Archive for November 2007

COPENHAGEN, Denmark: Raving xenophobe or fearless defender of Danish values?

Nationalist leader Pia Kjaersgaard’s anti-Muslim outbursts have earned her many labels — and many votes.

Despite predictions of her populist Danish People’s Party’s demise, Kjaersgaard remains a powerful force in domestic politics after winning 14 percent of the vote in last week’s election.

“The most important thing for the Danish People’s Party is to maintain the Danish identity,” Kjaersgaard, 60, told The Associated Press in an interview.

“I am convinced that the Islamists want to sneak Sharia (Islamic law) through the back door, that they want to combat Western society and they want Islam to become the main religion,” she said.

Her party — Denmark’s third biggest — has held the role of kingmaker since 2001, giving the center-right government the backing it needs for a majority in Parliament.

In return, Kjaersgaard has been able to press the government to adopt some of Europe’s strictest immigration laws, which she says have been instrumental in stemming the inflow of Muslims with radical views.

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State schools Supt. Jack O’Connell hosted a summit in Sacramento last week of 4,000 educators, policymakers and experts. He asked them to confront California’s “racial achievement gap” — the persistently lower test scores of California’s African American and Latino public school students compared with their white and Asian peers. In 125 packed sessions, participants probed causes of the gap and offered strategies to close it. O’Connell asked them to “honestly and courageously face this pernicious problem,” and for two days, the capital was abuzz with ideas, energy and even some hope.

Strikingly, the state’s other “achievement gap” was barely mentioned at the summit; this is the gap between California and the rest of the nation.

The most recent results from the National Assessment of Education Progress test (popularly known as “the nation’s report card”) place California’s fourth- and eighth-graders below those in nearly every other state in math and reading achievement. (Although California’s math scores have improved over the last decade, so have the scores in the rest of the country.)

This national achievement gap affects students across the state regardless of their race. If we don’t address both the racial and national achievement gaps, it’s hard to imagine solving either one

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The city of Denver is showing its employees a diversity training video that portrays a white man as a narrow-minded buffoon — triggering allegations of “institutional racism” against Anglos.

“Right now, their diversity program is racially motivated against white males,” said Dennis Supple, a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning mechanic who has worked for the city 1 1/2 years.

The video, titled “Laughing Matters — Think About It,” is meant to show employees how humor at the expense of others diminishes respect in the workplace.

The character who breaks all the rules is Billy, a white, blue-collar worker who’s a racist, sexist goofball.

In one scene Billy is told that another employee named Carlos can’t do anything because he’s waiting for supplies.

“What’s his problem?” Billy asks. “He can’t sell breakfast burritos without the supplies or he takes a siesta?”

Supple said the video violates his civil rights and that he’s considering taking the equity in his house to file a lawsuit to stop the city from showing it.

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London (PTI): Britain will no longer be a welcome country for illegal immigrants. As per directives issued by the British government, businesses would have to cough up a fine of upto 10,000 pounds for every illegal immigrant they are caught employing, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported here on Friday.

Even families who have a nanny will potentially be liable for a fine as they’re technically an employer. “All firms must carry out proper checks on new employees to ensure they are legally resident in the United Kingdom,” British Immigration Minister Liam Byrne was quoted by the daily as saying.

But, in doing so, the firms must ensure they do not flout the Race Relations Act — they must treat all applicants the same, which means British workers must be made to prove they are not an illegal immigrant by producing a passport, according to the directives.

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The problems involving non-Western immigrants in Europe may have escalated a step further on October 28, when major riots broke out between Turkish and Kurdish immigrants in Berlin.

On that day an authorized demonstration was held, initially in favor of fraternity between Turks and Kurds. On its margins, however, were two unauthorized demonstrations. The subsequent riots were directly related to the battles around the Turkish-Iraqi border between Kurdish nationalists and Turkish soldiers.

During the Berlin disturbances 18 policemen were wounded and 15 demonstrators arrested. In past unrest the police had always considered the attacks as coming from the Kurdish side. This time the initiators were Turks, some of whom chased Kurds with machetes.

Claudia Schmid, head of the domestic security agency’s Berlin branch, warned that similar events might recur. There are close to 2.5 million Turks in Germany, among them an estimated 500,000 Kurds. German domestic security has been watching an estimated 300 members of the Gray Wolves, an extreme right-wing Turkish organization, and about 1,000 sympathizers of the Kurdish militant party PKK.

ALSO, IN the center of the Dutch town Doetinchem on the night of October 27, 40-50 Kurds and Turks fought. Large police forces were called in to separate the two groups. Local sources claim the disturbances are unrelated to the border fighting because it is more comfortable for Europeans to blame hooliganism than ideology for such violence

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Kathmandu - The end of 11 years of a Maoist insurgency in Nepal has given rise to growing violence blamed on ethnic groups demanding a greater say in the country’s political and economic decisions, often resulting in political losses for the former rebels.

Until recently, the ethnic groups had largely remained silent, but the Maoist insurgency brought them to the forefront.

‘The Maoists systematically used ethnic groups that were largely ignored by the ruling elites by offering them a share of governance in areas they controlled during the insurgency,’ said political analyst Sudhir Sharma, who closely followed the Maoist conflict. ‘In exchange, the ethnic groups provided the rebels with manpower to fight government forces.’

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Commentators the world over refer to it, as though it were a well-established fact that US Jews wield far more influence than their numbers (2% of the population) would suggest.

But this presumed influence is also a delicate issue in the US, and is rarely analysed.

How does the lobby work? Is its power truly legendary, or just a legend?

Two US academics, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, have set out to answer those questions, and triggered a firestorm of controversy as a result.

Their book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which builds on a 2006 article in the London Review of Books, says the reasons for US support for Israel need to be explained

America spends $3bn a year in largely military assistance - one-sixth of its direct aid budget - to help a prosperous, nuclear-armed country, and strongly backs Israel in negotiations on Middle East peace.

But according to Mearsheimer and Walt, the US gets remarkably little in return.

There have been calls in the German parliament for a ban on a far-right party that has been winning increased support in poorer parts of the east of the country.

“The National Democratic Party (NPD) provides the core infrastructure for neo-Nazis in Germany. That’s why we are considering a ban,” says a determined Sebastian Edathy.

He is a Social Democrat MP in the German Bundestag and is the main voice calling for a federal ban of the far-right NPD. He has just got his party to agree to begin the long, slow process towards a ban.

In 2003, the proposal got as far as the Constitutional Court, and stumbled. Next time, Edathy says, it will work. He rattles off his reasons:

“The NPD is anti-Semitic and very racist. It is oriented on Hitler’s old party, the NSDAP. It is against a multiple party system. It is undemocratic,” he says.

“The NPD is quite obviously working openly against the constitution. For example, every weekend demonstrations take place organised by the NPD but involving radical, violence-prone neo-Nazis.”

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The social networking site of choice is related to a student’s race, ethnicity and parents’ education, a new survey indicates.

The finding “suggests there’s less intermingling of users from varying backgrounds on these sites than previously believed,” said study leader Eszter Hargittai of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Hargittai surveyed more than 1,000 freshmen from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Results show:

Caucasian students prefer Facebook.
Hispanic students prefer MySpace.
Asian and Asian-American students were more likely than others to “socialize” on Xanga and Friendster. They also used Facebook.
Asian and Asian-American students are least likely to use MySpace.

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Accusations of racism in a Lee’s Summit high school have lead to suspensions, but now the parents say their kids were unfairly punished.

There’s apparently been some racial tension in the band at Lee’s Summit West, specifically on the drum line. Students were talked to a couple weeks ago because both the black and white kids were using the “n word” and the band director told them to stop. But then talk about a noose landed a couple kids in big trouble.

Travis Grigsby loves playing drums, but he and his friend Alex Coday weren’t able to play for two weeks after they were suspended. It started after the band’s performance at a football game. Some kids on the drum line said they were talking about the best knots to use to tie up the drum equipment.

“Someone asked if anybody knew how to tie a noose and Travis did admit he knew how to tie a noose,” Kim Grigsby said.

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