Breaking News - Major Terrorist Attack In Oslo, Norway

[Razgovory]

Is anyone pushing for "less democracy and less openness?"

Slargos.

He doesn't seem to be on about that, he (like the terrorist), seems to think his opinion is being stifled by "cultural Marxists", or whatever.

[Slargos]

Is anyone pushing for "less democracy and less openness?"

Slargos.

He doesn't seem to be on about that, he (like the terrorist), seems to think his opinion is being stifled by "cultural Marxists", or whatever.

Doesn't seem to prevent people from making shit up about me. 

[Razgovory]

Okay, maybe you are against it.  Thank you for correcting me.

[Slargos]

Okay, maybe you are against it.  Thank you for correcting me.

Did I? Or did you just make shit up again?

[LaCroix]

Okay, maybe you are against it.  Thank you for correcting me.

troll?

[Razgovory]

Okay, maybe you are against it.  Thank you for correcting me.

troll?

What does he want for me.  First I say he's not against it, then he criticizes me, then so I reverse and he still criticizes me.  He's going to have to make up his goddamn mind.

[LaCroix]

What does he want for me.  First I say he's not against it, then he criticizes me, then so I reverse and he still criticizes me.  He's going to have to make up his goddamn mind.

i can't tell whether you're being willfully obtuse, or if you really don't understand his post. i suspect the former, as he's your latest target

[Razgovory]

What does he want for me.  First I say he's not against it, then he criticizes me, then so I reverse and he still criticizes me.  He's going to have to make up his goddamn mind.

i can't tell whether you're being willfully obtuse, or if you really don't understand his post. i suspect the former, as he's your latest target

I'm pretty literal minded.

[derspiess]

Is anyone pushing for "less democracy and less openness?"

Most of Languish at one time or another-- particularly when there are election results they don't like.

[LaCroix]

I'm pretty literal minded.

then the bolding slargos provided should make it easy to understand his point, no?

[Razgovory]

I'm pretty literal minded.

then the bolding slargos provided should make it easy to understand his point, no?

Nope, apparently not.

[LaCroix]

Nope, apparently not.

[CountDeMoney]

Slargos is nuttier than squirrel shit.

[citizen k]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/europe/02iht-politicus02.html

For Europe, Few Hints of Tolerance
By John Vinocur

AMSTERDAM — Surely, you could think, the Oslo mass murders might well bring some moderation to Europe's far-right populist parties in their unyielding denigration of Islam and their Armageddon-is-nigh vision of a future shared with Muslim immigrants.

At the same time, since Norway's massacre led to statements by populist leaders rejecting violence, you might also suppose that the European left could ease up on its resistance to the idea that multiculturalism has brought parallel societies, disrespect for national laws and traditions, and a threatened sense of identity to countries with hundreds of years of democratic history.

Neither assumption is hopeless. But each enters the area of very wishful, perhaps naïve surmise.

If you take the Netherlands (including Geert Wilders, the Dutch Freedom Party chief who is Europe's most abrasive anti-Islam voice) as a prime arena for Europe's kulturkampf concerning Islam's place in its midst, Norway's tragedy has not narrowed its divisions.

The Dutch have reason to think they have been a kind of pace car in the issue's development over the last decade.

Going back to 2001, they were the first Europeans to become involved in a wave of reaction, sometimes called a citizens' revolt, against state multiculturalism. They witnessed the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, two leading anti-Islamic figures. And they observed or participated in the rise of the Freedom Party to its current role at the edge of government policy.

Now the Dutch are dealing with the fact (and its potential political impact and manipulation) that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed Oslo killer, spoke in his 1,518-page manifesto of his admiration for Geert Wilders.

Of course, alongside his stated hatred of multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Breivik also said confusedly that the Europeans he most wanted to meet were Pope Benedict and Vladimir V. Putin (whose vision of "democracy" appealed to him), that he read Homer, Kafka, John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill, and liked Lacoste shirts and Chanel Platinum Egoiste cologne.

In any case, the reaction here, at its most shrill, was at screech level.

At one extreme, talking of Mr. Wilders in a radio interview, Gerard Spong, a lawyer, accused him of having "Norwegian blood on his lips."

"Wilders has full responsibility for this," Mr. Spong said of the murders. "He contributed to the development and the acts" of the killer. (An attempt supported by Mr. Spong and Islamic officials to bring defamation charges against Mr. Wilders for anti-Islam statements ended in his acquittal this year.)

In the Dutch context, and in some respects, a wider European one, Mr. Spong's remarks fit what opponents of multiculturalism see as an attempt to restore via the Norwegian tragedy a now diminished taboo on remarks critical of Islam.

Indeed, a canvass of Dutch opinion made after the killings by the Maurice de Hond polling organization showed that 52 percent did not think Mr. Wilders had to moderate his tone on Islam, while 44 percent said he should.

So hard vs. hard continues.

In these circumstances, how does movement occur? How does the heat get drawn out of a conflict that, mirrored Europe-wide at different degrees of intensity, reflects a growing sense of powerlessness and alienation?

With great difficulty. The multicultural issue is not a genteel discussion of diversity. In large part it's a conflict driven by both the traditional left's attachment to its convictions and a significant part of the white majority's reaction to the rapid growth of Islamic communities in Europe with their own varying loyalties and notions of the law.

In political terms, for the populist parties in the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, the issue is also about maintaining a handhold on power by dosing professions of democracy into apocalyptic visions of their countries' fate.

In turn, some conservatives, with less hysterical language, appear ready to track the populists.

For European Socialists, like the Dutch Labor Party, the problem is comforting its voters' beliefs at a time when right-of-center parties virtually run Europe (social democrats govern only in Norway, Spain and Greece), and leaders like David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have pronounced state multiculturalism dead, failed or destructive of national unity and values.

Now, a "leaked e-mail" from a Labor political strategist, Pieter Paul Slikker, to party officials was reported over the weekend to have told them after months of focus group discussion, "To put it bluntly, we aren't going back to the time of 'multiculti' tea drinking."

In a new book, "Immigrant Nations," Paul Scheffer, a Dutch political scientist, has restated his opposition to multiculturalism in nonconfrontational terms that may have appeal to the left. He says that the reality of multiculturalism is that it is a doctrine of "avoidance," sustaining immigrant groups' focus "on what they've left behind," placing more emphasis "on heritage rather than openness" and tolerating pretty much everything "as long as cultures are spared all criticism."

At the same time, there may be trace indications that the populists' interest in finding respectable tonalities has actually come into play — Mr. Wilders says that "we are democrats through and through" and that he is "revolted" by the Oslo killings — in the Freedom Party's performance in Parliament. The party, on whose tacit support the Liberal Party's government leadership depends, has appeared to moderate its demands for the closure of Islamic schools, a halt to immigration from Islamic countries and a ban on the building of new mosques.

Instead, it did not oppose a government Integration Memorandum calling on immigrants to participate in a Dutch society requiring respect of freedom, equality and tolerance — no radicality there — but also one tightening standards for immigrants receiving social benefits, and creating stricter conditions for receiving Dutch nationality that specify new citizens must waive a previous nationality.

Obviously, that's hardly a Big Bang-type existential trade-off that could bring an end to a quasi-religious war. Conceivably, such a deal might offer Muslim and other immigrants a major affirmative-action program as a symbolic investment in their future in exchange for accepting a no-tolerance framework setting out their assimilation into Dutch life.

But a hint of change, just barely, involving the kulturkampf's opponents that goes beyond total inflexibility? In the context of reaction to the mass murders in Oslo, there are precious few other straws in the wind.

[Jacob]

Can't really find any factual fault with Viking's analysis.

Can you, Jacob?

I don't know. I'm not in Norway, which is why I'm interested in Viking's perception.