Líder democrata-cristão holandês sublinha falhanço do multiculturalismo

Christian Democrat leader Maxime Verhagen on Monday said the multicultural society has failed. He was speaking during the recording of tv show Nova College Tour, reports the Algemeen Dagblad.
Verhagen told the programme the Dutch no longer feel at home in their own country and immigrants are not entirely happy here either.
The minister wants the Dutch to be prouder of their country like people in the US where they first say they are American and then where they originally come from, says the paper.
He follows his European colleagues in declaring multiculturalism a failure. German chancellor Angela Merkel, British prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy have all said the same, the paper states.

 Ver notícia no DutchNews.nl

Como vencer o conflito de civilizações

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the "Clash of Civilizations," particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

Huntington's argument is worth summarizing briefly for those who now only remember his striking title. The essential building block of the post-Cold War world, he wrote, are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization. [...]

Ver artigo de Ayaan Hirsi Ali no Wall Street Journal

Diversidade étnica na escola tem efeito negativo sobre a aprendizagem

Fifteen-year-old pupils from schools with high ethnic diversity perform worse than comparable pupils from schools with homogenous student populations. This applies not just to the immigrant children, but also to the pupils from the country in question. For the latter group, the negative effect is strongest in school systems with a hierarchy of school types, such as the Dutch and German systems. What’s more, the number and origin of the immigrant pupils also plays an important role. Having a higher proportion of pupils from Islamic countries at a given school negatively influences the performance of all pupils at that school. But in contrast, a higher share of pupils from South and East Asia has a positive effect. This is just one of Jaap Dronkers’s conclusions from his empirical research using international PISA data, which he discusses in his inaugural lecture. [...]

Ver notícia na Universidade de Maastricht

Casamento: um direito inalienável?

In a ruling last week, the European Court of Justice ruled the income requirement for Dutch residents to bring their partners from abroad was a clear violation of European laws for family reunification.

Since 2004, anybody who wants to bring his or her partner to live in the Netherlands needs to earn at least 120 percent of the minimum wage. This condition effectively makes it impossible for people on welfare to marry a foreigner and live together in the Netherlands, but also excludes students and those working part-time [...].

Ver notícia no NRC Handelsblad

Soldados gay holandeses responsáveis pelo massacre de Srebrenica, segundo general norte-americano

The Dutch government condemned the comments by Gen John Sheehan, a former Nato commander and senior marine officer, as outrageous.

Gen Sheehan made the remarks at a Senate hearing where he argued against plans by President Barack Obama to end a ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the US military.

Gen Sheehan said that after the end of the Cold War, European militaries changed and concluded "there was no longer a need for an active combat capability."

He said this process included "open homosexuality" which resulted in "a focus on peacekeeping operations because they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back.

Ver notícia no jornal Telegraph

‘Criminosos marroquinos‘ podem ser juventude frustrada

In no time at all, “criminal Moroccans” has become commonplace terminology. Last week, the Dutch national police force issued a report on “Moroccan perpetrator populations” in Dutch municipalities. The report included new measures quantifying the Moroccan problem in several Dutch cities, including the local “Moroccan strain” and “problem hierarchy”.

The study was intended to give the Dutch government a fair method of distributing extra funds between municipalities. As it turns out, the city of Gouda leads the pack when it comes to these new crime statistics. One out of three perpetrators here is Moroccan, corresponding to 0.55 percent of Gouda’s entire population. [...].

Ver a notícia no NRC Handelsblad

Pode ser a cidade mais liberal da Europa - mas se for gay é melhor ter cuidado

When the editor of one of America’s leading gay magazines visited the world’s gay capital a fortnight ago, he assumed that he would be safe.

But as Chris Crain, editor of the Washington Blade, was walking hand in hand with his boyfriend near one of the gay districts in Amsterdam, two men standing on a street corner spat at his face. He stopped to ask why, was called a “fag” and suddenly the two youths turned into seven.

Surrounded, Mr Crain was kicked to the ground by the gang and ended up in hospital with a broken nose and badly bruised face.

His attackers were Moroccan youths, blamed by Dutch gay rights groups for a disturbing rise of gay-bashing, as conservative Islamic culture clashes with Dutch liberalism. [...]

Ver notícia no jornal Times