Wrapping islam in Europe´s Mantle

Theodore Dalrymple
An artist asks: Should Europe want Turkey; should Turkey want Europe? 24 October 2005
The power of art to shock, not in the trivial sense of drawing attention to an artist’s craving for notoriety, but of making us acutely and uncomfortably aware of the ambiguities and contradictions of the human condition, remains undiminished. All that is required for an artist to exert that power is imagination, talent, intelligence, and seriousness of purpose.
A photograph exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial by the Turkish artist, Burak Delier, captures the existential dilemma confronting both his own country and Europe with brilliant precision. It shows a Muslim woman, heavily veiled, with only her eyes, her eyebrows, and some of her forehead uncovered. Her eyes, however, are wide open and express surprise, shock, fear—or perhaps even disdainful amusement. Her veil, though, is not of the usual black fabric: it is made of the European flag, dark blue with its circle of yellow stars studded across her chest and round the back of her head.
*******
There is no final, or indubitably correct, meaning to this most startling (and graceful) of images. Its ambiguity, however, is not caused by any lack of intellect of the artist—quite the reverse: it is caused by the ambiguity of life itself. Above all, Burak Delier’s photograph reminds us that history has to be lived forwards, not backwards and with hindsight, and that the openness and uncertainty of the future is both the hope of human existence and the price we have to pay for our freedom.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_10_24_05td.html

Realister & idealister
eller: konservative og neokonservative
realister som Merry, Huntington og Luttwak er modstandere af USA´s optimistiske forsøg på at demokratisere Irak. De tror ikke ikke på det af kulturelle grunde. Efterhånden som USA´s mål og midler fortoner sig i tåger og blod, ser tiden ud til at give dem ret.
Martin Krasnik kaldte på et tidspunkt i WA krigen "Den rigtige krig af de forkerte grunde". Som tiden går og Iran problemet nærmer sig, ligner den mere "Den forkerte krig af de forkerte grunde".
Vil vores idealistiske udenrigsminister også indse det efterhånden ? Og trække danske tropper ud, nu procentandelen af traumatiserede der vender hjem er fordoblet?
The United States
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005
Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition. Robert W. Merry. : Simon & Schuster, 2005, 320 pp.$26.00
This provocative and challenging book, one of the best and most thoughtful of a recent mini-spate of critiques of the Bush foreign policy from conservative realists, argues that Washington's current democratic zeal is misguided and misplaced.
Islamic civilization, Merry argues, is fundamentally different from Western civilization. Democracy may not work in the Islamic world at all; if it does, it is more likely to empower radicals than to consolidate moderate rule. For Merry, Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West is a better guide to the future than Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
Although Merry views Western civilization as deeply misguided and the West as in inexorable decline, he argues that the United States has no alternative but to ally with Europe and Russia against the hostile lands beyond;
He also calls for reduced immigration from the Islamic world as the clash of civilizations deepens. If nothing else, this book helps remind us just how elastic the term "realism" is and how much ideological baggage the theory normally carries: Merry calls himself a realist, but his proposed policies are shaped by complex, controversial, and by no means self-evidently true philosophical arguments about the nature of history. He is a Spenglerian declinist and a cultural determinist confronting the slow eclipse of the West. ("Great nations don't become adversaries to the countries of their heritage.")
This is a respectable, honorable, and possibly even an accurate reading of world history, but it seems unlikely that either political party in this nation of optimists will embrace such a rigorous pessimism anytime soon.
www.foreignaffairs.org is copyright by the Council on Foreign Relations.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
direktlänk
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G58452A0C
Jørgen Dragdahl giver i Orientering et udtømmende og informativt referat af bogen. Audio min. 9:11
http://www.dr.dk/orientering/Or_MP/2005/RAM/o051021c.ram

Sekteriseringen af kommunalpolitikken
afspejler naturligvis bare den fragmentering af landet, som politikerne har påført det via indvandringen. Den er ikke desto mindre beklagelig, og hører hjemme i et klansamfund. Det værste ved denne fragmentering er dog at største- delen af den må anses for irreversibel i overskuelig fremtid .Hvad der kun gør den så meget desto mere utilgivelig.

Indvandrere stemmer på indvandrere
Valgresultater fra Århus, Odense og København viser, at mange etniske vælgere foretrækker at stemme på landsmænd ved valg til politiske tillidsposter.
Der er en klar tendens til, at indvandrere stemmer på kandidater med en etnisk baggrund, hvis de får mulighed for det. Det konkluderer professor Lise Togeby fra Århus Universitet på baggrund af et omfattende registermateriale. Samme resultat er det lille lokalblad Vollsmose Avisen kommet til efter at have undersøgt, hvor mange stemmer de etniske kandidater fik ved det lokale valgsted ved kommunalvalget i 2001. I Odense-forstaden viser det sig, at de etniske kandidater trak en meget stor del af stemmerne ved Humlehaveskolen i Vollsmose - uanset hvor langt nede på listen, de var opstillet.
Tyrkere stemmer på tyrkere
Det er imidlertid ikke ligegyldigt, hvilken etnisk baggrund kandidaterne har, understreger Lise Togeby over for Altinget. Således kan man normalt ikke forvente, at en indvandrer med tyrkisk baggrund vil stemme på en indvandrer med tamilsk eller kinesisk baggrund: "Hvis man kigger på Gellerup-Parken i Århus, kan man tydeligt se, at det er kandidater fra samme etniske grupper som beboerne, der får flest stemmer. I Gellerup er de store grupper tyrkere, libanesere og somalier - og det er typisk kandidater med den baggrund, der får mange stemmer i området," siger Lise Togeby.
http://politik.tv2.dk/article.php/3064965.html