European links
19 killed in stampede at German music festival.
Noting that European politics has been moving rightwards for both cyclical and structural reasons.
About the euro and political sovereignty.
About Portugal’s experience with drug decriminalisation.
The fertility rate of Danish migrants is now falling to that of the general Danish population.
Suggesting that Tunisia’s present may be Europe’s future. The Southern European young are revolting against the lack of job prospects and looming fiscal burdens:
He said that pay-as-you-go social security and health care were a looming fiscal disaster in Southern Europe and beyond. “If these fertility rates continue through time, you won’t have Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese or Russians,” he said. “I imagine the Chinese will just move into Southern Europe.” …
Because payroll taxes and firing costs are still so high, businesses across Southern Europe are loath to hire new workers on a full-time basis, so young people increasingly are offered unpaid or low-paying internships, traineeships or temporary contracts that do not offer the same benefits or protections.
(Cut to Milton Friedman, 30 years ago, warning of the effects of collective action.)
Mandelson’s memoirs confirm Blair’s very negative view of Brown.
About coping with the unified and assertive Germany. Which did quite well at the recent EU summit.
Ireland’s fiscal and political woes are part of bigger Euro problems. Warning against soft bailouts. A eurosceptic MEP on the matter with EU. Suggesting that the EU issue has lost its power to tear apart British political parties.
Examining the Swedish elections: unionists continue to abandon the left, migrants vote very solidly left.
Bruce Bawer on how the Geert Wilders trial makes him support the First Amendment even more. Wilders complaint of judicial bias has been accepted as valid, so the case is having a retrial.
[It is reported that] demonstrators in UK demonstrating over higher education cuts abuse the NUS leader for being Jewish.
Noting France’s expulsion of the Roma has unfortunate precedents. About the decline of multiculturalism in Germany. French President joins UK’s PM and Germany’s Chancellor in abandoning multiculturalism. Pat Condell let’s loose in amusing style but it does bring up how much of the backing away is really about Islam. About Jack Straw’s comments and the issue of whether there is a rape culture within Pakistani migrants to Britain. He is getting some Muslim support. The rising support for an anti-immigrant party is part of a general European pattern. About the rise of anti-Muslim movements in Northern Europe:
The implication is that the recent rise of anti-Islam sentiment in northern Europe is proof neither of the end of tolerance in Europe nor the Europeanisation of ethnic nationalism. It is instead an outpouring of the intolerance of the tolerant, long (self-)censored by a political culture of anti-nationalism and conformity. The fact that (orthodox) Muslims can be opposed with a liberal-democratic discourse - rather than an ethnic-nationalist one - makes it at last politically acceptable (and increasingly politically correct) to express ethnic prejudice in these countries.
Kenan Malik and Fero Sebej discuss multiculturalism in Europe:
multiculturalism as a political process has come to mean something very different, namely the process of managing that diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes. It's a process through which cultural differences are institutionalized, publicly affirmed, recognized and institutionalized; through which political policy is predicated on the ethnic box to which one belongs. That seems to me deeply problematic.
The conflation of diversity as lived experience and multiculturalism as a political process has been highly invidious. On the one hand it has allowed many on the Right, and not just on the Right, to blame immigrants and immigration for the social problems of western nations. On the other hand, it has led many on the Left to abandon their attachment to classical notions of liberty and freedom, such as free speech and secularism. The irony about multiculturalism as a political process is that it undermines much of what is good about diversity as a lived experience. …
So the very thing that diversity is good for, the very thing we should cherish it for, is the very thing that multiculturalism as a political process undermines. …
I think the very notion of multiculturalism is an irrational one. It assumes from the start that societies are composed of cultures that somehow relate to each other externally, as it were. Here is one culture, here's another, and there's another, and these cultures then interact with each other. In fact cultures aren't like that: cultures are living, organic entities that constantly change. There is no such thing as a multicultural society. …
There are two ways over the past half-century in which we've stopped treating people as citizens. One is through racism. The racist says "you're not a citizen, you don't have full rights in this society because you have a different skin colour, you are foreign", etc. The second is multiculturalism. The multiculturalist says: "we treat you not as an individual citizen, but as a Muslim or a Hindu or a Sikh or a black". The irony is that multiculturalism developed as an attempt to combat the problems created by racism. But it has recreated many of the problems by treating people not as citizens but as members of groups, and by formulating public policy in relation to those groups and not in relation to the needs of individual citizens. …
The point about free speech is this: who is it that benefits from censorship? Is it those in power, or is it those without power? It seems to me that the only people to benefit from censorship are those with the power to enforce that censorship and, the need to do so. Those who have no power are much better served by as little censorship as possible. Free speech is always the weapon in the hands of those who want to challenge power and censorship is always a weapon in those who want to preserve their power. That's why I think anyone who wants to challenge racism should support of the greatest extension of free speech possible. …
… what I'm attacking is not simply multiculturalism, but also anti-immigrant sentiment, which are two sides of the same coin. Both sides of the debate confuse peoples and values. The fact that you have people from different parts of the world in one country does not create a problem in and of itself, either in terms of social relations, ideology or values. On the one side you have those who wish to restrict immigration on the grounds that it is impossible to have a common set of values without having a broadly ethnically homogenous nation. On the other side you have multiculturalists who say that because we have an ethnically diverse society, it impossible to have a common set of values. Both sides are wrong.
Noting that European politics has been moving rightwards for both cyclical and structural reasons.
About the euro and political sovereignty.
About Portugal’s experience with drug decriminalisation.
The fertility rate of Danish migrants is now falling to that of the general Danish population.
Suggesting that Tunisia’s present may be Europe’s future. The Southern European young are revolting against the lack of job prospects and looming fiscal burdens:
He said that pay-as-you-go social security and health care were a looming fiscal disaster in Southern Europe and beyond. “If these fertility rates continue through time, you won’t have Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese or Russians,” he said. “I imagine the Chinese will just move into Southern Europe.” …
Because payroll taxes and firing costs are still so high, businesses across Southern Europe are loath to hire new workers on a full-time basis, so young people increasingly are offered unpaid or low-paying internships, traineeships or temporary contracts that do not offer the same benefits or protections.
(Cut to Milton Friedman, 30 years ago, warning of the effects of collective action.)
Mandelson’s memoirs confirm Blair’s very negative view of Brown.
About coping with the unified and assertive Germany. Which did quite well at the recent EU summit.
Ireland’s fiscal and political woes are part of bigger Euro problems. Warning against soft bailouts. A eurosceptic MEP on the matter with EU. Suggesting that the EU issue has lost its power to tear apart British political parties.
Examining the Swedish elections: unionists continue to abandon the left, migrants vote very solidly left.
Bruce Bawer on how the Geert Wilders trial makes him support the First Amendment even more. Wilders complaint of judicial bias has been accepted as valid, so the case is having a retrial.
[It is reported that] demonstrators in UK demonstrating over higher education cuts abuse the NUS leader for being Jewish.
Noting France’s expulsion of the Roma has unfortunate precedents. About the decline of multiculturalism in Germany. French President joins UK’s PM and Germany’s Chancellor in abandoning multiculturalism. Pat Condell let’s loose in amusing style but it does bring up how much of the backing away is really about Islam. About Jack Straw’s comments and the issue of whether there is a rape culture within Pakistani migrants to Britain. He is getting some Muslim support. The rising support for an anti-immigrant party is part of a general European pattern. About the rise of anti-Muslim movements in Northern Europe:
The implication is that the recent rise of anti-Islam sentiment in northern Europe is proof neither of the end of tolerance in Europe nor the Europeanisation of ethnic nationalism. It is instead an outpouring of the intolerance of the tolerant, long (self-)censored by a political culture of anti-nationalism and conformity. The fact that (orthodox) Muslims can be opposed with a liberal-democratic discourse - rather than an ethnic-nationalist one - makes it at last politically acceptable (and increasingly politically correct) to express ethnic prejudice in these countries.
Kenan Malik and Fero Sebej discuss multiculturalism in Europe:
multiculturalism as a political process has come to mean something very different, namely the process of managing that diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes. It's a process through which cultural differences are institutionalized, publicly affirmed, recognized and institutionalized; through which political policy is predicated on the ethnic box to which one belongs. That seems to me deeply problematic.
The conflation of diversity as lived experience and multiculturalism as a political process has been highly invidious. On the one hand it has allowed many on the Right, and not just on the Right, to blame immigrants and immigration for the social problems of western nations. On the other hand, it has led many on the Left to abandon their attachment to classical notions of liberty and freedom, such as free speech and secularism. The irony about multiculturalism as a political process is that it undermines much of what is good about diversity as a lived experience. …
So the very thing that diversity is good for, the very thing we should cherish it for, is the very thing that multiculturalism as a political process undermines. …
I think the very notion of multiculturalism is an irrational one. It assumes from the start that societies are composed of cultures that somehow relate to each other externally, as it were. Here is one culture, here's another, and there's another, and these cultures then interact with each other. In fact cultures aren't like that: cultures are living, organic entities that constantly change. There is no such thing as a multicultural society. …
There are two ways over the past half-century in which we've stopped treating people as citizens. One is through racism. The racist says "you're not a citizen, you don't have full rights in this society because you have a different skin colour, you are foreign", etc. The second is multiculturalism. The multiculturalist says: "we treat you not as an individual citizen, but as a Muslim or a Hindu or a Sikh or a black". The irony is that multiculturalism developed as an attempt to combat the problems created by racism. But it has recreated many of the problems by treating people not as citizens but as members of groups, and by formulating public policy in relation to those groups and not in relation to the needs of individual citizens. …
The point about free speech is this: who is it that benefits from censorship? Is it those in power, or is it those without power? It seems to me that the only people to benefit from censorship are those with the power to enforce that censorship and, the need to do so. Those who have no power are much better served by as little censorship as possible. Free speech is always the weapon in the hands of those who want to challenge power and censorship is always a weapon in those who want to preserve their power. That's why I think anyone who wants to challenge racism should support of the greatest extension of free speech possible. …
… what I'm attacking is not simply multiculturalism, but also anti-immigrant sentiment, which are two sides of the same coin. Both sides of the debate confuse peoples and values. The fact that you have people from different parts of the world in one country does not create a problem in and of itself, either in terms of social relations, ideology or values. On the one side you have those who wish to restrict immigration on the grounds that it is impossible to have a common set of values without having a broadly ethnically homogenous nation. On the other side you have multiculturalists who say that because we have an ethnically diverse society, it impossible to have a common set of values. Both sides are wrong.