well no problem – send me your e-mail address.

but one issue is already the question if there will be more referendums like the one in switzerland in other european countries – which raises questions about direct democracy a.s.o.

thanks for the comment, Peppi. your honesty is the reason I engaged with you from the start. I hope I am able to admit when I am wrong as well…

Minarets aren’t the most important things in Islam, but there is an inherent, unmistakable symbolism in the deciding to ban them…

Tariq Ramadaan – brilliant scholar – wrote something about in the Guardian – worth reading -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/29/swiss-vote-ban-minarets-fear

can you alert me to some of the issues/debates raised in the German press?

i want to apologize – after the votum in switzerland and all the similar polls in german newspapers i have to conclude that i live in a deeply islamophobic country – you were right.

i am ashamed.

I did scream and shout about it, alot of my work in 2007 and 2008 dealt with foreigners in Durban/xenophobic attacks. We had Projects/Seminars/Special Coverage in our newsletters etc etc.

I dont think I need to respond to the infidel thing because you know that is not the case.

“My hypothesis is that the issue is more an ideological one than a material one in EU”
By minimizing xenophobia in SA in your previous blog you did a disservice to the 60+ deaths and thousands of refugees that still fear for their lives and live in squalor in our own country. Why aren’t you screaming about this? Is it possible that you don’t feel the same kinship with those infidel refugees?

the german government *way back then* was trying to figure what to do with the german-born-and-raised children of their post-world war 2 largely turkish and yugoslav gastarbeiten. most of the yugoslav ones were okay [gee, i wonder why], but the turks and especially the ghanaians, not so much. so it’s not like this is anything new. the sad thing, really, is that it took 20 years to pass a law that is still pretty abysmal in the eyes of people born in countries where citizenship is conferred at birth [regardless of the immigration status of the parents].

i never thought i’d be trumpeting the horn of the united states, but the gist of immigration/naturalization in the usa is thus: you may have come illegally, but if you’re paying taxes, we can work something out. [it really helps that birth certificates are local, not national, and thus extremely easy to copy/falsify.]

most other places in the world: “you’re the wrong color, where are you from-from? wow, these are really nice fakes. sorry we don’t want you here, even if these are real documents.”

it actually reminds me of this clip [it helps to be able to understand french]:

http://tinyurl.com/kkdcqk

woman at about 1:08 — it’s shitty being black here.

i was born automatically eligible for american, french, dutch, irish, and two other passports, and at varying points in my life travelled on three of those plus a canadian one. nice try though.

you really need do more reasearch on the atatus within russia of both the volga germans and the konigsburg germans. under *german* citizenship law, both sets of them are eligible to live in germany. however, germany pays russia enough money to keep it from happening. now that both poland *and* lithuania [which surround kaliningrad] are part of the eu, germany is pretty much going to have to give up on keeping the konigsburg germans at bay. but since stalin shipped most of the volga germans to siberia, those folks won’t be leaving en masse any time soon.

i’d rather be able to get free tertiary education than a “welfare grant”. if i were born in germany, educated in german schools and despite the constant “these fields aren’t for kids like you [read: non-whites]” from teachers and guidance counselors, became eligible for a university place, only to be denied a university because i don’t have the “right documentation” despite HAVING BEEN BORN THERE, i’d be mighty pissed off.

you see this happening throughout europe, btw. many of those who are citizens of their perspective countries end up going to uni in the uk so they can improve their english and then move to the united states. imagine that.