Re: The Basques will be generally taller, and will tend to look different than those with significant Mayan / Aztec heritage.
Please, help me spot those "Mayan/Aztec" features on the following picture of a "modern Mexican" fellow:
modernmexican.com
Re: Note on Turkey EU bid - I think that Giscard d'Estaing is opposed to Turkey's entry. Not sure about de Villepin.
You're right about Giscard's opposition to Turkey but then, I guess that his star is now waning at the same rate as the EU Constitution --Giscard's brainchild-turned-dead-letter. Giscard is said to have been paid about 400,000 euros ($500,000) to draft it....
As for de Villepin, I think he's of the same opinion as President Jacques Chirac, that is, favorable to Turkey's EU membership.
Re: Is what Denmark and Holland appear to want to do really that extreme ? Given, there will be some extremists in every country, but is the mainstream that far ?
Well, the problem is that, across Europe, the mainstream's agenda (regarding immigration, security, the EU,...) is increasingly set and framed by the far-right. It's been a gradual, stealth process that started about 15 years ago. If you could jump into a time machine and travel back to 1990, you would realize how Europe's political landscape has deteriorated... Indeed, if you told Dutch, Belgians, French, Italians,... of 1990 that, in 15 years from then, the far-right would score anywhere between 20 to 33% in their respective countries, they all would laugh at you and tell you that never, ever would "liberal Holland", "peaceful and diffident Belgium", or "boastful yet tolerant Italy", would massively vote for the far-right... And yet, they did.
Re: Do you see the French assimilating or accomodating their Islamic populations ? Or are they doing something else ?
Well, it all boils down to a race of sorts.... Two trends are at work in France and, more generally, in Europe. The first trend is an ominous segregation of most non-European, second-class citizens: most immigrant youths, whether they have a EU citizenship or not, suffer from double-digit unemployment rate. And, just as in the US(*), the unemployment of young immigrants INCREASE proportionately to their skills/degrees... It's a social time-bomb that, every now and then, explodes locally(**).
The second trend is about European elites' tentative try with tokenism: nowadays, it's not unusual to spot, here and there, a black cop, an Arab senator, or even a Turkish minister... It's a desperate, if touching, attempt by Europe's lily-white elites to show that "things are improving"... Yet, such "affirmative action" is limited to the political arena and some professional sports (soccer, athletics,...).
As I once put it, we can conceive of Europe as a firewalled nexus, that is, national boundaries between all EU-member countries, somehow, work like firewalls and prevent any extreme ideology from leaping unhindered from one country to the next... Today, at the dawn of the XXIst century, I deem Judeofascism the most perilous, noxious ideology around, and I expect it to spread across Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Flemish-controlled Belgium, the UK, and Austria. But Judeofascism will likely be checked by the French and Spanish "firewalls"... I expect Italy to meet the same turnabout as Spain...
All in all, the Iraq War was a litmus test of sorts that sorted out "Judeofascist Europe" from "Mediterranean Europe". And that's why the EU Constitution proved such a flop: there should be TWO Constitutions --one for Southern, Mediterranean Europe, and another for Northern, lily-white Europe.
Gus
(*) ucpress.edu
(**) vendredi 27 mai 2005, 10h24
Cinq voitures incendiées à Perpignan, où la tension persiste
PERPIGNAN (AFP) - Cinq véhicules ont été incendiés pendant la nuit de jeudi à vendredi dans le quartier Saint Jacques de Perpignan, où les communautés gitane et maghrébine se font toujours face, a-t-on appris de source policière.
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fr.news.yahoo.com |
