What I KNOW...
It's funny, when you actually sit down and think about what you know, it's actually a lot: I know that TODAY is the 30th of November, 2005, one day before December the first. I know that Germany is now building hundreds of BOREDELLOS to appease the voracious appetites of soccer fans around the world. I know that glaciers in the ALPS are receding at a rate of 2 meters per year; that any ski resort under 1000m above sea level will have to make 80 percent of their snow in 15 years. I know that MR. BUSH likes to use the words 'darn' and 'stay the course'. I know what the MATING ritual of a badger looks and sounds like. I know how to make a mean WIENERSCHNITZEL. I know that STILL, only TWO people seem to be writing articles in the Stusie. I know that WIEN, the largest city in Austria, expects up to 1.5 million revellers (who all seem to be carrying unsafe explosives) on the night of the 31st of December, making it one of the crazier events anytime, anywhere. I know that over 40 percent of the population of Zimbabwe has HIV or AIDS. I know that MOLDOVA is, mit Abstand, the poorest country in Europe. I know that certain members of the European Parliament plan to include all countries on the European continent in the EUROPEAN UNION. I know a lot of Austrians who are DEATHLY AFRAID of Turks. I know exactly how many members are in the GERMAN PARLIAMENT (614), and I know how many members belong to the NPD (0). I know that RONALDINHO, a Brazilian, was voted Europe's best footballer for 2005. I know that this year there were three times as many major HURRICANES as in the average year. I know that the typical BRÖTCHEN is rock hard after approximately 7 hours. I know that 15.2 miles is the length of the world's longest TUNNEL, and that it can be found in between Norway's two largest cities, Oslo and Bergen. I know that the FINNISH boast the best secondary schools in the world. I know that CHINA has 50 cities with over 1 million inhabitants, and that it has 8 cities with over 5 million. I know that SINN FEIN has members of parliament in both Dublin and London. I know what a KRAMPUS is. I know that two of Santa's reindeer are named 'THUNDER AND LIGHTNING'. I know that every snowflake is UNIQUE, and that all asian people seem to look THE SAME. You might ask at this POINT, is there any POINT to this post? The answer, I know, is NO. I know that MORMANISM is the fastest growing religion in the world. I know that the longest WORD in any language has 256 letters and I know that this word is, to noone's surprise, a German compound word. I know to LOOK BOTH WAYS before crossing the street. I know that SOCRATES said: all I know is that I know nothing. I know that you're getting sick of reading this, so I know that it's best to quit while I'm ahead. Be an eager Stusie reader if you want to know what I
THINK.
CHavEz Guevara?
There's a new sheriff in town, and he's got a pantload of oil instead of a six-shooter. Hugo Chavez is the proud 'President' of Venezuela, although one would be much more precise in describing him as a South American Socialist Icon than a president. He has made it his personal mission to link all South American countries under one anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-communist banner, making it no mystery that he wants to send Georgy crying for his mommy by depriving him of his favorite commodity: the bubblin' crude.
Mr. Chavez's newfound popularity certainly stems from his confident, matter-of-fact manner of speaking (just a guess...I don't understand a damn word he's saying), but perhaps more important is the fact that the price of oil has gone through the roof in the last few years, and Hugo is sitting on one of the largest caches of oil this side of the Euphrates. In fact, Venezuela provides over 15 percent of the U.S.'s massive oil needs in addition to being the main provider for Caribbean and other South American nations. Hugo knows that he's got a hell of a large carrot on a stick, and the U.S. is the donkey following it.
Now, in the past this relationship was well and good, because, as with almost all other governments in South America, Venezuela had a leader that more or less did whatever we said. That, and the overwhelming fact that a few years back oil wasn't the high-priced commodity it is now. Venezuela was a frighteningly poor country (and still is) and has few other exports aside from oil. Now we can see why their relationship to the U.S. was a necessity. A few natural disasters and a couple hundred million barrels of oil later, Venezuela has democratically elected Hugo Chavez, who now has the option of a dozen different oil consumers (e.g. China) who are more than willing to pay the same price as the US of A so they can have their fair share of the decadence.
This whole situation would be less than interesting if Chavez was a ruthless dictator who wiped out swaths of ethnic minorities in his country, because then we would simply march in, make a massive bastardized mess of their country and call it Freedom; but the reality is, he is preaching a familiar gospel to a particularly willing choir. Socialist thought has a long tradition in Latin and South America, and really only took a short nap while consecutive U.S. regimes either tacitly or elicitly controlled the political climate. Whether it was the 'drug war' in Columbia and Nicaragua or upheaval in Bolivia, American goevernments in the last 25 years have had their arms elbow deep in the bloody mess of politics south of Mexico, but the spirit of a certain Che Guevara never really died, and Hugo Chavez's fight against the West has been hailed by a huge majority of the populations of all of the countries in the region. In fact, his popularity soared even higher when he produced evidence that the U.S. was secretly planning to off him. Sounds a bit fishy, but who's gonna doubt him when we've done it a half dozen times before?
But that's not all: Hugo Chavez doesn't only consider socialist brothers like Fidel Castro to be his best friends. He is the David to the Goliath of global capitalism, and who better to represent the big, dumb, clumsy Goliath of the Bible than Dubya? In fighting this enemy, Chavez has also enlisted, among others, the help of the Iranians, who in their equal hatred of the Great Satan (a.k.a. Goliath, Dubya) have succeeded in becoming one of the most feared regimes in the world. So to sum up, we have an ardent anti-American Socialist Venezuela
n controlling a good portion of the world's remaining oil reserves, allying himself with equally oil-rich and American-hating middle eastern regimes (one of which is potentially close to obtaining nuclear technology), and giving all kinds of ultimatums to boot...whew, that was a mouthful.
The best and the brightest in Washington can clearly observe these developments from their windowed offices, so they obviously are reacting accordingly, right? Hmm...well, I guess the script for the recent Conference of the Americas was completed before they got the memo on Chavez. The U.S. marched on down there, as it often does, and made a plethora of one-sided demands that would ease the American economy and further cripple the farmers and producers of South America. In essence, we politically hot karled them at precisely the wrong time. To be completely honest, I'm kinda scared of Chavez because he's pretty much a power-hungry zealot along the lines of a certain Stalin or Mugabe (another friend of Chavez), but I'm more scared at the reaction of the U.S. government. Everything that they've done in the last year and a half has appeared to be horribly misinformed and ill-advised, and when you combine this with the total embarassment of Bush's recent Asia trip, it looks like the plane has crashed into the mountain. I just hope the Big Lebowski finds me before the Germans cut my dick off.
John Yoo, Berkley's Neocon Asswipe
Two days ago John Yoo came to the St. Thomas Law School at the invitation of our Federalist Society Chapter. For those who are unfamiliar, the
Federalist Society is a conservative/libertarian group that concerns itself primarily with what I would call the
traditional republican party platform: small government, states' rights, fiscal conservatism and the like. I emphasized the word traditional above, since today's republicans seem to have completely abandoned such ideals in favor of irresponsible and inequitable tax cuts, enormous overreaching governmental entities and the Orwellian dominance of the federal government. So these Federalists can't be that bad, eh? After all, they should dislike the current administration as much as the rest of the world does, right? Inexplicably, that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. Apparently they're assholes first, and Federalists second.
Anyway, they invited John Yoo, who I have
previously mentioned to speak about "Presidential War Powers." Yoo is a strong supporter of Presidental domination of anything that moves. He has argued that during times of conflict, POTUS can do pretty much anything he wants, regardless of what any international law or Geneva convention might say. The fact that we've previously signed and therefore agreed to be bound by such agreements is moot if we're at war, according to Yoo. I'm not sure if it's dawned on him that these agreements mostly come into play ONLY when we're at war. If he has noticed, he's cleverly omitted that little point from his arguements. Crafty bastard.
In the days leading up to his visit our Amnesty International Chapter organized a superb lineup of speakers, all of whom decried Yoo's work and the effects it has had, not only for prisoners in Guantanimo Bay, Abu Garib and Afganistan, but also for those in the
CIA prisions around the g
lobe that we only found out about last week. It was good to see that we have a very balanced student body, with plenty of people interested in taking a strong stand against Yoo's presence.
On the day, I found out that the Federalists had, rather to my surprise, provided an opponent for Yoo, a professor from the U of M Law School, who was supposed to debate the President's ability to declare war. As it turns out, Professor Paulsen, Yoo's opponent, is just slightly less conservative. Not only did these guys not really disagree, but
they were friends. It was the saddest excuse for a debate I've ever seen.
Yoo thanked Paulsen, Paulsen thanked Yoo, they complemented each other on going to Yale Law, Yoo plugged his book and then explained why the part of the Constitution that clearly gives Congress the sole ability to declare war is ambiguous. Paulsen got up, plugged Yoo's book, and briefly said that he thought Congress should be the one who declares war, and then added a monfuckingstrosity of a caveat: that if the president, in his role as commander-in-chief, was responding to an attack on the U.S. he could declare war. Now that pretty neatly makes the whole fucking argument an exercise in futility doesn't it? Perfect.
Bosnia-Herzegovina: The New and Unimproved Multi-Kulti Gesellschaft
http://economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5213089Given that I'm in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, I thought it would be appropriate for me to remain in the European theater of events and news. My interest was recently peaked by an article talking about Bosnia-Herzegovina 10 years after the Dayton Agreements in
Der Spiegel. When I traveled there last year I experienced first hand some the effects of the recent civil war, and learned some of the basics of Balkan history.
First of all, a short and sweet background of recent history in the former Yugoslavia: The death of Tito in 1980 - the communist leader of Yugoslavia from the end of WWII - resulted in a power vacuum that in turn caused a resurgence of ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia. The three main groups - the Bosniaks (muslim), the Croats (catholic) and the Serbs (orthodox christian) jockeyed for land and sovereignty. Like typical 8 year old boys, the three groups grabbed for their favorite cities and land; sure enough, they all wanted the same territory and toys. War ensued, and the Serbs, who happened to have some kick-ass toys on hand (Soviet tanks and a bunch of Mig-28's) camped out on the looming hills and bombed the living shit out of the majority Muslim population below. The Bosniaks, being resourceful people and realizing their military inferiority, pragmatically aligned themselves with the minority Croats (it's interesting to note that the Catholic Christian Croats are allying themselves with the Muslims rather than fellow Christians).
We all know the general outcome of this situation. Billy the Clinton to the rescue: delegates from each ethnic group are brought to, yes, the most unlikely of Accord-signing-locations imaginable, Dayton, Ohio. Seriously, who is in charge of choosing these places, and couldn't they pick a city where there are at least a single Sehenswürdigkeit. Fucking Dayton, Ohio...wow. But I digress. The three groups, all of whom were guilty of various forms of attempts at genocide, were more or less forced, again like a pair of fighting 8 year olds, to shake hands and promise not to gas and slaughter each other, becuase big boys in Europe don't do that any more.
We zoom forward ten years. Today's Bosnia-Hezegovina proudly flies its own flag, and even has its own car sticker abbreviation thingie (BiH). The problem is, it is still a very tense, ununified and poor country when one looks at the structure of legislation, the infrastructure, and the distribution of wealth and people:
As Lee, Cristo, and I drove into the northern part of the country controlled by the Serbians, they laughed at us, asking whether we really wanted to enter the country as Westerners. We reluctantly said yes, and soon found out the purpose of the query. Our Fiat nearly disappeared into the first meter-wide pothole in the middle of the road after crossing the border, then the poor Panda was nearly totalled by the dirty herd of sheep not crossing, but walking along the road. Garbage piles seemed like the norm (along with the smell), and we were perplexed by the fact that nobody seemed to be doing anything in particular. They just sort of sat around, wandered on the street, or carried half-destroyed clay bricks from one place to another. Nothing being built, nothing being destroyed, no markets, no trains. It was a perfect picture of stagnation.
So in post-Dayton Bosnia, the land was divided 49 and 51 percent between the Bosniak-Croat coalition and the Serbians, and a certain amount of autonomy was given to the respective regions. In essence, BiH has two official governments: the one for the whole country and the one for each of the two ethnic regions. Sounds like a typical clusterfuck of an agreement written by U.S. bureaucrats, huh? Well, the Dayton Agreement did succeed in stopping people like Slobodan Milosevic, but seriously dropped the organizational ball as far as establishing a realistic government. Something like 70 percent of the hard-earned taxes of the money-strapped population is used to fund the massive bureaucracy. 70 fucking percent...it almost sounds like the EU. So but that leaves a couple thousand Bosnian Convertable Marks (yep, the Bosnian currency was pegged on the good ol' German mark) to alleviate the adverse poverty, clean up some of the trash that plagues the countryside, and rebuild some of the thousands of buildings that still stand as skeletons all over the country.
On top of all of this, at the same time that the government seems to be completely inept and broke, the Serbians and the Bosniaks are still respectively pushing for their own sovereignty, while neighboring Croatia worries about the fate of its brothers and sisters living among Orthodox and Muslim majorities. Politicians from each side are for now non-violently jockeying for positions of power so that they can corruptly take advantage of the little that there is left to take advantage of. Well, it seems that the Dayton Agreements are about as fantastic as its city of origin. The question now is, how long will the politicians be satisfied with the classic push and pull of "modern democracy" before they decide the mortar and tank are much more effective tools?
I think most important in this issue is that since the war ended, all of us have seemed to have forgotten about this region. We've got more important things to worry about, like the bird flu, some burned out Renaults, and the failure of Brett Favre to throw more touchdowns than interceptions in the past four weeks. Mark my words, this area of Europe that has been a powderkeg since before powderkegs came into existence, will find itself in the Schlagzeilen again fairly soon. Hopefully this time we can find a better place to make the 8 year olds shake hands and make up. (There really isn't any better place to hear a more intelligent and in-depth discussion of this subject, because this is academic and sophisticated as it gets...dammit)
Kansas: Building that bridge to the 16th Century...
On Tuesday the Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 to adopt
new science standards recommending that schools teach specific points that doubters of evolution use to undermine its primacy in science education. The changes also included redefining the term "science" so that it is no longer limited to natural explanations of the world around us. This step is not out of the blue however, it is merely the latest and boldest step forward for proponents of
intelligent design. ID, as it is fondly referred to by those bright enough to handle an acronym but too dim to realize what it is they're supporting, is a revamped and sexified version of creationism. The main idea behind it is that much of life on earth, as we have observed it, is too complex to have evolved randomly - enter the aforementioned intelligent designer. Now I'm far from agnostic, but it strikes me as more than a little ridiculous to first point out that something seems incredible (that complex life evolved randomly) and then decide that blaming it all on a highly intelligent supernatural force solves the problem. Backwards bastards.
This is obviously a poorly hidden ploy to slip religion into public schools. The separation of church and state in this country is becoming little more than an ideal to which we once aspired. These are the same cretins who seem incapable of understanding that the idea behind the United States was that everyone was free to have their own beliefs. THEIR OWN BELIEFS. This is not a difficult concept, but it only works if people don't spend all their time trying so sneak little bits of their religion into government institutions.
It's not that there's anything wrong with having faith and/or religion. In fact, I'd recommend it, it brings balance - assuming of course that you're equipped with the intellect to get beyond the Sunday school stories designed to make the concepts accessable. Science and religion can (and have) gotten along well for quite a while, they are not mutually exclusive concepts. Here's a little excerpt Lissi found from the Catechism of the Catholic Church illustrating just that point:
159 Faith and science: "
Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."[37] "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."[38]
StuSik - The StuSie Musik Review
The first edition of the StuSie Musik Review is here. I've been listening to an interesting variety of stuff lately, incorporating the various recommendations of a number of people. The one that's been getting the most playtime on the ol' MP3 player is
Muse. Now this might be old news to many of you, I'm really not sure how I hadn't heard any of their stuff, but it's not bad at all. They've been compared to Radiohead a lot, but it seems like everything that's halfway decent these days gets compared to Radiohead, so it's tough to know what that's supposed to mean. For example, some people say a band is like Radiohead when they mean it's innovative and fresh and worth listening to, while others make the same comparison when they mean it's unoriginal (because Radiohead did it first) and whiney and miserable.
What that all boils down to, is that you shouldn't listen to other people's opinions about music ... and I think I've just argued this post out of existence. Fuck it, listen to me anyway.
Muse is three dudes, Matthew Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard, who put forth a very acceptable blend of angst rock and electronica. Sounds Radioheady you say? It is. Check it out if you haven't already. I'd recommend the song "Blackout."
Next, Giles brought a group called
Lemon Jelly to my attention, and they definitely take the StuSik award for wierdness. They're a London-based dj duo with a semi-crunchy, often-spoken-word-based, electronic sound. They have a few songs that are catchy little tunes behind nursery rhymes and the like. Sounds stupid, and I guess it is a little, but I like it. Check them out.
Finally, for all those Coldplay fans out there, I just wanted to include this link to a
great BBC interview with the band about their early days when they were called "Starfish." It's about a thirty minute interview, but is well worth a listen if you've got the time, and lets face it, I'm pretty sure you've got the time. As I mentioned to Morsch in an email a while back, I had the good fortune to see Coldplay in Minneapolis for free and the show was amazing. The alpine show this summer was also
good, but as we all noted, very short. They played for almost 2 straight hours at the Target Center and Chris Martin spent a good deal of time talking about the problems they'd been having as a band and that they'd almost broken up several times. Apparently they've put their differences behind them now, and are united once again. Sweet.
City of God? More like Escape from LA
...And der Mistfink returns with a one-two punch of nostalgia and politics. Seriously though, the situation in Frankreich deserves multiple entries and I'm not about to leave my two (Euro) cents out. The events unfolding in the land of frogs and farmers do call to mind a movie script, but nothing near the quality of City of God. No, I think
Kurt Russell's Snake Ripkin would fit in very well at the moment in
Clichy-sous-Bois. The proximate causes of this unrest, as der Mistfink correctly points out, are as varied as they are numerous, but several stand out as leading directly to
4,300 burned-out cars (and counting). I had initially assumed that the price of heating oil had finally eclipsed the price of your average Citroen, and so now the Frenchs were going to burn those for warmth, but alas I was mistook. Not only does the reason for all this violence and fire appear to be more indignant and less practical in nature, but it means that it's hugely unlikely they're going to get through the millions of Citroens that have been accumulating all over the country since the '60s. Merde.
Naturally, the proported "reason" behind the more than 10 days of riots was simply the touch-paper for a much larger situation. Something something straw ... something something camel. It was of course unfortunate that two kids were killed, regardless of whether or not they were running from the police. At this point, it really doesn't matter. The anger that has exploded has been building for decades and was brought to a head in recent years by attempts to further assimilate poor French Muslims into a Judeo-Christian French society. I believe I briefly mentioned the
headscarf ban in a previous post as an example of right-wing overreaching. The problem now however, is that the reaction to what was certainly an attempt to curtail civil liberties has, in essence, justified the very injustice it was designed to bring attention to. Understand, I'm not arguing for a headscarf ban, or any other measure targeting a specific ethnic, religious or racial group, but what I am pointing out is that rioting and burning all around you doesn't do much for your cause. We've all heard the "it takes a bigger man to walk away" spiel, and we've all felt the deep-seated desire to wade knee-deep in the blood of our antagonizers, but if one is not constrained by any moral or ethical argument against violence, the sheer logic MUST count for something. Just as the U.S. would love North Korea to start making crazy threats, and just as my downstairs neighbours would love me to crank up the "Born Slippy" remix, Europe's neocons have been itching for something like this. A firsthand display of the dangers of mixed societies, a tangible reason to fear those who are different, an evidenciary argument for crossing the street whenever
les Miserables come the other way. To be honest, I thought it was going to happen in the ehemalige DDR before it happened in gay Paris. Just goes to show how much I know.
Watch out for LePen and those of his ilk as they break out the "I told you so" banners when this is over. And watch the inevitable draw that their argument will have to the unfortunate working class French who have been caught in the middle of this social and economic squeeze. It's very tempting to hate when your car was burned while you were sleeping for something you had nothing to do with. Although maybe it should be considered a blessing in disguise, after all ... it was probably a Citroen...
Guerre Urbain en Paris: The New City of God?
After a brief respite from politics, der Mistfink is back on the pulpit to talk about assimilation, immigration politics, and the effect of global capitalism in urban life. The outer regions of Paris, along with poverty-stricken areas of perhaps a half dozen other French cities are a
flame, both literally and figuratively. A seemingly insignificant incident, in which two youths were electrocuted during a police chase, has sparked the rage of minority and poor populations throughout France. Over 3,000 cars have burned to the ground, and dozens have been injured. What is the real cause for this frustration, and why has this reaction broken out now?
In starting with the most simple and mundane of the causes for this violence, we need only look to the ministry of the interior, where the Polish-born Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to don his brass knuckles and single-handedly knock the teeth out of every piece of "scum" living in the now not-so-romantic city of Paris. What he really means is that he wants to rid the city of the troublesome lower classes living in the outskirts, who also happen to be minorities. I find it somehow ironic how the immigrants themselves often seem to be the most harsh on other immigrants (see the policies of the esteemed Mr. Schwarzenegger in California). But obviously, the hardened youth of Paris aren't going to let some skinny-ass white guy in a €1000 suit and a turned up nose call them "scum" without doing anything about it, are they?
But really, calling this the cause for thousands of burned cars, dozens of injured policeman, and the ensuing spread of violence to other French cities is naive. What we're looking at here is a much more deep-rooted problem that has managed to bubble its way to the surface. In order to get to the bottom of it, we have to discuss the idea of urbanism, immigration, and tendencies of capitalism. Let's start with an example: most of us, if not all of us, has seen the film City of God, in which we are put in the middle of the massive ghettos of Rio de Janeiro. The point of this film is not just to make us hate cops even more, but to introduce us to the idea of segregation in a large city. It is an inevitable reality that there are extremely rich and extremely poor people in large cities. There is literally no exception to this rule in the world. Somebody is always polishing the gold-leafed toilets of the executives. The problem is, the rich people don't want the dirty poor people to stick around after they're finished removing the also-stinky shit from expensive toilets; hence, the birth of the ghetto, or slums, whatever you want to call them. In any case, we have this fundamental idea of segregation, where the poor stick together and the rich do anything possible to keep them away, more or less. In the case of Rio, the police are not there to serve and protect, but to sell weapons and drugs to the poor so that they are too preoccupied with in-fighting to plan any kind of 'rebellion' in the city.
So we have this idea of segregation that is seemingly unavoidable. Now let's look back at the specific policy of France with respect to the immigrants, who essentially also represent the poor population. Since the days of colonialism began, France has always been the die-hard, gung-ho assimilators. In other words, they were going to do whatever the hell had to be done to make those savages French whether they liked it or not. In Algeria in the 1800's, this seemed to work alright, until the African people realized they were being fucked over, bound together, and basically caused enough trouble that the French eventually decided to give up the mission. The significance of this historical example is that the French policy basically hasn't changed, though the location has. The millions of immigrants now living in France largely originate from the former colonies, and the French government still has every intention of making these people as French as possible. Banning headdresses, suppressing religion to a certain extent, and tacit or overt use of discrimination are all within the bounds of fair play for the government. The problem is, like in Algeria, eventually you reach a breaking point: people will only quietly tolerate such measures for so long, and when they realize that raising a little hell will get them a little attention, they're sure as hell going to do it (plus its super entertaining to watch an object as large as a Citroen go up in a ball of flames). This then raises the question: what can or will the French government do to stop the unrest, and what will other governments do to avoid situations like those going on in France?
In judging the first responses of both Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Chirac to the violence, we see that it actually is true that politicians behave like a 10 year old boy whose arch enemy has just set foot on his lawn. Both men have promised to eradicate the causes of this violence, arresting hundreds upon hundreds of people and promising to push these cases through the courts doubletime. Well, congrats, fellas, just toss 'em all in the clink, and problem solved, right? I'm so relieved that politicians these days are so decisive and logical in times of need. Seriously, though, we can obviously see the lack of logic in this response so I won't spell it out.
But for the countries where violence hasn't yet broken out, the responses are much more interesting. In Germany, for example, politicians have called for new attention to immigration policy, specifically in the area of language requirements. The interior minister of Bayern has said that Germany must step up 'integration', as it is called, so that minorities like the huge Turkish population have more of a chance to improve their living conditions. In short, teach them German so they can get quality jobs and make money. A German-speaking immigrant is apparently a happy immigrant, and a happy immigrant doesn't throw Molotov Cocktails, right? Well, once again, this response simply doesn't cut the Muenster. First of all, teaching them German does nothing to eradicate the deep-rooted prejudices that are attached to Turks living in Germany, and second of all, we return to this idea about big cities: there always has to be someone to sweep the streets and occasionally wash the graffiti from the walls of Runzmattenweg. If you overeducate the people you've designated to fill these positions, you're left in a two-fold quandry: there's shit all over your toilet, and the guy that used to clean it is now competing for your job.
If the other countries of Europe (and even the good ol' US of A?!) are going to really tackle these problems, they need to get a little bit more sophisticated than telling the perpetrators to get outta their respective yards. Fifth grade logic doesn't really work all that well in the real world. Urban arpartheid, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung calls it, is a reality that will only worsen as the effects of globalisation magnify the current ethnic structure of the world's big cities. Even if we elect people like LePen or Haider who are willing to go to extreme measures to keep the riff raff out, multi-ethnic cities are here to stay, so we might as well start looking for ways to make them work. We either have to take our advice from the Brazilians and arm them to the teeth and get them all so high that they mow each other down, or we have to rethink the idea of assimilation (or integration, as the master euphemists have put it) and go back to the drawing board. Me, I'm getting a car that's made outta the same stuff as those fire-proof matresses. Now
that's a solution, if you ask me.
