A friend of mine is a Hungarian who fled Communism in the 80ies. He has a little agency hiring Eastern Europeans for construction work in the Netherlands. Two years ago we saw it coming a big flood of willing Polish, Czech and Hungarian workers coming to The Netherlands after their entry in the EU. They are wiping out the unskilled workers in industry, construction and farming.
Dutch newspaper "Trouw" runs an article on Polish workers running Turks, Morroccans and Blacks out of work. Not only are the Eastern Europeans cheaper, but they work hard and there is no violence. Amongst second and third generation Turks, Morroccans and Blacks violence in the workplace is endemic.
The immigrant are now on the dole. 1.800 agricultural and construction job agencies have gone broke in The Hague alone, which is close to the areas were labour intensive agriculture is strong with the characteristic glass house flower and vegetable businesses.
The idea that these immigrants were a boon to the Dutch economy ever is again exposed a the poppycock that it is. Although the cheap African and Middle Eastern workers helped out the farmers since the period of full employment in the sixties, when Dutch workers moved on to better jobs rather than work in agriculture 90 percent of the earnings are pocketed by the workers. The rest is the profit for the employer. But once these low skilled third worders are unemployed they go on the dole, which is financed by the rest of the working population. So the benefits are accrued by the employers, the immigrants, while the long term costs are born by the Dutch population.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Tribalism
An article (Hat tip Majority Rights) on the Christian Science Monitor.
Recent events - riots in many nations protesting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, Sunni-Shiite warring in Iraq, the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan - confirm that the West is not in a clash with Islam. Instead, Islam, which is a civilizing force, has fallen under the sway of Islamists who are a tribalizing force.
Indeed the world of Islam is tribalising. Islam does not have a capital, that sends its decrees to its far flung provinces. But also the individual national states that are majority Islamic seem to have problems keeping its populations together. It seems that a large part of the Islamic world central authority is breaking down.
the emergence of ethnic warring in the Balkans and elsewhere confirmed that when societies crumble, people revert to tribal and clan behaviors that repudiate liberal ideals.
Western areas also seem to be falling apart. The Western elites are importing masses of third worlders. The US is discussing importing 30 million non-whites in the next 10 years.
Most antagonists, no matter how high-mindedly they proclaim their ideals, are operating in terribly tribal and clannish ways. Some, such as Al Qaeda terrorists, are extreme tribalists who dream of making the West start over at a razed, tribal level.
This is Al-Queda's proclaimed goal. To end the Westphalian era both in the Islamic and in the Western world. Crime rates are on the rise in the ethnic enclaves in the West. Mafias and religious sects including Islam are on the rise.
As much of the intellectual elite is thoroughly anti-Western it is impossible to discuss many destructive trends as they have been made taboo by the thought police in the university system and the media. The self-curing ability of the West has thusly been damaged.
Al-Qa'ida is an ideological cover for what is unlawful, criminal and mafia like activity. Ethnic and criminal mafia's are expanding both in the Middle East, in Africa, in the USA and in Europe. Only the Asians seem to be able to muster the will to fight disorder and tribalism in their societies.
Recent events - riots in many nations protesting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, Sunni-Shiite warring in Iraq, the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan - confirm that the West is not in a clash with Islam. Instead, Islam, which is a civilizing force, has fallen under the sway of Islamists who are a tribalizing force.
Indeed the world of Islam is tribalising. Islam does not have a capital, that sends its decrees to its far flung provinces. But also the individual national states that are majority Islamic seem to have problems keeping its populations together. It seems that a large part of the Islamic world central authority is breaking down.
the emergence of ethnic warring in the Balkans and elsewhere confirmed that when societies crumble, people revert to tribal and clan behaviors that repudiate liberal ideals.
Western areas also seem to be falling apart. The Western elites are importing masses of third worlders. The US is discussing importing 30 million non-whites in the next 10 years.
Most antagonists, no matter how high-mindedly they proclaim their ideals, are operating in terribly tribal and clannish ways. Some, such as Al Qaeda terrorists, are extreme tribalists who dream of making the West start over at a razed, tribal level.
This is Al-Queda's proclaimed goal. To end the Westphalian era both in the Islamic and in the Western world. Crime rates are on the rise in the ethnic enclaves in the West. Mafias and religious sects including Islam are on the rise.
As much of the intellectual elite is thoroughly anti-Western it is impossible to discuss many destructive trends as they have been made taboo by the thought police in the university system and the media. The self-curing ability of the West has thusly been damaged.
Al-Qa'ida is an ideological cover for what is unlawful, criminal and mafia like activity. Ethnic and criminal mafia's are expanding both in the Middle East, in Africa, in the USA and in Europe. Only the Asians seem to be able to muster the will to fight disorder and tribalism in their societies.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Dutch Internal Intelligence Service: Terrorist threat homegrown and home bound
The Hague, The Netherlands
The AIVD, The Dutch Internal Intelligence Service reported (Dutch) to Dutch Parliament today in a public report that the threat of terrorist attacks against Dutch targets is mainly from locally organised networks or cells. The number of Muslims involved in Jihad is volatile and they are able to act violently without need for support or input from abroad. The number of active Jihadis bent on murder and mayhem is higher than 150. "Not all networks are MORE
The AIVD, The Dutch Internal Intelligence Service reported (Dutch) to Dutch Parliament today in a public report that the threat of terrorist attacks against Dutch targets is mainly from locally organised networks or cells. The number of Muslims involved in Jihad is volatile and they are able to act violently without need for support or input from abroad. The number of active Jihadis bent on murder and mayhem is higher than 150. "Not all networks are MORE
Hardline Verdonk will run for VVD leadership
Today Minister Verdonk of Immigration and Intergration made public to be run for the leadership of the Liberal-Conservative VVD party.
Verdonk is famous and infamous for her hardline management of the Immigration portfolio. She is hated on the Left who try to besmirch her as much as possible. She is also the only popular member of the right-wing coalition that has been governing The Netherlands since 2003 and gets lots of fanmail from the public. Verdonk has executed the policy of extraditing large numbers of illegals and 26.000 asylum seekers who had been turned down. In my opinion Verdonk has a good chance to win against the other leadership candidates Mark Rutte and unknown quantity Jelleke Veenendaal. Verdonk is popular because she keeps her word and does what she says.
The leadership position of the VVD came available after the desastrous municipal elections on March 7. VVD leader Van Aartsen stepped down.
National elections will be held in 2007.
This week Marko Pastors of Leefbaar Rotterdam (Livable Rotterdam) also announced to run nationally. This means there will be 3 contenders for on the rightwing. Verdonk, Pastors and Geert Wilders. Getting busy! The split right wing may mean loss of strength for the Right. But it will also mean that rightwing ideas will get more space in the media, which will be necessary education for the Dutch public.
Verdonk is famous and infamous for her hardline management of the Immigration portfolio. She is hated on the Left who try to besmirch her as much as possible. She is also the only popular member of the right-wing coalition that has been governing The Netherlands since 2003 and gets lots of fanmail from the public. Verdonk has executed the policy of extraditing large numbers of illegals and 26.000 asylum seekers who had been turned down. In my opinion Verdonk has a good chance to win against the other leadership candidates Mark Rutte and unknown quantity Jelleke Veenendaal. Verdonk is popular because she keeps her word and does what she says.
The leadership position of the VVD came available after the desastrous municipal elections on March 7. VVD leader Van Aartsen stepped down.
National elections will be held in 2007.
This week Marko Pastors of Leefbaar Rotterdam (Livable Rotterdam) also announced to run nationally. This means there will be 3 contenders for on the rightwing. Verdonk, Pastors and Geert Wilders. Getting busy! The split right wing may mean loss of strength for the Right. But it will also mean that rightwing ideas will get more space in the media, which will be necessary education for the Dutch public.
Dutch and Germans on top
The highest European IQs are found amongst the Germans and the Dutch, with an average of 107. The average Frenchman scores 94. The average Turk 90 (Hat tip, JMaria).
The cause for the differences are environmental pressures differing between European populations from one natural environment to another, according to Professor Lynn.
Professor Lynn is also the co-author of "IQ and the wealth of nations".
I guess Turkey will have some trouble participating in a knowledge society, then.
The cause for the differences are environmental pressures differing between European populations from one natural environment to another, according to Professor Lynn.
Professor Lynn is also the co-author of "IQ and the wealth of nations".
I guess Turkey will have some trouble participating in a knowledge society, then.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Hic sunt Pirates
Off the coast of Somalia a cruise ship was attacked again. The disorder areas are starting to affect the shipping lanes.
Australian town hit by cyclone
The Australian town of Innisfail was hit by a Cyclone. The population responded by: rioting, sniping at rescuers, looting and causing general mayhem?
No.
But even he (the Mayor) was amazed at the spirit and energy of a community that refused to blink when confronted with a category-five cyclone. He said many had waded straight outside into the wreckage with chainsaws.
What is wrong with these people?
No.
But even he (the Mayor) was amazed at the spirit and energy of a community that refused to blink when confronted with a category-five cyclone. He said many had waded straight outside into the wreckage with chainsaws.
What is wrong with these people?
Riots in France
In order to address the concerns of the French citizenry over the situation of enclaves of crime and anarchy developing in the poor immigrant suburbs of France, the French political class belatedly decided to crack down on crime. Hard. The result was nationwide rioting by Islamic youth for weeks.
In response the French government made available large funds to the administrators of the suburbs to "address the situation". The Administrators begged them not to give them more funds, because they did not know what to do with them.
So the French authorities looked at their inflexible labour laws and decided to relax them.
The result? More riots of course. This time white Frenchmen and immigrant scum combine their forces against the French police. Look at the pictures of the riotporn blog. More here.
Oh and in between the attacks on the police the immigrant wolf packs attack students, bystanders, journos. And the Frenchies never fight back.
They have been brain washed not to fight back and are not even ashamed by it.
In response the French government made available large funds to the administrators of the suburbs to "address the situation". The Administrators begged them not to give them more funds, because they did not know what to do with them.
So the French authorities looked at their inflexible labour laws and decided to relax them.
The result? More riots of course. This time white Frenchmen and immigrant scum combine their forces against the French police. Look at the pictures of the riotporn blog. More here.
Oh and in between the attacks on the police the immigrant wolf packs attack students, bystanders, journos. And the Frenchies never fight back.
They have been brain washed not to fight back and are not even ashamed by it.
Dutch parliament concerned over Venezuelan rearmament
El Presidente Chavez, the muy grande Maximo Jefe of Venezuela is making threats towards The Netherlands.
Come again?
Venezuela is threatening The Netherlands. A European country.
It is true, people. It is like this. In the Caribbean there are many, many Islands populated with happy brown people. Most of these island have their own Governments. But some other Islands are still nominally owned by European countries like France and the UK. And The Netherlands. The Netherlands own 6 Island in the Carribean. 3 are small and insignificant, laying a bit to the East of Puerto Rico.
And then there are Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao not far from the Venezuelan South American mainland. They have perhaps a population of 250.000 people combined, although there are many illigal immigrant from Venezuala, who nobody counts. A significant portion of the population has left the Island to seek greener pastures and welfare checks in The Netherlands.
Chavez has said that he will step in once the Dutch reduce their military presence. The matter has been raised in Parliament. Henk Kamp, the defense minister has assured that the Navy and Dutch Marine Corps are ready to protect MORE
Come again?
Venezuela is threatening The Netherlands. A European country.
It is true, people. It is like this. In the Caribbean there are many, many Islands populated with happy brown people. Most of these island have their own Governments. But some other Islands are still nominally owned by European countries like France and the UK. And The Netherlands. The Netherlands own 6 Island in the Carribean. 3 are small and insignificant, laying a bit to the East of Puerto Rico.
And then there are Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao not far from the Venezuelan South American mainland. They have perhaps a population of 250.000 people combined, although there are many illigal immigrant from Venezuala, who nobody counts. A significant portion of the population has left the Island to seek greener pastures and welfare checks in The Netherlands.
Chavez has said that he will step in once the Dutch reduce their military presence. The matter has been raised in Parliament. Henk Kamp, the defense minister has assured that the Navy and Dutch Marine Corps are ready to protect MORE
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Persecution
Western countries keep persecuting those who commit thoughtcrime. That's right. Our owners and masters tell us what thought are approved and may be thought and which not.
Thinking and saying that "Islam is a danger" to European will get you persecuted by hysterical Leftists armed with the power of the Law.
As is happening now in Belgium, were a Catholic clergyman, frere Samuel, who fled as a Christian from Turkey says that every Muslim child is a ticking time bomb for Belgian children. As they undoubtedly are.
DEFUSE THE TIMEBOMB. SEND MUSLIMS HOME.
Our elites try to imitate Soviet Russia in their approach to repressing political dissent. Only they are really PATHETIC repressors. Come on. Firing people from their jobs. Sending people to jail. Fining them. That is NOT going to impress us.
Thinking and saying that "Islam is a danger" to European will get you persecuted by hysterical Leftists armed with the power of the Law.
As is happening now in Belgium, were a Catholic clergyman, frere Samuel, who fled as a Christian from Turkey says that every Muslim child is a ticking time bomb for Belgian children. As they undoubtedly are.
DEFUSE THE TIMEBOMB. SEND MUSLIMS HOME.
Our elites try to imitate Soviet Russia in their approach to repressing political dissent. Only they are really PATHETIC repressors. Come on. Firing people from their jobs. Sending people to jail. Fining them. That is NOT going to impress us.
The Church that does not want to be a Church
In a previous article I wrote: "You cannot separate State and Ideology (religion is a spiritual ideology) by uniting it."
JKayce:
"Do you think that state and ideology can be separated? I don't think that is possible, the laws in our society are a reflection of ideologies."
Snouck:
Do I think that State and Ideology CAN be separated? Well, no. An ideology is a more or less coherent set of ideas. A State is a political body, a social organism and exists in the flesh, in its members and their behaviour. But a political unit can also be envisioned as a "corpus mysticum", a spiritual body. When we think of the USA do we think of the people, their lives, endings, fears, ferment, rot, hopes and desires or of their laws and institutions?
The laws and institutions should be reflections of the people in the flesh and their real behaviour.
A nation has its acknowledged and unacknowledged legislators. The legislators express the set of ideas of the nation. In word or writ or whatever the Nation’s code is. So should the legislators legislate according to their elite ideology, to the ideology of the people below or to something else?
If the legislators make laws according to their own particular ideology, then their laws will be ignored. They will require force to coerce the people. If they take the laws from the ideas of the people they will find out that the people will ignore these ideas as well, because people will always ascribe to notions and ideals that are more beautiful than the ugliness of mortal men, themselves. Talk is cheap. So the legislators have to observe the people, see what they do already and then make that law. Most people will then obey the laws without prompting. If there are conflicts judges can resolve them according to the law, which is the actual behaviour of the majority of the nation.
If the legislators are close to the nation, then there will be little room between collective behaviour and ideology or the set of laws.
However, legislators are an elite and have a tendency to remove themselves from the people. To become estranged. Competing with other legislators in order to get attention and increase their power they will increasingly compete in the beauty of their vision for the nation. They will say they wish beautiful things for the people and do away with suffering. For this they will be recommended and endorsed, their idealism will be admired and their ideology will be advanced by groups that feel they will benefit from it. Because legislators are not productive groups of society they will never bear the cost of the implementation of their visions. These costs will be born by productive groups in society, those productive citizens which do not defend themselves. E.g. because they work 60-70 hours a week. Or more.
As the number of laws increases, as ideology increases its costs become increasingly difficult to bear by productive groups and they will run away, stop being productive or organise themselves in order to challenge legislators or ideologues.
Let’s get back to separating ideology from the state. This is indeed not really possible. As soon as we think about collective behaviour there is ideology. The Christian idea to separate Religion from State has the purpose to separate earthly power from spiritual speculation. As a result of this separation there is some freedom for the people who live in the State, both the Christians and the Non-Christians.
Social organisation begins with non-kinship societies, our natural or biological political unit. Extended families and clans. These organisations need very little in the way of ideology, because they are so natural and need very little culture to rule their politics. Once social organisation moves beyond kinship there will be a requirement for ideology to give society the identity and thus the cohesion of a kinship society. A cultural innovation. A non-kinship society is able to form bigger units than a kinship society.
Obviously we are living in a non-kinship society. 15 million Dutchman do not belong to the same family, although there is a high level of relatedness. We have cultural capital to bring us together: Nationalism and Christianity.
Nationalism and Christianity have grown over the centuries in The Netherlands and Europe. Without these cultural and therefore ideological developments we would not be able to run our political unit, The Netherlands.
Because all citizens are equal before the law in a Western society, kinship (family) or non-kinship sub societies must not be given special power to hijack the State and use it in the interest of a minority interest. This is the reason why churches as carriers of ideologies must be separated from the state. But because the modern state is in itself partly and ideological construct this is indeed impossible. If there is an ideology that supports the power and interest of an minority within the nation that does not call itself a religion than it can slip under the radar of the rule that Church and State must be separated. Secularism is an ideology. It has strong religious overtones, promising its adherents moral superiority and deliverance from the heaviness, the lack of freedom, in traditional religion. All over the Western world secularism attacks traditional Christianity denying that it is in fact an undeclared Religion with a diffuse Church.
This is the Church of the Left. The Church that seeks to liberate the peoples from the West from the deprivations of their Western culture.
JKayce:
"Do you think that state and ideology can be separated? I don't think that is possible, the laws in our society are a reflection of ideologies."
Snouck:
Do I think that State and Ideology CAN be separated? Well, no. An ideology is a more or less coherent set of ideas. A State is a political body, a social organism and exists in the flesh, in its members and their behaviour. But a political unit can also be envisioned as a "corpus mysticum", a spiritual body. When we think of the USA do we think of the people, their lives, endings, fears, ferment, rot, hopes and desires or of their laws and institutions?
The laws and institutions should be reflections of the people in the flesh and their real behaviour.
A nation has its acknowledged and unacknowledged legislators. The legislators express the set of ideas of the nation. In word or writ or whatever the Nation’s code is. So should the legislators legislate according to their elite ideology, to the ideology of the people below or to something else?
If the legislators make laws according to their own particular ideology, then their laws will be ignored. They will require force to coerce the people. If they take the laws from the ideas of the people they will find out that the people will ignore these ideas as well, because people will always ascribe to notions and ideals that are more beautiful than the ugliness of mortal men, themselves. Talk is cheap. So the legislators have to observe the people, see what they do already and then make that law. Most people will then obey the laws without prompting. If there are conflicts judges can resolve them according to the law, which is the actual behaviour of the majority of the nation.
If the legislators are close to the nation, then there will be little room between collective behaviour and ideology or the set of laws.
However, legislators are an elite and have a tendency to remove themselves from the people. To become estranged. Competing with other legislators in order to get attention and increase their power they will increasingly compete in the beauty of their vision for the nation. They will say they wish beautiful things for the people and do away with suffering. For this they will be recommended and endorsed, their idealism will be admired and their ideology will be advanced by groups that feel they will benefit from it. Because legislators are not productive groups of society they will never bear the cost of the implementation of their visions. These costs will be born by productive groups in society, those productive citizens which do not defend themselves. E.g. because they work 60-70 hours a week. Or more.
As the number of laws increases, as ideology increases its costs become increasingly difficult to bear by productive groups and they will run away, stop being productive or organise themselves in order to challenge legislators or ideologues.
Let’s get back to separating ideology from the state. This is indeed not really possible. As soon as we think about collective behaviour there is ideology. The Christian idea to separate Religion from State has the purpose to separate earthly power from spiritual speculation. As a result of this separation there is some freedom for the people who live in the State, both the Christians and the Non-Christians.
Social organisation begins with non-kinship societies, our natural or biological political unit. Extended families and clans. These organisations need very little in the way of ideology, because they are so natural and need very little culture to rule their politics. Once social organisation moves beyond kinship there will be a requirement for ideology to give society the identity and thus the cohesion of a kinship society. A cultural innovation. A non-kinship society is able to form bigger units than a kinship society.
Obviously we are living in a non-kinship society. 15 million Dutchman do not belong to the same family, although there is a high level of relatedness. We have cultural capital to bring us together: Nationalism and Christianity.
Nationalism and Christianity have grown over the centuries in The Netherlands and Europe. Without these cultural and therefore ideological developments we would not be able to run our political unit, The Netherlands.
Because all citizens are equal before the law in a Western society, kinship (family) or non-kinship sub societies must not be given special power to hijack the State and use it in the interest of a minority interest. This is the reason why churches as carriers of ideologies must be separated from the state. But because the modern state is in itself partly and ideological construct this is indeed impossible. If there is an ideology that supports the power and interest of an minority within the nation that does not call itself a religion than it can slip under the radar of the rule that Church and State must be separated. Secularism is an ideology. It has strong religious overtones, promising its adherents moral superiority and deliverance from the heaviness, the lack of freedom, in traditional religion. All over the Western world secularism attacks traditional Christianity denying that it is in fact an undeclared Religion with a diffuse Church.
This is the Church of the Left. The Church that seeks to liberate the peoples from the West from the deprivations of their Western culture.
Dutchmen march!
Another clip (Dutch, dutch) by the "vliegende panters". Apparently this is made to make fun of fears of conservative Dutchmen. But basically it tells it really well. Muslims are not dangerous because they are rude, misogenistic, lazy, criminal, smoke weed, but because they explode in public places.
And because the demographic danger of their rate of family re-unification and the birth rate which causes them to be able to take over through the ballot.
It is a funny film. If you do not understand Dutch it is still nice to see all your cliches about Holland confirmed. If you DO know Dutch the text is ironic too.
Watch it here.
And because the demographic danger of their rate of family re-unification and the birth rate which causes them to be able to take over through the ballot.
It is a funny film. If you do not understand Dutch it is still nice to see all your cliches about Holland confirmed. If you DO know Dutch the text is ironic too.
Watch it here.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Bringing a new law to the land
When we bring a new people to a land we also bring a new law to that land.
In good old Amersfoort a Middle Eastern boy was killed in a silly conflict over a "slut". His gang bro's are now calling for revenge:
third World style.
Laws do not live in the abstract, they live in social settings. Change the setting and the laws will have to follow them. Laws travel with people. They do not live in a territorium.
In good old Amersfoort a Middle Eastern boy was killed in a silly conflict over a "slut". His gang bro's are now calling for revenge:
third World style.
Laws do not live in the abstract, they live in social settings. Change the setting and the laws will have to follow them. Laws travel with people. They do not live in a territorium.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Ayaan: zeroing in
Ferdy:
"Why attack so harshly a person who is one of the few critical voices about Islam in the Netherlands?"
Snouck:
It is not so much an attack on her, but rather my honest appraisal about where I think she stands. A difference of opinion is not the same as a "harsh attack on a person". If you read my post, you will have to agree that it is nowhere near ad hominem.
Ferdy:
"but unlike other politicians she wants to use it (the Government's tools, i.e. the State) to stop the Islamization of the Netherlands."
Snouck:
That is Statism. This is a Conservative blog. Conservatives oppose the use of Government's agencies to further ideological goals. You cannot separate State and Ideology (religion is a spiritual ideology) by uniting it. It is "casting out the Devil, by Beelzebub".
Ferdy:
I think Ayaan is a very positive contributor to the debat, but she is not the new messiah who should be followed blindly
Snouck:
Oh yes. I think she is smart, sensitive, vunerable, charismatic and wildly attractive. She is the muckraker of Multiculturalism. She is useful for our purposes as Westerners in that she opens discussions and raises point that would otherwise be left closed and unraised. But she is not one of us. She is a temporary ally. To be discarded when the time comes that she has outlived her usefulness. Harsh? Perhaps. But DO consider it. Follow her critically. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
"Why attack so harshly a person who is one of the few critical voices about Islam in the Netherlands?"
Snouck:
It is not so much an attack on her, but rather my honest appraisal about where I think she stands. A difference of opinion is not the same as a "harsh attack on a person". If you read my post, you will have to agree that it is nowhere near ad hominem.
Ferdy:
"but unlike other politicians she wants to use it (the Government's tools, i.e. the State) to stop the Islamization of the Netherlands."
Snouck:
That is Statism. This is a Conservative blog. Conservatives oppose the use of Government's agencies to further ideological goals. You cannot separate State and Ideology (religion is a spiritual ideology) by uniting it. It is "casting out the Devil, by Beelzebub".
Ferdy:
I think Ayaan is a very positive contributor to the debat, but she is not the new messiah who should be followed blindly
Snouck:
Oh yes. I think she is smart, sensitive, vunerable, charismatic and wildly attractive. She is the muckraker of Multiculturalism. She is useful for our purposes as Westerners in that she opens discussions and raises point that would otherwise be left closed and unraised. But she is not one of us. She is a temporary ally. To be discarded when the time comes that she has outlived her usefulness. Harsh? Perhaps. But DO consider it. Follow her critically. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Guns, Girls and Ghosts
Pim´s Ghost:
I too am a nationalist at heart. I'm an American as one, but I'd just as soon move to Holland and become quite political. Of course, due to my outspoken demeanor I'd never feel right having to leave my guns behind. I'd be a nice target I'm sure.
Snouck:
You can bring your guns. It is a bit of a procedure, but it goes as follows:
After moving to The Netherlands, you become a member of a "schietsportclub". This is a club for shooting guns. They will require to see your passport and a "bewijs van goed gedrag". This is a certificate of good behaviour. This means you need a letter from the police in your hometown that you have no serious offenses on your record. Then you have to regularly attend shooting practice at the club. I think once a month will be enough. After twelve months you can request a gun permit. This will permit you to keep a gun at home. I do not know how long it takes for the paperwork to be processed. Once you got your gun permit, you can keep your gun at home and take it to the shooting range of "schietclubs". There are "schietclubs" in most towns and villages. Most will be delighted to have American members, especially one from the American South. Do not be surprised to see Dixie flags at the bar or hall of most Dutch schietclubs!
The things is that the law says that you must have a "reasonable interest" in keeping a gun. And being a "sportschutter" or "sportsshooter" is enough. Once you got your permit for your first gun you have to wait another 12 months to get your permit for a second gun. Once you got that you can bring in as many legal guns as you want.
Most revolvers, pistols and rifles are legal in The Netherlands. If they are registered in the USA that is enough. Automatic (rapid fire) rifles are not legal.
I think our gun laws make sense although they are a bit too cumbersome. Shorten the time span for membership of a club to 6 months and drop the requirement to apply for an additional permit after the first one and it would be perfect.
I too am a nationalist at heart. I'm an American as one, but I'd just as soon move to Holland and become quite political. Of course, due to my outspoken demeanor I'd never feel right having to leave my guns behind. I'd be a nice target I'm sure.
Snouck:
You can bring your guns. It is a bit of a procedure, but it goes as follows:
After moving to The Netherlands, you become a member of a "schietsportclub". This is a club for shooting guns. They will require to see your passport and a "bewijs van goed gedrag". This is a certificate of good behaviour. This means you need a letter from the police in your hometown that you have no serious offenses on your record. Then you have to regularly attend shooting practice at the club. I think once a month will be enough. After twelve months you can request a gun permit. This will permit you to keep a gun at home. I do not know how long it takes for the paperwork to be processed. Once you got your gun permit, you can keep your gun at home and take it to the shooting range of "schietclubs". There are "schietclubs" in most towns and villages. Most will be delighted to have American members, especially one from the American South. Do not be surprised to see Dixie flags at the bar or hall of most Dutch schietclubs!
The things is that the law says that you must have a "reasonable interest" in keeping a gun. And being a "sportschutter" or "sportsshooter" is enough. Once you got your permit for your first gun you have to wait another 12 months to get your permit for a second gun. Once you got that you can bring in as many legal guns as you want.
Most revolvers, pistols and rifles are legal in The Netherlands. If they are registered in the USA that is enough. Automatic (rapid fire) rifles are not legal.
I think our gun laws make sense although they are a bit too cumbersome. Shorten the time span for membership of a club to 6 months and drop the requirement to apply for an additional permit after the first one and it would be perfect.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Hirsi Ayaan Ali: hostile to Europeans
There is a tendency in The Netherlands and in the USA to look at Hirsi Ayaan Ali and her courageous fight against Islam and to come to the conclusion that she is a valuable part of The Netherlands and of The West.
This is incorrect. And Laurence Auster's View From the Right has the story.
The gist of it is, is that Hirsi Ayaan Ali is highly hostile to Western people and that she sees Western people only as an instrument to reform Islam. But Westerners who want to stop the threat of Islam to our societies find Hirsi Ayaan Ali on their path. She supported an action by a Dutch law court against the SGP, an extremely conservative Calvinist Party, because of their stance on women being unequal to men. This is the biblical view and has supported Western civilisation for 1,800 years! She recently advised the Belgian government to ban the anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang, due to their traditional attitudes. Vlaams Belang wants to stop immigrations, defends the rights of Flemish people, both their individual and their collective rights, has traditional views on marriage and family. This is anathema to Ayaan, she indirectly compared Vlaams Belang to genocidal Nazism by stating that their values lead to mass murder. Laurence Auster concludes:
"Thus Ali, the Muslim who has supposedly turned against her own religion, now wants to outlaw a European political party for being “Islamophobic.” The lesson is that in seeking to solve the Muslim problem we cannot depend on Muslims, whether they are “moderates” or “apostates” or whatever; we must depend on ourselves."
To which I add the following observation of secularists from Islamic countries. Often these people like what they see in the West, but they do not understand the West. They like the outcomes of the West, but not the values. This is how Turkish elitist love their secular Turkish state and at the same time support the surpression of the Turkish people because they are often radical Muslims.
Same with Afghanis who belong to the elite. They want freedom for their women and freedom to play music, drink alcohol and disregard the strictures of Islam. But because the population of Afghanistan is so traditionalistic and consists of pious Muslims they support the Communist Party. Communism surpresses tradition whether it is Orthodox Christianity in Russia or Sunni Islam and clannism in Afghanistan.
Conservatism does not support the surpression of the people. Conservatism believes in Limited Government, Low Taxes, Property Rights, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Association, Marriage, The Right to bear Arms and maintanance of the Customs, Habits and Culture of the people to guarantuee these Freedoms. There is no point in establishing Tyranny to bring Freedom.
Ayaan and many so-called Liberals want to ursurp the rights of the people in order to liberate them. This is not Freedom. This must be opposed. This was tried in Russia and it was called Socialism. Ayaan and her Leftist and Liberal friends are trying to repeat the failure of Socialism. They see Statist Multiculturalism for the failure that it is and try to repeat it with Statist Secularism or "Ayaanism". It is not going to work.
VERZET is het devies. RESISTANCE should be our banner.
This is incorrect. And Laurence Auster's View From the Right has the story.
The gist of it is, is that Hirsi Ayaan Ali is highly hostile to Western people and that she sees Western people only as an instrument to reform Islam. But Westerners who want to stop the threat of Islam to our societies find Hirsi Ayaan Ali on their path. She supported an action by a Dutch law court against the SGP, an extremely conservative Calvinist Party, because of their stance on women being unequal to men. This is the biblical view and has supported Western civilisation for 1,800 years! She recently advised the Belgian government to ban the anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang, due to their traditional attitudes. Vlaams Belang wants to stop immigrations, defends the rights of Flemish people, both their individual and their collective rights, has traditional views on marriage and family. This is anathema to Ayaan, she indirectly compared Vlaams Belang to genocidal Nazism by stating that their values lead to mass murder. Laurence Auster concludes:
"Thus Ali, the Muslim who has supposedly turned against her own religion, now wants to outlaw a European political party for being “Islamophobic.” The lesson is that in seeking to solve the Muslim problem we cannot depend on Muslims, whether they are “moderates” or “apostates” or whatever; we must depend on ourselves."
To which I add the following observation of secularists from Islamic countries. Often these people like what they see in the West, but they do not understand the West. They like the outcomes of the West, but not the values. This is how Turkish elitist love their secular Turkish state and at the same time support the surpression of the Turkish people because they are often radical Muslims.
Same with Afghanis who belong to the elite. They want freedom for their women and freedom to play music, drink alcohol and disregard the strictures of Islam. But because the population of Afghanistan is so traditionalistic and consists of pious Muslims they support the Communist Party. Communism surpresses tradition whether it is Orthodox Christianity in Russia or Sunni Islam and clannism in Afghanistan.
Conservatism does not support the surpression of the people. Conservatism believes in Limited Government, Low Taxes, Property Rights, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Association, Marriage, The Right to bear Arms and maintanance of the Customs, Habits and Culture of the people to guarantuee these Freedoms. There is no point in establishing Tyranny to bring Freedom.
Ayaan and many so-called Liberals want to ursurp the rights of the people in order to liberate them. This is not Freedom. This must be opposed. This was tried in Russia and it was called Socialism. Ayaan and her Leftist and Liberal friends are trying to repeat the failure of Socialism. They see Statist Multiculturalism for the failure that it is and try to repeat it with Statist Secularism or "Ayaanism". It is not going to work.
VERZET is het devies. RESISTANCE should be our banner.
Seeing
Susie:
Do they (The Dutch outside the areas of immigration) not see what is happening to the great cities of the Netherlands? Do they think this will not involve them?
Snouck:
Most people who do not live in theareas impacted by immigration do not see it. People have not been equipped with the concepts to see immigration as a concept. It was crimethink. To change that requires a main change of culture and a group of people who will equip the people with the ideas to see what is happening to their society.
Sure immigration is a concern to many people. Bo so are jobs, interest rates, the availability of housing, crime. Of course all these can to some extent be linked to immigration, but the Dutch need someone to do it for them. Right now people are focussed on Islam. Which is excellent. Most immigrants are Muslims and Islam is a very political faith so it is the main threat.
How to deal with this threat? Most people think in terms of using the power of the state to force the immigrants in a Dutch mold so the immigrants will become like us. It is a ridiculous idea, but this is what politicians tell them and Dutch people have a tendency to believe in this solution. I believe it is the same all over the Western world. This is why Bush went to Iraq. He thought the Western model was universal and could easily be transferred to an alien population. Most Americans believed him both Democrats and Republicans. So the only way the failings of this approach can be exposed is by trying it and seeing it crash and burn. The Americans are now seeing that democracy does not agree with Iraqi society.
And the Dutch will eventually see that culture is not a intellectual thing that can be programmed into people, but that it much more and that foreign population will resist their values being changed. By the time these lessons are learned another 10 years have passed.
So maybe the Muslims will indeed take over Holland and France. What can be done about it? I really do not know.
Do they (The Dutch outside the areas of immigration) not see what is happening to the great cities of the Netherlands? Do they think this will not involve them?
Snouck:
Most people who do not live in theareas impacted by immigration do not see it. People have not been equipped with the concepts to see immigration as a concept. It was crimethink. To change that requires a main change of culture and a group of people who will equip the people with the ideas to see what is happening to their society.
Sure immigration is a concern to many people. Bo so are jobs, interest rates, the availability of housing, crime. Of course all these can to some extent be linked to immigration, but the Dutch need someone to do it for them. Right now people are focussed on Islam. Which is excellent. Most immigrants are Muslims and Islam is a very political faith so it is the main threat.
How to deal with this threat? Most people think in terms of using the power of the state to force the immigrants in a Dutch mold so the immigrants will become like us. It is a ridiculous idea, but this is what politicians tell them and Dutch people have a tendency to believe in this solution. I believe it is the same all over the Western world. This is why Bush went to Iraq. He thought the Western model was universal and could easily be transferred to an alien population. Most Americans believed him both Democrats and Republicans. So the only way the failings of this approach can be exposed is by trying it and seeing it crash and burn. The Americans are now seeing that democracy does not agree with Iraqi society.
And the Dutch will eventually see that culture is not a intellectual thing that can be programmed into people, but that it much more and that foreign population will resist their values being changed. By the time these lessons are learned another 10 years have passed.
So maybe the Muslims will indeed take over Holland and France. What can be done about it? I really do not know.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Labour Party fears its new candidates after election victory
The fear of Muslim enablers
The Leader of the Dutch Labour Party fears the cultural incompatibility of the many new foreign council members after the Labour landslides in the municipal elections.
I doubt you get an interview like this with a Labour Party leader anywhere else in the Western world. Last Friday Wouter Bos was interviewed by "Het Parool" a Amsterdam newspaper.
In the elections there was a higher than usual turnout amongst Muslim immigrants. 80 percent of them voted for the Labour Party. Most did not vote for Dutch candidates, but instead chose to elect someone from their own ethnic group. This upset the party list.
On Dutch elections one can vote for a party list. All the candidates of a party are listed. Usually people vote for the party leader, who is on number one, but sometimes there are candidates with a big personal following, who receive many personal votes. The actual party will consist of those candidates who got the most votes. Because the immigrant Labour candidates can command such big personal voting armies there is a radical change in the party hierarchies. E.g. Derya Kaplan, a charming Turkish lady who is a member of Labour for less than a year. She received 6,746 votes! Enough to become number four on the Amsterdam Labour Party List.
Ethnic Dutch candidates who have long worked for a local Labour Party department and who received high positions on the municipal party list are pushed aside by new immigrant members who have just joined the party. They have not invested a lot of time in the party and have not become a part of the party fabric nor are they immersed in its ideology and culture. Giggle. This is going to be such fun!
Ethnic Conflict in Dutch politics
Labour Party leader Wouter Bos forecasts conflicts with new Labour party members. He doubts the quality of the new council members. For the next elections he demands a screening of candidates before the elections.
The Party leader expects nepotism and collusion between the candidates and their voters. As happens in the countries of origin were the voters expect special treatment for the group who delivered the vote. Bos recognises that the culture of immigrant voters does not match the Dutch culture. This is a difference the Labour Party has always strenously denied until now. Bos is very honest in this way. (He also admitted sending his children to a ethnically white Christian school, avoiding schools with considerable non-white immigrant populations.)
So what about the future?
Bos expects that everything will be alright in a generation or so. Funny man. The party has a special course teaching council members the ins and outs of Dutch political organisation and Dutch values with regards to the political game. A course. It is funny how many Westerners view Western culture as something that is purely cognitive. Simply memorise a few simple rules, and "hey presto!": a Western citizens! That non-Westerners will look at Western and still remain attached to their culture, to their values and to their ethnic community does not feature in many calculations.
Labour as the immigrant party
Asked whether he was not anxious that the "Labour Party" would become the "Immigrant Party" Bos replied that: "the Labour Party has one single story for all their voters. If we remain loyal to our narrative, we will remain the party for everyone."
One has to wonder whether the candidates featured by Labour do not speak louder than any story that Labour has spoken. In fact Labour has remained remarkably quiet during the campaign. I would venture that the choice of immigrant candidates is the only commitment Labour has shown during the municipal election at all. And the immigrants paid attention and rewarded Labour.
The ethnic Dutch have now also paid attention and polarisation between the Dutch and the immigrant community will increase. Because Job Cohen has warned for violence between immigrant youth and other groups in Amsterdam, it will be interesting to see what will happen. My prognosis is that ethnic candidates will have problems to disregard demands from their ethnic voting bases. This will hinder the ability of Amsterdam to deal with disturbances and increasingly communicate the disadvantage of Multiculturalism to white Labour Party members and activists.
The Leader of the Dutch Labour Party fears the cultural incompatibility of the many new foreign council members after the Labour landslides in the municipal elections.
I doubt you get an interview like this with a Labour Party leader anywhere else in the Western world. Last Friday Wouter Bos was interviewed by "Het Parool" a Amsterdam newspaper.
In the elections there was a higher than usual turnout amongst Muslim immigrants. 80 percent of them voted for the Labour Party. Most did not vote for Dutch candidates, but instead chose to elect someone from their own ethnic group. This upset the party list.
On Dutch elections one can vote for a party list. All the candidates of a party are listed. Usually people vote for the party leader, who is on number one, but sometimes there are candidates with a big personal following, who receive many personal votes. The actual party will consist of those candidates who got the most votes. Because the immigrant Labour candidates can command such big personal voting armies there is a radical change in the party hierarchies. E.g. Derya Kaplan, a charming Turkish lady who is a member of Labour for less than a year. She received 6,746 votes! Enough to become number four on the Amsterdam Labour Party List.
Ethnic Dutch candidates who have long worked for a local Labour Party department and who received high positions on the municipal party list are pushed aside by new immigrant members who have just joined the party. They have not invested a lot of time in the party and have not become a part of the party fabric nor are they immersed in its ideology and culture. Giggle. This is going to be such fun!
Ethnic Conflict in Dutch politics
Labour Party leader Wouter Bos forecasts conflicts with new Labour party members. He doubts the quality of the new council members. For the next elections he demands a screening of candidates before the elections.
The Party leader expects nepotism and collusion between the candidates and their voters. As happens in the countries of origin were the voters expect special treatment for the group who delivered the vote. Bos recognises that the culture of immigrant voters does not match the Dutch culture. This is a difference the Labour Party has always strenously denied until now. Bos is very honest in this way. (He also admitted sending his children to a ethnically white Christian school, avoiding schools with considerable non-white immigrant populations.)
So what about the future?
Bos expects that everything will be alright in a generation or so. Funny man. The party has a special course teaching council members the ins and outs of Dutch political organisation and Dutch values with regards to the political game. A course. It is funny how many Westerners view Western culture as something that is purely cognitive. Simply memorise a few simple rules, and "hey presto!": a Western citizens! That non-Westerners will look at Western and still remain attached to their culture, to their values and to their ethnic community does not feature in many calculations.
Labour as the immigrant party
Asked whether he was not anxious that the "Labour Party" would become the "Immigrant Party" Bos replied that: "the Labour Party has one single story for all their voters. If we remain loyal to our narrative, we will remain the party for everyone."
One has to wonder whether the candidates featured by Labour do not speak louder than any story that Labour has spoken. In fact Labour has remained remarkably quiet during the campaign. I would venture that the choice of immigrant candidates is the only commitment Labour has shown during the municipal election at all. And the immigrants paid attention and rewarded Labour.
The ethnic Dutch have now also paid attention and polarisation between the Dutch and the immigrant community will increase. Because Job Cohen has warned for violence between immigrant youth and other groups in Amsterdam, it will be interesting to see what will happen. My prognosis is that ethnic candidates will have problems to disregard demands from their ethnic voting bases. This will hinder the ability of Amsterdam to deal with disturbances and increasingly communicate the disadvantage of Multiculturalism to white Labour Party members and activists.
Building up a movement
About the municipal elections and the landslide victory for Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party and the Greens a reader writes:
Susie:
You leave out the most important factor -- what do the Dutch people want??? It's still a democracy, is it not? The immigrant vote can't be much more than 10%. If the Dutch wish to die, then it is their choice."
Snouck:
No it is not that simple. The impact of immigration is very unequal accross the country. There are vast areas were there are hardly any Mulsims and small urban areas were they are 50 percent of the population, city wide.
In the areas hitherto untouched by immigration the population is not so concerned by it. And they are creeping to the Left due to secularisation. And only in Rotterdam is there a strong right wing alternative for the Left. The weakening Christian Democrats and the Liberal-Conservatives are pretty Multicultural too. New political organisations do not come into existance overnight. It will take 15 to 20 years to built up a strong Rightwing party. The question is if we have so much time. Also a part of the Dutch population will always stay on the side of Multiculturalism, because it is their ideology or because their power increases because of it and they can insulate themselves from the effects. So it remains to be seen if a nationalist alternative will grow at the required pace, if they will be able to formulate an ideology and whether they will be able to attract cadre for the party. Moreover there is strong opposition from the Socialist Party against the Fortuynist movement. The Socialist Party knows how to connect to people in working class areas and that it the prime hunting ground for a right wing movement.
Because the Christian Democrats seem to be collapsing perhaps their cadre can be poached in order to quicken the buld-up of a political organisation.
Susie:
You leave out the most important factor -- what do the Dutch people want??? It's still a democracy, is it not? The immigrant vote can't be much more than 10%. If the Dutch wish to die, then it is their choice."
Snouck:
No it is not that simple. The impact of immigration is very unequal accross the country. There are vast areas were there are hardly any Mulsims and small urban areas were they are 50 percent of the population, city wide.
In the areas hitherto untouched by immigration the population is not so concerned by it. And they are creeping to the Left due to secularisation. And only in Rotterdam is there a strong right wing alternative for the Left. The weakening Christian Democrats and the Liberal-Conservatives are pretty Multicultural too. New political organisations do not come into existance overnight. It will take 15 to 20 years to built up a strong Rightwing party. The question is if we have so much time. Also a part of the Dutch population will always stay on the side of Multiculturalism, because it is their ideology or because their power increases because of it and they can insulate themselves from the effects. So it remains to be seen if a nationalist alternative will grow at the required pace, if they will be able to formulate an ideology and whether they will be able to attract cadre for the party. Moreover there is strong opposition from the Socialist Party against the Fortuynist movement. The Socialist Party knows how to connect to people in working class areas and that it the prime hunting ground for a right wing movement.
Because the Christian Democrats seem to be collapsing perhaps their cadre can be poached in order to quicken the buld-up of a political organisation.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Hubris
A picture speaks more eloquently than a thousand words.
As the Muslim population of The Netherlands is increasing they diverse Muslim ethnic and sectarian groups commission the building of places of worship: Mosques. Some of them are in old schools of churches and some of them specially designed as Mosques, striking markers of the takeover of Dutch neighbourhoods. The Ethnic Dutch call them "Hovels of Hatred" (Haathutten).
Growing up a young Dutchman sees images on TV of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, the areas were Islam is strong and were the Mosque is a part of the local architecture. Little does the Dutchman expect to find these elegant buildings in his own cities.
When I visit Rotterdam with a passenger I like to get off the highway. Into the Spangen neighbourhood. As I turn through the cobbled streets of this working class neighbourhood we get into a street running towards a canal. The street is narrow and all the 4-story apartment buildings have sattelite dishes, a marker of immigrant populations. Beyond the canal, filling the full width of the street is the Mevlana Mosque.
On the streets little Arab and Turkish boys are playing "soldier" and the pavements is filled with veiled and burqa'ed women pushing wheel prams.
For most people the scene is a bit much to take in. They suddenly stop talking about whatever it was they were talking about and take a sharp hissing breath. Their eyes open wide and they look at the sattelite dishes, the lads, the prams, the burqas and the mosque.
A picture says more than a thousand words.
In Amsterdam, the Turkish Milli Görüs movement has been raising funds to build a show-piece mosque in Amsterdam-West, in the De Baarsjes borough. On the site of a former factory a Mosque will be build in combination with one-hundred-eleven apartments, seven-hundred-sixty square meter set aside for offices and shops, one-thousand-forty square meter of meeting rooms for "societal purposes" and a parking with room for two-hundred-thirty-eight cars. On a long canal called the Kostverloren canal.
It will boast the highest minaret in The Netherlands. Forty-two meters high. It MUST be forty-two meters high according to the golden rule. In order to place the top of the minaret at a 45 degree angle with the dome of the mosque. It will be higher than the Munt tower.But lower than the tower of the Westerkerk. The mosque will be build in the style of the "Amsterdamse School" of architecture to make it fit in the surroundings.
A final detail. The design is fundamentally inspired by the design of the "Aya Sophia" church, the main Church of the Byzantine Empire. This grand church was turned into a mosque in 1453, when Constantinopel became Istanbul. The capital of a mighty Islamic empire that ruled from Morocco to Croatia and from the Tigris to the Danube.
The commissioners of the mosque put special emphasis on this piece of history.
Anyway a picture says more than a thousand words.
So if I want to shock people with a picture of the Islamification of The Netherlands, I do not have to go to Rotterdam anymore. Who said progress is a thing of the past?
The old has to make place for the new. A long time ago, in the 17th century the factory site on the Kostverloren canal was already an industrial site. The site was occupied by a windmill for milling wheat. The windmill was called: "Eendragt". That is "Unity". That mill went a long time ago. In 1842.
Something else that had to go was a monument that had been placed on the quay of the canal. A monument were Dutch people gather to remember those who were killed by the German occupiers in the Second World War. According to the borrough the Islamic and Jewish communities had requested the removal of the monument, because it had the shape of a Christian Cross. When asked the local Jewish community said they had never asked anything and to be displeased that their monument was removed. The had also been miffed when Morroccan lads had been kicking the wreaths just after the wreath laying ceremony in 2003. The Turkish, Moroccan and Pakistani communities have confirmed (Dutch) that they asked for the removal of the offensive Cross. They do not like Christian symbols near their mosque.
O well. I got a monumental Mosque now. With a shopping centre. My cup runneth over.
And a picture says more than a thousand words.
As the Muslim population of The Netherlands is increasing they diverse Muslim ethnic and sectarian groups commission the building of places of worship: Mosques. Some of them are in old schools of churches and some of them specially designed as Mosques, striking markers of the takeover of Dutch neighbourhoods. The Ethnic Dutch call them "Hovels of Hatred" (Haathutten).
Growing up a young Dutchman sees images on TV of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, the areas were Islam is strong and were the Mosque is a part of the local architecture. Little does the Dutchman expect to find these elegant buildings in his own cities.
When I visit Rotterdam with a passenger I like to get off the highway. Into the Spangen neighbourhood. As I turn through the cobbled streets of this working class neighbourhood we get into a street running towards a canal. The street is narrow and all the 4-story apartment buildings have sattelite dishes, a marker of immigrant populations. Beyond the canal, filling the full width of the street is the Mevlana Mosque.
On the streets little Arab and Turkish boys are playing "soldier" and the pavements is filled with veiled and burqa'ed women pushing wheel prams.
For most people the scene is a bit much to take in. They suddenly stop talking about whatever it was they were talking about and take a sharp hissing breath. Their eyes open wide and they look at the sattelite dishes, the lads, the prams, the burqas and the mosque.
A picture says more than a thousand words.
In Amsterdam, the Turkish Milli Görüs movement has been raising funds to build a show-piece mosque in Amsterdam-West, in the De Baarsjes borough. On the site of a former factory a Mosque will be build in combination with one-hundred-eleven apartments, seven-hundred-sixty square meter set aside for offices and shops, one-thousand-forty square meter of meeting rooms for "societal purposes" and a parking with room for two-hundred-thirty-eight cars. On a long canal called the Kostverloren canal.
It will boast the highest minaret in The Netherlands. Forty-two meters high. It MUST be forty-two meters high according to the golden rule. In order to place the top of the minaret at a 45 degree angle with the dome of the mosque. It will be higher than the Munt tower.But lower than the tower of the Westerkerk. The mosque will be build in the style of the "Amsterdamse School" of architecture to make it fit in the surroundings.
A final detail. The design is fundamentally inspired by the design of the "Aya Sophia" church, the main Church of the Byzantine Empire. This grand church was turned into a mosque in 1453, when Constantinopel became Istanbul. The capital of a mighty Islamic empire that ruled from Morocco to Croatia and from the Tigris to the Danube.
The commissioners of the mosque put special emphasis on this piece of history.
Anyway a picture says more than a thousand words.
So if I want to shock people with a picture of the Islamification of The Netherlands, I do not have to go to Rotterdam anymore. Who said progress is a thing of the past?
The old has to make place for the new. A long time ago, in the 17th century the factory site on the Kostverloren canal was already an industrial site. The site was occupied by a windmill for milling wheat. The windmill was called: "Eendragt". That is "Unity". That mill went a long time ago. In 1842.
Something else that had to go was a monument that had been placed on the quay of the canal. A monument were Dutch people gather to remember those who were killed by the German occupiers in the Second World War. According to the borrough the Islamic and Jewish communities had requested the removal of the monument, because it had the shape of a Christian Cross. When asked the local Jewish community said they had never asked anything and to be displeased that their monument was removed. The had also been miffed when Morroccan lads had been kicking the wreaths just after the wreath laying ceremony in 2003. The Turkish, Moroccan and Pakistani communities have confirmed (Dutch) that they asked for the removal of the offensive Cross. They do not like Christian symbols near their mosque.
O well. I got a monumental Mosque now. With a shopping centre. My cup runneth over.
And a picture says more than a thousand words.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Islam in The Netherlands
Charles Martel from Islamophobic blog asked for my "wise and insightful commentary on the Dutch installment of an series of article the BBC is running on Islam in Europe".
Because I am a sucker for flattery I naturally gave in:
BBC:
"His wife Kareema remembers the critical comments of customers in the shop where she works. The word "Moroccan" was uttered as an accusation - even though she's Dutch born-and-bred."
Snouck:
This is what I meant earlier with the "we are all racist" comment. The measure of man is his measure under duress, under fire. We are all nice people when everything is going fine and dandy, but now that people are feeling threatened by immigration and political Islam people become hostile to groups that they associate with the threat. So we are all racist. I am not going to retract that observation. The same goes for the other side of course. The Dutch in the urban areas feel that they are losing control of their living areas. The immigrants feel the hostility and become (more) hostile themselves. It starts spiralling. All communities strengthen the others in their combative attitude. We are seeing that now in the open in The Netherlands. The Dutch liberalism does not stand up under fire.
BBC:
"Turkish-born Nebahat Albayrak is on the liberal left. She worries about a new generation of Muslims growing up without hope.
The problem, she says, is that the Dutch have never seen themselves as a society of immigration."
Snouck:
Yes, she strangely has a point here. The Dutch have been told by the politicians and the media that immigration was fine. The population would change, but everything else would remain the same. It would all been one big party. However the population noticed the crime rates going up and political Islam becoming a factor and urban areas turning into Third World slums. Reality did not live up to the rosy picture that had been painted.
BBC:
So is the Netherlands' famous tolerance only superficial?
Young Dutch Muslims like Nabil and Kareema work hard, speak Dutch and are in many ways integrated - yet they don't feel accepted in the country that's now their home.
Snouck:
Well, Nabil and Kareema may work hard, but they are part of a demographic group of whom only about 50 percent labours. The other half is receiving benefits. This is resented and Nabil and Kareema pay the price. Manifestly unfair but that is how it works in the real world.
Because I am a sucker for flattery I naturally gave in:
BBC:
"His wife Kareema remembers the critical comments of customers in the shop where she works. The word "Moroccan" was uttered as an accusation - even though she's Dutch born-and-bred."
Snouck:
This is what I meant earlier with the "we are all racist" comment. The measure of man is his measure under duress, under fire. We are all nice people when everything is going fine and dandy, but now that people are feeling threatened by immigration and political Islam people become hostile to groups that they associate with the threat. So we are all racist. I am not going to retract that observation. The same goes for the other side of course. The Dutch in the urban areas feel that they are losing control of their living areas. The immigrants feel the hostility and become (more) hostile themselves. It starts spiralling. All communities strengthen the others in their combative attitude. We are seeing that now in the open in The Netherlands. The Dutch liberalism does not stand up under fire.
BBC:
"Turkish-born Nebahat Albayrak is on the liberal left. She worries about a new generation of Muslims growing up without hope.
The problem, she says, is that the Dutch have never seen themselves as a society of immigration."
Snouck:
Yes, she strangely has a point here. The Dutch have been told by the politicians and the media that immigration was fine. The population would change, but everything else would remain the same. It would all been one big party. However the population noticed the crime rates going up and political Islam becoming a factor and urban areas turning into Third World slums. Reality did not live up to the rosy picture that had been painted.
BBC:
So is the Netherlands' famous tolerance only superficial?
Young Dutch Muslims like Nabil and Kareema work hard, speak Dutch and are in many ways integrated - yet they don't feel accepted in the country that's now their home.
Snouck:
Well, Nabil and Kareema may work hard, but they are part of a demographic group of whom only about 50 percent labours. The other half is receiving benefits. This is resented and Nabil and Kareema pay the price. Manifestly unfair but that is how it works in the real world.
Monday, March 13, 2006
More Election Analysis
Susie:
Can you tell me what the consequences of this election will be for future immigration into the Netherlands?
Snouck:
No consequences in my opinion. These were local, municipal elections. This will be decided at the national elections. My prognosis is that Labour (PvdA) will win again, nationally. So the Left will win. Only I think they will try to create a government with right-wing parties. Labour does not really believe in socialism and multiculturalism anymore is my judgement. But they keep tight lipped about it in order to maintain their hands on the immigrant vote.
Labour (PvdA) will limit immigration as well. They are doing a balancing act, trying no keep both the old Labour voters and the new immigrant voters happy. Their biggest fear is that the Leftist majority will be so big that there will be no possible of forming a coalition with a right wing party. If that happens, there will be a radical left wing government and we will be a very interesting situation. All bets are off after that, I really do not know if the country will be able to handle such a siituation for a long time. If the borders go open again and the Left will be in charge of the police and judiciary, they will run The Netherlands further into the ground, gaining more and more power in the cities, with all the immigrants.
The Fortuynist voters will be really unhappy. A part will leave. Another part may harden in their attitudes. The situation will be similar in France. Both countries may just go under, under the Islamic immigrant wave. I do not think that will happen though.
There will be a backlash against Islam, but because the democratic route to reform will be closed down it will be radical and perhaps violent. There will be an upsurge of Xenophobia, Racism, Conspiracy thinking, Anti-Islamism and Anti-Semitism. These things ussually travel in a group and not individually.
Herr Winn:
"The election results are prett much a wake-up call for the current national (right wing) coalition. They now have 14 months untill the parliamentary elections to get their story together and explain what has happened the last couple of years and how it could have been that much worse if Labour were in charge."
Snouck:
Well, that would be nice. But there is hardly anyone in either Liberal-Conservatives (VVD) or Christian-Democrats (CDA) to do it. Both parties are hard core technocratic. There is nobody to effectively take a stand against the Left. Wouter Bos, the leader of Labour (PvdA) and Jan Marrijnissen (SP) will remain silent and win votes. The question is only the magnitude of the victory and whether Labour will be able to find a right-wing partner. The economy is picking up as well. It could well be that the Left will not only win the next elections, but also the elections in 5 year, if the Bussiness Cycle will still be in the upward phase. Than we will have a Centre-Left or Extreme-Left government coalition for 8 years. And it will be in the crucial time, the time that would be essential to turn the situation from a looming crisis into a full blown crisis and surrender to Islam.
Can you tell me what the consequences of this election will be for future immigration into the Netherlands?
Snouck:
No consequences in my opinion. These were local, municipal elections. This will be decided at the national elections. My prognosis is that Labour (PvdA) will win again, nationally. So the Left will win. Only I think they will try to create a government with right-wing parties. Labour does not really believe in socialism and multiculturalism anymore is my judgement. But they keep tight lipped about it in order to maintain their hands on the immigrant vote.
Labour (PvdA) will limit immigration as well. They are doing a balancing act, trying no keep both the old Labour voters and the new immigrant voters happy. Their biggest fear is that the Leftist majority will be so big that there will be no possible of forming a coalition with a right wing party. If that happens, there will be a radical left wing government and we will be a very interesting situation. All bets are off after that, I really do not know if the country will be able to handle such a siituation for a long time. If the borders go open again and the Left will be in charge of the police and judiciary, they will run The Netherlands further into the ground, gaining more and more power in the cities, with all the immigrants.
The Fortuynist voters will be really unhappy. A part will leave. Another part may harden in their attitudes. The situation will be similar in France. Both countries may just go under, under the Islamic immigrant wave. I do not think that will happen though.
There will be a backlash against Islam, but because the democratic route to reform will be closed down it will be radical and perhaps violent. There will be an upsurge of Xenophobia, Racism, Conspiracy thinking, Anti-Islamism and Anti-Semitism. These things ussually travel in a group and not individually.
Herr Winn:
"The election results are prett much a wake-up call for the current national (right wing) coalition. They now have 14 months untill the parliamentary elections to get their story together and explain what has happened the last couple of years and how it could have been that much worse if Labour were in charge."
Snouck:
Well, that would be nice. But there is hardly anyone in either Liberal-Conservatives (VVD) or Christian-Democrats (CDA) to do it. Both parties are hard core technocratic. There is nobody to effectively take a stand against the Left. Wouter Bos, the leader of Labour (PvdA) and Jan Marrijnissen (SP) will remain silent and win votes. The question is only the magnitude of the victory and whether Labour will be able to find a right-wing partner. The economy is picking up as well. It could well be that the Left will not only win the next elections, but also the elections in 5 year, if the Bussiness Cycle will still be in the upward phase. Than we will have a Centre-Left or Extreme-Left government coalition for 8 years. And it will be in the crucial time, the time that would be essential to turn the situation from a looming crisis into a full blown crisis and surrender to Islam.
Immigrant block vote
A few days ago I wrote my commentary on the Dutch municipal elections of 7 March.
Herr Winn, wrote a commentary too. Generally I agree with what he says. He gets one of his observations wrong though: "For the first time left wing parties have openly pandered to foreign voters."
Snouck:
A minor point: the above remark of left wing parties pandering to immigrant voters for the first time. This is not something new. The left wing has always pandered to the immigrant vote. Not just in The Netherlands but all over the Western world. And it is a general pattern of Third World immigrants to vote for Leftist parties in the West.
Interestingly most immigrants are right wingers. They are particularists, not universalists. They have strong values regarding family, ethnic nation and religion. Because they put these first it makes sense for them to vote for parties in the West that put the host population last and the Third World immigrant groups first under affirmative action and pc-policies.
There is a kind of very interesting recursive pattern to the values of the Western Left and Immigrant Right. Like an Escher drawing .......
These days Right Wing parties increasingly hold up strict universal policies and values, while the Left has abandoned them and advocates INEQUALITY before the law. Special interests for special groups, all of them Non-Western.
Which is in fact the position of the original European Right-Wing: protection of prerogatives of pre-revolution pillars of society, such as Church, Nobility and Army. Only the groups have changed: they are now Mosque, Non-White Ethnics and Bureaucracy.
Herr Winn, wrote a commentary too. Generally I agree with what he says. He gets one of his observations wrong though: "For the first time left wing parties have openly pandered to foreign voters."
Snouck:
A minor point: the above remark of left wing parties pandering to immigrant voters for the first time. This is not something new. The left wing has always pandered to the immigrant vote. Not just in The Netherlands but all over the Western world. And it is a general pattern of Third World immigrants to vote for Leftist parties in the West.
Interestingly most immigrants are right wingers. They are particularists, not universalists. They have strong values regarding family, ethnic nation and religion. Because they put these first it makes sense for them to vote for parties in the West that put the host population last and the Third World immigrant groups first under affirmative action and pc-policies.
There is a kind of very interesting recursive pattern to the values of the Western Left and Immigrant Right. Like an Escher drawing .......
These days Right Wing parties increasingly hold up strict universal policies and values, while the Left has abandoned them and advocates INEQUALITY before the law. Special interests for special groups, all of them Non-Western.
Which is in fact the position of the original European Right-Wing: protection of prerogatives of pre-revolution pillars of society, such as Church, Nobility and Army. Only the groups have changed: they are now Mosque, Non-White Ethnics and Bureaucracy.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Milosevic dies in The Hague
Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia and later of Serbia died in The Hague today at the age of 64. He had been handed over to the international Court of Justice in The Hague as part of a deal to allow Yugoslavia to re-enter the international order after NATO attacked Serbia's Kosovo province in 1999.
NATO under the leadership of President Clinton and Tony Blair attacked Serbia over the long standing oppression of its Muslim (Bosnian and Albanian) and Catholic Yugoslavs.
After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, multi-ethnic Yugoslavia exploded, with the Croats, Bosnians and Albanians clamoring for independence. Slobodan Milosevic was scapegoated for the violence by the media and international political organisations such as the UN. Because of the oppression of the Albanians in Kosovo a province of
Serbia NATO attacked the Serb forces in Kosovo. The removal of the Serb Army however has led to an almost complete ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo by Albanians who were not stopped by NATO.
After the withdrawal of the Serbian Army from Kosovo, Milosevic was removed from power and handed over to the International Tribunal in The Hague to try Milosevic for his crimes against Albanians.
Milsosevic put up a spirited defense against the allegations. The Serbs have always maintained that atrocities were committed by maverick militias and not by troops under control of the Serb leadership.
Whatever the truth it has turned out that the multi-ethnic model has failed in Yugoslavia. NATO has invaded the territory of a souvereign state to meddle in its internal affairs and it has nothing to show for it. The invasion of Kosovo resembled the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990. The "humanitarian" invasion was a precedent that was used to justify the US-UK coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Secretary of State Rice is now calling for an invasion of Iran, on the grounds of Iran's disagreeing with US policy on nuclear arms.
However, the example of Kosovo shows that the use of military force does not translate into political gain or cultural change. Because the international press generally agreed with the attack on Serbia, they failed to point out the lack of success in having the Serbs and Albanians live together in a Multi-ethnic state.
The US is now having similar problems in Iraq and Afghanistan were US forces are under constant attack from an elusive enemy and where religious and ethnic groups are increasingly attacking each other. This is creating a peaceful and orderly society a difficult an impossibility. Iraq can become a terrorist haven in the future and an exporter of unrest, crime and throughout the Middle East in the same way that former Yugoslavia is a exporter of crime and disorder in Europe. This is a dream come true for Al-Qa'ida.
Whenever Westerners are debating and deciding on the use of military force, the question must be: will the action increase order and stability or decrease it? If the military action will likely damage a local source of order and social organisation the correct choice is to avoid military action, especially if it implies occupation.
The Milosevic and Saddam Hussains of this world can be more useful and agreeable than the real alternatives that will present themselves.
NATO under the leadership of President Clinton and Tony Blair attacked Serbia over the long standing oppression of its Muslim (Bosnian and Albanian) and Catholic Yugoslavs.
After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, multi-ethnic Yugoslavia exploded, with the Croats, Bosnians and Albanians clamoring for independence. Slobodan Milosevic was scapegoated for the violence by the media and international political organisations such as the UN. Because of the oppression of the Albanians in Kosovo a province of
Serbia NATO attacked the Serb forces in Kosovo. The removal of the Serb Army however has led to an almost complete ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo by Albanians who were not stopped by NATO.
After the withdrawal of the Serbian Army from Kosovo, Milosevic was removed from power and handed over to the International Tribunal in The Hague to try Milosevic for his crimes against Albanians.
Milsosevic put up a spirited defense against the allegations. The Serbs have always maintained that atrocities were committed by maverick militias and not by troops under control of the Serb leadership.
Whatever the truth it has turned out that the multi-ethnic model has failed in Yugoslavia. NATO has invaded the territory of a souvereign state to meddle in its internal affairs and it has nothing to show for it. The invasion of Kosovo resembled the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990. The "humanitarian" invasion was a precedent that was used to justify the US-UK coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Secretary of State Rice is now calling for an invasion of Iran, on the grounds of Iran's disagreeing with US policy on nuclear arms.
However, the example of Kosovo shows that the use of military force does not translate into political gain or cultural change. Because the international press generally agreed with the attack on Serbia, they failed to point out the lack of success in having the Serbs and Albanians live together in a Multi-ethnic state.
The US is now having similar problems in Iraq and Afghanistan were US forces are under constant attack from an elusive enemy and where religious and ethnic groups are increasingly attacking each other. This is creating a peaceful and orderly society a difficult an impossibility. Iraq can become a terrorist haven in the future and an exporter of unrest, crime and throughout the Middle East in the same way that former Yugoslavia is a exporter of crime and disorder in Europe. This is a dream come true for Al-Qa'ida.
Whenever Westerners are debating and deciding on the use of military force, the question must be: will the action increase order and stability or decrease it? If the military action will likely damage a local source of order and social organisation the correct choice is to avoid military action, especially if it implies occupation.
The Milosevic and Saddam Hussains of this world can be more useful and agreeable than the real alternatives that will present themselves.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Verdicts in Hofstad trial
The Hofstad trial is coming to a close. The Court has convicted nine members of the Hofstad terror cell. Five suspects went free. The cell members were part of a terrorist and criminal enterprise which had as its goals incitement, hate mongering and intimidation
Jason Walters and Ismael A. received stiff penalties. They received fifteen and thirteen years penalties respectively. During their arrest they injured members of the SWAT-team with an handgranade. Nouriddin el F. got a five year verdict. He was an agressive recruiter of Jihadis.
Jason Walters and Ismael A. received stiff penalties. They received fifteen and thirteen years penalties respectively. During their arrest they injured members of the SWAT-team with an handgranade. Nouriddin el F. got a five year verdict. He was an agressive recruiter of Jihadis.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Dissent on biology
I got a interesting, although somewhat cryptic comment on my post "Struggle" from a reader, who goes by the name of Rik.
Rik:
"No, our design is not fixed. Our biology is anything but immutable."
Snouck:
can you provide me with a source for the possibility of modifying the genetic hardwiring that guides behavior? Some kind of genetic engineering?
Rik:
Who should run it? Your argument would apparently rather have unaccountable neo-aristocrats, after the Enlightenment and all that.
Huh? Neo-aristocrats? In my admittedly provocative post I make clear what is undermining the way Western society is run: demography. If you read the articles that I referenced it with (a lot of work, I will admit) you will see that I have been looking for alternative sources of legitimacy apart from the modern state: Kinship and Religion. They precede the secular state in time and have built it up, but now these sources of legitimacy and social order are missing and the State rules on its own. We now are starting to see the limitations on this monopoly of organising the social order. Secular Westerners are weakening in numbers and others are trying to unseat them.
Nowhere in my article is there a direct or indirect reference to Aristocracy. It could be considered an ommission. If you want my 2 cents I do not think Aristocracy will have much chance to gain any influence from the demise of the State. But who knows what lies ahead of us?
Rik:
"I vehemently disagree with you. I think we would do much better if we started an Enlightenment 3.0, that overcomes the present fear of risk and the creeping statism."
Snouck:
Well, since I do not support the notion of Aristocracy gaining credence, you are merely disagreeing with your self. Enlightenment: I am all for Enlightenments. And Light. And Darkness too! I am such a broadminded person. And even retained my modesty despite my humongous greatness!
Rik:
"We - Western Europe - have started democracy, which is slowly but surely conquering the planet and now we're backing off ourselves. Away with it!"
Snouck:
No, we haven't started Democracy. Democracy is the most natural type of social organisation. All early forms of political entities have elections and a strong sense of equility. The fact that Western Civilisation is democratic has a lot to do with their relative youth in relation to the original centres of civilisation: The Middle East, India and China.
So tell me: what is the essence of democracy?
Rik:
"No, our design is not fixed. Our biology is anything but immutable."
Snouck:
can you provide me with a source for the possibility of modifying the genetic hardwiring that guides behavior? Some kind of genetic engineering?
Rik:
Who should run it? Your argument would apparently rather have unaccountable neo-aristocrats, after the Enlightenment and all that.
Huh? Neo-aristocrats? In my admittedly provocative post I make clear what is undermining the way Western society is run: demography. If you read the articles that I referenced it with (a lot of work, I will admit) you will see that I have been looking for alternative sources of legitimacy apart from the modern state: Kinship and Religion. They precede the secular state in time and have built it up, but now these sources of legitimacy and social order are missing and the State rules on its own. We now are starting to see the limitations on this monopoly of organising the social order. Secular Westerners are weakening in numbers and others are trying to unseat them.
Nowhere in my article is there a direct or indirect reference to Aristocracy. It could be considered an ommission. If you want my 2 cents I do not think Aristocracy will have much chance to gain any influence from the demise of the State. But who knows what lies ahead of us?
Rik:
"I vehemently disagree with you. I think we would do much better if we started an Enlightenment 3.0, that overcomes the present fear of risk and the creeping statism."
Snouck:
Well, since I do not support the notion of Aristocracy gaining credence, you are merely disagreeing with your self. Enlightenment: I am all for Enlightenments. And Light. And Darkness too! I am such a broadminded person. And even retained my modesty despite my humongous greatness!
Rik:
"We - Western Europe - have started democracy, which is slowly but surely conquering the planet and now we're backing off ourselves. Away with it!"
Snouck:
No, we haven't started Democracy. Democracy is the most natural type of social organisation. All early forms of political entities have elections and a strong sense of equility. The fact that Western Civilisation is democratic has a lot to do with their relative youth in relation to the original centres of civilisation: The Middle East, India and China.
So tell me: what is the essence of democracy?
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Municipal Elections
Yesterday there were municipal election in The Netherlands. In stead of local issues governing the election results, there was a heavy influence of national politics. The impopularity of the so-called right-wing coalition caused both the Labour Party, the Greens and the Socialist Party to grow. The Christian Democrats and the Liberal Conservatives lost heavily. Labour had kept very quiet for four years. People must have elected them due to a desire for stability in the same way people voted Christian Democrats in 2002. The shift towards the left is also indicative of a move towards Secularism, away from the faith based Christian Democrats. This trend has been going on since the 1960s.
The Socialist Party have a strong profile and they go steadily from strength to strength. Their leadership is excellent and they have been taking special care to develop their voter base and networks in blue collar worker area's in the past 20 years. They are unequivocally Pro-Western culture, which is unique within the Left nationally. This makes them ideal allies of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but she has chosen for the Liberal-Conservative VVD, which is not a good match.
They are also popular amongst the cognoscenti and literati, the pundit caste, which improves their media exposure at no expense. They will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.
The Greens performed less impressively due to weak leadership. They are environmental yuppies and push an impossible combination of favouring large scale immigration and environmentalism. They are so enamoured of these irreconcilable good intentions that they choose to remain oblivious of this fact. Their leader is a pretty lady. She is smart but she has neither strength nor insight.
The Christian Democrats see their voting base in the country side further eroding. The Netherlands is secularising and the trend bodes ill for them. The Left is gaining strength in the South and has already a strong presence in the North. Only the East is remaining strongly Christian politically.
The Liberal-Conservatives had a poor showing. The trend for them should be positive due to the continuing growing affluence of the Dutch mainstream. However lately they seem to be struggling and they suffer from increasing right-wing competition and weak leadership and cadre. I did not vote for them this time due to their Amsterdam proposal to close bars which discriminate. This is another ploy to increase State power.
Rotterdam. The city where Fortuyn made his devastating appearance in 2002. Marko Pastors, the party leader showed himself to be a very good administrator and politician and a right-winger. The man makes no mistakes but lacks the charisma of Pim Fortuyn. Good news overall I think. The Liveable Rotterdam party lost a little but remained a dominant party. They will leave the coalition and become an opposition party. This means that they will have time to re-establish the contact with the voter base and to strengthen party cadre, following the example of the Socialist Party 20 years ago.
Labour regained a bit of their strength in Rotterdam. This means the end of the present Rightwing coalition in that city.
In Amsterdam the Labour Party carried the whole city. All the Boroughs are Labour's. There will be a Left-Wing coalition instead of the present business friendly Labour-Liberal Conservative coalition. Job Cohen the Labour Mayor said in effect: "we have to be VERY carefull not to become arrogant and this victory is in fact too big".
These victories are indeed a curse for Labour. Labour does not believe in Socialism. They say they have an ideology but they are utterly empty. They want coalitions with Conservative Parties, so they can execute watered down Right-wing programs. They will tell their ideologically committed cadres that the coalition partners "made them do it". Now being forced into Left-wing coalitions they are going to have to agree on policies they do not believe in. It will be a joy to see them squirm in the next few years. And they tragically lack the law-and-order instinct that the electorate wants to see.
Brussels Journal gives the origin of the Leftist victories in the cities:
"According to the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam 80% of the non-indigenous electorate voted for Labour. This explains why cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Breda and Arnhem succumbed to the Left. 84% of the Turks voted for the PvdA; 81% of the Antillians/Surinamese did likewise. Of the Moroccans 78% voted Labour and 12% voted Green Left.
The center-right VVD, the party of famous Dutch policians such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Frits Bolkestein, received only 1% of the immigrant vote. The CDA got 3%, the SP 5% and Green Left 7%."
During the previous municipal elections the minorities did not show up for voting. Obviously they have corrected that. It gives new meaning to: "the government has elected a new people".
I think the municipal trend will also be the national trend in 2007. The present Right-wing coalition is doing great work both on slowing immigration and on Liberalising the economy. But large parts of the electorate outside the cities are not affected by the Multicultural society and want to hold on to a welfare society, which is impossible. On this the Right-wing message will be a very hard sell. But it has to be done, because it is the right thing to do. The secular Right wing lacks good cadres but has a message that goes with the Zeitgeist. The Christian Democrats have an excellent cadre, but its message is sadly unpopular these days. It will only get worse. The Right-wing is lacking in Reagan or Pim Fortuyn style Great Communicators. Maybe someone will come along.
Building, building, building local networks and cadres should be the motto for the Secular Right in the next few years. And harvest season will surely come.
The Socialist Party have a strong profile and they go steadily from strength to strength. Their leadership is excellent and they have been taking special care to develop their voter base and networks in blue collar worker area's in the past 20 years. They are unequivocally Pro-Western culture, which is unique within the Left nationally. This makes them ideal allies of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but she has chosen for the Liberal-Conservative VVD, which is not a good match.
They are also popular amongst the cognoscenti and literati, the pundit caste, which improves their media exposure at no expense. They will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.
The Greens performed less impressively due to weak leadership. They are environmental yuppies and push an impossible combination of favouring large scale immigration and environmentalism. They are so enamoured of these irreconcilable good intentions that they choose to remain oblivious of this fact. Their leader is a pretty lady. She is smart but she has neither strength nor insight.
The Christian Democrats see their voting base in the country side further eroding. The Netherlands is secularising and the trend bodes ill for them. The Left is gaining strength in the South and has already a strong presence in the North. Only the East is remaining strongly Christian politically.
The Liberal-Conservatives had a poor showing. The trend for them should be positive due to the continuing growing affluence of the Dutch mainstream. However lately they seem to be struggling and they suffer from increasing right-wing competition and weak leadership and cadre. I did not vote for them this time due to their Amsterdam proposal to close bars which discriminate. This is another ploy to increase State power.
Rotterdam. The city where Fortuyn made his devastating appearance in 2002. Marko Pastors, the party leader showed himself to be a very good administrator and politician and a right-winger. The man makes no mistakes but lacks the charisma of Pim Fortuyn. Good news overall I think. The Liveable Rotterdam party lost a little but remained a dominant party. They will leave the coalition and become an opposition party. This means that they will have time to re-establish the contact with the voter base and to strengthen party cadre, following the example of the Socialist Party 20 years ago.
Labour regained a bit of their strength in Rotterdam. This means the end of the present Rightwing coalition in that city.
In Amsterdam the Labour Party carried the whole city. All the Boroughs are Labour's. There will be a Left-Wing coalition instead of the present business friendly Labour-Liberal Conservative coalition. Job Cohen the Labour Mayor said in effect: "we have to be VERY carefull not to become arrogant and this victory is in fact too big".
These victories are indeed a curse for Labour. Labour does not believe in Socialism. They say they have an ideology but they are utterly empty. They want coalitions with Conservative Parties, so they can execute watered down Right-wing programs. They will tell their ideologically committed cadres that the coalition partners "made them do it". Now being forced into Left-wing coalitions they are going to have to agree on policies they do not believe in. It will be a joy to see them squirm in the next few years. And they tragically lack the law-and-order instinct that the electorate wants to see.
Brussels Journal gives the origin of the Leftist victories in the cities:
"According to the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam 80% of the non-indigenous electorate voted for Labour. This explains why cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Breda and Arnhem succumbed to the Left. 84% of the Turks voted for the PvdA; 81% of the Antillians/Surinamese did likewise. Of the Moroccans 78% voted Labour and 12% voted Green Left.
The center-right VVD, the party of famous Dutch policians such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Frits Bolkestein, received only 1% of the immigrant vote. The CDA got 3%, the SP 5% and Green Left 7%."
During the previous municipal elections the minorities did not show up for voting. Obviously they have corrected that. It gives new meaning to: "the government has elected a new people".
I think the municipal trend will also be the national trend in 2007. The present Right-wing coalition is doing great work both on slowing immigration and on Liberalising the economy. But large parts of the electorate outside the cities are not affected by the Multicultural society and want to hold on to a welfare society, which is impossible. On this the Right-wing message will be a very hard sell. But it has to be done, because it is the right thing to do. The secular Right wing lacks good cadres but has a message that goes with the Zeitgeist. The Christian Democrats have an excellent cadre, but its message is sadly unpopular these days. It will only get worse. The Right-wing is lacking in Reagan or Pim Fortuyn style Great Communicators. Maybe someone will come along.
Building, building, building local networks and cadres should be the motto for the Secular Right in the next few years. And harvest season will surely come.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Struggle
I read some interesting commentary on a speech by Dutch Christian Democrat Minister of Development Co-operation Agnes van Ardenne-Van der Hoeven. The commentary was by Paul Belien from Brussels Journal. Agnes van Ardenne argues that there is a upsurge of militant secularism which is in fact hostile to all religion. She wonders whether a new attack along the lines of 11 September 2001 will cause those forces hostile to religion to be increasingly violent and secular fundamentalist in their opposition to religion.
As a Development Co-operation Minister Agnes realises that in many parts of the world the state is failing and religious organisations are picking up the pieces.
"In Sub-Saharan Africa, faith-based organisations provide more than 50% of all health and education services, including care for the victims of HIV/AIDS. Where the state fails, religious organisations pick up the pieces. Clearly, these organisations are capable of mobilising society in a way that the state is not. We should not forget that in our own country many schools and hospitals were originally founded by religious organisations and in many cases are still being run by them."
She then continues to argue that most wars in Africa are religious and tribal wars and internal wars within states. But somehow this is okay and positive and Western Dvelopment Aid should be given to reliable religious organisations where possible. There are positive AND negative aspects to religion and secularists should not overlook the positive aspects. To this she connects the importance of religion for all the Muslims who are living in The Netherlands. One Imam in Amsterdam even signed a convenant with the municipality to combat terrorism and to co-operate with the Dutch security forces. 1 whole Imam! She then calls for understanding and immersion in foreign culture and religion. Secularists have to take religion seriously in order to deal with the third World and with the growing colonies of the Third World in the Western World.
My commentary:
Agnes van Aardenne denies that the West has a conflict with Islam, a religion. She then combines her denial with opening up another rift, the rift between the religious (Muslims and Christians) one one side and the secularists on the other side. The conflict is to be resolved by the secularists who have to immerse themselves in the world view of religious people. She offers no concessions from the side of the Christians or the Muslims.
The good thing of her piece is the understanding that the secularists are "fundamentalist secularist". They want to fill the public domain with their values and see no role for non-secular values. The State is also their Church.
The Muslims also turn down the separation of religion and the state. Their laws have to be directly taken from their Holy Writ.
In the Middle is Christianity that holds up the twin banners of faith in God and Obedience to the Emperor. Both the Temple and the Stronghold have to be defended and both are blessed by God.
Separation of Church and State is a Christian value. The Christian Religion is not to be misused for political gain. However, religion is older than the secular State. Religion gives life to the State, just as Religion is born from the Old Testament Tribalism. And without Religion the State will whither and die and secularism will die with it. Similarly universal Religion should not become so universalist that it denies the importance of the Tribe or Nation.
What we are seeing these days is that universalist secularism is mindlessy attacking Religion ("Bigotry, repressive") and Tribalism and Nationalism ("Racism, bigotry"). Secularism want the most beautiful things for us human beings. But it hates human beings as they really are. We humans ARE bigots, racists, tribalists and sexists. We are limited. Our design is fixed in immutable biology. And if society is not run in accordance with our human limitations it will crash and fall. The end of secularism. The twelve secularists of the secularist manifesto: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq are almost all from the Third World and 8 are lapsed Muslims. They have fled to the West and now they want to seize the power centres of Europe and use the power of Europe to disarm and subjugate Islam.
They are right that if Islam is not stopped, the separation between State and Religion will end and thus Secularism will end. That will end their freedom.
Agnes van Aardenne is right that radical Secularism is an attack on religion, also on Christianity. And that in many parts of the world religion is a source of order in chaos, the only source of order apart from family and Tribe, because the state is failing.
The West must defend itself from religion, but also co-opt and respect religion in order to further order and to facilitate the build-up of a social fabric in the Thirld World and at home. If the West fails to do that the state and secularism will go under while Religion and Tribe will survive.
Personally I think that the situation cannot be salvaged anymore. Multi-culturalism and Mass-immigration have so far damaged the fabric of Western societies that they cannot survive in the present form.
The new order is already gathering steam. Ever wondered were all those red state Bush voter come from?
"Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family. The absolute population of Europe and Japan may fall dramatically, but the remaining population will, by a process similar to survival of the fittest, be adapted to a new environment in which no one can rely on government to replace the family, and in which a patriarchal God commands family members to suppress their individualism and submit to father."
(The Return of Patriarchy, Philip Longman)
Mark Steyn wrote: "It is the demography, stupid". But the Muzzies are not the only relatively fast growing demographic group.
And another thing. One thing that has notoriously bedevilled the Middle East after the rise of Islam, is its internal disorder and infighting. After all any one can become a imam. Any imam can make fatwa's. Any imam can call for a Jihad. A divided house will surely fall.
As a Development Co-operation Minister Agnes realises that in many parts of the world the state is failing and religious organisations are picking up the pieces.
"In Sub-Saharan Africa, faith-based organisations provide more than 50% of all health and education services, including care for the victims of HIV/AIDS. Where the state fails, religious organisations pick up the pieces. Clearly, these organisations are capable of mobilising society in a way that the state is not. We should not forget that in our own country many schools and hospitals were originally founded by religious organisations and in many cases are still being run by them."
She then continues to argue that most wars in Africa are religious and tribal wars and internal wars within states. But somehow this is okay and positive and Western Dvelopment Aid should be given to reliable religious organisations where possible. There are positive AND negative aspects to religion and secularists should not overlook the positive aspects. To this she connects the importance of religion for all the Muslims who are living in The Netherlands. One Imam in Amsterdam even signed a convenant with the municipality to combat terrorism and to co-operate with the Dutch security forces. 1 whole Imam! She then calls for understanding and immersion in foreign culture and religion. Secularists have to take religion seriously in order to deal with the third World and with the growing colonies of the Third World in the Western World.
My commentary:
Agnes van Aardenne denies that the West has a conflict with Islam, a religion. She then combines her denial with opening up another rift, the rift between the religious (Muslims and Christians) one one side and the secularists on the other side. The conflict is to be resolved by the secularists who have to immerse themselves in the world view of religious people. She offers no concessions from the side of the Christians or the Muslims.
The good thing of her piece is the understanding that the secularists are "fundamentalist secularist". They want to fill the public domain with their values and see no role for non-secular values. The State is also their Church.
The Muslims also turn down the separation of religion and the state. Their laws have to be directly taken from their Holy Writ.
In the Middle is Christianity that holds up the twin banners of faith in God and Obedience to the Emperor. Both the Temple and the Stronghold have to be defended and both are blessed by God.
Separation of Church and State is a Christian value. The Christian Religion is not to be misused for political gain. However, religion is older than the secular State. Religion gives life to the State, just as Religion is born from the Old Testament Tribalism. And without Religion the State will whither and die and secularism will die with it. Similarly universal Religion should not become so universalist that it denies the importance of the Tribe or Nation.
What we are seeing these days is that universalist secularism is mindlessy attacking Religion ("Bigotry, repressive") and Tribalism and Nationalism ("Racism, bigotry"). Secularism want the most beautiful things for us human beings. But it hates human beings as they really are. We humans ARE bigots, racists, tribalists and sexists. We are limited. Our design is fixed in immutable biology. And if society is not run in accordance with our human limitations it will crash and fall. The end of secularism. The twelve secularists of the secularist manifesto: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq are almost all from the Third World and 8 are lapsed Muslims. They have fled to the West and now they want to seize the power centres of Europe and use the power of Europe to disarm and subjugate Islam.
They are right that if Islam is not stopped, the separation between State and Religion will end and thus Secularism will end. That will end their freedom.
Agnes van Aardenne is right that radical Secularism is an attack on religion, also on Christianity. And that in many parts of the world religion is a source of order in chaos, the only source of order apart from family and Tribe, because the state is failing.
The West must defend itself from religion, but also co-opt and respect religion in order to further order and to facilitate the build-up of a social fabric in the Thirld World and at home. If the West fails to do that the state and secularism will go under while Religion and Tribe will survive.
Personally I think that the situation cannot be salvaged anymore. Multi-culturalism and Mass-immigration have so far damaged the fabric of Western societies that they cannot survive in the present form.
The new order is already gathering steam. Ever wondered were all those red state Bush voter come from?
"Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family. The absolute population of Europe and Japan may fall dramatically, but the remaining population will, by a process similar to survival of the fittest, be adapted to a new environment in which no one can rely on government to replace the family, and in which a patriarchal God commands family members to suppress their individualism and submit to father."
(The Return of Patriarchy, Philip Longman)
Mark Steyn wrote: "It is the demography, stupid". But the Muzzies are not the only relatively fast growing demographic group.
And another thing. One thing that has notoriously bedevilled the Middle East after the rise of Islam, is its internal disorder and infighting. After all any one can become a imam. Any imam can make fatwa's. Any imam can call for a Jihad. A divided house will surely fall.
Elections: socialist cartel
Today there are municipal elections in THe Netherlands. So what shall I elect. Usually I vote the VVD. They are the party that has accepted Hirsi Ayaan in their ranks. A liberal party in the old sense, Liberal-Conservative I like to call them.
Yesterday Het Parool, the Amsterdam newspaper reported that one of the prominent VVD candidates proposed to close a bar if they "discriminated" at the entrance by refusing entry to certain groups of people.
Usually this means that a bar avoids letting groups of foreigners in, mostly Moroccans. This is due to the pugnacious and agressive behaviour of Moroccans. A bar that refuses to let people in, will not earn any money from them. But because certain groups of people have a systematic tendency to misbehave it does pay to not let them in.
It is a decision for the bar owner. Either he loses turnover because of refusing people or he loses turnover because people do not want to go to a place where they are harrassed. Every bar owner comes up with his own approach. Some bars hardly let in any foreigners at all, other bars like the Challenger or The Power Zone, exclusively target ethnic minorities.
But now a politician, wants to turn over these decisions to some municipal authority. And the punishement for "discriminating" will be closure of the bar. We all know how this will go. Ethnics hysterically scream "discrimination" at the slightest provocation. The media will often join the chorus and bay for the offender's blood. If you are white, there is no need to to defend yourself. It is already clear that you are a racist.
I would be mildly unhappy if this proposal was made by the Labour Party or the Greens.
But the Liberal-Conservatives? They are supposed to be the defenders of the rights of the citizens. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Association, Private Property and a lot more. They are supposed to be the defenders of our rights against the power-hungry government.
The funny thing is that there is no discussion of this proposal. Nobody, not the bar owners, not the press not the other parties, not the other people in the Liberal-Conservative party utter a word against this proposal to encroach on the rights of Freedom of Association and Private Property. For Amsterdammers, a city soaked in Socialism this just does not exist. It is a complete Socialist Cartel.
Hell, I even found a pamphlet for a Communist in the mail 2 days ago. He promises Free Health Care, free education and a crackdown on both organised and petty crime.
I might as well vote for this Communist.
Yesterday Het Parool, the Amsterdam newspaper reported that one of the prominent VVD candidates proposed to close a bar if they "discriminated" at the entrance by refusing entry to certain groups of people.
Usually this means that a bar avoids letting groups of foreigners in, mostly Moroccans. This is due to the pugnacious and agressive behaviour of Moroccans. A bar that refuses to let people in, will not earn any money from them. But because certain groups of people have a systematic tendency to misbehave it does pay to not let them in.
It is a decision for the bar owner. Either he loses turnover because of refusing people or he loses turnover because people do not want to go to a place where they are harrassed. Every bar owner comes up with his own approach. Some bars hardly let in any foreigners at all, other bars like the Challenger or The Power Zone, exclusively target ethnic minorities.
But now a politician, wants to turn over these decisions to some municipal authority. And the punishement for "discriminating" will be closure of the bar. We all know how this will go. Ethnics hysterically scream "discrimination" at the slightest provocation. The media will often join the chorus and bay for the offender's blood. If you are white, there is no need to to defend yourself. It is already clear that you are a racist.
I would be mildly unhappy if this proposal was made by the Labour Party or the Greens.
But the Liberal-Conservatives? They are supposed to be the defenders of the rights of the citizens. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Association, Private Property and a lot more. They are supposed to be the defenders of our rights against the power-hungry government.
The funny thing is that there is no discussion of this proposal. Nobody, not the bar owners, not the press not the other parties, not the other people in the Liberal-Conservative party utter a word against this proposal to encroach on the rights of Freedom of Association and Private Property. For Amsterdammers, a city soaked in Socialism this just does not exist. It is a complete Socialist Cartel.
Hell, I even found a pamphlet for a Communist in the mail 2 days ago. He promises Free Health Care, free education and a crackdown on both organised and petty crime.
I might as well vote for this Communist.
Islamic Protection
Winston Smith:
"What do you think about Verdonk's decision to end the moratorium on extraditions to Iran? There are some Iranian Christians at risk of being persecuted if they're sent back, as well as some gay people. Opposition political parties are united against her, as are some VVD members (among them Hirsi Ali), and the Raad van Kerken.
So, should the Christians and gays stay in the Netherlands even though they've been refused asylum, or should they be sent back to almost certain death?"
Snouck:
I do not know about Verdonk's decision on extraditions to Iran.
Should we protect these people because they came to our territory? I do not know? I do not know them. I do not know if they are good people. Iranian Christians. The Godfather is a Christian too. There are millions of people living under very difficult conditions around the world. Most of Africa is a basket case, a slaughter house. Should we bring them to The Netherlands and protect them? It would be the end of our society. Why single out these Iranians?
The way I see it is that questions like these should not be decided by a bureaucrat and according to rules. But by a vote by a community. If these people want our protection, than it should be the Dutch who decide and not the immigrants and not the bureaucrats.
And this is what happening anyway. I will tell you an anecdote.
Half a year ago I was contacted by a Turkish friend, who had gone to Belgium to set up a business. He had gone broke and came back to Amsterdam. He was happy to be back. We went to the Rembrandsplein and drank tea. At 02:00 o'clock we parted in front of the Synagogue, he went home and I did. He said: "so nice to talk Dutch, you are the first Dutchman I spoke in a month".
The idea with giving people citizensship, which will inevitably happen if these Iranians stay in the Netherlands long enough, is to make them parts of the Dutch community in a meaningful way. These days there are so many foreigners in our land, with our without passports that citizensship has become meaningless. New arrivals come here, work here live here, but they do not meet any Dutchies. The Dutch community has turned its back on the immigrants, whether they are Black or Muslim. Neither Verdonk nor citizenship squandering bureaucrat nor nationalist blogger can change that.
The situation between secular Turks and religious Turks is very, very bad. Another Turkish friend is a secularist Turk and in a discussion with me said that the situation in Turkey is so bad that the Dutch MUST help Turks by giving them free access to our country.
She got into a furious row with me. NOBODY tells me or my compatriots who belongs to our community. No minister, no bureaucrat, no Winston Smith. If you will try to force this on me or my compatriots I will become your doodsvijand (enemy to death). I have ended my friendship with that person on the spot.
As far as Middle Eastern Christians goes, I was taught about Islam by Wasken, a Armenian classmate when I was a teenager. I personally like Middle Eastern Christians a lot. But I would not want to force my preferences on my compatriots. So it would have to be put to a vote. The community that accepts the immigrants should also be responsible for the immigrant's upkeep and health care.
This is how it was before 1965, before we had a welfare state. Under such a structure there will be immigration too, but it will be on a managable level and people will soon find out which candidates suit them and which not.
"What do you think about Verdonk's decision to end the moratorium on extraditions to Iran? There are some Iranian Christians at risk of being persecuted if they're sent back, as well as some gay people. Opposition political parties are united against her, as are some VVD members (among them Hirsi Ali), and the Raad van Kerken.
So, should the Christians and gays stay in the Netherlands even though they've been refused asylum, or should they be sent back to almost certain death?"
Snouck:
I do not know about Verdonk's decision on extraditions to Iran.
Should we protect these people because they came to our territory? I do not know? I do not know them. I do not know if they are good people. Iranian Christians. The Godfather is a Christian too. There are millions of people living under very difficult conditions around the world. Most of Africa is a basket case, a slaughter house. Should we bring them to The Netherlands and protect them? It would be the end of our society. Why single out these Iranians?
The way I see it is that questions like these should not be decided by a bureaucrat and according to rules. But by a vote by a community. If these people want our protection, than it should be the Dutch who decide and not the immigrants and not the bureaucrats.
And this is what happening anyway. I will tell you an anecdote.
Half a year ago I was contacted by a Turkish friend, who had gone to Belgium to set up a business. He had gone broke and came back to Amsterdam. He was happy to be back. We went to the Rembrandsplein and drank tea. At 02:00 o'clock we parted in front of the Synagogue, he went home and I did. He said: "so nice to talk Dutch, you are the first Dutchman I spoke in a month".
The idea with giving people citizensship, which will inevitably happen if these Iranians stay in the Netherlands long enough, is to make them parts of the Dutch community in a meaningful way. These days there are so many foreigners in our land, with our without passports that citizensship has become meaningless. New arrivals come here, work here live here, but they do not meet any Dutchies. The Dutch community has turned its back on the immigrants, whether they are Black or Muslim. Neither Verdonk nor citizenship squandering bureaucrat nor nationalist blogger can change that.
The situation between secular Turks and religious Turks is very, very bad. Another Turkish friend is a secularist Turk and in a discussion with me said that the situation in Turkey is so bad that the Dutch MUST help Turks by giving them free access to our country.
She got into a furious row with me. NOBODY tells me or my compatriots who belongs to our community. No minister, no bureaucrat, no Winston Smith. If you will try to force this on me or my compatriots I will become your doodsvijand (enemy to death). I have ended my friendship with that person on the spot.
As far as Middle Eastern Christians goes, I was taught about Islam by Wasken, a Armenian classmate when I was a teenager. I personally like Middle Eastern Christians a lot. But I would not want to force my preferences on my compatriots. So it would have to be put to a vote. The community that accepts the immigrants should also be responsible for the immigrant's upkeep and health care.
This is how it was before 1965, before we had a welfare state. Under such a structure there will be immigration too, but it will be on a managable level and people will soon find out which candidates suit them and which not.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Who let them in, anyway?
Charles Martel:
"Snouck -> sometimes I wonder just how the hell did Denmark or Sweden end up with hundreds of thousands of Muslims?
.. Denmark? Who in God's name did they invade or colonise?
Snouck:
The Danes colonised Greenland. Still do in fact. And Ireland and England. They sacked Dorestadum, the biggest port in The Netherlands around the year 850. They used to be real bastards, the Danes, back in the good, old days. But we got revenge!!!!! We burned down Copenhagen in 1807, I think. This should show the Muzzies not to #### with the Dutch. We are kind of slow, but we 'll get you in the end.
Charles Martel:
Is there some faceless bureaucrat in Brussels deciding that Denmark should get its "quota" of Muslim? Is that how it happened? Because, as far as I can tell, this was never put to the Danes in a referendum - nor were they given a choice about it. The same with Norway and Sweden.
...I am originally from Ireland, and we also have the same problem - suddenly there are thousands of Muslims living in Dublin - nobody asked the Irish if that was a good idea or not - it just "happened"."
Snouck:
Thanks for your question. I am not an expert on Scandinavia. But I think that all these countries the pattern was more or less similar to what happened in Germany and The Netherlands.
After Destruction: Reconstruction
After the Second World War parts of the continent were laying in ruin. Everything that had not been stolen by the Germans had been bombed and strafed by the English and Americans, our liberators. I am talking about rolling stock for the railways, machinery and tools of the factories, bridges blown up, villages, towns and cities devastated, ruining the stocks of houses. Employment was scarce and there were armies of jobless, many of them former soldiers or forced labourers who had been dragged off too.
So there was a lot of work to do. And this work was done by the Europeans. They slowly built up their nations and economies. The loans provided by the Marshall plan, a big credit scheme, administered by continental national and private banks enabled the Europeans to buy machinery in the USA to rebuilt Europe's devastated industrial areas. And the Europeans not only took the machinery from the Americans but also implemented the American way of mass production in Turin and Milan, in Paris and Wolfsburg. The Germans call this the “Wirtschaftswunder” the Economic Miracle.
Soon the reconstruction gathered pace and there was a situation of more or less full employment. In such a situation wages go up and the workers become more powerful, while the employers, the capitalists, especially those in marginal industries lose power and face bankruptcy. This is a normal situation and happens all the time in well-run and free economies. The proper response to such a situation is to let the marginal industries go broke. Because there is full employment anyway the laid-off workers will quickly find new jobs, at better wages in industries that are more profitable and who are desperately looking for workers.
Tight Labour markets
In Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium and The Netherlands in the mid fifties this situation of labour shortages developed and was keenly felt in coal mining, textiles, steel industries, industries that add little value and that showed little possibility of innovation. These industries had been built up around the 1850s. This was the time of significant expansion of Capitalism and the industrial Society and the switching of wood burning to coal burning energy economy.
There is this rhetoric of “jobs Dutchmen, Germans, Americans do not want to do”. Bush repeats it all the time. So does the Multicultural Left and the supporters of Mass-immigration. It is a lie. Off course Westerners want to do these jobs. It is just that there are other jobs elsewhere that pay better. So if you want workers, increase your wages.
The industries that are marginal however (unprofitable), cannot pay higher wages so they are in a bind.
The deal between the Barons, the Governments and Organised Labour
The Capitalist barons in charge of these industries did not want their properties to be devastated by bankruptcy and they made deals with the Labour Unions and Governments. To make up for the shortfall of labour at a price that the Capitalist Barons could afford, they started to import labour from the South of Europe, mostly Spain and the South of Italy, which were socially and economically backward. By doing so they undercut the wages of blue collar workers, especially those at the bottom of the societal ladder. As far as the labour unions are concerned it was a true betrayal of the interests of the constituency they pretend to represent.
As far as the Governments are concerned it is the same, but they had a wider societal picture to consider. As far as the Capitalist Barons are concerned, well they are Capitalist Barons and they were just doing what comes natural to them. They do not pretend to be angels nor would we believe them if they did.
For Spain and Italy it was nice off course that their people found jobs up North and when these people came back they brought with them not only money but also skills and knowledge that were assets to their nations. In the early sixties, the Capitalist Barons used the charter agreed upon with Organised Labour and Governments to recruit cheap, unskilled labour on the other side of the Bosporus and the Mediterranean Sea, amongst the Islamic populations of Eastern Anatolia and the Rif Mountains, the most backward demographics of their nations. These people were contracted to do their work, earn their money and to disappear again to whence they came, as had most of the Spanish and Italians that had preceded them.
Islam was regarded as no threat
At that time the intellectuals in the West regarded religion a spent force and Islam was not seen as something that could ever be a force. It would go the same way as Christianity as far as these intellectuals were concerned, into the dustbin of history and nationalism was bound to follow.
Because these people were not seen as permanent citizens of the nations were they went to work no thought was given to educating them or training them to fit into society. Their employers taught them the rudiments of the majority language and that was mostly it.
The October war of 1973 between the Egyptians and Syrians and their allies and the Israelis united the Oil producing countries into a cartel, to wage economic war on the West and to improve the power of Thirld world oil producing countries. The cartel was highly successful into scaring the Europeans into co-operating with a scheme to increase Muslim populations in Europe and in maintaining the religious and cultural character of the immigrants. The economic shock of high energy prices made the marginal industries even less profitable and many of them faltered and went into bankruptcy. By 1980 most of them had disappeared or restructured themselves into industries with a higher added value. Beneficiaries of this trend were: South-Italy, Spain, Turkey and Asian countries such as South-Korea and Taiwan, which were industrialising. The losers were those Capitalist Barons who did not go with the trend of the time and who failed to build up industries in developing nations or move into more innovative fields.
With the marginal industries gone it was time for the Muslim migrant workers to go home. There was no further rationale for their presence in Europe. They had to reunify with their families and get on with whatever it is that people do in the interior of Turkey and North Africa.
Alas, that is not what happened.
They DID reunify with their families, however. They brought them over to Europe! No Job? No problem! One can get free money from the Infidel Government. In the 80ies the Muslim populations in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Denmark exploded. The more dependants a man had, the more money he had, the Government paid for his wife and his children. Health care and Education were provided free of charge. Only some one with a LOT of self-respect would refuse such a gilded deal.
And so the inner cities filled up with Muslims men without self-respect, their wives and their off-spring. The neighbourhoods were they live are the low rent areas. These filled with a teeming humanity of many origins and most of the whites with more than 80 IQ-points have left them and live in suburbs or towns within commuting distance of the white collar office jobs. The sort of job that adds most of the Value in Western Economies.
The early 80ies also saw the first nationalist resistance against the presence of large numbers of Non-Westerners, especially in France and Belgium. In The Netherlands the Government created a violent Anti-Fascist movement from amongst squatters and Leftist students, who made Anti-Fascism or “Antifa” an interesting lifestyle, a pleasant, interesting and subsidised alternative for being a wage slave in a consumer society. These people off course imagined themselves rebelling against society, although in reality they were just the muscle of the elites against those who sought to protect the nation. I suspect that the picture in Denmark, Belgium and Germany looks more or less the same.
So this is the partial answer to your question. The immigrant’s coming to Denmark, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands has nothing to do with colonialism. France has a history of colonial involvement with North Africa. But for the rest of these countries goes that the migrants came as part of a deal to save industries that were on the verge of bankruptcy. In the mid 1980ies a new immigration wave hit Europe. That will be covered by another piece to be written tomorrow, Inshallah.
"Snouck -> sometimes I wonder just how the hell did Denmark or Sweden end up with hundreds of thousands of Muslims?
.. Denmark? Who in God's name did they invade or colonise?
Snouck:
The Danes colonised Greenland. Still do in fact. And Ireland and England. They sacked Dorestadum, the biggest port in The Netherlands around the year 850. They used to be real bastards, the Danes, back in the good, old days. But we got revenge!!!!! We burned down Copenhagen in 1807, I think. This should show the Muzzies not to #### with the Dutch. We are kind of slow, but we 'll get you in the end.
Charles Martel:
Is there some faceless bureaucrat in Brussels deciding that Denmark should get its "quota" of Muslim? Is that how it happened? Because, as far as I can tell, this was never put to the Danes in a referendum - nor were they given a choice about it. The same with Norway and Sweden.
...I am originally from Ireland, and we also have the same problem - suddenly there are thousands of Muslims living in Dublin - nobody asked the Irish if that was a good idea or not - it just "happened"."
Snouck:
Thanks for your question. I am not an expert on Scandinavia. But I think that all these countries the pattern was more or less similar to what happened in Germany and The Netherlands.
After Destruction: Reconstruction
After the Second World War parts of the continent were laying in ruin. Everything that had not been stolen by the Germans had been bombed and strafed by the English and Americans, our liberators. I am talking about rolling stock for the railways, machinery and tools of the factories, bridges blown up, villages, towns and cities devastated, ruining the stocks of houses. Employment was scarce and there were armies of jobless, many of them former soldiers or forced labourers who had been dragged off too.
So there was a lot of work to do. And this work was done by the Europeans. They slowly built up their nations and economies. The loans provided by the Marshall plan, a big credit scheme, administered by continental national and private banks enabled the Europeans to buy machinery in the USA to rebuilt Europe's devastated industrial areas. And the Europeans not only took the machinery from the Americans but also implemented the American way of mass production in Turin and Milan, in Paris and Wolfsburg. The Germans call this the “Wirtschaftswunder” the Economic Miracle.
Soon the reconstruction gathered pace and there was a situation of more or less full employment. In such a situation wages go up and the workers become more powerful, while the employers, the capitalists, especially those in marginal industries lose power and face bankruptcy. This is a normal situation and happens all the time in well-run and free economies. The proper response to such a situation is to let the marginal industries go broke. Because there is full employment anyway the laid-off workers will quickly find new jobs, at better wages in industries that are more profitable and who are desperately looking for workers.
Tight Labour markets
In Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium and The Netherlands in the mid fifties this situation of labour shortages developed and was keenly felt in coal mining, textiles, steel industries, industries that add little value and that showed little possibility of innovation. These industries had been built up around the 1850s. This was the time of significant expansion of Capitalism and the industrial Society and the switching of wood burning to coal burning energy economy.
There is this rhetoric of “jobs Dutchmen, Germans, Americans do not want to do”. Bush repeats it all the time. So does the Multicultural Left and the supporters of Mass-immigration. It is a lie. Off course Westerners want to do these jobs. It is just that there are other jobs elsewhere that pay better. So if you want workers, increase your wages.
The industries that are marginal however (unprofitable), cannot pay higher wages so they are in a bind.
The deal between the Barons, the Governments and Organised Labour
The Capitalist barons in charge of these industries did not want their properties to be devastated by bankruptcy and they made deals with the Labour Unions and Governments. To make up for the shortfall of labour at a price that the Capitalist Barons could afford, they started to import labour from the South of Europe, mostly Spain and the South of Italy, which were socially and economically backward. By doing so they undercut the wages of blue collar workers, especially those at the bottom of the societal ladder. As far as the labour unions are concerned it was a true betrayal of the interests of the constituency they pretend to represent.
As far as the Governments are concerned it is the same, but they had a wider societal picture to consider. As far as the Capitalist Barons are concerned, well they are Capitalist Barons and they were just doing what comes natural to them. They do not pretend to be angels nor would we believe them if they did.
For Spain and Italy it was nice off course that their people found jobs up North and when these people came back they brought with them not only money but also skills and knowledge that were assets to their nations. In the early sixties, the Capitalist Barons used the charter agreed upon with Organised Labour and Governments to recruit cheap, unskilled labour on the other side of the Bosporus and the Mediterranean Sea, amongst the Islamic populations of Eastern Anatolia and the Rif Mountains, the most backward demographics of their nations. These people were contracted to do their work, earn their money and to disappear again to whence they came, as had most of the Spanish and Italians that had preceded them.
Islam was regarded as no threat
At that time the intellectuals in the West regarded religion a spent force and Islam was not seen as something that could ever be a force. It would go the same way as Christianity as far as these intellectuals were concerned, into the dustbin of history and nationalism was bound to follow.
Because these people were not seen as permanent citizens of the nations were they went to work no thought was given to educating them or training them to fit into society. Their employers taught them the rudiments of the majority language and that was mostly it.
The October war of 1973 between the Egyptians and Syrians and their allies and the Israelis united the Oil producing countries into a cartel, to wage economic war on the West and to improve the power of Thirld world oil producing countries. The cartel was highly successful into scaring the Europeans into co-operating with a scheme to increase Muslim populations in Europe and in maintaining the religious and cultural character of the immigrants. The economic shock of high energy prices made the marginal industries even less profitable and many of them faltered and went into bankruptcy. By 1980 most of them had disappeared or restructured themselves into industries with a higher added value. Beneficiaries of this trend were: South-Italy, Spain, Turkey and Asian countries such as South-Korea and Taiwan, which were industrialising. The losers were those Capitalist Barons who did not go with the trend of the time and who failed to build up industries in developing nations or move into more innovative fields.
With the marginal industries gone it was time for the Muslim migrant workers to go home. There was no further rationale for their presence in Europe. They had to reunify with their families and get on with whatever it is that people do in the interior of Turkey and North Africa.
Alas, that is not what happened.
They DID reunify with their families, however. They brought them over to Europe! No Job? No problem! One can get free money from the Infidel Government. In the 80ies the Muslim populations in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Denmark exploded. The more dependants a man had, the more money he had, the Government paid for his wife and his children. Health care and Education were provided free of charge. Only some one with a LOT of self-respect would refuse such a gilded deal.
And so the inner cities filled up with Muslims men without self-respect, their wives and their off-spring. The neighbourhoods were they live are the low rent areas. These filled with a teeming humanity of many origins and most of the whites with more than 80 IQ-points have left them and live in suburbs or towns within commuting distance of the white collar office jobs. The sort of job that adds most of the Value in Western Economies.
The early 80ies also saw the first nationalist resistance against the presence of large numbers of Non-Westerners, especially in France and Belgium. In The Netherlands the Government created a violent Anti-Fascist movement from amongst squatters and Leftist students, who made Anti-Fascism or “Antifa” an interesting lifestyle, a pleasant, interesting and subsidised alternative for being a wage slave in a consumer society. These people off course imagined themselves rebelling against society, although in reality they were just the muscle of the elites against those who sought to protect the nation. I suspect that the picture in Denmark, Belgium and Germany looks more or less the same.
So this is the partial answer to your question. The immigrant’s coming to Denmark, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands has nothing to do with colonialism. France has a history of colonial involvement with North Africa. But for the rest of these countries goes that the migrants came as part of a deal to save industries that were on the verge of bankruptcy. In the mid 1980ies a new immigration wave hit Europe. That will be covered by another piece to be written tomorrow, Inshallah.
The ideological watershed is shifting
Charles Martel (such a nice name of a great European hero):
the Dutch government talking to Robert Spencer?????
Snouck - that's progress. that really is."
Dutch Government talking to Robert Spencer and Theodore Darymple. Also The Dutch Bookstores are full of Darymple's book "our culture or what is left of it".
And newspapers, Leftist newspapers doing interviews with him and giving his books attention in a grand way. I thought I would never live to see such popularity for a Conservative thinker in the city of Amsterdam. Darymple in (bookshop) Scheltema!
"Driving to the Netherlands, I was surprised by how much the political atmosphere there had changed. Not long ago, the Dutch seemed insufferably complacent, regarding the rest of the world de haut en bas, as if it had not yet reached Dutch levels of enlightenment and generosity. It is amazing what a couple of assassinations can do."
It used to be impossible to talk with middle and upper class Dutchies in the big cities. They had an attitude that all the answers to human existance had been given, and that wisdom and truth had been contracted out to them. And they were definitely willing to discuss the terms of a sublease with anyone.
I am really surprised with the change of attitude of many Dutch people. The press and the Universities are still firmly in the hands of the ideological Left, but they are now full of doubt themselves and on the defensive. Also the increase in media outlets (internet, cable TV) causes the Left to lose its monopoly on thought. But still I doubt strongly that the Right will find answers to the predicament we are finding ourselves in. In the end suffering will show itself to be the best teacher.
We will have communal elections tomorrow. No doubt a lot of the gains by the Right from 2002 will be lost, very often because of the lack of quality of the Right. In the coming years the Right will have to build up a strong cadre of Rightwing politicians, both at the local level and at the national level. The advances of the Right will be slow. In the end it will probably be too slow to stave off disaster. Europe will sink away in ethnic strife and so will The Netherlands with its huge minorities and weak national identity.
It cannot be helped.
Finland, Ireland and Germany will be relatively unharmed, while France, Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK will see civil war. In the end the Europeans will win. Europeans still monopolize fields that really matter like Engineering, The Economy, and the Security Forces. We should be especially wary of attempts to bring the army and police in the hands of Muslims under the guise of diversity.
the Dutch government talking to Robert Spencer?????
Snouck - that's progress. that really is."
Dutch Government talking to Robert Spencer and Theodore Darymple. Also The Dutch Bookstores are full of Darymple's book "our culture or what is left of it".
And newspapers, Leftist newspapers doing interviews with him and giving his books attention in a grand way. I thought I would never live to see such popularity for a Conservative thinker in the city of Amsterdam. Darymple in (bookshop) Scheltema!
"Driving to the Netherlands, I was surprised by how much the political atmosphere there had changed. Not long ago, the Dutch seemed insufferably complacent, regarding the rest of the world de haut en bas, as if it had not yet reached Dutch levels of enlightenment and generosity. It is amazing what a couple of assassinations can do."
It used to be impossible to talk with middle and upper class Dutchies in the big cities. They had an attitude that all the answers to human existance had been given, and that wisdom and truth had been contracted out to them. And they were definitely willing to discuss the terms of a sublease with anyone.
I am really surprised with the change of attitude of many Dutch people. The press and the Universities are still firmly in the hands of the ideological Left, but they are now full of doubt themselves and on the defensive. Also the increase in media outlets (internet, cable TV) causes the Left to lose its monopoly on thought. But still I doubt strongly that the Right will find answers to the predicament we are finding ourselves in. In the end suffering will show itself to be the best teacher.
We will have communal elections tomorrow. No doubt a lot of the gains by the Right from 2002 will be lost, very often because of the lack of quality of the Right. In the coming years the Right will have to build up a strong cadre of Rightwing politicians, both at the local level and at the national level. The advances of the Right will be slow. In the end it will probably be too slow to stave off disaster. Europe will sink away in ethnic strife and so will The Netherlands with its huge minorities and weak national identity.
It cannot be helped.
Finland, Ireland and Germany will be relatively unharmed, while France, Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK will see civil war. In the end the Europeans will win. Europeans still monopolize fields that really matter like Engineering, The Economy, and the Security Forces. We should be especially wary of attempts to bring the army and police in the hands of Muslims under the guise of diversity.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Fantasy
Interesting meeting between Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and "an official of the Dutch Ministry of Intergration". It is fascinating to see how the knowledge that our Dutch elites have put themselves into an impossible corner is creeping up on them and that they are desperately looking for a way out. Meanwhile they are still lying to us that "everything is okay and will work out in the end, if we are just nice to each other and have mutual understanding".
"an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders. We began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim leaders she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only very few, but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I asked her if she had read the Qur’an. She told me no, she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it, she still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter what.
I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.
She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when cooperation was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you’re not getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is to be gained by pretending that it isn’t happening?
I don’t envy this articulate and intelligent young lady her job. But her remarks reminded me of a message I received not long ago, after I had criticized former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s bit of Wall Street Journal puffery about how Islam is really a religion of peace. A reader took me to task for “suggesting that Islam is irredeemable in some sense.” He asked: “if we assume this to be true, what is to be done. What would Mr. Spencer suggest that this or any American president do to deal with this reality. Wahid was thought to be a step in the right direction when he was president of the extremely large population of Indonesia, but if he is not much more than a ‘trumped-up counterfeit,’ where do we go from here.”
Where do we go from here? We go to reality. We stop deceiving ourselves and allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. If Wahid was being disingenuous about the teachings of Islam, then he doesn’t offer Westerners hope. He offers them a weak reed that will collapse when they need it the most. Why? Because Muslims who are attracted by the siren song of jihad will see through his pleasing platitudes and recognize how slim a case he really has with reference to the Islamic texts. Westerners can be fooled by him, and Muslims can’t. The young lady in the Dutch Ministry of Integration, despite her best efforts to ignore or deny this reality, kept coming up against it: she found that only a small minority of Muslim leaders in Holland were at all interested in working toward integration.
Eventually the Dutch Ministry of Integration and other administrative bodies in the Western world are going to have to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and with the implications of other facts about Islamic jihad that so far they have preferred to pretend did not exist. What would I suggest that the President do about this reality? I would suggest that he acknowledge it as a reality. That he address the nation and the world, and tell them that the United States is going to lead the resistance to jihad and Sharia supremacism in the name of equality of rights and dignity of all peoples. That any state that oppresses non-Muslims or denies them equality of rights in any way will receive no American aid whatsoever. That any state that allows the idea that Muslims must make war against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit to the Islamic social order will be no friend of the United States. That the idea that the U.S. Constitution should one day be replaced by Islamic Sharia, whether by violent or peaceful means, will be understood within the United States as seditious.
The Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference was one small effort to bring Dutch officials, and ultimately the West at large, to confront the realities of our world that the world is doing all it can to deny. Bat Ye’or spoke about how European officials themselves had brought Eurabia into being by encouraging immigration while eschewing assimilation at the insistence of the Arab League. Only now are Europeans realizing that their culture, their soul, has been sold by their leaders for oil, and the jihad is upon them.
It is a reality so bleak that it is no wonder that most officials prefer fantasy. But they won’t be able to maintain their comfortable illusions much longer."
Theodore Darymple wrote up his thoughts on a study session at the Dutch Ministry of Justice:
"To my amazement, the Dutch Ministry of Justice asked me to give a talk. The audience proved intelligent, respectful, but not supinely uncritical."
It IS indeed literally amazing, that our officials seem to be coming out of their ivory towers. To built new ones no doubt.
Why IS it so that we prefer fantasy?
"an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders. We began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim leaders she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only very few, but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I asked her if she had read the Qur’an. She told me no, she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it, she still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter what.
I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.
She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when cooperation was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you’re not getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is to be gained by pretending that it isn’t happening?
I don’t envy this articulate and intelligent young lady her job. But her remarks reminded me of a message I received not long ago, after I had criticized former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s bit of Wall Street Journal puffery about how Islam is really a religion of peace. A reader took me to task for “suggesting that Islam is irredeemable in some sense.” He asked: “if we assume this to be true, what is to be done. What would Mr. Spencer suggest that this or any American president do to deal with this reality. Wahid was thought to be a step in the right direction when he was president of the extremely large population of Indonesia, but if he is not much more than a ‘trumped-up counterfeit,’ where do we go from here.”
Where do we go from here? We go to reality. We stop deceiving ourselves and allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. If Wahid was being disingenuous about the teachings of Islam, then he doesn’t offer Westerners hope. He offers them a weak reed that will collapse when they need it the most. Why? Because Muslims who are attracted by the siren song of jihad will see through his pleasing platitudes and recognize how slim a case he really has with reference to the Islamic texts. Westerners can be fooled by him, and Muslims can’t. The young lady in the Dutch Ministry of Integration, despite her best efforts to ignore or deny this reality, kept coming up against it: she found that only a small minority of Muslim leaders in Holland were at all interested in working toward integration.
Eventually the Dutch Ministry of Integration and other administrative bodies in the Western world are going to have to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and with the implications of other facts about Islamic jihad that so far they have preferred to pretend did not exist. What would I suggest that the President do about this reality? I would suggest that he acknowledge it as a reality. That he address the nation and the world, and tell them that the United States is going to lead the resistance to jihad and Sharia supremacism in the name of equality of rights and dignity of all peoples. That any state that oppresses non-Muslims or denies them equality of rights in any way will receive no American aid whatsoever. That any state that allows the idea that Muslims must make war against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit to the Islamic social order will be no friend of the United States. That the idea that the U.S. Constitution should one day be replaced by Islamic Sharia, whether by violent or peaceful means, will be understood within the United States as seditious.
The Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference was one small effort to bring Dutch officials, and ultimately the West at large, to confront the realities of our world that the world is doing all it can to deny. Bat Ye’or spoke about how European officials themselves had brought Eurabia into being by encouraging immigration while eschewing assimilation at the insistence of the Arab League. Only now are Europeans realizing that their culture, their soul, has been sold by their leaders for oil, and the jihad is upon them.
It is a reality so bleak that it is no wonder that most officials prefer fantasy. But they won’t be able to maintain their comfortable illusions much longer."
Theodore Darymple wrote up his thoughts on a study session at the Dutch Ministry of Justice:
"To my amazement, the Dutch Ministry of Justice asked me to give a talk. The audience proved intelligent, respectful, but not supinely uncritical."
It IS indeed literally amazing, that our officials seem to be coming out of their ivory towers. To built new ones no doubt.
Why IS it so that we prefer fantasy?
Friday, March 03, 2006
Herr Winn and Individualism
The kleinverzet blog has a post replying to my post on equality. He explains the importance of balancing Equility and Liberty by introducing an Individual-Collective dichotomy. Individualists are accepting of Inequality. Collectivists do not. I am simplifying his reasoning a bit here.
My thoughts: one should not isolate Individualism too much. Man is a social animal. Individualism always exists in the social setting of a collective. The Collective (Tribal) man is older than Individual (modern or Western) man. The value Individualism can only meaningfully exist if it is enshrined, cherished and protected by our society, our Collectivity. Individualism is vunerable and unstable. It grows in times of peace and prosperity and wanes in times of poverty and unrest. The greatest danger to Individualism by the Collective is the monopoly on Laws, Force and Violence of the Collective. If the Collective lets down Individualism there is nothing an individual can do.
A question to Herr Winn: why was Christ crucified on the Jewish Pesach, the celebration of the Exodus from Egypt?
Let's move on. Herr Winn writes: "If we do nothing, if we stay silent, what Snouck describes may very well be (part of our) future. But I am not ready yet to shut down my computer and call it a day."
My post was pessimistic on the survival of the territorial nation state and therefore on future of formal LEGAL equality before the law that Westerners hold dear. But I am not pessimistic on the survival of the West, albeit in another social organisation than the secular state.
I wrote: "Look, I just do not think we will get rid of the Left. And the results of Leftism are disastrous and are partly irriversible. The problem with Leftism is that we deep down ALL want to believe in it. The Left is too well woven into our moral fabric.
By the time we understand how serious and damaging Multiculturalism has been, it will be very late and the way back will be exceedingly unpleasant.
Plus there are changes in military technology that make territorial nation states unviable in the future. WMD can be used against territorial states without fear of retribution to the networks (Al-Qada) that use them. I am interested to hear what your thoughts are regarding this and the thrust of my article on equality?
I do not think the situation can be easily repaired. That is no reason to be sad though. I am happy to see such a challenge in our time, and I try to let that happiness shine thru in my blog.
There is life after the national State's demise. Civilised life. It is our honour to be called upon to transplant our civilisation into that new Era."
Let's go out and do it!
My thoughts: one should not isolate Individualism too much. Man is a social animal. Individualism always exists in the social setting of a collective. The Collective (Tribal) man is older than Individual (modern or Western) man. The value Individualism can only meaningfully exist if it is enshrined, cherished and protected by our society, our Collectivity. Individualism is vunerable and unstable. It grows in times of peace and prosperity and wanes in times of poverty and unrest. The greatest danger to Individualism by the Collective is the monopoly on Laws, Force and Violence of the Collective. If the Collective lets down Individualism there is nothing an individual can do.
A question to Herr Winn: why was Christ crucified on the Jewish Pesach, the celebration of the Exodus from Egypt?
Let's move on. Herr Winn writes: "If we do nothing, if we stay silent, what Snouck describes may very well be (part of our) future. But I am not ready yet to shut down my computer and call it a day."
My post was pessimistic on the survival of the territorial nation state and therefore on future of formal LEGAL equality before the law that Westerners hold dear. But I am not pessimistic on the survival of the West, albeit in another social organisation than the secular state.
I wrote: "Look, I just do not think we will get rid of the Left. And the results of Leftism are disastrous and are partly irriversible. The problem with Leftism is that we deep down ALL want to believe in it. The Left is too well woven into our moral fabric.
By the time we understand how serious and damaging Multiculturalism has been, it will be very late and the way back will be exceedingly unpleasant.
Plus there are changes in military technology that make territorial nation states unviable in the future. WMD can be used against territorial states without fear of retribution to the networks (Al-Qada) that use them. I am interested to hear what your thoughts are regarding this and the thrust of my article on equality?
I do not think the situation can be easily repaired. That is no reason to be sad though. I am happy to see such a challenge in our time, and I try to let that happiness shine thru in my blog.
There is life after the national State's demise. Civilised life. It is our honour to be called upon to transplant our civilisation into that new Era."
Let's go out and do it!
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Harsh and insensitive
A Correction
After having been rediculously generous in granting third worlders asylum for 15 years the Dutch corrected their attitude. Thousands of asylum seekers have been expelled after being turned down. The IND (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) has become very tightfisted in granting residence and work permits. Also the list with safe countries has been expanded. Asylum application from these countries are seldomly successful.
After restriction had come in force in 2003 the number of people entering The Netherlands annually dropped from roughly 45.000 to 4.400. News of the hars regime in Holland sent a ripple of apprehension through people looking for a new life accross the Third World and the smuggling operations. It soon became common sense to go to other European countries, instead of The Netherlands. However the number of applications icreased again to about 7.700 persons. With the large backlog of asylum applicants the IND had become a very strange and Kafkaesque organisation. In 2002 for instance it was impossible to know whether an application for a residence and study permit had been received at all. The IND sent out no confirmation and it is impossible to phone, e-mail, fax or visit the people who are dealing with any immigration business.
The creaking wheels of the IND
As an anecdote to illustrate how besieged the IND had become after more than a decade of being swamped by people trying to get into fortress Europe: in 2002 a friend tried to enter The Netherlands for purposes of study (7 months). I tried to visit and phone the IND offices near Schiphol Airport, but it was all without avail. The workings of the IND were a complete black box and the staff saw nothing wrong with that. In the end my friend bombarded all the IND fax lines with 10 thousands of faxes (pink with black spots) and e-mailed them that the fax bombardment would only stop if they confirmed receipt of the application.
The IND gave in and sent a fax confirming receipt of her application and that they had started to process her file. If they had not received the application, it could have been send again or she could have accepted job offers elsewhere.
Also I was recruiting IT staff before that, mostly from the EU, but also from other countries like Australia and the US. The low level of education of IND contact staff was striking and so was their general lack of understanding of the world around them. Most foreign IT staff wants to work as contractors on temporary contracts. The concept of temporary contracts did not exist in the IND. They just did not understand it. The only way to renew the work permit of an US-citizen who had lived and worked in The Netherlands for almost 10 years was if he had a permanent contract, the only kind of labour contract Dutch civil servants understand. Dutch civil servants CANNOT be fired. They cannot FATHOM why someone would refuse to work on a permanent contract. In the end it turned out that the IND understood a thing they called "interim manager" a phenomenon from the late 1970ies when many Dutch firms needed temporary crisis- and turn around managers. Nightmare.
International knowledge Society
The thing is, modern internationalised economies need a lot of people to come in work here for a few days, months or years and go out again. They often have important knowledge or contacts that have to be used for their firms on a specific spot on the globe. These people have no intention to become Dutch citizens or to become public charges in The Netherlands. Unlike the masses of Third Worlders who come here to work for a few years and then live off the welfare state and add to the increasing weight of that part of their Tribe already in the West.
Looking out for number one
Can you blame these people for wanting to improve their economic situation? Can you blame them for feeling Tribal or Religious patriotism and wanting to do their bit by increasing their power over Westerners. Of course you can't. Everybody tries to do his bit for himself. Those who feel an allegiance to a wider community like many of tthese Third Worlders do are in fact less selfish than the individualists that are the result of Western upbringing in the Era of individualism.
But adding them to our society and giving rights inevitably takes away the rights of ethnic Dutch citizens. And the ones who pay the biggest price are not the wealthy, the well-educated and the well connected, but rather the blue collar workers living in the areas were rents are low. Their neighbourhoods and schools are internationalised, their wages are undercut. They are powerless against the violence that people from the Third World apply so easily and they lack the clannishness to stand up to ethnic attackers.
The Left goes ape again
Well, because immigration policy in general and asylum policy in particular has become so much stricter lot's of people are being turned down by the IND under the new leadership of mrs. Verdonk. Observers would expect that particular painfull cases would be brought under the attention of the public by the media and those figures in society who are still dedicated to the idea of Multiculturalism and Mass-immigration. And the sentimental Dutch would never be able to withstand a sob story.
And indeed a group of film makers started a project on asylum seekers being refused asylum and send back to their countries of origin. Boo hoo. The stories came on television and incited the usual recriminations and calls for more lenience for poor immigrants. However, mrs. Verdonk showed real steely resolve, checked the stories of the asylum rejects and published the real stories in the Dutch press, showing that mostly these people had been lying to the gullible leftist idiot film makers. That turned around public opinion again.
The Kosovo Girl
Recently a girl from Kosovo, Taida Pasic (pic), 18 year old, who had been living in a rural area for some time was send back. She speaks Dutch well and had been studying in a good school. She and her parents had been sent back to the Balkan. They received 7.000 Euro's to start up a new life, paid for by the Dutch tax payer. Taida was near her final examinations and wanted to come back for a few months to write her exams in order to enter university in Kosovo. She applied for a tourist visa. The IND refused. She then went to France and bought a visa for 4.000 Euro's, from a corrupt French official.
Because she went to live with friends in The Netherlands and prepared for her exams. The IND found out about her, arrested her, and brought her to a detention centre to prepare her for a forced removal.
Her shocked friends organised publicity, her case came in the press, signatures were collected from the public demanding a visa for her, there were television programs about it, Maria van der Hoeven, Minister of Education requested that Taida be given permission to stay until she had written her exams and all kinds of pressure were put to Minister Verdonk. Minister Verdonk (Dutch) is now being vilified as a vampire, a Nazi, a Racist, a heartless monster, the usual.
Straight backed Verdonk
But she does not bend. Taida is going to be KICKED out of the country. Elsevier, a right wing magazine reported that Taida could have written her exams on the Dutch embassy in Kosovo. Opinion polls show that less then 30 percent of the population support Taida. 45 percent of the Dutchies support the Minister.
Good. No more bending over backwards.
Civil war: the Left and the Right
Look, I have sympathy for people who want to get their education. Taida wants to get ahead in life and who can hold that against her. Just like my friend who got her permit in 2002. But a "no" is a "no". What part of "no" is it that Taida and her bleeding heart supporters do not understand? NO!!!!! Taida F### OFF. And a message to the Leftists out there. F### OFF with the Nazi shit. I am sick and tired of it. I am going to hit anyone who uses it on me in the future. There are already millions of flippin' foreigners in this country who SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN LET IN AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN GIVEN PAPERS! For years we have been muzzled by the government and they been running over us. Hell, I voted for a dead guy in the 2002 elections. So did 1,6 million Dutch voters. Was that reasonable? No. I just voted for a dead guy to show that I was NOT going to be reasonable.
Mending a broken culture
If we get our society on the rails again. In The Netherlands. In Europe. In the USA. If we get rid of this impulse to hate the West and to run a permanent Anti-White campaign we will be able to be reasonable again. Society nowadays is a knowledge society. People need to be able to travel and to obtain a legal status so that they can study and work and contribute internationally. This is good.
There are limits to Whiteys generosity
There should not be a attitude that any limits imposed on non-westerners are a sign of "racism" or "discrimination" and similar sorts of twaddle. As soon as this ingrained habit of the Left to regard itself as moral judges over the rest of their compatriots and to go apeshit whenever they see it serving their agenda I will stop being the unpleasant, gun-slinging, witch-burning fascist that I am now. If the Left will allow us Conservatives a real vote and allow us to secure our rights (FOS, private property, free association etc.) and keep crime in check and our lands to our own kind we will overlook your pathetic infatuation with the State.
For all you Leftist out there. We lost Pim Fortuyn. We lost Theo van Gogh. The hard line attitude against pretty 18 year old Taida shows that we mean business. So far we have been peaceful and playing it by the rules. Patience is wearing thin though. Start playing fair. Giving passports to Muslims who are going to vote for the Left is NOT playing fair. Hiding overrepresentation of minorities in violent crime is NOT playing fair. Screaming "racism" when this is pointed out is NOT playing fair. Demanding an end to Freedom of Speech in the Cartoon affair is NOT playing fair. If you guys want a civil war, you have to keep charting the course that you have been charting sofar. So talk to your Leftist friends and pass on the warning. You will not be happy when you are hit by the anger of the Right.
After having been rediculously generous in granting third worlders asylum for 15 years the Dutch corrected their attitude. Thousands of asylum seekers have been expelled after being turned down. The IND (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) has become very tightfisted in granting residence and work permits. Also the list with safe countries has been expanded. Asylum application from these countries are seldomly successful.
After restriction had come in force in 2003 the number of people entering The Netherlands annually dropped from roughly 45.000 to 4.400. News of the hars regime in Holland sent a ripple of apprehension through people looking for a new life accross the Third World and the smuggling operations. It soon became common sense to go to other European countries, instead of The Netherlands. However the number of applications icreased again to about 7.700 persons. With the large backlog of asylum applicants the IND had become a very strange and Kafkaesque organisation. In 2002 for instance it was impossible to know whether an application for a residence and study permit had been received at all. The IND sent out no confirmation and it is impossible to phone, e-mail, fax or visit the people who are dealing with any immigration business.
The creaking wheels of the IND
As an anecdote to illustrate how besieged the IND had become after more than a decade of being swamped by people trying to get into fortress Europe: in 2002 a friend tried to enter The Netherlands for purposes of study (7 months). I tried to visit and phone the IND offices near Schiphol Airport, but it was all without avail. The workings of the IND were a complete black box and the staff saw nothing wrong with that. In the end my friend bombarded all the IND fax lines with 10 thousands of faxes (pink with black spots) and e-mailed them that the fax bombardment would only stop if they confirmed receipt of the application.
The IND gave in and sent a fax confirming receipt of her application and that they had started to process her file. If they had not received the application, it could have been send again or she could have accepted job offers elsewhere.
Also I was recruiting IT staff before that, mostly from the EU, but also from other countries like Australia and the US. The low level of education of IND contact staff was striking and so was their general lack of understanding of the world around them. Most foreign IT staff wants to work as contractors on temporary contracts. The concept of temporary contracts did not exist in the IND. They just did not understand it. The only way to renew the work permit of an US-citizen who had lived and worked in The Netherlands for almost 10 years was if he had a permanent contract, the only kind of labour contract Dutch civil servants understand. Dutch civil servants CANNOT be fired. They cannot FATHOM why someone would refuse to work on a permanent contract. In the end it turned out that the IND understood a thing they called "interim manager" a phenomenon from the late 1970ies when many Dutch firms needed temporary crisis- and turn around managers. Nightmare.
International knowledge Society
The thing is, modern internationalised economies need a lot of people to come in work here for a few days, months or years and go out again. They often have important knowledge or contacts that have to be used for their firms on a specific spot on the globe. These people have no intention to become Dutch citizens or to become public charges in The Netherlands. Unlike the masses of Third Worlders who come here to work for a few years and then live off the welfare state and add to the increasing weight of that part of their Tribe already in the West.
Looking out for number one
Can you blame these people for wanting to improve their economic situation? Can you blame them for feeling Tribal or Religious patriotism and wanting to do their bit by increasing their power over Westerners. Of course you can't. Everybody tries to do his bit for himself. Those who feel an allegiance to a wider community like many of tthese Third Worlders do are in fact less selfish than the individualists that are the result of Western upbringing in the Era of individualism.
But adding them to our society and giving rights inevitably takes away the rights of ethnic Dutch citizens. And the ones who pay the biggest price are not the wealthy, the well-educated and the well connected, but rather the blue collar workers living in the areas were rents are low. Their neighbourhoods and schools are internationalised, their wages are undercut. They are powerless against the violence that people from the Third World apply so easily and they lack the clannishness to stand up to ethnic attackers.
The Left goes ape again
Well, because immigration policy in general and asylum policy in particular has become so much stricter lot's of people are being turned down by the IND under the new leadership of mrs. Verdonk. Observers would expect that particular painfull cases would be brought under the attention of the public by the media and those figures in society who are still dedicated to the idea of Multiculturalism and Mass-immigration. And the sentimental Dutch would never be able to withstand a sob story.
And indeed a group of film makers started a project on asylum seekers being refused asylum and send back to their countries of origin. Boo hoo. The stories came on television and incited the usual recriminations and calls for more lenience for poor immigrants. However, mrs. Verdonk showed real steely resolve, checked the stories of the asylum rejects and published the real stories in the Dutch press, showing that mostly these people had been lying to the gullible leftist idiot film makers. That turned around public opinion again.
The Kosovo Girl
Recently a girl from Kosovo, Taida Pasic (pic), 18 year old, who had been living in a rural area for some time was send back. She speaks Dutch well and had been studying in a good school. She and her parents had been sent back to the Balkan. They received 7.000 Euro's to start up a new life, paid for by the Dutch tax payer. Taida was near her final examinations and wanted to come back for a few months to write her exams in order to enter university in Kosovo. She applied for a tourist visa. The IND refused. She then went to France and bought a visa for 4.000 Euro's, from a corrupt French official.
Because she went to live with friends in The Netherlands and prepared for her exams. The IND found out about her, arrested her, and brought her to a detention centre to prepare her for a forced removal.
Her shocked friends organised publicity, her case came in the press, signatures were collected from the public demanding a visa for her, there were television programs about it, Maria van der Hoeven, Minister of Education requested that Taida be given permission to stay until she had written her exams and all kinds of pressure were put to Minister Verdonk. Minister Verdonk (Dutch) is now being vilified as a vampire, a Nazi, a Racist, a heartless monster, the usual.
Straight backed Verdonk
But she does not bend. Taida is going to be KICKED out of the country. Elsevier, a right wing magazine reported that Taida could have written her exams on the Dutch embassy in Kosovo. Opinion polls show that less then 30 percent of the population support Taida. 45 percent of the Dutchies support the Minister.
Good. No more bending over backwards.
Civil war: the Left and the Right
Look, I have sympathy for people who want to get their education. Taida wants to get ahead in life and who can hold that against her. Just like my friend who got her permit in 2002. But a "no" is a "no". What part of "no" is it that Taida and her bleeding heart supporters do not understand? NO!!!!! Taida F### OFF. And a message to the Leftists out there. F### OFF with the Nazi shit. I am sick and tired of it. I am going to hit anyone who uses it on me in the future. There are already millions of flippin' foreigners in this country who SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN LET IN AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN GIVEN PAPERS! For years we have been muzzled by the government and they been running over us. Hell, I voted for a dead guy in the 2002 elections. So did 1,6 million Dutch voters. Was that reasonable? No. I just voted for a dead guy to show that I was NOT going to be reasonable.
Mending a broken culture
If we get our society on the rails again. In The Netherlands. In Europe. In the USA. If we get rid of this impulse to hate the West and to run a permanent Anti-White campaign we will be able to be reasonable again. Society nowadays is a knowledge society. People need to be able to travel and to obtain a legal status so that they can study and work and contribute internationally. This is good.
There are limits to Whiteys generosity
There should not be a attitude that any limits imposed on non-westerners are a sign of "racism" or "discrimination" and similar sorts of twaddle. As soon as this ingrained habit of the Left to regard itself as moral judges over the rest of their compatriots and to go apeshit whenever they see it serving their agenda I will stop being the unpleasant, gun-slinging, witch-burning fascist that I am now. If the Left will allow us Conservatives a real vote and allow us to secure our rights (FOS, private property, free association etc.) and keep crime in check and our lands to our own kind we will overlook your pathetic infatuation with the State.
For all you Leftist out there. We lost Pim Fortuyn. We lost Theo van Gogh. The hard line attitude against pretty 18 year old Taida shows that we mean business. So far we have been peaceful and playing it by the rules. Patience is wearing thin though. Start playing fair. Giving passports to Muslims who are going to vote for the Left is NOT playing fair. Hiding overrepresentation of minorities in violent crime is NOT playing fair. Screaming "racism" when this is pointed out is NOT playing fair. Demanding an end to Freedom of Speech in the Cartoon affair is NOT playing fair. If you guys want a civil war, you have to keep charting the course that you have been charting sofar. So talk to your Leftist friends and pass on the warning. You will not be happy when you are hit by the anger of the Right.
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