
(US)
Republican leaders in the House have convinced themselves that a tough anti-immigration stance is key to holding on to their majority in November. And they cite GOP Representative Brian Bilbray's special election victory earlier this month in California as evidence that demonizing illegal aliens is a political winner. But Mr. Bilbray didn't even capture 50% of the vote in a safe GOP district against a Democrat, while Mr. Cannon has now survived a single-issue immigration assault from a well-financed fellow Republican. GOP voters are smarter than GOP Members think they are.Bilbray only failed to get 50% of the vote (he received 49.57%) because Independent William Griffith, who was endorsed by the MinuteMen and was on Bilbray's right on immigration, picked up 3.81%. Given the public's overwhelming support for tougher border enforcement and lower total immigration, both legal and illegal, the House's roadshow is politically prudent. Would the members be wiser to instead latch onto the reckless spending of the current GOP leadership and the Iraq miasma the neocons got us into? Is the WSJ's op/ed crew unaware of how Tom Delay upped GOP Congressional representation from an unfavorable 17-15 in 2000 to a favorable 21-11 majority in Texas with the 2003 redistricting in part by breaking up Hispanic havens in the southwest part of the state, with a results like the state's 23rd district?
Cannon said he wants immigration reform to look like some combination of the best parts of the U.S. House and Senate plans. Cannon says he opposes amnesty, and he has said undocumented workers could pay fines and return to their home country to apply for re-entry into the United States.Compare that to what Cannon said in 2002:
"We love immigrants in Utah. And we don't make the distinction very often between legal and illegal. In fact, I think Utah was the first state in the country to legislate the ability to get a driver's license based on the matricula consular [a Mexican government ID], and of that I'm proud."Utah's third district is considered one of the most conservative in the country, and Cannon has received a top rating of 100 on the American Conservative Union's legislator's scorecard. President Bush endorsed him as well. Those are quite a few obstacles for an unknown and politically inexperienced newcomer like Jacob to overcome. And he still managed to make the race close and bring it to the nation's attention.
Mr. Cannon defeated millionaire real-estate developer John Jacob, who spent more than $400,000 in the race, much of it assailing Mr. Cannon's support for President Bush's comprehensive immigration reform. Mr. Jacob was also adopted by Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo's political action committee, Team America, which wants to make the GOP an anti-immigration party. Mr. Tancredo's PAC spent $40,000 on radio ads attacking the incumbent, and its Web site even posted a picture of Mr. Cannon with a red target around his head.Nothing in there about how much Cannon's campaign threw into the primary. Thankfully, the Daily Herald is more honest:
U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, has a more than 2-to-1 fundraising advantage over challenger John Jacob in the race for the Republican nomination in Utah's Third Congressional District. ...
Reports filed through Monday show that Cannon had raised $815,687 from donors, PACs and loans. Jacob's total was $383,860, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. ...
Reports show that Jacob spent $346,000 through the beginning of June, compared to Cannon's $612,000 outlay.
Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick.This sounds plausible. It's basically the same concept we use for most shots--take small injections of the disease now so the body will build an immunity to more threatening levels in the future.
The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.
The new studies, one of which was published Friday in the peer reviewed Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, found significant differences in the immune systems between euthanized wild and lab rodents.
Parker said his study has drawbacks because he can't be sure that the age of the wild and lab rodents are equivalent, although he estimates the ages based on weight. He also could not control what happened in the past to the wild rats to see if they had unusual diseases before being captured and killed.The survival rate of lab rats compared to feral sewer rats strikes me as being of larger concern. If the average age of both cohorts was two, what proportion of lab rats make it to the age of two? What's the survival rate to the age of two for sewer rates? Lower than that of lab rats, presumably. What if in the wild, generally less healthy rats die off earlier, while in the lab all are preserved (outside of experimentation)? It seems to me that causation can only be, at best, speculated about. Immune strength might be coming from natural selection, not a Lamarckian enhancement of general immune system functionality.
Parker said he hopes to build a 50-foot artificial sewer for his next step, so that he could introduce the clean lab rats to an artificial dirty environment and see how and when the immunity was activated.The data that this elicits will be more conclusive.
Supporters of the American Civil Liberties Union who have become disillusioned with the group's governance are gathering the support of former officials, donors, and other ACLU members to challenge the organization's leadership, according to people involved in the discussions.Anthony Romero has aggressively brought the ACLU to the forefront of politics by taking the organization in a direction decidedly antipodal to the Bush foreign policy doctrine (he took over just days before 9/11). Unfortunately, it appears the noble cause of ending America's interventionist policy in Iraq has been tainted by perceived deplorable tactics employed by the ACLU (Abu Ghraib trumpeting, refusal to accept grant money that stipulates none of it be given to state-listed terrorists, demands that Guantanamo Bay detainees be released, etc) that strike me as not opposed to nation-building for the sake of the well-being of the US, but in spite of it.
The target of the nascent campaign is the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, 40, who took over day-to-day operation of the group in 2001.
One troubling sign for Mr. Romero is the emergence in the opposition camp of his predecessor, Ira Glasser. Since his retirement in 2001 after 23 years at the helm of the ACLU, Mr. Glasser has had little involvement in the civil liberties group's affairs.
However, he appeared at a board meeting earlier this month where proposals to limit speech by board members were debated.
...
One catalyst for the reform drive was the report from an ACLU committee urging constraints on speech by board members at odds with the organization. One provision said, "A director may publicly disagree with an ACLU policy position, but may not criticize the ACLU board and staff."
Another said board members "should refrain from publicly highlighting" any disagreement with the organization's policies, in part because public dissent could hurt the ACLU's "public support and fund-raising."
Mr. Romero said it was not unusual for the A.C.L.U. to grapple with conflicting issues involving civil liberties. "Take hate speech," he said. "While believing in free speech, we do not believe in or condone speech that attacks minorities."All speech is equal, but some speech is more equal than other speech.
Zimbabwe's white farmers' union has given warning of an impending "humanitarian catastrophe" after the government reneged on a promise to pay evicted white farmers the full value of the buildings and equipment seized along with their farms, leaving many of them destitute. ...
"They are waiting until people are desperate and then offering them between two and 10 per cent of what it would fetch at auction," said Mr Gifford.
Ken Fraser, 59, said he was called to a "compensation hearing" on Thursday at which he was offered Zim$14.7 billion (£25,000) for one of the five farms he once owned. "What they were offering me was quite ridiculous," said Mr Fraser, who was almost beaten to death by "war veterans" two years ago.Of course the real loser here is going to be Zimbabwe. The disempowering of whites in Africa has been terrible for Africans. When a place falls into the clutches of groups antagonistic to the productive classes, an exodus of human capital ensues. We've witnessed it firsthand in Cuba, it's going on in Zimbabwe, and it's taking place in Iraq.
"We had a shed put up there about five years ago that was worth Zim$13.9 billion
(£23,000), but that's what they are offering me now for the entire farm." He lives on savings and some income from contract work and has refused to leave his last house.
Even if all of this somehow works this election year, the long term damage to the GOP could be considerable. Pete Wilson demonized illegal aliens to win re-election as California Governor in 1994, but at the price of alienating Latino voters for a decade. The smarter Republicans--President Bush, Karl Rove, Senator John McCain, Colorado Governor Bill Owens and Florida Governor Jeb Bush--understand that the GOP can't sustain its majority without a larger share of the Hispanic vote. Making Mr. Tancredo the spokesman on this issue is a surefire way to make Hispanics into permanent Democrats.Apparently not wanting to provide entitlements for law-breaking liabilities is tantamount to demonization. Wilson turned a struggling campaign into a solid victory by taking up a populist cause that finds support across the political spectrum. He, like the GOP, didn't alienate Hispanics--he never had them to begin with. Even with Bush's massive hispandering, he couldn't reach 40% of the Latino electorate. House members know the sovereignty position is a winning one with voters.
Every poll we've seen says that the public favors an immigration reform of the kind that President Bush does.Unless the only poll you've seen is your own poll that trumpeted the Senate's proposal as being focused on strengthening security at the borders, building a fence, and instituting a guest worker program for illegals who have been here for more than two years. The open border crowd supports none of these things. The token Border Patrol additions and a partial fence were forced in from the sovereignty minority in the Senate. The so-called guest worker program is a misnomer. It puts illegals on the path to permanent residency. Did the pollsters make people aware of the fact that the 'guests' would stay indefinitely? Theoretically distinguishing between illegals who have been in the country for some time without causing trouble and holding a cutting edge job and those who just arrived seems reasonable. But how, when we know nothing about the shadow dwellers now, we are going to determine who has been here for more than two years isn't considered.
-Despite the poll’s implication, the new immigrant guest workers won't even beThe poll the op/ed board is basing all of its conclusions on mentioned none of these things. The poll did, however, find that voters are concerned about immigration (and that Republicans think the GOP isn't doing enough to tighten up) second only to the war in Iraq, and it also found that support for a wall trumps support for amnesty by a two-to-one margin among voters casting ballots based on immigration concerns. The poll also found a slightly higher percentage of Americans believe immigration (not just illegal immigration) hurts the country more than it helps it. Funny that these things were omitted from the excerpted piece above.
from Latin America. The program is likely to import large numbers of Asians, who (employers tell us) have a "lower runaway rate". Mexicans will be encouraged to continue to immigrate illegally, in the way that has proved so convenient to America’s elites over the last thirty years.
-Of course, as VDARE.com readers but few others know, language in the Senate bill assures that the "guest" workers wouldn't be guests because they could easily become legal permanent residents.
-And, funny thing, the WSJ poll doesn't mention that guest workers would be allowed to bring in their dependents—spouses and children.
-And it forgets to point out how the American public would pay to heal and educate the guest workers and/or their families.
-Nor does it point out that any children born to guest workers while in the U.S. will be American citizens because of the current "citizen child" misinterpretation of
the Fourteenth Amendment.
-Nor is there any mention of the huge increases in legal immigration wedged into the Senate Christmas tree.
The US focuses on advertising globally since the World Cup typically evokes little excitement domestically, according to ICOM. Only one market segment in the United States veers drastically from that trend—the Hispanic community.I'll have to start including the dilution of good sport in my litany of complaints against our immigration inanity.
Six Latin American teams have spots in the tournament this year (Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Costa Rica, and Mexico), as does Spain. The World Cup brings out an intense following and huge fan base among 42 million Hispanics in the United States. Ironically, four out of the six Spanish-speaking World Cup countries have fewer people than that.
U.S. authorities said Monday that detentions along the U.S.-Mexico border have decreased by 21 percent, to 26,994, in the first 10 days of June, compared with 34,077 for the same period a year ago.That's incredibly encouraging. Arizona's border, the busiest of the four border states, has seen crossings drop 23%. Even though only a token number of National Guard troops have been dispatched to assist the Border Patrol, they appear to be having a substantial effect:
The 55 soldiers who arrived June 3 are the first of some 6,000 troops to be gradually dispatched all along the border as part of President Bush's plan to stem illegal immigration to the United States.There are lots of reasons this could be working. The Mexican Army, like the country it serves (the average family in Mexico spends $166 in US real terms on bribes each year in a country with a PPP less than a fourth that of the US) is notoriously corrupt and morally unscrupulous. The challenges facing a Guatemalan trying to make it over Mexico's militarized border--robbery, rape, dismemberment, and even death--are rough. Migrants, given slanted reports in Mexico, probably fear that the US-Mexico border is moving in the same direction.
The soldiers aren't allowed to detain migrants and have been limited to projects like extending border fences and repairing roads, but the military's presence are keeping would-be crossers away from the area, migrant rights activists said.
"The border issue could give Lopez Obrador election victory," said Jorge Capetillo, a Latin America expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts. "It has definitely helped him." ...The prospect of another ten million of these people coming to the US to be subsidized and taken care of while decreasing the US quality of life in a host of ways when so many of them despise the US isn't at all appealing. Let Obrador scare-monger if it helps affect a precipitous year-over-year drop of 21% in border crossings.
But anti-Americanism remains an integral part of Mexican nationalism. In poll after poll in the region, Mexico is consistently at the top of list of countries that most disapprove of U.S. policy. "There has always been a strong anti-American sentiment in Mexican popular culture," said Pablo Cabañas, a political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. "This sentiment is especially strong among the lower classes."
"Some migrants have told me they heard about the troops on television and, because the U.S. Army doesn't have a very good reputation, they prefer not to cross," Loureiro said, referring to reports of abuse in Iraq.Dogs and swarthy men in hoods are scarier than smiling soldiers passing out candy to children. If only the MSM knew the unintentional effect it is having!
Miranda said he made it into the United States on the first try last year, but he expected a more difficult journey this time.We're making progress. The Senate's amnesty isn't going to pass again, and even if it does the House isn't going to cave. Immigration is just behind Iraq as one of the most important issues voters are going to take with them to the polls in November.
"We've heard that there are soldiers and armed 'migrant hunters' but we have to try," Miranda said. "If we don't make it in three tries, then we'll go back home."
That the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second-largest after New York, faces a crisis is hard to dispute. Some 81% of the district's middle school kids attend failing schools, which might be one reason that one in three eventually drops out. L.A. schools superintendent (and former Democratic Colorado Governor) Roy Romer dutifully notes that elementary math and reading scores have risen in recent years. But the fact remains that only 13% of students are reading at grade level, and 11% are at grade level in math. The only word for such results is horrifying.The WSJ goes on to predictably blame the bloated and ineffective school district. The teachers' unions aren't doing much good, but that's obviously not a complete explanation.
Among minority students in the district, who comprise the vast majority, the situation is even worse. Last year, nine out of 10 black and Latino fourth-graders scored below proficiency in reading and math. Eighth-graders fared worse. Just 8% of black eighth-graders are proficient readers, and 7% are proficient at math. For eighth-grade Latinos, the numbers are 9% and 6%, respectively.
Fuss in Washington notwithstanding, there's an easy way to reduce illegal immigration. It doesn't involve building fences or spending hundreds of billions to create an intrusive bureaucracy to hunt down illegals one by one and deport them. Just introduce a fraud-proof national ID card with biometric information; make it illegal, with real penalties, for employers to hire anyone, citizen or immigrant, who doesn't have one.There are three major pieces required for effective immigration control: 1) Physical barriers to entry, including walls, BP agents, surveillance, sensors, etc, 2) Stringent punitions--strictly enforced--for being in the US illegally (making it felonious), and 3) Workplace enforcement through the use of a tamper-proof identification card (Jenkins' suggestion) or employer access to a Social Security number database in which the prospective employee's number must match up (this can easily be done--try applying for a home loan with a credit score in the 400s or requesting a low-rate MasterCard after declaring Chapter 13). Taken alone, any of the three would have an enormous effect. Enacted together, the US would become virtually impervious to unwanted immigration. Jenkins makes sense thus far.
With 12 million illegals in the country, whole sectors of our economy exist only because of immigrant labor. Farms would shut down along with jobs for suppliers of seeds, packaging and ancillary services.Illegals comprise 5% of the US workforce. They are most heavily represented in agricultural (one in four), and also make up relatively significant portion of cleaning services (one in six) and construction (one in seven). No sector is primarily dependent on subsidized foreign labor. The agricultural industry certiainly enjoys the dual subsidization it receives in the form of obsequious serfs that are a net liability on the US taxpayer as a complement to the $25 billion or so it gets in handouts from the government, but in an industry that made an estimated profit of $64.4 billion in 2005, a net loss from illegal immigration of $5 billion would hardly force all of our seed planters onto the streets.
Armchair wonks say, "[Do not?] Enforce the law and damn the consequences." Every time the government does, however, a few of those couch warriors suddenly become vocal activists on the other side. It's their employer, their brother-in-law, their neighbor who finds himself facing criminal charges. It's their house that doesn't get finished. Don't be surprised if some of the latest politically inspired crackdowns end the same way.The sovereignty crowd puts no thought into the consequences?! Senator Jeff Sessions was personally impugned for actually reading the recent Senate immigraton bill before voting on it and raising questions over what its effects would be on the country. The CIS conducts meticulous analyses on the economics of immigration. VDare and a host of other analysts, pundits, and amateurs cover the whole gamut of effects current immigration trends are having on the US--depressed wages, higher crime, the return of atavistic disease, lower IQs, higher welfare use, greater income disparity, decreasing affordability of housing, cultural balkanization, an increase in anti-Semitic sentiment, pollution, national security concerns, increased population density, ad infinitum.
In search of a respectable argument, liberal enthusiasts for a border clampdown have lately adopted the obnoxious and condescending reification of "unskilled labor" popularized by some economists. It may be true in some sense that illegals hold down the wages of low-wage workers, but it tells you nothing useful. It tells you only that the supply of immigrant workers has an impact on the wages of mostly immigrant workers for jobs that mostly would not exist if immigrant workers weren't available to fill them.It may be true? On the very same pages economist George Borjas showed that it was true. Jenkins again posits that there are segments of the economy almost wholly dependent on illegal labor that would disappear with the illegals. On the day of the immigration protest strike last month, the jobs that would need filling if immigration laws were enforced were revealed:
Our economic dynamism is hardly being fueled by this:Jenkins continues:Of the hotel industry's 1.5 million employees, 150,000 aren't supposed to be here, according to statistics gathered by the Pew Hispanic Center. In food manufacturing, also with 1.5 million, 210,000 have no right to work. Landscaping, Mr. Penry's line, has 1.2 million workers, 300,000 of them illegally in the country.Virtually every third-world country has these industries. They do not add to America's global competitiveness. The less endowed natives our elites are spitting on can do all of these jobs. We have youths to do them as well.
In turn, a decently functioning job market rewards people for acquiring skills, not for remaining unskilled -- perverse is the idea of wanting to reduce labor competition for unskilled jobs in order to make unskilled jobs more desirable.Except that such a statement applies only to those already in the economy. Acquiring skills and using them in Mexico is less lucrative than coming to the US and working as an unskilled laborer. Minimum wage work alone in the US provides more buying power than the average Mexican citizen enjoys (including aid, remittances, and other income that is not the result of the recipient's labor). And as every good practitioner of the PC religion feigns to believe, Jenkins assumes that the ability to acquire skills that the market puts a premium on are equally achievable for all people. Nevermind that four generations in Mexicans are nowhere near the rest of the American population in educational achievement (twice as likely not to have graduated from high school and only one-fifth as likely to have a post-high school degree). Nevermind that Mexicans in the US have a high school graduation rate falling under 30%. Nevermind that America's working poor have double-digit IQs that make it nearly impossible for them to acquire professional skills or manage complex businesses.
So how about just open the door to anyone willing to put down a refundable entry deposit (say, $2,000) in return for a biometric work card? At a stroke, this would take the profit out of a vast underground industry. Chinese "snakeheads" cadge upwards of $40,000 per illegal immigrant. Latin "coyotes" get $2,000 or more. Not to mention the sizeable business done by document forgers and traffickers in stolen Social Security numbers.How about we legalize all drug use? It'll take the profit out of a vast underground industry. Remove laws on child sex exploitation and pornography? It'll do the same. Inanity. If they get a biometric card but refuse to work, will we absorb them anyway? If as many as 1.5 billion people worldwide would potentially come to the US if doing so were so simple (and that number would drop off drastically as the US precipitously plunged to third world status), an end to immigration will be realized when equilibrium is reached--that is, when the US comes to resemble the world at large. Do we want this kind of equity? An average IQ of 90? A life expectancy of 64 years? A literacy rate of 82%? A per capita purchasing power of under $10,000? And he doesn't even consider the qualitative factors like cultural and linguistic unity.
Polls say Americans want immigration cut down and they don't want amnesty for illegals, yet the Senate just passed an immigration reform that would increase immigration and proffer amnesty. The system works! -- at least it works better than it did when Congress jumped off a cliff with the Volstead Act, knowing that though Americans liked the idea of liquor prohibition, they'd end up hating the consequences.Guys like Jenkins are not on your side. They do not care how you suffer, so long as they feel morally superior in giving didactic lectures based on one falsity after another while the big MNCs they back enjoy the slave labor you pay for.
This doesn't please the border warriors, but they're spitting into the wind. In his table talk, a certain German dictator observed that religions have far more stability than states, which tend to come and go, swept away by the tides of history. The U.S., a young nation but already one of the world's longest-lived political states, has a chance to beat the odds thanks to our freedom from any of the usual fatal exclusivisms. But it will have to accept that it exists on a continent whose fastest-growing cultural force is Spanish speakers.
The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.A little over a year ago, a level of destruction only a third of what occurs today was considered normalcy. Then the deaths of a couple of thugs sparked a powder keg, and anarchy spilled out of France's immigrant enclaves. After the riots burned themselves out (!), we assumed a return to that putative normalcy. But said normalcy is actually much worse, yet little attention is given to it because it's not sensational enough relative to what transpired before.
National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted — and some now receive police escorts in such areas.Western media sources are good at sensationalizing 'freak' occurences but not so good at putting less sensational happenings into proper perspective. Though last year's riots got the headlines, this year is on pace to be 16% more destructive than last, in spite of the high-profile chaos that transpired last year. But since there hasn't been an abrupt, sensational surge this year, a more violent year is getting less coverage regarding violence than a less violent year did.
While falling birthrates threaten to undermine economies and social stability across much of an aging Europe, French fertility rates are increasing. France now has the second-highest fertility rate in Europe -- 1.94 children born per woman, exceeded slightly by Ireland's rate of 1.99. The U.S. fertility rate is 2.01 children.Randall at Parapundit then asks:
What I'd like to know: what is the native French fertility rate and what is the Muslim fertility rate?Great question. Unfortunately the French government doesn't keep statistical information by race or ethnicity. The comments section is rich with speculation and other commentary that's worth the read nonetheless. Common sense and compassion dictate that if it is the French that are causing the 'youths' to riot, more innocent Muslim children should not be brought into the oppression and poverty faced by the nation's Muslim minority. And if the Muslim enclaves are responsible, the same dictate that French citizenry not be subjected to such aggression. France needs to know where the ferility rates are coming from to gauge whether or not the incentives have been successful.
A center-right opposition vowing to streamline Sweden's famed welfare state ousted the Social Democratic government in a close parliamentary election Sunday, ending 12 years of leftist rule in the Nordic nation.Sweden's Social Democrats, who have led the majority for 65 of the last 74 years, fell to modest tax reduction policies, opposition to a six hour workday, and the advocating of reforms aimed at streamlining business operations. With the exception of a brief stint in the early nineties, the ruling leftist Social Democrats have seen Sweden plummet from the world's fourth wealthiest industrialized country in 1970 to sixteenth at the end of the millenium (and currently 19th in terms of purchasing power parity for nations with at least one million people).
Prime Minister Goran Persson, who had governed for 10 years, conceded defeat and said his Cabinet would resign after the Social Democratic Party's worst election result in decades.
With 99.7 percent of districts counted, the four-party opposition alliance led by Fredrik Reinfeldt had 48.1 percent of the votes, compared with 46.2 percent for the Social Democrats and their two supporting parties.
It touches the topic everyone knows is an issue but nobody will argue about: immigration. Sweden was one of only three European Union countries along with the UK and Ireland to open its doors fully to eastern Europeans last year and continues to accept large numbers of asylum seekers almost without question.
There is a general feeling that being Swedish is more about a set of values than racial attributes, but clashes of culture in a society once Europe’s most homogenous are easy to see.
In the busy city centre, blond teenagers play “chicken” in early evening sunshine, stripping to their underwear to dash through traffic and plunge into a fountain. A group of Arab boys stare on with mixed expressions of lust and disapproval, literal victims of shock and awe.
Escaping the stress of clogged roads, street violence and loss of faith in Holland's once celebrated way of life, the Dutch middle classes are leaving the country in droves for the first time in living memory. The new wave of educated migrants are quietly voting with their feet against a multicultural experiment long touted as a model for the world, but increasingly a warning of how good intentions can go wrong. Australia, Canada and New Zealand are the pin-up countries for those craving the great outdoors and old-fashioned civility. ...Even as Israel reels over its war with Hezbollah, instability in Iraq, and growing Iranian influence in the Middle East, scores of European Jews want to move to Israel to avoid anti-Semitism:
More people left the Netherlands in 2003 than arrived, ending a half-century cycle of surging immigration that has turned a tight-knit Nordic tribe into a multi-ethnic mosaic with three million people of foreign roots out of 16 million. ...
Unlike most earlier waves of migration to the new world, this one is not driven by penury. The Netherlands has a per capita income higher than Germany or Britain, and 4.7 per cent unemployment. "None of my clients is leaving for economic reasons. You can't get a visa anyway if you haven't got a work record," said Frans Buysse[, the head of a private immigration consultancy]. Europe's leader for much of the last century in social experiments, Holland may now be pointing to the next cultural revolution: bourgeois exodus. ...
According to Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, Belgium's Flemish anti-immigrant party, about 4,000 to 5,000 Flemish residents are leaving Antwerp every year, even as 5,000 to 6,000 non-European immigrants arrive in the city each year. ...
These are not just any emigrants but, as the director of a migration consultancy bureau in Amsterdam, Grant King, notes, "Most of our applicants are in high-paying, good, solid positions here - they are not the unemployed. They are mostly middle-class Dutch people with college or university degrees. … The problem for the Netherlands is that the ones that they don't want to lose are the ones that are leaving."
Ha'aretz reports today on a survey that finds "60,000 French Jews want to moveIt's time to halt all immigration from the Muslim world. Europe has mostly been moving to the right, with a rightist victory in Poland and narrowly in Germany, as well as a strong showing in the UK, the results from Sweden, and the likely victory of Sarkozy in France. I expect continued Islamic immigration and the strain both that and an increasingly archaic population put on social welfare systems will continue that trend. Hopefully this will induce more of what the Netherlands, Britain, and Germany have been doing in essentially filtering out hardline Islamic immigrants.
to Israel." Arik Cohen of Bar-Ilan University reached this conclusion by giving
questionnaires to the 125,000 French Jewish tourists who visited Israel in the summer of 2004. Of this huge sample, 52 percent said they see their future in Israel. Half of those aged 15-18 said they had personally experienced instances of anti-Semitism in the past four years. A third of the youth said they are considering immigration to Israel in the near future.
Sierra Club takes no position on United States immigration levels and policies. The Club's membership voted on April 25, 1998 to remain committed to environmental rights and protection for all within our borders, without discrimination basedThis even though Hispanic immigrants in the US appear to be more fecund when they come here than when they stay in Mexico!
on immigration status.
Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has provoked an angry response by stating it has to be possible for Sharia Law to be introduced in the Netherlands via democratic means. ...Maybe Jefferson really should have said, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%," instead of being faithful enough to "subscribe to the principle, that the will of the majority honestly expressed should give law."
Muslims, he said, just like Protestants and Roman Catholics, have a right to the perceptions of their religion, even if that included dissenting rules of behaviour such as imams refusing to shake hands with women.
He went on to say: "It must be possible for Muslim groups to come to power [in the Netherlands] via democratic means. Every citizen may argue why the law should be changed, as long as he sticks to the law.Mob rule. We're a nation of vicissitudes, Joseph K.
An Iraqi majority becomes an Iranian ally. The US is now caught in an about-face as it beefs up forces in Baghdad to quell the surging Shia militias that are now massacring minority Sunnis (the Baathists who used to be our unequivocal enemies). The Kurds want to redefine the geography so they become the majority. Majority voting in the Palestinian territories leads to an 'unacceptable' Hamas' victory that finds both the US (and Israel) in an act of blatant hypocrisy. Yet still President Bush drones on about freedom in the Middle East. While the House of Saad is corrupt and coercive, we could do a lot worse. Is anyone foolish enough to argue that the Saudi majority would retain King Abdullah? That we woud be so lucky. 'Moderate' Jordan would choose bin Laden over Abdullah, and the Saudis would probably do the same."It is a sure certainty for me: if two thirds of all Netherlanders tomorrow would want to introduce Sharia, then this possibility must exist. Could you block this legally? It would also be a scandal to say 'this isn't allowed!'
"The majority counts. That is the essence of democracy."
A growing number of people fear that the country faces "a Muslim problem" and more than half of the respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy. That compares with less than a third after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America five years ago. ...
The proportion of those who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism" has nearly doubled from 10 per cent a year ago to 18 per cent now.
The number who believe that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts as much as any- one else" has fallen from 23 per cent in July last year to 16 per cent. ...
A higher proportion than last year now feels that the police and MI5 should focus their counter-terrorism efforts on Muslims and far fewer people are worried that such an approach risks dividing the country or offending law-abiding Muslims.
Most strikingly, there has been a substantial increase over the past five years in the numbers who appear to subscribe to a belief in a clash of civilisations. When YouGov asked in 2001 whether people felt threatened by Islam, as distinct from fundamentalist Islamists, only 32 per cent said they did. That figure has risen to 53 per cent.
Five years ago, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat, or only a negligible one, to democracy. Now, by a similar ratio, people think it is a serious threat.
Miss Kelly said: "We must not be censored by political correctness and we cannot tiptoe around the issues."These comments were interspersed with the obligatory (and baseless) assertion that diversity has been a "huge asset", revealing that the supine still outweigh the spine.
She said: "Our ideas and policies should not be based on special treatment for minority ethnic faith communities. That would only exacerbate division rather than help build cohesion."
President Pervez Musharraf has opened a new and especially bitter confrontation with radical Islam by trying to rewrite Pakistan's controversial rape laws.Further growth in Britain's Pakistani population, numbering almost 750,000 according to the UK's 2001 Census, isn't good for gender equality. Immigration restriction will do far more for women's rights than countless domestic abuse awareness campaigns will do.
These place an almost impossible burden of proof on women by compelling them to produce four "pious" male witnesses to prove rape or risk being convicted of adultery and face 100 lashes or death by stoning.
This law, known as the Hudood Ordinance, has been regarded as untouchable since its passage 27 years ago.
Lawmakers nursing serious reservations against President Pervez Musharraf's efforts to ease discrimination against women absented themselves in Pakistan's National Assembly Friday to thwart the introduction of a bill to amend the controversial Hudood laws.
Only 30-40 members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid) were present. The opposition parties, bent on a no-confidence move against the government of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, walked out.
Mairaj-ul-Huda Siddiqui, a leader of an opposition alliance of six religious parties, told a crowd of about 200 in the city of Karachi after Friday prayers: "We will even sacrifice our lives for this and will not allow these amendments to take place,"
"This is part of a US and Jewish conspiracy and we will resist it forcefully," Siddiqui said.
Similar small protests were held in Lahore, Peshawar and the capital, Islamabad.
Immigrants will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbridled licentiousness, passing, as usual, from one extreme to the other. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.Why rely on a miracle when rejected visa applications will do?
Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.It's not only flamboyant gays that are being killed. Innocent children, abducted into the sex trade and prostituted out to homosexual men, are getting bullets through the eyes. And it's legal:
Eleven-year-old Ameer Hasoon al-Hasani was kidnapped by policemen from the front of his house last month. He was known in his district to have been forced into prostitution. His father Hassan told me he searched for his son for three days after his abduction, then found him, shot in the head. A copy of the death certificate confirms the cause of death.I think of my thirteen year-old brother and get sick to the stomach.
Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.
We were very modern. We were very, very Western culturalized — Iraq — comparing to the rest of the Middle East. Why it's been shifted to this Islamic dark ages country? We were much better off in the Saddam time, although he's a tyrant.Because our leftist neocon leaders are incapable of realizing that unelected tyrants in the Middle East bring the backwards Islamic world much closer to modernity than does giving the people a right to control their own destiny.
Islam considers homosexuality sinful. A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, says: "Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way". ...
The BBC asked Mr Sistani's representative, Seyed Kashmiri, to explain the ruling.
"Homosexuals and lesbians are not killed for practising their inclinations for the first time," Mr Kashmiri said in a response sent via email. "There are certain conditions drawn out by jurists before this punishment can be implemented, which is perhaps similar to the punishment meted out by other heavenly religions."
Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten on the spot, the newspaper said. Other killing teams entered villages at night, creating noise to get dogs barking, then honing in and beating them to death.Receive two-thirds of a dollar and you can murder your pet in a way you're comfortable with. To be fair, given the per capita wealth gap between the US and China, that's roughly equivalent to receiving $3.87 stateside, and dogs are an acceptable food source in China, so it might be better to imagine your local police force culling the city's pet rabits for comparison, although in Mouding county there are a lot of dogs--roughly one dog for every four people. Brutal pictures are here and here. Individual tales of the slaughter speak volumes about the lack of individual rights in the PRC:
Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their dogs before the teams were sent in, the report said.
On Saturday, a woman was walking her dog - a small white animal she'd had for a long time - in a Yunnan Province alley. Several men approached, talked her into handing them the leash and then beat the dog to death as the owner looked on in horror.Impetus for the campaign stems from a relatively high incidence of dog attacks on Mouding's population of 200,000, with one in 556 residents having been bitten in the last year. Initially the government's reaction was to vaccinate the county's 55,000 or so dogs, but the apparently high-profile case of a 4 year-old girl who was mauled to death sparked the cleansing. Although at least 4,000 of the county's dogs had previously received vaccination, all dogs found were dispatched irrespectively:
On Saturday, officials said that 90 percent of the dogs had been killed, and they expected to finish their work on Sunday.Military and police dogs were spared.