"Culturally enriched" riots in Amsterdam - Page 2

Feanor · 10-22-2007, 12:20 PM

Cultural invasion and assimilation is the greatest threat any nation can face.
1) It doesn't provoke much international outrage (no help)
2) It permanently destroys your nation as an ethnic group.
3) It is often times invisible, until it reaches huge proportions.
4) It will be supported by part of your own population.
5) It can't be stopped without diplomatic tensions.
6) There are no obvious ways of fighting back against it.

glyn · 10-22-2007, 14:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feanor

Cultural invasion and assimilation is the greatest threat any nation can face.
1) It doesn't provoke much international outrage (no help)
2) It permanently destroys your nation as an ethnic group.
3) It is often times invisible, until it reaches huge proportions.
4) It will be supported by part of your own population.
5) It can't be stopped without diplomatic tensions.
6) There are no obvious ways of fighting back against it.

7) It is happening in all first world countries.

**astralis** · 10-22-2007, 14:09 PM

8) America finds this process to be one of its greatest strengths.

braindead · 10-22-2007, 15:23 PM

but arguably America is one of very few countries that was built on this process , which makes it a little bit different .

entropy · 10-22-2007, 15:56 PM

But the carriers of the new culture came to America to build up something new, not to expand something already existing.

wkllaw · 10-22-2007, 16:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glyn

7) It is happening in all first world countries.

You're forgetting about Japan.

gunnut · 10-22-2007, 16:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wkllaw

You're forgetting about Japan.

Yeah, they keep the riff raffs out.

Skull6 · 10-22-2007, 16:48 PM

There is quite a difference between cultural merging & cultural invasion.

Cultural merging is what happened with my family--starting with my Great-grandparents. They came to America from Germany right after WWI. My Great-Grandfather would not allow anyone in the house to speak anything but English around him, but that doesn't mean that they mothballed all of the cultural traditions they brought with them. They practiced those they felt were important enough to keep, & adopted those "new" ones from their neighbors & friends who were already American. & I, as a thrid generation American from those Great-Grandparents, can see how my own & the lives of others were enriched from this "sharing" of cultures.

This is in stark contrast to the cultural invasion that Entropy describes taking place in his country. Rather than adopt & share the different cultures, it seems a group of immigrants want to REPLACE the existing culture with their own. I do not find this to be acceptable. It is something similar to what we are suffering with here in my country. & this immigrant group begins to feel that the laws of their new country do not apply to them--for some reason. Nothing could be further from the truth. & THAT's what the international community must be constantly reminded of. These immigrants moved to an existing country, with existing laws, & without seeking asylum. Therefore, once they stand, feet firmly on the ground, on another country, they fall well within the laws of that country, whether they like it or not.

Any International player not recognizing this fact is setting themselves up for a similar invasion, in my opinion. I'm not some left-wing liberal American here--actually far from it. But I do enjoy & encourage cultural SHARING. I'll not stand for a cultural INVASION of my country. While we might have been started as (& hopefully continue to be) a "melting pot" of diversity, I don't want to see ANY of those separate pieces becoming the exclusive culture of my country--no more so than I want to see a single State religion here either.

The bottom-line is, like myself, many here are willing to "share" cultures. Why does it seem that the new folk are unwilling (more & more violently) to do so, even as they cross our borders? & when one stands up & upholds the law correctly, why are they chastized for something akin to bigotry automatically?

I'm confused. If an immigrant charges into a local police station, attempts to take the life of a police officer, & is shot in the attempt, he is a victim & the shooter is wrong--the attacker just "didn't know" the law? If an immigrant violates another law, let's say drunken driving & recklessly speeding in an automobile, to the point where they crash into another car, killing all five on-board, who's the victim here? There are plenty of easy ways to learn a new nation's laws--the easiest of which is simply ASKING about them. But, if you assume that you are above the laws of your new country, I guess this whole arguement becomes a moot point?

Maybe I should change my signature line to "To those of you who aren't in the military: learn to get along peacefully--or else!"

Feanor · 10-22-2007, 17:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by braindead

but arguably America is one of very few countries that was built on this process , which makes it a little bit different .

Somewhat disputable. The modern day middle class America is actually being erased by this process. Latino immigration in the south west and asian immigration throughout are threatening to marginalize the nations economic divide. Consider that the American middle class is getting larger, while the buying power of the middle class as a whole is dropping. At least here in California the same thing is happening to schools. There are poor schools full of primarily Latinos, and elite school that are full of Asians. The phenomenon is massive enough to have earned the name white flight.

EDIT: My opinion may be somewhat one sided given that I live in California, where immigration is far more visible then else where in the U.S.

gunnut · 10-22-2007, 17:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feanor

Somewhat disputable. The modern day middle class America is actually being erased by this process. Latino immigration in the south west and asian immigration throughout are threatening to marginalize the nations economic divide. Consider that the American middle class is getting larger, while the buying power of the middle class as a whole is dropping. At least here in California the same thing is happening to schools. There are poor schools full of primarily Latinos, and elite school that are full of Asians. The phenomenon is massive enough to have earned the name white flight.

EDIT: My opinion may be somewhat one sided given that I live in California, where immigration is far more visible then else where in the U.S.

Your opinion is indeed biased by being in California. If you have traveled this country a bit, especially the midwest region, it's still mostly white. There are some Asians and some Hispanics, but not to the extent of California. I don't have much experiences, but I find smalltown folks in midwest to be very friendly and down to earth. They aren't the rednecks the liberal media always make fun of in sit coms and stand-ups.

**Parihaka** · 10-22-2007, 17:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astralis

8) America finds this process to be one of its greatest strengths.

9) So does New Zealand

Bluesman · 10-24-2007, 01:48 AM

Right on-topic:

Quote:

NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE
Steyn on Canada and the Commonwealth
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
These stories turn up so routinely you hardly notice them anymore:

Quote:

Vancouver’s hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver.

In giving the bylaw unanimous approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to arguments that hookah lounges provide an important cultural space for the city’s Muslims and granted them a temporary exemption.

Can that be right, even in Canada? Infidels can’t smoke but Muslims can? Apparently so. As the Vancouver Sun report continued, Emad Yacoub “said hookah lounges are essential for immigrants from hookah-smoking cultures, because it helps them deal with the depression common for newcomers and gives them places like they have at home.”

Once upon a time English and Irish and French immigrants to Vancouver used to find “places like they have at home” – pubs and bars and so forth. But not anymore. In fact, if you’re at the Legion Hall and can no longer light up a *** (whoa, relax, I’m just talking about cigarettes, not another lively Muslim cultural tradition), you might be forgiven for getting the impression that fewer and fewer places seem like home anymore.

It’s good to know the state is still prepared to trust adult citizens to be able to weigh the health risks of smoking against the “cultural” value (ie, the pleasure), even if they have to convert to Islam enjoy the right. Veterans, barflies, cigar aficionados and free-born Canadians in general can no longer enjoy this responsibility. But Muslims, uniquely, can.

Well, not entirely uniquely. For as The Vancouver Sun also reported:

Quote:

The one foggy point in the new bylaw was whether it will apply to crack cocaine and crystal-meth smoking.

Ah, right. If you’re taking a limo from Squamish to Richmond, you can’t light up a Craven A. But, if you do feel the need the smoke, just stop off at the nearest crack house or meth lab. It’s good to know that some aspects of infidel culture are still celebrated in Vancouver.

At casual glance, this decision by the city council breaches one of the most fundamental principles: equality before the law. Either smoking is illegal, or it’s not. But it can’t be illegal for some citizens, and not for others. But, of course, most of us don’t give that casual glance to this story, or to the gazillions that like it that bubble up at the foot of the “News In Brief” section every day of the week across the western world. And, of those who do give it a casual glance, the general blasé reaction was pithily distilled by one correspondent of mine as follows: “We’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.” Yeah, sure, it’s idiotic but it’s harmless. Don’t get your panties in a twist. Ours is such a wealthy, powerful, confident culture it can jab untold numbers of screwdrivers into its own head, and still survive. Death by a thousand cuts is not for us, even if (or just because) the cuts are self-inflicted.

I wonder. In Vancouver city council’s action, what was once dimly discerned is made explicit. An Englishman or Irishman has no culture. Indeed, Canada has no culture, save what others bring to it. Which is the logical reductio of multiculturalism: If coming to Canada causes “depression” among “newcomers”, it behooves us to bring Canada into line with “places like they have at home”. Instead of the immigrant assimilating with the host society, the host society assimilates with the immigrant. Which makes sense, given that he seems to value his inheritance more than Canada values its own. And so we confront the limits of political correctness. It’s fine for a pliant citizenry sedated by decades of propaganda, but not for Muslims or crackheads who don’t yield quite so easily. When the nanny state runs up against the unnannyable, it crumples like a cheap roll-up.

When I wrote my book about Europe and demography, dissenting critics wanted to argue about the rate of change – specifically, the date at which Islam becomes a majority on the Continent. It won’t be 2025 or 2050, they scoff. It might not even be by the end of the century, as Professor Bernard Lewis says. Maybe. Maybe not. My book has very little to say either way about the precise day on which Islam claims 50.00001 per cent of the European population. What matters is the point at which it becomes the key determining feature of a society’s political disposition. And that day will not be 2100 or 2050 or 2025, but, as we see in Vancouver, some time rather sooner.

Let us zip across the Dominion, to Etobicoke, a corner of Toronto I know well. Or I thought I did. The other day a reader sent me the list of candidates for the Etobicoke North riding in this month’s provincial election. They are as follows:

Shafiq Qaadri, Liberal
Mohamed Boudjenane, NDP
Mohamed Kassim, Progressive Conservative
Jama Korshel, Green
Teresa Ceolin, Family Coalition

“Teresa”? What kind of cockamamie name is that for an Etobicoke politician? This is the first riding in Ontario in which every major party is running a Muslim candidate. But not the last. To the casual observer, this would seem to be statistically improbable. Etobicoke is not 80 per cent Muslim, nor even 50 per cent Muslim. Yet every major national party already feels obliged to defer, in its candidate selection process, to Islam’s political muscle. I write in my book that, historically, Islam has never needed to be a statistical majority in order to function as one. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the “Islamic world” stretched from Spain to India yet its population was only minority Muslim: Islam conquered and ruled an empire of non-Muslim subjects. But, a millennium and a bit on, it’s not even necessary to conquer – not when everyone’s so eager to concede pre-emptively, all in the name of “tolerance”. As Douglas Farrow told a conference at McGill recently, tolerance is a negative: it implies a kind of passivity. “You can’t build a society on that negative principle,” he says. But you can rot and enfeeble the one you have, and in its ruins something new will be built.

Let’s zip east another few thousand miles, from Etobicoke to Brussels. The mayor of the city is a rather dreary Belgian leftie called Freddy Thielemans. He is the head of the governing Socialist Party. Of his 17-member caucus, ten are Muslim. Again, Brussels is not majority Muslim. Sure, the most popular baby boy’s name is Mohammed, but then, in western Europe, it would be easier to list the cities where it isn’t. Yet Brussels, the capital of the European Union, already has a Muslim-majority governing party.

It’s been faintly surreal following the recent ructions about the usual instabilities of the Belgian state: Is this it? Are the ancient differences between the Walloons and Flemings about to tear the kingdom apart? Etc, etc. The traditional warring tribes of Belgium are irrelevant to its future. Brussels will be a Muslim city, and so will Antwerp, and Ghent, and even my mum’s quaintly parochial Flemish backwater of St Niklaas. And the disputes of the future will be between Belgian Turks and Belgian Algerians, or Belgian Sunni and Belgian Shia, or some other variant thereof.

Twenty years ago, in The Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom wrote, “As an image of our current intellectual condition, I keep being reminded of the newsreel pictures of Frenchmen splashing happily in the water at the seashore, enjoying the paid annual vacations legislated by Leon Blum’s Popular Front government. It was 1936, the same year Hitler was permitted to occupy the Rhineland. All our big causes amount to that kind of vacation.”

Yes, indeed. “Tolerance”, “multiculturalism”, splashing in the shallows – or so we think. Those Muslims who frequent Vancouver hookah parlours because they’re “depressed”, because Canada is not like “home”, won’t have to be depressed much longer. Here, as in much of the west, the state is happy to dismantle its own inheritance. And in the vacuum of multiculturalism it’s those groups most fierce in defence of their culture who will build the future.

“The decline of the West,” wrote Samuel P Huntington, is still in the slow first phase, but at some point it might speed up dramatically.” What is the point at which it becomes irreversible? If you’re on a river heading over the falls, it’s not the moment when you plunge over the precipice and are dashed on the rocks below. That’s the great visual dividing line – Joseph Cotton in Niagara: one minute his boat’s horizontal, next it’s heading straight down. But the critical point happens way back upstream. It’s still flat, it’s still the river not the distant falls, but what you thought were the placid shallows has, in fact, a strong silent running current and, before you even know it, you’re being swept along.

Feanor · 10-24-2007, 02:28 AM

Cultural invasion made it's way across the Atlantic

Gunnut consider that already there are more Hispanics in the U.S. then blacks. At this rate the entire south west will be facing major cultural erosion. Spanish is already the major-most second language. Most instructions in public places are written in english and spanish.

gunnut · 10-24-2007, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feanor

Cultural invasion made it's way across the Atlantic

Gunnut consider that already there are more Hispanics in the U.S. then blacks. At this rate the entire south west will be facing major cultural erosion. Spanish is already the major-most second language. Most instructions in public places are written in english and spanish.

Correct. However the Mexicans are still more like us than most muslims. They are Catholics, for one, which is the biggest christian denomination in this country. They maybe liberal, but they are also conservative in other ways. Mexican is a nationality. Give them 2 generations and they will most likely be Americans. Muslims will be muslims.

I'm not saying muslims are evil and mexicans less evil. I'm just saying that everything being equal, mexicans are easier to deal with. For example, most Mexicans what to do well in this country and be Americans. Most muslims might want to be Americans, but they will always be muslims first.

tankie · 10-24-2007, 05:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunnut

Now you know how it's like in California.

Same the world over now mate , especially in the tollerant U/K

10-22-2007, 14:09 PM	#18 (permalink)
astralis *Foreign Service* Moderator Lei Feng Protege Join Date: 08-23-05 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 3,237 Country:	8) America finds this process to be one of its greatest strengths. __________________ Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

10-22-2007, 15:23 PM	#19 (permalink)
braindead Lost in Translation *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-30-06 Location: estonia Posts: 1,439 Country:	but arguably America is one of very few countries that was built on this process , which makes it a little bit different . __________________ If i only were so smart yesterday as my wife is today

10-22-2007, 15:56 PM	#20 (permalink)
entropy Senior Reader *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 03-19-07 Location: Belgium Posts: 1,628 Country:	But the carriers of the new culture came to America to build up something new, not to expand something already existing. __________________ If memory serves...

10-22-2007, 16:48 PM	#23 (permalink)
Skull6 *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-28-07 Location: Colorado Posts: 294 Country:	There is quite a difference between cultural merging & cultural invasion. Cultural merging is what happened with my family--starting with my Great-grandparents. They came to America from Germany right after WWI. My Great-Grandfather would not allow anyone in the house to speak anything but English around him, but that doesn't mean that they mothballed all of the cultural traditions they brought with them. They practiced those they felt were important enough to keep, & adopted those "new" ones from their neighbors & friends who were already American. & I, as a thrid generation American from those Great-Grandparents, can see how my own & the lives of others were enriched from this "sharing" of cultures. This is in stark contrast to the cultural invasion that Entropy describes taking place in his country. Rather than adopt & share the different cultures, it seems a group of immigrants want to REPLACE the existing culture with their own. I do not find this to be acceptable. It is something similar to what we are suffering with here in my country. & this immigrant group begins to feel that the laws of their new country do not apply to them--for some reason. Nothing could be further from the truth. & THAT's what the international community must be constantly reminded of. These immigrants moved to an existing country, with existing laws, & without seeking asylum. Therefore, once they stand, feet firmly on the ground, on another country, they fall well within the laws of that country, whether they like it or not. Any International player not recognizing this fact is setting themselves up for a similar invasion, in my opinion. I'm not some left-wing liberal American here--actually far from it. But I do enjoy & encourage cultural SHARING. I'll not stand for a cultural INVASION of my country. While we might have been started as (& hopefully continue to be) a "melting pot" of diversity, I don't want to see ANY of those separate pieces becoming the exclusive culture of my country--no more so than I want to see a single State religion here either. The bottom-line is, like myself, many here are willing to "share" cultures. Why does it seem that the new folk are unwilling (more & more violently) to do so, even as they cross our borders? & when one stands up & upholds the law correctly, why are they chastized for something akin to bigotry automatically? I'm confused. If an immigrant charges into a local police station, attempts to take the life of a police officer, & is shot in the attempt, he is a victim & the shooter is wrong--the attacker just "didn't know" the law? If an immigrant violates another law, let's say drunken driving & recklessly speeding in an automobile, to the point where they crash into another car, killing all five on-board, who's the victim here? There are plenty of easy ways to learn a new nation's laws--the easiest of which is simply ASKING about them. But, if you assume that you are above the laws of your new country, I guess this whole arguement becomes a moot point? Maybe I should change my signature line to "To those of you who aren't in the military: learn to get along peacefully--or else!" __________________ If you know the enemy and yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. - Sun Tzu

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10-22-2007, 12:20 PM	#16 (permalink)
Feanor Banished Join Date: 06-12-07 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 2,385 Country:	Cultural invasion and assimilation is the greatest threat any nation can face. 1) It doesn't provoke much international outrage (no help) 2) It permanently destroys your nation as an ethnic group. 3) It is often times invisible, until it reaches huge proportions. 4) It will be supported by part of your own population. 5) It can't be stopped without diplomatic tensions. 6) There are no obvious ways of fighting back against it.

10-24-2007, 02:28 AM	#28 (permalink)
Feanor Banished Join Date: 06-12-07 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 2,385 Country:	Cultural invasion made it's way across the Atlantic Gunnut consider that already there are more Hispanics in the U.S. then blacks. At this rate the entire south west will be facing major cultural erosion. Spanish is already the major-most second language. Most instructions in public places are written in english and spanish.

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