Dutch Populists Shock the EU with Election Victory

[Meredith Poor + 883]

7 hours ago, shadowkin said:

It’s curious you want to single out Christians.

I pointed this out because someone raised the point that 'Christians are now the most persecuted religion'. The point of the the reply is that 'let the person without sin cast the first stone'. Persecution is everywhere.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 3/27/2019 at 7:23 AM, Meredith Poor said:

So if an Asian woman has been recruited into a brothel in New York City this isn't 'slavery' because US government policy and law outlaws slavery. I'm not sure she would be too sympathetic with the distinction.

Governments in many parts of the world simply ignore forced labor. This includes tea workers in India, garment workers in Bangladesh, fishing deckhands in Thailand, etc. Whether the purported slavery is 'legal' or not is of little materiality to the person stuck in the situation.

Note also that a substantial number of diplomats living in the USA representing their countries as Ambassadors or Consuls also keep slaves.  They are protected from arrest and prosecution by protocols of diplomatic immunity.  The New York Police Dept regularly sees cases of slaves being kept in diplomatic missions, usually women who are to perform cleaning labor and sex services for the diplomat.  When they manage to escape and end up with the NYPD, the diplomat cannot be either arrested or brought in for questioning.  It is a big problem. Fortunately, the Americans are decent enough to grant a special immigrant permit to the slave, expel the diplomat from the country as persona non grata, and help the slave to be rehabilitated, to the extent that that is possible, given the psychic damage to the soul.  I credit the Americans and the NYPD for having the decency to do this.  In other countries, the slavery and abuse just gets ignored. 

Edited April 2, 2019 by Jan van Eck

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

It should be noted that the initializing event that soured many ordinary Dutch to the DU was the adoption of the common currency, the Euro, and the abandonment of the guilder.  At the point of the currency change-over, the guilder had a value of about 1/2 of the Euro.  During the currency conversion, the retailers took advantage of the currency swap by simply removing the sign "guilder" and replacing it with "Euro."  Instantly, retail goods effectively doubled in price.  This left a sour taste with the Dutch, who have been grousing over the losses in their purchasing power ever since.  Large numbers of consumer products are built outside the Netherlands, for example automobile tires (from France, Germany and Italy),  leather goods (Italy), specialty foodstuffs (Oranges, olive oils, from Spain), and so forth.  Holland is emphatically not a self-sustaining internal market. So the average Dutchman had to knuckle under and accept the price level increases. 

The upshot of this is that when some trigger event comes along, such as criminal acts by Muslim migrants (who probably are atheists but pretending to still be Muslims, remember these criminals are psychopaths by nature), then that up-welling of "populism" has its underpinning in those old wounds of price sticker shock from long ago.  And since inevitably this was the case in all countries except possibly Germany, where the old Deutschmark ruled Europe, it comes as no surprise that all these satellite countries such as Hungary now have populists coming out of the woodwork.  Old memories die hard.

[shadowkin + 584]

2 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

So if an Asian woman has been recruited into a brothel in New York City this isn't 'slavery' because US government policy and law outlaws slavery. I'm not sure she would be too sympathetic with the distinction.

Governments in many parts of the world simply ignore forced labor. This includes tea workers in India, garment workers in Bangladesh, fishing deckhands in Thailand, etc. Whether the purported slavery is 'legal' or not is of little materiality to the person stuck in the situation.

Well you chose to single out 'people in power'. The main reason I wanted to exclude criminal organizations, and that I neglected to mention, is precisely because it is illegal. Not acceptable by that society. This isn't true in the Muslim world. Maybe on paper. Muslims are selling Africans in broad daylight.

But, have it your way. Let's include them. Those Asian women you cited are trafficked (not recruited) by Chinese mafia, not Christian. Tea laborers in India. India mostly Hindu and Muslim. Bangla is a Muslim country.  Deckhands in Thailand, not Christian.

If you're being honest you're intent is criticize Christians not to point out persecution is everywhere. I think they best you can do here is cite the Central Americans trafficked into the US. These criminals are probably Catholic.

Since your description of slavery is quite liberal are we to include Muslim women who have little to no legal rights?