[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
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[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Known as the Lioness of Italy for its resistance to the Austrian army in 1849 during the First War of Italian Independence, is the city of Brescia blindly building its own funeral pyre as it takes in thousands of African migrants on a daily basis? It has been argued by liberals and many Catholics that the city is a model of integration and that Italian “conviviality” can succeed where Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French assimilationism have failed.1 Indeed, Brescia supposedly offers a third way: “interculturality” involving face-to-face “dialogue” between different cultures.2 What this actually means in practice is difficult to decipher. In any case, such claims are dangerously optimistic and utopian, to say the least.
History
Before considering the current wave of (state aided) migration let us take a very brief look at the origins of the city and its experience during another period of large scale of migration: the Völkerwanderung. We will see that during and after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Germanic tribes settled in and around Brescia, as they did in many other parts of Italy, but that these warriors and their families were ultimately assimilated into the Roman population. It could be said that Brescia conquered its conquerors. But what of the current migrants? As one former mayor put it, Brescia is in effect a “frontier city.” Can Africans and other non-Europeans arriving in such huge numbers also be assimilated? And, assuming for the sake of argument that they can be, how long will the process take and at what cost?
The Roman historian Livy wrote that Brescia, or Brixia as it was then called in Latin, had been the chief settlement of the Cenomanian Gauls who crossed the Alps and established themselves in Italy north of the River Po,3 which is thought to have been inhabited by the Ligurians, possibly a pre-Indo European population. In the period before and after the Second Punic War (218/201 BC), the Roman Republic defeated the Celtic tribes south of the River Po and founded colonies in the area. The Cenomanian Gauls north of the Po for their part were defeated in 197 BC and Romanisation gradually ensued. In 27 BC, Octavian Augustus granted Brixia, now a significant urban centre, the status of colonia civica augusta.
As the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century and in the centuries that followed, Brescia frequently found itself centre stage of the Völkerwanderung. In 402 AD the city was ravaged by the Ostrogoths under Alaric and in 451 it was besieged and sacked by Attila the Hun. In 496 Odoacer, the general who had deposed the last Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus August, was defeated and killed by the Ostrogoths under Theoderic who styled himself “King of the Goths and Romans.” The Ostrogoths finally succumbed to a resurgent Byzantine Empire and Brescia fell in 562. But Brescia remained in Byzantine hands for just six years when another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, invaded Italy almost unopposed and established a Kingdom that lasted until the Frankish conquest of 774. As least as far as Brescia was concerned the barbarian incursions and migrations had now largely come to an end. What is striking about these arrivals is the ultimate assimilation of these conquering Germanic populations into the Roman population. The Lombards gradually abandoned their social customs and clothing and the use of their Germanic tongue was replaced by the neo-Latin vernacular of the local population.
African and Asian Invaders
National Geography and Academics call them the “New Italians”
It is estimated that less than 3% of those who cross the Mediterranean are actually fully-fledged refugees. In Brescia the situation is even worse with around 72% of the arrivals classified as illegals. And these figures refer to 2016 only. Few clandestini are ever deported and most drift into the black economy, try to reach northern Europe or end up in the criminal underworld. A truly monstrous situation has arisen which amounts to failure by the state to fulfill its fundamental duty of upholding the rule of law and defend its citizens. A whole industry has now grown up around migrants: lawyers, think tanks, hotel owners, landlords and liberal/catholic cooperatives providing accommodation for them. The costs are enormous. According to one report, in 2016 the system of “accoglienza” (welcoming) was costing the province of Brescia around 2 million Euro a month!
The phenomenon of migration from Africa began in the late 1980’s but, to be fair, the much-maligned Berlusconi actually managed to get the situation under a degree of control thanks to his relations with Libya. Then came the chaos caused by the overthrow of Gaddafi and the civil war, the ousting of Berlusconi and a series of “technocrat” and liberal governments appointed by President Napolitano, a former communist who in 1956 backed the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Key figures in government circles are known globalists with connections to refugee organisations. Laura Boldrini, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, is a former spokesperson for the UNHCR in Rome and was editor of its magazine Rifiugiati (Refugees).
Now, in addition to this onslaught from Africa, Brescia already has a non-European population that makes up around 13% of its roughly 200,000 inhabitants, the biggest groups being North Africans, West Africans and South Asians.5 This is the one of highest in percentage terms in Italy and the real figure is without doubt higher because of illegal immigration and the figures do not include foreigners naturalised as Italian citizens. The vast majority are unskilled workers and their dependents. Foreigners suffer a disproportionately high rate of unemployment and it goes without saying that they make up the bulk of the prison population. The member of the Lombard Regional Council in charge of Security, Civil Protection and Immigration called Brescia “the capital of foreign crime” in Northern Italy.6 Brescia too has had its fair share of terror plots, foreign fighters and Islamists.
Political Climate
Italian opinion now reflects the divisions we see over much of the Western World between the globalist metropolitan establishment on the one side and “provincials” and defenders of the nation state on the other. Much of the media, academia, big business, the professions, the church, the school system and polite society generally are politically correct and anti-populist. The courts too have taken controversial decisions. In a town near Brescia recently, a member of Lega Nord, the northern separatist party critical of mass immigration, was fined for writing that certain cooperatives “profit from the traffic in illegal immigrants.” The judge held that the statement was “discriminatory” as asylum seekers are given temporary leave to stay in the country and technically are not in Italy illegally!8 As public anger over the situation rises (see below) such cases are likely to mushroom in future. Comparisons have been drawn with medieval heresy trials as a nervous establishment seeks to criminalise beliefs contrary to prevailing liberal orthodoxy.
Africans demanding that Italians live up to the ideals of Freedom and Democracy first nurtured in Africa
However, when pressed on the issue one finds that even people within these milieus will privately express deep concern, especially about Islam. There may be self-censorship as well because opposition to mass immigration is considered provincial and low status. A survey of ten European countries conducted by Chatham House (hardly an evil populist hotbed) suggested that over half the population of those countries wanted a ban on Muslim immigration. The survey suggested that 69% of Italians have an unfavourable view of Muslims. Fortunately, two national newspapers Il Giornale and Libero Quotidiano and websites such as Tutti i Crimini degli Immigrati (All the Crimes of the Immigrants) do not hesitate to cover immigration related issues.
The liberal and liberal elements in the Catholic church in Italy have a curious belief they can succeed where so many others have failed. In autumn 2015 the liberal newspaper La Repubblica ran an article claiming that a school in downtown Brescia where the children are entirely foreign is an example of how Brescia is a “model” and that integration “works here.”
Yet the journalist goes on to say that one reason that the school population is almost entirely non-Italian, and indeed largely non-European, is that Italian parents no longer send their children there because of the concentration of foreigners. Indeed, at times the teachers have to “educate” not only the kids but also the parents who hold regressive social attitudes in relation to activities such as mixed swimming classes. Even the journalist admits that sometimes it is “they,” i.e. the foreigners, who create problems, citing a Nigerian parent who said that boys must be served by girls.
Liberals and immigrants protest against Italian “racists” in Brescia, 2010
We are told that time, patience and resources are required. But here we are speaking about relatively new arrivals. Other countries now face the failed integration of many adult second and third generation Muslims turning to traditionalism, fundamentalism and even terrorism. It is surely complacent to argue that such problems can be avoided by time, patience and resources. Is it not more realistic to admit a basic incompatibility of cultures? Italian progressives who pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism and openness actually seem to live in a national, or in the case of Brescia, provincial bubble, complacent in their belief that when it comes to integrating immigrants Italians do it better. They seem to have learned little or nothing from the experiences of other countries.
So far the Italian state so far has had no official policy of multiculturalism and does not engage in practices such as affirmative action. It is rare to find members of ethnic minorities working for the state as mass immigration is, compared to most other countries, a relatively recent phenomenon. Further, the country also enjoys relatively restrictive citizenship laws which also tends to exclude individuals of foreign origin from working for the state and voting in elections. The country has therefore also escaped the sort of scandals seen for example in UK where there have been cases of electoral fraud in South Asian communities in London10 and reports of a disproportionate number of misconduct proceedings against ethnic minority police officers.
That said, the Italian education system in particular suffers from liberal bias. History textbooks, for example, are heavily influenced by multiculturalist thinking, provide a vulgar Marxist interpretation of colonialism, push cultural relativism and fail to conduct any analysis of crimes committed by communist regimes. Classroom tasks and activities with a pro-immigration bias are commonplace.
But will Italy go down the same path as some other Western countries and loosen its nationality laws, introduce diversity quotas in the state and, in effect, discriminate against its indigenous population? Will its liberals also play the identity politics card and seek to buy support from enfranchised Africans and Asians? Or will Italy learn from mistakes of other countries now enjoying the bloody harvest of mass immigration that went too fast and too deep? Some of the things we see do not augur well as liberalism in Italy is slavishly enamoured with what it sees as more “advanced” multicultural societies.
There are, however, signs of resistance at a popular level. In August 2015 villagers in Collio near Brescia protested the arrival of migrants and in November 2016 200 residents of the town of Montichiari also near Brescia staged a week long protested outside a former barracks that was being transformed into a refuge centre for hundreds of asylum seekers. The rejection of the left’s referendum proposals and the downfall of Matteo Renzi in December 2016 was arguably in part due the government’s open door migrant policy.
One Sicilian Public Prosecutor has raised questions about possible connections between people traffickers and NGOs operating in the Mediterranean and even went so far as to say that some NGOs might have “interests in the manoeuvres of international speculation.” But without evidence and without the resources to conduct further enquiries the Prosecutor has said that the investigation has suffered a setback. It was reported in the Italian press that on 3 May 2017 Prime Minister Gentiloni held a meeting with wealthy liberal philanthropist George Soros, a man who reportedly funds NGOs operating off the Libyan coast, to discuss “investments in Italy.”
We shall see whether the prosecutor gets his resources. Until the next general election, expected to be held in 2018, and until perhaps we see a thorough going transformation of the political culture and collapse of liberal consensus, we can expect migrant numbers to swell still further as Brescia, like the West generally, continues to build its own funeral pyre.
ItaliAnthro, “Mediterranean Sea as Genetic Barrier”, 16 June 2014:
This new study confirms that the Mediterranean Sea has acted as a strong barrier to gene flow through geographic isolation following initial settlements. Samples from (Northern) Italy, Tuscany, Sicily and Sardinia are closest to other Southern Europeans from Iberia, the Balkans and Greece, who are in turn closest to the Neolithic migrants that spread farming throughout Europe, represented here by the Cappadocian sample from Anatolia. But there hasn’t been any significant admixture from the Middle East or North Africa into Southern Europe since then.
Genes Mirror Geography Across the Mediterranean Basin
We first used principal components analysis (PCA) to visualize the genotypic distances between studied populations. Populations on the southern and northern coasts of the Mediterranean appear to be separated by the geographic barrier of the Mediterranean Sea. The role of the Mediterranean Sea as a barrier for gene flow among populations was also supported by our analysis using the BARRIER software, which implements Monmonier’s maximum difference algorithm. In accordance with this finding…the PCA distribution of the populations closely resembles the geographic map of the countries circling the Mediterranean Sea. On this PCA “map” of populations, the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea is appropriately occupied by the Palestinians and the Lebanese Druze. Yemenites and Bedouins branch out from the Mediterranean populations and are closer to the populations of the Near East.
[...]
Seljuk Turks settled in Anatolia in the 12th century AD; however, the Anatolian Cappadocians we included in this study belong to the population that have kept the religion and the language of the pre-Seljuk Cappadocians and, therefore, most likely carry the genetic makeup of the ancient Anatolians. The only important gene flows from Near East to Europe must have occurred in prehistoric times and, as genetic evidence suggests, the most prominent migrations should have occurred during the Neolithic.
[...]
Although the Southeastern Mediterranean islands seem to have acted as a bridge from Anatolia to Southern Europe, the relatively small degree of gene flow between the African and the European coasts shows that the Mediterranean Sea also had a barrier function as also suggested with studies of mtDNA polymorphisms. Thus, the Mediterranean seems to have facilitated the migrations of Neolithic farmers along its Southern European coast but it mostly acted as an isolating factor between its European and African coasts.
Breitbart, “Reporter Attacked Live on Air During Report on Immigration in Rome”, 9 May 2017:
An Italian TV reporter and her cameraman were assaulted during a live broadcast whilst covering the living conditions of African migrants hoping to break into northern Europe in search of higher welfare payments.
Matrix Channel 5 journalist Francesca Parisella was showing viewers scenes at Rome’s central train terminal, where dozens of migrants were sleeping outside the station. The reporter told viewers the migrants, who have been arriving in boats to Italy this year in record numbers, had gathered cardboard and other items “to protect them from the cold of the street”.
Noting that Italian volunteers had recently visited the site to bring the migrants hot food, Parisella said the men disperse during daylight hours then return to the station to sleep, “because their hope especially is to reach Milan and other cities in the north [of Italy] and then move to northern Europe”.
Just after the reporter told viewers that she and her team “don’t want to disturb [the migrants] further”, the camera was visibly shaken and appeared to have been turned on its side, causing Parisella to alert the Matrix host Nicola Porro that her party was under attack.
Following Porro’s warning to the TV journalist to “get out of there”, Parisella could be heard running from the station before the assailants caught up with her.
“What do you want? You’re crazy!” she said, and emitted screams of terror. “Oh God, Francesca, get out of there,” said Porro, before instructing the Matrix producer to alert police to the attack.
From the Matrix studio a few minutes later, the presenter explained that “Francesca is upset but well. [Assailants] destroyed the camera and beat up the cameraman. A situation like our show this evening should resemble reports from a war zone. Thanks to a taxi driver, a much worse outcome was avoided.”
Shortly after, Parisella confirmed this version of events on the programme by telephone.
“We were stood at a distance to report on the type of welcome [Italy] can give [migrants], but they were disturbed and then assaulted us. They chased me and grabbed me by the jacket,” said the journalist.
Police, who are investigating the incident, said: “This type of aggression is unacceptable and casts a haunting shadow on press freedom in our country, on security conditions in Italy’s largest station, and also on the possibility of violence towards a young woman working in the centre of our capital.”
Porro said he felt “guilty” for having sent a woman out to report from the station late at night, but said the case “raises serious questions” about how somewhere in the centre of Rome was able to become a “no man’s land” where attacks are commonplace, with no fanfare nor acknowledgement from the media.
According to local media, a 37-year-old man hailing from the Ivory Coast has been detained in connection with the attack. The alleged aggressor was known to police for a list of crimes including domestic violence and was ordered by the prefect of Rome last September to be deported.
Photographer Zakaria Abdelkafi’s shocking photograph of a French anti-riot policeman set ablaze by a molotov cocktail has quickly spread to every corner of the world. And yesterday, only one day after Abdelkafi captured the photograph, he shared the story behind it.
PetaPixel, “The Story Behind this Viral Photo of a French Policeman on Fire”, 3 May 2017:
The photograph was taken during a march for the annual May Day workers’ rally in Paris, and has since appeared on the covers of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and countless online publications and European newspapers. In an article for his employer, Agence France-Presse, Abdelkafi said he had no idea what was about to happen.
“I always follow [a group who hide their faces behind bandanas and hoodies] because, from past experience, I know they always cause trouble,” he said. “They’re very violent.”
His dedication to following this group around occasionally gets him pushed down and beaten by the very people he’s trying to photograph. This time, he placed himself between them and CRS (Republican Security Companies) police, taking photographs as the protesters began throwing rocks, bottles, “anything that they could get their hands on” at the riot police.
That’s when a molotov cocktail went flying.
“When they threw the Molotov cocktail, I didn’t actually see it. I just saw the guy engulfed in flames and I just snapped away,” he says. “I kept on following the policeman who was burning.” He was screaming, the officers around him were screaming, the scene was as horrific as you imagine it. “He was a human being being burned alive in front of me,” says Abdelkafi. “And the demonstrators, they didn’t care. They kept throwing things at the police.”
Abdelkafi is no stranger to horrific sights—a Syrian refugee, he was forced to flee his country in 2015, ultimately receiving asylum in France and a job with AFP. He has witnessed truly horrific sights; this moment hit close to home.
“I kept thinking about his face and whether he would be scarred. I kept thinking of his family. I’ve had lots of friends who have become disfigured because they have been burned by bombs in Syria. So I know what it’s like. I wonder if they do.” he said in his AFP article. “I have seen many people die in front of me. I have seen many people wounded. But this policeman really got to me.”
According to TIME, the unidentified 41-year-old police man suffered third-degree burns on his hands and neck, and second-degree burns on his face. As for Abdelkafi, he hopes to meet the man he photographed. “I would like to go see him in the hospital and bring him flowers.”
Zaida Catalán (6 October 1980 – March 2017) was a Swedish politician who was a member of the Green Party and leader of the Young Greens of Sweden between 2001 and 2005. She was known for her work in animal rights, equality and the sex purchase law (which she supported).
Equality is one of the cornerstones of the Greens’ ideology. They promised equal pay for equal work, breaking gender segregation in employment, splitting parental leave into three parts (one for each parent and one freely transferable including to a third person close to the child), fighting violence against women, quotas for women on the boards of stock market-listed companies, investments in school health (to fight mental health problems), laws against sexist advertising which perpetuate gender norms, improving sex ed, improving support to people who have faced abuse and a law on gender mainstreaming.
While these Green Party positions might be fine in Sweden and for Swedes, it is also the case that…
[...] the Greens are the most pro-immigration party, enthusiastically supporting open borders (or a world without borders). Its manifesto endorsed a liberalization of asylum laws (an automatic right to a permanent residence permit if an asylum seeker hasn’t been deported within 2 years, facilitating family reunification, people born and permanently residing in Sweden should automatically obtain citizenship); better integration (easier access to housing and jobs for new arrivals) and fighting discrimination.
Zaida Catalán was killed while on a UN mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in March 2017. On 12 March 2017, Catalán and another UN employee were kidnapped during a mission near the village Ngombe in the Kasai Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were both found dead on 27 March. Catalán had been beheaded and was found in a shallow grave.
Federal housing policies created after the Depression ensured that African-Americans and other people of color were left out of new suburban communities - and pushed instead into urban housing projects, such as Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass towers. Paul Sancya/AP
In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America’s housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a “state-sponsored system of segregation.”
The government’s efforts were “primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families,” he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.
Rothstein’s new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as “redlining.” At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans.
Rothstein says these decades-old housing policies have had a lasting effect on American society. “The segregation of our metropolitan areas today leads ... to stagnant inequality, because families are much less able to be upwardly mobile when they’re living in segregated neighborhoods where opportunity is absent,” he says. “If we want greater equality in this society, if we want lowering of hostility between police and young African-American men, we need to take steps to desegregate.”
Interview Highlights
On how the Federal Housing Administration justified discrimination
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America - by Richard Rothstein
The Federal Housing Administration’s justification was that if African-Americans bought homes in these suburbs, or even if they bought homes near these suburbs, the property values of the homes they were insuring, the white homes they were insuring, would decline. And therefore their loans would be at risk.
There was no basis for this claim on the part of the Federal Housing Administration. In fact, when African-Americans tried to buy homes in all-white neighborhoods or in mostly white neighborhoods, property values rose because African-Americans were more willing to pay more for properties than whites were, simply because their housing supply was so restricted and they had so many fewer choices. So the rationale that the Federal Housing Administration used was never based on any kind of study. It was never based on any reality.
On how federal agencies used redlining to segregate African-Americans
The term “redlining” comes from a development by the New Deal, by the federal government of maps of every metropolitan area in the country. And those maps were color-coded by first the Home Owners Loan Corp. and then the Federal Housing Administration and then adopted by the Veterans Administration, and these color codes were designed to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. And anywhere where African-Americans lived, anywhere where African-Americans lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages.
New Observer, “17 Weeks: 44,299 Nonwhite Invaders Land in Europe”, 2 May 2017:
A total of 44,229 nonwhite invaders pretending to be refugees landed in Europe in the first 16 weeks of 2017, latest figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have shown.
According to the IOM breakdown dated April 26, 2017, 43,490 of the invaders had arrived by sea—most picked up by crypto-communist “human rights organizations” and transported to Italy by their boats and the European Union’s naval units—while another 739 had invaded Europe via a land border.
The IOM’s figures showed that Italy remains the main landing point, with 9,841 invaders landing there in the period April 13 to 26 alone.
The blatantly bogus nature of the asylum claims is revealed, once again, by the nationalities of the invaders. According to the IOM, the main nationalities of the invaders to Italy (in descendant order) are Guinea, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, and Gambia. In Greece, the main nationalities of the invasion force are Syria, Iraq, Republic of Congo, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, while those invading Bulgaria are from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran.
Apart from the fact that those claiming to be Syrians and Iraqis can always move to safe parts of their own country—and therefore do not have to flee their nations at all—none of the other nationalities mentioned have any justification for seeking asylum (unless fleeing one’s self-created disaster zone is a valid reason).
The IOM figures also, once again, showed how effective the Hungarian government’s crackdown on the nonwhite invasion has been, proving the lie of the western liberal argument that “it can’t be stopped.”
According to the IOM, in the period from April 20 to 26, only eight invaders were registered in Hungary, and six were registered in the previous week.