#1
A lot of good stuff here, some of which we've all seen before, and I only claim to have skimmed it and printed it. But I DO like the conclusion:
Its easy to see why Al gores movie should not be shown in schools. An Inconvenient Truth is a political commercial that misrepresents a whole area of science. He admittedly uses scare tactics to get people to listen then shows them a professional slide show that blames every thing bad on so called man made global warming.
Al did not make and publicize this movie because he cares; something obvious when you consider his own lifestyle. He did not make this movie to run for president. This movie has grossed over 60 million dollars to date and it hasnt even made it to cable. Al charges over $100,000 per slide show. But the real money that Al will make is through his new company, Generation Investment Management, a company that seeks to establish the rules and licensing for the new carbon-trading scheme. We have all heard of politicians who lie for money and power; it looks as if Al did not retire after all.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/06/2007 18:08 Comments ||
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Last year more than 155,000 Germans emigrated from their native country. Since 2004 the number of ethnic Germans who leave each year is greater than the number of immigrants moving in. While the emigrants are highly motivated and well educated, "those coming in are mostly poor, untrained and hardly educated," says Stephanie Wahl of the German Institute for Economics.
In a survey conducted in 2005 among German university students, 52 percent said they would rather leave their native country than remain there. By "voting with their feet," young, educated Germans affirm that Germany has no future to offer them and their children. As one couple who moved to the United States told the newspaper Die Welt: "Here our children have a future in which they will not have to fear unemployment and social decline." There are two main reasons why so-called "ethno-Germans" emigrate. Some complain that the tax rates in Germany are so high that it is no longer worthwhile working for a living there. Others indicate they no longer feel at home in a country whose cultural appearance is changing dramatically.
The situation is similar in other countries in Western Europe. Since 2003, emigration has exceeded immigration to the Netherlands. In 2006, the Dutch saw more than 130,000 compatriots leave. The rise in Dutch emigration peaked after the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. This indicates that the flight from Europe is related to a loss of confidence in the future of nations which have taken in the Trojan horse of Islamism, but which, unlike the Trojans, lack the guts to fight.
Elsewhere in Western Europe immigration currently still surpasses emigration, though emigration figures are rising fast. In Belgium the number of emigrants surged by 15 percent in the past years. In Sweden, 50,000 people packed their bags last year -- a rise of 18 percent compared to the previous year and the highest number of Swedes leaving since 1892. In the United Kingdom, almost 200,000 British citizens move out every year.
Americans who think that the European welfare state is the model to follow would do well to ponder the question why, if Europe is so wonderful, Europeans are fleeing from it. European welfare systems are redistribution mechanisms, taking money from skilled and educated Europeans in order to give it to nonskilled newcomers from the Third World.
Gunnar Heinsohn, a German sociologist at the University of Bremen, warns European governments that they are mistaken if they assume that qualified young ethnic Europeans will stay in Europe. "The really qualified are leaving," Mr. Heinsohn says. "The only truly loyal towards France and Germany are those who are living off the welfare system, because there is no other place in the world that offers to pay for them... It is no wonder that young, hardworking people in France and Germany choose to emigrate," he explains. "It is not just that they have to support their own aging population. If we take 100 20-year-olds [in France or Germany], then the 70 [indigenous] Frenchmen and Germans also have to support 30 immigrants of their own age and their offspring. This creates dejection in the local population, particularly in France, Germany and the Netherlands. So they run away."
On Monday Francois Fillon, the new French prime minister, said that "Europe is not Eldorado," emphasizing that his government intends to curb immigration by those who only seek welfare benefits. "Europe is hospitable, France is an immigration country and will continue to be so, but it will only accept foreigners prepared to integrate," he stressed. Europe cannot afford to be "Eldorado" for foreigners any longer, because it has stopped being "home" for thousands of its own educated children, now eagerly looking for opportunities to move to America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- white European nations outside Europe.
While the fertility rate in France is 1.9 children per woman, two out of every five newborns in France are children of Arab or African immigrants. In Germany (fertility rate 1.37) 35 percent of all newborns have a non-German background. Paradoxically, fertility rates in Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc., are lower than among immigrants from these countries in Europe. "A woman in Tunisia has on average 1.7 children. In France she has six because the French government pays her to have them," Mr. Heinsohn explains. "Of course, the money was never intended to benefit Tunisian women in particular, but French women will not touch this money, whereas the Tunisian women are only too happy to... For Danish and German women the welfare benefits are too low to be attractive. Not so for the immigrants. So, what we see in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands are immigrant women who take low-paid jobs which they supplement with public benefits. It is not a fantastic income but sufficient for them," he said.
Europe's welfare system is causing a perverse process of population replacement. If the Europeans want to save their culture, they will have to slay the welfare state.
Paul Belien is a European writer. He is editor of The Brussels Journal and an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute.
#3
I think that the historical European will "come out to play" and it will be bloddy, very bloody. The people will force the change, jus like with saw in France.
Europe has fought off several bloody Islamic tides over the centuries with nowhere close to the current delta in technology and military hardware. The only thing the Euros lack at the moment are the balls to act like their very lives depended on a smashing victory.
The Last Days of Europe show how immigration is at the root of Europe's current problems.
By Stanley Kurtz
Can uncontrolled immigration kill a continent? According to Walter Laqueur, it already has. Laqueur, an historian whos spent a lifetime moving between America and Europe, is a scholar and public intellectual of international stature. So its news when the latest book from so knowledgeable and unimpeachable a friend of Europe echoes and extends the themes of a pugnacious series of American tracts on European decline. Whether European intellectuals will be able to dismiss Laqueurs The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, just as theyve dismissed so many other such books, is an open question. (Its tough to discount a book endorsed by Henry Kissinger and Niall Ferguson.) Whats certain is that, in the midst of our own immigration debate, Americans cannot afford to ignore The Last Days of Europe.
Immigration Disaster
In combination with Europes demographic decline and guilt-laden multiculturalism, which is not solely european, but quite present in the USA too, if I read RB correctly
says Laqueur, unchecked immigration has created a massive and growing population of unassimilated Muslims, hostile to their own countries and determined to transform Europe beyond all recognition, through a combination of violent and non-violent means. Why had the European countries brought these [Islamist] attacks upon themselves? asks Laqueur. Above all, he says, it was naïveté that had made possible the indiscriminate immigration of earlier decades. In his concluding reflection on what went wrong for Europe, Laqueur singles out immigration as first among causal equals: ...uncontrolled immigration was not the only reason for the decline of Europe. But taken together with the continents other misfortunes, it led to a profound crisis; a miracle might be needed to extract Europe from these predicaments.
In Laqueurs telling, the trouble began when European countries recruited workers abroad to do the work European workers were not willing or able to do. Only about half of the (supposedly temporary) guest workers who came to Europe during the boom years of the 1960s returned home as initially planned. Others stayed on legally or illegally and in many cases brought relatives to join them, and the host governments were not willing to enforce the law against those who broke it. When Europes boom gave out following the OPEC oil shock in 1973, governments stopped issuing work visas. But that didnt stop immigration. Relatives flowed in legally, through family reunification laws, and illegally, as immigrant smuggling became a major business.
There followed a flood of asylum seekers, to whom the authorities were quite liberal in their approach, even though the majority of these immigrants, probably the great majority, were not political refugees but economic migrants.... Many were Islamists, others hoped to establish criminal gangs, but all asylum seekers, whether legitimate or illegitimate, were supported by a powerful lobby, the human rights associations and churches that provided legal and other aid. They claimed it was scandalous and in violation of elementary human rights to turn back new immigrants and that in case of doubt mercy should prevail.
As supposed asylum seekers poured in, they destroyed their papers, making it impossible for European authorities to deport them. Whats more, border controls inside Europe were largely abolished and if an immigrant had put foot into one European country he could move freely to another. Laqueur adds that the number of asylum seekers, real and bogus, began to decline after 2002, following the introduction of more stringent screening measures. But by then it was too late; Europe had entered its last days.
It should have been clear early on that immigration was creating serious problems, says Laqueur. Muslim resistance to assimilation was evident, as were the warning signs of demographic decline. And had it been clear, it is hardly the case that nothing could have been done about it. After all, says Laqueur, illegal immigrants to Japan or China, Singapore, or virtually any other country would have been sent back within days, if not hours, to their countries of origin. Yet because all this was ignored, says Laqueur, we now face the end of Europe as a major player in world affairs. Almost overnight, Laqueur continues, what had been considered a minor problem on a local level is becoming a major political issue, for there is growing resistance on the part of the native [European] population, who resent becoming strangers in their own homelands. Perhaps they are wrong to react in this way, but they have not been aware until recently of this trend, and no one ever asked or consulted them.
What Were They Thinking?
Laqueur returns several times to the failure of Europes authorities to consult with the public on immigration. Instead of putting the matter up for debate, government and corporations quietly and unilaterally set policy. Europes elite had a bad conscience, given memories of refugees from Nazi Germany whod been turned away decades earlier. There was also the omnipresent fear of being accused of racism. This bizarre combination of multiculturalism and complete disregard for the significance of culture opened up a huge gulf between Europes elite and the public a gulf that emerged openly when France and The Netherlands rejected the proposed EU constitution (in part over concerns about Muslim immigration and the accession of Turkey to the EU). There was, says Laqueur, a backlash against the elites who wanted to impose their policies on a population who had not been consulted....Another important motive was the reluctance to hand over national sovereignty to central, remote and anonymous institutions over which people had no control.
Laqueur concludes that its next to impossible for an historian to establish just what it was that Europes authorities were thinking when they formulated the immigration practices now undermining Western civilization in its very cradle. Some people believe it was due to the influence of USSR's fellow-travellers, aka the "Brejnev plan" to flood western Europe with "unemployement and crime", by having large populations of client-States imported in France, Germany,...
To the question Did they imagine that uncontrolled immigration would not involve major problems? Laqueur responds that it is unanswerable. (My guess is that, like todays market-based immigration advocates in America, European leaders were focused on the immediate need for labor and gave little if any thought to long-term social consequences. In other words, the simplest explanation for Laqueurs inability to track down the deep thoughts of Europes leaders about the cultural consequences of immigration is that there never were any such thoughts.)
But why should mass immigration have been a problem for Europe when the need for labor was (and is) real, and when modern dynamos like America and Australia were virtually built on mass immigration? Part of the answer lies in Europes relative lack of experience with immigration and assimilation. Yet theres more at work, as Laqueur shows, through a comparison of post-WWII Muslim immigration with the wave of Jewish migration to both Western Europe and the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Culture Counts
Jews entered Western Europe in that period by the tens of thousands, not by the millions. They also made great efforts to integrate, above all seeking a good secular education for their children, at almost any price. There was no welfare state in those days no social workers, no subsidized housing, no free medical payments, and no social security. Back then, it was sink or swim, whereas the modern welfare state has removed the incentives for success that used to force cultural integration. When they first arrived in Britain, Laqueur tells us, many Bangladeshis were reluctant to accept government assistance, viewing welfare payments as dishonorable and contrary to Islam. It was only the advice of social workers that managed to turn welfare dependence into a way of life for these Bangladeshi migrants.
That doesnt mean Laqueur discounts the influence of Muslim culture on failed integration far from it. The Last Days of Europe is being touted for its measured tone, in contrast to, say, the blistering (and blisteringly funny and effective) polemics of Mark Steyns America Alone. Thats an accurate assessment, up to a point. If there was even a single joke in The Last Days of Europe, I missed it. Yet Laqueur has no tolerance whatever for political correctness, and doesnt mince words. For example, Laqueurs extended critique of Islamophobia as an explanation for failed Muslim assimilation in Europe is devastating. Laqueur doesnt hesitate to say that the fundamental problem of Muslim assimilation is cultural rooted in traditional Islam, and in the strange blend of Muslim mores and ghetto street-culture that nowadays shapes Europes angry young Muslim men.
Far from distancing himself from conservative critiques of Europe, Laqueur embraces them, invoking conservative writers like Theodore Dalrymple and The Weekly Standards Gerard Alexander. Laqueur even argues that the term barbarian can be applied with justice to the actions of some lawless young Muslim men. He also takes seriously the possibility of a violent Muslim revolution in Europe. Laqueurs tone may be calm, but his substance is explosive and very much of a piece with the long train of conservative books on European decline.
The Last Days of Europe is a book about culture. Laqueur rejects the cultural blindness of economic elites who see immigration in strictly market terms. He rejects racism and xenophobia as explanations of failed Muslim integration, in favor of a cultural account. He rejects economic explanations for the decline of Europe itself, insisting instead that the erosion of strong families, relativism, and a loss of faith in the future are at the root of Europes problems. (Laqueur unashamedly invokes Gibbon here.)
Delusions
Laqueur is convinced that Europeans (and their liberal American admirers) have been living in a state of delusion. He is ruthless in skewering a series of recent American books touting Europe as the worlds emerging soft superpower, a continent destined to lead the world through its exemplary combination of benevolence and justice. The notion that the hard-eyed powers of the world will on the basis of sheer inspiration come to emulate European rule of law comes in for polite ridicule by Laqueur. The Last Days of Europes fascinating chapter on Russia is a case study in failed expectations for democratic and market universalism, and therefore also a study in the recalcitrance of culture.
Europes disastrous and deluded decline is so obvious to Laqueur that he expends considerable energy wondering out loud how anyone could ever have taken the world-wide triumph of European soft power seriously to begin with. Reading Laqueur, its tough not to notice parallels between the leftist fantasy of a pacifist, rule-bound world and the Bush administrations own overconfidence in the power of exemplary democracy. The Bush administrations willingness to use military force is generally contrasted with the European (and American) Lefts abhorrence of force and preference for soft power. Yet the two positions are less at odds than meets the eye.
True, the presidents strategy required that military force be used to implant democracy in the heart of the Muslim world. Yet the plan was to avoid the need for a heavy military footprint in Iraq, or for military actions against other powers, by allowing democracys allegedly universal appeal to spread spontaneously through both Iraq and the region. The Western Left adheres to an only slightly different fantasy of democratic contagion. If the Bush administration unwisely depended on the domino effect of elections in Iraq, the fantasy of a soft superpower depends on the supposed domino effect of policies like the abolition of capital punishment and rule by the International Criminal Court.
Like many others, Laqueur roots Europes fall in its relativism, multiculturalism and to speak more bluntly Europes simple lack of confidence in its own values. Yet Laqueurs account could be read to make the opposite point. Underneath all that guilt and cultural deference lies overweening and unwarranted self-confidence. Europes delusional belief in its ability to lead the world without force through exemplary justice alone rests on a profoundly ethnocentric conviction of its own moral superiority.
This same self-confidence helps explain why Europes elites discounted the cultural challenge of immigration. Insofar as they bothered to consider the issue, the unthought-out assumption was that liberal modernisms superiority would be seen, acknowledged, and therefore eventually adopted by Muslim immigrants. So it turns out the Europes old ethnocentric social evolutionism the notion that the worlds barbarian nations would sooner or later adopt the Wests superior ways has never really disappeared. Nowadays, however, instead of inspiring sacrifice and justifying imperial force, the social evolutionism obviates the need for either; its an ideology of superiority, without cost or hard work cultural superiority as pure wish-fulfillment.
The West would do better to have confidence in its own values, while also recognizing that our values are our own and are therefore unlikely to be spontaneously adopted by others. It is a characteristic weakness of liberal democracy to assume its own universal appeal, while taking democracys cultural pre-requisites for granted. Precisely because the West now imports populations who lack the cultural pre-requisites for democracy and market capitalism, the immigration issue has the power to explode democracys characteristic cultural naïveté (if it doesnt explode democracy itself first).
Americas Debate
Even as Europes immigration-wrought crisis grows, America is facing its own immigration debate. The parallels to Laqueurs European story are obvious: jobs Europeans wont do, uncontrolled legal and illegal migration, failure to enforce the law especially after the initial crossing at the border the abuse of family reunification provisions, melodramas of outrage by human rights groups, bogus but paralyzing accusations of racism and xenophobia, and sheer obliviousness on the part of business and government elites about the long-term social and cultural implications of uncontrolled immigration. Even the European publics outrage at being cut out of immigration decision-making has its American parallel in the attempt to railroad through a gigantic immigration bill in just days, with virtually no debate and the public outrage thats followed.
But what about differences between the American and European experiences with immigration? American immigration is largely Hispanic. If culture is important, then surely Mexican immigrants should be judged culturally closer to Americans than Muslims are to Europeans. True enough, but this is far too simple a response.
For starters, Muslim immigration is a non-trivial issue even in America, as the terror plots at Fort Dix and JFK Airport show. (See Look to Europe.) For another thing, Mexican immigrants in the United States are reproducing some of the problems of Muslim immigrants in Europe. Chain migration through family reunification can transport entire extended families even whole villages from Mexico to the United States, and that creates serious barriers to assimilation (see Chain, Chain, Chain). The problems of Mexican immigrant families in America are very different from the problems of extended immigrant Muslim clans in Europe, yet in many ways they are equally severe, as Heather MacDonald shows in her remarkable article, Hispanic Family Values?
Nightmare
In focusing on immigration, Ive given short-shrift to the bold, subtle, hopeful, piercing, and absolutely terrifying dissection of Europes prospects at the conclusion of Laqueurs book. The Last Days of Europes chilling climax is not to be missed. But the terrifying fate of Europe is precisely what we need to avoid. While America may not yet be in Europes dire straights, it would be sheer madness to for the United States to repeat Europes deadly immigration mistakes at the very moment when the depth of the continents tragic errors are emerging into the light of day.
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
#1
Above all, he says, it was naïveté that had made possible the indiscriminate immigration of earlier decades.
Naivete, sure. But also greed on the part of elites who see immigration as a union-busting/wage-dampening measure (I am looking at you Presidente Bush, same with the Saudi hand-holding), multicultural masochists and nihilists, and old fashioned European feelings of absolute racial superiority unthreatened by the dark hordes. Of course, that last part needs to be backed up with mass slaughter or the result is young Swedish women gang-raped over and over again.
Please, God, let the tide turn. If the Europeans do not get their blood up rape and the sword will be all that is left to them.
President Bush met with dissidents from all around the world today and gave a superb speech, which you can read by hitting the link.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2007 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Does that mean "freedom" for Islamofascists? Voters in the Muslim tyrannies are increasingly voting for the enemy. Anyone who respects their choice endorses a security nightmare. President Reagan had to undo 4 years of Carter chimping for "freedom" and "human rights" for homicidal terrorists.
#2
The Palestinians voted in Hamas in about as free and fair an election as is likely to happen in the Arab world in this generation. As a result the financially solvent part of the world instituted a financial blockade that, while now starting to crumble, has resulted in the lovely all-against-all civil war likely to continue until the last fighter turns his weapon on himself for lack of any other target. Let the Arab voters honestly express their will... then let them live with the consequences that flow therefrom. It's an important lesson in reality.
Its the capitals fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles, yet Islam can still be tainted by mistrust and misunderstanding. Here Time Out argues that an Islamic London would be a better place
The noise from the expectant crowd hushed to a murmur as an open-backed lorry that had driven slowly up the Mall known since the Islamic revolution of 2021 as The Way of the Martyrs nudged its way through the thousands gathered in Mohammad Sidique Khan Square. On the lorry, two masked guards held a young man, black hood over his head; a quiver running through the material suggested he knew what was coming.
The lorry halted by the plinth that had once held Marc Quinns sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant long since removed as an insult to decency and was now the place of public execution. A rope noose attached to a wire cable hung from a mechanised hoist. The main doors of what had been the National Gallery flung open and an Imam walked down the steps of the new Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence, opened only a week before by Sultan Charles, Prince of Islam and protector of the faithful in England.
The official executioner placed a stepladder against the plinth. The lorry pulled up and the young man was pushed out, then forced up the ladder. The noose was forced over the condemned mans head. The crowd chanted Allahu akbar (God is greater than everything).The hoist driver put his finger on a green button Okay, not really thats a hysterical, right-wing nightmare of a future Muslim London: where an cruel alien creed is forced on a liberal city. A society where women are second-class citizens, same sex relationships a crime and Sharia law enforces terrible public disfigurement and death. But the reality is a long, long way from this dark vision.
For a start, Islam is not an alien religion to London. At the end of World War I the city sat at the heart of an Empire that had 160 million Muslim subjects, 80 million in India alone. London was the largest Islamic capital in the world. Forty years later and the end of the Empire, unrest and war and poverty in south Asia had lead to mass immigration to the mother country and London became a Muslim capital in another sense.
According to the 2001 census there are 607,083 Muslims living in London (310,477 men and 296,606 women). The majority of Muslims live in the east of the city and, by 2012, the Muslim Council of Britain estimates that the Muslim population of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest and Hackney will be 250,000. There are plans afoot (though no formal application has yet been submitted) to build the UKs biggest mosque capable of welcoming 40,000 worshippers near the 2012 Olympic site, a move which has prompted predictable outrage from some quarters. Consequently, Muslim disillionment with a reactionary and often ill-informed press is at an all time high.
But rather than fear the inevitable changes this will bring to London, or buy in to a racist representation of all Muslims as terrorists, we should recognise both what Islam has given this city already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future.
Public health
On the surface, Islamic health doesnt look good: the 2001 census showed that 24 per cent of Muslim women and 21 per cent of Muslim men suffered long-term illness and disability. But these are factors of social conditions rather than religion. In fact, Islam offers Londoners potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of superbugs in Londons hospitals.
Alcohol is haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As London is above the national average for alcohol-related deaths in males, with 17.6 per 100,000 people (Camden has 31.6 per 100,000 males), turning all the citys pubs into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health. Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and youd avoid many of the 22,000 alcohol-related deaths and the £7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year.
Ecology
The world is green and beautiful, said the prophet Muhammad, and Allah has appointed you his guardian over it. The Islamic concept of halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world and Muhammad was one of the first ever environmentalists, advocating hima areas where wildlife and forestry are protected. So we could expect more public parks under Islam, but halifa also applies to recycling: in 2006, 12,000 Muslims attended a series of sermons at the East London Mosque explaining the theological evidence for a link between behaving in an environmentally sustainable way and the Islamic faith.
Education
Presently, Muslim students perform less well than non-Muslim students. In inner London, 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims have no qualifications (the figure for the general population of the same age and location is 25 per cent). When it comes to university education the picture is equally gloomy: 16 to 24-year-old Muslims are half as likely to have degree level or above qualification than other inner London young people.
Again, social factors rather than religion have led to this state of affairs. Young Muslims in London are often of south Asian origin and therefore more likely to live in households where English is not the first language, more likely to encounter racism (both intentional and unintentional) during their education, and more likely to suffer from poverty and bad housing conditions.
But Tahir Alam, education spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, claims Muslim children do better in their own faith schools than in the mainstream state sector: Muslim schools have their own distinct ethos. They use the childrens faith and heritage as primary motivators to provide the backdrop for their education and behaviour. This ethos is consistent with the messages that children are getting at home, so it is a very coherent operation between the home and the school.
If Islam became the dominant religion in London the same ethos could be applied to schooling across swathes of underprivileged and deprived areas of the city. This could have a revolutionary effect on educational achievement and, perhaps just as importantly, general levels of discipline and self-respect among Londons young people. While controversy rages over faith schools, there are 37 Muslim schools in London. As of 2004, only five were state schools, but there is growing pressure to bring more into the state sector which, according to Alam, will help raise achievement for many sectors of the Muslim community. Many private Muslim schools are under-resourced and if they can be brought into the state sector this valuable experience can be extended to more children.
Food
Application of halal (Arabic for permissable) dietary laws across London would free us at a stroke from our addiction to junk food, and the general adoption of a south Asian diet rich in fruit juice, rice and vegetables with occasional mutton or chicken would have a drastic effect on obesity, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders and associated public health problems. As curry is already Londoners and the nations favourite food (see our Brick Lane food feature), it would be a relatively easy process to encourage the adoption of such a diet. Not eating would be important as well. The annual fasting month of Ramadan instils self-discipline, courtesy and social cohesion. And Londoners would benefit philosophically and physically from even a short period when we werent constantly ramming food into our mouths.
Inter-faith relations
In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud would be protected as peoples of the book. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London. This welcoming stance already exists in the capital in the form of the City Circle (see Yahya Birt interview), which encourages inter-faith dialogue and open discussion.
Arts
Some of the finest art in London is already Islamic. The Jameel Gallery at the V&A houses ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, which date from the great days of the Islamic caliphate of the eighth and ninth century up until the turn of the last century. Or take a free daily tour of the Addis Gallery of Islamic art (at the British Museum). London-based Nasser David Khalili, an Iranian-born Jew, has amassed what is considered to be the worlds largest private collection of Islamic art. Islamic influences have also flourished in other areas of the arts, with novelists, comedians (Birmingham-born Shazia Mirza was an instant hit on the London circuit), and music (from rappers Mecca2Medina on, to the less in-your-face Yusuf Islam).
Social justice
Each Muslim is obliged to pay zakat, a welfare tax of 2.5 per cent of annual income, that is distributed to the poor and the needy. If the working population of London, 5.2 million, was predominantly Muslim this would produce approximately £3.2bn each year. More importantly, everyone would be obliged to consider those Londoners who havent shared their good fortune. London would become a little less cruel.
Race relations
Under Islam all ethnicities are equal. Once you have submitted to Allah you are a Muslim it doesnt matter what colour you are. End of story.
Michael Hodges. Additional research: Elizabeth Austin, Tue Jun 5
#2
Mixing the Kool Aid with a little ZamZam are we, Mike? You want ice with that...INFIDEL!
Sad thing is, he may well be right. But I doubt it'll turn out as peachy keen as he thinks it will...
How do these people manage to remember to breathe?
Posted by: The Doctor ||
06/06/2007 16:37 Comments ||
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#4
...thats a hysterical, right-wing nightmare of a future Muslim London: where an cruel alien creed is forced on a liberal city. A society where women are second-class citizens, same sex relationships a crime and Sharia law enforces terrible public disfigurement and death. But the reality is a long, long way from this dark vision.
Somebody ought to scoop this guy up and parachute him into Gaza.
#6
Does he get paid to write such delusions. I suppose we can expect much more of this type of suicidal redux in the future to grace our airwaves and print. Unreal.
#8
Muslim immigration imposes enormous security costs on the West.
This isn't worth a post, but the Organization of the Islamic Conference - Islam's UN parallel - asked the Philippines to return 2 captured terror bases to the Islamofascists.
#9
Jeez...I thought this was from The Onion or Scrappleface or some other satire...This numbnuts can't really be serious...I think the Gaza parachute idea is great...a little empirical research would do wonders....
#10
"Consequently, Muslim disillionment with a reactionary and often ill-informed press is at an all time high."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
So much stupidity in one article. Look, they are clean because they wash their hands and feet (nevermind wiping their asses with their hand). Look, no alcohol, so no more louts on the street. And just look at how "educated" they all are. I mean, almost everybody had an advanced degree in islam, so we know they are well schooled, no? And the food, and the race relations, all great! And not to forget the real god of the left, the "environment." Under islam, all your cares will be gone!
Just don't mind those pesky executions I was talking about in the first paragraph....
Was this a school project or something? Talk about lipstick on a pig....
Posted by: Mark E. ||
06/06/2007 22:04 Comments ||
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#11
In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud would be protected as peoples of the book. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here?
Um, Mr. Hodges, could you supply us with an example of where the above statement has actually worked? You know, in the real world outside of the pretty, swirling colors in your head.
#12
Inter-faith relations
In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud would be protected as peoples of the book. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London. This welcoming stance already exists in the capital in the form of the City Circle (see Yahya Birt interview), which encourages inter-faith dialogue and open discussion.
Filth! Horseshit on a stick! Send this asshole to Saudi Arabia so he can enjoy an Islamic utopia hellhole first hand.
#2
An important lesson, though, that only the men get to have any fun, while the women are hidden away with the children. However, they forgot to force the females to get male permission to leave their area... and where are the Christians, the Jews, and the Shiites in all this? I'd love to do this, but complete in all details, including the Muttawa beating women for showing a bit of ankle below the swathes of black fabric.
#6
Unbelieveable. Actually, that is not the correct word. Believeable.
Where the hell are the parents? I'd be screaming for.... well.... for something, I guess. I know my kid would be learning a very different lesson at home that day, as well as having a really good "show and tell" for the next time. Perhaps a few readings of select passages from the Koran to the class until they sent the kid to the principals office...
Or maybe he could come to school wearing a jewish star, and since the Magic Kingdom is "judenrein", he could go to a Cub game with me instead.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
06/06/2007 21:34 Comments ||
Top||
If I were 20 years old on September 12, 2001, I would have enlisted. It's the price of having a genuine war hero for a father. There's that genetic imperative: Get out there and find who you really are. Are you brave? Will you sacrifice your life for others? Or will you cut and run? . . .
Canadians may not be in Iraq, but we're close, just on the other side of Iran, in Afghanistan. We're dying, just like the tender faced Yanks that appear every night at the end of the news on PBS. And we're doing the hard work there - it's not just "peacekeeping," the shadow-play that mocks and imitates the greatness we once displayed. Fifty-four Canadian soldiers have died in that battle. We're re-building the great army that Jean Chrétien gutted. Some day soon we might even show up with the geopolitical relevance we had 50 years ago.
But there's a lot of cowardice to live down. The rest of the world still calls "the cut and run crowd." The phrase, "Canada's Cut and Run Crowd" appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 14th. Were they wrong?
Before you answer, let's be clear. A popular joke says the Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the world. All the other newspapers are read by people who don't. So that's the evaluation of the people who actually count. Canada? We cut and run.
Are you happy with that? Or are you one of the women who calls for "peace" and "tolerance," while Islamic fundamentalists behead the innocent? When I was growing up, the phrase "privilege breeds responsibility" was hammered into my soft little brain. Canada is the richest country in the world, the most welcoming of countries, the most blessed in terms of natural resources, in stability, in unity. To me, that means we have a responsibility. Responsibility is not just about the calculations of self-interest; it's about being there, tools in hand, ready to help when needed. That is the only way to ensure peace.
"Peace" is what happens after war. The 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s were peaceful because we won World War II. If we don't win this war for the greater Middle East, our grandchildren will live under the threat of terror. And we'll be the people who decided to sit out the great battle between good and evil, so we could watch Canadian Idol, shop online and go to our kids' soccer practice. Make no mistake; we'll have ceded the future to tyranny.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/06/2007 09:05 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Canadians may not be in Iraq, but we're close, just on the other side of Iran, in Afghanistan. We're dying, just like the tender faced Yanks that appear every night at the end of the news on PBS. And we're doing the hard work there - it's not just "peacekeeping," the shadow-play that mocks and imitates the greatness we once displayed. Fifty-four Canadian soldiers have died in that battle.
And god bless and receive every one of them.
We're re-building the great army that Jean Chrétien gutted. Some day soon we might even show up with the geopolitical relevance we had 50 years ago.
Very true: The Canadians punched WAY above their weight, and I like to think there was a friendly competition between the Canadian and American armies to top each other that benefitted the entire Free World.
But there's a lot of cowardice to live down. The rest of the world still calls "the cut and run crowd." The phrase, "Canada's Cut and Run Crowd" appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 14th. Were they wrong?
Before you answer, let's be clear. A popular joke says the Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the world. All the other newspapers are read by people who don't. So that's the evaluation of the people who actually count. Canada? We cut and run.
Are you happy with that?
I never was, and I'm not Canadian.
"Peace" is what happens after war. The 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s were peaceful because we won World War II. If we don't win this war for the greater Middle East, our grandchildren will live under the threat of terror. And we'll be the people who decided to sit out the great battle between good and evil, so we could watch Canadian Idol, shop online and go to our kids' soccer practice. Make no mistake; we'll have ceded the future to tyranny.
#1
"The only journalists that will survive will be those that choose a side. The classic independent war correspondent who once floated across a war will be, literally, dead."
This kind of explains why the news reports are the way they are - since we don't (intentionally) kill the reporters, self-preservation will just naturally make them report for the other side.
From the woman who wrote Privilege Means Responsibility, posted by Mike earlier. An old piece, dated March 23 2007, but still interesting I think.
Paranoia, says my dear clever brother Bruce, "is the family disease." "Well, ok then" I said to myself, "let's take that bad boy out for a walk." China announced this week that it was bumping its defence budget by 17%. I suspect one of our so-called great men is behind that monstrous threat: Maurice Strong.
While we all watch Conrad Black being taken apart by the Yanks, one of Canada's most dubious characters is hiding out in China, still fomenting trouble at the age of 77. When history comes to write his story, it will be one of extraordinary back room deals that curiously make him rich, while decreasing the self-determination of others. Strong's true talents lie in behind-the-scenes manipulations of the political process. He is reputed to be very, very wealthy, despite being a self-confessed, life-long socialist.
Socialism for everyone else, apparently. As godfather of Kyoto, he is responsible for the virulant anti-capitalist stance of the enviro movement (now thankfully acknowledging sanity when it shows up on the playing field). Strong was the UN official who was chief co-ordinator of re-forms that set up the Iraq Office, which oversaw the Oil for Food program. In fact, he resigned from the U.N., when a $1,000,000 cheque was found to have been delivered to him, endorsed by him and cashed, that came from Saddam Hussein's UN sanctioned regime.
While Strong protests innocence, he vanished to China soon after and returns seldom. Particularly since, following right after the Oil for Food indictments in New York this fall, revelations of pay-outs that propped up North Korea's nuclear community were found to have come winding through various UN outfits which Strong, as special envoy to Kofi Annan for the Korean peninsula from 2003-2005, controlled.
But it is in Strong's machinations for "global governance" that he is most terrifying. Global governance is UN speak for "give us money and go away while we run the world." One of his most flesh-crawling recommendations was that the U.N. take a .5% tax on foreign-exchange transactions, raising, by the estimate of economist James Tobin, $1.5 trillion annually for a supra-government, which answers to no voter in no country. Not only that, under his aegis, at the same time, a two-stage system revoking veto power by the five members of the Security council was recommended.
No wonder he's pitched up in China, the only functional Stalinist state left with nuclear ambitions. Is he, I wonder, about to trigger another Cold War? This one in the name of someone, anyone, standing up to the evil American Empire? I suspect he's going to try. That, and hiding out from any indictments that might come down from his fiddling with the massive budgets he supervised and spent, under the aegis of the U.N.
There is nothing wrong with the U.N., except for this one small thing. Its structure, and lack of oversight by the democracies of the world, has made it a snakes' nest for international manipulators who work against freedom and self-determination of ordinary men and women, in the service of an ideology that is the most murderous and destructive in human history. We need to rescue it and soon.
Women's Post claims to be read by more mid to high income professional women in Toronto than their versions of the NY Times. Kinda like the Wall Street Journal, I guess, being read by those who actually do run things. ;-)
#2
Now that's queer. At the top of the page it said Warning: pg_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid PostgreSQL result resource in /home/www/www.rantburg.com/htdocs/incisspambot.php on line 6 and yet the thread showed up nicely below.
#5
North of Silicon Valley, in the South San Francisco town of San Bruno is one of the largest West coast military graveyards. Untold thousands of bleak white head stones stand in stark contrast to the verdant sod that covers so many of our nations war dead. The huge numbers of grave markers defy counting or even simple comprehension. They seem to scroll out endlessly over the quiet rolling hills.
Only later in life, as I learned more about the World Wars, was I able to appreciate the significance of this solemn memorial. To this very day it still astounds me to think of how many young men, boys really, were wrested from their peaceful Middle American homes, screamed at by a drill instructor during a month or two of boot camp and then sent overseas to a place where they could not even speak the language. Their average survival time was six weeks. Six short weeks, often less time than they had spent in training. Then they were dead with only a silent gravestone to commemorate their brief existence on earth. That they died so swiftly and in such vast numbers to ensure the enduring liberty we all enjoy today leaves me in total awe.
When I consider this, it is absolutely impossible to imagine how people can possibly disregard or ignore the threat that confronts us now. Once again, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany have from the ashes of tyranny, in the form of Islam, to assail everything that all those who went before us fought and died to preserve.
The photo above is of that National Cemetery. Over 100,000 of America's soldiers are buried there. My own grandfather is included among them. I sometimes struggle to understand how people can drive by this grim reminder of how hard won our freedom is yet oppose current attempts to preserve it. Very few have perished in this ongoing war against Islam but even this minuscule loss, no matter how precious, has managed to dissuade so many from continuing the fight for our freedom and that of the entire world. Were I to have ever opposed the fight against Islamic domination, just glimpsing the photo above would cause an agony of shame.
We all have so much to thank our fallen heroes for. So few seem to understand this. May that lack of understanding eventually become a disgrace to all who deny their monumental sacrifice upon our behalf.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Paul Belien
Can uncontrolled immigration kill a continent? According to Walter Laqueur, it already has. Laqueur, an historian whos spent a lifetime moving between America and Europe, is a scholar and public intellectual of international stature. So its news when the latest book from so knowledgeable and unimpeachable a friend of Europe echoes and extends the themes of a pugnacious series of American tracts on European decline. Whether European intellectuals will be able to dismiss Laqueurs The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, just as theyve dismissed so many other such books, is an open question. (Its tough to discount a book endorsed by Henry Kissinger and Niall Ferguson.) Whats certain is that, in the midst of our own immigration debate, Americans cannot afford to ignore The Last Days of Europe.
Its the capitals fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles, yet Islam can still be tainted by mistrust and misunderstanding. Here Time Out argues that an Islamic London would be a better place
Canadians may not be in Iraq, but we're close, just on the other side of Iran, in Afghanistan. We're dying, just like the tender faced Yanks that appear every night at the end of the news on PBS. And we're doing the hard work there - it's not just "peacekeeping," the shadow-play that mocks and imitates the greatness we once displayed. Fifty-four Canadian soldiers have died in that battle. We're re-building the great army that Jean Chrétien gutted. Some day soon we might even show up with the geopolitical relevance we had 50 years ago.
