Racial Murder in the Netherlands and now Race Riots in France? Whither Europe?

[Overpaid Slacker]

This is disturbing.

I'm not going to bash France in this post (maybe later in this thread, though...) but if this is a symptom of a real problem in France, there's going to be a lot of trouble there.

The initial harbinger, AFAIC, was the simmering anti-Jewish sentiment that bubbled over more often in recent years, which has been almost always glossed over by French politicians, who are allowed to play "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" by a complicit press, both in France and elsewhere in the West.

The French, like much of western Europe, are on the declining side of the demographic bell curve as well. Many (if not most) native (or "white") birth rates in European countries are at or under the "break-even" point, where the immigrant birthrates are astronomical.* This is due in no small part to the welfare state collective making it less costly to the parent to have/raise a child -- or, more accurately, several children.

Now, this could be an isolated incident of very limited scope from which we should not extrapolate -- much like European anti-Nuclear weapon demonstrators featured so prominently by our MSM during the 80's. I'm concerned and will be paying closer attention to this b/c of the context in which it occurs and, at the risk of twisting Malthus to my purposes, what might be an undoing of Europe by demographics of immigration.

There's a million ways to slice this, including the prospects of the EU in general (which I believe are pretty dim in the coming 10 years if they stay on the same course) so I'm curious what other Pelicans think....

JP

*You'll have to take my word on this demographic point, as my articles and notes are at home and I'm not.

[gaijindabe]

They are shot. Sell the Euro short. And with open borders a cornerstone of the EC, the rest of the place is shot as well.

The violence is no joke. One day in London last month I saw more incidents of bad behavior than a whole year in New York City. Within 5 hours I saw - some old guy dripping blood after a fight or something, a couple of Arab kids curse out a bus conductor collecting fares and a drunk in the "tube" (bottle in hand) ranting, raving and cursing.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

My sister was walking down the street in London with a friend and a random male passerby hauled off and punched her. In the crotch.

Things are pretty f*cked up over there.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Guys -
I agree, the first-hand, anecdotal "evidence" can be damning, but a few lunatics throughout Europe are not where I think the problem is likely to be.

I'm concerned about the more systemic, racial and organized issues than what appear to be random assaults. We can see those on our own city streets.

gaijindabe: C'mon, now... a drunk in the tube? I can't remember NOT seeing a drunk in NYC's electric sewer during my 7-year hitch in NYC and we wouldn't want a foreigner to judge the US by what they might see in NYC on any given day.

JP

[Joeaksa]

Since the bombing in Spain, then the film-maker being stabbed in Holland, things have been simmering in Europe. It will get worse before it gets better but now the people there know that they have not escaped the attention of the radicals out there...

JoeA

[gaijindabe]

I thought it was too easy to judge - but that was the last time I was there. For the first time in my life, I was almost mugged. Broad daylight, in a park in London. It was not the choice anglo-saxon words I used on the three of them, nor my threat to "kill at least one", but rather my accent I am sure that saved my bacon. They moved in on a homeless man and started on him next. I found a cop within a few minutes and he was in no rush to find or confront them..
Declining birth rates, massive racism, uncontrolled immigration, a bankrupt welfare state, increasing violence. The place is f*#ked.

[dd74]

Originally posted by Overpaid Slacker
Now, this could be an isolated incident of very limited scope from which we should not extrapolate -- much like European anti-Nuclear weapon demonstrators featured so prominently by our MSM during the 80's. I'm concerned and will be paying closer attention to this b/c of the context in which it occurs and, at the risk of twisting Malthus to my purposes, what might be an undoing of Europe by demographics of immigration.

No, this is not isolated. Some of the most racist people I've ever met were European. For good reason? Possibly. I've heard it said London is not what it used to be culturally because of immigration, and in Paris, the large houses behind walls on the Left Bank are owned by Arabs. I've also heard that if you are a journalist in England, and write a piece condemning the loss of identity of the British to immigration, you could be jailed.

[Deschodt]

Pretty easy to generalize...

I've also almost been mugged in England (but ran fast back then) but do not feel anymore or less safe there than anywhere else "civilized". Never had a problem in France, ever...

Is there a big foreign population in Europe ? Sure...Right down ex-colonies lines, and recently a big eastern europe influx of people attracted by standards of living they don't have... England has Pakistanis/Indians, France has arabs of all ilk, Germany has turks, Switzerland all sort of flavors these days, and so on... The loosening of the EU border policies between members and some lax immigration control at some of these borders make it more obvious...

Those things are normally not a problem until... the economy slows down and the citizens start blaming "foreigners"... Same thing all around the world !

Pretty easy to throw stones from the US standpoint, but one should remember that when it comes to racism, slavery, segregation (very late in the 20th century, much later than any other developed country other than south africa), or event he recent hilarious minute man border patrolling, the US is doing just as bad if not worse, eh ?

[Overpaid Slacker]

Pretty easy to generalize...

It sure must be...

one should remember that when it comes to racism, slavery, segregation (very late in the 20th century, much later than any other developed country other than south africa), or event he recent hilarious minute man border patrolling, the US is doing just as bad if not worse, eh ?

[StevoRocket]

Most of the USA population is of immigrant stock from Europe - who did it for financial reasons - remember?. Check your surname if you are unsure. If its not native American you are from immigrant stock.

Most of Europes already mixed population is becoming more immigrant too - we do have land access routes and slack border controls - we also have political asylum laws and we (including France Belgium and Holland in this) used to have an empire whos people still have our passports and a right to come here.

I thought the USA had a statue welcoming disadvantaged people? Bring me your....... Mexicans as cheap labour... thats a tiny problem compared to the UK - we dont shoot border crossers.

Most Brits would like a better immigration policy - properly policed and enforced - its a bloody small overcrowded island and we cant afford the social security payments for the whole of eastern Europe let alone Pakistan and India. The current farce is allowing anyone who has seen satellite tv in Eastern Europe to want to come here and if they get here we dont throw them out - we give them a house and pay them £37000 a year for a man and wife and 6 kids.(and they have no jobs).

Enoch Powell was right - it will unfortunately end in bloodshed when the jobs go to immigrants and the Brits find they can no longer afford the taxes to pay for immigrants hand outs and the mortgages on their expensive homes..

[rrpjr]

Reverse racism? I didn't that was possible.

It may be too late for Europe, in the sense of understanding what has been going wrong in time to exert the political will (should it even be found) to change. The costs of the delusions of the largesse state and its utopianism of assimilation, along with the general and growing self-loathing of much of the West, could not be better illustrated.

An eternal human truth is on display here: contempt for the "benefactor" who lacks the will or self-respect to assert a value system of moral consequence and force. Pity and handouts and smug "compassion" produce contempt. Standards and accountability produce respect. Europe has demonstrated how highly it thinks of itself (and obversely how highly it thinks of the people it purports to think highly of) by its policies. Now it is paying the price.

I would say this is strictly European, since Europe appears to be the current capital of amoral and guilt-stricken western liberalism. But maybe not for long.

[StevoRocket]

Along with the appalling British weather - this is why Spain, France and Italy are the retirement home ambitions for hundreds of thousands of Brits with money.

- Oh - thats immigration isn't it?

[dd74]

Originally posted by Deschodt
Pretty easy to throw stones from the US standpoint, but one should remember that when it comes to racism, slavery, segregation (very late in the 20th century, much later than any other developed country other than south africa), or event he recent hilarious minute man border patrolling, the US is doing just as bad if not worse, eh ?

And we were one of the last developing nations on the planet - and one of the youngest. Everyone has to live through their "teething pains" and mistakes.

As for the minute man border patrol, they aren't entirely recognized by the U.S. as the correct approach to illegal immigration. But the minute men do believe they have a mission, especially in lieu of the U.S. not having enough border patrolmen and women and lax agreements with Mexico because of NAFTA.

[StevoRocket]

British channel 4 tv (one of our main channels) a few minutes ago....

Subjects - Has Bush the right to spread democracy - are British Muslims doing enough beyond simple marches and protests about Muslims being attacked and discriminated against

[StevoRocket]

[dd74]

Originally posted by StevoRocket
British channel 4 tv (one of our main channels) a few minutes ago....

Subjects - Has Bush the right to spread democracy...

No, he does not in my opinion.

Marching Muslims? Sadly, I don't know if a peaceful march is enough these days in such a violent world.

[skipdup]

Originally posted by StevoRocket
- we dont shoot border crossers.

We don't either, unless they shoot first... which sometimes they do.

[304065]

JP:

Your perception that the trend is by no means an emergent one is accurate. It's been evident for years, but recent events like the ones you mention suggest that it's getting worse. Consider recent racist graffiti incidents at various memorials in Europe. Before one dismisses such actions as the skinhead fringe, consider the repeated remarks of French politician Jean Marie Le Pen, who has remarked that the gas chambers were a "minor detail" of the second world war. The fact that Le Pen was prosecuted under a French statute prohibiting such remarks does little to reassure one either about the state of racial tolerance or civil liberties.

Your comment about drunks in NYC resonates with me, as I can confirm that homelessness and intoxication are prevalent, and will probably get worse now that the weather is warming up. Despite my sympathy for these failed dot-com investment bankers I do agree they are a problem, but by no means indiciative of a broader decline.

To those of you Europeans and Canadians whose response to the allegation of racial intolerance in Europe is to hit back with sharp statements about our own history of institutionalized racism, I offer only the following. First, thanks for participating in the discussion, and I mean that sincerely, because I think it's important that you get a sense of our view on the issues without the filter of mainstream media either here or there.

Second, remember that ours is a country that was founded on the very ideas of liberation from the bondage of tyranny. Those are heady words, but it's true: our revolution was the product of the joint efforts of political philosophers and guerrilla soldiers, who drew from the history of political struggle in Europe to fashion a new government that was designed to be immune from the corruption and abuse of power that so characterized Europe to that point. They looked at things like the Magna Charta, the Restoration Settlement of 1689, the Chartist movement, the history of the English Reformation and subsequent struggle for re-Catholiczation, when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. All of which were designed to not only prevent the encroachment of government into our lives, but designed to protect the fledgling government from collapse.

But as they say on TV, wait, there's more. As our own government teetered on the verge of collapse from within for a few years, we watched as all of Europe was conquered by a French dictator, who started on the Italian coast in 1796 and a few years later had humiliated the military powers-that-be and proclaimed himself Emperor. We once again withstood an effort to retake North America in 1812-1814, but we rode that out also, and meanwhile the French dictator made the mistake of taking on the Russians, leading to his downfall (whew!)

Enter the abolitionist movement in Britain. We had our own, also, and after having withstood attempts at recolonization, attempted to put an end to the practice of Slavery. Aided little by the Confederacy's trade with European powers, we proclaimed the emancipation of African Americans in 1862, and endured a four year Civil War that was a thinly disguised constitutional struggle, not about Papist sypathies this time, but about the fundamental issue of States' rights to perpetuate slavery in the face of a Federal mandate otherwise.

The point of all this history lesson is that we deserve a little, no, a great deal of credit for advancing the conception of human rights on this planet. You might think about that when you are discussing our intervention in Iraq with your neighbors, and the subsequent domino effect of democratic movements popping up in the middle east. Then again, if you believe the media, NONE of these things had anything to do with the policies of Mr. Bush, which theory was extruded from the same vat of nonsense that claimed that Mr. Reagan's policies had nothing to do with the fall of Communism.

But I started talking about New York City. In a few minutes I'm going to walk out my office door, into the most racially, economically, and culturally diverse place on the planet. Enemies since biblical times walk down the street together, and trade with one another. Immigrants, and I'm not talking about European immigrants, are right now arriving here by the thousands LEGALLY, thousands more illegally (sorry, I'm not falling for the PC "undocumented" title so long as it's against the law) and taking a slice of the American pie. That means that they are participating in the economic and civil benefits that being here provides: the right to be free of the political tyranny of their place of birth, and the right to participate economically DESPITE their origins.

NOWHERE on earth but New York does that happen. So give us a break. We aren't perfect, by no means. But more people are getting more opportunity to break from a painful past and find new opportunities here than at any point in the scope of human history. And that's a net positive, any way you look at it.

Oh, and the point about the Minute Men? It is nothing short of ABSURD for our government to simultaneously encroach on our civil liberties in the name of protection from terrorists while ignoring the gigantic sieve that is our southern border. If Mr. Bush wants to liberalize legal immigration policies from Mexico, let him set up a tarheta verde stand at the border and hand them out. But to ignore illegal crossings because you think that lack of enforcement constitutes an immigration policy is a slap in the face to every airline traveler who's gotten a pat-down from the TSA.

[speeder]

Originally posted by john_cramer


Oh, and the point about the Minute Men? It is nothing short of ABSURD for our government to simultaneously encroach on our civil liberties in the name of protection from terrorists while ignoring the gigantic sieve that is our southern border. If Mr. Bush wants to liberalize legal immigration policies from Mexico, let him set up a tarheta verde stand at the border and hand them out. But to ignore illegal crossings because you think that lack of enforcement constitutes an immigration policy is a slap in the face to every airline traveler who's gotten a pat-down from the TSA.

My thoughts exactly. I've said before on this board, and elsewhere, that one cannot even discuss "Homeland Security" while the borders of the country are essentially unguarded. No offense meant to the over-burdened people actually in charge of patrolling it, but how must they feel when our govt. simply will not give them the resources to make it secure?

Three hour lines at the airport while they strip-search Asian schoolchildren and Swedish grandmothers in the name of PC, , and any half-crippled drunk can simply walk over the border from Mexico?? In groups of 20-30 at a time? What a freaking joke.

[StevoRocket]

The same border guard perverse childish stupid over-reaction happened at Gatwick - one man arrived on a plane with a hand grenade in his checked in luggage and they closed the airport for 14 hours a year ago (imagine the chaos).....

Gatwick Airport's north terminal was closed down after a live hand grenade was discovered in the luggage of Rahaman Alan Hazil Mohammed, a passenger arriving in the country from Venezuela. Several thousand travellers had to sleep overnight at the airport or stay in local hotels while experts dealt with the grenade. Twenty-one outgoing flights were cancelled and many more disrupted. The airport was reopened at 20:00 GMT, amid questions over why the grenade had not been detected in the plane's hold.

The grenade had no fuse mechanism and could not be a danger. He has just appeared in court with the prosecution calling him a danger to the publics lives.

Meanwhile....
Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair has ordered an inquiry into claims journalists drove a van carrying a fake bomb (labeled clearly "BOMB") into Windsor Castle's grounds.

The Sun newspaper said the van passed St George's Chapel, where the marriage of Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince Charles will be blessed this Saturday.

The "apparent security breach" raised serious concern, Scotland Yard said.