From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 09:06:47 MST
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 10:27:12AM -0500, Michael Wiik wrote:
> Thomas Friedman recently gave a talk (shown on C-SPAN) at some
> university's advanced political science course and suggested the
> 911 hijackers consisted of two groups: poor arab moslems who did
> the strongarm work and comparatively rich and well-educated
> european moslems who did the flying and provided leadership.
It might be worth looking at the review of the social psychology
of suicide bombing (of course there is such a field) in the
latest Science (Scott Atran, Genesis of Suicide Terrorism,
Volume 299, Number 5612, Issue of 7 Mar 2003, pp. 1534-1539):
Contemporary suicide terrorists from the Middle East are
publicly deemed crazed cowards bent on senseless
destruction who thrive in poverty and ignorance. Recent
research indicates they have no appreciable
psychopathology and are as educated and economically
well-off as surrounding populations. A first line of
defense is to get the communities from which suicide
attackers stem to stop the attacks by learning how to
minimize the receptivity of mostly ordinary people to
recruiting organizations.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/299/5612/1534
Plenty of interesting information (some of it surprised me a lot
and forced me to reconsider some of my views) and a discussion
of just how tricky it is to get rid of terrorism as an
institution.
> He mentioned that while the USA endeavors to be a melting pot
> (imperfectly at times, of course) no such endeavor is taking
> place in Europe though it has a growing moslem population
> which is basically frozen out of civil society.
This is an important point.
> Just wondering if France is less prejudiced than other european
> nations, anecdotal evidence being the long association with
> Algeria, better assimilation of blacks than in most of US history,
> the notion of 'frenchness' perhaps being less a function of
> race/nationality than language/culture, and if all this is at least
> part of French resistance to war w/ Iraq.
>
> My only recent experience being in Norway, now with a growing
> Pakistani population, and the seeming guilt complex composed of
> equal parts Nordic racial superiority and strivings toward a
> socialist egalitarian utopia wherein noone is better than anyone
> else (one of the reasons I remain in the USA).
<rant> Sweden is second place after Denmark in the category
"worst immigrant integration" in some studies; I think
Scandinavia on average is very bad at integrating new cultures.
To some extent it is due to a previously very homogeneous
population, but I think the institutions of the welfare state
makes things worse. On one hand people should be helped
regardless of what they say and regardless of individual need,
on the other hand people that are arriving are a drain on the
system and hence not very welcome. And since the aim is to make
every immigrant just as well-off and integrated as the natives
(which of course fails) people are trapped in a Kafkaesque
bureaucracy until they become well integrated - which is usually
defined as being able to use the welfare system to subsist
(which means the case is out of the hands of the case workers).
Going to Sweden in order to get a new life, start a small
company and work? No, that is not allowed. The social
democrats and their union allies are firmly against immigration
of foreign labor until everybody within the land has work.
</rant>
Does this breed terrorism? No, it mostly breaks down people and
creates a class of low-class citizens that are dependent on the
system. Maybe a few of the second generation would be
radicalized, but it doesn't seem to be happening right now.
I think France and other more central nations actually may have
more prejudices, but the potential of becoming a real part of
society there is larger for an immigrant.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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