From the Christian Science Monitor:
PARIS – Hardly had the fires died down in the Paris suburbs, as the November rioting by immigrant youths petered out, than the flames of another conflict fed by France's colonial past began to sweep through the political landscape here.This time they are metaphorical. But the passionate debate under way over whether French history teachers should stress positive aspects of colonialism is generating almost as much heat. The argument reveals the same ambivalence among French politicians about their country's former empire and its peoples which also fuels much of the immigrants' alienation. It has also raised questions about whether a democracy can have an "official history."...
The trouble started last February, when lawmakers from the conservative ruling party quietly slipped a clause into a bill requiring schools to "recognize in particular the positive character of the French overseas presence, notably in North Africa."
History teachers protested, and in November the opposition Socialists, whose leader François Hollande said had voted for it "inadvertently," tried and failed to overturn it in Parliament.
Diplomatic pandemonium ensued. Algeria suspended negotiations on a friendship treaty with France that was meant to seal the two countries' final reconciliation. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy cancelled a trip to France's Caribbean island possessions when local leaders said they would not meet him. And fierce arguments broke out at home both about the nature of French colonial rule and about whether politicians should tell schools how to teach history...
As French society has changed over the past half- century, with several million North African immigrants moving to France and raising children as French citizens, "more and more people do not recognize colonial history told from the colonizers' perspective," points out Guy Pervillé, a history professor at Toulouse University. "They want their memories reflected in history, too."...
"France, which needs to find itself and come together, cannot move forward into the future without facing its past with courage," said Azouz Begag, the Minister for Equal Opportunity...
"more and more people do not recognize colonial history told from the colonizers' perspective," the article states. However these same people are more than willing to move to a country they don't like and take advantage of its socialized medical and education services and live off of their host country's welfare system. None of those systems were available to them in their countries of origin. France (and other countries) should follow Germany's lead and require loyalty tests as a precondition of citizenship. If they don't want to be loyal to their host country, then ship 'em back to where they came from.
Well this is digusting!
How dare the educators even think about NOT installing shame in the minds of young frenchmen at the "evils" of their civilisation.
DO that and you might even get rid of the Holy Grail- the Neo Marxism that teaches us that any civilisation is better and has more to offer than our own!
I mean- the whole of France's new culture is based on Shame and self denigration, you can't destroy that and the wonderful new revisionist history that goes with it or you will end up with a Nation of NeoCONS who love and are proud of their culture!
Azouz Begag actively and without shame promotes islamisation of France
Some choice quotes from this Minister for Opportunity
About Polygamy: "...We can find a suitable arrangement within the Republic"
http://www.france-echos.com/actualite.php?cle=6719
About integration:
"We must go beyond the perifery, go towards the natives (the white French), the descendents of Vercingetorix (The Gauls)..We must break down the doors, and if they don't want to open, we should use forceps.
Wherever diversity doesn't exist, it whuold be an invasion of crickets in the civil service, in the national police force. Everywhere, to such an extent that we can never go backwards"
http://fr.novopress.info/?p=3569
« Il faut traverser le périphérique, aller chez les indigènes là-bas, les descendants de Vercingétorix….Il faut casser les portes, et si elles ne veulent pas s’ouvrir, il faut y aller aux forceps.
Partout où la diversité n’existe pas, ça doit être une invasion de criquets, dans les concours de la fonction publique, dans la Police Nationale. Partout, de manière à ce qu’on ne puisse pas revenir en arrière.»
Assimilation into the culture of the host country means giving up the cultural baggage, ancient hatreds, and whatever else doesn't fit in the new environment. Migrants all over the world are refusing to do so and should be sent back. They should not use the title "immigrant," for doing so implies that one voluntarily wishes to become a member of the host society. These people are there for other purposes...
Whatch a socialist's face go through all colours of the rainbow if you question the nationality of a 'frenchman' named Ahmed, but tell you with straight face that the French had no right to be in Algeria. With 1 million french in Algeria and an unspecified number of millions of Algerians here, who has colonised who?
OT. An online poll is asking whether Sharon was a war criminal or the Israeli Charles De Gaulle. Could you please take a few seconds to click here and answer the poll. The french should be easy enough for you to understand.
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/cgi/sondage/affsondage.pl?SONDAGE=000166
Sebastien
Sharon was neither
He was the Israeli Winston Churchill.
The Lion of Juda , lived his life with the Hyenas of Islam Waiting to consume him and his pride. Like Churchill he had nowhere to run to so he stood upright and fought.
De Gaulle spent the war running away to london and and driving Churchill mad, telling him what to do.
Then when the allies prevailed, De gaulle took all the glory for himself and told Eisenhower to piss of home. Eisenhower is reputed to have said something like " Is it OK if we bury our dead before we go?"
Chevalier, you will get no argument from me on the qualities of de Gaulle. The poll however doesn't have a Winston option.
This is a clear example of political correctness run amuck. The task of teaching real History should be to teach the truth, both positive and negative.
The French colonial record, as the colonial record of most countries, is a mixture of both good and bad. In Africa, the Americas and other areas, France spread education, trade, a common language and many other policies of which she should be proud.
It is true that there are shameful episodes that must be admitted. The massacre of the Natchez Indians for example. But, despite this one criminal act, most North American Indians welcomed the French and allied with them.
As for Africa, it is true that European nations initially participated in the slave trade. It is equally true that it was the Christian Europeans who eliminated the slave trade over the violent resistence of local Muslims traders. It is also true that since the withdrawal of the Europeans from Africa, in Islamic countries such as Mauritania, Chad, and Sudan, the slave trade has returned.
The rejection of human slavery is, in all of human history, a development unique to Judeo-Christian cultures. Had it not been for colonalism, most Africans would have remained as human chattel to their local rulers.
No one should deny the real crimes of the past, but in overall balance, the French colonial experience was more positive than negative and the French can rightfully be proud of their record.
Where France and Britain should be ashamed is when in the Crimean War, they allied against the Christian Tsar of Russia and saved the dying Ottoman Empire, thus paving the way for the massacres of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians.
I can't tell you all how distressing it is to see what's happenning in History Dept.s and other areas of humanities.
Anybody concerned or interested in what's going on there should read some Keith Windschuttle's views on it.
http://www.sydneyline.com/
He writes about the killing of history with striking clarity. Worth a read.
A one-sided view of colonialism is as valid as any one-sided history (not at all). Without discussing Roman and Islamic colonialism directed AT Europe over hundreds of years it's devoid of context.
"..task of teaching real History should be to teach the truth, both positive and negative"
This is not how the left wing educators work, my friend.
Only the instalation by the educators of shame and hatred of ones culture in the youth can they later be manipulated as adults by the activists who abound in the French media, educational and french civil services etc.
Shame leads to guilt and Guilt leads to multiculturism ad extremis, a state in which any civilisation hoewver vile and genocidal is preferable to one's own.
This is the first stage in the acceptance of moral inversion and immoral equivalence, where there is not right and no wrong, perpetrators are as guilty as victims and the killing of a crazed attacker in self defence is no different than the blowing up of women and children.
The hideous wakes by "enlightened" american progressives, gays for palestine, the ISM and so called "humane" support groups for "Tookie", a vicious murderer is a prime example of the inverted morality that ensues from self hate education.
"Without discussing Roman and Islamic colonialism directed AT Europe over hundreds of years"
This implies an equivalence between Rome and Islam.
However, when Rome was colonizing Europe, Rome was superior to Europe on almost every level -- technological, military, political, social, cultural, artistic, philosophical, scientific, and moral. And then later, Roman culture became European (i.e., a nascent Europe digested a fallen Rome for its cultural nutrition).
The same cannot be said about Islam Imperialism: the Middle East and North Africa were superior to the Muslims who conquered them; same for the Iberian Christians (i.e., what would become Spain); same for Persia; same for India. Where the Muslims conquered peoples who were inferior on the military level (black Africans and Berbers), those peoples were, for all their limitations, superior to the Muslims on most of the other levels. (Only the central Asian tribes were comparable to the Muslims in abysmal inferiority on most levels except for the military; and where the central Asiatics lacked a cohesively totalitarian religion, they eventually succumbed and became Muslim.)
To paraphrase a fortune cookie:
"Man who invites termites into house cannot complain of sawdust in his souffle."
The French appear doomed by their own desire to thumb their noses at the "cowboys of America" and demonstrate their "tolerance" of the intolerable. Even if it kills them.
C'est la vie.
What they need to do, instead, is stage the classic play by their most famous philosopher, and wit, Voltaire: "MAHOMET, ou la fanatisme" ("Mohammed, or fanaticism")" (1741).
For info on it check out:
http://www.markhumphrys.com/islam.html
Same here in Australia:
For the last 30 years Australians have thrown many billions at the (unaccountable and totally corrupt) Aborigines in order to bring them into the civilized world. Little, if anything, has been achieved. Had Australia been taken by Muslims or by Chinese or Japanese they would have simply been wiped out by now.
Instead, white Australians burden themselves with the guilt and shame of the colonizer: We pay commie-teachers (Are there any other?) handsomely for the inconvenience to inculcate our native tribes with racial hatred and -who guessed it-, the idea that we have stolen their land and not only that, their soul...
The red bacteria is everywhere, it destroys our society and everyone that is infected with it.
No apologies, no retreat, no guilt!
Europe is done.
It's time to move west where it should be good for another 50 years.
Then into the sea...
Algeria under the French was the breadbasket of Europe, it's exports of food exceeded it's imports.
Now it has to import even food to feed it's own population.. no Muslim country could survive on it's own without Jizyah, also known as foreign aid and subsidy.
The following is an extract from a paper I wrote in 1984
No doubt the immigrants came with trunk loads of scholarly books on their history, colonial and other wise. What? Did some one say 70-80% illiteracy? Did someone say only 50 books a year translated into Arabic? Did someone say, not one world class university in the entire Arab world?
However, when Rome was colonizing Europe, Rome was superior to Europe on almost every level -- technological, military, political, social, cultural, artistic, philosophical, scientific, and moral.
That is one side of the reversible equation
The other side which is mentioned in Gibbon's "Rise and fall" is when Barbarians colinize and conquer a civilisation that is in every way mentioned above superior to their own.
And this is the field of study that is the most important one in relation to our own situation today.
Why did ROme Fall?
Was it because as some suggest, the pacifism of Christianity that exposed a new soft underbelly.
was it the endless sophistication of philosophy that took it down a path of folly and suicide.
Was it the corruption and moral degeneration that ensues form living too long in Luxury?
Did they indeed become so emasculated that they could not even lift a sword in Self defence?
No apologies, no retreat, no guilt!
Posted by: sheik yer'mami [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 8, 2006 07
how true you are 'sheik yer'mami"! and Nariz, they blame everything on the European colonism, but look at Mugabe of Afric, his country was a bread basket of Arfrica, now its need to import food for their starving people! kicked out the white farmer and or killed the white farmer to you own peril! and look at how cowed the EU is with that killer Mugabe! same with Arab countries..l would say a barrel of grain for ten barrels of oil.. we are feeding the world (the west).
Good news, sort of. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been voted "European of the Year" by Reader's Digest.
Reader's Digest is a bit silly, and "European", to me, is not a compliment, because it makes me think of the EU and all its works. However, if Reader's Digest are going to vote for a European of the Year, it may as well be her - she is wonderful.
Needs saying. Well done.
Oh, I'm sure the algerians would love the French to educate their nationals living in France of what happens when Muslims cooperate with a khafir government:
http://poetry.rotten.com/french-algeria/
Chevalier wrote: "This is not how the left wing educators work, my friend"
How right you are! I am a high school history teacher and an English as Second Language teacher so I have experienced this personally. Leftist administrators don't want real history taught, only their twisted ideologies. They also have no concept that immigrants to a country ought to learn its language and culture.
And we wonder why the education systems of the US and other western countries are collapsing?
You need look no further than the Israeli greenhouses of Gaza, now under Paleoswinian management. Once these houses produced beautiful and bountiful fruit, now scant months later, they are barely living proof of the arab art of destruction.
Barely anything grows there, the equipment is ignored and allowed to decay, wiring and parts are stolen and the pals themselves are now begging for help from the previous owners.
Provoslani
I believe that the turning point occured at the time of the Vietnam demonstrations. It was then that a new genreation of protestors became influential in the academic and educational world.
Ho Chi Min in a skilfull propaganda coup, leanrt from the Russians, had managed to turn American defenders of freedom in South Vietnam into an army of crazed imperialist aggressors, thanks to the help of John kerry, Jane fonda and soviet anti American propaganda.
Arafat was toed the same line and was told that he had to transform himself into " a man of peace" if he was to fool the west.Carry an olive branch in front of you and a kaleshnikov behind your back and also turn your terrorist thugs into helpless refugees yearning for their Homeland and the west will excuse everything you do.
Thus were the BIG LIES given birth with the west's full approval.
Thousands of Educators went forth ashamed of their countries' past excesses . This sense of shame would be echoed in the curiculla of schools and universities throughout the western world .
Nothing the west achieves is worthy.All acts of charity towards the third world are merely the result of selfish guilt for the transgression of the past. We must atone by accepting multiculturism and pluralism in all its aspects and thus become enlightened progressive liberals.
And on and on !
Churchill must be equated with Hitler.
GITMO with the concentration camps and all the amoral relatavism that has ensued since are the result of those early days.
The french are right when they say they must attempt to destroy the revisionism that has invaded thier educational system like aplague of locusts.
Only then will a generation be raised with pride in their country's civilisation and with the will to defend it from attack.
chevalier,
You're probably right about the '60s generation being responsible for the current education malaise, but I think the roots go even deeper than that.
After all, the godfather of modern progressive education, John Dewey (1859 - 1952) saw his influence become dominant in his own lifetime. This naturally progressed to the cultural Marxism which dominates today and is rooted in the destructive philosophies of Gramsci and Marcuse.
Perhaps we should even date the decline of the West at least back to the French Revolution and probably back to the Reformation and the Enlightenment which spawned all future revolutionary destruction.
I guess I am just a complete reactionary traditionalist but, considering the alternatives and the uncountable number of martyrs that suffered as a result, I'll be in good company.
The Sydneyline link given above is very eye opening, and some of the articles written over 10 years ago are prophetic.
Meanwhile, if anyone woud like to glance at the mugs of the 60 most wanted men in France, you can judge for yourself how successful an experiment extra european immigration has been. I would hazard a guess that these faces would be similar in any 'most wanted' list in Europe.
http://193.252.228.130/personnes1.asp?T=R
Since Napoleon France has completely lacked the ability, the wit, or the inclination to do much more than surrender and complain... She has coasted on former glory while fantasizing about her current status in the World... France, like Norma Desmond, is now ready for her closeup! HA!
I think going back to the French Revolution might be a bit much Provoslavni, but you bring up some interesting points... The arrogant French have never had the courage to admit their gargantuan mistakes and crimes during this nightmarish period of "revolution"... In typical fashion they have largely papered over this dark period, thereby failing to learn anything about their mistakes or their deficits as a culture and as a nation... And they have failed subsequently too -- the French remain typically unapologetic about Napoleon's heinous rampages in the immediate aftermath of their horrid revolution. The devastation wrought by this maniac throughout Europe and North Africa is largely unreconciled -- Napoleon, this brilliant but stupendously flawed proto-Hitler augered the mechanized bloodbaths that brought Europe to her knees a century later in two World Wars. And do we forget that it was America's efforts to support France's former colony in VietNam which drew the US Superpower into that nightmarish fiasco -- France was at the epicenter of all of these ugly events... these and many more... They have long been at the center of poisonous ideologies such as nihilism, Marxism, and the neutron bomb of culture and society: so-called post-Modernism and/or deconstructionism...
France's crimes are legion -- the arrogance of her people prevents them from learning, or hoping for the future -- Her period to honestly examine her record has come and gone... Now such an exercise seems more likely to cause irreparable harm... France is now entering an unprecedented period of self doubt and her morbid self-examination will mainly sap and destroy any possiblity that she will fight for her survival now that things have now gone too far for this sad country...
But what's new in that?
We should begin dismantling her famous chateaus, her castles and palaces, and her fantastic museums before the Muslims begin to pillage and deface these treasures... As for the average Frenchman? You're on your own! Yes, I know some would say that we need all the allies we can get in this fight against Islamic Jihad... And that is largely true, but not when it comes to France and the French! She has spit in America's eye too often -- she is NO ALLY! Her hatred of America has never been more palpable than it is now... and given her deplorable historic record of appeasement, betrayal, and surrender -- it's hard to imagine we would benefit much by saving her, or considering her in our camp against the Jihadis -- after all -- isn't that basically what we're supposed to believe right now about France? After all, isn't France already supposed to be our "ally"? Before answering "yes" I would ask for you to look at what it's gotten us to date! Betrayal. More bloodshed in Iraq... The war itself! Further terrorist planning on European soil... Appeasement of the terrorists. Encouragement for the financiers of terrorism... Smokescreens for the Jihad... More denial... More surrender...
With friends like France, who needs enemies?
I really get a kick out of the leaders of the French Caribbean islands refusal to meet with Sarkozy. It seems like they don't resent French colonialism to the point of asking for independence, thus losing all sorts of subsidies, welfare payments and free defense.
While France dotes over its past, Islam looks to the future.
Which has the bettter future? France as a republic, or the Islamic Republic of France?