muslim population, which would still be some 16,000.“
From Pakistan Facts
“Just weeks ago, a Pakistani man named Ghulam Rana was convicted in France of terrorism related charges. The trial documents noted that Rana was a LeT activist. Another LeT man was deported from Germany just days earlier. Far away Australia is witnessing a series of arrests and trials of people caught before they were able to conduct terrorist attacks. Their alleged list of targets included a nuclear power plant outside Sydney. Here too, the mastermind was a Pakistani LeT jihadist named Faheem Lodhi. The Australian, French and Virginia trials were all connected to the same LeT cell. Testimony during the French trial noted that the LeT suspects admitted to being given military training in facilities guarded by Pakistan army soldiers.”
From Foreign Affairs, on Pakistan’s Jihad culture:
“Most of the militant groups’ funding, however, comes in the form of anonymous donations sent directly to their bank accounts. Lashkar-i-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”), a rapidly growing Ahle Hadith (Wahhabi) group, raises funds on the Internet. Lashkar and its parent organization, Markaz ad-Da’wa Wal Irshad (Center for Islamic Invitation and Guidance), have raised so much money, mostly from sympathetic Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, that they are reportedly planning to open their own bank.
Individual “mujahideen” also benefit financially from this generous funding”
I have a suggestion for you people. How about you tell your govt, yes those goddamn Republicans, to stop funding dictatorships in the Middle East that actually help the proliferation of the miltant groups, and give money to dangerous Mosques in Europe.
Whatever country you’re from, I’m sure it is also allied with Saudi Arabia; it also funds dictatorships in the Middlle East. So, you stop buying Saudi oil, stop selling them weapons…. that sorta thing.
I look down on Europe because they appear to be incapable of defending themselves. Being able to defend oneself used to be a prerequisite for being called a nation.
Lmao.
maryatexitzero – a word of advice. If you’re going to teach me about what is going on in Europe, lay off the Fox News for a while, ok? I love it when some Americans speculate about events in Europe. It sounds like a bunch of five year old kids discussing what sex must be like.
Anyway, enough of the condescension.
Sunny – When Theo Van Gogh was killed in the Netherlands, Der Spiegel noted that the killer’s actual target was Dutch legislator Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She and other legislators were so vulnerable to extremist death threats, they had to leave the Netherlands to hide in the United States for a while.
In short, a Western nation couldn’t defend its own legislators against an occupying Islamic paramilitary group. That’s pretty sad.
I don’t support the death of Theo Van Gogh or anyone else for that matter for saying how they feel, but this paramilitary bullshit just makes me laugh.
For standing up to religious fanatics, I’ve been threatened by Hindu groups, Muslims, Sikhs, and even the British far-right. It’s all good. There are idiots anywhere and the Al-Qaeda do spend some time trying to ideaologically inseminate young kids with their brand of drivel.
But to think Saudi Arabia is funding secret para-military groups that do a contract killing on people who speak out is just pure funny. For a start we’d have a lot more killings going on regularly.
If the world blames the French, and if the French make concessions to the Muslims, the success of this tactic will probably be repeated throughout Europe.
Try reading what Dalrymple actually says in the article that NNC quotes.
I have a suggestion for you people. How about you tell your govt, yes those goddamn Republicans, to stop funding dictatorships in the Middle East that actually help the proliferation of the miltant groups, and give money to dangerous Mosques in Europe.
The big white elephant in this room is how the American govt supports those regimes that suit it, who secretly fund many Islamist groups. Rather than blaming all Muslims, or rubbing your hand with glee when young kids in France (who probably hate the Saudis as much as they hate the French police) go on a riot.
You know, stop buying Saudi oil, stop selling them weapons, stop supporting them with aid…. that sorta thing. It’s so easy to look down on Europe and blame them for not “dealing with” Islamists, without taking into account how the US govt is complicit in all this.
Ymarsakar:
RE: the war in Iraq; certainly I see it as a strategic step toward a goal of eliminating pockets of radicalism in the ME, and I support the decision to go into Iraq. But I don’t kid myself that it is a “solution” to the problem of Islamic terrorism. Terrorism will likely go on long after Iraq is stablized.
The reason I keep stressing the need to look at the riot situation carefully and completely, is that it is my hope that by doing so, here in America we can avoid a similar situation. One of the biggist “isms” in America is racism, and it is being used as a tool, in some cases in conjunction with Islam, to unite & incite our own disaffected populations.
We can learn some lessons from these riots:
1) An economy needs to keep the doors of opportunity open to all citizens; and discourage the “ghetto-ization” of any segment of the populace. Promoting economic prosperity for all, stymies the influence of “isms.”
2) Welfare, as a long term solution to poverty, is an abject failure.
3) Liberalism in this country needs to rethink its love affair with socialism.
There are doubtless many other lessions to discover if we stay attentive and open minded.
By the way, to say you ignore a variable you cannot change is tantamount to admiting defeat. One should be very thoughtful before admitting defeat.
Sunny – When Theo Van Gogh was killed in the Netherlands, Der Spiegel noted that the killer’s actual target was Dutch legislator Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She and other legislators were so vulnerable to extremist death threats, they had to leave the Netherlands to hide in the United States for a while.
In short, a Western nation couldn’t defend its own legislators against an occupying Islamic paramilitary group. That’s pretty sad.
These Islamist state-trained paramilitary groups are occupying most large cities in Europe. They’ve been in Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and France for years. Please don’t insult our intelligence by pretending they’re not.
Since Islamist states have paid to train these paramilitaries, they must be expecting them to DO something. This may be what they’re doing. I’d guess that they’re experimenting with different techniques for starting a fire. It didn’t catch in Britain, it may not catch in Denmark, but it sure did catch in Paris. If the world blames the French, and if the French make concessions to the Muslims, the success of this tactic will probably be repeated throughout Europe.
If the European police and military forces can’t even guarantee Hirsi Ali’s safety, I doubt that they have the resources to fight this new ‘spontaneous riot’ tactic. Hope I’m wrong.
Europe doesn’t know how to do that. It goes against the grain of… aristocratic heredity. America is not a heirarchy where the top echelons are the most vigorous, we are a bottom up society in which it is the lower tiers that fight our wars, win our fights, and keeps this nation strong and everlasting.
Ymarsakar do you usually smoke crack when you type messages? I can’t be asked to dignify your post. You make so many foolish assumptions about Europe, which is seen as one monolithic whole when there is nothing further than the truth, that there is no point. Thanks for reading my points anyway. We must agree to disagree.
If Catholics were rioting, and murdering people by blowing themselves up in places as disparate and distant as Australia and Bali adn the US and Spain, and doing it at least partly in the name of Catholicism, I would indeed think we had a Catholic problem.
Well, let’s see. We have Spanish terrorists in the form of ETA. We have the Catholic Pope causing untold emotional and physical damage by not letting Catholics use contraception. And then we have the war in Iraq, where a country is being liberated through “shock and awe”, based on evidence about WMD which subsequently turned out to be rubbish.
Is anyone counting how many Muslims are being killed by the American forces there? The Pentagon might not be, but trust me the Muslim world is.
So yes, I guess it does come down to what you choose to see and how you bring together disparate events.
Just because a person is Muslim does not mean their religion is responsible for the rioting, any more than Christianity is responsible for the killings of Africans and Indians during colonialism and of Native Americans by white colonial settlers (though it was cited extensively).
If you are speaking of real solutions, then that’s an impasse. Because a real solution would be an American solution, a cowboy solution, a solution equal parts efficiency and compassion. An “Iraqi” solution even.
They aren’t going to buy that.
So even if we wanted to change the poverty, we can’t, not because we won’t but because we just can’t. Not without replacing France’s democracy.
I am of the view that you need to ignore, as if it wasn’t there, variables that you can’t change. If you are attempting to solve a problem, it does no one good to dwell on what one cannot change.
Poverty cannot be changed, because of the elements I listed. Islamic fanaticism can be affected one way or another.
Speaking to the citizens of France, I do not believe the solution will arrive politically. If anything happens, it will be because of grass roots.
If the grass roots can be mobilized, then something good might result.
If it can’t be, then the only option left is to fight Islamic terror, and fight it hard to make up for the lack of better solutions.
“Compared to that, how is it ever your problem to solve their economical difficulties?”
I think it becomes my problem when they are threatening to blow me up. 😉
But seriously, I agree that you cannot replace poverty with welfare and expect a thank you. But we, as a society, cannot just sit back and watch a surging underclass growing more and more radical, and simply say “it’s not my problem”.
I’ll be the first to state that poverty is not a simple problem that can be easily solved. If you read the second part of the paragraph you quoted from, I stated it may be impossible to solve.
But we cannot ignore this side of the equation in the cause of the rioting any more than we can ignore the influence radical Islam may have.
To neo, sunny, and some anonymous people, notherbob2.
Islam isn’t incidental at all, given how fascism derived from Islamic practices or Whabbism from fascism either way, Islamic societies benefited from Soviet Communist police methods, and Islam’s government system itself derived from Soviet intervention groups.
The ties that bind us are all too easily to overlook and rationalize. Without looking deeper, without thinking harder, without the iron hard concentration of a human mind dedicated to the truth, you will miss the nature of the enemy and in so doing, you will ultimately fail in protecting yourself against thy enemy.
That is the consequence of inaccurately reading the enemy, in ages past. It has consistently been thus.
Solving the economic problems of the poor and marginalized would certainly reduce the pool of recruits for the “-Isms” .
You cannot solve the economic problems principally because they are not yours to solve. They would resent the “Other” coming into their society, and telling them (the Jihad of Islam) what to do.
Nor could you solve it without their help. And you won’t get their help. Any help you offer as part of a socialized system or “group therapy” will be returned with death threats, bombs, and suicide bombs. They see your attempts to “help” as attempts to control them, tell them what to do, and inflicting your weak decadent Western inhibitions upon a people that view themselves as God’s chosen people, ruthless with determination and piety.
Compared to that, how is it ever your problem to solve their economical difficulties?
On to another topic.
The thing about France and UK, while different, is still the same problem in the end. And that is, that regardless of whether the French want the immigrants to assimilate or not, the truth is that there is nothing to assimilate into nor any real reason to do so.
There is no reason to learn French, French is not the language to get jobs. Not when France can’t create a pro-business sector to attract jobs anyway.
English is the language to get jobs.
The difference then factors to this. That suicide bombers in UK are rich idiot kids, from second or third generation immigrants, who are lost in a sea of stupidity and martyrdoom. While the riots in France were caused and instigated by poor people. Who funded the riots, the communications, and the organization though? I bet you can follow the money to a “not so poor” source.
The ends, are the same. To force a society to change its laws, to accomodate a select Elite,
The proper framework to understand this phenomenon is not based upon class, but based upon goals and means. It is of no material worth how rich or poor they are, or for what reasons they go to Jihad, so long as their contributions contribute to an overthrow of the government or some other goal instigated by Islamic Jihad stationed in the ME.
STILL, you beat that “not assimilated drum” blindly. If they had white skin, woould you still say that? What exactly does one have to do to be assimilated, please tell me.
I don’t think Sun understand what assimilation is supposed to be.
Perhaps the reason Europe so scorns assimilation is that they see assimilation as forcing one culture to become another kind of culture by force or coercion. But assimilation done correctly, is just like forming associations correctly.
You build from the ground up, through supports that support each other, that don’t weaken the structural integrity of the whole. A firm foundation is required.
That foundation is the American work ethic, and possibility of advancement, as well as a mighty dose of pragmatism.
Layered upon this foundation, are the cultural diversity that are the Asians, Hispanics, Europeans, and so on.
They contribute their share to the American Dream, through providing us the best from their culture and point of view, while shedding all the weaknesses in the struts. Therefore we derive a very strong metallic alloy to be used as the supports for our building the future.
In the end, America takes the best from people, collects them into a whole, lets everyone learn from the experience, and then throws away the junk.
You can see it even in the English language, especially in the English language. Whereas to the French, assimilation means “to Speak French” and only French. No use of the word “E-Mails” or any other such unFrenchified ness.
In English, we take and steal all kinds of words and then use them in a polyglot, mongrel sort of fashion.
Repertoire, touche, German words, British words, Australians, mate, comrade, anything and everything is assimilated.
Europe doesn’t know how to do that. It goes against the grain of… aristocratic heredity. America is not a heirarchy where the top echelons are the most vigorous, we are a bottom up society in which it is the lower tiers that fight our wars, win our fights, and keeps this nation strong and everlasting.
It is an example of excellent par none, that the “lower tiers” now composite the sons of Senators and Congressmen, the sons of rich wasps, as well as the sons and daughters of less affluent folk.
Using the “build from a strong foundation” principle, we have made a social structure that has very few if any weak links.
Unlike Europe, all of our weight is not at the top, all of our strength is not at the bottom nor at the top, and all of our labor force is also not unequally distributed across the building.
It is much harder to collapse a well balanced and supported building, than it is to blow over an imbalanced society founded upon nothingness.
You have a bunch of clueless head-line names speculating like mad about an issue they know very little about. A cursory examination blows apart their theories.
It is a law that is unbroken, that well read Americans like Neo-Neocon and me, know more about Europe than supposedly European intellectuals know about America and strength.
I do not believe anything has come up to change that fact.
Look at it this way, ladies and gentleman. Europe looks at the issues that plague them one way, Their Way, all others are inappropriate.
Neo-Neocon and me, we base our perspectives not upon what we dug up out of the ground, but from such notables as people actually living in the regions in question. Such as Melannie Phillips and Dam…(something).
Our information is sourced from people who make it their jobs and their survival to know the Truth about their surroundings.
We steal their knowledge, and apply it to our own practical uses.
That has been the secret to American success for… I don’t know how long. We don’t just steal other people’s ideas, we actually improve upon them. And we also steal the best inventors, and they do the improving afterwards.
Like gunpowder. Europe has lost sight of the ability to steal other people’s talents and strengths, to fix their problems.
We have not. And that is the difference.
And that is why people will always see such a disconnect when talking about America or Europe or Japan for that matter.
Cause the Japanese are rising again, and they know as much English as they know their native Japanese. I wonder why… why their popular songs are done as much in English as in japanese… where English words are used to emphasize coolness and new concepts…
The Japanese are adopting the American model for success, not the European. That is why they will be attacked. As the United States has been, for being a mongrel-like hideously distorted nation that bred from the bottom up, rather than the top down as an aristocracy would.
The thrust of the Dalrymple article is that in France this has not happened, especially the economic part.
It has happened however, if by assimilation you mean “French assimilation”. Having now assimilated immigrants into a sullen, depressed, and powerless group, the assimilation is now unraveling given Islamic influences and money and spontaneous funded riots.
I do believe Dam uses the word assimilate in the American vein, and he is correct to say that it is not successful.
By if you look at it from a French/European perspective… things change a bit.
Sunny is obviously looking at this from such a perspective. It would help to know one’s opponent.
There is a real problem when we polarize all arguments to “us vs. them”, and then refuse to listen to what the other side is saying. There IS an economic aspect to the riots, and there IS a cultural aspect (radical Islam) as well.
Radical Islam is being used by extremists who are intent on establishing the worldwide Caliphate, as a tool to unite those who are, or believe themselves to be, part of a disenfranchised population. This is happening not just in Europe’s slums but in US prison’s as well. And it recruits not just minorities; witness John Walker Lind (sp?). There is no need to speculate about this goal. It has been stated many times by the extremists themselves.
It is the age old story of one group’s desire to assert its point of view over all others. The fact that the uniting ideology is Islam is incidental; it could have been any ideology, (in the past it was Catholicism, communism, fascism, insert your ‘ism); but radical Islam is a reality, and to ignore it is to view the problem wearing blinders. Those who are using Islam , “hijacking” it as some call it, may not even agree on their specific goals or on the means to accomplish their ends; but the ultimate aim is always, and has always been, power and control.
To combat this problem we need to look at it in it’s entirety; and not just pick out the aspects that agree with our, often simplified, view of reality.
Solving the economic problems of the poor and marginalized would certainly reduce the pool of recruits for the “-Isms” . But that is a long term and possibly impossible goal, if history is any indicator. So in the meantime we need to recognize and understand the current “-ism”, and do our best to find ways to reduce or replace its influence over the neediest in our societies.
Sunny, it is interesting how you require me to have written on every possible relevant topic (such as northern Ireland) to be able to make a point about a certain topic. No, I don’t write about everything, just whatever happens to interest me most at the moment.
If Catholics were rioting, and murdering people by blowing themselves up in places as disparate and distant as Australia and Bali adn the US and Spain, and doing it at least partly in the name of Catholicism, I would indeed think we had a Catholic problem.
And it would help if, when you quote someone, you would identify whom you are quoting. “You” is an awfully general word when there are so many comments. The quotes in your most recent post, for example, were not of anything I ever said, so I assume you are referring to another “you.”
And, by the way, do you reside in the US? In fact, the groups you mentioned in the US–Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, etc., are extremely well-assimilated in general. “Assimilation” is a relative word which does not mean losing every particle of cultural identity, and assimilation doesn’t usually happen in the very first generation. The key is whether the children are assimilated to the general culture, and especially–as I said before–economically. The thrust of the Dalrymple article is that in France this has not happened, especially the economic part.
And whether or not they speak French is not the issue. They are neither culturally nor economically assimilated, that is the point.
Any examples of extending the same coverage to whites then? Like say… commentary on the recent three-day riot by the Irish in northern Ireland Was that a Catholic problem you suppose?
Regarding the point you make above. Why do you think they are not economically assimilated?
Also, why does one have to be culturally assimilated? What does that entail? The Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indians and many others do fine in America without cultural assimilation. Do you view that as a problem?
In the US, at least, all three of these cultures have assimilated quite well with the dominant culture, contrast that with the lack of assimilation of European Muslims
Rubbish – what method of comparison are you using?
Secondly, we were talking of cultural bias towards women as far as I’m aware. Have you ever been to India or Japan. Seen the endemic sexism within those cultures in America and the UK? I have, and I try to fight it every day. So please don’t make comparisons you have no clue about.
Also does anybody think that there is any comparison between tribal Muslim culture and modern Japanese, Chinese, or Indian cultures?
You clearly have nooooo clue or have ever been to India.
but I see no one has replied to my comparison with the Indian, Chinese and Japanese communities.
Probably because it’s not a very valid comparison. In the US, at least, all three of these cultures have assimilated quite well with the dominant culture, contrast that with the lack of assimilation of European Muslims. Also does anybody think that there is any comparison between tribal Muslim culture and modern Japanese, Chinese, or Indian cultures?
Sunny: From your remarks, I continue to believe you either have not read my post, or have read it and do not understand it, or have read it and understand it and are pretending you do not for the sake of argument.
However, I will answer one question of yours (in your 1:10 PM comment): “If they had white skin, would you still say that?” (meaning, would you still say they were unassimilated?)
The answer: yes, absolutely. And whether or not they speak French is not the issue. They are neither culturally nor economically assimilated, that is the point.
Other points:
Mary:
This “spontaneous” riot was caused by a rumor spread by pirate radio stations of a rape, and the murder of a black man by a group of Pakistani youths.
Well, how reductionist of you. So the fact that rumours of a rape were spread by black stations, which were clearly not substantiated, and still haven’t been several weeks after the alleged incident, does not mean a thing?
Melanie chats out of her arse. She’s great at that. Two gangs killed during the riots, although people get killed by gangs in that area all the time. One was an Asian gang, and one a black gang. This is not unusual in itself, it’s just people again love to make a big deal when Muslims are involved.
also inspired by a vague and uncertain set of circumstances.
Because the death of two kids is oh so vague.
And hatred of the police is universal amongst poor communities, doesn’t matter what you call them. Black youths in the UK hate them too because they are 8 times more likely to be stopped than anyone white.
and lastly:
Ymarsakar said…
The thing Sunny hasn’t been able to accomplish is to counter Dam’s analysis about how the religion of Islam motivates and allows disaffected immigrants in Britain to justify violence, cultural backwardness, crimes, and hatred.
Please – why don’t you tell me. Someone already tried the stupid argument about a sexist culture, but I see no one has replied to my comparison with the Indian, Chinese and Japanese communities.
Anyone care to guess why the French religious symbol ban is now seen exclusively as a “headscarf” ban?M
You mean apart from the fact that it was sparked by girls wearing headscarves, and that no one had said anything about banning religious symbols at school before it became a “Muslim problem”? Sheesh.
Neo-neo-con, let’s see:
its huge and largely unassimilated Moslem immigrant population (originally of immigrants but now including their European-born children), bulging in its belly like the meal of a boa constrictor afflicted with terrible indigestion.
Love the wording, but like I said, it is more scaremongering than anything grounded in reality.
I came from a conference on European ethnic media in Paris a few weeks before, and the biggest Morrocan magazines in France and Netherlands are in French and Ducth respectively. They speak European languages, not Morrocan, and the kids caught on camera on TV all said they were French and were retaliating against the way the police treated.
STILL, you beat that “not assimilated drum” blindly. If they had white skin, woould you still say that? What exactly does one have to do to be assimilated, please tell me.
As one might expect, there is deep disagreement between those who believe only in prevention and think they have a kindler, gentler answer–the leftists and Socialists–and those who believe that the situation has gone on long enough and a firm and immediate crackdown is necessary
As opposed to the lefties who believe that the “immigrants” should just have more equality?
Or sorry, is that too much whining for you?
And the last example of your naivety. You quote Fukayama, the person who said they political history was coming to an end, only because he uses the Muslim angle to talk about integrating immigrant communities.
Firstly, all these communities are not homogenous. Secondly, many in the UK are not even Muslim. Thirdly, the Dutch and the French have had vastly different models to deal with integration, and going by recent media hysteria – both models have failed.
In fact all the media does is keep adopting different models as examples like a pack of wolves, and dropping them as soon as something happens.
The French headscarf ban has been largely accepted by the French Muslims, but it is a solution for that country only, not for England or the Dutch. Or even the Americans. So my point is again this: You have a bunch of clueless head-line names speculating like mad about an issue they know very little about. A cursory examination blows apart their theories.
The French “headscarves ban” is a poor example, because it wasn’t just a headscarf ban; it was a ban on ALL religious accoutrements, not only Muslim headscarves but also Christian crucifixes (crucifi?) and Jewish yarmulkes. In short, it was typical PC run amok… in cases where all cultures can’t be equally respected, they must be equally eliminated.
Anyone care to guess why the French religious symbol ban is now seen exclusively as a “headscarf” ban? I figure I’ve been insensitive enough for one day.
It was only a matter of time before a situation was sparked in the tinderbox of the French suburbs..
Yeah, right. Tell us the oppression and humiliation that sparked the tinderbox in Denmark..and the tinderbox in Britain…and India..and Thailand..and Indonesia..and Israel.
Here is a little different take by Joel Shepard via Instapundit:
The problem in France is not the same as in the UK or the Netherlands. There, there’s been an overdose of PC multi culturalism… but American critics are wrong to assign that to France. France HAS insisted on integration, as seen by the controversial ban on headscarves in French schools. And most French muslims do consider themselves French, to varying degrees, and Islamic extremism is pretty small thing here (there was far more protest against the headscarf ban outside of France than inside). So it’s not an intefada.
There’s just no damn jobs. White college grads can’t get jobs, what hope do immigrants from regions with bad schools have? I think this is more like the LA Rodney King riots — there’s people there who want the French dream, just as in LA people wanted the American dream, but they just don’t see it when they look around, and they resent the fact enormously. They can’t change schools to get a better education because the government says you have to go to the school where you live, and they live where they do because of the zoning laws… which I’m no expert about, but I do know that the government owns 30 percent of all housing in France, and poor immigrants basically live where they’re told. The government tries to give them everything and does it extremely badly, there’s no upward mobility, and it doesn’t breed a happy community. Religion exacerbates the feeling of exclusion, I’m sure, but the rioting seems mostly driven by economics and bad social policy.
So yeah, it’s a stupid French government problem, but not the one some American critics are ascribing… however attractive it might be to do so.
“How on earth could you read my post and come to the conclusion that that’s what I was saying?”
Simple answer: they didn’t, they’re just pretending they did in an effort to put you on the defensive.
Most important thing to realize about the War on Terror is that the enemy will lie so blatantly that it makes rational people wonder if they have gone mad. Such lies are intended to paralyze rational minds with astonishment and self-doubt, and thus chill debate. George Galloway is a master of this.
The proper response is to either call “bullshit” and move on, or (if you have the political capital to do so) calmly record the liar’s bluster, and then use it as evidence in a later perjury case.+
Oh ya, above post, for the sake of reference, is using parts of Sunny’s, Neo Neo’s, and jensdensen’s posts.
“I’m happy to call a spade a spade”
I call bullshit. You wouldn’t be nattering on about the fine differences in gardening implements if you were.
You find no need to discuss things with us fools, and we find no need to discuss things with weasely liars. Time for us to go our separate ways, I’d say.
The thing Sunny hasn’t been able to accomplish is to counter Dam’s analysis about how the religion of Islam motivates and allows disaffected immigrants in Britain to justify violence, cultural backwardness, crimes, and hatred.
Sunny could blame it all on the French police, but whose Mullah House were the British breaking into before the bombings?
Lastly. When there is a riot or an issue in America which is started by black or Hispanics, do you talk about an “immigrant” population? Does their religion come into it?
Last Riot I remember was the LA riots and that one up at Ohio with the Nazis being attacked by black gang members.
The LA riot was found out to be started by liberal white man mass media, not by priests and black demagogues, when they showed Rodney King being beaten and spliced the video to make it into a propaganda tool.
So no, we don’t talk about immigration problems for the sole fact that there are much fewer immigration problems in the US than in Europe. That is downright obvious to the people in America.
What is not obvious, is how whenever there is a situation in Europe that is going bad, people start talking about how Americans have their own equal problems. (Crime) Or don’t, as the case may be.
The truth is we don’t, and blaming Americans for not having these same problems as justifications that these same problems don’t exist in Europe, is not really going to change the facts on the ground.
This ties into the victimhood culture, and psychological defense mechanisms that prevent Europe from facing their problems and solving them. That is sad, but Americans aren’t the cause of it just cause we are criticizing Europe for something that we ourselves have already solved for the most part.
It’s one thing if America had the same kind of problems in the same proportion, and we criticized Europe. Then it’d be like Europe to be criticizing us for our crime, when their crime is higher, be like Europe to be criticizing us for our economy, when their unemployment is rockets higher than ours. Obviously people shouldn’t do that.
So, it is not the same thing, and it is not parallel to other situations.
Then suddenly they all become potential suicide bombers even if they are just angry about general police brutality or lack of economic opportunity.
Making excuses for the criminals and the rioteers, is not going to solve the problem.
If Europeans, and it doesn’t really matter if Sunny is a European or not, continue to act as if the problem is lesser than it is, they will greater problems. Greater problems than they already face as of now. Which are monumentous in itself.
There’s no need to learn the deeper issues anymore when Muslims are involved. For the mob baying blood, they have become a problem unto themselves.
Someone has obviously not read Dam’s article, either of them, as well as not understanding the arguments being made if one did read them.
I am amazed at that amount of illiteracy going on. And not just on paper either.
How on earth could you read my post and come to the conclusion that that’s what I was saying?
i’ve been saying this for awhile now, illiteracy for those who read the internet, is going up ; )
Seems to be true, especially for those bloggers that use the long essay format. Someone could read all of Bill Whittle’s stuff, and comment on the first sentence only with disagreement.
It is an amazing phenomenon.
All the arguments are in the link I put up, and Dam gives a good introduction of his analytical and logical manner of analysis in the link Neo Neo put up. But if someone doesn’t know them, then ignorancy is their excuse and shield.
I do believe there is a real benefit to illiteracy now. It isn’t just a liability like it was before.
On some level the people know all this and are trying to kick the police out.
Rebellion succedes on the basic premise that it can get various political groups together, that would otherwise be mortal enemies. If they succede in getting moderate French support by decrying economic destitution, then acquire radical Muslim support through jihad, they will have a powerful base from which to launch their strike.
It is consistent with my earlier prediction that Europe is the next battleground of Islamic Terror, even if we were to clear out the Middle East.
All they have to do is take over France, to acquire their nukes. And taking over France, may or may not be harder than fighting us in Iraq.
It was only a matter of time before a situation was sparked in the tinderbox of the French suburbs. While the French Government has ruled with its laissez faire approach, many of its inhabitants suffer the effects of inequality, unemployment, and marginalisation, particularly North African migrants. Instead of sidestepping this reality by deluding itself with the imagined notion of a community sipping wine in Ché¢teaus with sexy French girls, the Government would have been much better of remembering the Revolution! One resident has summed up the situation by saying;
“Anything could have started it,” … “When you’re an immigrant here, you’re just stuck in your shit. Does it really surprise you it’s going up in flames?”
There’s no need to learn the deeper issues anymore when Muslims are involved.
A few relevant “deeper issues”
On October 26th, Melanie Phillips discussed a riot that took place in Birmingham, England between Pakistani immigrants and blacks. This riot was reported in the local and international press. This “spontaneous” riot was caused by a rumor spread by pirate radio stations of a rape, and the murder of a black man by a group of Pakistani youths.
These “spontaneous” riots in Paris started at about the same time, also inspired by a vague and uncertain set of circumstances. According to recent reports, rioters are shooting at the police with real bullets. Blogs have been set up to help the rioters create a ‘ring of fire’ around the city. Quotes include:
“Clichy guy needs help to screw the cops”, “May God bless France because the war has begun”, and of course the usual rubbish about Allah and paradise and the like.
(I think keufs is the current slang for cops)
On October 15th, a blogger reported that he had seen signs in Denmark threatening violent jihad (saying that the mujahideen had chosen specific targets in Denmark. The blogger had seen those same posters in Sweden.
The subsequent riots were supposed to have been caused by a series of cartoons about Mohammed; they were also related to an incident where a Somali boy threw a rock through a window. The riots in Denmark are taking place at about the same time as the riots in Paris, with one difference. The rioters in Denmark admitted that they had been planning this for three weeks.
So, let’s see, we have three riots taking place in three separate European countries at the same time, all with a similarly vague cause. That’s not even mentioning the 3,000+ violent, “spontaneous” incidents around the world that have involved Muslims who, like many of the rioters, have coincidentally listened to Saudi sponsored preachers, communicate with each other via the internet and who have had paramilitary training.
You say: NNC says “its Muslims! See Europe, its time to wake up”, and the rest lap it up.
You’re right, it’s all our fault, we’re making it happen.
Antoine de St-Exupery:
“If you want a group of men to love one another, constrain them to join in the buiding of a tower. If you want them to hate one another, throw bread among them.”
(quoting from memory; this is from “Citadelle”, which was published in the under the ridicuous title “Wisdom of the Sands.”
What you have here is a bunch of people living in a certain place who are not allowed to run their lives and economic affairs the way they see fit. I am not sure but the impression I get is that it’s pretty hard to set up some sort of bussiness activity there and/or hire people. The economy is driven downwards, a shop or factory is visible and easy target for the bureaucrats. What’s left is the ‘black’ economy of drug dealing and the like. This does not allow for much capital accumulation which drives local wages downward, below the french minimum wage, hence the high unemployement. Welfare and the stalinist housing don’t help matters much. On some level the people know all this and are trying to kick the police out.
Sacré bleu!
PS: Yaakov, I love your work…
Those that would not oppose Islamic terror in Israel now get a chance to face it in their own cities. Unfortunately that is of no comfort. I wish it were.
Goodbye “French” France.
Dry Bones
Foobarista is correct–this is mostly about the failure of the eurosocial model.
Note that the french-left proposal to the problem is two-fold: blame the reaction to the problem as the cause of the problem, and to demand higher spending but without embracing the anglo model of wealth creation through pro-expansion capitalist policies. IE, they will burden the productive classes even more. We see the result of these policies every time–socialism doesn’t make everybody equally rich, it makes everybody equally poor–and we are seeing the beginnings of it now.
It will get much worse for them before it gets better. The upside is that the US is somewhat sheltered from the phenomenon mostly because we provide opportunity. That’s not the only differentiator [did you know that most of our Arab immigrants are Christian, while most of theirs are muslim], but it is by far the most important in the end.
It is simply this. Rich people don’t riot.
-I’m not sure about the very rich, but I can think of instances from my dissolute youth that demonstrate the well-off middle classes can riot.
Here is a famous conservative bourgeois riot from
Canadian history
There must be others I can’t think of at the moment.
The Real Elephant in the room is the welfare state and its inability to assimilate immigrants. Assimilation is hard, and many won’t try unless they have a powerful incentive to do so. A stick and a carrot are both needed, and a European-style cocooning welfare state provides neither.
In the US case, the stick is near destitution if one chooses not to work, and the carrot is the opportunity to advance to the middle class and beyond if one works hard and builds a life. And no, this isn’t just a myth: my immigrant wife is a business broker and sees recent immigrants buying and selling businesses every day. Many of these businessmen are Arab or Iranian Muslims.
Sunny, you seem to have not read my post. Or, if you read it, you seem not to have understood it. “No need to learn the deeper issues when it’s Moslems involved?” (Sunny at 11:09 PM). How on earth could you read my post and come to the conclusion that that’s what I was saying? The bulk of the post is in fact about those deeper issues.
The fact that the rioters are Moslems is part of the problem, but it’s not the whole problem by any means. To ignore the fact that these people are Moslems would be foolish. To say that’s the entire story would be equally foolish, and I certainly said nothing of the sort.
As far as my reference to Europe’s “sleeping” goes–I didn’t mean to imply that in recent years various countries in Europe haven’t worried about the problem, perhaps even to the point of, as you say, “hysteria.” They have worried and they have talked, but as far as I can see they have avoided even attempting to do much about it. Meanwhile, the problem grew, and has become quite explosive.
Societies which oppress women seem to invariably have narcissistic young men, impulsive, quick to take offense, prone to the opposite poles of hedonism and fanatic moral rigor over trifles.
The same reasoning however falls down when applied to the Indians, Japanese and Chinese.
It is simply this. Rich people don’t riot.
then you are too simpleminded and culturally insensitive to discuss anything with Sunny.
Yawn. Please don’t throw the politically correct bullshit at me please. I’m happy to call a spade a spade, but I just find it hilarious when its a case of the one-eyed king leading the blind.
NNC says “its Muslims! See Europe, its time to wake up”, and the rest lap it up.
There’s no need to learn the deeper issues anymore when Muslims are involved. For the mob baying blood, they have become a problem unto themselves.
I just wanted to point out the inconsistencies in the reasoning here. I don’t give a crap about being PC.
If I were a jihadist organizer, I certainly would want to spill it over into the better neighborhoods to see how far and long the riots can go. There is a bit more at work here than some frustrated youths unwilling to become acculturated. With numbers, you’ve got power, the first rule of the street. Street power is defined by action alone. The bolsheviks, the brown shirts, the orgnizers of the palestinian street resistance all understood this, as did Mao and many others. This current action shows what the response/retaliation will be like and it shows the numbers who will hit the street and who exactly will engage and not just be passive observors/bystanders. It is called the initiation of cadres.
Yes. To say they’re all Muslims would be simplistic, but anyone who doesn’t know that the root problem of this discussion is Islam (Muslims) and all it stands for (not just mistreating women), has not lived with them and tried to teach them, e.g. “I wasn’t lying to you; I was just talking.” I wonder if the yet to be published “Mosque of Notre Dame” will get anyone’s attention when translated into English. Mark
Interesting how all those French Algerians and French blacks and French whites all are acting together to destroy Paris. What could the common link between them all possibly be?
If you say “they’re all MUSLIMS,” then you are too simpleminded and culturally insensitive to discuss anything with Sunny. Good on ya, mate!
Assistant Village Idiot . . .
I agree with your view that the existing Muslim culture that tries to control women is the main source of its woes. Arabs will never progress until Arab women have the same rights and freedoms as Arab men.
Right now the Arab culture encourages men to take out their failures on Arab women. When I hear Arab men complain of “humiliation,” I close my ears. They must learn to exist on their own merits, not the enforced inferiority of the women in their families.
While I take Sunny’s point that all situations are more complicated than we tend to categorize them, I think there is still justification for regarding the Islamic background (and partial adherence) of the rioters as an important element.
It is true that the Middle-eastern men who have immigrated into European countries often display a remarkable lack of traditional Islamic practice, but it is also true that they require much stricter observation by the females. They may be relying on their religion only for the cultural support it gives to their desires, but that veneer allows them to remain culturally identified with and supported by more observant Muslims. This feeling of communal support, not altogether illusory, is very much a part of their courage in rioting. They do not believe they will be held to account.
Societies which oppress women seem to invariably have narcissistic young men, impulsive, quick to take offense, prone to the opposite poles of hedonism and fanatic moral rigor over trifles. My guess is that it is extremely unhealthy for a boy to pass his mother in status at a young age.
One more comment, if I may. Europe has definitely not been sleeping. In fact it has been living in hysteria over immigration and Muslims for years now. It got to a stage of stupidity after Theo Van Gogh’s murder last year (though I do not condone that), but the idea that Europe has been “sleeping” is once again a convenient but biased way of interpreting the situation.
I’ll probably repeat the following thoughts on various blogs over and over, so please forgive me in advance.
Teaching about one’s history and culture is not difficult, and it does NOT have to involve rude overly nationalistic teachings. Some of the great minds of our age should check out the South Korean educational system, for example. They don’t have any trouble at all teaching the things that make Korea special. Israelis didn’t have (maybe they do now) have any trouble teaching Jewish and Israeli history. It’s only in places like the U.S., where multicultis have a death grip on the educational system, that teaching about Western and U.S. traditions and culture has become a problem.
On the other hand, I–whose family just stepped off the boat–know a huge amount about American history and culture and have no problem personally identifying with Betsy Ross, Annie Oakley, Amelia Earhart, and my other fellow Americans.
I don’t know why the French find teaching about France so difficult. One doesn’t have to be of ancient French lineage to teach about the culture. It’s amazing how such simple ideas such as “Americanization” and “Frenchification” (to coin a word) have become so difficult due to people over-intellectualizing a simple problem.
Argh, apologies for grammar or typos. I hate previewing.
There are a number of nuances your article or commentary does not take into account, making it rather one sides.
Firstly, to call then simply “European Muslims” is hoplessly reductionist. A lot, but not all, of the rioters are French Algerians. Many are black. Some even white french.
Secondly, the French Algerians are very different to British Muslims for example, who are mostly Kashmiri Pakistani. The ‘Berbers’ from Algeria do not see themselves as Arabs, are very removed from the Arab version of Islam, are quite secular. The ones in the UK for example freely drink and smoke hash.
So your commentary seems more like trying to force an event into how you would like to see the world (as having a Muslim problem), rather than the other way round.
Secondly, Dalrymple himself says:
But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order…
That is the solution right there, but everyone chooses to ignore it because again it does not fit into the agenda. Only earlier this year France had its first non-white TV presenter on national television. Those guys effectively ignore their immigrant populations, and can continue to do so because there are no figures on how diverse the work populations are (ethnicity cannot be measured).
The French minister is talking tough, but that is hardly going to make a segment of the population think he cares for them when he is calling them all criminals and scum.
Lastly. When there is a riot or an issue in America which is started by black or Hispanics, do you talk about an “immigrant” population? Does their religion come into it?
Clearly it does for you… but it is interesting that no one cares about a rioter’s religion unless that person is Muslim. Then suddenly they all become potential suicide bombers even if they are just angry about general police brutality or lack of economic opportunity.
Thanks for clarifying, neo.
meade: not a boa constrictor in general. A boa constrictor just for the sake of this one metaphor–and a sick boa constrictor at that, unable to digest its huge meal.
Ymarsakar: I don’t actually think Dalrymple was offering excuses. I just thought some people might read it that way.
Good recent article by Dalrymple that you linked. I’ll have to mull that one over, now that I’ve swallowed it whole :-).
As I believe Fukiyama said (or at least implied)–many European countries seem to be combining multiculturalism and nationalism in a particularly harmful way. The “multiculturalism” aspect is the idea that we don’t dare criticize any practices of another cultural. The “nationalism’ aspect is the belief that your are not *really* (German, French, Swedish, etc) unless you are of native racial background, or at least have deep roots in the country.
It makes no sense in logic to combine these beliefs, and turns out to make no sense in practice, either.
Anonymous said…
… belly like the meal of a boa constrictor afflicted with terrible indigestion.
Cool picture and article, anonymous! However, I don’t quite get neo’s likening Europe to a boa constrictor.
sorry– that was me above.
Ymarsakar extracts the central question raised by the Dalrymple articles:
WHAT is there to assimilate into, both in Europe and in the USA?
The articles give partial answers for Europe.
But in the USA, what’s left of the once dominant culture or creed immigrants sought to assimilate into? It was an Anglo-Saxon culture–by history, tradition, custom, law, and style. Immigrant groups strove to become “American,” which meant, without abandoning national or ethnic backgrounds, fitting into a societal order that valued Protestant middle class dreams (think Norman Rockwell’s depiction of Thanksgiving, think Reader’s Digest…) and professional dreams nourished by getting your “best and brightest” into Harvard or Yale. Entering the establishment did not mean becoming its slave, but there was an implicit acceptance of certain values (hard work, education, decorum, status…)
The groups that came did it. The Germans. The Jews. The East Europeans. The Irish. Now, the Asians.
And , until recently, it worked, reasonably well. There was a core, a creed, and it wasn’t just for Epicopalians or Brahmins. And those groups incorporated the unique contributions from immigrant groups (slowly and often painfully)–think Jewish humor–in the movies, on TV–it became as much the vocabulary in Boston as in NYC.
The point of all this–we have, duuring the past 25-30 years denied that such a core or creed, European in origin with an Athens-Jerusalem axis as its intellectual foundation, exists or should exist as our core. Twenty-five years of “cultural studies,” of relativism, of fierce anti-intellectualism (“nothing is better than anyhing else”) have eroded a core–imperfect and impure as it was.
You can and should study many cultures and understand and value their contributions to all of humanity. But it is impossible to assimilate into a “global culture.”
Is what’s happening in Europe not starting to happen here? Without the violence and seething hostility, for which we should be grateful.
The global marketplace may be inevitable, but a global culture is no culture at all–culture is rooted in traditions and values that have resided, for better and worse, in the philosophy, language, literature, music, arts, politics shared by people within chosen (USA) or arbitrary borders.
How are you going to maintain it if so many no longer believe in it?
Some of Doug’s point about national identity makes sense. Like happiness, sympathy, a number of worthwhile things, it is elusive to set out to construct it. It grows, often over centuries, and when it is destroyed, there is no re-manufacturing it on the cheap. Only “that which remains” holds any promise at this point, and there are forces of denial and contempt toward the robust shreds, forces who appear to have made a separate peace with eventual disaster.
Neo Neo, did you read his latest article yet?
This City Journal Article sourced from LGF, gives a good psychological perspective on the West(Europe’s) misinclinations and stupidities as relating to the Islamic terror in their midst.
One of the conclusions I derived from the author’s excellent analysis (steeped in psychology as the author seems to be a practicing doctor) is that the Muslim population in Europe isn’t assimilated, not because the Muslims keep themselves apart and ignore western culture like a group of Amish, but rather that there is NOTHING to assimilate into.
Not when the French don’t have a national identity other than “Anti” whatever America. Not when the British ban Fox Hunting, disparage all the conservative and healthy British virtues of moderation and pragmatism, and basically sink themselves into a cultural blackhole.
And not when the entire European culture is centered around one of “victimhood” and “blame others”.
Europe is reaping their oats and just deserts, and I wish, really wish, that Europe would stop dragging America into their shit for once in a life time.
If it isn’t WWI, WWII, the Soviets, then it is their colonies in the Middle East… *sighs*
Maybe we should have saved a nuke for Germany instead of the two Japan got in return for spiritual awakeness…
Extremist Islam will not succeed,and the attempt to make it do so, will only bring down its supporting culture as well.
Another conclusion I got from Mister Dalrymple (What a weird name) is that the Islamists aren’t going to destroy us with their culture, cause basically their culture sucks. Rather, they will be destroying the West via using the West’s own methods, wealth, and tactics against it.
So, while it is true that the Islamics will fall into their “Caliphate” thingie, it is not true that they can’t bring down the West in the doing so. Which is the point of Islamic nihilism. Absolute destruction for absolute destruction’s sake.
Vietnam is a failed state, but that didn’t mean they didn’t kick the US across the world. And it didn’t mean that they were fated to fail with communism. Islam can indeed succede with the Caliphate, but that requires some innovation. It is not impossible, don’t fall into the trap of believing so. That is what has unhinged most citizens in the West.
That last paragraph can be read as though it is offering an excuse for this turn to violence and to violent Islamic supremism. If that’s the case, I certainly don’t support such an excuse. But I do think Dalrymple’s article represents a good description of the phenomenon, an explanation that makes a great deal of sense.
Given how I see how Dam thinks, through his writings, I do not believe he was making excuses. Rather, if you take his writings as it is, independent of other people’s beliefs, then you will see that he just tells the truth. And his truth is sourced as much from his perceptions as from those of his enemies.
Is that not the psychological-epistemological style you yourself follow Neo-Neo?
To take all the facts into consideration, and making a synthetic conclusion.
Not just one side or that this or the other alone.
But getting the national identity question right is a delicate and elusive task.
uh, don’t you(or anyone else) think it is a little bit too late to be thinking about creating a national identity out of whole cloth when they’re staring down the barrel of a gun?
The most likely creation would be a police state… People who tend to react out of proportion to necessity, tends to be the ones who aren’t experienced in harnessing rage, violence, and other lethalities.
Like Tony Martin situation in Britain. Like Dutchland.
… belly like the meal of a boa constrictor afflicted with terrible indigestion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4313978.stm
My grasp of history is not what it should be but I have this ‘belief’ that a condition of semi-instability is really not socially sustainable.
Either it degenerates into sheer anarchy(which itself is not sustainable), or it is subject to the ‘iron fist’ without the ‘velvet glove’.
The mess you perfectly describe in your posting WILL be corrected. My guess is that the correction will be later rather than sooner and that it will be violent. For all the predictions of doom, Extremist Islam will not succeed,and the attempt to make it do so, will only bring down its supporting culture as well.
Europe knows how to deal with minorites. It does not know how to do this well, but it certainly has enough practise in doing it efficiently . Islamists are playing with matches in a building that is very susceptible to fires.
And then, European countries are the first to point fingers at Americans for the state of race relations the state of Hispanic and other illegal immigrants in the U.S. That’s what really gets my goat. Baaaa…
I am amazed by the lack of attention this story has gotten–days of violent racial riots in a major European capital and barely a peep. When the Prince of Wales goes to Georgetown tomorrow to participate in a religious tolerance seminar on how the west is responding to Islam, it might be more productive for everyone if the question of how Islam is responding to the west is also raised. Hard truths must be faced on both sides, and the “kindler, gentler” camp–of which Charles is a leading member–are not helping anyone.