One of the ugly little secrets of Multiculturalism is the problem of violence between different non-white immigrant ethnic groups.

According to politically correct orthodoxy, all ethnic violence and crime may be ascribed to the racism of the majority white population. However, when “brown-on-brown” clashes occur, blaming the evil white man is a stretch, even for the most ardent multiculturalist. Somehow whites — via the overarching racist society they have created and dominate — are able to pit different ethnic groups against each other. That’s the Left’s story, and they’re sticking to it.

In London the Jamaican gangs are at war with the Pakistanis. In L.A., the blacks and the Mexicans clash repeatedly. Sometimes even different Muslim groups fight against one another.

The preferred victim for “youths” may be a member of the indigenous white population, but they will take any target of opportunity that happens along.

Belleville is a culturally enriched suburb of Paris, and, like most of the banlieues, its population is predominantly Muslim. However, there is a substantial Chinese minority in Belleville, and because the Chinese are relatively well-off and not always protected, they are favored targets for youthful muggers and thieves.

As immigrant groups go, the Chinese are generally peaceful and law-abiding. Last weekend they mounted a demonstration in Belleville with the theme “Sécurité Pour Tous” (“Security for All”) to protest the persistent violence of Muslim youths against their community, and the apparent indifference of the police to what is happening. Their rally was well-organized, orderly, and initially non-violent.

However, at the end of the event, a “youth” stole a Chinese woman’s purse and ran off with it. This was exactly what the crowd had been protesting, and for some of the protesters it was the last straw. They confronted the police, overturned cars, broke windows, and had to be dispersed through the use of teargas.

It was a most un-Chinese reaction to provocation, and demonstrates the extremity of their situation in Belleville.

The article below, which gives an account of what happened last Sunday and the background behind the demonstration, is taken from Le Quotidien du Peuple (my translation). The photos were borrowed from anthropologie du présent, Chine informations, and Alice in the land.

Le Quotidien du Peuple is a news organ of the Chinese community in France, and remains well within the acceptable politically correct boundaries its approach to the issue of “youth” violence in France. Nevertheless, an outline of the problem can easily be discerned from this report:

To preserve the rights and interests of the Chinese community in France, will the shot fired in Belleville be the last?

On June 20, tens of thousands of people from the Chinese community living in Paris marched in the Belleville district of the 19th and 20th arrondissement in Paris, and their demands were for “security” and “non-violence.” This demonstration was the detonation of several shots fired on June 2. That day there was a banquet at a restaurant in Belleville for the wedding of a young couple from China. But several guests were assaulted and attacked at the entrance of the restaurant by youths of African and Maghrebian origin who suddenly tore up and removed anything they could carry to throw at them. In the face of this situation, A Wu, a young Chinese man invited to the banquet, pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot and wounded the criminals. Knowing that his ill-considered actions violated French law, the young Chinese man immediately turned himself over to the French police, who had stood aside and allowed the bandits to act, and he gave them his weapon.

A Wu, who goes by the name Zhong Shaowu, is a young Chinese originally from Wencheng in Zhejiang Province, and at the moment is still locked in the Paris police detention center. It seems the police have no interest in any assault and theft in which the victims were ethnic Chinese; what interests them is where A Wu acquired the weapon he carried to defend himself against bandits and his motive for firing the shot, because according to them “There’s a little Mafia behind that.”

Regarding the case of Mr. Zhong, opinions are very diverse. We have no comment on that because this is not yet clarified, and it is the Paris police and the Chinese Consulate that are handling the problem. The most important thing for us is that the shot was fired once for all the long-suppressed indignation and anger, repressed and compressed in the hearts of the inhabitants of the Chinese community living in France, and especially the inhabitants of Chinese origin who settled in the low-rent housing district of Belleville in the 19th arrondissement of the French capital, who work hard with diligence to be able to make a better life in France. But for many years they have suffered a lot of provocations and attacks by gangs of young thugs who infest the neighborhood. Like most Chinese people engaged in and dedicated to small businesses, at the end of the day they often carry amounts of cash, and that is why they have become a favored target for the mob, the rogue and the scoundrel.

The demonstration on Sunday, June 20 began in the afternoon. In its preparation and organization it reflects the great differences of viewpoint among various parts of the Chinese community regarding the problem of ethnic integration. The diverse and different thoughts it arouses in society may be useful for us to know in order to decide the direction to take to best address the security issues of ethnic Chinese people.

1. Why should we not consider the problem of the lack of security among the Chinese in Belleville as a single ethnic conflict?

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In all criminal cases of violence aimed to seize the property of others, most victims always carry cash, have little ability to defend themselves, have no companions to help and defend them, are mostly women or the elderly, while those of Chinese origin who speak little or no French, and have difficulties seeking help and communicating with the organs of justice. Given that a Chinese person is industrious, hard-working, able to endure suffering and hardship, and is very skillful in management and operations, he often has income, while his gentle nature — quiet and affable because it prefers to endure the troubles and hardships and financial losses to avoid misfortune — makes him in the eyes of the criminal a fearful and docile lamb who does what he is told. In France, a number of immigrants, and especially the younger generation of immigrants from francophone African countries and the Maghreb countries, often engage in criminal acts to satisfy their needs, and this is a puzzle for French authorities who do not know which way to turn. Ethnic Chinese despise these people, and are often subject to their acts of theft, assault and robbery.

One thing we must not forget is that these people are very different from Chinese, since many of them have lived and grown up from childhood in an environment of violence, and they consider the forcible oppression of the weak as a rule of survival. They bully, mistreat, humiliate and brutalize not only ethnic Chinese, but also the weaker members of their own ethnic group, so that even the women, the elderly and children of African and North African origin, and also some French people, are often the object of their abuse and humiliation. The purpose of their rape and plunder is to seize the fruits of labor of others and make a living without working. For them, the only thing that merits consideration is the best way to seize the property of others. As for me (the author of this article), I have friends of North African origin, and they are modest, gentle, reasonable, hardworking, and diligent workers like any member of a civilized society; this is why it is completely arbitrary and subjective to try to determine the moral quality of any person by considering only his ethnicity.

Contrary to the imagination of some Chinese, in which the incident developed into a war between the Chinese community and other local immigrant communities, such a situation will not benefit anyone, and will provide no solution to the problems that exist, and will be positive only for hooligans, ruffians, and criminals who will be glad to manipulate racism and ethnic awareness in order to avoid prosecution, and this will be the only escape for them that will allow them to avoid embarrassment and trouble. In contrast, we must use the model of relations between associations and organizations, and it is up to Chinese organization to act first to contact different ethnic communities to unite and gather all the residents of nearby neighborhoods, thereby reducing as much as possible hiding places for criminals, and that is how the Chinese can make use of their wisdom and intelligence.

2. Why should the overseas Chinese and foreigners of Chinese origin living in foreign territory make their claims and demands known, understood and accepted by the general public and the major social classes of the country in which they reside?

The overseas Chinese nationals and overseas Chinese have a heart that beats in unison with the homeland and this is naturally the choice of feeling, but nobody should forget that they must respect the sovereignty justice of the country hosting them, and when their rights and interests are encroached, then they must seek the help and protection of the courts of the host country, and must also know how to harness the power of local media to increase the weight of their claims so that they are taken into account by the leaders of the country involved as well as the international community, and ensure that their actions can gain moral support. Regarding this, the Jewish community is very well behaved and has conducted its affairs well. I remember that in 2007 the Jewish community in Paris organized a large demonstration with a number of participants that was not counted in tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but reached over one million. The mission of the Jewish community was to honor the memory of Ivan, a young Jew murdered by bandits from the Ivory Coast, received the full support of major French media, and even non-French Jews participated in the demonstration which began at the Place de la Republic and ended up at the Place de la Nation. In comparison, there were only tens of thousands of Chinese who participated in our “anti-violence” event. The route was not only short and demonstrators traveled the streets to remote places where there are few people, and there were very few representatives of other ethnic groups, it seems that our event is much less popular than the one organized by Jews three years ago. During the course of the latter, there were several small skirmishes between young Muslims and Jewish youth (Ivan’s attacker was a young Ivorian who practiced Islam), but they were quickly suppressed by security groups dispatched locally by the organizers of the event with the help of the police.

What impressed me most deeply was the high degree of self-discipline of the Jewish community when several Jewish extremists began to burn the headscarf emblematic of the Palestinian Liberation Movement and fight with young North Africans who followed the rally. I acted instinctively, taking my camera. At that time, a young engaged couple Jews came to me and begged me in tears while saying, “Mr. Journalist, please do not include this picture in your news article, because these young Jews are a minority and they do not represent the mainstream of the Jewish community. We do not want our event to cause ethnic conflict.” And at exactly that moment, members of the group enforcing discipline and safety intervened to disperse the antagonists and end the conflict that had just kindled.

Subsequently the local press published reports on the event and there were very few negative comments about it, which was quite consistent with the initial goal adopted by the organizers. The Jewish community is deeply rooted in French society, so it is impossible for the Chinese community to fully and completely follow its example, but can refer to it as a model for the organization of the event.

3. Errors that overseas Chinese must avoid making when they are struggling for their rights and interests.

During the demonstration on Sunday there were some problems that I think were inappropriate and inconceivable.

First of all, the principle of “unity of all ethnic groups to resist and combat illegal activities” was not translated into the event, while there was too much emphasis on the participation of ethnic Chinese while failing to invite the largest number of representatives of other ethnicities. For example, the French also suffer from the woes inflicted by the thugs and criminals, and they should have been invited to this event, while most of the population of Belleville became mere spectators and not participants, which significantly reduced the impact of this popular demonstration.

Then, regarding the organization of the event, even though there were no major problems, during the final stage, when during the evacuation of protesters there were quarrels, disputes, and altercations between Chinese youth and youth of North African origin, and at the same time a woman of Chinese origin became a victim of theft when her handbag was snatched and disappeared in the blink of an eye, causing a conflict with a tendency to escalate. For when organizers left the place, some young people of Chinese origin acted against the police who used teargas to try to disperse the demonstrators, and a dozen were arrested and detained.

On the other hand, many held aloft and waved Chinese flags throughout the event, and some protesters said that “the Chinese Embassy is supporting the event …” when in reality in such cases, Chinese embassies abroad always act with caution because of the sovereignty of justice of the country involved. While preserving and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens, we must avoid interfering in the judicial independence of the country at issue. A small number of protesters who do not understand this act with abandon, adding a negative aspect and a sense of hostility which is absolutely counterproductive for the success of diplomatic efforts, and, on the contrary, these factors and this feeling cannot provide any successful resolution of the problems.

Hopefully, the claims and demands of the Chinese community in France about its safety in this country will be taken into account by the French government. But, on the other hand, Chinese citizens in France and French people of Chinese origin should make efforts to strengthen communication and understanding with leading French social classes, because the emergence of the problem of insecurity in ethnic conflict is in nobody’s interest, and is something that nobody wants to see or live through.

— By Luo Hao

Note: My French is rusty and inadequate, and I welcome correction if I have missed the sense of the text in any part of the above translation.

Hat tips: For the article and some of the photos, Cyber-résistant; for the rest of the photos, Steen.

Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at Tundra Tabloids. Some excerpts are below:

Forks existed in Greco-Roman Antiquity, but then as pitchforks and as a serving utensil. From the tenth through the thirteenth centuries AD they were fairly common among the wealthy in Byzantium. In the eleventh century, a Byzantine wife of a Doge of Venice brought forks to Italy. While spoons and knives were well-known in the ancient world, the triumph of the knife and fork as the mainstays of European tableware was slow in coming. It was only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the fork became a standard item at elite tables.

Forks used solely for dining were luxuries and markers of social status among the nobles. At the court of Versailles, Louis XIV of France allegedly did not approve of forks, yet his grandson adopted the custom. Even in the late 1600s, commentators noted that the English do not use “forks but fingers.” They initially ridiculed forks as being effeminate and unnecessary, but eventually, eating with forks was considered fashionable among wealthy British citizens.

Like many other ideas and habits, the custom of eating with knife and fork was spread from Western Europe to other parts of the world during the colonial period. The most important holdout has been East Asia, where chopsticks as eating utensils originated in China in ancient times. They are currently used in neighboring regions such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam as well, often made of bamboo or plastic, but also of metal, ivory and different types of wood.

The Italian Renaissance writer Bartolomeo Platina, or Sacchi (1421-1481) in 1465 composed De honesta voluptate et valetudine (“On honourable pleasure and health”), which became the first printed European cookbook. After him, surprisingly few similar titles were written. The great French chef François Pierre de la Varenne (1618-1678) published Le cuisinier françois in 1651. Most food writing took the guise of medical and dietetic advice in the humoral tradition, with less practical advice on how to prepare food to make it as delicious as possible. “La Varenne’s book was not really about how to improve one’s health by adjusting one’s diet. It was a cookery book and it was perhaps the first European cookery book almost entirely dedicated to the task of instructing its readers how to cook food.” It introduced a whole new culinary vocabulary to its readers. He published his work in the vernacular at a time when Latin was losing out to French as the lingua franca of Europe’s elites.

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After La Varenne, the development of a highly influential French haute cuisine (“high cooking”) continued with the chefs Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) and Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935). Escoffier contributed to Prosper Montagné’s (1865-1948) publishing of the first edition of Larousse Gastronomique, an encyclopedia of French gastronomy, in 1938. Carême was a great theorist and classifier who specialized in pâtisserie (pastries and sweets), “which he considered to be a branch of architecture, and saw himself as a culinary artist, an inventor, a creator.” Chef to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838) or Talleyrand, the influential French diplomat and political survivor, Carême subsequently worked briefly for Tsar Alexander I of Russia (1777-1825), then George IV (1762-1830), King of Hanover and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and finally James Mayer de Rothschild (1792-1868) of the prominent Jewish banking family.

Some early English cookbooks were The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse (1708-1770) and The Compleat Housewife from 1742 by Eliza Smith. The Joy of Cooking, first published in the United States in the 1930s by Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962), has been printed in millions of copies. Pellegrino Artusi (1820-1911) published the major Italian cookbook La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene (“The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well”) in 1891, following the political unification of Italy.

Elliott Shore tells the story of the Western restaurant in Dining Out — The Development of the Restaurant, a chapter in the fine book Food: The History of Taste, edited by Paul Freedman:

“People in the Western world have eaten away from home for centuries, but the restaurant as opposed to the inn, foodstand or other modest convenience or necessity, has existed for merely 250 years. The restaurant began, and remained for about its first century of existence, as an exclusive place for the wealthy, which served — in London, Paris, New York, Berlin — an international more-or-less French cuisine with little variation. Even as the restaurant started to become more accessible to a varied clientele, the uniformity of the offerings remained fairly constant for another century. It is only in the last fifty of those 250 years that we can start to speak of the move towards the phantasmagoric array of food, of atmosphere and of styles of service that have made the restaurant such a successful and ubiquitous feature of the culture of taste. Naturally, long before the modern restaurant was born in the mid-eighteenth century, there were many occasions to dine, or at least to eat, while travelling or during the urban workday. Travellers had to eat some place, after all, and in medieval and early modern Europe pilgrims, students, emissaries and soldiers thronged the roads and had some expectation of being fed.”

Nevertheless, the first restaurants were found in China. In the twelfth century AD when Hangzhou was the Chinese capital city it had hundreds of tea-houses, theaters and hotels and numerous restaurants. In the West, although taverns serving meals had existed since ancient times, the first luxury restaurants developed in the late 1700s. Late medieval China had a sophisticated system of communications, with waterways and roads facilitating trade in products from all provinces of the Empire and beyond. You could get cheap-but-good noodles, or sit in a luxurious tea house in a garden landscape filled with colored lanterns and paintings and drink tea from fine porcelain. If it were a hot summer day, you could get refreshing iced drinks or even iced foods. Restaurants in Song and Yuan Dynasty China had waiters and menus along with some aspects of a sexual marketplace and social meeting place.

The restaurant is a specialized place to eat, not a traveler’s refuge that also serves food, like an inn. The Western restaurant with a professional waiter and all the attributes we now associate with it emerged during the 1760s in Paris. A coffeehouse or a café was not a restaurant in the modern sense because it did not have an extensive selection of cooked foods made for the diner and ordered from a menu. The Caffè Florian at St Mark’s Square in the middle of Venice, Italy has been in continuous operation since 1720 and has attracted famous guests from Goethe via Charles Dickens to Marcel Proust, but although it was a valuable place to socialize, its menu was limited to pastries and snacks to accompany the caffeinated beverages.

Read the rest at Tundra Tabloids.

Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, has pleaded guilty to all ten counts against him, including weapons and terrorism charges, some of which carry a mandatory life sentence. Mr. Shahzad told the judge that he is a soldier in a Muslim war against the United States to punish it for its attacks on Muslim lands.

In other news, the Indonesian government says that the biggest outfits that smuggle drugs into Indonesia are run by Iranians.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to bewick, C. Cantoni, CSP, Freedom Fighter, Insubria, JD, JP, Lurker from Tulsa, Vlad Tepes, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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The incidence of overt anti-Semitism in the Netherlands has increased recently, and virtually all of the reported cases involve culture enrichers, rather than “persons of Dutch background”.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from Elsevier about a recent incident in Amsterdam, and follows it with his own notes. The full video is embedded at the bottom of this post:

Dutch Rabbi gets Hitler salute and raises the alarm about anti-Semitism

by Maartje Willems

In a broadcast of the Dutch TV program “The Five W’s” by the [Dutch] Jewish Broadcasting Organization, one can see Rabbi Lody van de Kamp walk with two students though Amsterdam where he is threatened by Moroccan youths. One of them even gives him a Hitler salute.

In the TV program Van de Kamp raises the alarm about the growing anti-Semitism in the Netherlands. He wants Jews to be able to walk normally in all areas of the city, and at present that is not the case.

“It happens regularly that one is mocked,” says Rabbi Van de Kamp. The two students also claim to have been harassed often when they walk through the city.

In other cities of the Netherlands there have also been reports filed with the police because Jews were attacked.

Last week it became known that the Amsterdam borough “De Baarsjes” even has a hidden synagogue, because Jews are afraid of trouble otherwise.^[1]

Last week PvdA member Ahmed Marcouch called for the deployment of a lokjood [“decoy Jew”] to halt the growing anti-Semitism.

“As far as I am concerned, you may deploy a decoy Jew, but you must nab them. You must do everything to increase the chances of getting them. These look like they are just incidents, but this is serious.”

Elsevier comment: Why is there so little public outrage about the increasing aggression of Dutch-Moroccan street-scum?

Notes:
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[1] Paul Andersson Toussaint (Dutch journalist): “In the Amsterdam neighborhood De Baarsjes is a hidden synagogue: there Jews gather every Saturday, but secretly. The Moroccans may not have noticed it. In our capital Amsterdam, there are six neighborhoods where Jews wearing a keppeltje [yarmulke] or are dressed in the Orthodox fashion (as well as those recognizable as gay people) can no longer appear without running a high risk of being cursed, spit on, threatened, or even harassed. All of those are neighborhoods in which there is a concentration of Moroccan Dutch. I know two Orthodox Jews, who for years on their way to their ‘Sjoel’ [synagogue] in the neighborhood De Pijp have been harassed and insulted every Sabbath by groups of Moroccan youths, mocking them with ‘dirty cancer Jew. Allah will slaughter you all’. One of them moved to Israel, the other to Amstelveen [south of Amsterdam] where ‘they’ are not present. Most of their Jewish friends don’t dare to wear a keppeltje [yarmulke] in the [neighborhoods] Indische Buurt, the Transvaalbuurt, and Nieuw-West, or pull a hat over their keppeltje [yarmulke]. Even Rabbi Raphael Evers, who lives in the neat neighborhood Buitenveldert, has developed avoidant behavior, and tries to minimize his trips out on the street, because he almost always is offended by Moroccans: ‘Hey. Hitler forgot one’. Many Jews he knows have the same experiences.” [source]

“A conservative estimate: I am physically and verbally threatened on average twice a week, intimidated or otherwise indecently or (extremely) aggressively treated by immigrant boys and men. The vast majority in that group is of Moroccan descent. There is almost never a justification for the excessive behavior of these guys. Their conduct undoubtedly has a racist origin. The fact that I am a native Dutchman is enough for them. There are thousands of such hate-heads walking around in Amsterdam. […] My own research and strolls in districts in Amsterdam show that it is a much broader phenomenon. There is no ethnic community where we-they thinking has developed so strongly as with the Moroccans. There is a large group of Moroccans living in Amsterdam that do not feel Dutch at all, but Moroccan. And who are hostile towards the Dutch, Dutch society, and the West.” [source]

Video:

Of bekijk de flash versie.

The graph below charts the fortunes of the various Dutch political parties as polled over the course of the past year:

Our Flemish correspondent VH offers this analysis of political trends before, during, and after the June 9 elections, in which Geert Wilders’ party (the PVV) won 24 seats in Parliament:

The poll graph shows the gravity of demonization, and also the drumming into the electorate that the PVV is not able to govern, and nobody wants the PVV to govern, anyway: thus a lost vote. You can see the effect of the last few months of propaganda against the PVV, with its drop in popularity, and then a last-minute surge. Now all three top parties are effectively at the same level.

There may have been an additional factor causing some people to cast a strategic vote for the closest alternative, presented as such by the MSM, the VVD (center-right). Doing so would prevent the PvdA (the Socialists) from becoming the biggest party.

Another interesting development is that the CDA (Christian Democrats) lost heavily to the PVV: the right wing CDA voters moved to the PVV. When the left wing of the CDA refused to talk with the PVV — and thereby made a PVV-VVD-CDA right-wing cabinet impossible — the more right-wing of the CDA electorate might have moved to the PVV, and left the CDA. The latter party risks becoming a backbench party, hijacked by its low-brow self-righteous left-wing appeasers and traitors.

But, rather than have this happen, I think the old political elite hopes to crush the PVV before the next election, and then the status quo can be restored — as they successfully did with the LPF, the party of Pim Fortuyn: It took them only three cabinets and four years to root out the LPF and regain control.

VH has translated an article from the Leefbaar Rotterdam website about the post-election maneuvering in the Netherlands:
– – – – – – – – –

Talking with the PVV was only to put on a show

by Ronald Buijt [of Leefbaar Rotterdam, “Livable Rotterdam”, Pim Fortuyn’s party]

To tame the “populist voting-fodder” as they view it, the old parties pretended to enter serious talks with the PVV [to investigate the possibility for a coalition government with the VVD (center-right liberals) and possibly the CDA (Christian Democrats, which houses a right wing and a left wing, the latter fiercely opposed to co-operation with he PVV)]. Since almost all parties had already had ruled out the PVV in advance, there was only one possible coalition left with the Party for Freedom: CDA-VVD-PVV. Now that CDA refuses even to consider whether this coalition might be possible, there will be no center-right government. But comfort yourself: even if the CDA had been willing to sit at the negotiating table, such a government would never been formed.

For decades the established parties in the Netherlands divided the power among themselves, including the many affiliated (well-paid) jobs. The PvdA, CDA and VVD have managed to rule repeatedly in different configurations for 40 of the years since WWII. Sometimes D66 [center-left liberals] was allowed to join. Until the 1990s, the PvdA and CDA always scored between 45 and 60 seats out of 150 in Parliament, and the VVD usually between 30 and 40 seats.

PvdA, CDA and VVD dominated this country until they were deep into its nervous system. As stated above, there are always two or three of these parties in the government. They ensure that their party members become the Queens’ Governor of a province [the Netherlands consists of 12 provinces] and over 90% of the mayors of the Netherlands [all appointed by he Queen] are members of these parties. In all the institutions of importance there are people with a direct connection to these three parties: trade unions, employers’ organizations, the Council of State, the heads of the ministries, school boards, Water Authority, the Dutch Bank. But also with civil society organizations there is this link, in particular to the PvdA [Labour Party, Socialists], which is the rule rather than the exception. The commissioners [ministers of a province] are almost always of these parties, and in the towns and villages the vast majority of the council members are in the CDA, VVD and PvdA.

Therefore an incestuous administrative elite slowly arose in the Netherlands which completely lost all links with common citizens. They cared for each other perfectly well, and arranged unprecedented redundancy schemes [the continuation of salaries when becoming unemployed, due to elections for instance]. In the Netherlands, failed politicians who are voted out of office receive very large fees that the ordinary Dutch person may only dream of, and they introduced salaries in the (semi-) government sector that are no longer proportionate in comparison to the real world.

This elite has always been legitimized by a large part of the Dutch media. In fact, many journalists became part of the elite and have their focus on the one square kilometer of the Parliament buildings [Binnenhof], lacking any notion of what was actually going on in the Netherlands. In 2001/2002, the rise of Pim Fortuyn was thus to all these people not only a complete shock but also a complete surprise.

This elite refuses to even give in an inch to the strong feelings of dissatisfaction among a group of voters that is much larger than the 1.5 million people who actually voted for the PVV. The Netherlands is a country of consensus among the VVD, CDA, PvdA, and the old media. They share the pie among them and anyone who might threaten the status quo will be dealt with ruthlessly, using arguments of opportunity.

To begin with, they try to treat the intruder with disregard by pointing at the tone in which an issue is brought up. This is a proven strategy to avoid the content of problematic issues raised. Over 100,000 times they have collectively written about, and referred to, the head-rag-tax, and at the same time avoided addressing the Islamization of our cities. When the scorning of a person based on his tone is not successful, one switches to the mention of “populism”.

And in this way one slides down. Bringing up the War [WWII] and its NSB [National Socialist Movement] have been tried and tested recipes, and even the hiding place of Anne Frank is easily thrown into the battle to silence [“kaltstellen”] the intruder. Everything for the plush!

At first Fortuyn and later Wilders only became stronger and more popular due to this. While one could say that with Fortuyn the elite was completely caught, with the advent of Wilders such is not the question anymore. Here the elite is knowingly and willingly about the defense of its own power.

This elite of VVD, CDA and PvdA has for 60 years blocked all kinds of administrative reforms, out of fear of the citizens and of losing their own power and well-paid jobs. It is they who determine which one of their party fellows becomes a mayor or the Queen’s Governor. They determine themselves who becomes our Prime Minister. And when in a rare exception they allow a referendum on Europe, and no less than 64% of the voting-fodder votes against Europe, well then their response is that they failed to properly explain it to the citizens. Anyone who thinks they then will again make an attempt to “explain it well” to the Dutch voters and then again ask for their opinion is wrong. They simply sign the Treaty of Lisbon anyway, which had been voted against massively.

As I mentioned before in a previous article: “The Big Three of the past will anxiously hold each other’s hands and form a coalition government together. Like frightened rabbits they will once again stare into the headlights of Wilders and the dissatisfied electorate. With their outdated view of the Netherlands they will paralyze each other and thus will also keep our country in paralysis. They [for instance] will not do anything to counter the degraded situations in the nursing homes, or to say it in a popular way: for the ones who have built up the Netherlands after WWII, and thus have contributed to our current prosperity.

They will also do nothing about the ever-rising hatred of gays. They will certainly do nothing about the fact that after 70 years Dutch Jews are again not safe in Amsterdam. They will do nothing about the continuing emigration of highly educated natives (often a disguised vote for Wilders!). And they will certainly not do anything to curb the continuing entry of disadvantaged ethnic minorities.

There will be no minimum sentences introduced. Under pressure of all the respect-rascals they will do nothing to the many billions swallowed up in “development aid”. Instead of addressing the lack of safety in the cities and taking on the street-scum, they simply continue wasting billions on projects for the deprived neighborhoods, and cut the budget for the police. Of course they will leave their servants in the Broadcasting Media untouched.

In short: they will simply continue until the PVV and [at the other side] the SP [anti-mass-immigration Socialist Party] have 76 seats together. Nothing will change fundamentally until that happens in the Netherlands.

A group of some 8,500 Chinese immigrants mounted a demonstration in the suburbs of Paris to protest the repeated attacks on them by “youths”, who pick Orientals as their preferred targets. Near the end of the demonstration an attack by some of those very “youths” occurred, sparking an escalation into riots, with angry Chinese overturning cars, breaking windows, and causing other damage. There’s no word yet whether any “youths” will be brought to justice.

In other news, a group foreign-born residents of Finland has established an “immigrants’ parliament”. They maintain that religion will play no part in their activities.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, KGS, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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Geert Wilders’ party, the PVV, believes that Jordan is the natural and logical homeland for the Palestinians. Many thanks to our Flemish correspondent VH for his translation of an article from today’s Elsevier:

Jordan angry because of PVV position on Palestine

Wilders finds that Jordan should be renamed Palestine.

by Maartje Willems

PVV leader Geert Wilders wants to resolve the conflict in the Middle East by forming Palestine out of Jordan. The Jordanian Minister of Communications is angry and has requested clarification.

according to Ynetnews, Saudi Arabia has also reacted angrily and asked for clarification via the embassy.

Wilders is not impressed by the reactions of Arab countries. “This is a free country — in contrast to those countries — and we should be allowed to maintain this position,” he says to Elsevier.nl.

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“It is not only a conflict about land, but rather about ideology,” says Wilders. If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next, according to the election program [pdf] of the PVV.

That is why the PVV is of the opinion that “we must do everything we can to stop the offensive by the Left and the Muslims to destroy Israel.” Wilders believes that “the West must protect Jerusalem.”

Jordan finds the idea of the PVV strongly reminiscent of the Israeli right wing, and is furious. The Jordanian Minister of Media and Communication, Nabil Al Sharif, has asked for clarification. “Jordan is an independent country that supports the Palestinians,” said Al Sharif. According to him, finding a country for the Palestinians is an illusion, which only a handful of people believe in.

If it were up to the PVV, however, Jordan transformed into Palestine would not need to become an obligatory homeland for Palestinians.

From time to time you’ll see news reports about lavishly-funded scientific studies that reach conclusions that seem obvious to ordinary people. You know the kind of thing I mean — $200,000 to find out that women who are unhappy in their marriages are more likely to cheat on their husbands. Or maybe a half a million to demonstrate that people with arthritis play squash poorly.

The following report from the Netherlands is the same sort of thing. Once upon a time, a sensible person could have reached the same conclusions without conducting the scientific research. But when common sense runs contrary to political correctness, it takes expensive professional studies to override the PC — and even that may not be enough to do it.

According to Radio Netherlands:

Lower Achievements at Mixed Schools

For years and years, the ‘perfect school’ was defined by having the right ratio of black to white, native to migrant and rich to poor. However, recent Dutch research has exposed this myth. Children at mixed schools consistently score lower grades than their peers at predominantly white or black schools.

Dutch sociology professor Jaap Dronkers has carried out research into the pros and cons of ethnic diversity in secondary education. He compared student achievement in language, math and physics of 15-year-old children in 15 Western countries. Much to his surprise, students’ grades were inversely proportional to ethnic diversity.

“I interpret lower student achievement at ethnically diverse schools to mean that a great deal of energy is spent on bridging the various cultural gaps between students. As a result, teachers are unable to focus on teaching. They keep hopping from one culture to the next. It uses up time and energy not spent on teaching.”

Dr. Dronkers’ interpretation surely has merit. But additional factors may be at work — what about inter-ethnic violence in hallways and on the playground? That’s one of the ugly little secrets of Multiculturalism that no one wants to talk about, especially when the violence is “brown-on-brown”. When Pakistanis gang up on the Hmong kids, it brings the whole PC-MC fairy tale crashing down. One must avert one’s fastidious glance from such sordid realities.

Nevertheless, racial or cultural violence — or even the constant dread of it — must surely “negatively impact the learning environment”.

The article continues:
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Comparable

No data were available for the Netherlands, but Professor Dronkers believes his findings are also applicable to this country as education in surrounding countries like Denmark, Belgium and Germany is in his opinion comparable to the Netherlands.

The ethnic make-up of Dutch schools is a highly sensitive issue. The existence of separate ‘black’ and ‘white’ schools is generally regarded as undesirable. However, as long as the segregation leads to a homogenous student body, the effects are not necessarily negative. On the contrary, a ‘black’ school where 80 percent of the children were of Turkish descent outperformed a school of much greater ethnic diversity.

Islamic

Another noteworthy finding from his research are the generally below-average achievements of students with an Islamic background.

“This cannot be explained by their socio-economic backgrounds or the characteristics of schools or educational systems. So what is the reason? It is very well possible that they are being discriminated against, but this also holds true for non-Islamic children. People will say: they are the children of migrant workers, but so were the Italians. The remaining factor is religion.“ [emphasis added]

Prof. Dronkers has broached a forbidden topic here. According to the ground rules of modern multicultural orthodoxy, Islam in the West can never, ever have a negative impact. It simply isn’t possible, and anyone who says otherwise is a racist and an Islamophobe.

Fortunately, other experts are on hand to refute the wayward professor’s conclusions:

Not everybody agrees with Professor Dronkers’ conclusions. Dutch writer and educational expert Anja Vink says the professor places too much emphasis on culture and religion. She argues that socio-economical circumstances are widely accepted as determining factors for the educational achievement of children.

“We are focussing on colour, culture and religion, but what is being left out is that these children are from poor families. This could also apply to poor native children. If you attend a ‘white trash school’ you would get the same results. You will see this in the provinces of Friesland, Groningen en Limburg.”

Ms. Vink is repeating a common assumption here, that there is always an economic explanation for the negative characteristics of Third World minority groups in the West.

Yet whenever scientific studies on the subject are undertaken — studies like Dr. Dronkers’ — they reach the same conclusions: even when income and social class are taken into account, ethnicity plays a demonstrable role in behavioral differences.

This is the news that the gutmenschen don’t want to hear, and will refuse to believe, no matter how much evidence accumulates to support it.

Of course, not all immigrants have a negative effect on the educational environment. Can you guess which countries these beneficial influences come from?

Professor Dronkers agrees that ethnic diversity can have a positive effect on children of highly educated parents. “In that case there is an added value.” The scientist says that migrant children from non-Islamic countries like China, South Korea and India are also a positive exception to the rule.

I’d like to venture a further common-sense hypothesis. Imagine that all these schools were “segregated” instead of multicultural. Obviously the average educational performance of their students would be significantly higher.

However, the most poorly-performing schools would be the Muslim ones, particularly those populated by Somalis. The Turks would fare somewhat better, and white Europeans would clock in at the average. But the Indians, the Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese would be at the top of the performance heap, and would form the bulk of the student body moving on to a higher education in engineering and the sciences.

This is a truth that no one wants to face. All the available scientific evidence points to it, but it is systematically denied, buried, denounced, and demonized by academia and the educational establishment. They don’t want it to be true; therefore it is false.

No one will ever be able to prove it, because segregated schools will never again be permitted in the West. But the average citizen knows it’s true.

It’s common sense. And sometimes common sense is right.

Hat tip: C. Cantoni.

The World Cup is occupying much of the public’s attention all over the globe. Now is the time for Iran to nuke somebody, because no one outside the blast range would notice — they’d be too busy staring at the TV broadcast from South Africa.

One-third of German employees are allowed by their employers to watch the World Cup while they are at work. Yesterday, unfortunately, those who watched saw their team beaten by Serbia for the first time in 37 years.

In a related story, a woman in Cape Town burst her windpipe while blowing on a vuvuzuela.

In other news, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is pushing for the ruble to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Amil Imani, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, JP, Srdja Trifkovic, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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Some of you may remember my fondness for “Hello Kitty” products, particularly those guns.

I found my first Hello Kitty gun at MauserMedic’s “Ugly Gun Sunday” feature. I just went over to his site to look for that beauty [he has great photos] and was confronted with the reminder he was going to deploy to Afghanistan. Turns out he’s there right now.

Oops! When I read that post back then, I was indignant about his fellow-employees’ reaction to his news: how dare he sign up for the National Guard and inconvenience them by vacationing in Afghanistan while they have to stay here? So what’s wrong with maybe being against the troops in Afghanistan while still remaining loyal to your fellow worker?

Or is that too nuanced? Sheesh.

Anyhow, I suggest you look at some of his most recent posts on life in the sandbox.

Now it turns out that there is much more than that to Hello Kitty than my little AK 47, as you can see in this blog, Hello Kitty Hell. I guess some people just don’t get cute irony?

They probably never heard of kitsch either. Or menopause (that’s when some women become afflicted with a return to stuffed animals, or begin putting little china figurines on the top of the toilet tank. Not all of them, of course. And if it’s your mother-in-law, just avert your eyes).

The French understand all this. Of course they would. Hello Kitty is so very French, just as Jerry Lewis is — no, I don’t understand it either.

Just to prove my point, here are some French Halal Kittehs:
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The first is from Fromage Plus.

He says (the Baron’s translation):

Alibekov and I set ourselves a little graphics challenge: adapt “Hello Kitty” to modern France! The timing was tight, but here is my contribution to the competition.

Good, but is Alibekov’s submission better than mine?

And he links to Alibekov’s work, here.

…Ah, so hard to choose. These bloggers really know their Hello Kittehs, all right.

This is a heavy question, but which do you prefer?

I think I’ll send them on to MauserMedic wherever he is in Afghanistan. I hope it brings a smile, as his photos often do for me.

At the very least, these images will improve his CQ (Cuteness Quotient). The Baron’s CQ is definitely a bit on the low side, with a matching gag reflex. I think being a guy interferes with CQ…unless you’re French.

Hat tip: Cyber-résistant

The news story below represents the logical culmination of the Multicultural welfare state: a young Turkish woman in Austria speaks no German, and is thus virtually unemployable, so the state must pay for the care of her children.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Many thanks to JLH for translating this article from the June 13 edition of Die Presse:

Turkish Woman Speaks No German, So She Does Not Have to Work

by Phillip Aichinger

Because of her lack of knowledge of German, a Turkish woman has little chance in the job market, so she does not have to earn a living for her children, decided the court in Favoriten district.

Vienna: District Favoriten made a remarkable legal decision. Because of her poor German skills, the court decided, a Turkish woman does not have to work to support her children.

The father filed the application in the name of his children. A suit for divorce and custody is proceeding simultaneously, the father’s attorney, Thomas J. Ruža, said. The wife testified that she could speak hardly any German. Her husband had not wanted her to learn to speak German. She had not sought work, because the children needed special care. It had not been possible for her to get a job on the job market.

Not true, responded the father. His wife could work in the area of something like housecleaning and earn around €1,000 a month. Furthermore, he had encouraged his wife several times to learn German, but she had refused. And the attorney pointed out, that the children were presently living with their father.

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The wife is now attending a German course, for which she receives €397 a month from the employment service. Too little for child support. However, what counts in the child support law is the “effort” principle: the person who is entitled to receive child support must make a maximum effort, that is, earn as much as he or she is capable of. The test for that is determined by the individual case. The district court analyzed the situation in this particular instance. The woman does not speak German, so it will be difficult for her to find employment without German, since the application interview could turn out to be difficult. “We can conclude from this that, with a comparatively large number of applications, a more qualified person will be chosen.” That the woman could earn around €1,000 Euros per month was “pure fiction,” said the court (026 PU 103/09 s-12). Therefore, the wife is not liable for child support.

Too Focused on Language

The father’s attorney wants to challenge the decision. The decision of the Favoriten district court was given by a (female) law enforcement officer. Next to preside will be judges. “The decision’s result may be tenable. Nonetheless, with good argumentation, I believe it is vulnerable,” says attorney Brigitte Birnbaum (who took no part in the trial), family law expert and vice-president of the Vienna bar. In her opinion, while it must be considered that a person of limited linguistic skills is more difficult to place, in this case, however, the court “focused too much on the language problem.” It should have been made clear what steps the mother had taken to find a job. At any rate, Birnbaum emphasizes, the decision is not permission for a non-German speaker not to work.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.

“If they board our ship, we will throw them into the sea, Allah willing!”

Here’s a peek behind the scenes on board the Mavi Marmara the day before the Israeli commando raid on the Gaza “aid” flotilla. IHH leaders can be heard exhorting the crowd in Turkish and Arabic:

Hat tip: TB.

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I may be reading too much into the following news story, but this seems a watershed moment. Up until now, the European Union has been the club that everybody wants to get into. It’s not just Turkey — Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and other countries, even going beyond Europe proper into the Caucasus, are anxiously waiting in line to join Club Euro.

And now the people of Iceland have pulled the curtain aside and seen the silly little man fiddling with the knobs and dials. His increasingly reedy pronouncements — “I am the great and powerful Europe!” — seem to have lost their effectiveness.

According to Presseurop:
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Iceland Turns Away From EU

Meeting at the 17 June European Council summit in Brussels, the EU’s 27 member states have decided to open accession negotiations with Iceland. However, Le Figaro notes that “solid support for Reykjavik in Europe is not matched by a consensus on the EU in Iceland.” In late 2008 at the height of the crisis which brought their economy to its knees, EU membership was viewed as a lifeline by the citizens of Iceland. But now the Parisian daily reports that the situation has changed: “More than 60% of Icelanders, who are concerned about the ongoing Icesave bank dispute with London and the Hague, would vote against EU membership. Worse still,” continues Le Figaro, “a recent poll has found that 57% of the population are in favour of withdrawing the application to join the EU, and a multi-party group of MPs has recently brought a motion before parliament to scrap any further negotiations. For two thirds of the population, the 990 million krónur (€6.2 million/ £5 million) devoted to the accession budget would be better spent elsewhere…”

That’s a pretty hefty “no” vote — two-thirds of Icelanders would withdraw the application to join the EU. What happened? Did they realize that Greece and Spain are the Icesave of Europe?

Let’s hear it for Icelandic common sense!

Hat tip: C. Cantoni.

Civil disturbances have begun again in Greece, with communists calling for “war” against the government for its imposition of austerity on the country. Demonstrators have taken to the streets to protest pension reforms, and another general strike is in the works.

In other news, the Federal Communications Commission has made public its plans for greater control over the internet. Meanwhile, the situation in Kyrgyzstan has deteriorated, with riots and violent unrest raising concerns that the country may collapse into complete chaos.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, Lurker from Tulsa, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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