Yet another brilliant essay from Fjordman has been posted at the Brussels Journal.

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias

From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2006-07-17 08:38

The 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have witnessed the most spectacular population growth in human history, most of it in Third World countries. The world’s population, estimated at 6.4 billion in 2006, grows by more than 70 million people per year. In sixty years, Brazil’s population has increased by 318 per cent; Ethiopia’s by 503 per cent. There are now 73 million people in Ethiopia – more than the population of Britain or France.

At the same time, many of the most economically successful countries, both in the East and in the West, have problems with ageing or declining populations. At its peak around 1910, one-quarter of the world’s population lived in Europe or North America. Today the percentage has probably declined to about one-eighth. South Korea’s birthrate has dropped to the point where the average Korean woman is expected to have only one child throughout her life. The U.S. still has a birthrate of more than two, while the U.K. saw births inch up from 1.63 to 1.74 and Germany from 1.34 to 1.37 in the same period. The low birthrate problem in Asia is rooted in women’s rising social and economic standing. Japan’s birthrate was 1.28, comparable to Taiwan’s 1.22, and Hong Kong’s 0.94.

“Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world’s most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe – Muslim Albania – has a fertility rate above 2. Russia’s fertility rate is 1.28.

Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: “Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death.” “The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe’s population will relive – in slow motion – that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050.”

It’s numbers like these that have prompted Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to state that “it’s demography, and not democracy, that will be the critical factor shaping growth and security in the 21st century. High rates of births are contributing to the booming populations which are dragging down developing nations. Meanwhile falling birth rates are sapping the growth of developed nations.” “Although migration is one option developed countries are looking at to keep their economies vibrant,” Lee said, “it might not solve all their troubles and might even breed social tensions.” According to him, governments may not be able to afford to keep out of personal issues like sex, marriage and procreation much longer.

Historian Niall Ferguson reveals how Islam is winning the numbers game. “If fertility persisted at such low levels, within 50 years Spain’s population would decline by 3-4 million, Italy’s by a fifth. Not even two World Wars had inflicted such an absolute decline in population.” “In 1950 there had been three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995 the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain. By 2050, the population of Iran could be more than 50 per cent larger. At the time of writing, the annual rate of population growth is more than seven times higher in Iran than in Britain.”

Even in developing countries such as fast-evolving China, population growth is falling, and in the Indian subcontinent, Muslims have higher growth rates than Hindus or other non-Muslims. We thus have a situation with an explosive population growth in failed countries, while many of the most economically and technologically advanced nations, Eastern and Western, have stagnating populations. This strange and possibly unprecedented situation, which could perhaps be labelled “survival of the least fit”, will have dramatic consequences for the world. It is already producing the largest migration waves in history, threatening to swamp islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty.

..

You really should read it all.

Swedish integration attempts ‘are divisive’

Swedish integration attempts ‘are divisive’
Published: 13th July 2006 10:55 CET

Sweden should scrap the Integration Board in its current form and transform it into an introduction board that would focus on providing for new immigrants’ immediate needs, the country’s discrimination commissioner said on Wednesday in Dagens Nyheter.

Masoud Kamali sharply criticized current integration policies, calling them divisive.

The population is divided up into “Swedes” who are going to integrate the group “immigrants.” The report that was the grounding for Swedish integration policies was coloured by its focus on “immigrants’ deficiencies,” he said.

The structural obstacles against integration are not noticed, and that is why all organizations and authorities that work with divisive policies toward integration should be scrapped, Kamali said.

He said the goal for general social policies must be to decrease economic inequalities and fight structural discrimination, to create similar possibilities for everybody and to have a global perspective.

The Swedish Migration Board’s report on integration for 2005 said there was a 17 percent difference between the number of employed people 20 to 64-years-old who are foreign and native to Sweden.

In 2005, 81 percent of native Swedes between those ages were working compared to 64 percent of those born outside of Sweden.

Hmm, is there a problem with the Swedes expecting immigrants to integrate into Swedish culture? So the “immigrants”, and lets be specific here, Mr Kamali, the Muslim immigrants, don’t want to integrate then? They want to stay apart from the Swedes? Sounds rather divisive to me.

I would have thought that when you come to a country it is because you like the culture and life-style of that country and perhaps find it a somewhat superior place to live to where-ever you came from. Well, to be honest, its been a long time since I really thought that.

As for 36% of migrants being unemloyed, compared to 19% of “native Swedes”, are most of these people actively looking for work, learning the language, adjusting to the culture and picking up new work skills? Or are some of them totally happy to sit on welfare, take jizyah from the infidels and attempt to impose their way of life on the country which welcomed them with open arms, helped them, fed and clothed them, and bent over backwards to accomodate their “cultural differences”? Perhaps for some of these people deportation is a much better option than integration then.

This excellent essay over at DhimmiWatch today, by Fjordman. Here are some extracts:

On Britain:

“Asian youths,” a British euphemism for Pakistanis and Muslims from South Asia, in parts of Oldham are trying to create no-go areas for white people. One of them told: “There are signs all around saying whites enter at your risk. It’s a matter of revenge.” However, it’s not just the white natives that are targets of Muslim violence, but other non-Muslims, too. A report on Hindus being driven out of the English city of Bradford by young Muslims was described by some Hindus as “ethnic cleansing.” Some of them want to leave the city to escape the “Talibanization of Bradford.”

In an online story in newspaper The Daily Telegraph that was removed “for legal reasons,” former Muslim Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo warned that British Muslims could soon form a state within the state. Dr Sookhdeo believed that “in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.” “In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future – and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.” “Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on.”

The next step will be pushing the Government to recognize sharia law for Muslim communities – which will be backed up by the claim that it is “racist” or “Islamophobic” to deny them this. Sookhdeo noted that there is already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. “There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time – and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.” “The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government’s record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that.”

You can read the aforementioned Daily Telegraph article which quotes Patrick Sookhdeo here. (Recommended)

On France:

In France, Muslims already have many smaller states within the state. Criminologist Lucienne Bui Trong wrote that: “From 106 hot points in 1991, we went to 818 sensitive areas in 1999.” The term she used, “sensitive areas,” was used to describe Muslim no-go zones where anything representing a Western institution (post office truck, firemen, even mail order delivery firms) was routinely ambushed with Molotov cocktails. The number was 818 in 2002, when the French government decided to stop collecting the statistics.

In some of these areas, the phenomenon of gang rape “has become banal.” Violence against and pressure on women is part of daily life in the suburbs, where boys can dictate how girls should dress. Pressure is mounting for Muslim women to wear veils. In 2002, a 17-year-old girl was set alight by an 18-year-old boy as his friends stood by. The support group “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises” (“Neither Whores nor Submissives”) says the number of forced marriages has risen in recent years, with roughly 70,000 girls pressured into unwanted relationships each year in France. A leaked study conducted between October 2003 and May 2004 under the auspices of France’s inspector-general of education, Jean Pierre Obin, described an educational system where Muslim students regularly boycotted classes that concerned Voltaire, Rousseau and Moliere, whom the students accused of being anti-Islamic. Orbin’s report cited Muslim students’ refusal to use the “plus” sign in mathematics because it looks like a crucifix; Muslims boycotting class trips to churches, cathedrals and monasteries; and forcing wholesale changes in school lunch fare to accommodate their religious practices.
..
[After the French riots] some of the rioters left boasting messages on various Internet forums. “We aren’t going to let up. The French won’t do anything and soon, we will be in the majority here” One observer stated: “In France, the majority of young Muslims believe that French society is dying, committing suicide. More like 10 percent to 20 percent of them believe that they are in the process of replacing European civilization with an Islamic one.” In the southern city of Marseille, Muslims make up at least a quarter of the population, and rising fast.

On Holland:

In the Netherlands, Muslims will soon make up the majority in all major cities. “Today, we have 1 million Muslims out of 16 million Dutch,” according to Frits Bolkestein, Dutch politician. “Within 10 years, they will have an absolute majority in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam. We are staring into the face of a shortly to be divided community. Muslims have the right to their own schools, so there is no teaching of evolution, gay teachers are not tolerated but anti-Semitism is.” A researcher for the Netherlands Ministry for Immigration and Integration found that 40% of young Moroccan Muslims in the Netherlands rejected Western values and democracy. Six to seven percent were prepared to use force to “defend” Islam, and the majority were opposed to freedom of speech for offensive statements, particularly criticism of Islam.

On Germany:

Security sources in Germany warned that the country was home to between 3,000 and 5,000 potential Islamic suicide attackers. A Berlin court in 2005 ruled that a well-known Turkish religious leader should be extradited to Turkey. In his Berlin mosque he repeatedly said that “all Germans were stinking people and doomed to go to hell because they were useless creatures and infidels.” Shortly before, the press spokesman of this mosque had told about the Turks’ strong interest in fostering good relations with native Germans. TV correspondent Reinhard Laska feared that the opinions voiced by the Imam were only the tip of the iceberg: “There was nobody in the mosque who stood up and demanded that the Imam stop his nasty talk about Germans,” he said. “Nobody seemed to mind at all.” In 2006, “Valley of the Wolves,” a virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war, sold out to cheering audiences from Germany’s 2.5 million-strong Turkish community. According to Der Spiegel, Germany’s and Europe’s biggest weekly magazine, an estimated number of 50 women in Germany have been murdered in so-called honor killings in the past decade. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. Much of this insular and ultra-religious world is out of public view, “often hidden in inner-city apartments where the most influential links to the outside world are satellite dishes that receive Turkish and Arabic television and the local mosque.” “In these families, loyalty and honor are elevated virtues and women are treated little better than slaves, unseen by society and often unnoticed or ignored by their German neighbors.” It caused an outcry when a group of 14-year-old Turkish boys mocked one victim during a class discussion. “She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German.”

On Sweden:

In Sweden, reports about criminal gangs and mafias, a phenomenon that is growing day by day, are coming in from urban areas all over the country, and a feeling of powerlessness is spreading among ordinary citizens. “We have no other possibility than to flee from this area. Families cannot fight against these problems alone. We are talking about survival, you can get stabbed here. We can only survive by attempting to avoid getting targeted.”

Feriz and Pajtim, members of youth gang Gangsta Albanian Thug Unit in the Swedish city of Malmö, explain how they mug and beat people downtown. “Many of us participated in gangs that fought against the Serbs during the war in Kosovo. Violence is in our blood,” Feriz said. They target a lone victim and make him a scapegoat. “We make it look like he bumped into one of us. Then we have an opportunity to attack him. We surround him and beat and kick him until he no longer fights back,” he said. “You are always many more people than your victims. Cowardly?” “I have heard that from many, but I disagree. The whole point is that they’re not supposed to have a chance.” Neither Feriz nor Pajtim expressed any sympathy for their victims. “If they get injured, they just have themselves to blame for being weak,” said Pajtim and shrugged.

They bring with them a rather brutal culture to Sweden. A BBC article described how the centuries-old custom of blood feuds has made a comeback in Albania in recent years. “The law and order vacuum created by the collapse of communism sent many Albanians back to the ancient customary laws of their tribal roots.” “The Kanuns sanction blood feuds and regulate them from all points of view,” said professor of law Ismet Elezi. “And first they established the rule: whoever kills will be killed. Blood is avenged with blood.” In an effort to end to this perpetual cycle of revenge, the Albanian education ministry has set up programmes for children affected by blood feuds. Each local authority tries to identify the children who do not attend school because they are in hiding or confined to their homes. “It’s between the families. If we go and ask for the police to help this thing will get even worse.”

What the BBC conveniently “forgot” to mention in this article was that these blood feuds are rooted in Islamic teachings.[..] The idea of blood money originates from the Koran, 2.178. Indemnity is secured through the payment of blood money to the next-of-kin or the injured party, as opposed to retaliation, in which the killer is put to death or has a like injury inflicted on him/her. It depends upon what the family of the deceased or the injured party wants.

And this quote from Douglas Murray:

“All across Europe, debate on Islam is being stopped. Italy’s greatest living writer, Oriana Fallaci, soon comes up for trial in her home country, and in Britain the government seems intent on pushing through laws that would make truths about Islam and the conduct of its followers impossible to voice. Europe is shuffling into darkness. It is proving incapable of standing up to its enemies, and in an effort to accommodate the peripheral rights of a minority is failing to protect the most basic rights of its own people.” A survey in April 2005, after the murder of another critic of Islam, Theo van Gogh, indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people wanted to emigrate abroad.

Full essay here.

Well worth a read, Caroline Glick writing in the Jerusalem Post:

Our World: After Londonistan

Jul. 11, 2006

By CAROLINE GLICK

In the wake of last year’s terror attacks on London, the people of Britain seemed muster the will to rally around their flag. After years of denial, the country that gave Israel the British jihad bombers who blew up Mike’s Place in 2003; gave Pakistan and America Daniel Pearl’s British jihadist executioner; and gave America the British jihadist shoe bomber finally acknowledged that British jihadists were a problem for Britain.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair started to admit that the source of the terror was not poverty, Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel but the jihadist ideology propagated within Britain’s Muslim community. Rather than make excuses for the murderers and their army of teachers and enablers, Blair began formulating a program to go after Britain’s jihadist hotbeds that indoctrinate British born and bred Muslims to wage war against their country.

Yet, as Melanie Phillips points out in painstaking and hair- raising detail in her book Londonistan, Blair’s efforts to curb the influence of radical jihadists and undermine their operations were quickly stymied. The multiculturalists who have taken hold of Britain’s cultural, intellectual, judicial, ecclesiastical and political life attacked, blocked or watered down every single one of his anti-terror initiatives. In the end, far from winning over his seemingly endless critics, Blair backed down.

Read the whole thing.

The ever courageous Oriana Fallaci is currently on trial in Italy for allegedly insulting Islam with the content of her book “The Force of Reason” (see sidebar). (via Michelle Malkin)

Sign a letter of support for Fallaci and freedom of speech.

The lawsuit was filed by Adel Smith, the president of the Muslim Union of Italy. 18 statements in the book, ruled offensive towards Muslims, are the subject of the complaint.

See Future Europe’s Oriana Fallaci Trial site here. You’ll find the letter and trial details there.

More info at Gates of Vienna, where Dymphna writes:

Defamation is the politically correct term for telling unpleasant truths about extremely thin-skinned cultures who refuse to acknowledge that their own leaders have previously proclaimed what Fallaci says is their goal: the subjugation of Western civilization.

..

In a world of worthy causes, in a universe of injustice and suffering, this one remains important. An old lady, still an icon of journalistic integrity, is dying [TOD: she has terminal cancer]. Like Saint Sebastian, she is also being tortured with arrows from moral midgets and cultural imbeciles.

It behooves all of us to do the little that we can.