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The Dutch government has decided that immigrants, by which is meant mainly Muslim immigrants, should have made available to them government-sponsored courses in the Dutch language, Dutch history, Dutch culture. And with those courses on offer, there will be new requirements. Immigrants will be required, within a very generous five years, to demonstrate a minimal knowledge of that language, that history, that culture. It is an act born of hope and despair. The hope is that these Muslim immigrants will, in learning these subjects, not simply be thereby better able to manipulate Dutch infidels, to make demands and to subvert the laws, customs, understandings of local Infidels using tools provided by those same Infidels, but will, instead, come to appreciate that Dutch society, (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali so clearly did).
Then, instead of wishing to Islamize the locals or to have Islam dominate the Dutch, will themselves be in fact so transformed by this new knowledge, having acquired a knowledge of, and therefore deep appreciation for, Dutch freedoms, Dutch individualism, Dutch laws and understandings, Dutch thought and Dutch art, that they will not only profess loyalty to the Netherlands, but when they profess it, mean it.
To date Muslims in Holland, as elsewhere in Western Europe, have not demonstrated such loyalty or a desire to integrate through the acceptance of certain basic understandings. Instead, the younger generations of Muslim immigrants seem filled with fervor that increases rather than diminishes, and have created a situation that is unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous for Infidels in all of the countries of what Muslims call Dar al-Harb (the Domain of War) or the Bilad al-kufr (the Land of Infidelity, or Lands of the Infidels). They are taught to despise Infidels, to express hostility toward them, even at times to “cut off the heads” of the Unbelievers. This kind of sentiment, repeated so often in the Qur’an and the Hadith, has its effect.
The despair of the Dutch government is shared by the governments of other Infidel countries in Western Europe. They do not know quite what to do. Like other Western governments, that of the Netherlands appears to believe that it simply has no choice, but cannot expel (Why not? On what peculiar theory?) those who remain adherents of a belief-system that uncompromisingly divides the world between Believers and Infidels, and tells Believers that it is their duty to strive for the day when all parts of the world have removed all obstacles to the spread and dominance of Islam, so that the entire world will become part of Dar al-Islam. And the despair is felt most by those who have taken the time to thoroughly investigate the nature of Islam, not only the contents of Qur’an and Hadith, not only the example of Muhammad and the implications for Infidels of that example, but also the history, over the past 1350 years, of Muslim Jihad-conquest, and the Muslim subjugation of many different non-Muslim peoples. All of those non-Muslim peoples suffered under Muslim rule in ways that one would, if one did not know about Islam, and the conception of the “tolerated” non-Muslim, the dhimmi, and his legal status, regard as amazingly, rather than unsurprisingly, similar.
Whether they belong to the party of those Infidels who think the truth about the belief-system of Islam should be stated, or to the party of those who think one should avoid stating the truth for fear of making that grim truth even truer, Europeans recognize that the belief-system of the millions of Muslims permitted into their midst poses an unprecedented and unique problem. For Islam is not quite like any other undeclared mental baggage brought by any other kind of immigrant. Dimly, or brightly, Europeans are beginning to understand this business of a strict division in the world between Believer and Unbeliever, Muslim and Infidel. Muslims are taught this. It is taken to heart and is not theoretical. It is vividly alive for most of the world’s Muslims, no matter where they may be. The Qur’an instructs them “not to take Jews or Christians as friends, for they are friends only with each other.” Muslims are taught never to participate in, nor to recognize, the religious holidays of others. They are told to obey only those Infidel laws, in the Infidel countries they happen to live in, that Muslim scholars tell them do not conflict with Islam. They are taught that, as always, their sole loyalty must be to the Umma, the Community of Believers. Islam is a collective faith; it has no time for individualism or the individual. Muslims determined to carry on campaigns of Da’wa among vulnerable and carefully targeted groups of Infidels, ordinarily the psychically or economically marginal, are not trying to save souls so much as they are attempting to gather recruits for the army of Islam. And once recruited, those new soldiers are never allowed to leave Islam – or if they try to, they will be punished as deserters.
Muslims are taught that they are the best of people; that non-Muslims ideally should be subjugated to them; that the lands of the world’s peoples belong to Allah and to the Believers, and that in the end the entire world will, in fact, belong to them. They are taught to regard with contempt non-Believers, and the legal status of “dhimmi” that is imposed on non-Muslims (should they manage to be considered as “protected peoples”—which is only guaranteed to Christians and Jews as “ahl al-kitab” or “People of the Book”) is so onerous that over time many, to escape its burden, converted to Islam.
Holland needs to toughen its test for those wishing to become citizens of Holland. It should not be some multiple-choice farce, but so constructed as to constitute a serious inquiry into the mental makeup of the takeover. To halt the tide of Muslim immigration that is now flooding not only low-lying Holland, but all member states of the European Community, more than a finger in the crumbling polder-dike of present immigration laws will be needed. The testing of would-be immigrants for Holland should make them no longer regard the country they have landed in as just one more part of the Bilad al-kufr, the Land of Infidelity or of the Infidels, an incidental variant on the theme of the Kuffar. Those in England must learn all about England, those in France all about France, and those in Holland, all about Holland.
An immigrant must want to come to the Netherlands, for more than the free medical care, free education, free or subsidized housing and generous living allowances that Muslims all over Europe have become masters at exploiting beyond anything the creators of these welfare states ever contemplated. He must not merely be seeking an initial foothold to which he can be admitted, so that subsequently all of Europe will be open to him – to find the best way to be supported, and to work to undermine the very peoples and societies whose generosity he is exploiting for aims that those peoples and societies are only now beginning to comprehend.
It is in reality a great privilege for someone from the world of Islam to come to a Western country. The Islamic world denies many forms of artistic expression, discourages at every step free and skeptical inquiry by the Believers, limits the freedoms of women, and encourages Believers to treat non-Muslims under Muslim rule at best as “dhimmis” -- that is, those non-Muslims subject to carefully constructed legal system whereby all kinds of disabilities are inflicted on them, the sum of which is a status of humiliation, degradation, and permanent physical insecurity. Mere geographic presence in Holland does not make one Dutch, and it certainly does not allow one to both inherit the legacy of a thousand years or more of Dutch history, and then to attempt to change, to mutilate, that very legacy, as one inferior to the only legacy that counts: that of Islam.
The government of the Netherlands might wish to consider suggestions from outside.
As a well-wisher, who prefers to keep Miep Gies in mind, or the retiring Professor van der Horst, rather than Menten or the wife of Wim Duisenberg, I have prepared a test that might fit the bill.
Here it is:
1) List five achievements of the Dutch East India Company from the time of its founding in 1602.
2) In appraising Dutch rule in the East Indies during the period 1880-1940, what acts of the Dutch were most deserving of praise, and what most deserving of blame?
3) When Jews expelled from Spain came to Amsterdam after 1492, many came and settled in Amsterdam. Why were they made welcome? How did this minority, quite foreign in many ways to the Dutch in language and culture, contribute in succeeding centuries to Dutch life? If you wish, you may concentrate on the figure of Spinoza and his role in the Enlightenment.
4) Who was Anne Frank? Why is the house in which she and others hid during World War II visited by people from all over the world? What is the historical significance of Anne Frank?
5) Who was Menten, and what is his historical significance?
6) This question counts for one-third of the total grade on the entire examination, so think carefully about its full significance before answering. Discuss three of the ten paintings listed below. Choose the painting that you find most appealing and the one you find least appealing and discuss your reasons for those choices:
a) Jan Vermeer's Woman With a Turban
b) Rembrandt's The Jewish Bride
c) Lucas van Leyden, The Last Judgment
d) Gerrit Dou, Young Woman Dressing
e) Henrick Avercamp, Winter Scene on a Canal
f) Geertgen tot Sint jans, The Assumption of the Virgin
g) Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights OR The Marriage Feast at Cana
h) Frans Hals, The Merry Drinker
i) Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait
7) Describe the part of the terraqueous globe most closely associated with each of the following:
a) Henry Hudson
b) Abel Jansz Tasman
c) Willem Barents
8) Describe briefly the significance of any three of the buildings listed below:
a) Pieterskerk in Utrecht
b) Grote Kerk in Breda
c) Mauritshuis in The Hague
d) Rembrandtshuis in Amsterdam
e) Erasmushuis in Rotterdam
f) Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam
g) Beguin Convent in Amsterdam
9) Among the famous foreigners who came to Holland seeking refuge were John Locke, Descartes, and Pierre Bayle. Choose any one of the three, discuss his significance, and explain why that person sought such refuge, and whether he found in Holland what he sought.
10) What was the effect on Holland of:
a) The Treaty of Utrecht
b) The Peace of Munster
c) The Treaty of Breda
c) The Maastricht Treaty
That's ten; there are two score more. Ten of those questions will be devoted to short but representative passages from Dutch intellectual history. The original Latin of some of the writers chosen – Erasmus, Grotius, Spinoza – will have been translated into Dutch. Ten more questions will be devoted to Dutch literature, and will range chronologically from Jacob Cats to Cees Nooteboom and Harry Mulisch. And a final twenty will be devoted to the most important text in Dutch history, the one which informs so much of its artistic and philosophical legacy. That text, or those texts, consist of the Old and New Testaments. Familiarity with the Bible stories without which no one can enter, say, the Rijksmuseum and comprehend much of its contents, or without which so much of Dutch literature and history cannot be comprehended, will be essential for all those who will wish to partake of the civilizational legacy which the Dutch are generously inviting non-Dutch to share.
Extra credit? Well, we’ll give that a little thought. Possibly a paper, written outside of the examination room, on Pieter Geyl’s essays on historiography, or a paper on Huizinga’s “Homo ludens.” Yes, an essay on the spirit of “Homo ludens” will do nicely.
It won’t be an easy examination. But it shouldn’t be. Think of all the people who labored and invented and painted and wrote political tracts or a tractatus theologicus, and established joint-stock companies, and went exploring in distant lands austral and septentrional, from Van Dieman’s Land to Hudson’s Bayand even went to war from time to time, all of which went into making the Dutch the Dutch.
Standards will be high. The task of reading and judging examination answers should come to be regarded as among the most solemn duties for the citizens of Holland – that is, the indigenous Infidels who wish to keep Holland Holland. That is as it should be. No one has a right to complain, least of all those who come from societies far more violent, primitive, and collectivist than that offered to them, practically on a platter, by the people of The Netherlands, whose country it is. Obtaining Dutch citizenship, after all, is a very high privilege indeed. It can, and should, be made available only to the deserving – the deserving few.
Posted by Hugh at July 1, 2006 1:53 PM
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Question #11: Why is it that Dutch society manifests a paradox between a strongly Christian history on the one hand, and a social liberality in sex, alternative lifestyles, insouciance and free thinking that often is wildly experimental on the other hand? Explain in a brief essay between 500 and 1,000 words why this paradox is a good and healthy thing for civilization. Following this essay, if you think this paradox is not good and healthy, defend this in a second brief essay of the same length. [Note to test evaluators: collect all the second essays for use by intelligence agencies equipped to detect undue Islamic hostility to Holland and the West.]
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at July 1, 2006 2:13 PM
Such a test might increase pride among the Dutch, but ... well, is it a serious proposal? Do you see test graders making decisions based on the seeming integriy of the responder?
The focus should be exclusion, either in general or with an explicit reference to "the inadmissibility of those who support sharia." Add to this a renewed natural increase in the native population.
The question is probably, how can a non-Islamic religious consciousness return to Europe? And maybe the only way is as a consequence of horror of one kind or another.
at July 1, 2006 6:51 PM
Hugh-
A valiant effort, but sadly about as fruitful as waving a crucifix at a plague of near-sighted locusts.
As if anyone (apart from a few desperate apostates from Islam) coming from any Muslim country to Holland wants anything but a fat, dumb Dutch neck to adhere to -and begin the Islamo-leeching.
No amount of cultural 'education' will change their implanted theocratically-tyrannical ids.
I like Television's thinking, but I suggest a simpler question:
1) Should Islam dominate Holland and turn it into a theocracy based on the Koran?
If the respondent answers "YES", they fail, and are "repatriated".
If they answer "No" then a sub-question comes into effect, which would be:
1A) If you answered "NO", then, in 1,000 words -or more- explain "Why not?"
If the logic of this essay sounds bogus, for any reason, they FAIL, and are also "repatriated".
Let's stop tapdancing with Atilla (Imperialistic Islam). He (the Umma) swings a double-headed demographic and jihadist axe, and we try to reply with fill-in forms?
Pussyfooting to oblivion is a lousy epitaph.
Back to Mecca with the mendacious!
Posted by: profitsbeard at July 1, 2006 8:07 PM
This reminds me of Naseems recently voicing the criticism one constantly hears from muslims: that westerners have no, or no worthwhile culture. One gets a similar message from some politically active Maori here in NZ, and no doubt from non-western people worldwide.
Yet it's so patently absurd, but I guess many devout muslim immigrants don't see much of it. They wouldn't go to the art galleries and museums because of the naughty images, they woudn't go to concerts or listen to western radio channels. TV may not show much of European history and cultural tradition. And the less highbrow cultural traditions or cultural developments (pop music, the friendly backyard BBQ, the way we celebrate the Christian festivals whether or not we are Christians) - these are despised by them. Our scientific and medical culture, our technology is cheerfully used by all and sundry, yet the tradition of critical enquiry and free thought they come out of are not respected.
Yet these things are actively and enthusiastically pursued by most of us. We need to stand up for our culture, declare our pride in it. Maybe I'll send a flier for our next local concert to the mosques around here...
Posted by: Lili at July 1, 2006 9:47 PM
"Such a test might increase pride among the Dutch, but ... well, is it a serious proposal? Do you see test graders making decisions based on the seeming integriy of the responder?
The focus should be exclusion, either in general or with an explicit reference to "the inadmissibility of those who support sharia."
-- from a poster above
The "serious proposal" was this: merely by presenting this test, so instinct with everything that is alien to Islam, I was making a point: there is no conceivable possiblity that the world of Dutch civilization, if it is to continue to exist, cannot conceivably "integrate" those who will not know, will not appreciate, cannot possibly take to their heart, what Holland or any other part of the West is all about.
Look at the titles of the paintings selected. Well-known paintings, well-known subjects. The Last Judgment. The Jewish Bride. The Merry Drinker. The Wedding Party at Cana. A Self-Portrait (depictions of people are bad enough, but a painter who paints himself must be intolerable.) The trick-entry of a pseudo-Muslim (acceptable? unacceptable?) "Girl With Turban."
Of course such a test would also be failed, completely, by many young Dutch. Do they know those paintings? Do they recall the Treaty of Breda? Do they know who Tasman was, or Hudson? Do they remember, dimly, anything about Miep Gies or Menten? Anything about Pieter Geyl or Huizing's "Homo Ludens"?
The test was about Islam and about how distant its adherents are from everything that makes Holland Holland. It was also a reminder to the Dutch. If you forget your own history, if you know little or nothing, then you begin to think you have nothing to lose. And you don't.
As for the accompanying test, the test for Muslims about the Sharia, about the dhimmis, about Asma bint Marwan and the Khaybar Oasis and Abu Akaf and little Aisha and what we should think of those events -- yes, that is the subject of another test.
That separate text will be suitable for all Muslims throughout Bilad al-kufr. In other words, it can be given to a Muslim in France or in Italy or England or Germany. It will be about the belief-system of Islam, and how it fits or does not fit with the legal and political institutions of each country. It will be akin to the Multistate Examination that is given to all students taking the Bar Examination, no matter what the jurisdiction.
But above I was merely offering one example of that country-specific part of the examination. I chose Holland to start with (others will be offered). It is a way to prompt thought, possibly even among the Dutch who may read this and distribute it at Dutch websites, about how distant, how alien, how alien and hostile, is the world of Islam to the world of Holland. Those who keep dreaming about the "integration" of large numbers of Muslims into the societies of Western Europe never quite tell us how it will be done, because they can't. They keep ignoring the nature of Islam. And what is also offensive is that they keep avoiding looking at their own legacy, at discussing it, at seeing the ways in which that legacy is incompatible with the belief-system of Islam, and by the adherents of that belief-system.
"Serious proposal"? Yes. Making a point. Making several.
Posted by: Hugh at July 1, 2006 9:57 PM
Boy Television, your post indicates that you have more in common with Muslims than you care to admit..that is an obsession with sex as a result of sexual repression.
Whenever I think "conservative" I think of those ideologies cum religions that are sexually repressed and obsessed with sex..and that be Orthodox Judaism, Christian Conservatives and of course Islam.
The big three really have a lot in common, at their core values that is.
Posted by: Nariz at July 1, 2006 10:03 PM
You did say 'ideologies cum religions'. Perhaps that was a freudian slip of your own, Nariz? Probably the first person to use the word cum on this website. LOL
Posted by: somethingaboutislam at July 1, 2006 10:36 PM
Re: The despair of the Dutch government is shared by the governments of other Infidel countries in Western Europe.
I live in Europe and I don't sense despair on the part of national governments and the EU. Far from despair, I sense glee in the destruction of what was Western Europe, its people and religion - Christianity.
Posted by: SleepyCat at July 1, 2006 10:59 PM
"Probably the first person to use the word..."
-- from a posting above
No. See the discussion a few days ago about the use of foreign words and phrases, which one poster found distracting, and also wondered why "vademecum" had been spelled as one word rather than two.
Posted by: Hugh at July 2, 2006 1:04 AM
On June 26, under "Turkey Has Had a Good Run," this excerpt from a posting:
"As to "vademecum": I prefer to spell it as one four-syllable word no matter what the AP style-sheet insists, or some computer program presumes to dictate. If the Romans can have "cum" as an enclitic or postclitic [please note the self-restraint], which yields "mecum," then why not carry it a step further and attach the entire "mecum" as an enclitic to "vade" in order to produce "vademecum"? And that is exactly what is done in Italian and in French, though apparently not in English (though in the past, I think, it was). Does none of this nothing extenuate?"
at July 2, 2006 1:08 AM
Nariz: :Whenever I think "conservative" I think of those ideologies cum religions that are sexually repressed and obsessed with sex.."
That's funny because whenever I think of ideologies that are obsessed with sex - I think of the political left: explorations of gender and sexuality, bisexual studies, queer studies, transgender studies, blah blah blah. You know the score - a fanatical obsession with sex from the political left. While it may not be a “religion” obsessed with sex, as you say, this obsession with sex on the left is so extreme as to practically constitute a religion in and of itself. So who is it here that is actually "obsessed with sex"? I am inclined to think that Muslims and the far left are far more similar in that obsession than are normal American conservatives who may happen to object to gay marriage but otherwise just tend to largely marry in a conventional fashion and raise children and probably, on the whole, give the topic of sex a whole lot less thought than either Muslims OR leftists.
at July 2, 2006 2:11 AM
somethingaboutislam-
Come, come.
It's a perfectly acceptible latinism, as Lenny Bruce once noted in his infamous
"To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb" routine.
As in "Islam cum Penal Colony".
(Or was that Kafka?)
Posted by: profitsbeard at July 2, 2006 3:53 AM
EUROPE STREET REPORT:
Having been on a short but intensive roundtrip trough northwestern Europe during the footy worldchampionship mania this summer I had to notice the enormous ignorance about the political state of the union by the general population. The English did not care, they were hopefully fevering about their worldcup aspirations even though everone admitted that their team had played lousy, when they got kicked out hundredthousands wept and no-one was interested that meanwhile a judge at the highcourt had overturned the arrest order of the 6 terror suspects from the „gone wrong“ anti-terror razzia in London where nothing had been found. The judge did that on the controversial anti-discrimation laws from Brussels. The suspects had been monitored in clearly comitting circumstances, but they are to be set free. The Police had to apologise to the muslim community, their speakers, and the public via the media and shame is on them.
Only the Northeast seemed not yet invaded by muslim culture, on a day in Newcastle upon Thyne I noticed only 2 headscarf wearing women which was somewhat exotic like it had been 20 years ago in the rest of Europe. The locals are proudly aware of it, Durham sports quite a few universities and none of them have muslim students so the islamic culture has not set foot there yet. Considering the rest of Europe it is actually refreshing to see.
Arriving in Amsterdam is always exotic and somehow shocking, but this time I was shocked that all the hire bycicle stores were not run by longhaired locals anymore, but by Morroccans. The little kiosks and sidestalls were manned by Morrocans. They had moved out of the suburbs and had taken over the city centre. On a tourist packed sunny summerday it had the feel of Marrakech to it.
The Dutch were nursing their hangover from crying about their fate at the championships, they were not interested that their government hat collapsed on the controversial Ayaan Hirsi Ali issue. Govenment-wise all will hang in limbo until October when there will be new elections. The cause and the real problem is the deadly muslim fatwa on Hirsi Ali, but the Dutch have not figured that yet. The multicultural experiment has overtaken them and became a bonehard reality without escape. At virtually all supermarkets two thirds of the staff are sharia obiding headscarf wearing muslim girls, the shopper is confronted with sharia if he wants or not.
Germany was flying its colours, the black, red, and yellow draped the land. Their team was winning the games on homeground, and even the chancellor Mrs.Merkel was seen dancing and cajooling when the boys shot a goal.
The nation was drunk, they were not the Bad anymore, everyone liked them and loved it in Germany.
But they need that, as soon as the championships are over and normal life returns they will find out that the same Mrs.Merkel and her government have used the time of this great football distraction wisely and passed a few laws on federalism which of course plays into the hands of Brussels and the introduction of those controversial E.U. anti-dicrimination laws.
Germany seems very well saturated with muslims who would benefit , the largest group being the Turks. They are highly visible and have moved into virtually every town and city, only a percentage of villages are being without the influence of muslims. The relation to the Turks is 40 years old when turkish guestworkers were brought into the country to aid the developing economy, the fact of possibly importing jihadist Islam was never considered. The Germans were worried about their own international tolerance and a muslim was something from a storybook. Nowadays over 2400 mosques are situated in Germany.
Should the EU anti-discrimination laws be introduced you cannot arrest a terror-suspect anymore, then you have to wait till the terrorist blows himself up, and his surroundings, before you can collect the bleeding remains of the terrorist and arrest them.
One has to wonder how the responsibles at London Police felt when they were apologising to the muslims...
at July 2, 2006 8:25 AM
99% of the immigrant aplicants would fail such a test. I would be surprised if most native Dutchmen would pass it.
This might sound as elitist arrogance, but the truth is that most people don't know their own history. Some have even lost touch with the little things that make their culture unique.
The European Union is partly to blame, but this river runs even deeper. The problem is that people don't care. They don't care about the threats in a distant (?) future, as long as they can afford a new house, a new car, and vacations in the Caribbean or in Thailand.
That is how dimwitted the ordinary individual is. And as you go up the cultural/social ladder, things get even worse. The blue-collared worker acts when threatened. The more educated individual will often find excuses for the criminal behaviour of others: a poor background, the racism in our society, a poor education, a diferent culture...
The truth is that colonial arrogance has been replaced by the (also arrogant) sense that people from diferent (and inferior) cultures are somehow able to get off the hook and "forgiven" by us, the superior westerners. It's the "White Man's Burden" all over again, but for the sake of PeeCee let's simply call it the "West's Burden".
Posted by: cruzado at July 2, 2006 10:55 AM
"most people don't know their own history. Some have even lost touch with the little things that make their culture unique."
-- from a posting above
That was one of the points being made.
at July 2, 2006 11:16 AM
cosmicAvenger:
Great report! I watched the ending of the Portugal-England match. The English fans were stunned-one of the most unusual sights I've ever seen. No disappointment, no grief; just an immense lack of comprehension: How could this happen??
Posted by: ovidius_naso at July 2, 2006 12:29 PM
"And that is exactly what is done in Italian and in French"
My 1915 edition of Petit Larousse has it as vade-mecum, with a hyphen.
Posted by: Television at July 2, 2006 12:40 PM
"I watched the ending of the Portugal-England match. The English fans were stunned-one of the most unusual sights I've ever seen. No disappointment, no grief; just an immense lack of comprehension: How could this happen??"
Well, I watched English fans throwing stones at Portuguese fans in Germany, and I also read BBC reports of British police having to protect Portuguese fans from English hooligans. And their barbaric behaviour does not even surprise me considering the rampant racism and quasi-fascist victorian arrogance of the English press towards the Portuguese in the past week. Completely despicable.
Considering that the Scottish and Irish fans behave in a completely diferent manner, something tells me that the English people alone needs to perform some serious soul-searching... and get some etiquette lessons. Unbelievable.
at July 2, 2006 1:23 PM
Incidentally, considering that the last time that England beat Portugal in a competition was in 1966, they should be getting used to losing by now...
Posted by: cruzado at July 2, 2006 1:28 PM
cruzado
Ha ha! I had no idea. I should have said "How could this happen again and again??"
Thanks.
at July 2, 2006 5:50 PM
the English people alone
Not just English soccer hooligans? All of us. OK, I'll bear that in mind.
One thing I love about this site is the invaluable advice we English are given about how to run our lives. For example, we have been advised by Americans and Canadians, who obviously know better than us, that we should support the BNP. Thugs, you see, are good in the war against Islam.
Hang on a minute. English soccer fans are thugs. Or is it all of us? Is thuggery a good thing or a bad thing? Who knows? One thing's for sure, we English don't. Whatever would we do without foreigners to tell us what's what.
at July 2, 2006 7:29 PM
"English soccer fans are thugs. Or is it all of us?"
When they went to Germany and made a point of parading small inflatable Spitfires whilst they sang WWII songs, in my book that's lack of manners. When the whole press of the country labels a people as cheaters and divers, they are stereotyping an ethnicity under derogatory terms and falls under the label of "racism". That can be serious when said by an individual. When newspapers print this garbage, that is simply intolerable in a civilized society.
So no, the problem isn't just football fans, unfortunately it goes beyond that.
Posted by: cruzado at July 2, 2006 10:53 PM
I've just noticed a comment above on "vademecum" in French. Too tired now, but it is unlikely to be a cold day in July tomorrow, either. So it can wait.
Posted by: Hugh at July 2, 2006 11:42 PM
most people don't know their own history
Did they ever? Was there a golden age when most people did know their own history, given that most people had very little education? The difference now, I think, is that educated people are not taught their own history, or are taught a distorted version of it.
I like the test. I'm not sure about the Peace of Munster, though. You can't have a peace of Munster without a large glass of Gewürztraminer to wash it down, and that would be haram.
I'd add as Question 12 (someone's already added Question 11) some kind of "Israel test". The taqiyya mask always slips when asked about Israel.
When they went to Germany and made a point of parading small inflatable Spitfires whilst they sang WWII songs...
Tee hee.
Looks as if England's footballing fortunes have taken a dive. Like Ronaldo.
Posted by: Interested at July 3, 2006 6:11 AM
vade-mecum, with a hyphen.
Hyphens are the devil's work. It should either be one word or two. Of course it's one word in German, but then everything is.
Not out of principle - I don't have any principles - but for practical reasons, I'd probably go for one word: vademecum. If you had a few of them and had to make it plural, vademecums is better than vade mecums.
Only one of life's ignoramuses would say vademeca. And only the Hajj-bound would say vade meca.
at July 3, 2006 6:33 AM
"Was there a golden age when most people did know their own history, given that most people had very little education?"
No, but there was once a golden age when the ignorant knew they were ignorant, and when the "educated" cultural elites were actually educated elites. The cultural elite is a pale shadow of itself. As to the ordinary individual, he believes that the little education he received (I prefer to use to term "instruction", "education" is something completely diferent) has turned him or her into the most important person in the world. And that is why I have in my country arrogant physicians who think they know everything, and yet they can't even speak proper Portuguese. For good or bad, it's the society we live in.
"The taqiyya mask always slips when asked about Israel."
That is actually a very good idea. They simply can't contain themselves...
"Looks as if England's footballing fortunes have taken a dive. Like Ronaldo."
The only time England achieved anything in the WC was when they hosted the competition in 1966, where they cheated by forcing the Portuguese to make - at the last notice - a 7 hour train ride to Wembley (instead of a short ride to Liverpool) where they won the game by scoring a goal that didn't exist. So England hasn't just taken a dive, the problem is that she never left the water nor learned how to swim... English fair-play? Don't make me laugh!
Posted by: cruzado at July 3, 2006 7:39 AM
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