European Politics Thread.

[iNeo 0]

The thing about immigration critical parties is what should the rest of their poltics be about? - A socialist that's critical to massive immigration might not agree with the rest of the party's politics, and is he ready to switch only because of immigration politics? I don't think a lot of people are...

Well, and there's the little fact that your views are not supported by the majority of the Swedish people, who overwhelmingly support immigration, even from countries outside the EU.

Svenskarna positiva till arbetskraftsinvandring [DN]

Work force immigration from other EU countries:

Pro: 90%

Contra: 9%

Work force immigration from non-EU countries:

Pro: 70%

Contra: 30%

mmm work force. Sounds better than refugees.

I'm not saying majoriy would switch if the circumstances were different,

but I think a lot of people would. When Folkpartiet, or was it Moderaterna,

proposed that immigrants should do a test in Swedish to get their citizenship,

their popularity increased. So a lot of people probably want a more sensible immigration.

[GoOB 0]

mmm work force. Sounds better than refugees.

Hehe, the funny thing is. We aren't putting our well educated "refugees" to good use in the commercial sector. Most work as cleaners, taxidrivers or ticket inspectors. Which, atleast I would hate if I had a university degree.

And it's not like most immigrants (or "refugees" as you wanted to call them) are comfortable sitting on their arses doing nothing. Most of unemployed immigrants Iv'e spoken to, in my Stockholmian suburb atleast. Have little choice, that said, most of my adult immigrant aqauintances have more common sense and working morale than most of their Swedish equivalents.

[aviel 0]

Question not related to above;

How is youre land finincial situation

sorry for asking that but i realy want to know, here in my contry peapole are saving (to) much money, they only give cents away for food, many small shops go bankrupt, and eaven Petting farms

[denoir 0]

I'm not saying majoriy would switch if the circumstances were different,

but I think a lot of people would. When Folkpartiet, or was it Moderaterna,

proposed that immigrants should do a test in Swedish to get their citizenship,

their popularity increased. So a lot of people probably want a more sensible immigration.

No, people want a better integration. That's why the popularity of FP increased when they suggested it. Incidentally the popularity of anti-immigrant parties like Sverigedemokraterna and Sjöbopartiet have been steadily decreasing since their high-point in the mid 90's.

There is a lot of things that can be improved with the integration. It has however very little to do with the immigrants, with their ethnicity or culture. For the most part the problem is that the system leaves them isolated in soceity. This I think unfortunately goes beyond politics and policy. It's a question of mentality on both sides. Sweden is in many ways a pretty closed soceity. On the other hand, I think that things will improve over time. I believe that people will have much less problems with embracing globalization in the future.

aviel:

Our economy is fairly good. While we're still suffering the aftermath of the dot.com bubble, we're doing relatively good. The state finances are excellent - no deficit. Our national debt is very small (it was down to zero a few years ago). The unemployment rate is less than 5%, which is about average for Sweden. The currency is tied to the Euro so it's very strong (perhaps too strong). Growth could be better - it's around 1% IIRC, but it is improving.

So bottom line, as everybody else, we suffered a beating from when the IT bubble burst, but we're recovering. I think people are in general still pretty pessimistic about the economy though.

[iNeo 0]

Our national debt is very small (it was down to zero a few years ago)

You mean foreign debt? I thought it was sky-high.

Quote[/b] ]No, people want a better integration. That's why the popularity of FP increased when they suggested it. Incidentally the popularity of anti-immigrant parties like Sverigedemokraterna and Sjöbopartiet have been steadily decreasing since their high-point in the mid 90's.

How do you know what people want?

Why isn't my theory of immigration critical parties probable?

Does integration get better with bilingual education at schools, state grants to minority organizations, etc? The state seemingly wants to preserve all new cultures = segregation.

"We can't handle more immigrants in Sweden today. It may be a daring statement, but it's my determined conviction and studies from Swedish schools support my statement. We can't handle the immigrants we have in Sweden today."

- Freely translated from what Carl-Gustav Boethius, chairman of RFSU, wrote in the newspaper GP in 1978.

"On a per capita basis, Switzerland received the largest number of refugees (23.4 % per 1,000 inhabitants) among industrialized countries in the last decade, followed by Sweden with 16.6 percent and Denmark with 13.8 percent."

- http://www.undpi.am/bulletin/bul_15/unhcr.html

Just a note to the discussion about criminal immigrants...

Who is an immigrant?:

"This generous citizenship policy makes presentations deceptive as to the share of foreigners in the total Swedish population of more than 9 million: this figure is only around 5%. However, the share of foreign-born citizens is actually 10% (nearly one million). Every fifth person in Sweden is either an immigrant or has at least one parent who is an immigrant. This makes Sweden one of the most marked immigration countries in Europe."

- http://216.239.59.104/search?....%24FILE

...which means that more people are immigrants or part of immigration "cultures," than those in statistics.

[denoir 0]

How do you know what people want?

Why isn't my theory of immigration critical parties probable?

Because of how people vote. They used to vote much more for the immigration critical parties in the 90's than they do now. Sorry to disappoint you but xenophobia and bigotry is going out of fashion.

Because 90% support further immigration from EU countries and 70% from non-EU countries.

Quote[/b] ]Does integration get better with bilingual education at schools, state grants to minority organizations, etc? The state seemingly wants to preserve all new cultures = segregation.

It has nothing to do with integration. Difference in culture is not something that prevents mutal respect and cooperation. On the contrary, integration is about successfully bridging the differences - not removing them.

Quote[/b] ]"We can't handle more immigrants in Sweden today. It may be a daring statement, but it's my determined conviction and studies from Swedish schools support my statement. We can't handle the immigrants we have in Sweden today."

- Freely translated from what Carl-Gustav Boethius, chairman of RFSU, wrote in the newspaper GP in 1978.

So? Obviously he was wrong. Nearly thirty years later we're still here and doing well. It's a good quote actually, it shows how we heard the same xenophobic things thirty years ago - and how today's bigots don't learn from past ones.

[theavonlady 2]

There must be a 2nd Europe somewhere else.

Quote[/b] ]Stoned to death... why Europe is starting to lose its faith in Islam

By Charles Bremner

December 04, 2004

Islamic fundamentalism is causing a 'clash of civilisations' between liberal democracies and Muslims

DAYS before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death, her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to police.

Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific “lapidation†of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst.

A few days ago, pop celebrities joined 2,000 people in a march through Marseilles denouncing violence against women, particularly in the immigrant-dominated housing estates. The protest against Islamic “obscurantism†and the “fundamentalism that imprisons women†was led by a group of Muslim women who call themselves Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive).

The movement, which emerged three years ago to defend Muslim women, is spawning similar groups across Europe, supported by a mainstream opinion that has recently abandoned political correctness and wants to halt the inroads of Islam.

From Norway to Sicily, governments, politicians and the media are laying aside their doctrines of diversity and insisting that “Islamismâ€, as the French call the fundamentalist form that pervades the housing estates, is incompatible with Europe’s liberal values.

The shift is not just a reaction to exceptional violence such as the Madrid train bombings, or the murder of Theo van Gogh, the anti-Islamic Dutch film-maker, by a Dutch-Moroccan. It stems from a belief that more muscular methods are needed to integrate Europe’s 13-million strong Muslim community and to combat creeds that breed extremists and ultimately, terrorism. With mixed results, governments are trying to quell the scourge by co- opting Muslim leaders to promote a moderate European Islam.

In Germany, with its three million — mainly Turkish — Muslims, and France, with its five million of mainly North African descent, television viewers were shocked when local young Muslims approved of Van Gogh’s murder. “If you insult Islam, you have to pay,†was a typical response.

“The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart,†said Angela Merkel, leader of Germany’s Christian Democrat opposition. “Anyone coming here must respect our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots.†Italy’s traditional tolerance towards immigrants has been eroded by fear of Islamism. An Ipsos poll in September showed that 48 per cent of Italians believed that a “clash of civilisations†between Islam and the West was under way and that Islam was “a religion more fanatical than any otherâ€.

Similar views can be heard across traditionally tolerant Scandinavia — and no longer just from the populist rightwing party’s such as Pia Kjaersgaard’s People’s Party in Denmark. The centre-right Government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has equipped Denmark with Europe’s toughest curbs on immigration, largely aimed at people from Muslim countries. In Sweden, where anti-Muslim feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been authorised to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the measure comes nowhere near France’s new ban on the hijab in all state schools.

In Spain, with a rapidly rising population of nearly a million Muslims, the backlash has been less visible despite the bombings, but thousands demonstrated in Seville this week against plans to build a mosque in the city centre. The Government has also won approval by sending 500 extra police to monitor preachers and Muslim associations.

Police across the EU are closely watching prayer meetings in makeshift mosques in cities and housing estates, and media accounts of the jihadist, anti-Western and anti-semitic doctrines of the imams are fuelling public anger. In Germany, pressure is growing for sermons to be preached in German rather than Turkish or Arabic. Hidden TV cameras recently broadcast an imam in a Berlin mosque telling worshippers that “Germans can only expect to rot in the fires of hell because they are nonbelieversâ€.

The debate over the limits to free speech is loudest in France, which now acknowledges the failure of its “republican†approach to integration whereby immigrants were supposed to blend harmoniously into society and not exist in separate communities.

Dominique de Villepin, the Interior Minister, is deporting foreign imams who support wife-beating and other uncivilised practices. This week the Government moved to ban a Lebanon-based television channel for anti-semitic broadcasting. The left wing, which long shunned criticism of Islam as the stock-in-trade of Jean-Marie le Pen, the far-Right leader, now denounces the “totalitarianâ€, anti-feminist, antisemitic doctrines of the fundamentalists. Jacques Julliard, a leading left-wing commentator, said the Left’s longstanding tolerance had been used as “an agent for the penetration of Islamic intoleranceâ€.

Some on the Left have also taken strong exception to the concept of “Islamophobiaâ€, a supposed sin defined by EU anti-racism watchdogs as akin to anti-Semitism.

The French consensus was symbolised by the 80 per cent public support for the head-scarf ban, which started with little trouble in September. While many Muslims felt stigmatised, the Government took comfort from the approval of the ban by a substantial minority of the 10 per cent of the population that is of immigrant origin.

Among them is Fadela Amara, a Muslim town councillor from Clermond Ferrand, who heads the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises movement. “The veil is an instrument of oppression that is imposed by the green fascists,†she says. Mme Amara, who led the Marseilles march, advocates an “open Islam, an Islam of French culture a bit Gallic around the edgesâ€. This is also the aim of the state, which two years ago created a national Muslim Council to promote moderate mainstream Islam. The council was set up by Nicolas Sarkozy, the then Interior Minister, who now heads the UMP, President Chirac’s centre-right party.

M Sarkozy has just caused a stir by going a stage further, proposing that France’s rigorously secular state fund the building of mosques. “Whether I like it or not, Islam is the second biggest religion in France. So you have to integrate it by making it more French,†he said. To general dismay, however, the national council is coming increasingly under the effective control of radicals.

Reluctantly, some intellectuals have lately concluded that the model for Europe should be the US. On Tuesday a writer for Libération, the French left-wing daily, noted that immigrants in the US threw themselves into “the American dream†and prospered. “There is no French, Dutch or other European dream,†she noted. “You emigrate here to escape poverty and nothing more."

[brgnorway 0]

Quote[/b] ]Say there is three criminal Swedes and one criminal immigrant.

The Swedes commit a crime each during the year,

while the immigrant commits 10 crimes during the year.

The number of criminal immigrants is lower in this case,

but the probability of being the victim of criminality from an immigrant is larger than the same of a Swede.

See what I mean when I say the probability remains the same although the number of criminals may be lower?

I don't think the number is that much lower anyway,

and you're forgetting that immigrants are overrepresented in violent crimes, the ones that affect you.

First of all, speaking as a person who has lived both in the rural areas in central eastern parts of Norway as well as in the middle of the city - both Oslo and Bergen. I have never to this date even been close to be beaten up by a person with darker skin - because that's what it's all about isn't it?

In Svelvik where I'm brought up there are no persons with dark skin apart from the casual adopted columbian girl or boy.

And there are a lot of fights outside the drinking places friday and saturday. I predict it's the same in the swedish countryside! Not once have I seen fights been reported to the police - and thus they never made it to the statistics either! Some of the fights were even quite serious if you count broken arms, injured teeth etc for serious injuries.

As a doorman I've had lots to do with drunken norwegians and even a few sailors whenever there's been a navy meeting in Bergen. I've also stood in line waiting for a taxi on several occasions - and not once have I even noticed someone with darker skin waiting there with me. So when fights did brake out it wasn't the local Ali from Bongo Bongo who caused violence. It was drunken norwegians and the odd sailors.

And your statistics doesn't add up. Even if the situation was like you want it to be - you'd still be judging the ethnic group as a whole just because of a few who repeated their crimes.

Quote[/b] ]I wasn't saying that that's how it is, I'm saying that they would notice if it was! Because you were saying they were overrepresented.

No I didn't say that! You got it wrong! Go back and you'll se the context it was written in - where I said that some places there might be an over representation due to norwegian/swedish men bringing home foreign girls as sex slaves. This happends a lot in the rural areas of Norway and Sweden, areas where most women have left in order to study and get work in the cities instead of being a farmers wife out in the country.

Quote[/b] ]Mmm I don't think that's a large number,

and you can't assume any proportions without full coverage statistics can you...

Again, related to the above reply!

Quote[/b] ]Yep, so I'm guessing you're no longer claiming immigrant girls are overrepresented as rape victims at home.

I never did! And certainly not in the total (and incomplete) statistics. However, in some local areas in the countryside it's to be expected :

Russerbrud

.

Quote[/b] ]Up until this last quotation it has sounded like you were assuming only immigrant girls are raped at home and don't report it.

Believe me I didn't due to the fact that there are a lot of women out there and most of them are ethnic norwegians and swedes.

Quote[/b] ]No? But you want to judge them as racists, dumb-asses etc? Or maybe just me.

I would never call you this or that! However, your replies are laden with suggestions often used by people who have tendency to say: "oh you know, I'm no racist but......"

[GoOB 0]

In Sweden, where anti-Muslim feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been authorised to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the measure comes nowhere near France’s new ban on the hijab in all state schools.

Hrm, odd. It's very hard to get banned from a school in Sweden. And I have a hard time imagining that "banning" pupils who wear Islamic head-cover is anywhere near a common thing. Or that it has been "authorised" afterall. A ban is a school or county decision AFAIK.

Although, I do beleive I have read about some muslim girls wearing full head-covers being sent out from a lecture at the university of Uppsala. I have a very hard time beleiving that pupils have been banned from any school because of it, however.

Religious rights is one thing that we don't mess with in this country, or atleast thats how it used to be!

[brgnorway 0]

Didn't we have a fan or two of the british "BNP" ?

Ok, so here's the story from UK's finest:

Quote[/b] ]IT WAS A BIT OF A COCK-UP ..HE SOUNDED WHITE OVER THE PHONE

A shitty newspaper but what the hell!

[theavonlady 2]

Didn't we have a fan or two of the british "BNP" ?

Ok, so here's the story from UK's finest:

Quote[/b] ]IT WAS A BIT OF A COCK-UP ..HE SOUNDED WHITE OVER THE PHONE

I saw that story elsewhere earlier today. Sickenning!

[Jezz 0]

i really dont see why they dont ban parties like the bnp, freedom of speech yes but they go to far

[GoOB 0]

i really dont see why they dont ban parties like the bnp, freedom of speech yes but they go to far

Well, in a democracy you have to show tolerance even to those that aren't tolerant.

Personally, I do feel some ammount of... Err, shall we say "intolerance" towards organizations who spread the same kind of propaganda as the BNP does. But, I would much rather see such organizations exisiting with minimal support, than them being outlawed and censored.

[kerosene 0]

I think its because they dont offically support violence or criminal behaviour, the NF and combat18 are illegal because their criminal organisations.

If the BNP were banned, it would set a bad precedent, potentially, for other organisations that the public or the governemnt didnt agree with - although not necessarily fascists and racists.

[brgnorway 0]

I'd like to play a little "devils advocate" here though!

I agree that it's not a good thing to outlaw political parties (officially non-violant that is) just because they themselves are intolerant. However, at what point should you abolish political parties from taking part in a democracy? Is it a good or a bad thing that the election winner in Algerie was turned down by the military junta and political establishment a few years ago - or is it justified to act in an "undemocratic way" to protect the democracy?

[iNeo 0]

What's the big deal, is it strange that they wanted a British DJ? They let him play anyway. I don't see how that's sickening.

[theavonlady 2]

What's the big deal, is it strange that they wanted a British DJ? They let him play anyway. I don't see how that's sickening.

The color of someone's skin determines their nationality? In the UK? Really?

[iNeo 0]

What's the big deal, is it strange that they wanted a British DJ? They let him play anyway. I don't see how that's sickening.

The color of someone's skin determines their nationality? In the UK? Really?

I meant ethnic British.

[theavonlady 2]

What's the big deal, is it strange that they wanted a British DJ? They let him play anyway. I don't see how that's sickening.

The color of someone's skin determines their nationality? In the UK? Really?

I meant ethnic British.

You think that if he would have been white and from Australia they would have minded?

Remember, they spoke to this guy on the phone and he sounded British enough until he turned up in the flesh.

[iNeo 0]

What's the big deal, is it strange that they wanted a British DJ? They let him play anyway. I don't see how that's sickening.

The color of someone's skin determines their nationality? In the UK? Really?

I meant ethnic British.

You think that if he would have been white and from Australia they would have minded?

Remember, they spoke to this guy on the phone and he sounded British enough until he turned up in the flesh.

Probably not unless he was to join the party, what do I know..

They preferbly wanted a white guy, they got a black guy by mistake, but they let him play, it's not like insulted him or beat the shit out of him

[theavonlady 2]

They preferbly wanted a white guy, they got a black guy by mistake

Sound like when chicken is served for dinner over here.

[kerosene 0]

Yes, id have to say its pretty strange that they NEEDED a "british" D.J, although not once you factor in them being white supremicists.  - you cant be ethnically british by the way, britain is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  

I'd love to know what kind of music these pricks listen to, cause you know its techno crap and garage music, they probably listen to music made by black people, so consequently a black d.j was booked.  

If they wanted thrash metal all night long they would have got a white d.j, I imagine they make bookings under fake names to stop dates getting leaked to the press or anti-fascist organisations so thats probably one of the reasons they wound up with a black d.j.  

They'd probably be happy to let in an australian or someone similiar into their little group, thats not the kind of "foreigness" they dislike.

[iNeo 0]

They preferbly wanted a white guy, they got a black guy by mistake

Sound like when chicken is served for dinner over here.

You decide what color you want your chicken to be of when you're in the store, don't you.

[iNeo 0]

- you cant be ethnically british by the way, britain is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

You can be ethnic European hehe but there are subgroups... but you're right.

[theavonlady 2]

You decide what color you want your chicken to be of when you're in the store, don't you.

Our chicken is divided up into dark meat (thigh and leg) and white (the breast).

They all come that way unless you know of a genetically modified variety. (and please don't bother the Israeli invented featherless chicken pick again)!