Marcus' s Space

Migrants to the West #6

Posted on May 21, 2013 by marcusampe

“Islam and migrants have been a reality in Europe for centuries. As long as the continent of Europe doesn’t approach segments which are different from the majority with tolerance, particularly in regards to religion, an occurrence of new inquisitions and Holocausts, as well as incidents evoking Srebrenica, are probable.”

said President Abdullah Gül on the 15th of April 2013, also giving a warning to the people of Europe:

“European countries will face new humanitarian tragedies leading to mass killings of people if they continue in their failure to embrace tolerance toward different cultures and religions.”

Racism and a lack of tolerance of different cultures and lifestyles are some of the chronic diseases in Western socities, says Turkish President Gül. – DHA Photo

His strongly worded remarks came as he delivered a keynote speech at the opening of a two-day international symposium on ‘Migration, Islam and Multiculturality in Europe’ arranged by Hacettepe University’s Migration and Politics Research Center.

In Europe we see that many citizens do have a distorted image of other beliefs than their own. The Islam got a twisted image because of the continuous religious conflicts and terrorism coverage in the visual media. Facing economical problems the Muslim immigrants are considered a stand in the way. Their belief is than, because it is obviously different, considered the most annoying difference and therefore unwanted or taken as a sign of not willing to integrate.

The band of brotherhood and collectivism is also something that frightens many. Some consider that “the genius of Western societies is that individualism allows the construction of civil societies where kinship ties are much less important. This is why Syria and Iraq cannot construct civil societies but are riven by kinship groups that are in constant conflict.” (Muslims dominate the natives on the streets of Norway, Kevin MacDonald)

They do want to see collectivism as very effective in competition against individualists within a society and look with jealousy to the success of Judaism as a collectivist culture in relatively atomized Western societies. Ethnic networking by Jews is very effective in the intellectual world (the theme of The Culture of Critique) and all the other centres of power throughout the West.

Highly disciplined, cooperative groups are able to outcompete individualist strategies. Indeed, an important thread in the following chapters is that Jewish intellectuals have formed highly cohesive groups whose influence to a great extent derives from the solidarity and cohesiveness of the group. Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor: Cohesive groups outcompete individualist strategies. (CofC, Chapter 1, p.5)

Deutsch: Die Verbreitung der Juden in Mitteleuropa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The togetherness and the family feeling, lacking by many Westerners is felt as a threat to the individualistic attitude of the West European population. The collectivists are felt to become dominant, many of the individualists accept their subordination and begin to look up to the collectivists, just as so many Whites throughout the West admire Jews as a dominant group. As noted in The Culture of Critique:

Once Jews had attained intellectual predominance, it is not surprising that gentiles would be attracted to Jewish intellectuals as members of a socially dominant and prestigious group and as dispensers of valued resources. Such a perspective fits well with an evolutionary perspective on group dynamics: Gentiles negotiating the intellectual status hierarchy would be attracted to the characteristics of the most dominant members of the hierarchy, especially if they viewed the hierarchy as permeable. Writer William Barrett, a gentile editor of Partisan Review, describes his “awe and admiration” of the New York Intellectuals (a group of predominantly Jewish intellectuals discussed in Chapter 6) early in his career. “They were beings invested in my eyes with a strange and mysterious glamour” (in Cooney 1986, 227). (previous link, p. 3)

Lots of reactions today seem to be very similar to the ones of the 1930s. Several people want to see their race a s superior and do find Europe is not protecting their own natives. The whites cannot get together put aside petty differences and join together in unity against the ‘tide of evil’, Africans, Muslims, Hispicanics etc.. In the 1930s many thought the Jews were in charge and had all the money. Today there are again people who have the impression that not only Jews are in charge so their will be done, but that we now also face the Muslims who want to dictate their Sharia Laws to us.

Racism and a lack of tolerance of different cultures and lifestyles are some of the chronic diseases in Western societies, Gül said, drawing attention to the increase in support for political parties which portray migrants as the main reason for societal problems in European countries such as safety, unemployment, crime and poverty.

We should be careful when we look how other countries want to react on certain situations. We should dare to take our own conclusions. Every state or country is responsible for producing its own authentic resolutions and every democratic country should call for the right of everybody to have their own religion and should ask from every citizen to show respect for multiculturalism.

Gül also said:

Abdullah Gül. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Racism and intolerance toward different cultures and lifestyles are unfortunately one of the most chronic diseases. Although this disease can be taken under control, it arises again, particularly during times of economic crisis,”

The Turkish president also emphasized the importance he attaches to the Law on Foreigners and International Protection which was approved by Parliament on April 4 in a bid to harmonize Turkey’s regulations on the issue with those of the EU. Gül approved the law on April 10, allowing it to go into force on April 11 after being published in the Official Gazette.

Preceding articles:

Have the eyes speaking of love and peace
and join the Bloggers for Peace

Please find also to read:

Muslims dominate the natives on the streets of Norway- the occidental observer
Muslims dominate the natives on the streets of Norway- murder by media
(Breaking through illusions – Link to “Multiculturalism and the lie of diversity”)
Muslim immigration destroying Europe
“Different and Threatening”: Most Germans See Islam as a Threat

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Time to dispel migrant myths (thejc.com)
In the heated debate about immigration, which seems to intensify daily and has by no means been settled by the recommendations in the Queen’s Speech last week, the Jewish community can look back with pride at the number of Jewish migrants who came to Britain and made an enormous contribution to this country.
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we must beware of simplistic analysis: that we were the good and deserving migrants and those arriving today are not. And we would do well to remember that, like today’s migrants, we were the targets of a hostile press. Even the most cursory look at the headlines that greeted the arrival of Jewish refugees in the 1880s and before the Second World War demonstrates this:”These immigrants have flooded the labour market with cheap labour to such an extent to reduce thousands of native workers to the verge of destitution,” complained the Manchester City News in May 1888.

Or the Sunday Express, in June 1938: “But just now there is a big influx of foreign Jews into Britain. They are overrunning the country. They are trying to enter the medical profession in great numbers. Worst of all, many of them are holding themselves out to the public as psychoanalysts”.

The headlines that portrayed us as people who were swamping the country, taking jobs away from the indigenous population and not wanting to integrate are paralleled today with monotonous regularity.

This constant drip of sensationalism leads to a widespread perception that Britain is now swamped by migrants. But the cross-party Migration Matters Trust, using Office for National Statistics data, tells a different story. It finds that migrants make up about one in 10 of the population, lower than Australia, the US or Germany and that almost 90 per cent of new jobs go to British nationals.
Turkey – One Of The Worst Religious Freedom Offenders In The World – Lectures Europe On Tolerance (midnightwatcher.wordpress.com)
“The only way to remove the root of intolerance in Turkey is to remove Islam, but this isn’t humanly possible with a population that is at least 96% Muslim. Fortunately, there is Someone who can make a difference. And He’s coming soon …”
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Turkey, Key US Ally, Added to List of Worst Religious Freedom Offenders – “Yes, you’ve read that right. The country that has become ‘a useful model for new Arab regimes‘ has now been added to the list of worst religious freedom offenders in the world. Alongside Egypt who now vows to one day kill all Jews, this is a nation that the Obama Administration is now actively arming, a nation that now makes verbal attacks against Israel ‘a central feature‘ of its political discourse. Welcome to the ‘new’ face of ‘moderate Islam’ …” Read more.
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Turkey: 40% Of Turks Do Not Want To Live Next To Christians, 58% Do Not Want A Jewish Neighbour – “‘The social inquiries in Turkey show that 40% of the population does not want to live with [a] Christian neighbor. And 58% of [the population] does not want to live with [a Jewish] neighbor’, Simavoryan noted. Expert also noted that [the] Armenian community is on the eve of vanishing in Turkey as a result of [Christian intolerance]. According to him [the] media is very active in this issue. ‘Every action by the Christian Church is presented as [a] negative action. Even the churches are presented as terrorist organizations’.” Read more.
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Secular Opposition Laments the Rise of Islamism in Turkish Government and Society, Christians Under Increasing Pressure – “In a Turkey with a secular constitution and a government and population of the Muslim faith, the social-democrat opposition has denounced an attack by the government and the presidency on the tradition of Ataturk festivities, symbol of the state’s secular nature. The alarm has come on a day in which a daily paper provided details on a report by the Association of Protestant Christian Churches noting numerous ‘attacks’ on Christian communities.” Read more.
Derrida, the Jews and the Battle for Europe (chechar.wordpress.com)
In view of the results of the present state of things, we can say with confidence that much of the scholarly work of the contemporary Jewish “intelligentsia” has been, and is, the destruction (“deconstruction,” if you prefer) of our culture. From all angles. They have introduced displeasure, mistrust, suspicion, discomfort throughout our culture in our painting, our music, our literature, our philosophy, our law, our traditions, all of our history since Marx… They poison the sources of our knowledge as harpies defile, desecrate, bumble, dirty, pollute our spiritual food.
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The European seeks the good of his health; wants to make it better, stronger, more confident; wants to establish it on new foundations and purest symbolism. Nietzsche’s intention is that the European be exceeded, that he leaves behind all the ideological and spiritual, Platonic and Judeo-messianic period. A symbolic change, a change of “heaven,” a complete regeneration, a new dawn, a return perhaps. Marx (Jewish strategy) seeks the destruction of our worlds; Nietzsche seeks correction, transformation, renewal.
Turkey Warns Europe Of New “Holocaust” If They Don’t Accept Islam… (themuslimissue.wordpress.com)

While imprisoning pianist Fazil Say for denigrating religion through comments he made on Twitter and handed down a 10-month suspended prison sentence, forbidding churches to operate in their country, and converting the historical cathedral Hagia Sophia into a mosque to eradicate signs of Christianity completely, Turkey accuses Europe of intolerance and demands tolerance for Muslims in the West… What a farce.
Islamophobia is as widespread and acceptable as anti-Semitism used to be (mondoweiss.net)
In the morning was the computer technician and in the afternoon was the dentist, and it was Islamophobia a.m. and p.m.
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Back when Jews were persecuted, the Jewish community and friends of Jews had to organize. The American Jewish Committee got started after the pogroms. The ADL started because of the Leo Frank lynching. The New York Times crusaded for Leo Frank, and the Methodist bishop in Atlanta refused to lift a finger to help: “I have been annoyed by letters from all over the country trying to draw me into the case on behalf of Mr. Frank.” There was a real reason for the organizations fighting anti-Semitism. They changed American attitudes, and government policy too. People of conscience have to do the same thing now for our Muslim brothers and sisters—kill the bigotry, fight the evil policies, show that Muslims are just part of the human family.
Greece: Farmer shoots 30 unpaid Bangladeshi migrant workers when they demand pay (revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com)
About 30 migrant workers have been injured in a shooting on a strawberry farm in Greece after requesting salaries that had not been paid.

The migrants – mainly from Bangladesh – were shot at by at least one farm supervisor, in a Peloponnesian village in southern Greece.
Fruit-picking firms ‘will need migrant workers to survive’ (standard.co.uk)

Many of Britain’s fruit-picking businesses could close unless a new wave of migrant workers from outside Europe is allowed into the country, government advisers warned today.

In a report to Theresa May, the Home Office’s Migration Advisory Committee said that migrants from countries such as Ukraine could be needed to prevent home-grown fruit prices rising so high that supermarkets opt for imports. That could lead to historic orchards and fruit fields becoming arable.
Hundreds of Burmese Migrants Arrested in West Thailand (irrawaddy.org)
The Council of Europe – the main European human rights watchdog – issued a report this week detailing abuse against migrants in Greece.

The report warned of a growing wave of racist violence, stating that “democracy is at risk”. It highlighted the role of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.

Posted in News and Politics, Religion, B4Peace | Tagged 1930s, Abdullah Gül, Anti-Semitism, Europe, Immigrant, Immigration, Individualism, Intolerance, Iraq, Islam, Jews, Judaism, Kevin MacDonald, Miggrants, Multiculturalism, Muslim, New York Intellectuals, Racism, Sharia law, Syria, Turkey, West, Western World | Leave a comment

Migrants to the West #5

Posted on May 20, 2013 by marcusampe

Limited freedom

In Islamic countries is the trend going on of limiting people in their freedom; This has not so much to do with the religion of the followers of Muhammed. The example we can find about the female Turkish writer activist, Rabia Kazan in the article Bestselling Turkish Writer is receiving death threats, after she took her veil off is worthwhile to take in consideration, for guidance in awareness and treatment of those who would like to impose more rules than really dictated by the prophet Muhammed. It are those falls teachers who try to get the power over people whom we see tyrannising women in Afghanistan and other Eastern Islamic countries. It are the Western governments who should take care that such extremist teachings do not get funding grounds in the West.

In the end there is nothing left to cover

Islamophobia

We should not get islamophobic but could learn from some warnings of some Islamophobes but we should not get into an attitude of the crusade period.

Painting by Edwin Lord Weeks (circa 1880) depicts an old Moor preaching the holy war against the Christians at the mosque in Spain. – The Walters Art Museum.

That there would have been no “social values” in Islamic countries is not right. For years they had even better values than in certain so called Christian countries and they had a very intellectual uprising and high standard culture. Look for example to the Moors in Spain or Muslim Iberians. The mixed Arab, Spanish, and Berber population living in the South of Europe created the great Arab Andalusian civilization in such cities as Córdoba, Toledo, Granada, and Sevilla. The ‘alien’ and ‘non-Christian’ who conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania, in a certain way liberated the people from a more barbarous group of people. Many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam because they found it a better way of live, more according to the Laws of the One and only One God, without doing such idolatry the Visigoth were doing.

Those against the witnessing of Muslims and certain battles they did forget that next to the Islamic conquests there where the Roman Catholic conquests with a lot of bloodshed and the horrible barbarian actions of the Inquisition. {The grand inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada was responsible for burning about 2,000 heretics at the stake.}

Believe in Allah

Allah in Arabic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not only Muslims believe in Allah. Many good Christians have Allah, or God, as their Guide and prefer to live according to His Will instead of to adhere to the tradition of men. Those who want to Observe the commandments and becoming doers of the Word would not agree with a lot of people their lifestyle in the West. This is also one of the reasons why in the last few years we can see so many people looking for an alternative for their slipped down church. It is the responsibility of the Christian churches or communities to offer a good value and to present the real Judeo-Christian values according to the Law of God.

Rich culture

Muslim troops leaving Narbonne to Pepin le Bref in 759. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It were Muslim Arab scholars who translated all scientific and philosophic Greek texts we still use today. Thanks to the many Muslim scholars the west got a rich library of scientific and mathematical books. {Arabic books translated in Toledo in Spain into Latin were taken to a place called Cambridge where they formed a house of learning.} We also not forget that the Jewish European and Asian knowledge including that of the Greeks Romans and Persians were gathered and compiled by the Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars in Baytul ghikma. Without Muslim scholars, working closely with Jewish and Christian scholars in the 9th through 12th centuries, much of what was discovered by the Greeks and Romans would have been lost to modern Europe and it’s descendant the US during the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome.

Conquerors

In Europe there is such a mixture of people from different conquerors of the past and living in such young countries that you may question if they really have one identity? The Cultural Detective recognises that we have an increasingly global and interconnected economy. They look at the multicoloured Dutch society and how they manage to combine royal glitter and soberness, place their King in the middle of the egalitarian society and together they guarantee freedom and democracy.

Royal Glitter in the Sober Dutch Egalitarian Culture agrees that some people came to the Netherlands for the cannabis and perhaps forget the cheap sex. Over the centuries people from all continents have come to the Netherlands in search of jobs, education, freedom of speech, a strong social system, and tolerance of race, religion and sexual orientation.

Holland and Belgium are a melting pot of people and languages, but also of different religions with many denominations. In Belgium there are five state religions and next to them we can see that even in the Muslim population there are so many different groups, of which some are even very strongly opposed to each other. The same opposition can be found in the many different Christian groups, were the Roman Catholics saw their members going fast away the last few years, because of the many scandals in that church.

The Dutch, Belgians, Luxembourgians and French may believe in equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal treatment – with the law as the authority – no matter who you are, but I do believe there has to be done a lot of work on that equality element.
Like other Northern European countries, the Dutch trust the ability of their national institutions and the government to function well. Favouritism or bribing is punished severely in Holland and Belgium. It is this trust which makes the social economic climate of the northern countries pleasant and predictable.

Autochthonous coming in minority

In the Low Countries (Holland and Belgium) people live very reasonably, though there is a serious increase of the poor by the autochthonic population. The well being by many is felt to be becoming in danger by the increase of unemployment and the continuous flood of people from Africa and the East of Europe coming into the country. The fear for those ‘invaders’ is more based on the economical aspects than on the religious aspect.

Concerning the fear of the Islam, strangely enough the most radical groups seem to be made off by people from local origin and not so much from immigrants. The Belgian radical Salafist organisation Sharia4Belgium is formed by a Belgian and gets also many Belgian youngsters in their regions, to become enthusiast to go fighting in Syria for example. (20 Flemish boys went to the battlefield as warrior for freedom but also for the jihad.) The organisation denounces democracy and calls to reform Belgium into an Islamic state.

Fouad Belcacem a Belgian – Photo Gazet van Antwerpen

The Belgian leader Belkacem was sentenced in Morocco for possession of illegal drugs, but incomprehensible Belgium did not want to deliver him to Morocco because he is a Belgian and do not want to take away his citizenship because in Belgium there is the right of free speech and democracy. The city of Antwerp, which oversees the safety and respect for the law, including human rights, can not accept that freedom of expression is undermined and that is particularly what Fouad Belkacem does. To prevent such occurrences in the future the city now spans a lawsuit against Sharia4Belgium. In that interim measures Antwerp claim that all attacks on freedom of expression, the anti-discrimination legislation or anti terrorism law are punishable by a fine of 25,000 Euro, according to the aldermen. Though it took many years before the imams took a stand publicly against such fundamentalist organisation, many foreign Muslims found that Belgian Islamic organisation more a treat than a blessing to the Muslim world.

Bringing closer to or further away from God

That the West would be a culture of greed and nepotism as well as a decadent society may perhaps be true. But not everyone in the Benelux behaves indecent and most of the people in those three countries will not hesitate to still know how to behave and manage to maintain ethical standards. No doubt that many inhabitants of the Low Countries have drifted far from God, but neither the Sharia movement or any other fundamentalist Islamic or fundamentalist Christian group, which are also growing, will bring the people closer to God. I fear that they will achieve the contrary. Such fundamentalist groups call for an aversion of religion and give the idea to people that all religions use violence to get their ‘thing’ and to oppress people.

In Sharia een kwaad voor Islam I said already that Shariah4Belgium claims to be “composed of young Muslims in Belgium who want answers to the Command of Allah” They consider themselves as a group who answers at the calls to the good (Tawheed – Islamic Monotheism) and warns against the bad (i.e. Shirk – idolatry). “Sharia4Holland has the same Belgian leader and considers itself as a “group of young people from the Netherlands” willing “to fight for the law of Allah.” Also they write only to stop “until death will overtake, or flag of shariah will blow up the Royal Museum in The Hague us.”

The flutter of the Islam fundamentalism is laughed away by the Arabic Muslims in Belgium, while the Turkish Muslims are not so sure if those fundamentalist Muslims would be such an innocent mixed bag. I also do believe our capitalist world should be more afraid of what comes from within than for what comes from abroad.

Possibility to live in a big city

Nearly half of ethnic minorities – 4 million people in Great Britain– live in communities where native British make up less than half the population, the study by the Demos think-tank found. On the Flemish television we could see how the British capital is making it impossible for small-income families to stay there. Many areas in the capitals come to stand empty and derelict. But this is not so much brought on by the Muslims entering the country. The Daily Mail wrote:

“More than 600,000 white British Londoners have left the capital in a decade, it was reported earlier this year. Census figures show that between 2001 and 2011 the level of ‘white flight’ reached 620,000.”

“It is the equivalent of a city the size of Glasgow – made up entirely of white Britons – moving out of the capital. The figures mean that for the first time, white Britons are in a minority in the country’s largest city.”

Xymalf who is unemployed and has a Site containing Satire which may offend some, writes in The death of London that the report provides a shocking glimpse into the future. And I am afraid what he says shall be appropriate for more capitals in Europe. Our children or grand-children will be a minority in their own capital but I do not believe that they would be the minority in their own country. But the exclusion of the white people and the original habitants of those cities is more a matter of economics and of the expansion drift of those cities.

Recession and seed for nationalism

He understands that there is a recession raging at the moment, but is afraid that the campaign to ensure his children’s future and his nation’s survival continues regardless! He is willing like other British citizens to fund a modern, responsible patriotic political movement that claims to use the latest campaigning methods to fight the many injustices that are routinely inflicted on the British people who have, in effect, been left defenceless, voiceless and marginalised by the political ‘elite’.
He and his patriots with the same feeling show the bigger danger of the economical bad situation of Europe today.

It are not only English people who feel that they begin living a country which has not enough interest in the own population, the own history. He gets the feeling, it seems, that traditions and culture are effectively forbidden and systematically discouraged, because otherwise he would not support such a nationalistic movement.

In Flanders we saw the Flemish nationalist and right wing Vlaams Blok as Vlaams Belang loosing voters, but they mainly went to the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, or New-Flemish Alliance NVA, because there they could find that the votes would be counting, having became excluded undemocratic by the cordon sanitaire.

The Flemish centre-right political party, founded in the autumn of 2001 promotes civic nationalism and speaks about a confederate state instead of the Belgian Kingdom. As of the 2010 federal elections the party gained a substantial plurality in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium with 28% of the votes in Flanders and 17% of the national vote, becoming the largest party in both Flanders and Belgium altogether, but once again the public votes did not seem to count to get the division of seats, proving that there is something really wrong with the so called ‘democratic system’ in Belgium where the Roman Catholic Church and the Walloon conduct the whereabouts of the country. This was the first time in which a non-traditional political party dominated the outcome of a Belgian election.

Mixing people

Opposed to the far-right character of the Vlaams Belang the NVA does not seem to be so afraid of the mixing of people in their regions. They understand the economical importance of the mix and are convinced that when both Belgian communities separately would obtain more powers, all parties would benefit. According to that Flemish party the Flemish government has to overcome the crisis by saving the coming years and maximizing the Flemish competences. They also, like any reasonable thinking person in Belgium see that not much happens at the federal level: no savings, no asylum and migration policy, no energy policy, no judicial reform, no state reform.
On 13 June, the Flemish voter sends a clear signal that things can not go on. The N-VA convincing wins the federal election and the largest party in the country, but many other political parties made arrangements quickly so that the NVA could not do much to seal the fate.

Christians facing discrimination

“A huge surge in migration has caused the number of foreigners living in the UK to almost double to 7.5 million in just 10 years.” writes xymalf in Immigration into UK. In other key results, the number of Christians in Britain fell 4.1 million to 33.2 million while the number of Muslims went up almost 2 per cent to 4.8 per cent of the population.

Christianity in Britain is under ferocious assault: many Christians now face discrimination and persecution because of their beliefs in many areas such as employment, business, and adoption. But the writer forgets to see that a lot of discrimination of Christians also does come from English people, like we do see the same problem arising in the Low Countries where, especially in Belgium, certain Christians get it more difficult to receive respect at work. Bullying of Christians seems to have become a popular sport. But not by Muslims. First of all by those who call themselves Christians or more often by atheists. The non believing Belgian population considers religion the source of all evil. They also do not understand the difference between a Catholic and a Christian and confront all the believers with the terrible sexscandals and paedophile acts of the Catholic clergy.

Preceding article: Migrants to the West #4

Give Peace a chance Respecting all different people, giving them the hand of love and peace

Find also:

Of interest:

Appeasing Islam.
the policies and pronouncements of President Reagan led to the crumbling of the Iron Curtain. Calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” brought rebukes from many government, media and academic elites—but history proved Reagan right.
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In an era of high education and specialty degrees—from psychology to political science—perhaps it was inevitable for simple common sense to fall by the wayside. The embassy attacks across the Muslim world, especially the most savage in Egypt and Libya, are a testimony to this: U.S. policy towards these countries fundamentally exacerbated their wild reactions. To understand all this, one need only turn to the classic “schoolyard bully” paradigm, that any child can understand.
Muslim accused of beheading 2 Christians in U.S.
Pamela Geller, who blogs about Islam at Atlas Shrugs, said it “appear have been a ritual killing, religious in nature.”
“The victims were Coptic Christians and the murderer was Muslim (and we are painfully aware of the status and treatment of Coptic Christians under Muslim rule in Egypt),” she wrote.
“The killing evokes this passage in the Quran: ‘When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!” – Quran 8:12.”
Belkacem to remain in custody
Belgium heightens terror alert level
Fundamentalist spokesman detained
Sharia4Belgium under attack after Molenbeek riots
Prosecutor wants two years for Belkacem
Multiculturalism and its discontents
One man, no vote: British Muslims’ apathy
Will Islam conquer Europe

In Dutch:

In French:

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The Bipartisan Folly of Our “Islam Delusion” (secaa23.newsvine.com)
Too many Democrats – and Republicans - still do not understand that, contrary to the biblical view of man, the root of Islamic ideology declares that man is of no consequence. Allah is.
Pamela Geller, WND Column: Daniel Pipes is Wrong on Islamic Jew-Hatred (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
According to an article about a speech he gave last week in Toronto, scholar Daniel Pipes “suggested it is Islamism, a political ideology, that inspires hatred of ‘the other,’ rather than Islam. … He emphasized that while Islam has existed since the age of the prophet Muhammad, Islamism is a recent phenomenon and need not be considered an authentic expression of Islam.”Need not be considered an authentic expression of Islam by whom? By Muslims? Yet so many do, all around the world. By non-Muslims? What would that accomplish, since so many Muslims think it is an authentic expression of Islam, except to render us complacent in the face of the jihad threat?
Sounding the Sharia in Sweden (americanthinker.com)
Calls to summon Muslims to prayer were broadcast over loudspeakers for the first time ever in Sweden this past Friday on April 26^th at the Fittja Mosque in the Stockholm municipality of Botkyrka. The Islamic call to prayer (adhan), resonating from the towering 104-foot (32-meter) minaret, began with the ear-shattering “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is Great) and was followed by the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”. Every Friday, people from as far as two kilometers away will be subjected to hear what U.S. President Obama called “one of the prettiest sounds on earth”.This is what Swedes in the Stockholm municipality of Botkyrka will have to get used to, now that the decision rendered by the Botkyrka Municipal Assembly and authorized by the Botkyrka Police to approve the public call to worship, has taken effect. Whether or not Swedes find it offensive, loud, or disruptive, they have no choice but to listen every Friday to the live three-to-five-minute amplified recitation of the Muslim declaration of faith that calls the people to come together and pray.
Religion VS Racism; The ultimate debate. (gammaatheist.com)
Religion and Racism are separate issues, they should not be entwined into one dispute. You can have one without the other, because as I said previously, we are all one race; the Human race.
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The next time you see a Muslim, do not automatically assume the worst. There are amazing people in every religion. It is just a shame that the ones we see publicly are the ones that cause the problems and tensions between countries, faiths and people.
Reflections on Islam:Understanding the West’s most implacable enemy (iranaware.com)
Points of contention between Muslims and non-Muslims have gradually increased in recent years. In the opinion of many, they represent the most serious risk for world peace. It is not merely a conflict between Israel and the Arabs, but rather, the policy of Iran and Al Qaeda, who openly express sheer hatred of Israel and the West. In the words of the Iranians, the United States is the “Great Satan”, while Israel is the “Little Satan”.Moreover, dangerous conflicts are occurring between India and Pakistan, between the Chechnya rebels and Russia, and between the people of Uyghur and China. In the major cities of Europe – from France to Russia – tensions between native residents and Muslim immigrants is on the rise, as well. It appears these conflicts are not coincidental; rather, they reflect a core problem which, if not thoroughly understood by the Western world, will lead to increasing tensions, until the conflict is likely to result in terrible bloodshed throughout all of Europe and the Islamic countries.
Islam as a Hegemonic and Expansionist Religion (robertlindsay.wordpress.com)
There are plenty of cultures who are content with not trying to dominate the world and don’t keep pushing for a takeover when they go abroad. I sure as heck don’t notice: Polynesians, Copts, Greek Orthodox, Saivites, Buddhists, Shintoists, Tibetans etc…imposing themselves in the same manner as Islam. As shitty/wicked as Vedic Hinduism is, it pretty much limited itself to the SubCon. Buddhist Nationalists run pogroms in Burma and Sri Lanka but they don’t try to colonize other regions of the world.While the West went on a world domination binge and still does run the world, they have changed significantly. They opened their countries to all religions and cultures. What Islamic country accepts non-Muslim immigration in any meaningful capacity and doesn’t keep its minorities in ‘their place’?
Peace And Love Are The Essence Of Islam (islamolife.wordpress.com)
The West must make its Muslims citizens, but Muslims have a right to import generations of infidel bonded labor who have no hope of ever obtaining citizenship, lest the Islamic nature of the society be challenged. Muslims have a right to limit proselytization and the building of infidel houses of worship in Muslim lands, but the infidels must not put limits on the building of mosques in infidel lands or Muslim conversion efforts of infidels in infidel lands. The blatant hypocrisy of Muslims is stunning and audacious.
Radicals, Moderates and Islamists (sultanknish.blogspot.com)
The radical-moderate continuum that has defined the dialogue on Islam in the War on Terror is not an authentic perspective, it is an observer perspective.To the Western observer, a suicide bomber is radical, a Muslim Imam willing to perform gay weddings is moderate and the Muslim Brotherhood leader who supports some acts of terror, but not others, is moderately radical or radically moderate.These descriptions tell us nothing about Islam or about what Muslims believe, but do tell us a great deal about its observers and what they believe. They turn Islam into inkblots that reveal more about the interpreter than the splotch of ink being interpreted.Muslims are not radical or moderate. The radical-moderate continuum is how liberal countries rate individuals and countries to decide how well they will harmonize with the national and international consensus.
Changing religious affiliation (africanspiritualitynow.wordpress.com)
At present the two world religions are approximately equal in their strength among the Yoruba. Islam predominates in Ibadan and Oyo, but there is also a large Christian minority. In Egba, Ijebu, Ife, and Igbomina the religions are more equally balanced, while in Ondo, Ekiti, Ijesa and Kabba there are large Christian majorities.
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The expansion of Islam was most rapid in the period around the turn of the century. With the end of the wars, the return of Muslims to other parts of Yorubaland helped the religion to spread, even in the eastern areas where it had previously made little impact. Resistance was strongest in Ekiti, and the most rapid progress was made in Ijebu, partly thanks to the conversion of Seriki Kuku, the leading military chief after the British invasion (Abdul, 1967: 27ó38).
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Given the Yoruba’s instrumental attitude to religion and their tolerance of religious pluralism and innovation, it is not surprising that members of both religions are quite prepared to use the services of other religious specialists when need arises: prominent alufa often have a number of Christian clients
The Savage History Of Jihad In India (themuslimissue.wordpress.com)
Jihad In India met ferocious resistance from the Sikh Faith. The Sikhs and the Islamic invaders fought for nearly 300 years and at the end of the period the Sikhs had prevailed. Ahmed Shah Abdali made the last of his eleven invasions into India around 1763 and returned disheartened never to return to India again. Effectively, a long period of muslim domination of India had come to an end.

The prime characteristic of Islam and Christianity is the denial of individual conscience. They are systems which are based on complete coercion. If you are not a Muslim or a Christian you will go to hell.

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Migrants to the West #4

Posted on May 14, 2013 by marcusampe

Tariq Modood, Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at the University of Bristol, wrote a letter in response to an academic paper written by Alison Shaw titled ‘Why might young British Muslims support the Taliban?‘.

According to Modood Western policy in relation to the Muslim world and many other parts of the world has been far from moderate. when we look at the previous war years we can see that the Western world intervened their where they could get their oil and other important resources to make their economy turn well.

English: Image of a demonstration staged by the group Stop of the Islamification of Europe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He writes:

As for domestic politics, the possible involvement of a small number of British Muslims in international terrorism should not lead us to overlook the need for policies to further the democratic inclusion of Muslims in Britain, any more than the existence of the IRA was a reason to neglect the democratic inclusion of Catholics in Northern Ireland. In each of these cases, the opposite is true.”

Abdelxyz in his blog covering politics, current affairs and issues relating to especially British Muslims wrote:

The ‘need for policies to further the democratic inclusion of Muslims in Britain’ that Modood mentions in his letter is important because not only do Muslims and other communities have a right to fully participate in the democratic process, research has shown that lack of involvement could contribute to radicalisation. In fact the political settlement in Northern Ireland that acknowledged all sides in the conflict resulted in a marked decrease in terrorist activity in the region, suggesting that political participation, ie democratic inclusion, is a necessary tool to fighting radicalisation as well as allowing citizens to exercise their political rights. (One man, no vote: British Muslims’ apathy)

Tehmina Kazi, Director of the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD)

Golden Room wants to make us believe that the UK has one of the fastest growing mixed ‘race’/mixed ethnicity populations in the world and talks about the death threats against Tehmina Kazi, the director of the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy, which have become common. More recently British Muslims for Secular Democracy has become the target of a trolling assault on Twitter launched by Stephen Gash, leader of far-right group “Stop the Islamification of Europe”

Efforts from the far left, extreme liberalists and from hardline Islamic groups have tried to silence Kazi and degrade her arguments by focusing on her gender and attacking her personally.

‘I have been accused of being a sell-out, and some people have said I can’t represent Muslims because I don’t wear hijab’ says Kazi, ’The trustees have had criticism and there has been much speculation on what I wear, including (false) assertions that I must wear short skirts!’

“The courage and willingness to challenge injustices perpetrated against the Muslim community as well as hardline Muslim conservatives has often led to a backlash from the community.” writes Golden Room. But extremist politics oftentimes lead to strange bedfellows.

Leftist liberalist organisations have found common ground oddly enough with hardline conservative Islamic groups. In a complex interplay, they have the shared objective to bash the right wing which they view as the fight against imperialism. These expedient alliances are equally quick to attack anyone who disagrees, and in their warped logic, progressive groups such as British Muslims for Secular Democracy come under fire. Hence, such fronts, whilst confronting the extreme right wing ‘…simultaneously try to disempower Muslim activists like myself.’ describes Kazi, ‘I have received a lot of flack from vicious bloggers, and had spiteful, vengeful comments posted on Facebook’

The experiences of people of dual heritage and people in cross cultural relationships, is poorly reflected and understood by political institutions, the media and wider society, therefore it is necessary that people come forwards to express their feeling. They have more than one identity, and simultaneously are a new and unique identity in themselves- but this identity is frequently overlooked, marginalised and even stigmatised, so it is good that those people of dual heritage let the world hear their voice about Cross Cultural Relations.

The Goldenroom Online Journal for Cross Cultural Relations and its accompanying Goldenroom blog wants to be the leading go-to place for the increasing cross-cultural population, providing resources, information and products representative of dual, mixed or multi heritage people. A place to celebrate and enrich their lives, families and communities.

Kenan Malik whose extended essay Multiculturalism and its Discontents will be published by Seagull this summer writes:

The reasons for this transformation in the perception of multiculturalism are complex, and at the heart of what I want to explore in this book. It is not just the perception of multiculturalism that has changed. The character of the critique of multiculturalism has transformed, too. As much of the debate surrounding the Breivik assault reveals, the contemporary critique of multiculturalism is often driven by crude notions – indeed myths – about Islam, Muslims, immigration, European history and Western values.

Preceding : Migrants to the West #3

Migrants to the West #2

Migrants to the West #1

An image of most famous Indian Muslims (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blog for and go for Peace

Please do read:

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UK: ~Looking Back~ Muslim Culture, British Identity (ionglobaltrends.com)
On 30 November the Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum, Lord Altaf Sheikh, urged the British Muslim community to join the armed forces and police in order to promote tolerance and mutual respect between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain. Such suggestions, as well as the very existence of this Forum within the British Conservative Party, demonstrate to what extent Muslims in Britain are becoming a vibrant and integral part of British society.As much as the British government and society have a role to play in this process, the Muslim community does as well. Such integration will not only allow Muslims in Britain to better understand British culture, but will also allow the broader British society to understand Muslims.When looking at the Muslim community, it is important to recognise that a central aspect of Islam is its global character – Muslim culture is not limited to a specific region or nationality. Instead Muslim culture and identity are guided by personalities and behavioural tendencies.
The Rise of Ignorance and Islamophobia (reteacheronline.com)
An interesting article in the HuffPostUK sets out what I’ve been trying to teach in my lessons on prejudice and persecution for a while now. Since 9/11 it has been evident that Islamophobia is on the rise and many students have felt that all Muslims are terrorists or that the religion is out to take over the world (in a very negative way).
British Muslim leader Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity (telegraph.co.uk)
Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, left, with the Prince of Wales at the Markfield Islamic Foundation, Leics

A war crimes court in Bangladesh has indicted Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, a British Muslim leader, for his alleged role in the murder of top intellectuals during the country’s 1971 liberation war.
British Muslims warn Prime Minister Tony Blair over foreign policy (susanfreudzon5.wordpress.com)
“Whether we like it or not such a sense of injustice plays into the hands of extremists. As moderates we will do all we can to fight extremism. We hope the government will join us in this, not just by changing the rules on hand luggage, but by showing itself as an advocate for justice in the world.”
I spy with my many eyes… (abdelxyz.wordpress.com)
Muslim individuals are approached or pressured to spy on fellow Muslims, as shown in Salih’s documentary, but it doesn’t stop there. Even a Muslim Member of Parliament, Khalid Mahmood, wants local authorities to reinstall cameras to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham after they were taken down because of considerable opposition after it was revealed the cameras were used to spy on the community. The Prevent Strategy once funded the Quilliam Foundation who, like Khalid Mahmood, support spying on Muslims and whose founder, Ed Husain, said that spying on Muslims was “the morally right thing to do”. Husain’s comments don’t differ much from the comments made by Islamophobe Martin Amis who suggests “the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order”.
British Muslims warn Prime Minister Tony Blair over foreign policy (josephfrederick47.wordpress.com)
Some of the United Kingdom’s most influential British Muslims have written a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair saying that there must be urgent changes to UK foreign policy.In the memo, they say current government policy musters fanaticism and puts ordinary people at risk in both the United Kingdom and abroad. They also urge the Prime Minister to extend his efforts in tackling terrorism and extremism.
11 British Muslims jailed for bomb plot (nation.com.pk)
Eleven British Muslims were jailed on Friday for planning an Al-Qaeda-backed plot to carry out a string of bombings that they hoped would rival 9/11 and the 2005 London attacks.
The conspiracy involved at least six of the plotters travelling to Pakistan for terror training, with the eventual aim of setting off eight rucksack bombs in crowded areas and possibly other timed devices.
3 British Muslim men jailed for terror offenses (conservativeread.com)
Three British Muslims, including a convert who was featured in a documentary about radical Islam and a former London police support officer, were jailed Thursday in London for traveling to Pakistan for terrorism training.Richard Dart, Imran Mahmood and Jahangir Alom pleaded guilty last month. Prosecutors said that in addition to traveling to Pakistan for training between 2010 and 2012, the trio went to extensive lengths to try to evade surveillance, discussed making explosives and referenced Wootton Bassett — which for years served as a military repatriation town — as a possible target.

Posted in News and Politics, Religion, B4Peace | Tagged Islam, Muslim, Multiculturalism, Terrorism, Ethnicity, Radicalism, Tariq Modood, Multicultural Society, Islamification, Northern Ireland, Kenan Malik, Goldenroom, Radicalisation, Tehmina Kazi, Stephen Gash | 3 Comments

Migrants to the West #3

Posted on May 12, 2013 by marcusampe

In previous articles I said already that the media play a central role not be underestimated in internationalizing integration debates by framing and linking local issues to international events. I also mentioned the feeling of superiority of the European community. European integration politics is fixated on the role as manager of integration, multiplied by the European self-image as supervisor of civilization. The individual countries prefer to have most of the control and are afraid the European Union as governing state is willing to have more say into the debate. But I think Europe is to soft and should demand the same treatment of all people in all countries of the union and trying to get the same conditions for all of them, may they live in Spain, Greece, Belgium or the rich Germany.

English: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. The photo shows a part of a public photo documentation wall at Former Check Point Charlie, Berlin. The photo documentation is permanently placed in the public. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While its contemporary form differs from classic nation-building and cultural homogenization, ‘integration’ discourses always combine nationalism and liberalism, and are primarily a matter of control, of the government’s need to demonstrate its ability to manage diversity. (Titley and Lentin 2011:201-204)

Some westerners want that other people take over their values and are not happy when others keep up their traditions. Those who keep celebrating their own festivals are considered by many not integrating. when we look at the work situations many European Muslims are generally well-integrated in the economic and political sense, but allegedly fall short of the expectation to internalize what is often called ‘Western values’ or Judeo-Christian values.

The ‘assimilation’ required is more a taking over of the attitudes and actions been labelled as ‘normal’. The politicians also look at the successful immigration that one were there is a one-way adjustment. They seem to overlook that those minorities do not ‘disturb’ mainstream society and become as much as possible like the majority. When we look sincerely non-predisposed we will clearly see that there is much more in common with those immigrants and other people in that state than the prejudiced proclaim.

A survey by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed’s (2007) worldwide Gallup poll on Muslim views shows that a vast majority of Muslims (as opposed to the extremist minority usually highlighted by Western media) see ‘Western’ and ‘Muslim’ values as compatible, and support free speech, democracy and gender equality, which most women and the majority of men see as compatible with their religion.

Too many people are ignoring the fact that it can be as interesting to integrate the two values of the religious thinking with each other, neither assimilating “Western values” nor separating from the West.

Talking with several Muslim immigrants you can hear that they are nuanced in their criticism of the West; they mostly admire Western democracy, but lament the
breakdown of traditional (family) values and criticize specific (foreign) policies. In the real ‘traditional Muslim families’ “Western culture” is not rejected, but they would prefer their own model of democracy, which may include sharia (in its diverse interpretations) as a source of legislation, but reject that religious leaders should have a role in law-making (theocracy). They want to improve relations with the West, but are asking for greater respect for the Islamic religion. Form many of them Europeans and Americans are living a life to be ashamed of, and when you look at certain television programs and some printed magazines you can not blame them, for having such a look down at our indecorous behaviour. Immorality seems to stand on the first place in the capitalist world. Those who really love God would also detest such a society and prefer to live otherwise. We also should not ignore the free sexual behaviour, the greed and envy with great materialism
and ‘egoism’, sometimes seen by Muslims as characteristics of Western society, but
more accurately seen as characteristics of modern capitalist society.

It is getting time that politicians and religious people come out in the clear and talk openly about their community and tell the others what they expect.
They should try together to take away the unfounded and irrational fear of Islam and of the many other religions of the immigrating people and of those of the people already living for decennia in the region.

The people in charge of the community should show to their citizens that it is unfounded to think that Muslims do not want to integrate and that they have ‘unreasonable demands’, ‘mixed loyalties’ and ‘support extremism’. By giving themselves to be better know Muslims also can help to get rid of the label of ‘obscurantism’ and their incompatibility of values.

Christian Stokke looks at the western logic being in itself “the last bastion of Eurocentrism”, “the gap between Western cultural formations and universal values” (Sayyid, 2003:135-136) and he writes:

Both Islamic and western discourses can be understood as particularist interpretations of universal values. Thus, in Sayyid’s words, “it is not so much that some elements are western and others are not, but rather that eurocentrism operates by laying claim to the copyright on some things and rejecting others” (Sayyid 2003: 148). In other words, Eurocentrism ‘polices’ universal values by claiming that they are of western origin, an act that depends upon an essentialist view of the West (Sayyid 2003:151), and on the Orientalist claim that the ‘Other’ cannot represent itself without intervention from the West (Sayyid 2003:,149).

We should all consider:

Values like freedom, equality and justice are universal, but can be interpreted in more than one way. ‘Western’ attempts to
monopolize interpretation and universally impose its version, are no more legitimate than when reactionary Islamists do the same. Democracy implies that everyone is entitled to take part in reinterpretation and renegotiation of values, and the outcome of this never-ending process remains open as an empirical question for the future. It cannot be settled in advance; neither by theology nor by political philosophy.

A general message for all to all

Blog for and go for Peace

Preceding articles:

Migrants to the West #1

Migrants to the West #2

Read also:

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Culture clashes can be moveable beasts (dailystar.com.lb)
It is a fact that the notion of a clash of civilizations, first popularized by the American academic Samuel Huntington, is more relevant than ever in the minds of many people. Especially when it concerns Muslim-Western relations, there is a view that Muslim and Western values are incompatible. And yet Huntington’s argument that after the Cold War conflict would be defined not by ideology or economics, but by cultural differences, was prophetic as culture has become the principle basis for differentiation, even if it is often viewed in far too static a way.

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Huntington was prescient for realizing that the causes of conflict would shift away from ideological antagonism (though the argument with respect to economics was less persuasive), even if they remained firmly in the realm of ideas. However it is also true that, in his rendering, global relations seemed to reflect an apocalyptic vision – that of perennial discord and enmity.

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Acknowledging the complex undercurrents of the Arab revolts is necessary in order to grasp what is going on. The notion that there is something irreconcilable between the aspirations of Arab societies and those of Western societies is simplistic, and often wrong, just as it is equally naïve to expect Arab societies in ebullition will wholeheartedly embrace Western values, such as secularism, the primacy of the individual at the expense of the group, and so on.
The Cost of Islamic Incest (jericho777.wordpress.com)
Several days ago, an interview with Nicolai Sennels on Muslim inbreeding was published but taken down soon after at the request of the author, as it was decided that several themes needed to be buffered by more evidence and research.
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There is a dire phenomenon rising in Europe that is crippling entire societies and yet the continent sleeps, refusing not only to confront the destructive elephant in the room, but also to admit its very existence.The troubling reality being referred to is the widespread practice of Muslim inbreeding and the birth defects and social ills that it spawns.
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Muslims, on the other hand, are bound together less by patriotism, but mainly by family relations and religion.

Intermarrying to protect the family and community from outside non-Islamic influence is much more important to Muslims living in a Western nation than integrating into that nation and supporting it.

Today, 70% of all Pakistanis are inbred and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30% (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants“).

A rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred.

A large percentage of the parents that are blood related come from families where intermarriage has been a tradition for generations.

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin.

The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.”

The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality.
Migrants change UK forever: White Britons ‘will be in minority by 2066′ (express.co.uk)
There is nothing wrong with discussing the disparities between Western and Muslim values, but to lend to the discussion unchangeable qualities on both sides is to miss the adaptable nature of culture and the ability of humans to modify cultural reactions in changing environments.If one wants to question Huntington’s paradigm, it is in the sphere of perceptions where that has to be done. For many people in the West, the Arab uprisings since 2011 have been a case in point. These people have come to believe that what began as a yearning for democracy and freedom has ended up favouring Islamist groups (groups that believe there is a role for Islam in politics) that are neither particularly democratic nor tolerant of freedom, and who have usually sought restrictive legislation against women, a substantial portion of their populations.

But the reality lies in the nuances. For example, in Egypt and Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda parties have taken over major state institutions. While they have allowed behaviour unheard of under the old regimes, they have also become increasingly contested as they have retained powers allowing them to restrict certain freedoms, such as freedom of expression, while riding roughshod over representative bodies.

Acknowledging the complex undercurrents of the Arab revolts is necessary in order to grasp what is going on. The notion that there is something irreconcilable between the aspirations of Arab societies and those of western societies is simplistic, and often wrong, just as it is equally naïve to expect that Arab societies in ebullition will wholeheartedly embrace Western values, such as secularism, the primacy of the individual at the expense of the group, and so on.

A mass influx of migrants has given the UK the fastest-rising percentage of ethnic minority and foreign-born populations.

The report – which also reveals the huge impact of Labour’s open-door policy to immigration between 1997 and 2010 – says foreigners and non-white Britons living here will double by 2040 and make up one third of the UK population.

Report author Professor David Coleman said: “On current trends European populations will become more ethnically diverse, with the possibility that today’s majority ethnic groups will no longer comprise a numerical majority.”

Prof Coleman said migration has become the “primary driver of demographic change” – Daily Express

The findings mean that the UK could overtake the United States as the world’s melting pot, with fewer people describing themselves as British or white.
Tolerance: What does Muslim-Western relations mean? (ionglobaltrends.com)
Huntington was correct in looking toward culture as the boundary between Western and Eastern societies. But boundaries are ever-changing and values cross over between cultures by osmosis. To assume cultures are autarkic and unchanging is as erroneous as to assume that cultural distinctions are invariably resolvable. The truth about culture lies in the middle; values are transposable, which is why identity is most enthralling when they are tethered the least.
On the Muslim Question (3quarksdaily.com)
In a series of chapters on sexuality, freedom of speech and democracy, Norton recognises that valid differences of orientation exist. But she does not always help her own case by making assertions that are variously vague, trivial or wrong. For example, she says that terrorism is the precursor to democracy (as if the course of the Arab spring was inevitable), that randomness is “terrifying” (so much for evolutionists), that “Germany has no neo-Nazis” (when they number upwards of 5,000), that the publishers of the Danish cartoons “intended to provoke” (and not just insult) Muslims, that the veil is “profoundly erotic” (for elderly women?), or that calling your sports team the Redskins “honours an old enemy” (tell that to Native Americans). But if the clash-of-civilisations approach is false, what options exist for addressing the differences presented by a Muslim minority in a western country?
The Muslim Patrol video and policing the body in the public space (cordeliadonohoe.wordpress.com)
Our Christian secular culture, is having to deal with the sturm und drang of the Islamic world, both in World politics and within our own ideologies. These involve notions and ideas that can be overwhelming and incomprehensible to the West, not helped (in this video) by the fiery and self righteous indignation. But what does it actually say about gender representations in the both East and Western cultures?Where a Western feminist can say that the commodification of womens bodies through representation in sexual terms is an integral part of our oppression. It defines us in terms of age and visual desirability and limits us from person-hood and power, from a more Islamic perspective – these images are actually dangerous to the social order. Women are seen as powerful sexual beings who pose a threat to society unless visually segregated away from the public space. Womens’ sexuality should be controlled within the family and covered in the public space because it is potentially the source of chaos.
German Muslims want official Muslim holidays in Germany (english.pravda.ru)
The Central Council of Muslims in Germany proposed that federal authorities formalize two Islamic holidays as official holidays. This is not shocking news, as in some areas Muslims already have that right. Recent polls suggest that in the future the Turks want to see Germany as the country with a predominantly Muslim population. So far they have minimal representation in the legislature.
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The position of Muslims in Germany is quite strong. The former Federal President Christian Wulff generally believed that “Islam was part of Germany.” Some lands and cities with federal status (Hamburg, Bremen, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg) have approved the Muslim holidays as official. The mayor of the city of Hamburg (SPD), signing an agreement with the Muslim community, said that it would certainly be a revolutionary milestone in the history of the city. Despite religious and ethnic background, we are all citizens of Hamburg, he added. Indeed, the document provides not only the right not to work on Muslim holidays, but also free access of Muslim organizations to prisons, hospitals and schools, the ability to create theological universities and theological schools whose diplomas will be recognized on a legal level, teach the Koran courses in the public schools, and foundations of Islam on an optional basis.These are undoubtedly great achievements, but not a single land was able to legally allow a Muslim headscarf. Not only that, a conflict in one of the schools in 2003 ended with the ban on wearing it in eight of the 16 subjects of the German federation. However, Muslims in Germany periodically come up with new initiatives. Head of the Turkish Community in Germany Kenan Kolat said the Eid al-Fitr (Eid al Adha) should be a day off for all German students, not just for Muslims.
Islamophobic ‘Foreign Policy’ article compares Boston bombing and Palestinian resistance to occupation (mondoweiss.net)
Boston bombings have given virulent propagandists and Islamophobes a field day. While various pundits and media personalities jumped to the Tsarnaev brothers’ religious identities as the singular motive for their alleged acts of violence, they focused on them as individuals, and how their thought processes could have been perverted by purported religious radicalization. What makes Shamir’s contention particularly disturbing is his sweeping generalization that all groups and individuals affiliated with Islam, from Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood, to the Tsarnaevs and Sayyid Qutb, all had a particular end in mind—the obliteration of Western culture.
Islam And Immigration (personalliberty.com)
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Boston bombers rejected, rather than embraced, American values so much so that they sought to terrorize the Nation by killing and crippling women and children. I don’t see this type of behavior in immigrants to America or Canada who are Latino, Asian or Western European.“Islam is not just a religion,” writes Mark Steyn in his book, America Alone: The End of the World as we know It. “Those lefties who bemoan what America is doing to provoke ‘the Muslim world’ would go bananas if any Western politician started referring to ‘the Christian world.’… So it’s not merely that there’s a global jihad lurking within this religion, but that the religion itself is a political project — in a way that modern Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are not.”
U.K Hospitals: Muslim Surgical Nurses, Actually All Muslim Nurses, No Longer Required To Wash Their Hands…. (theconservativetreehouse.com)
When we encode multiculturalist school policy, we have a recursive loop of disaster. When we cannot criticize Islam, we cannot teach that much of Western history has been about fighting Islam. We must erase the concept that our defending Europe against Islamic invasion led the way to the Enlightenment and, ultimately, to our political freedoms. And when our school children are taught not to value our Western culture, they will not feel any sense of pride, have reasons to defend the civic virtues that make England strong, or possess a desire to protect their homeland.

Posted in B4Peace, News and Politics, Religion, Welfare and Health | Tagged Behaviour, Christian Stokke, Civilization, Community, Control, Dalia Mogahed, Democracy, Eurocentrism, European Union, Extremism, Freedom, Integration, Islam, Islamophobia, John Esposito, Judeo-Christian Values, Liberalism, Love for God, Materialism, Media, Multicultural Society, Multiculturalism, Muslim, Nationalism, Sayyid, Sharia, Values, West, Western culture, Western World | 3 Comments

Migrants to the West #2

Posted on May 11, 2013 by marcusampe

Wrong perceptions

About 40 per cent of the French, German and Norwegian populations perceive Islam as a threat to national identity (NOU 2011:14; p.315); and an annual Gallup in Norway over the years 2005 to 2010 shows that more than 50 per cent of the Norwegian population think that Islamic values are incompatible with basic Norwegian values (IMDI 2010:22). A similar proportion also say that immigrants should assimilate (NOU 2011:14; p. 317). Given that a large majority of Muslims want to integrate and think that their religion is compatible with liberal values, why does every second “Westerner”, even theorists like Taylor, Barry (2001:27) and Kymlicka, share a misperception that the two have incompatible values? {A Multicultural Society in the Making; How Norwegian Muslims challenge a white nation; by Christian Stokke, 2012 p20}

1st President of Modern Turkey: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Perhaps are Esposito & Mogahed right to say that the conflict between Western and Muslim communities is more political rather than cultural; it is more about policy than about principles. I am not convinced that European Muslims may be more secular than their counterparts in Muslim countries, though much might have changed in those countries. When I first encountered the dancers of the Ankara Ballet in 1976 and visited Turkey in the early 1980s I did find contemporary fashioned clothed people and a very modern country where the inhabitants had very western or modern living attitudes. They were more open minded than their Turkish European counterparts. But when I revisited the country some 20 years later I also noticed lesser bikini’s and no monokinis any more, plus saw many more women fully dressed with everything hidden from public. In the home country of those who immigrated to Europe we saw a shift to the fundamentalist Muslim religion. A lot of the work of the great politician Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who wanted to give the people a sense of pride associated with their citizenship, giving the needed psychological spur for the people to work harder and achieve a sense of unity and national identity, is destroyed. The more secular open religious country became more religious narrow minded. Atatürk had embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, secular and European nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced. It were the more conservative Turks who came to the West, like in the previous century several Europeans had fled from the religious defiled Europe, those Turks went away from a country which in their eyes lost connection with the Laws of God.

Rejection of multiculturalism

In the East as in the West we see that people become more afraid to intermingle.

While Kemalist ideology aims to banish religious interference in government affairs, and vice versa; solidified in public education and government-subsidized cultural and legal affairs this separation of religiosity and laicism frightens people today. It seems that many Eastern people think they would loose their possibility to be faithful Muslims and in the West we notice that people become afraid that their Christianity would be endangered by the more active believers of the Islam world. Those people who call themselves Christian but are not really very active believers better wonder how they should be faithful believers and why those immigrants so eagerly wish to worship their God, which is the same God of gods as the one of the Jews and Christians.

In case the western world would allow Kemalist laicism it would offer freedom of thought and independence of the institutions of the state from the dominance of religious thought and religious institutions. The Kemalist principle of laicism is not against moderate and apolitical religion, but against religious forces opposed to and fighting modernization and democracy. And it is for such dangerous forms of religiosity, be it Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or any other that the industrial world has to be afraid for.

Freedom of religion and code of dress

Many Muslim women have different ways of hair and parts of their body covering.

The Muslims should not be afraid for the laïcité of the industrial world and the civic world should not be afraid of people wearing religious symbols. What happens in Belgium, having public schools or the civic offices prohibiting any religious symbol being worn by their pupils or workers is totally against the freedom of people. That Catholic, Protestant or any other private school would demand their pupils to wear an uniform without certain symbolic signs can be accepted. Those who would not like to apply to the code of dressing of that school or institution could and should have the possibility to go somewhere else. But a state school has to be open for everybody and every body should feel themselves at ease, not to oblige themselves to say prayers or to do actions against their believes.

A Muslim women wearing an acceptable or not dangerous hijab

Any democratic country has to provide their citizens the possibility to go to places where they can wear the clothes acceptable for their believe. As such a a veil which covering the head, which is particularly worn by Muslim women beyond the age of puberty in the presence of non-related adult males, should also be allowed in the public schools and in the civic official buildings, like the townhall, library and civic hospitals. Though the believers should also recognise and respect the civic laws covering the safety of all the citizens. This means that for safety the commonly understood belief that hijab being a requirement in Islamic tradition would not endangering any body, but the wearing of a Jilbāb when the coat for the woman has also a covering of the full face of the woman, would be too dangerous because underneath the coat any person could hide any dangerous person or weapon.

A woman berniqāb which is forbidden in Belgium though the police does not pick them up or do not give a fine.

A woman wearing a niqab in Monterey, California

A totally unacceptable dress is the one with the full mask, like the Burqa. The cloth which covers the face as a part of sartorial hijab was originally worn by some Muslim women in public areas and in front of non-mahram adult males in Syria, the Arab countries of the Arabian Peninsula such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the UAE. Though today on the streets of Europe we see those Niqābs more. We can even find European, white munaqqabah or niqabi (women wearing the niqab). Hanbali and Salafi schools with some others preach also in Belgium the covering of the entire body (including her face) when in public or in presence of non-mahram men. [I do find it strange that in my neighbourhood two young Flemish girls who previously walked, where clothed and behaved like whores converted to Islam and sometimes wear the nearly full covering dress.]

The Medina quarter in Essaouira, Morocco, showing women wearing the traditional Jilbāb.

Islamophobia

A woman wearing a burqa in Afghanistan

Entering the 21st century we saw a growing awareness of upcoming Islamic beliefs giving more way to a clash of civilizations by the way of living of immigrants who did not adapt to our modern western society and by the youngsters who became disillusioned by our way of life and the capitalist system.

The media did not help really by creating in their articles the “classical” stereotypes. Many false presumptions where made and fed by the multiplying terrorist acts of some lunatics, that gave the idea that the Islamic religion is a violent political ideology with values incompatible and inferior to those of the West. (Report of the European Monitoring Centre on Xenophobia and Racism)

This week I am in discussion about such Islamophobic ideas on a Dutch Christian group where some people consider the Muslims not as a monotheist religion (?) while others accuse Islam to be constructed as monolithic, substantially different, having an other God than ‘we Christians’ have.

In many places we see that people do find the Islam threatening and that any Muslim criticism of the West is rejected, even when they would say something very right. Lots of Westerners do not like to receive any criticism on their system which they consider to be the best way to construct a good society.

But fear of Islam is also mixed with anti-immigration racism, fear for their own job, having to face a ruthless competition. I am afraid that in many cases it is not so much an attack on the religious people for their believes, but more for them behaving different and worse, for they being part of ‘demanders’ in the community, having the right for social security and for taking jobs or for opening shops which are open in day but also in night time, and seemingly making more money than others would want.

We can not exclude anti-immigrant, class and racial discrimination in a group of religious people who seem to manage to get some of the own population into the religious and more dangerously in the political networks, like getting them to fight in Syria.

According to me our world did not get rid of the colonial imperialist feeling. Europe recognises that America has outgrown them, but together they consider themselves as the western superior power. They love the dominance and hegemony which consistently constructs Europe as superior to the ‘Other’.

Upcoming eastern danger

The West was more than please to use first the liberated Eastern European, transferring their factories to those countries where they could find cheap labour. But when they became too expensive the West went more East, to Pakistan, India and China.

At first they thought to have the Orient under their sceptre and in control, but now they see those upcoming markets and many stereotype ideas shattered. The Western idea to liberate all the other people is also fed by the differences in how people treat the other sex. The desire to unveil and ‘liberate’ the oriental women has re-emerged but on the other side as a from of ‘counter-action’ the hijab has become a symbol of resistance to assimilation.

We can not deny that gender and violence have been persistent themes in anti-Muslim discourse, as reflected in the focus on violence against women, but also in the cartoon affair, where the most provocative cartoons depicted the prophet as a terrorist surrounded by women in burqas.

By demonizing non-assimilated Muslim minorities in Western countries as an ‘enemy
within’ the so called democratic countries created themselves a fertile ground for a hostile community.

When the discourse of good Muslims and bad Muslims is linked to a neo-nationalist ideology that links culture to descent and
sees Muslims are unassimilable, individuals of ‘Muslim descent’ are faced with the impossible task of repeatedly proving themselves to be ‘integrated enough’ in terms of loyalty to ‘western values’. (Razack 2008:122)

The themes of gender and violence remain central, and like historical Orientalism served to justify colonialism, it still serves to justify specific Western political interests such as the war in Afghanistan (Zebiri 2011:174-175; Fekete 2009:193).

Integration and government decisions

Ghassan Hage argues that the tendency towards integration, including a degree of change in majority society, is inevitable and minimally affected by government decisions. A comparison of the wide differences between minority policies of various European states would show that certain policies may facilitate or slow down the integration process, but they have a rather limited effect; differences in the extent of real integration are small. Hage thus argues that when nationalists worry about minorities’ ‘lack of integration’, what they want is “more supervised integration” (where minorities have to prove their loyalty to the nation), while they actually fear “real integration”, where minority persons become equal and politically active citizens defining their belonging independently. Rather than as a
meaningful instrument for formulating policy, Hage sees integration debates as a “ritual
of white empowerment” (ibid, 241), which provides the majority with a sense of control
over the nation; he argues that the presence of unchecked white nationalism assures the
continuation of white hegemony, while white liberals can condemn nationalist populism
as irrational, and claim for themselves a responsible “middle ground” as managers of
diversity. {Christian Stokke, A Multicultural Society in the Making, 2012}

The Flemish parliamentarians demanding to forbid people wearing any religious sign or symbols, but allowing them to wear rainbow shirts or any contestant sign for ‘earth-matters’ is putting oil on the fire and instead creating a solution, creating a bigger problem and a restriction of religious freedom.

Preceding article: Migrants to the West #1

Place enough for all sorts of white and coloured people of different cultures in a world full of colour

Demanding to put the fear of union away and going for peace together

Citizen University and the difference between Citizenship and Activism

Doomthinking or a real problem for Europe

Citizens to be put at the heart of the public debate

Blow to legitimacy of the capitalist system

Will Islam conquer europe

God of gods

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Here We Go Again: Most Germans See Islam as a Threat (secretsofthefed.com)
More than half of all Germans view Islam as a threat to their country and believe it does not belong in the Western world, according to a major new study on religious attitudes in Germany.The findings confirm the results of dozens of other surveys, and reflect a growing divide between the views of ordinary Germans and those of Europe’s multicultural elites, who, in the quest for “diversity,” have been promoting mass immigration from Muslim countries for decades.
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Although 80% of Muslims in Germany say they believe “democracy is a good form of government,” the survey also shows that only 24% of Muslims are involved in civil society activities outside of work and family. Bertelsmann explains the statistical disconnect in this way: “The strong collective attachment to family, which prioritizes family relationships over civil society activities, probably plays a role.”

The survey results are undeniably bad news for multiculturalists, who are now busy casting the blame for “Islamophobia” on German ignorance and portraying Muslim immigrants as victims of “negative stereotypes.”

Bertelsmann claims that the Germans who are most concerned about Islam are “the elderly and those with low levels of education,” although the report offers no convincing empirical evidence to support this claim.
Islam is the Ultimate Sleeper Cell (iranaware.com)

Most recent Muslim terrorist plots were carried out by “lone wolves”, individuals or small groups, who received their Islamist indoctrination and explosives training through the Islamic internet of Jihadist social media.
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As a Muslim becomes more religious, his thoughts turn to Jihad, whether supporting it directly or indirectly. The religiosity need not be overt. The terrorist can be outwardly secular, but inwardly religious. He doesn’t have to grow a beard or leave Korans everywhere. Many don’t. The essence of Jihad is that it allows a Muslim to live a secular life so long as he dedicates himself to the fight against non-Muslims.
Face of Islam: Being Muslim and American (wbng.com)
Two thirds of the Muslim community in America today are immigrants, but the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life estimates almost half of Muslims in the U.S. will be born here by 2030.But while Muslims become a greater presence in the US, Shaikh says Islam continues to be associated with terror.

“I think Islam has definitely gotten portrayed negatively in the media,” he said.

He said he would explain Islam as a submission to God’s will, which includes a command against violence.

“Our greeting, ‘As-salamu alaykum,’ is translated to ‘Peace be upon you, peace be on you.’ So we greet people with peace,” Shaikh said, “And this shows that peace, love and kindness are important aspects of Islam.”

Shaikh said a common misconception among non-Muslims is focused on the frequency of prayer, which can be viewed as extreme. He said Muslims pray five times a day in order to keep them better connected to God.

“The reason why we pray so many times during the day is because every so often we need to go back to God,” Shaikh said.

Shaikh encourages anyone with questions to sit down with Muslims, and come to the understanding most are far from extreme.

“If you interact with a Muslim,” he said, “You’ll come to know exactly who he is.”
Islam as a Hegemonic and Expansionist Religion (robertlindsay.wordpress.com)
There are plenty of cultures who are content with not trying to dominate the world and don’t keep pushing for a takeover when they go abroad. I sure as heck don’t notice: Polynesians, Copts, Greek Orthodox, Saivites, Buddhists, Shintoists, Tibetans etc…imposing themselves in the same manner as Islam. As shitty/wicked as Vedic Hinduism is, it pretty much limited itself to the SubCon. Buddhist Nationalists run pogroms in Burma and Sri Lanka but they don’t try to colonize other regions of the world.
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The infidel West must open its doors to be flooded by millions of alien, often hostile and frequently ill-behaved Muslims who, if they obtain enough numbers, will threaten the very nature of the West by Islamicizing it. Yet all Muslim countries must remain Muslim. Muslims must be treated wonderfully in the West by infidels, but Muslims are free to treat their non-Muslim minorities like crap, which as a general rule, they do.The West must make its Muslims citizens, but Muslims have a right to import generations of infidel bonded labor who have no hope of ever obtaining citizenship, lest the Islamic nature of the society be challenged. Muslims have a right to limit proselytization and the building of infidel houses of worship in Muslim lands, but the infidels must not put limits on the building of mosques in infidel lands or Muslim conversion efforts of infidels in infidel lands. The blatant hypocrisy of Muslims is stunning and audacious.
Resolution of the 4th International Conference on Islamophobia at UC-Berkeley: ON FRANCE (indybay.org)
while discrimination is still in place and sustained by the state, the collective called Mamans Toutes Egales continue to defend many mothers that use the veil and are excluded from chaperoning fieldtrips and After School Programs. We concretely affirm the right of Muslim women to use the veil as an expression of their specific cultural and religious identity to participate in public life, to work, to get involved in the schooling of their children that is being violated.
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we call on the French government and the political leadership to adhere to the articles and spirits of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by affirmatively embracing the Muslim minority and to take the needed steps to repeal all exclusionary laws that discriminate and problematize and otherize Muslims as a group.
In Migrants to the West #6 we also shall look at the keynote speech at the opening of a two-day international symposium on “Migration, Islam and Multiculturality in Europe” arranged by Hacettepe University’s Migration and Politics Research Center, spoken of a.o. in Turkey – One Of The Worst Religious Freedom Offenders In The World – Lectures Europe On Tolerance (midnightwatcher.wordpress.com)
European countries will face new humanitarian tragedies leading to mass killings of people if they continue in their failure to embrace tolerance toward different cultures and religions, President Abdullah Gül has warned.
Muslims dominate the natives on the streets of Norway (theoccidentalobserver.net)
Gates of Vienna has an article showing just how unfathomably bad things are in Norway as a result of immigration and multiculturalism (“Everything You Have Learned in School Is Wrong“). The main story is the familiar one throughout the West: elites encourage immigration and are able to avoid the costs. As noted in Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech, the costs are paid by those who can’t flee the areas impacted by immigration.
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Muslims have large social networks based on kinship and they are aggressive in groups, whereas they are cowardly when alone. The result is a very clear dominance hierarchy, with the natives at the bottom and groups of Muslims at the top.
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The genius of Western societies is that individualism allows the construction of civil societies where kinship ties are much less important. This is why Syria and Iraq cannot construct civil societies but are riven by kinship groups that are in constant conflict.
On the Muslim Question by Anne Norton – review (guardian.co.uk)
Anne Norton thinks that the “Muslim question” is, if anything, a question about non-Muslims. She is straightforward in denying the claim that Islam and the west are involved in a “clash of civilisations”, castigating writers of various political persuasions who have, blatantly or inferentially, put forward this view. She thus criticises writers such as John Rawls (as well as those, such as Michael Walzer and Michael Ignatieff, who “have urged them on”) for saying that Muslims constantly seek empire and territory, for stereotyping Muslims’ political orientation as the antithesis of liberalism, and for promoting a false history that conceals liberalism’s own failings.
“Different and Threatening”: Most Germans See Islam as a Threat
Although 85% Germans say that society should be open to all religions, and 67% believe that “every religion has a core of truth,” fully 50% of Germans believe that Islam does not belong to Germany.

The survey also shows that Muslims possess the strongest religious identity in Germany. Some 90% of Muslims believe that religion is somewhat or very important, 40% rate themselves as very religious, and 30% of Muslims visit the mosque on a regular basis. By contrast, only 18% of Protestant Christians attend church on a regular basis.

Posted in News and Politics, Welfare and Health, Religion, Christianity, Christendom, B4Peace | Tagged Belgium, Europe, 21° Century, Community, Western World, Capitalism, Diversity, Islam, Muslim, Norway, Islamophobia, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Racism, Ottoman Empire, Multiculturalism, Terrorism, Hijab, Niqab, Immigration, Religious Symbols, Secularism, Muslim world, Citizenship, Multicultural Society, Hegemony, Christian Stokke, West, Laicism, Kemalism, Clothing, Veil, Jilbāb, Burqa, Arab countries, Munaqqabah, Niqabi, Hanbali, Salafi, Orient, Colonialism, Ghassan Hage, Control, Religious Freedom, Migrants | 1 Comment

Migrants to the West #1

Posted on May 10, 2013 by marcusampe

Challenging perceptions

In the United States of America, Canada and in the European Union you may wonder if the current process of those countries becoming a multicultural society, more specifically when several Muslims challenge ‘white’ perceptions of those nations and give the impression they want to impose their way of thinking on those countries.

Monument to Multiculturalism by Francesco Perilli (Photo credit: Shaun Merritt)

Those fundamentalists are the ones who frightens most citizens of those countries. They are also the problem for further trust and development. When you consider that already 25% of the Belgian population is adhering the Islamic faith, while the country is a so called Catholic country, but has only 6% of its population going to mass, you may trigger the question if it is still right to consider Belgium a Catholic country.

Fear for or from Terrorism and Multiculturalism

Because the terrorism from the Muslim origin increasing worldwide and getting lots of media attention and not enough reaction against such violence from the imams in our countries, we can notice an increase of racism.

Multiculturalism has been a hotly debated topic in Europe and North America in the last two decades. While anthropologists have made important contributions, much of the academic debate has taken place within the field of normative political theory. A major disagreement among political philosophers is about how multiculturalism relates to liberalism. A prominent advocate of a liberal version of multiculturalism, Will Kymlicka (2002:336-337), notes that until 1989, multiculturalism was usually equated with communitarian philosophy which disputes the liberal concept of the ‘autonomous individual’. According to him, it has become widely recognized that except for a few
‘communitarian’ groups, most ethnic minorities in Western societies want to be equal participants in liberal society. Thus, debates are in most cases “debates amongst liberals about the meaning of liberalism”, i.e. debates among people who “endorse the basic liberal-democratic consensus, but who disagree about the interpretation of these principles” (ibid, 338-339).
writes Christian Stokke in his Thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor, Trondheim, December 2012, A Multicultural Society in the Making; How Norwegian Muslims challenge a white nation.

Importance of national contexts

Tariq Modood sociological theory of political multiculturalism (Modood & Favell
2003:490-492; Modood 2005:187-188) looks at the importance of national contexts, especially when importing and applying theories developed in North American countries to a western European context with different multicultural experiences (Modood & Favell 2003:487; 493-494; Modood 2005:171; 189). He argues that the case of Britain is interesting because it bridges the experiences of North American ‘immigrant nations’ that have been culturally diverse from the start, and the presumably homogenous ‘old nations’ of Europe, where multiculturalism has become an issue as a result of more recent non-European immigration, of which a significant share come from Muslim countries (Modood 2007:2-9). Britain’s historical self-image is that of an ‘old nation’ but more accurately it is a union of four ethnic nations, including the Scottish, Welsh and perhaps Irish in addition to the dominant English.
Due to Britain’s imperial past, it has a diverse minority population consisting of three main groups, Caribbean and African Blacks; Indians; and South Asian Muslims. Like in the United States, minority issues have been understood within a paradigm of “race relations” focused on colour racism (Modood 2007:9), and the Black American struggle has inspired British minority movements (ibid, 40).

While ethnic minorities constitute a larger proportion of the general population in some continental European countries, Britain is regarded the most multicultural society in Europe, not simply in terms of state policy but because of much higher minority participation in the public sphere than in countries like France and Germany, whose models of the ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ nation are less inclusive of minorities, and where public integration debates largely consist of majority persons speaking about minorities. Modood also argues that unlike the ‘state multiculturalism’ of Canada and Australia, British multiculturalism has mainly developed as a result of the political mobilization of minorities in social movements.

Multiculturalism grant (Photo credit: BC Gov Photos)

Providing a platform for dialogue

To my idea we should not be afraid for multiculturalism when we can provide a form of process of negotiation and dialogue and creating a ground of different opinions respecting each-others ideas, culture, religion and traditions.

I am a Muslim not a Commodity (Photo credit: Edge of Space)

Minorities may challenge public discourse and political institutions but both parties should aim for the same goal, coming together to create a place where all different people can come together to live in peace with each other. some may think that a ‘critical multiculturalism’ should not be primarily interested in ‘culture’ but in politicized ethnic
identities, and in turning these from a stigma into a positive part of society (ibid, 43),
resulting in the formation of hyphenated identities such as ‘Black American’, ‘British
Asian’ or ‘Norwegian Muslim’. Last month therefore several Flemish politicians called for not to speak any more of “allochtoon” or (im)migrant like they would be aliens but to speak about those allochthonous people as Belgian Italian, Belgian Marrocan, Belgian Turk and Belgian Greek. We also may not speak about a ‘migrant’ any more or ‘coloured’ person or a ‘nigger’, which is absurd because we should still use the classical words of a language and not leaving them out for they were at one time ‘coloured’ or with a negative meaning. In a multicultural society, these identities are seen as a legitimate basis for political mobilization and lobbying rather than regarded as divisive or disloyal to the nation. (Modood 2007: 49).

Looking at the Critical Mirror

Modood (2007:64-68) argues that minorities have a distinct knowledge which can hold a “critical mirror” up to larger society; not only do they have primary knowledge about the marginalization and discrimination they experience, but they may also contribute with different perspectives on their shared society and its discourses, and he emphasizes that multiculturalism is about openly discussing such critical perspectives on attitudes, values and practices, and about allowing minorities to influence these. While Modood focuses on multicultural negotiations and minority mobilization, other theorists direct more attention to problematizing the dominant discourse. Applying American paradigms of critical race
theory and whiteness studies to analyze Norwegian majority discourses, anthropologist
Marianne Gullestad (2002; 2006:209) has analyzed how ‘white hegemony’ is challenged by minority voices, then re-articulated and reasserted in integration debates.

Integrated generations

Balancing on our coloured world

The Americans like the Europeans should be aware that those people who came from other countries or states, now in their second and third generations may no longer be organized communities with different belief systems and practices, but could be very national and really fully belong to the region where they are living now. For those immigrants that is today mostly a big problem, because a Belgian Moroccan is in Belgium often considered to be a Moroccan though in Morocco they consider him as a foreigner. To the end they do seem to belong to nowhere. It can well be that that person is behaving more like a Flemish one than an other Belgian who would live in the same region. Lots of those immigrants moved in the direction of either hybrid lifestyles or developed into ethno-religious communities living in societies where secularism is hegemonic.

Most of our countries participated in colonial practice and discourse and got foreign people to work as cheap labour in the underground and factories. Now when the mines are closed and the factories can not offer enough employment they just want to get rid of them, like they are waste. A decent community can not behave like that and should show respect to those who were willing to contribute to the welfare of the country.

Shaping public opinion

It has become an impossibility to call a halt to ethnic diversity. We therefore should have an open mind in our growing multicultural society where the public sphere takes on additional importance, by being the site for dialogue and negotiations between minority, majority. The mass media do play a very important role for giving the picture of the situation and forming the mind of their viewers. In Belgium we see certain media exaggerating the differences and over-sizing so called ‘Belgian or Flemish brandmarks. According what I can find in those media to which a Belgian should apply I for example could never be considered a Belgian because I would not behave like the ‘normal Belgian’ should do. {But who could decide what a Belgian is and what about the Flemish or Walloon division?}
We always should be very careful when we want to put a stamp or a label on a ethnic. You would be surprised how many wrong pigeonholes are created by those popular magazines.

The mass media may act as a gatekeeper deciding who gets access to public debate but this could also create dangerous grounds were fanaticism enters and fundamentalist groups, like very right wing groups can get more opportunities to spurge their controversial ideas than the reasonable sensed ones. Depending on the kind of media; while the political elite has regular access to television news and debate programs, the more democratic internet has opened up arenas for ordinary citizens to express their opinions (including undemocratic opinions like racism, e.g. the growing network of anti-Islamic websites). The opinion pages of national newspapers seem to be the preferred arena for European intellectual elites and a main site for academic analysis of public debate.

Public sphere an public opinion

The relationship between the public sphere and public opinion goes both ways, public opinion is represented in the media, but the media also shapes public opinion. The relationship is not straightforward; but depends on other factors; studies have shown that in societies where there is little personal contact between majority and minority population, media portrayal has a strong influence on majority perception of minorities (Hervik 2004; IMDI 2009).

To my opinion we do not see a wide enough diversity of minority voices represented. The media should take care that not only voices with sensational opinions or those most favoured by mainstream media can have their say. Media access alone is insufficient to exercise free speech, as Husband (2000:207-208) argues, it must be accompanied by a “right to be understood”.

Debate should be open to all citizens from all sorts of cultures and the moderator should take care that all visions can righteously expressed. On the Flemish television we can see that the debate programs are only offered very late at nigh out of prime time, so they only would attract a certain intellectual or interested public. Often in those programs a language is used which is considered by several of the ordinary public as too ‘hautain’ or too academic, and in a ‘language’ which is not generally accessible to all. An other problem in the communication is the arguments grounded in religious doctrines which are not necessarily seen as relevant arguments by non-believers and believers of other religions.
citizens.
Thus, religious arguments need to be ‘translated’ into secular language (Habermas 2005:15) of public reason (Rawls 1999:143). Importantly, both Habermas and Rawls (ibid, 142-144) distinguish between the informal public sphere (public debate) and formal political institutions (parliaments, courts and administration), where the former is fully open to any kind of contribution, whereas only arguments that meet certain criteria should be allowed to cross the institutional threshold and influence policy and law-making (Habermas, ibid). However, Rawls’ (1999:135) argues that citizens should ideally engage in public reasoning as if they were legislators, and Habermas’ discourse ethics promotes an ideal of rational argumentation where every citizen is equally entitled to participate, and where the strength of the better argument alone should prevail, regardless of individual participants’ social position or background. According to Rawls (ibid, 171), defining participants as ‘citizens’ means viewing them as free and equal individuals, assigning to each the same political position disregarding their social situatedness in terms of class and ‘comprehensive doctrines’. Thus, this model of public deliberation places certain constraints on public reasoning and excludes certain kinds of contributions as illegitimate (Bader 2009). {A Multicultural Society in the Making, Christian Stokke}

Preceding: Giving others the chance our ancestors had

Time to connect with those who go for unity, democracy and peace

You too can join a peace-movement

Find also to read:

A Multicultural Society in the Making: How Norwegian Muslims challenge a white nation
Multiculturalism and www.tariqmodood.com.
The pursuit of integration requires that citizens have a sense of belonging to the whole, as well as to their own ‘little platoon’
The evidence shows that multiculturalism in the UK has succeeded in fostering a sense of belonging among minorities, but it has paid too little attention to how to sustain support among parts of the white population
Book Review: European Identity and Culture: Narratives of Transnational Belonging
Book Review: National Belonging and Everyday Life: The Significance of Nationhood in an Uncertain World
The opposition between ‘Britishness’ and multiculturalism is more complex than it seems
Citizen University and the difference between Citizenship and Activism
Doomthinking or a real problem for Europe
Citizens to be put at the heart of the public debate
Christian fundamentalism as dangerous as Muslim fundamentalism
Problems by losing the borders
God Watches
Looking For Someone to Blame: Reactions to the Boston Bombing
Biography of Jürgen Habermas
The reading Friday 26 April at the university of Leuven was so successful that the univ had to offer an opportunity to follow it also life in the parc over the packed auditorium PDS, and in the big auditorium of the Maria Theresia College, Sint-Michielsstraat 6.
Democracy, Solidarity and the European Crisis
Lecture delivered by Professor Jürgen Habermas on 26 April 2013 in LeuvenWhat unite the European citizens today are the Eurosceptical mindsets that have become more pronounced in all of the member countries during the crisis, albeit in each country for different and rather polarizing reasons. This trend may be an important fact for the political elites to take into account; but the growing resistance is not really decisive for the actual course of European policy-making which is largely uncoupled from the national arenas. The actual course of the crisis management is pushed and implemented in the first place by the large camp of pragmatic politicians who pursue an incrementalist agenda but lack a comprehensive perspective. They are oriented towards “More Europe” because they want to avoid the far more dramatic and presumably costly alternative of abandoning the euro.
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Summarizing the analysis, we are trapped in the dilemma between, on the one side, the economic policies required to preserve the euro and, on the other, the political steps to closer integration. The steps that are necessary to achieve this objective are unpopular and meet with spontaneous popular resistance. The Commission’s plans reflect the temptation to bridge, in a technocratic manner, this gulf between what is economically required and what seems to be politically achievable only apart from the people. This approach harbors the danger of a growing gap between consolidating regulatory competences, on the one hand, and the need to legitimize these increased powers in a democratic fashion, on the other. Under the pull of this technocratic dynamic, the European Union would approach the dubious ideal of a market-conforming democracy that would be even more helplessly exposed to the imperatives of the markets because it lacked an anchor in a politically irritable and excitable civil society. Instead, the steering capacities which are lacking at present, though they are functionally necessary for any monetary union, could and should be centralized only within the framework of an equally supranational and democratic political community.
John Rawls (1921—2002), arguably the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century
John Rawls, American political and ethical philosopher
In A Theory of Justice, Rawls defends a conception of “Justice as fairness.” He holds that an adequate account of justice cannot be derived from Utilitarianism, because that doctrine is consistent with intuitively undesirable forms of government in which the greater happiness of a majority is achieved by neglecting the rights and interests of a minority. Reviving the notion of a social contract, Rawls argues that justice consists of the basic principles of government that free and rational individuals would agree to in a hypothetical situation of perfect equality. In order to ensure that the principles chosen are fair, Rawls imagines a group of individuals who have been made ignorant of the social, economic, and historical circumstances from which they come, as well as their basic values and goals, including their conception of what constitutes a “good life.” Situated behind this “veil of ignorance,” they could not be influenced by self-interested desires to benefit some social groups (i.e., the groups they belong to) at the expense of others. Thus they would not know any facts about their race, sex, age, religion, social or economic class, wealth, income, intelligence, abilities, talents, and so on.
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Soviet-style communism is unjust because it is incompatible with most basic liberties and because it does not provide everyone with a fair and equal opportunity to obtain desirable offices and positions. Pure laissez-faire capitalism is also unjust, because it tends to produce an unjust distribution of wealth and income (concentrated in the hands of a few), which in turn effectively deprives some (if not most) citizens of the basic means necessary to compete fairly for desirable offices and positions. A just society, according to Rawls, would be a “property-owning democracy” in which ownership of the means of production is widely distributed and those who are worst off are prosperous enough to be economically independent.
Recasting the Argument for Stability: Political Liberalism (1993)
Problems of Extension

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Modood, “Multiculturalism” (clrforum.org)
This month Polity Books will publish Multiculturalism by Tariq Modood (University of Bristol).
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At a time when many public commentators are turning against multiculturalism in response to fears about militant Islam, immigration or social cohesion, Tariq Modood, one of the world’s leading authorities on multiculturalism, provides a distinctive contribution to these debates. He contends that the rise of Islamic terrorism has neither discredited multiculturalism nor heralded a clash of civilizations. Instead, it has highlighted a central challenge for the 21st century – the urgent need to include Muslims in contemporary conceptions of democratic citizenship.
One man, no vote: British Muslim suffrage (abdelxyz.wordpress.com)
a short extract of a letter written in 2002 by Tariq Modood, Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at the University of Bristol, (which shall also be mentioned in Migrants to the West #4)
America Follow Their Lead – The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism – Kick The Muslims Out (itmakessenseblog.com)
lticulturismThe Netherlands , where six per cent of the population is now Muslim, is scrapping multiculturalism:The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants create a parallel society within the Netherlands ..A new integration bill, which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads:“The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people.In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role.”

With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society.
Multiculturalism and Its Discontents (kenanmalik.wordpress.com)
In Breivik’s eyes the killings in Oslo and Utoya were the first shots in a war to defend Europe against multiculturalism. Shortly before the attacks Breivik had published online 1500-page manifesto entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. 2083 refers to the 400^th anniversary of the Battle of Vienna when the advance into Europe of the Ottoman Empire had been checked by the armies of the Habsburg Empire. Twenty-first century Europe, Breivik claimed, faced a similar threat and required a similar military response. ‘The individuals I have been accused of illegally executing’, he wrote, ‘are supporters of the anti-European hate ideology known as multiculturalism, an ideology that facilitates Islamisation and Islamic demographic warfare.’ They were ‘killed in self defence through a pre-emptive strike’ having ‘been found guilty and condemned to death.’
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The character of the critique of multiculturalism has transformed, too. As much of the debate surrounding the Breivik assault reveals, the contemporary critique of multiculturalism is often driven by crude notions – indeed myths – about Islam, Muslims, immigration, European history and Western values.
Australian Government: Sharia Law Out, One Law for All (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
Check out the article (below) in The Australian. In short, no room for Sharia law in a multicultural society. Muslims in Australia say they will defy the (secular) law and have multiple wives anyway. And I am sure those wives will apply for single mother benefits.
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Islamic law and polygamous marriages will be denounced as forever unacceptable in Australia in a bipartisan parliamentary report that will define what multiculturalism means for our nation, and state there must be only “one law for all”.The report — the result of a two-year investigation into Australia’s multicultural strategy — is understood to be critical of the limited access migrants have to English language training and the lack of cultural awareness shown by employers and the federal employment recruitment agency.
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While they pretend to reject Sharia law the political Muslim appeasers have in fact been actively involved in the development of Islamic Sharia banking/ finance and the massive multi billion dollar halal export beef industry– creating a financial windfall for the Government. Australian laws have been amended in areas of finance, taxation and the family law act–polygamy and divorce to name a few to accommodate the Muslim minority in accordance with Islamic Sharia law. Australian Government officials have also traveled extensively to the middle east to promote Australia as Sharia friendly to lure Islamic investors to our shores. The Government has also strongly urged Australian financial institutions to do much more to attract Islamic Sharia investment.
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The Australian Government has enacted race hate/religious vilification laws ,handed down by the global monstrosity–the U.N, to intimidate Australians and every other non-Muslim into silence– preventing them from speaking out against Muslims and their murderous cult. While the Jihadists carry on their rape and murder sprees across the world unchallenged , western Government continues the massive cover up of the worldwide Muslim massacre of non-Muslims– the genocide of innocent men women and children..It truly beggars belief.
There Is More Than One Way to Skin a Community (kenanmalik.wordpress.com)
David Goodhart, in his response to my review of his book The British Dream, raised three major issues. First, he suggested, mass immigration undermines stability and continuity. Second, he claimed that I ignored the fact that immigrants come not as individuals but as members of communities and cultures. And third, he challenged me to set out my concept of integration. I dealt with the question of stability and change in a pervious post. I will write about the meaning of integration in a future post. Here, I want to take up the question of community and culture.
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The best way to understand immigration to Britain, and of the changing relationship of minority groups to culture, community and tradition, is in terms of three generations: the first generation that came in the fifties and sixties; the second generation that were born or grew up in the seventies and eighties; and the third generation that has come of age since then. (David Goodhart mentions the ‘three generation’ model in his book but does not follow through the consequences.)
The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism And Muslim Mass-Immigration (themuslimissue.wordpress.com)
immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants who ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.”The government will also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner;
“It is not the government’s job to integrate immigrants.” (How bloody true).
+The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism
Diversity and Multiculturalism, Failed Liberal Values (canadafreepress.com)
This country was not built on diversity and multiculturalism, the failed liberal ideology. We are certainly diverse enough and Americans come from many cultures. For generations every immigrant to this country learned English, American history, celebrated American traditions, and became a part of the fabric of our exceptional society while honoring traditions from the ethnic backgrounds and former countries they left behind.
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We are committing societal suicide through environmentalism gone berserk, demographics, degradation of education via communist indoctrination in schools, insane illegal immigration policies, abortion, out of control fiscal and monetary policies, unraveling of the family unit, degradation of the institution of marriage, and destruction of our Christian faith.Liberal groups have pushed multiculturalism and diversity heavily in the last 30 years. We have legalized with little scrutiny people coming from third world nations based on their Islamic faith, refugee status, skin color, gender, ideology, sexuality, and economic background. We have given student visas at an accelerated pace, hoping that smart, college graduates would stay in the U.S. and contribute to society in a positive way.
Multiculturalism has won the day. Let’s move on | Sunny Hundal (guardian.co.uk)

Whitechapel High Street, one of the most multicultural areas in London. Photograph: Rex Features

It’s official: 45 years after Enoch Powell made his “rivers of blood” speech – the fearmongers have lost the war, while those who think Britain is stronger with a multiracial and multicultural identity have won.
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the continuous war waged by the rightwing press against multiculturalism has utterly failed. Public opinion has in fact moved in the opposite direction and become less hostile to people of different cultures and ethnicities living in the UK. In other words, interacting with ethnic minorities and watching them contribute to the UK (in sport, business, academia etc) has easily overcome tabloid scaremongering. This doesn’t just illustrate the limited impact of the press and politicians, but the power of everyday experiences in changing opinions. So when David Cameron gave a speech in 2011 saying “multiculturalism has failed” he just reinforced the negative perceptions of the Tory party of Enoch Powell, while only appealing to a narrow sliver of the population. Even mainstream Conservative voters don’t buy that view any more: 71% of them support multiculturalism too. There is also evidence to show that attitudes to immigrants have improved since 2002.
White Bread, Multiculturalgrain bread, wholemeal bread … Let’s Aim For More Fibre. Let’s Get Multivultural (examiningmedia.wordpress.com)
The Australian media industry is currently aware of the sensitivity and reactions the “whitewashing” accusation provokes and has found the need to improve discrimination, exclusion and the (mis) representation of ethnic actors (Dreher 2014). With the introduction of the concept of “Actor’s equity” provides a benchmark for color-blind casting. Colour-blind casting does not discriminate against ethic individuals on any level when casting roles.

Posted in B4Peace, Culture, Religion, Welfare and Health | Tagged Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Capitalism, Christian Stokke, Ethnic Minorities, Ethnicity, European Union, France, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalists, Great Britain, Hegemony, Islam, Islamic faith, Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Labelling, Liberalism, Marianne Gullestad, Media, Minority, Multicultural Society, Multiculturalism, Muslim, Negotiation, Open mind, Race Relations, Racism, Sharia law, Soviet-style Communism, Tariq Modood, Terrorism, Theory of Justice, United States | 9 Comments

Giving others the chance our ancestors had

Posted on May 9, 2013 by marcusampe

Lots of American citizens seem to have forgotten where they originally came from. They consider themselves true Americans, but are they so true ‘virgin’ Americans?

Engraving of Spaniards enslaving Native Americans by Theodor de Bry (1528–1598), published in America. part 6. Frankfurt, 1596. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today the United States like many West-European countries is facing an immigration problem. They have to do a lot with economical refugees. But they may not forget that there are also several people who want to come and live in the ‘New World‘ for the same reason as the ancestors of those contemporary ‘Americans’.

In the United States of America as well as in the European Union a wide range of issues are currently under critical discussion: the extent to which our high-tech industries will be able to recruit high-skill workers, the ways in which agricultural labour flows will be stabilized and those workers protected, the degree to which family reunification remains a guiding principle for decisions about who to let into the country and how. Also how people should be able to go work and live form one state into the other and under which conditions.

With the many people thinking the grass is greener over here than in their country and because of the big problematic human trafficking the issues most important for our states is insuring a clear and rapid road map to citizenship for the unauthorized or “undocumented” migrant population.

The American president wants to start a national debate. Across the country, the ‘Americans’ have a serious discussion about how they can build a fair and effective immigration system that lives up to their heritage as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.

And they need the help of many voices from al over, to make sure that genuine, personal perspectives are part of the conversation. The truth is, that if those ‘Americans’ go back far enough, nearly every American story begins somewhere else — so often with ancestors setting out in search of a different life, carving out a future for their children in that place that all of them now call home.

America’s immigration system is broken. Too many employers game the system by hiring undocumented workers and there are 11 million people living in the shadows. Neither is good for the economy or the country.

The President’s plan is to create an Immigration System for the 21st century, building a smart, effective immigration system that continues efforts to secure their borders and cracks down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.
It’s a plan that requires anyone who’s undocumented to get right with the law by paying their taxes and a penalty, learning English, and undergoing background checks before they can be eligible to earn citizenship. It requires every business and every worker to play by the same set of rules.And that is also what they should do in Europe to stop unwanted scum and profiteers who do not want to contribute to the glory of the country but just want to fill their pocket by being the spongers of society. We should avoid any leeches.

We may not take away the right of people to dream to make a better live for themselves. We never can deny the freedom and the glorious experiment some our ancestors got to build the live we can enjoy today. Together we should and can build a fair, effective and common sense immigration system that lives up to our heritage as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.

Cecilia Muñoz, Director of White House Intergovernmental Affairs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cecilia Muñoz, Director, Domestic Policy Council of The White Housewrites to the American people:

We want to make sure that idea isn’t far from the minds of policymakers here in Washington as we work to reach an agreement to reform immigration.

To kick things off, one of the President’s senior advisors sat down to share his story with you.

Watch David Simas tell his American story, then tell us yours.

When Americans from all over the country — each with different backgrounds, each from different circumstances — all speak out with the same voice, it’s powerful in a way that’s hard to ignore. We’ve seen it again and again, in debate after debate.

And this is the kind of issue where putting a face on the push for reform takes an abstract concept and makes it real. So share your American stories with us, and we’ll put them to use.

We’ll publish them on the White House website. We’ll share them on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll do everything we can to make sure they’re part of the debate around immigration reform.

Get started here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration/stories

Legal immigration should be simple and efficient but not excluded from some important rules making that the person wanting to come into the country shows genuine reasons to come and live in a society he respects and is willing to consider as one of his own thoughts.

Undocumented immigrants should be provided with a legal way to earn citizenship so they can come out of the shadows. It should hold them accountable by requiring they pass background checks, pay taxes and a penalty, go to the back of the line, and learn the language of the region they want to live in (For the U.S.A. I would consider English and Spanish. For Belgium I would say they should learn Dutch and French or be fluent enough in German). It requires everyone to play by the same rules.

The government should be stronger in checking the companies if they are using the right workforce at the right price and should penalise any firm which has workers who have to work under the normal prize. It is high time that the governments in the industrialised countries stop businesses from exploiting the system by knowingly hiring undocumented workers or providing grounds to have slaves and human traffickers finding grounds for existence. It should hold these companies accountable, and give employers who want to play by the rules a reliable way to verify that their employees are here in our economical world legally.

Communities should be made safer from crime, enhancing the infrastructure and technology, and strengthening the ability to remove criminals, sending them back to where they came from, and apprehend and prosecute threats to our national security.

On January 29, 2013 president Obama said:

“If we’re truly committed to strengthening our middle class and providing more ladders of opportunity to those who are willing to work hard to make it into the middle class, we’ve got to fix the system. We have to make sure that every business and every worker in America is playing by the same set of rules. We have to bring this shadow economy into the light so that everybody is held accountable — businesses for who they hire, and immigrants for getting on the right side of the law. That’s common sense. And that’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform.”

This counts for every self-respecting country and we should go by those lines and give other people who have less than us the opportunity to grow like we would like to grow in prosperity.

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Undocumented workers seeking driving rights victorious in key House vote (vtdigger.org)
Undocumented immigrants in Vermont won the right to drive on Tuesday, after a charged House vote ended a vigorous political push by migrant farmers and their advocates which lasted two years.

The House voted 105-39 to create a new and visibly different “driving privilege” card, which will allow about 1,500 undocumented dairy farmers, mostly from Mexico and Guatemala, to drive in the state legally.

The Senate approved the same legislation earlier this month, in a 27-2 vote. The bill heads for the desk of Gov. Peter Shumlin, who came out to support the bill back in November.
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“It deserves to be said that these are people who are working hard in our state, that these are Vermonters too, just like us,” continued Ram. “We Vermonters don’t say this person belongs or that person doesn’t belong, [that] this person’s legal and this person’s illegal, and therefore they have different rights or protections.”
Viewpoints: Why immigration overhaul matters to state (sacbee.com)
With the U.S. Senate finally poised to discuss immigration reform, it is important that those of us in California stay focused on what this might mean in the state and what is needed in a bill – and after – to help the state prosper.
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Many settled in California long ago; almost half – 49 percent – of the state’s undocumented immigrants have lived here for more than 10 years. They are not just Latinos. Asians constitute 12 percent of the unauthorized population. And whatever the national origin, they are deeply connected to the state’s citizenry. Of the 6 percent of households headed by undocumented immigrants, nearly three-fourths have at least one citizen living there as well.The potential legalization and eventual naturalization of these immigrants would most likely economically benefit the state. Focusing specifically on the undocumented population, the Center for American Progress recently suggested that a road map to citizenship could generate a 25 percent boost in immigrant income, whereas a more conservative estimate for the state generated last year by USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration suggests a more modest gain of more than 14 percent. Either means a boost in state GDP, multiplied over several years and many sectors.
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California has had a long and convoluted relationship with its undocumented population (just think of Proposition 187), but the state now seems to be moving past punitive policies toward embracing its entire immigrant population.
Immigration Hearts Could Be Shattered By Washington Breaking Their Dreams – Analysis (albanytribune.com)
On April 10, thousands of immigration reform supporters gathered together in front of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to rally for the inclusion of a reliable path to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented residents presently living in the United States. The multicultural crowd present that day included immigrant workers from a wide backgrounds of occupations, leaders of civic organizations and their members voicing the opposition against current immigration laws. Overall, President Barack Obama was called upon to fulfill his campaign promise to reform the government’s outdated and hostile immigration policy.
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There is a national consensus that the current immigration system is broken and that some decisions have to be made regarding the status of the undocumented population. The root of the problem goes back to the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), enacted in 1986. U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services describe IRCA as “a bill that was passed in order to control and deter illegal immigration to the United States. Its basic purpose was to stipulate legalization of undocumented aliens who had been continuously unlawfully present since 1982, legalization of certain agricultural workers, and sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, and increased enforcement at U.S. borders.”
Heritage vs. Heritage: Major Immigration Report Released Today Directly Contradicts Its 2006 Study (humboldtdems.wordpress.com)
On Monday, the Heritage Foundation published a widely panned study arguing that comprehensive immigration reform that allows undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, as the population will take advantage of an array of government programs, including, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, public education, and population-based services like police and parks. But the study, which comes out under the leadership of conservative former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), is a sharp departure from a “Backgrounder” the Foundation published in 2006. Then, Heritage noted that “worker migration is a net plus economically” and warned lawmakers against succumbing to “a lopsided, ideological approach that focuses exclusively on border security while ignore migrant workers (or vice versa) is bound to fail.”
Survey: More Americans Back Citizenship For Undocumented Workers (boiseweekly.com)
A new survey published this morning by the Brookings Institution and the Pubic Religion Research Institute reveals that more than 6 in 10 Americans think undocumented immigrants should be granted a path to citizenship. The survey found that 63 percent of respondents back citizenship for those without documentation, while 21 percent favor deportation
The economic case for immigration reform (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
The latest numbers show slow growth in the United States. That’s bad for jobs, income – it’s even bad for those worried about the deficit because it means lower tax revenues. And it has prompted a revival of the partisan debate about what to do about it.

Well, there’s one idea out there that could have support from both parties. A study out last week suggests there is one very simple way to increase tax revenue, expand GDP, and create jobs – all at the same time. What’s more, Congress is already weighing it: it’s called immigration reform.

How and why? Well, a new paper from the left-leaning Center for American Progress actually calculates the economic impact of immigration reform.
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The study’s authors make the case that legalizing undocumented workers brings them into the formal economy. Now they have to pay income taxes, social security, and health care taxes and all those other things you see on your wage stubs. It also gives them access to many more jobs, and at higher wages. These gains then go on to have ripple effects across the economy, boosting GDP growth.

Critics often point out that if illegal immigrants become citizens, they become a burden on the system, impacting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But these arguments ignore basic economics. Immigrants with legal papers are transformed into contributing members of society. And access to society’s services also makes them safer, healthier, and more productive.
The Boston Marathon Attack and Immigration Reform (turnergpa.wordpress.com)
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came to the United States in 2002 and were granted asylum. While Tamerlan was a legal resident, Dzhokhar became a U.S. citizen in 2012.

Some of those involved in the ongoing immigration debate on Capitol Hill are yanking the reins insisting that the bombing casts a new light on the issue that must be considered.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), for example, urged lawmakers not to rush ahead without giving due consideration to the issues raised by the Boston bombings. He made the remarks during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Later, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the so-called gang-of-eight who have unveiled a sweeping immigration reform proposal, said he believes the bombing should make immigration reform even more critical.

“What happened in Boston…I think should urge us to act quickly, not slower, when it comes to getting the 11 million [illegal immigrants living in the U.S.] identified,” Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y), another backer of reform, agreed: “We are not going to let them use what happened in Boston as an excuse, because our law toughens things up,” Schumer said on the same show.
New Reports debate the positive impacts immigration reform will have for the American economy (immigrantintegrationnow.wordpress.com)
The Heritage Foundation released a new report arguing that immigration reform would cost the American taxpayer $6.3 trillion. The report and subsequent Heritage Foundation press conference garnered immediate reactions: Senator Flake (R-AZ) on Twitter, Doug Holtz-Eakin in the National Review Online, and the CATO Institute and ThinkProgress, were among the many to find flaws in the Heritage Foundation report.

Posted in Poverty, Welfare and Health | Tagged Background check, Barack Obama, Cecilia Muñoz, Illegal immigration, Immigration, Irregular immigration, Law, New World, United States, United States Domestic Policy Council | 1 Comment

A co-operation flying Over the mountains

Posted on May 7, 2013 by marcusampe

The last few weeks I hear several things about a new Belgian film which made me curious about the project.

Flemish director Anja Daelemans and British director Nicholas Bonner had an idea which would have sounded if not ridiculous impossible. But borders are there to be crossed and bridges to be build to go over wild rivers.

Over “a little too much whisky” at a film festival in 2006 Anja Daelemans listened to the project a feel-good story about a clever and headstrong young woman who dreams of abandoning her life as a miner to become a trapeze artist in the big city. Dreams come through with a smile on the face. And when we think of every smiling faces we see those North Korean faces with the white teeth.

Nicholas Bonner living in in Beijing, is well known to North Korean authorities as he has long organised tours of the country. For many foreigners it is nearly impossible to go to and for Belgians it is always like they are followed all the time by secret officers. It is very difficult to move freely in that country as a westerner. but Bonner seems to have the right connections and managed to get permission to film in that isolated country. He has also produced a few interesting documentaries about North Korea, which were (some would say miraculously) approved by their government censors and widely released.

In close consultation with us, our North Korean colleagues wrote and rewrote the script for the film over a period of three years. At the early stages, the script was often rejected by the state run film and television studios. Our script was nothing like a standard North Korean script. We had a female lead character pursuing her own dream without regard for country or party, and she was a coal miner dreaming of a life outside the mine. In addition, she was also a young woman (too old according to North Korean standards) training to become a trapeze artist. For all these reasons the script was considered unrealistic. Our story just did not fit traditional North Korean film tropes. Suddenly, it seemed as if Comrade Kim would never fly.

But, all of this was without utilising the ingenuity of our North Korean producer Ryom Mi Hwa. Herself the daughter of a cinematographer, Mi Hwa knows a good story when she sees one. Although, she too, was very close to giving up.

It was lovely to here the producer tell about the six years it took to make the film. The interviews I heard were already so entertaining that I hope many people would go to see the film and get some of the spirit and enthusiasm that producer showed.

The film was finished in 2012, has screened at a handful of festivals and opens across Flanders and Brussels this week. And it is exactly the film that Daelemans wanted to make.

“I’m interested in politics, of course, but I’m not interested in making movies about political situations,” she says. “I want to entertain people. When I go to the movies, I want to be entertained; I do not want to come out depressed.”

“The main character is a woman, and there is no strong man next to her,” explains Daelemans. “She does her own thing and follows her own dream. And the men she works with support her in that. In North Korea, that kind of film doesn’t exist.”

When we see the newsreels from North Korea we always get some fanatic female journalist ‘shouting’ propaganda language. There we can see a soldier of a women, but when I did understand it rightly Daelemans her film shall show more a man of a woman making her drams come true without being afraid to show the love for that what she wants to become but also for those around her.

Comrade Kim is a “taboo breaker” in North Korea, says Daelemans. The country in fact has an active film industry, but all the scripts are subject to state censorship, which insists on propaganda messages of an ever-victorious and morally pure North Korea. Some of their films have been known to rewrite history. Aside from these movies, North Koreans see very little cinema. Once a week, a foreign film is shown on the state-run television channel, usually a Chinese or Russian drama. Foreign films are not shown in cinemas, with the exception of the annual Pyongyang International Film Festival, which screens movies from around the world. The films are carefully chosen, avoiding, for instance, any sex, but the locals still flock to the festival to get a glimpse of the outside world.

For westerners, it’s a different kind of film, too, a kind of throwback to 1960s Disney movies in which charmingly naive young people solve crimes or get mixed up in other adventures. It feels like a movie for children:

I have no doubt that if Comrade Kim was dubbed in Dutch, it would be a sure-fire hit in Flanders. And yet it’s a strangely fascinating movie for adults, too, intercut with creative animation sequences, carried out in Belgium, and oddly nationalistic lines like: “The working class can do anything if we believe in ourselves!” or “Everything can be achieved with a revolutionary spirit” or “You are the daughter of our coal mine and of Korea”.

In Comrade Kim, 20-something Kim Yong-Mi (played by real-life trapeze artist Han Jong Sim) works in a coal mine in rural North Korea. But she’s also a talented gymnast, entertaining the other mine workers with her handstands and backflips. Yong-Mi has always dreamed of flying like the birds in the sky, as we see from the opening scenes when she is still a child and her mother is still alive – a mother who encouraged her to follow her dreams.

So when Yong-Mi travels to the capital Pyongyang to expand her skills with other young workers on a construction site, she immediately heads to the state circus. One thing leads to another, and eventually the determined Yong-Mi gets her own shot at trapeze stardom.

According to Daelemans the film shall not be a propaganda film for the communist Korean system but shall also not hide some good but also some less good things in that system and the problems in the family life. They took care that the kind of ideology that we always find in North Korean films is taken away for a grate part but she agrees that she could not take away everything because then the North Koreans wouldn’t recognise it as their own.

“But we do not consider it a propaganda film at all.”

“Through the whole process, there was respect and trust, and we tried to find common ground to overcome cultural differences,” she says. “There were no hidden agendas. We did not go in there and play the leaders. If you respect and trust one another, you can get very far.”

Technical Infomation

director image

Running time: 81 minutes
Format: DCP
World Premiere: September 8th 2012
Original music composed by: Ham Chol & Frederik Van de Moortel; > A Belgium, UK and North Korea co-production: Comrade Kim goes Flying, a heartwarming story of trying to make the impossible possible.; +++; “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung Among Workers” (Photo credit: John Pavelka)

Comrade Kim: North Korean film set to screen in LA (rare.us)
Comrade Kim Goes Flying is one of the most unique and entertaining features at this year’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. The first fiction feature shot in North Korea and co-produced by both Western and North Korean companies, it sidesteps current political tensions to offer a spunky comedy about a female coal miner (Kim Yong Mi) who dreams of becoming a circus acrobat. The film screens Sunday, May 5 at 5:45 PM at CGV Cinemas.
Trapeze artist performs with paraglider: Spectacular images show tricks performed at 2,000dt (thisismoney.co.uk)
The professional circus performer and paragliding pilot performed gravity-busting acrobatics over the Lake Annecy in Geneva.The astonishing act sees fearless trapeze entertainer Roxane Giliand take to the skies before dropping down 12ft below pilot Gill Schneider with no shoes or helmet on.
New North Korean Propaganda Film Shows The Capture Of 150,000 U.S. Soldiers (warnewsupdates.blogspot.com)
A propaganda video showing North Korean soldiers invading South Korea and taking 150,000 American citizens hostage has been posted online.The four-minute film, entitled A Short, Three-Day War, has been put up on a website used by the secretive state to show off videos in which it imagines gaining supremacy over the United States and other foes.
Kim Tae Hee is the #1 most hated celebrity by North Koreans (allkpop.com)
According to North Korean refugees, the most disliked celebrity in North Korea is not who you think it is. Actress Kim Tae Hee has been revealed to be the celebrity who is hated most by North Koreans.During a recent filming for Channel A‘s variety show ‘Meet Now‘, North Korean refugees revealed, “Kim Tae Hee is known as a bad woman among North Korean residents.”

Posted in Culture | Tagged Anja Daelemans, Comrade Kim, Film, Kim Yong-Mi, Nicholas Bonner, North Korea, Pyongyang, Pyongyang International Film Festival, Ryom Mi Hwa | Leave a comment

Citizens to be put at the heart of the public debate

Posted on May 7, 2013 by marcusampe

Manuel Barroso & Henri Malosse

The Corsican/French Henri Malosse was elected president of the Employers’ Group of the EESC in 2006 and has been actively involved in EU policies supporting SMEs and, in particular, inspired the creation of the Euro Info Centres, specialist EU policy information centres, in over 300 towns and cities across Europe.

Mr Malosse had quickly developed a firm conviction that Europe has a key role to play in nurturing a sense of European citizenship.

Henri Malosse is keenly aware of the disconnection between Europe and its citizens, a fact again brought home by the Greek and Cyprus crises. Convinced that one of the answers lies in a rebalancing of forces in Brussels, he wants the European Union’s second assembly to do more to embody people’s real expectations in areas such as job creation, combating youth alienation, protection of savings and access to health care.

“The greatest challenge facing the EU today is the lack of support by European citizens. To win back popular support must be the top priority for those of us who believe in the European integration project. These days, as if the financial crisis were not enough, European governance has accelerated the break-up with the people. And who can blame them when Europe shows that it is capable of taxing people’s life savings! The EU needs someone who can put forward strong and uncomfortable messages, capable of casting a positive critical eye and shaking up its institutions. I want to be part of this and press for a more ambitious EU that truly prioritises the interests of its citizens. And the urge is now.”

“It is the role of the Committee, on behalf of the various interests that make up our society, to engage with the other institutions on their strategies and hold them to account. The public will only be able to put their trust in us again if we do this.”
Henri Malosse, EESC president

In an ever more competitive world in which one crisis is followed by the next, our social model and the rights it brings are being put to the test. He is convinced that the only way to pull ourselves out of the recession that is pushing our society to breaking point and driving our young people to despair, is by making the most of the talent and skills of Europeans. With the public increasingly at a loss to understand decisions taken by the European Union Henri Malosse is kicking off a 2½-year tenure as head of the EU institution representing civil society.

Official emblem of the EESC (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To this end, the EESC will step up its capacity to anticipate developments, open up its work and scrutinise EU policies.

He will be assisted by vice-presidents Jane Morrice, former deputy-speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and an EESC member since 2006, and Hans-Joachim Wilms, European Affairs Officer, Trade Union for Construction, Agriculture and the Environment (IG BAU) and a German EESC member since 1994.

Malosse is expected to make more waves than his predecessor, Staffan Nilsson, and is bringing in an outsider to head his private office, Rudy Aernoudt. “The appointment makes a curious progression for the 50-year-old Belgian, who has already headed private offices in the Walloon, Flemish and Belgian federal governments.” says European Voice.

At the beginning of May Mr Malosse for the first time met the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, as EECS president creating a new appointment for June, during which the Commission will be presented the issues, on which civil society expects priority actions from the European Union.

Mr Malosse has called for the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to ensure greater consistency among European policies, following the announcement that a penalty will be imposed on the Société Nationale Maritime Corse-Méditerranée (SNCM). He pointed out that a decision like this will affect not only a business, but also more than 1 400 direct employees and hundreds of indirect jobs and would further widen the gulf with the European public.

Find more:

Penalty for the SNCM an inconsistent decision, says EESC President Henri Malosse

Quango unchained: The EU’s subculture you’ve probably never heard of (but that thinks it embodies your expectations) (webabuser.blogspot.com)
The absence of any meaningful impact of a body like the EESC on the multiple crises plaguing the eurozone borders on being comical.
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If only the EESC got a bit more power, than we’re sure that the collapsed interbank lending market would be restored over-night. A few more EESC conferences would do wonders to bring down unsustainable debt levels in the eurozone.
The French re-connection (europeanvoice.com)
Henri Malosse, who has been a member of the EESC since 1995, latterly as head of the employers’ group. He has the dubious distinction of having co-authored a book with Edith Cresson, on the subject of doing business with the European Union (her expertise in this field brought down the Santer Commission).
Local discourse must be engine of European debate (irishtimes.com)
One of the most notable findings of the Accountability Report 2012 is that average attendance by Irish Ministers at meetings of the Council of the EU in 2012 stood at 97 per cent, up 11 percentage points on the same figure for 2011. We believe this encouraging statistic shows the Government’s commitment to improving Ireland’s relationships, reputation and results in Europe. It is vital this engagement continues.
The real overall cost of intermittent renewable energy must be better assessed and revealed (venitism.blogspot.com)
The EESC argues that a sustainable energy system – comprised largely of renewables – is the only long-term solution to our energy future but transparency and a more open debate on costs’ related issues are essential for paving the way, maintaining the strong support of citizens and preparing the required policy decisions.
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The EESC is convinced that, by providing more clarity on the total costs of intermittent RES and alternative energy options, the EU could substantially improve policy-making and ease transition towards a low carbon economy. The EESC also strongly supports the move towards a European Energy Community, since this is the best way to develop Europe’s potential in a cost-efficient way.
EU will not deliver on promises without democratic accountability (europeansting.com)
The two main advisory bodies of the European Union, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR) expressed their anguish over the growing distance between Brussels and the Peoples of Europe. Last Thursday on the occasion of the plenary session of the EESC, its President Staffan Nielson invited Ramon Luis Valcárcel Siso, president of the Committee of the Regions in order to look at ways of developing political cooperation between the two Committees. Their joint aim is to make their voice better heard by the Brussels executives and bureaucracy.
Unleashing the potential of children with high intellectual abilities in the European Union (krmlr.wordpress.com)
I dag viser jeg til en sak fra EU der de nå har kommet med en rapport som omhandler evnerike barn og unge i Europa:
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Hovedpoengene finner du i disse “Key points”:
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On 19 January 2012, the European Economic and Social Committee, acting under Rule 29(2) of its Rules of Procedure, decided to draw up an own-initiative opinion on “Unleashing the potential of children and young people with high intellectual abilities in the European Union”
President’s comments on Europe ‘helpful’ says Gilmore (irishtimes.com)
Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore said President Michael D Higgins’ remarks on European policy in a forthright interview in today’s Financial Times, were “helpful” to the Government in the debate on the euro zone.
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Asked about the President’s criticism of EU leaders and the European Central Bank, Mr Gilmore said Mr Higgins had made a very signfiicant contribution to the debate about Europe’s direction

“I’m very proud of the fact that during the course of the Irish presidency the president of Ireland made a very clear keynote address to the European Parliament reflecting very clearly the priorities which the Government has for our presidency and the direction which we want see Europe taking.”
Trust in EU falls to record low (guardian.co.uk)
Public confidence in the European Union has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the union’s worst ever crisis, new data shows.After financial, currency and debt crises, wrenching budget and spending cuts, rich nations’ bailouts of the poor, and surrenders of sovereign powers over policymaking to international technocrats, Euroscepticism is soaring to a degree that is likely to feed populist anti-EU politics and frustrate European leaders’ efforts to arrest the collapse in support for their project.

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The study for the Cabinet Office by the European Social Survey, linking university researchers across the EU, found that soaring unemployment, anxiety and insecurity had eroded faith in politics.

“Overall levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy [declined] across much of Europe, but this varied markedly between countries. It was significant in Britain, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, particularly notable in France, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, and reached truly alarming proportions in the case of Greece,” it said.

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Tusk delivered an unusually stark warning that German prescriptions could bring increasing nationalism and populism across the EU in a backlash that was already well under way.”We can’t escape this dilemma: how do you get a new model of sovereignty so that limited national sovereignty in the EU is not dominated by the biggest countries like Germany, for example,” he said pointedly. “Under the surface, this fear will be everywhere: in Warsaw, in Athens, in Stockholm. It will be everywhere without exception.”

Aart de Geus, head of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German thinktank, also warned that the drive to surrender more key national powers to Brussels would backfire. “Public support for the EU has been falling since 2007. So it is risky to go for federalism as it can cause a backlash and unleash greater populism.”
EESC Video Challenge’12 (ineshenriqueslopes.wordpress.com)
EU. Simplifies, connects, provides new opportunities of mobility; generates new possibilities of living. Connected Mobility tells us a story that could be from any citizen of one of the member states of EU, showing the ups and downs of a period of Henrique’s life, always portraying the main advantages of having an EU citizenship.
Swedish euro scepticism hits all time high (thelocal.se)
Fewer than one in ten Swedes want to replace the krona with the euro, in an overall EU-confidence dip that political scientists tie to the financial crisis.
- Sweden dominates EU innovation ranking (27 Mar 13)
- Stockholm in top ten of EU’s richest regions (24 Mar 13)
- Swedish krona ‘world’s strongest’ currency (15 Mar 13)
“Whether it’s founded or unfounded, the euro is blamed for what’s happened with Europe’s economy,” Sören Holmberg, political science professor at Gothenburg University, told Sveriges Radio (SR).

“And the crisis has indirectly affected the Swedish economy.”

Posted in News and Politics | Tagged Brussels, Citizenship, Citizenship of the European Union, EESC, European Commission, European Economic and Social Committee, European Union, Hans-Joachim Wilms, Henri Malosse, Integration, Jane Morrice, Job creation, Protection of Savings, Rudy Aernoudt, Youth Alienation | 3 Comments

20 years at the personal computer

Posted on April 30, 2013 by marcusampe

Expensive utilities

In 1981 the IBM PC was introduced to the world and seemed to be the revelation for small businesses to have, though they were very expensive. Too expensive for private use or for a small private business like my Dance Archive and Artist Management office ‘Danscontact- Dansarchief” or my dance company ‘Rubicon’.

The first computer to run Microsoft software which presented itself as the First Mini Computer was the Altair, introduced in January 1975. It took an other two years before the real start of the personal computer got going with some pace which in the 1990ies became a picked up speed like the devil was behind it.

We were confronted with the punchcards but I mostly kept working with my filing cards and using the scissors to cut all the paper-clippings which my wife was willing to glue on the filing papers. Thousands of index-cards and many maps full of newspaperclipings, filled my study-room.

Handwork and preservation for the future

My ballets and those of others I wrote manually down. Also all my teaching-notes and balletscores I wrote with the hand. Program-notes and official papers were written out by the secretaries. All the international dancemagazines were read and articles manually indexed. I spend hours and hours reading and indexing for years, next to my choreographic and teaching job in the arts schools.

In 1993 one of my students sold me her second-hand computer, so my electronic adventure started. At that time still having to pay for an internet connection per second and, because of its prize, keeping it as short as possible.

When I got immobilised for some moths, in 1999, I could not do anything on my computer and was unable to work on my archive, so that work became much much way behind, so that I could not keep it up any-more. With pain in my heart, I had to leave my ‘child’ behind, but wanted all the magazines, personal letters, photographs, personal and other material of international dancers stay together. Some dance libraries in the United States of America, Switzerland, France and Holland were interested to buy bits and pieces, but I decided to give it to the Vlaams Theater Instituut VTi (Flemish Theatre Institute or Institute for the Performing Arts), and the technical material, scores and recordings to my niece who also had become a balletteacher. The VTi now presents the archival collections and links to the many records about people, organisations and productions: photo and video, press cuttings, books and periodicals, archival documents and ephemera. Their computer-system could also link the data with other archives in the world.

Yvonne Georgi (1903 – 1975) German dancer, choreographer and balletmistress

Personal letters, photographs and books from my old friends and teachers like Harald Kreutzberg, Yvonne Georgi, Hans Brenaa I still kept in the house with some of my most precious balletbooks and some special photos of the Ballet of Twentieth Century.

One period in life coming to an end

While revalidating, after six months absence, I went back to teaching and did no choreographies any-more for professional dancers.

In 2009, when I got retired, the ballet chapter became closed, which gave me so much grieve that for some years I could not speak or sea much of ballet or theatrical dance. Now I am getting back the flavour. A few days ago I started to Pin some Mastery of movement.

In the mean time my spiritual work had demanded lots of my time.

Communities on line

In the 1990ies the MSN network hosted online communities. Those communities were very popular and many groups tackled the religious subjects. I also went onto Messenger and got until a few months ago a “messengeruser.com” account the predecessor of “hotmail.com”. When it became the free email service “Outlook.com” I thought it was time I changed my old messenger address to the new outlook.com address. (My Tiscali and fulladsl addresses became scarlet addresses)

The softdisks computer was soon changed for a new Compaq computer with diskettes but with a useless Windows Millennium system. That computer had a short time. In 2002 I asked my nephew to make myself the strongest computer at the time, in an acceptable budget for my purse.

He created a pc with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (Version2002 Service Pack 3), because several programs I wanted to use could only run on Windows and not in the better free open-source Linux. The desktop he created for me was/is with AMD Athlom 64 processor, 3000+, 2.00GH, 2.00GB of RAM)

Last year I started to have the first big problems on it and now I am facing some programs not able to run on this computer and it running very slow. I can not use Logos Bible Software any more, which mean I even can not reach our own Christadelphian Library. Therefore I am looking to buy a new desktop computer and also a laptop or notebook so that I would be able to work outside as well, or take it with me to meetings and to the service of my ecclesia (or church).

Religious work on the Message Board

The church-work has become the main work for me, in real life now and on the computer.

To some religious people in the Low countries, who wanted to be independent it looked a good idea to start a MSN group with a default message board called “General” and an other message boards for other topics, giving the opportunity to all sorts of members to participate in the group by adding messages and replying using the same interface as used for creating a custom web page. Alternatively, an e-mail could be sent to the group’s e-mail address and the message appeared on the General message board. I started with Bijbelonderzoekers (Bible researchers) and together with some friends we constructed a.o. Vrije Christenen (Free Christians) which got some nice following and many replies on the articles placed by several administrator members and some active normal members.

Bringing people together

On my “site” and my groups I promoted the message to unite, and to step over the borders of denominations, sharing the same message of the coming Kingdom of God.

Christadelphian meeting at the AC Leuven (2006)

We organised meetings or came together to have a service praising God and reading the Holy Scriptures together. For the music in the service we took much attention so that the lyrics would not interfere with the believes of one or the other. As such trinitarian texts, taking or talking about Jesus being God, were avoided.

This way we managed to have very nice communal meetings. But as often happens nice songs do not last long. Some leaders of the group became too muddled by the differences of the different believers and other religions that they gave up their beliefs in Christianity (one becoming a Muslim and an other an atheist).

From MSN to Multiply

On the MSN Groups there were a few other foreign groups who also tried to bring a message of peace. Our and their voices got muffled in 2006 when Microsoft announced (officially October 2008) the MSN Groups Service would close down on February 21, 2009.

I took the given opportunity to migrate my data in 2006 to the social website Multiply which was launched in March 2004 . Marcus’s Space, Bijbelonderzoekers and Christadelphians found their place on Multiply but never got as many readers like on the MSN Groups, though Quantcast estimates Multiply had 2.47 million monthly U.S. unique visitors at their peak on July 30, 2012. Much time was put into the publication of material but I got nearly no responses an no members. If I remember well Vrije Christenen (Free Christians) had at one time 1700 members. Now, on Multiply, I had to do with a handful. They did not multiply.

Multiply was headquarterd in Boca Raton, Florida but moved to Jakarta, Indonesia early in 2012 and switched to e-commerce, dropping the social networking aspect entirely.

As soon as I got the news about Multiply going to close down I looked for other possibilities to continue to bring my ideas forwards and to comment on certain situations in this world.

Transfer again

That way I encountered WordPress which offered a much easier way to publicise and seemed to generate many more readers. The Multiply articles I transferred to my Blogger account with the idea to place all the messages on to WordPress, but that looked too much work so I left them their and noticed they also got better views than on Multiply, so I continued placing religious related messages on Christadelphian World. (In its 6 months of existence it got already 6.896 views)

The Messenger Live and Windows Live Spaces texts, I transferred December 7, 2010 to WordPress, where you could find me now.

My intentions did not change much. Mostly I just want to give some impressions from my heart. For the religious sites I mainly place articles about subjects of interest at that moment and for use in the ecclesia or churchmeeting. (My Christadelphian Ecclesia and Broeders in Christus)

Messages of Hope and Peace

On all the websites I do keep I want to bring a message of hope and peace which will not disappoint us. I would like to share the idea that we can work together to have more people living together in peace in a nice unpolluted environment.

I sincerely believe it is possible to congregate people from different nations and from a wide spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds, cultures and creeds to constructively create a nice environment where many can work and live together in peace.

I am convinced we should get to more people fostering international understanding. I also believe that we should bring youngsters more together showing them how conflict and hostility could be overcome by learning from each other.

It is not ill striving against the stream

In this twenty-first century, tragically, there are still wars to protest, and refugees to embrace. We all can see the many horrible things going on in the world. Knowing that it is part of the human race and has always been there in history does not mean we should not react against it or not pull a good oar.

Conflict still seems to be a part of the human condition, but it is surely within the grasp of educated young people to make a difference and perhaps it can be ill striving against the stream, but I am sure when many people could join hands it matters and changes for the good, can be brought forward.

Transcending the narrow ideologies that plague the world

I am convinced that people can transcend the narrow ideologies that plague the world. It will demand an attitude which requires voluntary work and effort to dedicate oneself to matters which go beyond personal interest.

An all-out effort can make a noticeable difference.

To my mind together we can do much more and should make more efforts in joining forces, crossing borders, conniving with a league of lovers of peace.

Combining the many ideas to make a better world with the concerted action of several individuals and organisations their joint effort, we all could shift the lines and displace our many limitations.

You can perhaps utter what a cheek to have the conscience to take the lead to raise an army of bearers of love and peace. We should know the time of the day and understand something has to happen before the world is going to laugh on the wrong side of its mouth.

Lots of people may bury their head in the sand and prefer to live in their own little cocoon. I would rather be one of the many small grains of sand which can form a lovely inviting beach where people can find themselves at ease.

Click here to Join the Bloggers For Peace

Looking out for the next step

I could use all the help to sort me out to have some descent tool to get me in the next decennial, able to prepare the exhortations, sermons and my documentation and preparations for my theoretical studies and articles.

For the Logos software program the company recommends:

Intel i5 Processor (or AMD equivalent)
6GB+ RAM
Windows 8 Pro (“RT” Not Supported)
DVD-ROM drive (only required for non-downloadable items)
1280X1024 display
1GB+ DirectX11 Compatible Video Card
30GB Free Space – Internal HDD/SSD Only
(May require additional space depending on your library)
Broadband internet connection

No wonder the program update does not work any more on my system with my 2GB pc, though there should be still 40 GB free space on it, but the RAM is clearly not sufficient to do normal contemporary work.

I got to hear that Vista is not good, but others also say that Windows 8 is made for touch screens and is not so good for desktops, which would give me the choice for a Windows 7.

Any propositions?

Up to the next 20 years

Am I still running behind or not believing enough in the more recent tools like iPads and tablets, which perhaps could do a lot of work as well or even better than the desktop? When I see the younger people constantly busy on their iPad I must acknowledge that those modern devices are easy to use, mobile, and can do most of the things that people want. That makes them a fashionable, if not fully functional, and perhaps could make them a replacement for a new PC. Though when I look the bad body position and no ergonomic keyboard I do not think it would be interesting for me writing long documents or exhortations. My pc takes about 12 minutes to start up, while another one in the house only a few minutes and the iPad of my son only a few seconds.

It would be nice if I could get some useful machine that can do lots of work and store enough information to have a big library at my doorstep, of my chair.

I look forward to get enough inspiration and to make new contacts from all over the world, sharing ideas and some nice works.

That all that passed by will enjoy their stay at one of my websites and would feel at ease to share their ideas as well. I do hope some new computer this Summer will enter again fast working connections with many different writers and thinkers, willing to share their texts, photographs and drawings.

Let us stay connected in good and bad times, sharing a friendship and spreading lovely thoughts, making peace and no war.

Additional reading material or places to look at:

My main website for the Belgian Christadelphians
The Ecclesia-site of the Belgian Christadelphians: Ecclesia Brussel-Leuven
The Flemish Brethren in Christ or Christadelphians: Broeders in Christus or Christadelphians
Marcus Ampe on Pinterest
A move in Spaces
Ending Multiply relationship
Transfer site opened to the public
Historical Ziegfeld and other Multiply Groups
Hope does not disappoint us

Kozo & Cheri asks that you further spread the message of peace

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Change Computer History Forever: Well, Here We Are (ascii.textfiles.com)
Through these terabytes (!) of software, the whole of the software landscape of the last 50 years is settling in. But since software is just that, programs and materials, it’s best to have some documentation and writing regarding it as well.
Apple Inc. (AAPL), Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ): Personal Computers Are Now Dead, Who To Invest In? (insidermonkey.com)
Research firm IDC recently reported that personal computer (PC) shipments were off by nearly 14% in the first quarter. That’s a massive and worrisome decline that took a toll on just about every PC related stock. It looks like tablet computers are killing PCs, so consider buying PC makers.
Want to bring back Windows Live Messenger? Here’s how (neowin.net)
Microsoft recently killed off Windows Live Messenger in favor of Skype, leaving many of us without years’ worth of chat logs or the familiarity that MSN brings. Skype, while good, doesn’t have the same stability as MSN and adds a lot of unwanted clutter. Microsoft have blocked MSN from working for many users, but some new software from a Microsoft MVP allows you to bring back Messenger in a few simple steps.Messenger Reviver 2 is a free piece of software that installs, repairs and modifies Windows Live Messenger ’08, ’09, ’11 and ’12 to allow them to sign in, despite Microsoft’s block. Currently, when you access Messenger you’re prompted to “install the newer version in order to continue,” but Reviver installs a patch that allows WLM to continue to be used.
The Future is Here: The Neuromimetic Processor (storiesbywilliams.com)
when it comes to Neuromoprhic processors, computers that mimic the function of the human brain, scientists have been lagging behind sequential computing. For instance, IBM announced this past November that its Blue Gene/Q Sequoia supercomputer could clock 16 quadrillion calculations per second, and could crudely simulate more than 530 billion neurons – roughly five times that of a human brain. However, doing this required 8 megawatts of power, enough to power 1600 homes.
What is SAAS (Software As A Service)? (workzone.com)
As cloud computing begins to dominate the development landscape, more and more companies and websites are turning to SAAS in order to fulfill their business needs. SAAS, or software as a service, is a distributed software management system that sees programs installed on mainframes in “the cloud”. These programs, such as data entry or sales software for everything from small businesses to multi-national corporations, offer many advantages over traditional, locally installed applications. While on-demand software has been available in many forms since the inception of computer networks, it has only recently gained prominence in all modes of computing.
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Software as a service instead allows data to be checked and updated on-the-fly, whether from a tablet, notebook, smartphone, or desktop PC. Enterprise data programs such as the ones deployed and distributed by salesforce.com enable sales teams to move to the forefront of their markets without worrying about compatibility or other traditional software woes.
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Is It Time for Your Project Management Software to Move to the Cloud?
How to Reconfigure and Rename Windows XP Home in Your Workgroup (smallbusiness.chron.com)
Windows XP Home Edition can connect to and share files with other workstations on a network via a workgroup. The other computers in the workgroup locate the Windows XP machine using its IP address or host name, also called its computer name. You can rename and make other changes to the PC without it impacting its presence in the workgroup, but workstations that have a network path to a shared folder on the computer will need to update the location with the new host name.
Microsoft: Almost 25 percent of computers are still unprotected from viruses and malware (digitaltrends.com)
Although the majority of users got the memo to proactively protect their machines with antivirus software and possibly even setup a firewall, an average of 24 percent of computers around the world are still unprotected and therefore vulnerable to cyber attacks. There are many free options like AVG’s antivirus software available online, so there is really no excuse to not setup some sort of Internet security on every computer.Just because you’re running an out-of-date version of antivirus software on your computer, doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods, either. You’re basically making your computer vulnerable to the latest malware that your software wasn’t designed to handle, but that’s a relatively easy fix. All you have to do is update your antivirus software or look to pay for a more recent version.

Posted in B4Peace, Ballet + Dance/Dans, Christendom, Dagboek = Diary, History | Tagged Attitude, Christadelphian World, Christianity, Computer, Danscontact - Dansarchief, Difference, Free Christians, Hope, Ideology, Institute for the Performing Arts, Join, Limitation, Logos Bible Software, Messenger, Microsoft, MSN, MSN Groups, Multiply, Online Communities, Software, Vlaams Theater Instituut, Vrije Christenen, Windows XP, WordPress | 10 Comments

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Limited freedom

Islamophobia

Believe in Allah

Rich culture

Conquerors

Autochthonous coming in minority

Bringing closer to or further away from God

Possibility to live in a big city

Recession and seed for nationalism

Mixing people

Christians facing discrimination

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Rejection of multiculturalism

Freedom of religion and code of dress

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Upcoming eastern danger

Integration and government decisions

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Fear for or from Terrorism and Multiculturalism

Importance of national contexts

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Public sphere an public opinion

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Technical Infomation

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Expensive utilities

Handwork and preservation for the future

One period in life coming to an end

Communities on line

Religious work on the Message Board

Bringing people together

From MSN to Multiply

Transfer again

Messages of Hope and Peace