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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Tue Aug 31 18:15:05 2010
edf40wrjww2msgDetailOT:detailStr fiogf49gjkf0d Big uproar over his comments. But it's not the first time Thilo Sarrazin said bigoted stuff; he got away with it before.
The Australian
German banker Thilo Sarrazin defends 'racism'From: The Times | September 01, 2010 12:00AM
BERLIN: A German central banker with outspoken views on Turks, Jews and the decline of his country has defended himself amid calls for his dismissal by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Thilo Sarrazin told the Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag that "all Jews share the same gene" and that Muslim immigrants across Europe were not willing or capable of integrating into Western societies.
Yesterday at the launch of his book, Germany is Abolishing Itself, which warns against the effects of Muslim immigration, Sarrazin denied he was a racist and insisted on his right to freedom of speech.
The Bundesbank said that its executive board would talk to Sarrazin and then decide on further steps.
Sarrazin, 65, caused an earlier uproar by suggesting that people on welfare should spend only $7 a day on food, mocking them for being overweight and sloppy dressers.
Merkel and at least three cabinet ministers have denounced his remarks, and the Social Democratic Party, of which he is a member, is calling for his expulsion. The banker yesterday insisted his book was balanced. "All I do is read and make sense of the statistics," he said. "I don't want us to end up as strangers in our own land."
The German population is sinking rapidly, he says in his book. The demographic balance is maintained only by immigrants' higher birthrate. The result, he says, is dropping school standards and rising crime.
"The intellectual potential of society is shrinking rapidly," he said, "and immigration is not the appropriate answer . . . Those coming in from Islamic countries are posing a threat to the European cultural model."
A leader of the Turkish community in Germany, Kenan Kolat, accused him of intellectual racism.
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