Did Indians Discover Calculus

No. But that won't stop some people from trying to give India credit for it... Angry has more, but here's an excerpt. Note my comments on Angry's site....

The question is raised about who invented calculus.

Let me answer that question. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz share that honour. The Kerala School might have come up with the Taylor expansion of trigonometric functions, but that is not the same as calculus. Nor did they contribute their discovery to the body of human knowledge.

No need to rewrite the history books on this one, even if it means evil Westerners retain the credit for something good.

I wrote,

Interesting that Europeans or English are tripping over themselves to give credit for something as profound as the creation/ discovery of Calculus to Malayalam/ Keralese without so much as a whimper.

Usually, if you follow papers from India, the people there are blaming imperialism or colonialism for some discovery or the other being stolen, unrecognized or some other form of malfeasance depressing their greatness.

There will be more of this as the western world's affliction of self-loathing manifests itself in, what hitherto would have been unbelievable, increasingly self-inflicted self-delusions.

Posted by: Kaptaan at August 15, 2007 08:49 AM

Technorati Tags: India, Science, England, UK, Europe

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The UK has Got IT Bad

What is it with the UK? Kathy Shaidle points to a news item about Muslim men targeting white girls for sex........

who are as young as 12!

Why can't people honestly address the situation and condemn the perpetrators directly? Aren't muslims themselves talking about these kinds of people? It's the reputation of all Muslims that gets impacted, whether they are Sunni [Barelvi, Deobandi, Salafi, Wahabbi], Shia [seven, twelver, Ismaili], or Quadiani. I'd be interested to know if the UK even keeps crime stats breaking it down by community to that degree?

Having spoken to people in the UK, it seems they all know good, decent Muslim people who are their friends, and I've met some Muslims as well who seem decent enough. But do those people with close friendships with Muslims ever bother to even ask them what 'kind' of Muslim they are, and their thoughts on those Muslims bent on subjugating the world?

I can well imagine some Muslims say it is a part of their religion to harass these girls, such as those Muslims who believe in Jihad, Kafirs as sub-human, and oppression of non-Muslims. Them engaging in what is ACTUAL anti-social, sub-human behaviour is not a surprise.

But what about the rest of the Muslims out there? Why doesn't anyone ever hear of them condemning the perverts in their midst? Are they afraid of them or just too ignorant or oblivious to care? Do they in fact sympathize with those people? Or is it that the newspapers don't put those protests into print?

British Honour Killing of Kurdish Muslim Woman by her Family

Via Relapsed Catholic, Bloodthirsty Liberal posts about the killing of Banaz Mahmod and how her family had her raped and beaten before murdering her. Anyone who thinks honour killings don't occur in Muslim families is sadly mistaken. This kind of thing is what 'feminists' should be working to stop, or at least have the penalties fit the crime.


Technorati Tags: Islam, Muslim, Crime, Religion

Islamist Recruiter - 7/7 Bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan

David Frum pointed me to Prospect magazine which has a feature story using interviews with Khan's brother on how Khan became an Islamic recruiter and force for the evil design of Islamic supremacism. The article also touches on funding sources for mosques (Saudi, HUT, Muslim Brotherhood), and Wahabbism.

Here's an excerpt below (emphasis is mine in bold and large type). Pay attention to the part about how they find out about the interests of the target person and focus on those. From a previous post, I pointed to an article that mentions this is the tactic they use in trying to convert people from other religions ie: Sikhs and in particular they try and find Sikh girls going through a spot of trouble to convert. Unfortunately, many girls end up being used as prostitutes or trophies in Pakistan for money.

it takes about 30 years for a sizeable second generation to establish itself and then become frustrated with its status, both within its own community and the wider society. This frustration arises in part from a question of identity. Whose culture and values do you affiliate with? Those of your parents or of your friends? Those of your community or of your country?

Hassan Butt, a former recruiter for the British jihadi network (the term violent Islamic extremists in Britain use to describe themselves), who twice met Sidique Khan, says that the reason radical Islamic movements in Britain have been able to recruit thousands of young Muslims is that they have managed to exploit this identity problem.

Butt—who was interviewed in the August 2005 issue of Prospect, just after 7/7—left the jihadi network in February 2006. (His route out, documented in a recent interview on the US current affairs programme 60 Minutes, has been slow and painful, and earlier this year he was attacked near his home in Manchester for his betrayal.) After he left the network, Butt told me that as a recruiter, his most important job was to discover what his potential recruit identified with, and then to pick holes in it. For example, if the potential recruit felt Pakistani, then Butt would focus upon the difficulty of being both British and Pakistani. Butt and many other recruiters find this easy because they know what it is like. Having lived in Britain all his life within a strongly Pakistani household, Butt felt neither British nor Pakistani. "When I went to Pakistan," he said, "I was rejected. And when I came back to Britain, I never felt like I fitted in to the wider white British community. And you've got to remember that a lot of our parents didn't want us to fit into the British community."

Religion—in this case a purified and politicised version of Islam, far from the traditional "folk" religion of the first generation—was a natural way of transcending this cultural dislocation. "Here come the Islamists and they give you an identity… you don't need Pakistan or Britain. You can be anywhere in the world and this identity will stick with you and give you a sense of belonging....

According to Butt, the other big factor that has helped Islamist recruiters is the fact that in many communities, Islamists are winning what some have termed a "civil war" within Islam. For simplicity's sake, contemporary Islam can be divided into four schools: traditionalists, fundamentalists, modernists and Islamists. Unlike the split between Christian fundamentalists and other Christians, both Islamic traditionalists and fundamentalists lean towards scriptural literalism. The main difference between the groups is how they regard the 1,400 years of theological innovation since Muhammad's death.

While traditionalists will not hesitate to draw upon centuries of scholarly argument, evolution in Sharia law and changes in accepted Islamic practice, fundamentalist movements—of which the Saudi-backed Wahhabis are the most important—reject all theological innovation since the life of Muhammad and his closest companions. Muslims, they say, should pay attention only to the holy book and the collected sayings and doings of Muhammad. This is why, over the last 50 years, Wahhabi authorities in Saudi Arabia have demolished more than 300 historical structures in the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. They want to create a timeless Islam....

On the other side, British fundamentalists and Islamists are centrally funded. It is estimated that over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia has set aside $2-3bn a year to promote Wahhabism in other countries. It is not known how much of that money has come to Wahhabi groups in Britain, but one major recipient has been the Leeds Grand Mosque.

Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir are also centrally funded. They gather money from members, pass it to a central administration which then hands it back out again. These groups' lack of local community focus means that they have to compete harder for "market share," which has made them hungrier and more efficient....

I translated my usual question of whether he thought what his brother had done was "good" or "bad"—he had said that it was a terrible thing several times—and instead asked him whether he thought 7/7 was halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden) in Islam. Only when a look of stunned surprise come over Gultasab's face did I realise that I must have been asking him an entirely different question. After a brief pause, he replied. "No comment."

Here, it seemed, was the perfect example of the division between two worldviews—secular ethics and an embattled Islamic faith. How long had Gultasab managed to function with these two conflicting positions fighting within him? Everyday morality told him that his brother had committed a cold-blooded act of terror, while his own Islamic theology told him that there was no clear answer and maybe his brother was a hero. How many thousands of young British Muslims are similarly conflicted?

This is a question that Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's counterterrorism unit, is still trying to answer. After three further suspects from the Beeston area were charged this April with being involved in helping to plot 7/7, Clarke held a press conference in which he accused some West Yorkshire Muslims of keeping information from the police. "I firmly believe that there are other people who have knowledge of what lay behind the attacks," said Clarke. "Knowledge that they have not shared with us. In fact, I don't only believe it. I know it for a fact."...

When I asked Gultasab why he didn't try to prevent his kid brother from going down the path of jihad, he gave a similar answer. No one had expected him to become a suicide bomber. Why would Sidique kill himself barely a year after his wife had given birth to a baby girl—on whom he apparently doted? This question was never really answered, but most people in Beeston were pleased that the kids were becoming more religious. "Better them being Wahhabi than on drugs," said Gultasab. "People appreciated the kids running a bookshop because they were peers to the younger generation—who were no longer listening to the elders." The elders thought that the kids would come back to their roots. As Gultasab told me, when marriages took place without family consent, people thought that eventually everything would just be reconciled, as things usually are between children and their parents. And why would Sidique, the moderniser of his community—and "the kindest member of our family"—end up committing such a barbaric act?"

Technorati Tags: England, Europe, Canada, Islam, Muslim, Terrorism, Crime, Punjab, Pakistan

Bhopal II? Chemical Plant Finds Deliberately Hidden DEFECTIVE Parts From China

Would you want a Bhopal type of incident in your city? Tens of thousands died in that disaster in India. Don't think it can't happen in your western country, not with Chinese suppliers lying and defrauding their customers.

One blogger in particular has been consistently on top of all the fraudulent, counterfeit and dangers emanating from China, Steve Janke. Here's another excerpt from a posted article from Steve Janke, at Angry,

I have a report from Shell Chemical detailing a shocking problem discovered in Holland. Chinese-made piping for a major chemical plant was discovered to have been deliberately reworked to hide serious flaws that engineers believe could have resulted in disastrous consequences...

Shell, the Dutch petrochemical giant, is currently constructing a world-scale styrene monomer/propylene oxide plant at Moerdijk, The Netherlands, known as MSPO-2.

Don't worry if you didn't know that.

Like any major industrical chemical operation, huge pipes will move massive volumes of potentially lethal chemicals from point to point in the processing. These pipes can't fail, or else people die.

Technorati Tags: Health, China, Europe, Environment, Economy, Crime

Loving Adoring Children? or Hard-Core Jihadist Muslim?

Either the parents of Islamo muslim terrorists are ignorant as to their children's true emotive forces, or they are dissembling. It seems that the parents of these people are invariably quoted as being something other than that which they are charged.

If the results of the investigation and resulting case in the UK goes against the muslim doctor and finds him to be guilty of being a terrorist mastermind, then you have to wonder which of the above was true for the parent who was quoted in the news. What does it actually mean when the parent describes the son as being a 'good' muslim?

Are these the actions we, as in non-muslims, can expect from 'good' muslims in our communities?

Can we truly trust muslims, generally speaking, considering that terrorists have come from a wide spectrum of educational and economic backgrounds and there doesn't seem to be ANY discernible co-ordinated response from muslims to root these people out from their midst?

It would be one thing if some muslims were fighting for independence in their country of origin as a result of human rights grievances, or oppression, it's quite another when they are attacking the countries which have allowed them in and provided them with freedom and opportunity. Why emigrate to countries whose national status you do not even recognize? or you consider to be part of a so-called Dar-Al-Harb (House of War).

In Amman, Jordan, the father of Asha described his son as a good Muslim, not a fanatic, and expressed incredulity that he could be involved in an al Qaeda-style bomb plot.

"I am sure Mohammed does not have any links of this nature because his history in Jordan and since he was a kid does not include any kind of activity of this nature," he said.

Technorati Tags: Islam, Terrorism, Health, Asia, Europe, England, Australia

Honour Killing Barbarity Revealed

People in the UK have come across this much more than people in Canada. However, unless Canadians are vigilant this may become part of our landscape here as well due to the influx of immigrants from certain countries where this practice is prevalent.



'Honour' killings are sanctioned by Sharia law in Islam as being the crime for adultery, people who say it is a cultural hangover and not linked aren't necessarily being honest with themselves regarding the penalties under Sharia for adultery or apostasy (both of which are used to justify the 'honour' killing)...



From Family Security Matters via Western Resistance and part 3 of 3,

In other non-Arab Muslim societies such as Pakistan, the custom is common. If "honor-killing" is merely a reflection of local tribal customs, then it would be found to the same degree amongst Hindus and Sikhs in India, who share the same ancestors. Among these groups, the practice is rare, although in Maharashtra state women are killed and tortured for being suspected witches. Annually, there are thought to be 5,000 dowry-killings in India, where a bride's family defaults on payment and the wife is killed. Sati or sutti was a Hindu custom where a widow would immolate herself on her husband's funeral-pyre. This custom was banned by the British. Neither sutti, dowry killings nor witch-burning could be seen as "honor killings".



The Kurds of Turkey and Iraq who practice honor killings are not Arabs, nor are the predominantly Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan who engage in the practice. If honor-killing is a survival of an Arab, pre-Islamic custom, then it has been exported to Kurdish peoples and those in Afghanistan and the Indian sub-continent, a "fellow-traveler" during the early (pre-Ottoman) historical spread of Islam. Therefore, I do not buy into the argument that honor-killings have nothing to do with Islam. They are a living part of its history. Adultery, according to Sharia principles, is punishable by death, and most honor-killings involve suspected adultery. Apostasy is also, according to some Islamic schools of thought, punishable by death.

Here's a particularly vile case of 'honour' killing, but is representative of the mentality and brainwashing that takes place where women themselves, mothers and daughters are brought up to believe that this is the way things should be, along with the minor penalties if any when someone commits such a heinous crime...

Though not recent, the case of Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud, a mother of nine who killed her teenaged daughter Rofayda on January 27, 2002 shows a callousness that shocks. Rofayda had been raped by her two elder brothers in their shared bedroom in their Ramallah home. She became pregnant. On December 23, 2002, Rofayda gave birth to a baby boy at a women's shelter in Bethlehem. She returned to the family's three bedroom home in the suburb of Abu Qash. The family and village heads signed a promise that they would not harm the teenager. The two brothers were jailed.

Amira Qaoud did not keep her promise. She bought razor blades, and ordered her daughter to slash her own wrists. When Rofayda refused, her mother smothered her with a plastic bag, slashed the girl's wrists and hit her with a wooden stick. The killing took twenty minutes. Amira Qaoud said: "She killed me before I killed her. I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor." Her nine year old daughter Fatima echoed her sentiments, saying: "My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people. I love my mother much more now than before."

In Palestinian territories, a murder is regarded as less serious if it is an honor killing, and thus honor killers receive from six to twelve months' jail. This stems from Jordanian legislation from 1960. Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code affirms that "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery with another, and he kills, wounds or injures one or both of them, is exempt from any penalty... he who discovers his wife, or one of his female ascendants or descendants or sisters with another in an unlawful bed and he kills, wounds or injures one or both of them, benefits from a reduction of penalty." In addition to this, Article 98 of the Penal Code allows a reduced sentence if a perpetrator kills in a "fit of fury".

Read it all.



Technorati Tags: Crime, Religion, Politics, Islam, Muslim, Sikh, India, Pakistan, England, Europe, Canada

Lying to Try and Prove a Theory - Climate Change Advocates

I've been a 'climate change denier' for some time now. I don't believe humans are responsible for 'dangerous' global warming or 'dangerous' climate change. One reason I don't buy the hype around climate change and 'global warming' is that the data is continually being misrepresented or manipulated.

Here's the latest example from NewsBusters via SDA and Cjunk,

Swedish Scientist Accuses UN's IPCC of Falsifying Data and Destroying Evidence
Posted by Noel Sheppard on June 24, 2007 - 19:45.

If you listen to the global warming alarmists working for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, sea levels across the globe are rising at a rate that will eventually doom us all.

According to Swedish paleogeophysicist Nils-Axel Mörner, who’s been studying and writing about sea levels for four decades, the scientists working for the IPCC have falsified data and destroyed evidence to incorrectly prove their point.

Mörner was recently interviewed by Gregory Murphy of Executive Intelligence Review, and began by making it clear that the sea level claims made by the IPCC are a lot of nonsense (emphasis added throughout, h/t Eduardo Ferreyra):

[W]e can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year. Not more. 1.1 is the exact figure. And we can check that, because Holland is a subsiding area; it has been subsiding for many millions of years; and Sweden, after the last Ice Age, was uplifted. So if you balance those, there is only one solution, and it will be this figure.

That ended in 1940, and there had been no rise until 1970; and then we can come into the debate here on what is going on, and we have to go to satellite altimetry, and I will return to that. But before doing that: There’s another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases, because sea level is rising, then immediately the Earth’s rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when they rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and the same comes up: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more.

1.1 mm per year? That means that if this were to continue for 1000 years, sea levels would be 1.1 meters higher. Doesn’t sound very catastrophic, does it?

Mörner then addressed what in his view was a ridiculous error by the IPCC:

Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It’s the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn’t use. And if that figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting. And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that.

But that was just the beginning of Mörner’s problems with the IPCC:

Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction factor,” which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow —I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don't find it!

Pretty extraordinary, wouldn’t you agree? A "correction factor." Honestly, the way these folks manipulate data is nothing less than astounding.

Yet, Mörner wasn’t finished, as he later detailed an incident when IPCC scientists actually destroyed evidence which refuted their rising sea level claims:

This tree, which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the '50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, “Ah, freedom!” They were allowed back. And there have been writings and talks about this. I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television. You know what happened? There came an Australian sea-level team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came to launch this film, “Doomsday Called Off,” right after, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they had seen the people who had pulled it down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program. I haven't told anybody else, but this was the story.

They call themselves scientists, and they're destroying evidence! A scientist should always be open for reinterpretation, but you can never destroy evidence. And they were being watched, thinking they were clever.

Think Katie, Charlie, or Brian will be interviewing Mörner any time soon?

No, I don’t either.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Climate, Religion, Politics, Crime, Asia, Europe, England

Salman Rushdie Affair - A Sane Muslim Responds

Sikhs in the UK would have heard in detail I'm sure about the Muslim reaction to the Rushdie Knighthood and the toadying by UK politicians of various hues afterwards to placate the Fundos (or Fundies - Fundamentalists) afterwards. I wrote about the 'demented' reactions of Islamonutters as well (though they may have a large following, they are still 'nutters').

What you may not have heard was a sane response from a Muslim (at least I think she's a Muslim). Well I found one via Kathy Shaidle and The Augean Stables. Please see the original post for all the links (meanwhile, I've just added The Augean Stables to my reading list...)

India Knight, the British daughter of a Muslim shows more courage than the English who taught her their Western values. Just the kind of voice we need to hear.

June 24, 2007
Rushdie, the man they love to hate
Surely there’s a difference between careful diplomacy and pandering to extremists
India Knight

What an extraordinary, if depressingly predictable, fuss about Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. Eighteen years after the fatwa was issued, Ijaz ul-Haq, tPakistani religious affairs minister, last week told his country’s parliament that “if someone exploded a bomb on Rushdie’s body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the ‘sir’ title”.

Union Jacks were burnt in Pakistan, with rioters shouting “Kill him!”. If I were Pakistani, I’d be more inclined to riot about the monstrous off-the-scale corruption that riddled my government, and the corrupted version of Islam that brainwashed disenfranchised young men in the madrasahs, but anyway. A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said that to honour “an apostate and one of the most hated figures in the Islamic world” indicated that Britain supported “the insult to Islamic values”.

One might respectfully suggest that if people who seek to impose their grotesque distortion of Islam on their unfortunate peoples will insist on making these inane pronouncements, they might at least do so with a degree of calm and a semblance of rationality, because otherwise it’s hard to take them seriously (assuming one were inclined to do so, which is quite an assumption).

It’s as though the Vatican took such exception to The Da Vinci Code that, instead of putting out composed-sounding statements and seeking (not entirely successfully) to reassure people that super-creepy Opus Dei is not in fact creepy at all, its spokesmen started foaming at the mouth like nutters and ordered crusades against Dan Brown for having the temerity to invent a story and write fiction.

Muslim world inflamed by Rushdie knighthood

A Pakistani minister said that Rushdie’s knighthood justified suicide bombings amid offers of rewards for his assassination
British minister: ‘We stand by Rushdie knighthood’

Actually it’s not like that, because Rushdie is a brilliant writer and Brown is a sort of rich monkey with a typewriter, but you get the gist. And no sooner is the knighthood announced in the Queen’s birthday honours than politicians such as Jack Straw are tripping over themselves “sympathising” with the “hurt feelings” of the “Muslim community” and volunteering his opinion of Rushdie’s oeuvre: “I’m afraid I found his books rather difficult and I’ve never managed to get to the end of any of them.” This just makes him sound thick, I’m afraid.

Midnight’s Children is hardly Finnegans Wake, and with the exception of The Satanic Verses none of Rushdie’s books is remotely “difficult”. So either Straw is remedially dim, poor thing, or he’s making the point that since Rushdie’s work is not his cup of tea, neither is Rushdie, and nor, by extension, is his knighthood – nothing to do with me, guv, so please keep voting for me, Muslim constituents.

Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said she was “sorry” for any offence caused. An unnamed Labour MP told a newspaper that “anybody with common sense would have blocked this”. Thank God for John Reid: the home secretary said that although the issue was “sensitive”, the protection of people’s rights to express their opinions in literature, argument and politics was of “overriding value to our society”.

What on earth is the point of pussyfooting around like pathetic craven saps (and I write as someone who is the daughter of a Muslim and also has some Iranian blood)? Surely there’s a difference between careful diplomacy and pandering to extremist Muslims who violently oppose everything people in this country stand for and believe in?

We live – thank God, Allah and everybody else – in a democracy. We have, and cherish, the right to free speech. It is a glorious thing. People are allowed – encouraged – to have an imagination and to write books, which some people may like and some people may not, but there you go: nobody forces anybody to read anything (though perhaps they should: I’d love to know how many fatwa supporters read the 560 pages of The Satanic Verses).

So what I don’t understand is why, when the knighthood was announced and gracefully acknowledged by Rushdie – “I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour” – it should have been met at home by carping and wriggly apology instead of celebration. Is it too much to ask for our politicians to stand up and paraphrase Voltaire’s “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”? Yes, apparently, because it seems that pandering to the tiny proportion of the Muslim vote that is both extremist and fundamentalist is worth more than art, beauty, reason or morality.

Part of the problem – and it’s an objectionable one – is that Rushdie is viewed in many quarters as being insufficiently grateful for the protection the (Conservative) government afforded him during the fatwa. Apparently, if millions of people are encouraged to kill you and the country you live in quite rightly thinks that’s a poor show, and helps you, you forfeit the right to express an opinion about anything, whether it’s the price of a pint of milk or the niqab.

In addition to this perceived lack of gratitude is the political perception of Rushdie. To the right, he’s a leftie, which is ironic because he was helped and protected by a Conservative government and a Labour premier, Tony Blair, whom many would consider a kind of low-level Tory.

To the left, he is problematic in the extreme, because the left courts the Muslim vote. “Courts” isn’t quite right – “toadies” is more like it. And in the process, moderate Muslims who practise their religion peacefully and with grace don’t seem to feature: they’re lumped with the extremists and given a hard time as a result, for the reasons outlined above.

There’s a third issue here. Art matters. Literature matters. They matter much more than the ravings of some overexcited, barely literate oik of a cleric with a gift for oratory, even if – especially if – said cleric ends up having global influence. When you cut to the chase, all that remains is this: Rushdie, who was 60 last week, is an exceptional writer who has written great books, for which he has been awarded prizes and awards both here and internationally. Unlike most exceptional writers, he walked around as a living target for 10 years under constant police protection.

People associated with his books were also targeted, injured – his Italian translator was beaten and stabbed; his Norwegian publisher shot and left to die – and even killed, in the case of his Japanese translator. All because he wrote a book, used his imagination, made up a story, got it published, and didn’t or wouldn’t foresee the calamitous consequences of his act of creativity – because those consequences were unimaginable to a civilised mind living in a democracy. His knighthood recognises all of this, as well as his talent. I couldn’t be more delighted for him.

Can we get it right this time. Time to get the joke.
Hitchens gets it, and look at how he stiffens British backbone with his remarks.

Technorati Tags: Islam, Muslim, England, Europe, Pakistan, India, Asia, Sikh, Religion, Politics, Crime

Research Debunking "Humans Responsible for Global Warming" Narrative

If you don't believe humans are causing dangerous global warming then read no further, however, if you 1. believe humans cause global warming, and more importantly, 2. believe you have an 'open' mind to alternative ideas - then read further, otherwise please go back to being a global warming bien pensant as it where.

Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.



The Deniers: The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science.
The National Post is a Canadian national newspaper. Here is the series so far:

Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate 'fluff' -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
Gore's guru disagreed -- The Deniers XX
The ice-core man -- The Deniers XXI
Some restraint in Rome -- The Deniers XXII
Discounting logic -- The Deniers XXIII
Dire forecasts aren't new -- The Deniers XXIV
They call this a consensus? - Part XXV
NASA chief Michael Griffin silenced - Part XXVI
Forget warming - beware the new ice age - Part XXVII

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.

My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.

Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."


R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Canada, Asia, USA, Africa, Europe, South America

Demented Terrorist Sympathizers

Update - At least the Brits protested the comments by some of the lunatics in charge of the asylum, known as the Pakistan parliament
=================================
actually argue with a straight face that giving Salman Rushdie an honorific title or British knighthood is a root cause of terrorism?



What I find contemptible is a people who are so arrogant and unreasoned as to think that they have the right to subjugate and oppress anyone professing a different religion, opinion, gender, lifestyle, etc...



How many times do people who are not Muslim have to read about these kinds of news stories before they are so completely turned off from hearing anything these people have to say about anything? Maybe there are 'real' abuses committed against Muslims, but seeing this victimhood mentality play itself out over something so banal or innocuous time after time after time is really fatiguing, especially when you consider that it becomes a case of making excuses for suicide bombings and terrrorist attacks against Britain or any other country for that matter.



When was the last time anyone threatened to suicide bomb Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or any other muslim country or muslims themselves over laws or acts in those countries that prescribe death for so-called Infidels (non-muslims) for blasphemy, practicing their own religion, or other assorted acts related to what we would call Free Speech or Freedom of Religion?

Britain's knighthood to the author Salman Rushdie contributes to insulting Islam and may lead to terrorism, a Pakistani minister has said.



Such actions are the root cause of terrorism, Religious Affairs Minister Ejaz-ul-Haq told parliament.



The minister later said he had not meant to condone or incite terrorism but stress its origins.



Pakistan's parliament has condemned the knighthood. Iran says it shows 'Islamophobia' among British officials.



Mr ul-Haq was speaking during a session of Pakistan's National Assembly in which it unanimously condemned Britain's award of a knighthood to the author Salman Rushdie and demanded it be withdrawn.



His comments in the Urdu language caused uproar.



"If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act is justified," he said, according to the translation by the Reuters news agency.



"If Britain doesn't withdraw the award, all Muslim countries should break off diplomatic relations."



Opponents accused Mr ul-Haq of inciting violence.



Later he returned to the floor of the assembly and said his remarks were not meant to be a justification of suicide attacks.



Mr ul-Haq is a well known Islamic hardliner. He is the son of former President Zia ul-Haq who carried out a process of 'Islamisation' in Pakistan before dying in a plane crash in 1988.



Iran criticism



The resolution passed by the lower house of parliament said that honouring Salman Rushdie "hurt Muslim sentiments".



Sir Salman's book The Satanic Verses sparked protests by Muslims around the world and led to Iran issuing a fatwa in 1989, ordering his execution.



Iran also criticised the knighthood, saying praising the "apostate" showed Islamophobia among British officials.



A spokesman for the British High Commission in Islamabad would not comment on the parliamentary resolution, but he said the knighthood was a reflection of Mr Rushdie's contribution to literature throughout a long and diverse career.



Like Iran, Pakistan is an Islamic republic with an overwhelmingly Muslim population which saw violent protests against The Satanic Verses in 1989.



Pakistan's parliamentary affairs minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, who proposed the resolution, said the knighthood would "encourage people to commit blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad".



Sir Salman, 59, was one of almost 950 people to appear on the Queen's Birthday Honours list, which is aimed at recognising outstanding achievement.



The controversial Indian-born author's fourth book - The Satanic Verses in 1988 - describes a cosmic battle between good and evil and combines fantasy, philosophy and farce.



It was immediately condemned by the Islamic world because of its perceived blasphemous depiction of the prophet Muhammad.



It was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities and in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's spiritual leader, issued a fatwa.



In 1998, the Iranian government said it would no longer support the fatwa, but some groups have said it is irrevocable.



The following year, Sir Salman returned to public life.



Of his knighthood for services to literature, Rushdie said: "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way."

Technorati Tags: Islam, Europe, Crime, Asia, Pakistan, Terrorism, Terrorist

So Did the Muslim Boy Really Convert to Sikhism or Is It Just a Sham?

From Birmingham, there comes this news that a Gurdwara committee is under fire for marrying a non-Sikh to a Sikh girl. If the committee is going to do this, isn't it incumbent upon them to ensure that the 'conversion' is heartfelt and not just a matter of expediency?

Shouldn't they have outlined a program of education for the boy to ensure that he understood Sikh values, prayers and beliefs over a period of study?

Shouldn't they have done the same for the girl to ensure that she herself would know Sikh principles, prayers, beliefs and values?

The Gurdwara committee should have done at least that much as well as educate the girl's parents on the same. This would have ensured that if it was later learned that the boy's 'conversion' was only for show, that the girl would truly know what Sikhism is and what he or his family may force her to leave, if it came to that. Regardless, I think, without having spoken to the committee and only going by what I've read (which may not count for anything really), the Gurdwara committee didn't have a rationalized approach for doing what they did and had no plan of action, course or any other guide on which they based their decision to marry the couple.

The head of a Birmingham Sikh temple and his family had to flee their home after it was targeted by arsonists in what is believed to have been been a reprisal attack for allowing a mixed marriage.

Three cars were set ablaze outside the Handsworth Wood home of Jarnail Singh Bhogal, president of the Ramgharia Sikh Gurdwara in Graham Street, Hockley. The attack in the early hours of yesterday comes in the wake of protests against the marriage, the details of which were posted on an online Sikh forum naming the temple leaders.

The website referred to a marriage between a Sikh woman and a man of another religion and called on Sikhs to protest outside the Gurdwara yesterday against "this disgraceful act".

It also demanded the resignation of Mr Bhogal and warns Gurdwara leaders there will be consequences if they allow mixed marriages.

According to the Gurdwara temple, however, the man involved in the marriage converted to Sikhism before the ceremony. Cars parked in the driveway of Mr Bhogal's house on Vernon Avenue were fire-bombed at about 3.30am yesterday.

Mr Bhogal said: "I woke up and there was a big bang and an orange light or flash. I opened the curtains and saw my three cars on fire so I asked the kids and my wife to get out and go in the garden and called the fire brigade."

Insp Lee Bartram of Thornhill Road police station said: "An incident occurred where three vehicles were damaged. The reason behind that we can't confirm. We appeal to witnesses to contact police on 0845 1135000."

A spokesman for the Ramgarhia Sikh Temple said: "The girl was a Sikh and the boy voluntarily changed his name to a Sikh name and promised to adopt the values of Sikhism.

"Committee members were incorrectly targeted based on vicious rumours which led to the horrific incident where three cars were burnt."

Technorati Tags: Sikh, Muslim, Gurdwara, Europe

UN Sikh Jawans in Lebanon

Found this at military photos about the 15th Punjab operating in Lebanon as part of India's forces under the UNIFIL banner.

LEBANON: INDIAN ARMY
Bhangra, A War Dance
Sikh UN jawans are humouring the locals. That's till the next battle. .........
Andrew Mills

Turbanators? Only If There's A Need

* For 9 years now, India has been providing troops for UN forces in South Lebanon
* Currently, 850 soldiers from 15 Punjab Infantry are stationed there
* South Lebanon is Hezbollah's stronghold. There is a growing feeling that UN forces here could come under attack in the coming months.
* Most say that Indian forces unlikely to be targeted. Why? Because guerrilla groups can generate headlines worldwide by attacking western troops.
* Also, Indian soldiers seem to have won the hearts and minds of people in South Lebanon. Hezbollah says India's role has been positive.

***
The men of the 15 Punjab Infantry Battalion are some of the most battle-hardened and decorated fighters the Indian army has to offer. But in the two months they have been deployed as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) here in Hezbollah's heartland, a few kilometers north of the Israeli frontier, they haven't exactly been focused on fighting.

"Winning the hearts and minds of the people is very important," says Maj Sumit Sharma, the contingent's spokesman. "We should not be seen as being from outside." So, there is a soldier who teaches yoga to 10-year-olds, a troupe that demonstrates Bhangra to the locals and, perhaps most famously in these parts, Maj Shailendra Choubey, the jovial army veterinarian.

Maj Choubey is the only veterinarian for kilometers around. He does his daily rounds of the countryside, checking up on colicky donkeys, treating cows with mastitis and monitoring expectant sheep. "You must be finding it pretty crazy," Maj Choubey says as he tackles a pregnant sheep to the ground, examines its belly and then jabs a needle into its hindquarters. "But this is what we do."

It won't be what they would do if war returns to the gentle hills and broad valleys of South Lebanon. For 34 days last summer, this area was a battlefield, as Israel and Hezbollah, the Shiite militia, went to war after the latter kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. The toll was devastating: more than 1,200 dead Lebanese, most of them civilians; 159 dead Israelis—120 soldiers and 39 civilians—and an estimated US$2.8 billion in damage to Lebanon's infrastructure.

What's more, India's soldiers (then of the 4 Sikh Regiment) were caught in the crossfire; several Indian soldiers were injured. In the nearby village of Khiam, a UN observation tower came under Israeli artillery fire. Four soldiers—from Austria, Canada, China and Finland—were killed. The men of 4 Sikh were sent in the night to retrieve what was left of their bodies.

South Lebanon has been peaceful since August thanks to a UN-brokered ceasefire, which the Indian soldiers, along with 12,000 UN soldiers from 27 countries, are tasked with enforcing in a 20-km buffer zone that runs along Israel's northern border. The 850 Indian soldiers stationed here now are charged with preventing Hezbollah—or any armed militia—from operating in the vicinity of 12 villages here in the eastern sector of the zone, an area that includes the mountainous border with Syria, an ancient smuggling route. (India has been providing soldiers to the UN force in South Lebanon for 9 years now.)

The villages, olive groves and sheep pastures that stretch from here to the Mediterranean Sea constitute Hezbollah's stronghold. With the end of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon in 2000, the militia has used this territory to launch countless rocket attacks into Israel. But since December 2006, when 15 Punjab Infantry Battalion arrived, they haven't encountered a single Hezbollah guerilla, missile or weapon that is poised to attack Israel, says Maj Sharma.

In fact, with a few exceptions, almost everything UNIFIL has discovered in the buffer zone has been abandoned.

"The vast majority of bunkers, positions and facilities that we've come across are those which are redundant. There is no sign of maintenance," says Liam McDowall, a UNIFIL spokesman. "And the vast majority of explosive devices, improvised explosive devices, shells, missiles, again, are inoperable."

UNIFIL says some 100 patrols conducted by its white armoured personnel carriers and Humvees every day have forced Hezbollah to give up active operations in the buffer zone. "Because we are a deterrent, no armed elements are here," Maj Sharma says.

Nevertheless, there are signs that another war between Israel and Hezbollah may be on the horizon.

Hezbollah openly says its fighters have spent the last seven months preparing for another major battle by stockpiling some 33,000 missiles and regrouping their fighters. "We in the resistance have weapons, and we openly declare that we've weapons, that we're completing our preparedness for a greater and more dangerous stage," Hassan Nasrallah, the group's leader, said in a televised address last month.


Truce is on, so what does the Indian army do? Shake a leg, teach the natives yoga, nurse their cattle.

[W]hat's more, the Israeli Defence Forces has said in recent weeks it has gathered intelligence that Hezbollah is continuing to smuggle Iran-supplied weapons across the Syrian border and into Lebanon. "It's not a question of if (Israel is going to attack again), it's a question of when," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a Hezbollah expert and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

"Definitively, I don't think it's going to happen in five years time. I think it's going to happen quite soon."

If there is another war, the soldiers of 15 Punjab Infantry insist they are ready for anything that comes their way. "My boys have a very good record of gallantry in war," says Col Advitya Madan, the commanding officer, who explains that in its 302-year history 15 Punjab has never backed away from a fight—whether it was defending the Maharaja of Patiala centuries ago, fighting for the British at Gallipoli during World War I or holding off insurgents in Kashmir. "We work on the principle that we expect—and hope for—the best, all the same we are prepared for the worst," Col Madan says. "We are ready. We are well equipped. My boys are very well trained to react."

In addition to the threat of another war between Israel and Hezbollah, there are fears that Sunni Muslim groups affiliated with Al Qaeda may launch an attack on UNIFIL's soldiers. Al Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced the entire UNIFIL force. "I'll be really surprised if we get through 2007 without UNIFIL being seriously attacked," says a Western diplomat in Beirut.

However, the huge force of UNIFIL comprises nearly 13,000 soldiers from 27 countries. Most believe that if an Al Qaeda-affiliated group attacks they will strike one of the European contingents—from Spain, Italy or France. "If they're going to strike, they're going to want it to make major headlines all over the world, which is why the European contingents are very concerned," says Timur Goksel, who retired as a senior advisor to UNIFIL in 2003. "All they need to do is shoot one guy and there will be a crisis."

And though the French and Spanish contingents have encountered some minor problems with the local population, who largely support Hezbollah, the Indian soldiers say they haven't had any such difficulties. "We are received with open arms," Maj Sharma says. "At least in the eastern sector, things have been cool." This sentiment was echoed last week in Delhi, where Hezbollah leader Ali Fayyad had come down to attend a seminar.He said, "The role of the Indian army deployed as part of UN peacekeepers in South Lebanon is very positive" and "it has no problem with people and Hezbollah".

Technorati Tags: UN, UNIFIL, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Israel, Yoga, Sikh, Khalsa, India, Punjab,

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Demographic Balance, and Consequences... for Europe

An article in Danish was recently translated and posted at Gates of Vienna, that highlighted the issues facing Europe today based on research into demographics related to having a 'youth bulge' in the population. For anyone interested in the future of Europe and demographic trends, its quite interesting and informative.

Sikhs should take note and ask what those trends portend for the future of Sikhism on the continent. See below for the article, and do visit GoV for the comments.

While the European populations are shrinking and the best-qualified young people are leaving, we continue to allow mass immigration of unqualified Muslims, who will soon make our welfare states collapse. Add to this the fact that the Muslim world has built up a “youth bulge”, which according to experience will lead to mass murder and whose effects cannot be offset by foreign aid. The originator of these bleak predictions is the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, who believes that the game is over for Europe

By Lars Hedegaard

Authorised translation from the Danish by Sappho

Gunnar HeinsohnBREMEN: If the leaders of the American-led “Coalition of the Willing” had known Gunnar Heinsohn’s research, they would most likely never have left their troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. They would quickly give up any thought of intervention in Sudan’s Darfur province. They would tell the Palestinian 10-children families that the West will no longer pay for their unrestricted childbirths. Western opinion-makers and politicians would also abandon their pet theory that virtually any act of violence in a belt from Northern Africa to the Philippines - in addition to miscellaneous acts of terror all over the world - are caused by the unsolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And worst of all seen from the prevailing political consensus in the West: Heinsohn does not believe for a second that economic aid and hunger relief in countries with large youth populations can prevent wars, social unrest, terror or killings. On the contrary he is convinced that in some cases material aid may start the killings. This is because starving people do not fight, they just suffer. However, if you give a lot of young men enough to eat and a certain education in a society where there are too many young men so that not all can get the recognition and positions that they feel entitled to, it may lead to violence.

The 63-year-old sociology professor at the University of Bremen published his findings in his sensational and politically incorrect book Söhne und Weltmacht: Terror im Aufstieg und Fall der Nationen [Sons and World Domination: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations], published in 2003. The book became widely known and discussed after the prominent German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk had characterised it as being as groundbreaking as Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Sloterdijk thought that the book might pave the way for a new realism within a field that might be labelled “Demographic Materialism”.

Heinsohn is not concerned with the absolute size of populations, but rather with the share of teenagers and young men. If this share becomes too big compared to the total population, we are facing a youth bulge. The problem starts when families begin to produce three, four or more sons. This will cause the sons to fight over access to the positions in society that give power and prestige. Then you will have a lot of boys and young men running around filled with aggression and uncontrollable hormones. And then we shall experience mass killings, until a sufficient number of young men have been eradicated to match society’s ability to provide positions for the survivors.

According to Heinsohn, 80 per cent of world history is about young men in nations with a surplus of sons, creating trouble. This trouble may take many forms — a increase in domestic crime, attempts at coups d’état, revolutions, riots and civil wars. Occasionally, the young commit genocide to secure for themselves the positions that belonged to those they killed. Finally, there is war to conquer new territory, killing the enemy population and replacing it with one’s own.

But, as Heinsohn emphasizes again and again, the unrest and the violent acts caused by youth bulges have nothing to do with famine or unemployment. In his book he describes it as follows: “The dynamic of a youth bulge — it cannot be emphasized too often — is not caused by a lack of food. A younger brother, who may be employed as a stable hand by the first-born son and who may be well fed and perhaps even fat, does not seek food but position, one that can guarantee him recognition, influence and dignity. Not the underweight but rather the potential losers or the déclassé are pushing forward” (p. 21).

In recent years the West has been facing a gigantic youth bulge in large parts of the Muslim world. This bulge is created by a Muslim population explosion. Over the course of just five generations (1900-2000) the population in the Muslim countries has grown from 150 million to 1 200 million — an increase of 800 per cent. As a comparison the population of China has grown from 400 million to 1 200 million (300 per cent). The population of India has risen from 250 million to 1000 million (400 per cent).

Sappho has visited Gunnar Heinsohn at his office at the University of Bremen, which awarded him a life-long professorship in 1884.

Youth bulges and violence

-What is the definition of a youth bulge?

“There is no commonly accepted definition. The Frenchman who first used the term in 1970 said that a youth bulge existed when 30 per cent of the men in a population were between 20 to 24. I changed it to 30 per cent between 15 and 29. This means that if you take 100 males from a country, then 30 of them will be between 15 and 29.”

“But remember that this 30 per cent group of young men will not pose any danger if they are hungry or lack education. To be dangerous they must be in good physical and mental shape.”

Heinsohn emphasises that there are lots of wars and killings in history that do nor emanate from youth bulges. The Hitler movement and the Mussolini movement in the 1920s can be explained as youth bulge phenomena. The early Nazis and Fascists had an average age a bit below 30. The Bolshevik movement in the period around the 1917 Revolution can be described in the same way. But by the time Hitler started WWII, many German families were down to only one son. So Hitler’s attack in 1939 was not a youth bulge phenomenon. Neither was the Holocaust. The killing of the Jews was not caused by young German men wanting to take their positions, even though there are theories that make this claim.

Nor do the killings organised by the later Marxist-Leninist regimes — that may have killed 100 million people — have anything to do with youth bulges. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 was driven by millions and millions of farmers’ sons without land — that was a youth bulge event. Stalin’s Gulag, however, does not fall into this category.

- What about Mao’s killings in China?

“Again, in the 1930s Mao’s movement was carried by a youth bulge, but when he took power in 1949 and started his great purges by killing landowners, the youth bulge was already gone.”

- So the predominant ideology of the West, namely that we can fight war and violence by alleviating hunger and creating jobs in the third world, is wrong?

“Every year the five German peace research institutes publish a report, and every year it has the following conclusion: If we win the struggle against hunger, we have defeated war. On the contrary —youth bulge research shows that if you are successful in eliminating immediate material poverty and hunger in a country with a youth bulge, violence starts to escalate.”

“In Europe we have just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaty and in all the newspapers we could read that this treaty ended war in Europe. This is absolutely wrong. If the Germans after 1945 had reproduced as they did between 1900 and 1914, then we would have had a German nation of almost 500 million citizens, and we would have had about 80 million German men between 15 and 29. In reality we have 7 million. And we may well ask ourselves whether these 80 million would have been as peaceful as the present 7 million, or would have been detonating bombs in Breslau or Danzig.” (These former German cities - now called Wroclaw and Gdansk - were ceded to Poland following Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945, ed.)

Demographic capitulation
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“This brings me to something that I call ‘Demographic Capitulation’. It has a very simple definition: Take all the men aged 40-44 and compare them to the boys aged 0-4. Demographic capitulation is when you have 100 males aged 40-44 compared to less than 80 boys aged 0-4. In Germany the numbers are 100/50, in the Gaza Strip they are 100/464. I have compared some numbers for you, and these show that Denmark is on the verge of Demographic Capitulation. Your numbers are 100/80.”

Heinsohn’s statistical overview shows that if Denmark had reproduced at the same rate as the Gaza Strip (from 240 000 to 1.4 million between 1950 and 2006), then we would not have had a population of 5.5 million (compared to 4.3 million in 1950), but 25 million - more than New Zealand and Australia combined. In that case the median age of Danish males would have been 15 (in reality it is 39), and there would have been 3.6 million men of battle-ready age (15-29), whereas the real number is only 470 000. (Median age must not be confused with average age. A median age of 15 means that there are as many people below 15 as there are above 15, ed.).

Whereas such countries as Germany and Japan have capitulated demographically, other countries are characterized by “Demographic Armament”. Apart from Gaza this is situation in among others the three Muslim countries Afghanistan (100/403), Iraq (100/351) and Somalia (100/364). It is no coincidence that they are marked by widespread and extreme acts of violence and will be for several more years into the future. This also holds true for Gaza and the Palestinians in general.

- So you do not believe that the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is realistic?

“No, and the main reason is the big mistake that was made in Oslo in 1991, when the secret negotiations between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin started. The error was that nobody took any notice of the Palestinian population explosion. The Palestinian population has multiplied almost 6 times within the last 50 years. We should have done two things: Israel should have stopped its settlements, and the world community should have said to the Palestinians: Every child in Palestine will be fed by the world community as before, because by accepting that every Palestinian child is a refugee, the world community has a responsibility for the number of children born. But from January 1st 1992 you will have to pay for your newborn children, just as a woman does in Lebanon, in Tunisia and in Algeria. That is what they should have told the Palestinians. Why am I mentioning these three countries? Because in those societies a women has fewer than two children on the average. Had we done that 15 years ago, we would have seen a generation of young Palestinian men with few reasons to commit violence against each other or against the Jews. But we did not, and therefore I do not believe in the peace process, even if Hamas should decide to sign everything. Their young men will tear such agreements to pieces.”

Heinsohn points out that it is the USA and the EU, and particularly the Scandinavian countries, that pay for the enormous Palestinian child production. We must cease this support, so that the Palestinians pay for the children they bring into the world after a certain point in time.

- Why cannot the Palestinians just work like everybody else and earn their own keep?

“Palestine is a special case. They never had any chance of developing because they have always been on international support.”

Poverty and religion

- From your book one gets the impression that youth bulges create poverty, whereas we in the West have regarded youth bulges as a result of poverty?

“If a youth bulge changes a state into a failed state, then one will see a breakdown of the market and of production, and this will lead to poverty. If we look at current examples of countries with increasing violence — Pakistan and Bangladesh — we can see that both have managed a steady increase in the average income per capita — and even a significant growth. Thus we have created the primary conditions for making the young men both well fed and well educated, which leads to them becoming unruly. If these young men successfully destroy the country’s infrastructure, it will result in poverty. I have followed this process closely in the West African state of The Ivory Coast. Here they have had a system of seven children for every woman, at the same time as the average income has increased. When the killings started, the average income fell.”

- How do you explain the fact that the Muslim Middle East was deeply underdeveloped before there was any sign of a youth bulge, even before the Europeans — who get the blame for most things — had set foot on its soil? Is it not necessary to add religion to the explanation?

“Let us look at the small countries in Europe that were capable of conquering and colonising large parts of the world from around 1500, starting with Portugal and Spain. Our explanation is usually that there was a pressure on resources because of overpopulation. The opposite was the case. When Spain started its conquests in 1493 with Columbus’ second expedition, Spain had a population of six million, but in 1350 it had had nine million inhabitants. Spain was not overpopulated. There was, however, a sudden a growth in childbirths because in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII had decreed that birth control was punishable by death, which caused an immediate explosion in births. In the middle ages the average number of children per family was 2-3; now it was suddenly 6-7. That caused the median age in the population of six million to be 15, whereas the nine-million population of 1350 had had a median age between 28 and 30. So there was no lack of land or food. However, there was a sudden scarcity of positions. Previously there had been one or two boys in the family. One could take over the farm and the other might become a tenant somewhere else. Now you had three sons who had food but no positions, and these boys started the conquests and the colonising. It was quite telling that the Spaniards called then secundones, the second sons.”

“Where does religion enter the picture? These young men — 95 per cent of them — were normal, good boys and saw it as a sin to kill or mistreat the conquered populations in the colonies. They knew the difference between themselves and psychopaths or common murderers. So when they went into action, they had religion to tell them that they were not murderers, but people who would kill the infidels, the sinners and the unjust with a clean conscience. People who executed orders from a higher power as they would not want to be seen as disobedient.”

“For this reason I do not call these conquerors and colonisers — Spaniards, Englishmen and Danes — Christian, but Christianists. The same distinction as with a Muslim and an Islamist. These young Spaniards were not Christian, but Christianists, who needed this ideology to justify their terrible killings.”

New religions arise in no time

Heinsohn is also hesitant to ascribe to Islam a core from which one may deduce later actions or patterns of action. As an example he mentions the movement of 1968, to which he himself belonged.

“When the time is ripe, new religious pamphlets and books will be written on the spot and in no time. From your holy books — the Koran, the Bible, The Communist Manifesto etc. — you take what fits your purpose. You know that you are going to use violence but want a justification. For you are a righteous person. But when the youth bulge is spent, the books that were distributed in millions of copies cannot even be sold in second-hand bookshops. Everybody knows that they are full of rubbish. But while the movement is on, these young men are impervious to arguments. So the false ideas do not arise from holy scripture. They are generated by the young men themselves because they need wrong ideas to justify their actions. Consequently you cannot stop them by explaining that their ideas are wrong. The movement is not created by wrong ideas. On the contrary, the wrong ideas are created by the movement. Islam does not create Islamism, young Muslims do.”

According to Heinsohn’s calculations there will be approximately 300 million young Muslim men in 2020, but not all of them will be angry. A growing number of Muslim nations — Algeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran, Turkey and the rich Emirates — have all fallen under the demographic replacement limit. Iran now has a fertility rate of 1.7. That is the same as in Denmark, but less than in France. These countries still have a youth surplus from earlier, but in a few years they will no longer have any youth bulges that make them pose any danger.

Consequently he does not believe that the Iranian masses will set the whole region alight. This scenario is a projection of the situation immediately before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and during the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988, when Iran could send hundreds of thousands of boys and young men out into the minefields. These teenagers are no longer there.

A class of losers

- Would it not be a solution to let the superfluous sons come to Europe?

“What happens in Europe is that all the countries — there are no exceptions — are ageing nations that do not fully reproduce themselves. Thus they have embarked on a process where they eat each other’s talents. Why are they not looking for talent in Africa, where the population has grown from 100 million in 1900 to an estimated 2 billion in 2050? Why not in Islam, where we have a similar population explosion? Why is America looking for talent in Germany, why is Denmark looking for Poles? Because the third world countries do not have the educational level that is needed in the developed countries that can only maintain their position through innovation. For that purpose they need young people who have grown up in a high-tech society. It is not because Africans or Muslims are not as intelligent as others, they are just not socialised in a way that makes them useful in our societies.”

- In Demark we now have a number of highly educated immigrants and their descendents from Muslim countries — doctors, lawyers etc. But many of them are as unintegrated as are many of the uneducated. They remain as extremist and as Islamicist as if they had not received a higher education?

“I will leave the evaluation of Danish conditions to the Danes. However, we experience the same phenomenon in England. There we have a population within the population, namely the Pakistanis, who have the highest birth rate in the country, and who are most dependent on social transfers. In the Western countries we have a social system that is hardly being used by the local population. On the other hand there is an immigrant population whose women cannot compete in the local workforce. 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. And this creates a career type for women only, which their daughters carry on.”

“But the sons do not have this option. They grow up on the bottom of society without the intellectual skills needed to improve their social position. It is these boys who burn Paris, who burn parts of Bremen. Some of them make it to university and become leaders of the others — not poor, but young men with low status who believe that they are oppressed because of their Islamic faith, but in reality it is the welfare state itself that has created this class of losers.”

“If, on the other hand, one goes to Canada, where I have lived part of each year for the last 20 years, they have a completely different policy. They say: Our immigration policy has a simple base. Every newborn Canadian and every new Canadian who comes from abroad has to be more intelligent than those who were here before. Because only through innovation can we keep our position in world competition. Therefore I want my son to be smarter than me. And believe it or not: Of 100 adult Canadian immigrants, 98 have better professional qualifications than the Canadian average. In Germany and France the corresponding number is 10 per cent. So we went for quantity, and they went for quality.”

“And why? In Germany because people were afraid of being called racists, and it looks like all European nations suffer from the same fear of making choices.”

The Fifth Village

- Might some of it also be explained by the leftist parties importing their own voters?

“In France we have seen that Africans and Algerians have voted for Ségolène Royal. Add to that another phenomenon that we can observe in Germany among other places. Here some of the ‘ethno-Germans’, as we are now beginning to call them, and who make up 85 per cent of the German population, are starting to emigrate. Annually about 150 000 Germans leave the country, most of them for the Anglo-Saxon world. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are ready to receive 1.5 million well-educated immigrants yearly, and they are doing everything to ease the way for them.”

“It is no wonder that young, hard-working people in France and Germany choose to emigrate. It is not just that they have to support their own ageing population. If we take 100 20-year-olds, then the 70 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.”

“Europe has just finalized its immigration principles in January 2007. And they are quite different from the Canadian ones. Our first criterion for letting people into the EU is whether they have been victims of discrimination. Next principle: If the person already has family in EU, he has privileged access. Third principle: People who are already illegally in Europe should be legalized. And finally, only in fourth place do we have the Anglo-Saxon principle that the immigrant should fit into our labour market.”

“The purpose is to make Europe look stronger than the Anglo-Saxons when it comes to ‘soft power’.”

“I am very pessimistic about the future. Europe’s situation reminds me of the principle that is called ‘The Fifth Village’ in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, who have experienced population decline. So four villages are being abandoned and the remaining population is moved to the fifth village. However, that does not increase the birth rate in the fifth village. And after some time the fifth village will also be populated by old people, and there are no young people in the vicinity to work for their pensions.”

“The same will happen to the approximately 40 nations between Brittany and Vladivostok. Some of them will become Fifth Villages and will have a new lease on life, others will just implode. I predict that all the Slavic nations will implode. Same thing with the three Baltic states and all of the Balkan states. The question is whether Germany and France will become Fifth Villages. I see Scandinavia as a Fifth Village. The same thing with the Iberian Peninsula and with Ireland and England. But I am not sure the rest of the continent will make it.”

The young are leaving

- But will we even deal with nations in the future? If Europe gets a Muslim majority, it is not certain that Danes, Germans, Frenchmen etc. will bow to sharia law. Might the result be that the indigenous populations will withdraw to their own enclaves, from where they will try to defend themselves, as we have seen in Bosnia?

“That is of course a possibility, but one must ask oneself who is it that will stay and fight? I might because I am more or less forced to stay here. But if I were an 18-year-old ethnic German, done with high school, then I would do like most others are already doing. I would want to study in the Anglo-Saxon world and then I would emigrate. I would not want to stay and fight. The Anglo-Saxon world needs 50 million well-qualified immigrants within the next 30-40 years, so well-qualified young people from Western Europe will have every incentive to go there instead of staying and fighting.”

“A possibility is to aim for Chinese immigration. If we in Germany had the same number of Chinese immigrants as they have in Canada, we would have 3 million. But immigration from China has not even been considered in Europe.”

“China is the fastest ageing nation in the world after Germany, Japan and South Korea. We usually view China as a sleeping giant. I on the other hand see China as a source from where the Western nations will skim the best. And they will get them. Currently, rich Chinese are preoccupied with moving their riches to Switzerland because with the few children being born in China, people in their 40s have no chance of ever getting a pension. China is down to a fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman. The country is already losing 500 000 of its best every year. The young see no hope of ever being able to build a pension plan in their home country. Therefore they settle in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada etc.”

“In East Germany they have just decided to demolish an additional 400 000 apartments. There are no people for them, and the empty apartments ruin the banks by depressing the rents and the prices of housing. In West Germany we are also losing population. We have to stop taking the least suitable immigrants. To attract young and competent people, we might give them a house. That was the way Brandenburg secured the French Huguenots in the 17th century. But I doubt it will work today.”

Demographic rearmament?

- Would it be possible to imagine that Europeans might suddenly start to multiply as a moral obligation to maintain the people and the culture? It was what happened after the British had conquered French Quebec. The Catholic priests put pressure on the French families to put up to 15 children into the world, and this demographic effort was successful?

Gunnar Heinsohn does not give much of a chance to such a strategy. It would require draconian measures, which the Europeans would not accept. Promises of money will not work except for people with little education and low status — which just makes the situation worse.

“Look at the Polish people,” says Heinsohn — who was born in 1943 in the city now known as Gdansk, but which he still calls Danzig, the son of a German submarine captain who lost his life near Newfoundland five months before his son was born. “Here is a nation with proud traditions. Poland saved Europe from the Mongols, the Turks and the Bolsheviks and ended up bringing down Communism. And yet they have a lower birth rate than the Germans. They are down to 1.2 children per woman. In addition, over the last 15 years they have already lost 2 million of their best people. Perhaps emigrants tell their parents that they are coming back, but they won’t. That is why I am saying that countries such as Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are doomed. They have no attraction for immigrants. The same thing is happening with Russia. Who wants to move to Russia? And look at the newest members of the EU, Bulgaria and Romania. Romania is the first country in the world where there are more retirees than active workers, and we let them in. The same with Bulgaria, which has the world’s fastest-dwindling population. The young are moving out, and with a clean conscience, because they believe that tomorrow Brussels will pay for their parents. So the EU has accepted 27 million people who wanted to get inside to secure their pensions. And in the European centre they are still overjoyed to have attracted millions more than the USA. That will make us strong, they believe.”

“So I see few possibilities. However, in my book I cite the example of California, which experienced a turn-around around 1990, which meant that even the white population — excluding the Latinos, who have a much higher birth rate — went from 1.3 to 1.8 children per woman. It is not full reproduction but a significant change nonetheless. It was a huge surprise because California is the world’s most advanced region. By the end of the 1980s the prognosis was that the birth rates would continue to fall, but in the beginning of the 1990s new studies found that Californian women were no longer satisfied with just working, and shortly afterwards the birth rates went up.”

“In Europe it was dismissed with the explanation that Americans are so conservative, but that is not true in California, which has in many ways been the pioneer of the West. However, I cannot see a similar change in Europe. Of course France has 2 children per woman, but out of five newborns, two are already Arabic or African. In Germany 35 per cent of all newborns already have a non-German background, and non-Germans commit 90 per cent of violent crimes. As I have said — mothers are paid to put children into the world and so are their daughters, whereas the men take to crime.”

“Or take the Tunisian example. A woman in Tunisia has 1.7 children. In France she may have six because the French government pays her to have them. 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.”

- So we need to discriminate?

“That will not work. It is too late. The moment you start discriminating, you will be dragged into each and every international court in existence. This is what the Anglo-Saxon world has escaped by discriminating at the border. Not based on race or ethnicity but based on qualifications. They are discriminating against the unqualified. Yet they reject them with a friendly piece of advice. When a person has been refused entry in Ottawa or Canberra, friendly immigration authorities will advise him to go to Germany. Because they have a different system there.”

The end of the welfare state

- How do you see the political situation in Europe in twenty years? No welfare state, no democracy?

“Concerning the European continent apart from Scandinavia, Ireland and England, I believe that even the pessimistic population prognoses will turn out to be too optimistic. They assume that the young people will stay in Europe and bring up their own children, but that will not happen. A study from 2005 showed that 52 per cent of the Germans between 18 and 32 wanted to leave. They might not mean it but they are entertaining the thought. The really qualified are leaving. 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. America, Canada and Australia count on receiving our best qualified youths, and they will get many of them. That will put an end to innovation and put a damper on economic growth in Europe. In Germany we are already forfeiting billions upon billions in revenue because we lack qualified people to take on the jobs. We have two million jobs that we cannot fill - and a welfare-dependent population of six million, and the two do not meet. The welfare group grows each year because of new babies, but the vacant job slots are not filled.”

“It is a case of two nations that are closed off to each other. The welfare state cannot continue. We cannot hope to cover the demographic holes through immigration from China either, since the Chinese do not want to emigrate into a welfare system where they will have to pay for an ageing population’s pensions in addition to a welfare population of millions.”

“We have to say that there is only one category of people who can count on help from the government and that is the mentally or physically handicapped. Nobody else should expect help. This sounds cold and cynical but our welfare states were founded the 19th century when families had 10 children. When their father fell to his death from a scaffold, somebody had to look after the family. This is not the situation we are facing today.”

“If you go to Australia, you will not be paid to have children. You may get a slight tax relief. On the other hand a citizen of Australia can keep 80 out of every 100 dollars he earns.”

- How could it go so wrong in Europe that had this grandiose vision of peace, cooperation and progress and unlimited trust in its own abilities?

“It started to go wrong around 1980. But the great turn in Germany came as late as 1990. That was when we opened the gates for a mass immigration of roughly speaking unqualified people. Between 1990 and 2002 Germany allowed an immigration of 13 million. At almost the same time it started to go wrong in France. We can only avert this burden on the welfare state through legislation. We have to pass a bill to the effect that new children born after a certain date will have to be paid for by their parents. It will be a revolution. But it is not even being discussed here in Europe.”

Clinton’s social reform

“But let me point out what happened in the USA. During the election campaign of 1992 Bill Clinton, in a famous phrase, promised to ‘end welfare as we know it’. In 1935 the USA had passed the ‘Aid to Dependent Children’-act (from 1960 known as ‘Aid to Families with Dependent Children’, ed.), which guaranteed every mother with small children help from the state. Again it was a question of the father who had fallen from the scaffold, and very few received support because of this law. However, in 1965 morals had changed. Until then it would have been unthinkable to a mother — whether she was white or black — to become pregnant, hide the identity of the father and then let the public pay for her kids. Now she did not even have to push the father out of a tall building. This caused an explosion of the number of welfare-dependent American families. From 1965 to 1995 their share rose to 10 per cent of all American families and 15 per cent of the children. That was the reality Clinton had to face.”

“Most of these welfare dependents were blacks, and that made racists claim that the problem was in the black genes. But the Republicans and the Democrats worked together on a new law, ‘Temporary Assistance for Needy Families’, which was a smart law. It told American women: We will give you welfare up to five years. You decide whether it should be five years straight, or whether you want to divide the five years into shorter periods. The new law was passed in 1996 and took effect on January 1, 1997. It caused several top officials in the Clinton administration to walk out in protest stating the law was a racist attack on the weakest — single mothers and their children. They had predicted that by 1997-98, the number of adversely affected would have grown from 12 to 14 million. As it turned out, it was these well-meaning people who were the racists. The black girls were smart enough to go on the pill with the result that the welfare-dependent population shrank from 12 million to 4 million. It was the most successful social reform in history.”

“In Europe we have not even begun to discuss such a reform.”

Leave the youth bulges alone

- Lately there has been a discussion as to whether we in the West can accomplish anything in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan or with populations such as the Palestinian. Why not let them fight it out among themselves?

“Some American strategists are beginning to question whether the USA, with its one-son families, ought send out troops to fight populations with many sons. That is the mistake we have committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you have to go in because you have been attacked, then you must do it, but as soon as the danger has been defeated, it is necessary to withdraw. It is up to the Iraqis and the Afghans themselves to ensure that there is a balance between the size of the population and the number of positions society can offer. And as far back in history we look, we can see that this balance has been maintained by young men killing each other. We have done it in Europe, and it has happened elsewhere. We cannot allow them to send their young men over the borders to kill others.”

“My personal view is that when faced with a youth bulge, we should allow it to play out with the consequences we know. We should stay away. If we interfere, we cannot avoid siding with one party and help killing that party’s opponents. Then the population will se us as doing the dirty work for one side or another. Instead might arm the most sympathetic side, which was what the French did in Algeria after the Islamists started killing the secularists in 1992. France sent weapons aid to the secularists. Back then nobody said that we ought to send money and food to the families of the Islamists, as they do in Palestine.”

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