Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I know that Dr. Kaiser puts the end of the French crisis at 1962. In my opinion, there is a big problem with that -- May 1968, which shows all the hallmarks of an Awakening.

NPR did a commentary on it this morning in Morning Edition. Here is the print version.

Neil Howe talked about posts here and in private emails with me. About how brutal the generation gap was in Germany and France during the late 60's and 70's.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...6LRM74BNN9PwJQ

Le Marseillaise, the French national anthem, was booed by spectators in a 'friendly' soccer game between France and Tunisia played in Paris a couple of days ago. President Sarkozy is up in arms about it, though i don't think he named ethnic hostility specifically. but everyone can read between the lines.

it looks like a definate sign of the rise of 4T style mob mentality.

Originally Posted by Tristan

Neil Howe talked about posts here and in private emails with me. About how brutal the generation gap was in Germany and France during the late 60's and 70's.

That is true. A German historian I know thinks that the anti-Vietnam protests in those countries (particularly West Germany) were actually protests against their parents' collaboration with the Nazis! However, to recapitulate for about the twentieth time:

1.) After 1945 de Gaulle tried to turn the Second World War into a 4T for France and create a new, stronger government, but he completely failed, and quit. Adenauer, the German gray champion, took power in 1949; de Gaulle didn't come back until 1958.

2). The Fourth Republic that emerged from the war was a carbon copy of the Third. It couldn't handle the wars in Indochina or, more importantly, Algeria. De Gaulle came into power in 1958 because of a military coup in Algeria. Then he had to fight off a military coup in 1960 after he decided to pull out of Algeria. He violated the old Constitution and the new in many basic ways--he got around them by putting important issues to a vote. If that isn't a 4T, I don't know what could possibly be one.

Booing the Marseillaise sounds more 3T than 4T to me--in the 4T they'll start cheering it again. The vote against the new EU constitution and the riots in the suburbs a couple of years ago both look 3T to me as well. Of course, our economic crash is going to drag in the whole industrialized world. . .

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Booing the Marseillaise sounds more 3T than 4T to me--in the 4T they'll start cheering it again. The vote against the new EU constitution and the riots in the suburbs a couple of years ago both look 3T to me as well. Of course, our economic crash is going to drag in the whole industrialized world. . .

i think you're sadly mistaken here, the people who were booing the Marseillaise were basically immigrants who feel no affinity for France to start with. In the 4T they're probably more likely to be throwing the molotov cocktails in the streets. The riots may have been 3T but social unrest of that kind (or more severe) is definately around in 4Ts. Its just that the last American 4T was relatively stable socially with few such incidents, but riots and mob behaviour were happening in European cities, the whole idea of capitalist democracy was being declared a failure.

I see evidence around me now of that happening again. At a relatives' Christmas dinner i got stuck in political conversation with a european immigrant man who himself openly declared the system to not work and for capitalism to be junked in favour of more state management. some here might agree. That once stupid idea now seems plausible to reasonable people.

Originally Posted by myk'87

At a relatives' Christmas dinner i got stuck in political conversation with a european immigrant man who himself openly declared the system to not work and for capitalism to be junked in favour of more state management. some here might agree. That once stupid idea now seems plausible to reasonable people.

'Stupid', like 'beauty' is in the eye - and ear - of the beholder, and the times the beholder is living in.

Originally Posted by myk'87

i think you're sadly mistaken here, the people who were booing the Marseillaise were basically immigrants who feel no affinity for France to start with. In the 4T they're probably more likely to be throwing the molotov cocktails in the streets. The riots may have been 3T but social unrest of that kind (or more severe) is definately around in 4Ts. Its just that the last American 4T was relatively stable socially with few such incidents, but riots and mob behaviour were happening in European cities, the whole idea of capitalist democracy was being declared a failure.

I see evidence around me now of that happening again. At a relatives' Christmas dinner i got stuck in political conversation with a european immigrant man who himself openly declared the system to not work and for capitalism to be junked in favour of more state management. some here might agree. That once stupid idea now seems plausible to reasonable people.

Yes, of course. Capitalism had rarely looked so unchallengeable (at least in the US) as in 1928, and has never looked so hopeless as in 1932.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Yes, of course. Capitalism had rarely looked so unchallengeable (at least in the US) as in 1928, and has never looked so hopeless as in 1932.

Kind like 2004 vs. 2008.

A former Prime Minister stated that France was at a "risk of revolution."

EdF strikers cut power to French homes

Adam Sage in Montigny-lès-Cormeilles At an electricity substation on a bleak industrial estate north of Paris a masked union militant is preparing to deprive a neighbourhood of power.

His colleague is outside, dragging nervously on a roll-up cigarette while keeping a lookout for police or security guards. “Get a move on,” he says. “And then let’s get out of here.”

A switch is pulled down, the door of the sabotaged transformer is locked and the two activists — employees of EdF, the French state electricity supplier — drive off.

In their wake hundreds of houses and a handful of businesses in Montigny-lès-Cormeilles are left without electricity for much of the morning.

It was the second time in a week that blackouts had hit the Paris region as striking gas and electricity workers adopted radical tactics to support their call for a 10 per cent pay rise and an end to outsourcing of jobs.

They are denounced as industrial saboteurs by the Government and face disciplinary action and prosecution, but say they are determined to press ahead with what they portray as a struggle against free-market forces.

After failing to prevent the partial privatisations of EdF and GdF, the gas supplier, they believe that the tide has turned in their favour because of the recession.

Redundancy plans have caused violent protests in private sector companies, left-wing students have blocked universities and unions are planning a demonstration on Labour Day. “There is a risk of revolution,” Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister, said.

For Stéphane Miliadis, a representative of the Confédération Générale du Travail union at the EdF plant in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, near Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, it offers a golden opportunity.

“The Government is losing control,” he said. “So now is the moment to push back the capitalist logic which has crept into the company.”

The movement got off to a slow start. “We’ve been on strike for three weeks but at first no one paid any attention at all,” he said. “It was only when some of the guys started cutting the electricity and gas that things got moving.”

The militants armed with a map showing the substations and keys to the locks can shut down power to thousands of homes in a few minutes.

Last Thursday 66,500 EdF customers lost their electricity supply, some for several hours. In Douai, northern France, two patients in intensive care had to be moved when a hospital lost power for 40 minutes.

In the Paris region the Grand-Val shopping centre suffered the same fate. “We had to turn away customers from all 48 shops,” Félix Crespo, a technical manager at the centre, said.

A bakery worker told The Times that she had been late for work “because I have an electric alarm clock and of course it didn’t go off”.

Earlier this week the activists sought to win public support by switching 350,000 customers from peak to off-peak tariffs — a 50 per cent saving. They also restored power to hundreds of households that were cut off by EdF because they had failed to pay their bills.

The power cuts have continued. In Montigny-lès-Cormeilles the saboteurs took action against EdF offices and several hundred homes were affected. A home-help assistant said: “I look after a 92-year-old woman and this sort of thing means she hasn’t got a proper meal because there was nothing to cook it with.”

History of revolt

— The revolutionary movement that shook France between 1789 and 1799 rejected the social and economic inequalities of the ancien régime, overthrew the Government and abolished the monarchy
— Popular revolt in 1848 led to the creation of the Second Republic and established the principle of the right to work
— In 1920, strikes on the railways forced the army to drive trains to get food around the country
— The de Gaulle administration's deployment of police against student rioters in 1968 provoked a widespread revolt, ending in widescale reform of the education system
— In 2005, rioting among poor African and Arab immigrant communities prompted the Government to impose a three-month state of emergency
— In 2006, students nationwide protested against an attempt to make it easier for French companies to sack employees under the age of 26. The law was withdrawn
— “Bossnapping” has become a popular technique in French labour disputes. Striking workers take their bosses hostage until they agree to demands

From time to time we have had arguments here about whether the Western European cycle is actually behind that of the US somewhat, as I have long maintained. I suddenly realized that there was solid data that might help answer that question and I have found what I was looking for: a graph of European countries' birth rates, which can be found here (see p. 1).

The graph is not easy to read and the legend uses the intials countries use themselves. Thus D is Germany, E is Spain, F is France, UK is UK, obviously, and so on. B must be Belgium, come to think of it, and HL is Holland and N is Norway. But the message is clear.

The German (presumably West German) birthrate was falling during the 1940s, began to rise around 1950 and peaked around 1965. The French showed exactly the same pattern at a slightly higher level. The Belgians followed the same pattern. Unfortunately data for the UK only begins in the mid-1950s. I shall try to find some more now. . .

Well, it turns out that the British statistics are a bit bizarre. In the first decade of the twentieth century almost a million Brits were born every five years. (That's how the stats are listed. Of course, that probably includes Ireland.) A big trough began in the late 1920s, before it did in the US I believe. 1941-45: 669,000. 1946-50: 781,000 - a big rise, although I suspect the US one (which I will look up) was much larger. But then, 1951-55: only 657,000, and 740,000 in 1956-60. The peak postwar years were the 1960s, with five-year totals of 849,000 and 817,000, before things plumetted below 700,000 in the 1970s, and have been falling ever since.

I suspect the drop in the 1950s reflects a drop thirty and more years earlier as a result of losses in the First World War, but that is only a guess. Anyway, this seems to be a pretty unique case which could be used to argue either side. .

DK

OK, I really have to get back to my real job. . .but here is a graph I discovered showing the US High-era birth rate. . . oh, rats. I have the image, copied (although it is from a document that had to be downloaded--I can't simply link it.) I can't figure out how to get it into this post, can some one tell me how to do it? thanks.

Try including it with the little icon three to the left of the link button?

For some reason, personal profiles disable direct display of images on this forum, but it can be changed in the user settings area.

This is supposed to do it--and it does, sort of. A much quicker and more sustained Boom than in the UK. I shall do more research on this. . .

Further data on Britain are rather fascinating--the same birth per thousand data shown in the graph. At no time in the postwar period did the British reach 20/1000, which we surpassed in 1946 and never fell below. We did not have a decline in the early 1950s the way they did (they had a big one.) We peaked before they did (they peaked in the early 1960s, but their peak was still substantially lower than our rate throughout the period). To put it bluntly, their high, by this measurement, was not as robust as ours, and not until around 1960 did they appear to experience the burst of confidence, measured in fertility, that we had.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Further data on Britain are rather fascinating--the same birth per thousand data shown in the graph. At no time in the postwar period did the British reach 20/1000, which we surpassed in 1946 and never fell below. We did not have a decline in the early 1950s the way they did (they had a big one.) We peaked before they did (they peaked in the early 1960s, but their peak was still substantially lower than our rate throughout the period). To put it bluntly, their high, by this measurement, was not as robust as ours, and not until around 1960 did they appear to experience the burst of confidence, measured in fertility, that we had.

I would suggest that this conclusion is not totally surprising based on other data either.

World War 2 was (for the most part) a foreign war in the United States. The British experience was quite different. With France occupied, the Nazis were just twenty miles from our coast. For about a year in 1940-1, we were the only major European country still fighting them.

When the war ended, the government found itself with very little left for reconstruction. The entire continent was exhausted by the fighting - Britain came out better than most. Money was short. And, unlike in most of the United States, we had to reconstruct before we could move forward.

There were bombed out buildings in major British cities (as I understand it) until well into the fifties. Wartime rationing was not repealed until 1954 - in fact it was stricter after the war than it ever was during the war. A little further on, in 1956, we saw the Suez Crisis, which demonstrated and cemented Britain's decline as a superpower.

So I would say that your conclusions are accurate in a more general sense. The high - such as it was - was not as robust as in the US, and did not really start to peak until the late 50's and early 60's. The 1T era in this case would far more aptly be called a "recovery".

In terms of dates, I put the turnings in the UK in 1948-9, 1967-8 and 1987-88 and 2008-09-ish.

German Socialists lose
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/wo...socialism.html

On this site you can view election data by country or EU party and practice your foreign language skills:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parlia.../index_en.html

Herein follows a biting satire I have written. Hope you like it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the People of Europe:


For many years you have complained and whinged on about America being the land of the fat, home of the idiot. You have been extremely vocal about our having the audacity to be public with religion: praying for rain in the town square after a huge drought, having tent revivals as social events in the bayous of Alabama, and lest we forget having a song about a Plastic Jesus in the car.

For years you have been appalled by the stupidity of the people because they have an undeniable disinterest in social democracy where all decisions are made from the top down (inherently undemocratic in itself and more a result of the heritage of accepting feudal lords dictating to serfs.) You do not attempt to understand that a society that acts like Supernanny might not be the greatest ideal because it, and the government that heads it, judges the masses as too weak to survive on their own and think for themselves and the government ultimately has the right to interfere in every matter possible: the worst kind of paternalism. You balk at the debate over healthcare and wag your finger at how the right to health should not be an issue, but do not recognize that giving away so much power at once to bureaucrats should not be taken lightly-trading in five insurance companies that suck for one monolithic one run by the government where the average citizen cannot protest is not a no brainer. You do not see the possibility that doctors could be made answerable to governments and Vogon like twerps who have the degree but have never practiced medicine for a day in their life nor the need of a society to see advanced and specialized doctors as well as rank and file GP's. You don't


You accuse us of being hyper-militaristic, in particular during election cycles, but no light is ever shed upon 1) the fact that you spend a tiny amount of your own GDP on your military because you cannot afford it and the huge bureaucratic safety net for your people at the same time 2) such a condition makes it easy to force America into doing the heavy lifting, so that your politicians have a convenient punching bag that gets them elected and 3) Over sixty years we rebuilt European economies (even providing seed money) stopped the Soviets from getting its grubby hands on the rest of you, forgave many wartime debts when they were defaulted on, broke the back of the USSR, and have provided a world in which you can do business. You have not told your people that going too soft on national defense is a dangerous affair with a resurgent Russia (see Japan's growing unease with China for illustration) and do not recognize that Britain's giving up its Trident system of nukes is a dangerous game and a red flag (who are they going to sell it to?) You are highly critical of the democratic processes of America (which admittedly have some flaws to be worked out in this 4T) but very stupidly have handed off an immense amount of power to a largely unelected body of elites in the EU Parliament (Ireland has gone as far as betraying its spectacular 800 year fight for independence by signing the Lisbon Treaty; it is highly doubtful given its boot licking of the U.K. and because of fringe groups like the IRA that the Dail has allowed textbooks to print the truth about 1916 & given the lesson to Irish children that those who trade freedom for security deserve neither.)

You have doggedly accused America of racism but have not deigned it appropriate to take a look at your own backyard and have taught your children very little about the evils of 19th century colonialism (Mohand Singh was very adept at buttering up Oxford students with his compliments on what the British Raj brought to India, in spite of what Ghandi had to say.) Your memory of the Jewish Holocaust is fading as the old die and seem to be refocusing that type of energy on Israelis and Gypsies, the former aided and abetted by Arab anti-Semitism. You've allowed a very large amount of peoples from your former empires to immigrate but have not provided the tools for social advancement, have placed unrealistic demands that they kowtow to 1000 year old culture (with the unsaid statement being that it is superior) and have not given enough representation in high office, on the police force, or on boards of companies. In an ironic twist, because of your placing absolute secularism on a pedestal and strong embrace of allowing the young to be unproductive well into their thirties, the native birthrate is collapsing and the blacks and Arabs are outbreeding you.

So , to all of this I say, f#ck you. No, really. Somebody needs to f#ck you.


The bug perenially up your ass needs to die and that bedpost needs to start knocking against the wall. It may be the only solution to get you used to the idea that having lots of sex can have multiple benefits to the economy, to the environment, and to the future of the European Union. The first step shall be banning birth control pills and replacing them with as many sex toys as humanly possible. The glass blowers of Venice can supplement their tourist kitsch with glass dildos; these can be made to order or can be cast according to a partner's personal, unique genital attributes using plaster of paris. (All shall be available online.) Entire bookstores shall be stocked with only the finest, half of their books being sex related and all of them available in Kindle format. Remasters of Debbie does Dallas and Tera Patrick shall play at the multiplex at midnight and Amsterdam, not Brussels, shall become the capitol of the E.U. as their expertise shall be needed on how to set up extensive sex industries. (Why fly Bangkok or Holland when you can just jet down the high street?)

The aging political elite, now in their 50s and 60s in Europe shall be put into early retirement and gays and lesbians shall be put in charge as they cannot procreate and an impartial party must be there to keep the peace; the only exception to this rule shall be Silvio Berlusconi because putting him out of office may be hazardous and a punishment to young girls everywhere (keeping him busy with paperwork might be a better idea.) The trend shall be called the New Sexual Revolution and will give plenty in the media to chatter on about and report and will make huge amounts of money with an eager populace. The hedonism that such a revolution generated in the 1960s shall return and the clubs, restaurants, and bars shall be stimulated as men and women alike need a place to begin foreplay. Barclay's of London, once a tight laced place of business, will have a disco ball by night and a ticker tape monitor by morning, counting off not only major account revenues but also its own.

Scientists shall study people having sex as a form of alternative energy, interested in how to turn two bodies going at it like animals in heat into giant batteries. Extrapolating the current population it should be enough to light and heat Europe for many years to come, plus their interest shall be sparked by a very sudden exponential growth in population as attitudes towards birth control have taken a completely different path. Demands for goods will explode and the impact on the environment will spur on demand for green energy at a much faster rate.

Muslims and blacks will not be able to compete as sexuality is not discussed openly in such societies and because the onus is solely on females to reproduce they will not know what hit them when two people decide to churn out babies like there was no tomorrow; they will not benefit from scientific discovery. They won't even be able to cry and kick and scream about a profligate society because most people will be too busy in bed and the actual rulers of Europe are all gay (homophobia may be another issue but as gays are so empowered the Muslims shall be forced to leave or adapt.) The people having lots of sex will be happy and contented from the release the get at last and they will be happy because they can scream at America more for not joining them by making love,not war. Corruption shall be replaced by utopia.

And so, dear Europe, enjoy yourselves, and to paraphrase another satire, f#ck loudly, f#ck proudly.

Don't look now, but the far right is on the rise in Europe. Hungary has an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic government which has given itself the right (so far not exercised) to fine newspapers huge amounts of money for printing anything hostile. A far right party just won an election in Finland on an anti-EU program. Far right parties are also doing better in Germany and in France. Democracy had a very brief life in Eastern Europe after the First World War and it may not do too much better this time around.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Don't look now, but the far right is on the rise in Europe. Hungary has an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic government which has given itself the right (so far not exercised) to fine newspapers huge amounts of money for printing anything hostile. A far right party just won an election in Finland on an anti-EU program. Far right parties are also doing better in Germany and in France. Democracy had a very brief life in Eastern Europe after the First World War and it may not do too much better this time around.

Will you bomb us now?

The so called "far right" that's on the rise in Europe is nothing but the natural reaction to the prospect of getting demographically and culturally displaced by massive MENA-immigration within a hundred years, something all west European governments are pursuing with the folly of a hypnotized buffoon. You're a victim of printed mass media.

In fact, anything else but such a reaction, as belated as it is, would be extremely unhealthy and point to something seriously wrong with the peoples of Europe.

If you're pro immigration, sooner or later you will have to ask yourself how many gang rapes your ideals are worth.

Sexual crime rate in Sweden, including rape, 1975-2009:
http://affes.files.wordpress.com/201...pg?w=702&h=452

Grey field at bottom is population increase (14%).

I did not realize that France was still rated AAA. And there is even mention of a BBA (Balance Budget Amendment) for France.

While France’s debt of 84.7 percent of gross domestic product is less than Italy’s 120.3 percent, as a percentage of economic output it has risen twice as fast as Italy’s since 2007. French government debt totaled 1.59 trillion euros ($2.3 trillion) at the end of 2010, according to the European Union; Italy's was about 1.8 trillion euros. France has had a larger budget deficit than Italy every year since 2006. S&P rates Italy A+, four levels below France.

(...snip...)

Before going on holiday, President Nicolas Sarkozy on July 26 wrote a letter to every member of Parliament, making his case for adding a balanced-budget requirement to the constitution. He hasn’t yet called a joint session to approve such a measure because a three-fifths majority is required, and the Socialist Party is opposed to amending the constitution.

(...snip...)

Sarkozy has committed to cutting the budget shortfall to 5.7 percent of output this year, 4.6 percent next year and 3 percent in 2013. The Socialist Party’s two leading candidates for next year’s presidential election have also pledged to reach the 3 percent deficit target in 2013.

“If French authorities do not follow through with their reform of the pension system, make additional changes to the social-security system and consolidate the current budgetary position in the face of rising spending pressure on health care and pensions, Standard & Poor’s will unlikely maintain its AAA rating,” S&P said in a June 10 report.

Here.

James50

ECB rumored to bring out the bazookas tonight and buy Italian and Spanish bonds.

What happens if they don't?

James50

Will you bomb us now?

No. Sorry, no motive to do so and less public will. But if I were you, I would be looking at the underclass of immigrants in Europe (including Sweden) for upcoming violence. They are at the bottom of the economic totem pole. Every time there is a jolt in the economy, especially in the big three (France, Britain, Germany) there will be repercussions to the lowest social strata because they feel the pain the most.

The so called "far right" that's on the rise in Europe is nothing but the natural reaction to the prospect of getting demographically and culturally displaced by massive MENA-immigration within a hundred years, something all west European governments are pursuing with the folly of a hypnotized buffoon. You're a victim of printed mass media.

That is not totally accurate, dearie. In fact, it is far too simple. After WWII, your government, like most governments of Europe, had a problem in that they lost a lot of people in two world wars, so rebuilding the economy was going to be that much trickier. At the same time, many of the European powers had to go through a period of decolonialization. Ergo, a window opened up: politicians decided to invite former colonials to Europe to pick up the slack and speed up recovery. Europe recovered and prospered. That was the good news.

The bad news was the way that Arabs and blacks and South Asians were treated. There were few paths to social advancement: political representation never materialized for these groups. Amongst the powers that be and the host European cultures themselves, there was very poor understanding of what exactly they were inviting to Europe, or rather, who: none of these cultures ever had an Enlightenment or Renaissance. Their native cultures use shame or fear as a regulator of sociopolitical behavior, not guilt or burden of proof, and immigrants from these cultures will often listen to the devil they know over the devil they don't know and won't understand. Democracy doesn't exist in feudal societies or cultures that are nearly totally communally oriented as your rights are defined only in one's relation to others, not in what the powerful owe you. Thus, an imam has a lot more weight over an immigrant community than a district court judge and some immigrants will have no problem taking social protection (the dole) for as long as they want because so long as one is not found out ,one is not guilty, and in one's mind it is the job of others to support him. The current politicians do not understand this at all. Telling a Muslimah to remove her veil at school only creates trouble. Serving halal food in the cafeteria as an alternative for her helps the situation. The state should only intervene when it is absolutely necessary (honor killings, letting the blind get in the cab with a seeing eye dog as ALL cabbies must assist the disabled, female genital mutilation [based on a medical rationale,] and giving an alternative for Muslim women who seek to divorce their husbands or escape brutality.)


Europeans further treat their 1000 year old cultures like monoliths that are incapable of evolving. Just last night I was watching a program on Parisian pastry chefs looking to win a medal for their works. I noticed something very sad. There was little that was new. All of them used choux pastry at one point or another, all used the same recipes for chocolate, all were obsessed with nougatine and all had the same old same old ingredients, same old stuff France has been using for eons. It occurred to me that they had thousands of blacks and Muslims on their doorstep and not one of them thought to snoop around the alleys looking for new ingredients or incorporate them into the cakes they were making and call it French pastry. It wasn't even like they would be low on options: African mango. pistachios. soursop. actual canes of sugarcane. jasmine flowers. Figs. phyllo dough. palm wine. To me it indicated that the chefs still regarded the blacks and Muslims as "other" when they actually had a huge opportunity to create something incredible. I also noticed that every chef there was white. It would appear to an outsider, Tussilago, that multiculturalism is what a lot of European politicians talk about and what is praised in polite conversation....but the practice stinks. So long as one monolithic fixed culture dominates all others in every aspect of life, so long as one rules above the others, I guess that Europe truly is a paradise.

Originally Posted by Mary Kate 1982

It would appear to an outsider, Tussilago, that multiculturalism is what a lot of European politicians talk about and what is praised in polite conversation....but the practice stinks. So long as one monolithic fixed culture dominates all others in every aspect of life, so long as one rules above the others, I guess that Europe truly is a paradise.

I don't think the French or Germans are pushing multiculturalism. Multiculturalism was a Nordic country phenomenon that has suffered great hits in the recent past. I doubt the concept survives much longer. On the other hand, I think in the US, it is alive and well.

James50

Originally Posted by Mary Kate 1982

No. Sorry, no motive to do so and less public will. But if I were you, I would be looking at the underclass of immigrants in Europe (including Sweden) for upcoming violence. They are at the bottom of the economic totem pole. Every time there is a jolt in the economy, especially in the big three (France, Britain, Germany) there will be repercussions to the lowest social strata because they feel the pain the most.



That is not totally accurate, dearie. In fact, it is far too simple. After WWII, your government, like most governments of Europe, had a problem in that they lost a lot of people in two world wars, so rebuilding the economy was going to be that much trickier. At the same time, many of the European powers had to go through a period of decolonialization. Ergo, a window opened up: politicians decided to invite former colonials to Europe to pick up the slack and speed up recovery. Europe recovered and prospered. That was the good news.

The bad news was the way that Arabs and blacks and South Asians were treated. There were few paths to social advancement: political representation never materialized for these groups. Amongst the powers that be and the host European cultures themselves, there was very poor understanding of what exactly they were inviting to Europe, or rather, who: none of these cultures ever had an Enlightenment or Renaissance. Their native cultures use shame or fear as a regulator of sociopolitical behavior, not guilt or burden of proof, and immigrants from these cultures will often listen to the devil they know over the devil they don't know and won't understand. Democracy doesn't exist in feudal societies or cultures that are nearly totally communally oriented as your rights are defined only in one's relation to others, not in what the powerful owe you. Thus, an imam has a lot more weight over an immigrant community than a district court judge and some immigrants will have no problem taking social protection (the dole) for as long as they want because so long as one is not found out ,one is not guilty, and in one's mind it is the job of others to support him. The current politicians do not understand this at all. Telling a Muslimah to remove her veil at school only creates trouble. Serving halal food in the cafeteria as an alternative for her helps the situation. The state should only intervene when it is absolutely necessary (honor killings, letting the blind get in the cab with a seeing eye dog as ALL cabbies must assist the disabled, female genital mutilation [based on a medical rationale,] and giving an alternative for Muslim women who seek to divorce their husbands or escape brutality.)


Europeans further treat their 1000 year old cultures like monoliths that are incapable of evolving. Just last night I was watching a program on Parisian pastry chefs looking to win a medal for their works. I noticed something very sad. There was little that was new. All of them used choux pastry at one point or another, all used the same recipes for chocolate, all were obsessed with nougatine and all had the same old same old ingredients, same old stuff France has been using for eons. It occurred to me that they had thousands of blacks and Muslims on their doorstep and not one of them thought to snoop around the alleys looking for new ingredients or incorporate them into the cakes they were making and call it French pastry. It wasn't even like they would be low on options: African mango. pistachios. soursop. actual canes of sugarcane. jasmine flowers. Figs. phyllo dough. palm wine. To me it indicated that the chefs still regarded the blacks and Muslims as "other" when they actually had a huge opportunity to create something incredible. I also noticed that every chef there was white. It would appear to an outsider, Tussilago, that multiculturalism is what a lot of European politicians talk about and what is praised in polite conversation....but the practice stinks. So long as one monolithic fixed culture dominates all others in every aspect of life, so long as one rules above the others, I guess that Europe truly is a paradise.

They don't even have immigrant restaurants? Good grief --- here in Albuquerque, a flyover country city of 500,000 people, we have Persian and Turkish and Middle Eastern and of course Vietnamese and Thai and heavens knows what else - and you can't be invited to anybody's house or party without some things like hummus or falafel being on offer. (Well, all right. I have a friend who prides himself on his solid traditional Midwestern cuisine. I haven't heard any complaints about it. Last night's entree was chicken enchiladas, which in this state *is* traditional American cooking.

Originally Posted by James50

ECB rumored to bring out the bazookas tonight and buy Italian and Spanish bonds.

What happens if they don't?

James50

Even scarier, does it make a real difference if they do? Just Spain is going to ultimately require more money than the ECB is going to want to use to bail out IMO, and Italy is probably going to require more than spain. It seems like yet another band aid, since it seems unlikely that the political will exists to effectively deal with the problem (e.g., France and Germany opening up the pocketbook).

I would not be surprised if we are in another banking crisis 6 months from now, this one brought on by Europe.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

They don't even have immigrant restaurants? Good grief --- here in Albuquerque, a flyover country city of 500,000 people, we have Persian and Turkish and Middle Eastern and of course Vietnamese and Thai and heavens knows what else - and you can't be invited to anybody's house or party without some things like hummus or falafel being on offer. (Well, all right. I have a friend who prides himself on his solid traditional Midwestern cuisine. I haven't heard any complaints about it. Last night's entree was chicken enchiladas, which in this state *is* traditional American cooking.

They had ethnic restaurants in Sweden back in 2002, when I was there last. Heck, they even had ethnic restaurants in England in 1973. I was a vegetarian at the time, and was saved by the proliferation of Indian restaurants there.