HonestThinking is dedicated to topics related to culture, politics, science, and philosophy. Our focus is currently on human rights, democracy, and the relationship between Islam and the Western civilization. To understand what HonestThinking is all about, please read our manifesto.

Of the various topics we cover, the ones having to do with etnic groups, and boundaries between them, are probably the most controversial. We do not pretend to know how one should deal with the related to problems, except - as should be clear from our writings - that we think Western countries need to re-examine their currently suicidal immigration policies. Our general stance on ethnicity can be summed up as follows: A healthy society should allow as large an ethnic variation as possible, but no more than that (inspired by Einstein).

Mission accomplished?

Tony Blair has laid the foundation for dismantling the UK as a nation

26.06.2007 (updated 09.07.2007). Excerpts from a report in The Telegraph (emphasis added): [According to an OECD report it turns out that] one in 10 people living in Britain was born overseas - a far higher proportion than previously thought, an international study group said yesterday. Record levels of immigration are rapidly changing the make-up of the population, figures released by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirmed. [...] In recent years, about half a million people have come to live in Britain every 12 months. [...] the fastest rate of growth in British history. [...]

In the late 1960s, about 75,000 people a year were accepted for citizenship but this fell to about 50,000 following new laws in 1971. The figure fell to 37,000 in 1997 [when Blair assumed office], but since then, there has been a spectacular increase. Unless action is taken, ministers said recently, there is a "critical risk" that the mass immigration of recent years will fracture society.

Yes, Britain had deserved something better than being forced by this man to commit multi-suicide

HonestThinking comments: When history is to be written about the multicultural suicide of Great Britain, no other individual can compete with Tony Blair when it comes to abusing power in unfailing determination to complete what he set out to accomplish. He has, in our opinion, been disloyal to his own nation, and ultimately to Europe and the entire Western world.

In light of the escalating British tragedy, the following lyrics from Pink Floyd's Time take on a more profound meaning:

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

And the last lines of verse #2 of the same song (released in 1973 as part of Dark side of the Moon) seem to have a chilling prophetic touch as Blair steps down after having bee in office since 1997:

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

An immigrant informs the UK (and Europe) of his take on the situation

Must the European Union be dismantled in 0rder to save Europe?

26.06.2007 (minor update the next day). Fjordman harbors little or no doubt; the EU must be destroyed, according to an article of his in The Brussels Journal. The following excerpts indicate why:

In a frank moment, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxemburg’s prime minister, once described the EU’s “system” in this way: “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens,” he explained. “If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”

In The Economist, columnist Charlemagne [Gideon Rachman] wrote: “What Mr Juncker and those who think like him are trying to do is, in essence, to drown opposition to European federation in a mass of technical detail, to bore people into submission. As a strategy, it has gone a long way. The greatest single transfer of sovereignty from Europe’s nations to the European Union took place, in 1985, as part of the project to create a single European market. Even [British Conservative PM] Margaret Thatcher, not usually slow to spot a trick, later claimed that she had not fully appreciated the ramifications of what she was then signing up to.”

Writer Christopher Booker has called this the EU’s ”culture of deceit”:

“What in fact has been taking place has been a transfer of power […] to Brussels on a scale amounting to the greatest constitutional revolution in our history. But much of this has remained buried from view because our politicians like to preserve the illusion that they are still in charge. The result is that remarkably few people now have any proper understanding of how the political system which rules our lives actually works.”

I have used the term “neo-Feudalism” to describe the EU. There are definitely certain elite groups in Europe who think that everything that is wrong with Europe is because of “populism” — what others call democracy. The motive force behind the EU aims to cede national sovereignty to a new ruling class of bureaucrats, a new aristocracy. This is a throwback to the pre-democratic age. Karl Zinsmeister notes that: “The EU apparatus is exceedingly closed and secretive. Relatively few of the confederation’s important decisions are currently made by democratically accountable officials. On front after front, bureaucratic mandarins are deciding how everyday Europeans will live. […] Many Europeans, in a way Americans find impossible to understand, are willing to let their elites lead them by the nose. There is a kind of peasant mentality under which their ‘betters’ are allowed to make the important national judgments for them.” [...]

According to British Conservative politician Daniel Hannan, this is how the EU was designed. “Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval. So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion. Indeed, the EU’s structure is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic.” [...]

The funny aspect of this is that those who are against the EU are labelled xenophobes, nationalists or simply anti-democratic forces. The EU is an organization where unelected bureaucrats dismantle democracy, yet denounce their critics as anti-democratic forces. [...]

Amato, who is a former Italian Prime Minister and also the Vice-President of the EU Convention which drafted the Constitution, has earlier stated that:

“In Europe one needs to act ‘as if’ — as if what was wanted was little, in order to obtain much, as if states were to remain sovereign to convince them to concede sovereignty [...] The Commission in Brussels, for example, should act as if it were a technical instrument, in order to be able to be treated as a government. And so on by disguise and subterfuge.”

The above quotes are taken from an article that constitutes part 4 of a series on Eurabia. It contains links to parts 1, 2, and 3.

HonestThinking comments: We think there can be little doubt that the foundation of EU is a questionable one, and that there are basically three possible future courses for this political Behemoth:

• Continued development into a totalitarian organization (likely).
• Radical transformation into something democratic and sustainable (unlikely).
• Dismantling (this seems unlikely except perhaps for a subset of the current member states).

Why such pessimism on behalf of EU? Because its deceitful foundation and utopian visions are about to be overwhelmed by reality.

The talented Mr Ramadan

25.06.2007. A British liberal who writes for Prospect appears to have had a very rude awakening, discovering that Muslim Brotherhood front man Tariq Ramadan really isn’t a “moderate Muslim” after all. Melanie Phillips has the story: The talented Mr Ramadan.

Oh dear. Here is yet another well-intentioned British liberal who is suddenly doing a double-take at what he took to be evidence of Islamic moderation but which now stands exposed before his horrified gaze as camouflage for extremism. Until now, Prospect editor David Goodhart has been a defender of the poster-boy of Islamist-chic, Tariq Ramadan, against his detractors, believing Ramadan’s highly disingenuous and manipulative spin that he represents a happy accommodation between Islam and western civilisation. Earlier this month, Goodhart was apparently distressed to read the latest example of Ramadan’s thinking in the Guardian where he is lionised as an intellectual colossus and the man who holds the key to Islamutopia. ...

How the West Was Lost

25.06.2007. Theodore Dalrymple comments on The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, by Walter Laqueur, for The American Conservative. Some excerpts:

It is Europe’s doom that Walter Laqueur explores and explains in this succinct and clearly written book. He does not say anything that others have not said before him, but he says it better and with a greater tolerance of nuance than some other works on this vitally important subject.

There are three threats to Europe’s future. The first comes from demographic decline. Europeans are simply not reproducing, for reasons that are unclear. They seem to care more about the ozone layer and carbon emissions than they do about the continuation of their own societies. [...]

The second threat comes from the presence of a sizable and growing immigrant population, a large part of which is not necessarily interested in integration. [...]

The third threat comes from the existence of the welfare state and the welfare-state mentality. [...] While Europe mortgages its future to pay for such extravagances—the French public debt doubled in ten years under the supposedly conservative Chirac—other areas of the world forge an unbeatable combination of high-tech and cheap labor. The European political class, more than ever dissociated from its electorate, has hardly woken up to the challenge.

All this Laqueur lays out with exemplary clarity. He sees Europe, once the home of a dynamic civilization that energized the rest of the world, declining into a kind of genteel theme park—if it’s lucky. The future might be grimmer than this, of course: there might be a real struggle for power once the immigrants and their descendents become numerically strong enough to take on the increasingly geriatric native population.

[...] we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The Role of Journalism Today

21.06.2007. Excerpts from a speech by Ayaan Hirsi Ali at National Press Club (Washington, USA): Why are Westerners so insecure about everything that is so wonderful about the West: political freedom, free press, freedom of expression, equal rights for women and men, gays and heterosexuals, critical thinking, and the great strength of scrutinizing ideas--and especially faith? [...] As a woman in the West I have access to education. I have a job, and I can change jobs as I wish. I can marry the man of my choice, or I can choose not to marry at all. If nature allows it, I can have any number of children I want. I can manipulate nature and freeze my eggs. I can have an abortion. I can own property. I can travel wherever I want. I can read whichever book, newspaper, or magazine I wish. I can watch any movie I want or go to the museum of my choice. I can have an opinion on the moral choices of others and express my opinion, even publish it. And I can change my mind as time goes by. I can establish a political party or join an existing one; I am free to change parties or give up my membership. I can vote. I can choose not to vote. I can stand for election to office or go into business. This is what makes the West so great.

HonestThinking comments: We are particularly happy to learn that a message like this is given to media people, large portions of which are busy destroying the West and everything it stands for. They will continue their anti-Western campaign for as long as we continue to buy their newspapers and magazines, and continue to watch and listen to their TV and radio programs. Their yoke of misinformation and selective reporting must be broken if we are to prevail in this fight.

Islam's Rise in Europe

21.06.2007. Excerpts from a report by Dick McDonald in Family Security Matters: On Sunday June 10, 2007, Avi Davis of the American Freedom Alliance managed to hold one of the most successful international conferences ever held by a civil society. Billed as “The Collapse of Europe, the Rise of Islam and the Consequences for the United States,” [...] My sold-out panel was entitled “Is Europe Doomed to Economic Stagnation?” Since the entire audience and all the speakers agreed with that premise, there was little discussion of economics beyond noting that Europe’s birth rate of 1.2 children per couple doomed Europe to a demographic disaster by 2050 or sooner. [...] The conference clearly defined the tragedy that is multiculturalism and how Islam is using the weak European bureaucracy and left leaning institutions like the media and the political class to slowly but methodically introduce the cult of Islam and the Shari’a law into their societies. That such assimilation has been preordained by a 1970 pact with the Arabs to exchange oil at a favorable price for letting Muslims immigrate in great numbers into Europe, and for Europe to take the Muslim side in international dealings with the Arabs against Israel.

Ethnic tensions 'could lead to violence'

18.06.2007. Ethnic tensions could escalate into violence in market towns and rural areas following waves of immigration from eastern Europe, an official report warns today. A council poster in Huddersfield A council poster in Huddersfield The Government's Commission on Integration and Cohesion will argue that the recent scale of migration has been "unsettling" for many communities and causes "tensions". Thus reports Graeme Wilson, Political Correspondent, and Richard Holt in The Telegraph.

HonestThinking comments: Few factors shape our sense of belonging and identity, and thus our loyalties, stronger than ethnicity. Yet, the current debates in Western countries about immigration and integration problems do not focus much on the topic. We suspect that this paradox has its roots in the following conundrum and ethical dilemma: On the one hand it is a virtue to treat any person with respect, irrespective of his or her ethnic background. On the other hand only an ignorant and stupid (or evil) person thinks that the ethnic makeup of a society is of little or no importance. Unless we come to grips with these issues fairly soon, Europe, and much of the rest of the West, will be headed for major disasters.

We need to make our young people love life

18.06.2007. Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the shari'a and law faculty at Qatar University, has recently published several articles in Gulf papers about terrorism and its root cause. This excerpt from an op-ed published by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa on May 15 was translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org). The following are excerpts from an article of his in Jerusalem Post:

The young people who have become tools of murder and human bombs are the sons of the culture of hatred, the outcome of a fanatical culture and extremist ideology that sees life, its pleasures, and its beauty as unimportant. Ultimately the political, economic, social, and religious motives that push [the young people] to blow themselves up lie in a single main cause - and that is the culture of hatred. [...]

We need a culture that will restore the importance of life and the value of the individual, and will make young people love the arts and the humanities...

The Flaws of the Western Man

18.06.2007. Here's yet another great article by Fjordman at Global Politician. The opening paragraph is as follows: There are two different camps among those concerned with the problems of the modern West: Those who ascribe them to a powerful and influential minority who champion certain ideologies, and those who ascribe them to a lack of cultural confidence and structural, religious and metaphysical problems in the West in general. I personally see some evidence to support both these explanations.

Aztlan - End Of The American Dream

15.06.2007. Excerpts from Fjordman's article at Global Politician: There are indeed some parallels between the USA and Europe. Mass immigration to the US is aided by an unholy alliance of corrupt political elites, Big Business supporters and anti-Western Leftists. There is little doubt in my mind that some members of the political elites in North America are envious of how their counterparts in Europe through administrative decisions have managed to fool their electorates and quietly bypassed the democratic process, gradually abandoning border controls in favor of a regional block. Left-wingers support this for the same reasons as left-wingers in Europe: They desire Third World immigrants because they tend to vote for left-wing parties and support expanded welfare states. Some left-wingers also see it as a goal to erase the Western cultural heritage and the white majority, again, just like in Europe. Some Big Business supporters tend to see immigrants as cheap labor and a new servant class. Of course, unlike some other countries, they get citizenship in the US, which means that the “servants” will eventually end up owning the country.

German brain drain at highest level since 1940s

15.06.2007. For a nation that invented the term "guest worker" for its immigrant labourers, Germany is facing the sobering fact that record numbers of its own often highly-qualified citizens are fleeing the country to work abroad in the biggest mass exodus for 60 years. Thus writes Tony Paterson for The Independent.

HonestThinking comments: This is a sure sign of major problems for Germany. Unless this trend is stopped, that nation is doomed.

Transnational Multiculturalism is a Totalitarian Ideology

14.06.2007 (updated the next day). In a new article at Global Politician, partly based on HonestThinking's comment below on UN's totalitarian tendencies, Fjordman discusses why Transnational Multiculturalism is more or less bound to move in the direction of a totalitarian ideology.

The following was posted 15.06.2007 by userid ARTICLE 19 at The Sentinel (as a response to Fjordman's article): "Neither ARTICLE 19 nor its executive director Dr. Callamard has ever suggested that “we should control what is presented in the media.” We have worked for twenty years to defend and promote freedom of expression, including media freedom, and we have worked for the enactment of legal and regulatory frameworks throughout the world that ensure the development of a free, independent and pluralistic media. In her key note speech at the Inter-Media dialogue, Dr. Callamard commented that restrictions on freedom of media have multiplied and lamented the decline in media diversity. She also noted the increased numbe of jouranlists [sic] attacked or even killed for doing their job. Dr. Callamard went on to identify a few possible responses to these developments, including tackling impunity, promoting appropriate regulatory frameworks in line with international free speech standards, promoting and implementing public service broadcasting and supporting community and minority broadcasting, and ensuring effective self-regulation."

Mark Steyn - America alone II

Great quotes from Steyn's book America alone.

11.06.2007. From page 34: Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.

Mark Steyn - America alone I

Great quotes from Steyn's book America alone.

10.06.2007. From page 16: When the fastest-breeding demographic group on the planet is also the one most resistant to the pieties of the social-democratic state that's a severe challenge, at least for the Left. In their bizarre prioritization of "a woman's right to choose," feminists have helped ensure that European women will end their days in a culture that doesn't accord women the right to choose anything. Non-Muslim females in heavily Muslim neighborhoods in France now wear headscarves while out on the streets. Yes, yes, I know Islam is very varied, and Riyadh has a vibrant gay scene, and the Khartoum Feminist Publishing Collective now has so many members they've rented lavish new offices above the clitorectomy clinic. I don't claim to have all the answers, except when I'm being interviewed live on TV. But that's better than claiming that there aren't even any questions.

UN's totalitarian tendencies

Dr. Doudou Diène

09.06.2007. On 4 June 2007 some 100 editors and journalists from all over the world met in Oslo, Norway, for an international conference on media and globalization. Keynote speaker at the conference was Dr. Doudou Diène, the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

At the time of writing, we are aware of a single report only in the printed media in Norway from this event , viz. one that was produced by one of the HonestThinking editors (who works as a part time journalist) for Norge Idag.

However, the message from Dr. Diène is interesting, to say the least. During his keynote address he urged media to actively participate in the creation of a multicultural society. He also expressed concerns that democratic processes could lead to immigration-restrictive parties coming to power.

This, in our opinion, is yet another sign that Europe is moving in the direction of totalitarianism. When the facts on the ground can no longer frankly and honestly be reported by the media, one is basically left with two options:

• Do something with the undesirable facts.
• Pretend reality is different from what it is.

The first option is necessary in order to preserve freedom, human rights, and democracy. The second option is the road to dictatorship and totalitarian rule. Perhaps paved with good intentions, but still the inevitable end result of pursuing Utopian visions beyond the point where it becomes obvious that they are just that.

There are already clear signs that large portions of mainstream media in Norway have been working according to UN instructions long before Dr. Diène set foot in our capital last week, and a related case is now being reported from Belgium.

Europeans' flight from Europe

08.06.2007. The following are excerpts from an article in The Washington Times by Paul Belien:

Last year more than 155,000 Germans emigrated from their native country. Since 2004 the number of ethnic Germans who leave each year is greater than the number of immigrants moving in. While the emigrants are highly motivated and well educated, "those coming in are mostly poor, untrained and hardly educated," says Stephanie Wahl of the German Institute for Economics. [...]

The situation is similar in other countries in Western Europe. Since 2003, emigration has exceeded immigration to the Netherlands. In 2006, the Dutch saw more than 130,000 compatriots leave. [...]

Elsewhere in Western Europe immigration currently still surpasses emigration, though emigration figures are rising fast. In Belgium the number of emigrants surged by 15 percent in the past years. In Sweden, 50,000 people packed their bags last year -- a rise of 18 percent compared to the previous year and the highest number of Swedes leaving since 1892. In the United Kingdom, almost 200,000 British citizens move out every year.

HonestThinking comments: The fact that hundreds of thousands of Europeans are giving up and leaving this continent every year, is probably the strongest evidence available of the complete failure of the multicultural project. Moreover, it makes all the prognoses of the various national demographic bureaus utterly worthless (when they tell us that the native population will make up a certain percentage of the total population in so-and-so many years from now, they typically do not take emigration into account).

Unless this trend is stopped, our societies could collapse sooner than you might think. This really ought to worry our politicians, but apparently they are only moderately concerned.

Will Britain one day be Muslim?

08.06.2007. The following are excerpts from an article in The Daily Mail by Ruth Dudley Edwards:

In my many conversations with like-minded people about the threat that radical Islam poses to the British way of life - and, indeed, to European civilisation - we frequently end by despairingly agreeing that the West seems intent on committing political and cultural suicide.

When we look starkly at the demographic statistics, the wimpishness of our Establishment in the face of the threat, the perversions perpetrated by political correctness and our own passivity, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that within a couple of generations, Islam will be in control in Europe.

And before anyone says that there would be nothing wrong if this happened, since the vast majority of Muslims are tolerant people who would not dream of interfering with our way of life, it's necessary to point out that in Muslim countries, it's usually the radicals and extremist mullahs - who regard tolerance as a vice - who make the running. [...]

Yes, Islam may be a great religion. But in its fundamentalist version, some of its values are antipathetic to ours, and if they triumph in Europe, they will threaten our values such as freedom of thought and speech and the spirit of intellectual inquiry that made European civilisation great and prosperous.

The danger of ending up like those poor, despotic and medieval Islamic states in which millions live miserably is a prospect that Christians, Hindus, moderate Muslims and non-believers should be uniting to prevent. But the truth is that we are doing little to stop it.

HonestThinking comments: Edwards is right, the UK (and much of Europe) could be Muslim pretty soon. In particular, this development could go really fast once self-enforcing processes such as white flight really get going. This will make even more Europeans want to leave, which in turn will create a vacuum that is filled with more immigrants. And so on.

Fabricating an emotion

05.06.2007. HonestThinking commemorates the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967-war by referring to a thought provoking article by Shmuel Katz in The Jerusalem Post.

Excerpt: "The most startling item in the Arabs' propaganda is their usurpation of the Jewish patrimony of Jerusalem. Arab political propaganda claims that Jerusalem is an "Arab city," has been an Arab city for many centuries, and is a holy city in Islam. There is only one small grain of truth in this claim, which on the whole is as false as the quite common description of Palestine as "a land holy to three faiths.""

A continent of losers

03.06.2007. 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 mayhem and mass murder. The originator of these bleak predictions is the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, who believes that the game is over for Europe.

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 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 labeled "Demographic Materialism".

Lars Hedegaard has interviewed Mr. Heinsohn for Sappho.

Islamist spokeswoman caught in double talk

Edina Lekovic, communications director of the MPAC

03.06.2007. For those of you who are still not aware of this (already infamous) story:

Mrs. Edina Lekovic, who serves as communications director of The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), appeared on CNBC's Kudlow & Company with counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson on May 23, where they discussed a Pew Research Center poll on U.S. Muslim attitudes. In the course of the discussion Mrs. Lekovic vehemently rejected Mr. Emerson's assertion that she, while serving as an editor of the Al-Talib Magazine, stood responsible for the publication of an article lauding Bin Laden as a freedom fighter. In fact, Lekovic denied ever having served as editor of the Al-Talib Magazine at all.

However, later in the day Mr. Emerson provided apodictic evidence that Lekovic was indeed managing editor of the relevant Al-Talib issue. A pdf-copy to prove this was posted on the internet.

Al-Talib, juli 1999, "The Spirit of Jihad"

In reaction to this, Mrs. Lekovic sent a long, angry e-mail to Emerson (asking Mr. Emerson to post it on his website) in which she announces that in "no way" does she now support the sentiments in that editorial, concedes having "briefly" worked for Al-Talib, and claims her name appears on that masthead due to a "printing mistake."

Unfortunately for Lekovic, Emerson has a back run of Al-Talib issues. Between October 1997 and May 2002, it turns out, her name appears at least eleven other times on the masthead, in such capacities as "managing editor," "assistant editor," "copy editor," "writer," or the recipient of "special thanks." In addition, Mr. Emerson claims to know that an earlier official MPAC-bio boasted Mrs. Lekovic's association with the al-Talib as one of her merits, without there being any evidence to suggest protests to that association on the part of Mrs. Lekovic.

Daniel Pipes' latest newsletter provides more detail on this story, including a transcript of the CNBC debate. The debate itself is available at YouTube.

HonestThinking comments: Anyone monitoring the islamist scene will regularly observe islamists exploit ambiguities and word-plays to conceal and dissimulate their real position on controversial political issues (a PR-technique called kitman, legally sanctioned in Islam). This case, however, is probably the best documented, most blatant and clear-cut exposure of this peculiar kind of deception we have ever witnessed.

Americans can praise themselves lucky for having Islam scholars of Mr. Emerson's stature. On Scandinavian shores one would be hard pressed to find anyone holding the position of an Islam or terrorist researcher having the will or guts to confront the likes of Mrs. Lekovic.

As Europe self-destructs

03.06.2007. From the always readworthy Caroline Glick, columnist and editor of the Jerusalem post, "As Europe self-destructs" surveys some critical assumptions of the ideology of cultural self-annihilation currently at vogue among the European elites. Read the entire article at The Jerusalem Post.

HonestThinking comments: Glick's article is brilliant in its own right, but we take a special interest and satisfaction in noting that she sites "the intrepid Scandinavian blogger Fjordman" for perspective on the present state of Swedish society.

The Big Lie

01.06.2007. The following is an excerpt from author David Solway’s recently released book, The Big Lie: on Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity. A onetime member of the anti-American Left, Solway came to see in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, that the United States represents the best hope to defend Western civilization and combat Islamic terrorism. The book charts his intellectual odyssey. Read more in FrontPageMagazine.

Destroying Our Culture - A Multicultural Anti-Genesis

31.05.2007. The Multiculturalist uncreated mankind in his own image: Confused, self-loathing individuals with no concept of right or wrong. And he didn’t create them male of female. He said that they were identical, and that claiming otherwise was sexist. And the Multiculturalist cursed them and said, 'Be barren and decrease in numbers, vanish from the face of the earth, let Mother Nature rule and the fish of the sea and the birds of the air reclaim the world.' The Multiculturalist then said, 'Let here be darkness,' and there was darkness. The Multiculturalist saw that the darkness was good, and he unseparated the darkness from the light. The Multiculturalist called the light 'discrimination and bigotry,' and the darkness he called 'tolerance.' On the seventh day, the Multiculturalist rested, and he saw that it was good. He had unmade reason, he had unmade logic, he had unmade truth, he had unmade the very reason and desire to exist. And there was evening on the seventh day, but there was no new morning. Thus writes Fjordman in Global Politician today.

A Green Card in every pot

31.05.2007. Americans — at least really stupid Americans like George Bush — believe the natural state of the world is to have individual self-determination, human rights, the rule of law and a robust democratic economy. On this view, most of the existing world and almost all of world history is a freakish aberration. In fact, the natural state of the world is Darfur. The freakish aberration is America and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world.

The British Empire once spread the culture of prosperity around the globe — Judeo-Christian values, tolerance, equality, private property and the rule of law. All recipients of the British Empire's largesse benefited, but the empire's most successful colony was the United States.

At the precise moment in history when the U.S. has abandoned any attempt to transmit Anglo-Saxon virtues to its own citizens, much less to immigrants, George Bush wants to grant citizenship to hordes of immigrants who are here precisely because they are fleeing cultures that are utterly dysfunctional and ruinous for the humans who live in them. Thus writes Ann Coulter in a recent article.

The deep crisis of the West

19.05.2007. The following are the opening paragraphs of an article published today here at HonestThinking:

Sometimes we make things too complicated. This article is an attempt at explaining, using as few words as possible, why Europe in particular, and the entire Western world in general, is in a deep crisis. This explanation will be followed by a brief discussion of some possible objections, after which several sobering facts and quotes are provided. The article is wrapped up with some concluding thoughts and remarks.

My pessimism on behalf of the Western civilization rests on the following simple observation: Somewhere, somehow, there has to be a limit to the amount of diversity a society can handle without becoming dysfunctional.

I am not pretending to know exactly where this limit is; I am merely claiming that such a limit must necessarily exist. With this as our basic assumption, we may reason as follows.

Read the entire article about The deep crisis of the West.

Stupidity Without Borders — The Alliance of Utopias

19.05.2007. The following are excerpts from a new article by Fjordman at Global Politician:

American military historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson talks about how mass immigration is the product of a de facto alliance between the Libertarian Right and the Multicultural Left. [...] The right supports one part of globalisation — the free movement of capital and goods — while the left tends to support another part, the free movement of people.

[...]

In the middle of the massive waves of migration in the 21st century it is suicidal to cling on to ideas of a “borderless world.” Yet in the West, there seems to be an alliance between the anti-national forces of the political Left and the Libertarian ideals and short-term desire for cheap labor of the political Right, who denounce their critics as “racists.” Perhaps we can call it an Alliance of Utopias. What these Western Utopians don’t understand is that there is another, competing Utopia of a borderless world: The Islamic Caliphate. As long as the Islamic world can dump their excess population in infidel countries and Muslims make up a majority – some say 70% — of the world’s refugees, any policies of not maintaining our borders will only pave the way for the Islamization of our lands. And it will happen with the blessing of many of our intellectuals, both right-wing and left-wing.

HonestThinking comments: This is entirely in line with statements we ourselves have made multiple times (primarily in our Norwegian writings, see e.g. the article Grums og hersketeknikker). Unless this unholy alliance of the naïve Left and the cynical/greedy Right is broken, the West as we know it, is almost certainly doomed.

Cultural War by Proxy

19.05.2007. There is a steady flow of interesting articles being published at Global Politician, and we would like to recommend Cultural War by Proxy written by Wolfgang Bruno. This article makes some very good points, and concludes as follows (emphasis added):

We can't begin to do anything, until we in the West come together in agreement about basic principles concerning the value of Western Civilization. Until this is done, we will not be able to recognize and fight the danger of Islam. The most interesting and promising development is the alliance between non-religions persons such as Ali Sina and devout religious persons such as Robert Spencer. This is where the dynamic heart of the Islam-critical movement is today. And if the Bush administration were smart, they would support them in every way they can, including financially. Italian writer Oriana Fallaci has labeled herself a ”Catholic Atheist”. Not a believer herself, but still deeply attached to the religious heritage that makes up an important part of her culture. Maybe the end definition of the West will be a society similar to what the USA is today: Secular by form, but religious by nature.

Conservative Bloggers Fight for Free Speech

12.05.2007. From a new article by Fjordman in The Brussels Journal:

It has been documented countless times that journalists in Denmark (and many other countries) to a very large degree vote for parties to the left of the center. But a totally different picture emerges when looking at their non-professional colleagues in cyberspace. The weekly Mandag Morgen has published a survey which labels 19 out of the 20 most visited Danish political bloggers as conservative or leaning towards the political Right. To Kim Møller, who runs the most popular blog in this survey, Uriasposten.net, the result comes as no surprise, but is a natural result of the grossly lopsided coverage in the traditional media. "If you want a conservative view on developments in society, you won't find it there," he says to the new, conservative online newspaper 180Grader.dk.

Uriasposten was, to my knowledge, the first blog to republish the now famous Muhammad cartoons, immediately after they appeared in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The story was later introduced in English by me and had, unsurprisingly, been debated for months in the blogosphere on websites such as Jihad Watch and The Brussels Journal before the major international media took notice. Møller's blog is, alongside Snaphanen, Document.no, Honest Thinking and a few others, among the leading Scandinavian blogs.

[...]

This can be compared to being attacked by an angry and hungry polar bear, while your eyes and ears, the media, tell you that it's a cute koala bear who just wants to be cuddled. Meanwhile, your brain has been indoctrinated to think happy thoughts about diversity and smile to all creatures, regardless of their nature or intentions. This is pretty much how the entire West is today. The heavy anti-Western bias of our media and our education system constitutes a very real threat to our survival.

Pessimists claim that this is merely the "wild West" period of the Internet, which will eventually become censored, controlled and boring just like all other media. That is certainly a possibility, but even if this turns out to be true, it has still been of great importance in generating resistance to Islamization during its first generation as a mass medium. Only future historians will be able to determine its full significance, but it is conceivable that the network of independent websites could tip the scales in favor of our cultural survival. Helen Szamuely of British blog EU Referendum believes that the Internet has empowered "more people faster than anything has done since the invention of printing." Gutenberg's printing press helped fuel the Renaissance in 15th century Europe. With some luck, the Internet could yet turn to be the catalyst for a new Western Renaissance.

HonestThinking comments: Something is seriously wrong with mainstream media in the Western world, and we consider it one of the single most serious threats to our continued existence as civilized nations. And, obviously, we very much appreciate the above complement.

Now Muslims get their own laws in Britain

MUSLIM radicals have established their own draconian court systems in Britain

01.05.2007. Controversial Sharia courts have been set up in major towns and cities to impose Islamic law and enable Muslims to shun the legitimate British legal system. Last night religious leaders and politicians expressed outrage that Sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in our society. Critics insisted that the Government is allowing a two-tier legal system to flourish in the name of political correctness and that the authority of UK justice is being undermined. See article by Paul Jeeves in Daily Express.

Beating Freedom of Speech

28.04.2007. On Thursday, April 12, a gang of Somali thugs on a downtown Oslo street attacked Kadra, a Somali woman who now lives in Norway, and beat her senseless, breaking several of her ribs. They were enraged at her for her recent statement that the Qur’an’s views of women needed reevaluation. They also might have been angry because of her role in revealing the widespread support among imams in Norway for female genital mutilation; Kadra exposed their support for this horrific procedure using a hidden camera in a 2000 documentary for Norwegian television. Thus writes Robert Spencer in a recent article in FrontPageMagazine.

The Migration Flood

28.04.2007. Another article by Fjordman at Global Politician. Full of sobering quotes and facts.

Not the death of Europe?

28.04.2007. Richard John Neuhaus of First Things has written an interesting review of Philip Jenkins' book God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. The following are what we consider some particularly interesting excerpts (emphasis added):

In God’s Continent, Jenkins seeks to counter what he views as the excessively dismal, even alarmist, analyses of the future of Europe.

As one has come to expect from Jenkins, God’s Continent is chock-full of information. It seems he has read nearly everything pertinent to his subject. His is an argument of many parts. For instance, “both Christianity and Islam face real difficulties in surviving within Europe’s secular cultural ambience in anything like their familiar historic forms.” Both will have to adapt to what sociologist Peter Berger calls “Eurosecularity,” and, in fact, both are doing just that. Economically, Europe will continue to need large numbers of immigrants, particularly to support its welfare states with aging native populations. Immigrants will mainly be Muslim, and, while their birth rate is high, and much higher in their native countries, the rate among second- and third-generation immigrants in Europe is falling. But alarm about population change is an old story. [...]

God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis is a tour de force that puts the most hopeful possible construction on a set of circumstances that leads others to the edge of despair, or over the edge. Of course, Jenkins may turn out to be right, and we should, guarding against alarmism, keep matters in historical perspective. Recognizing the complexity of a circumstance is always in order, so long as it does not become the complexification that obscures what should be obvious. There are several points on which Jenkins’ argument is unconvincing. [...]

But then, and despite his roseate projections, perhaps Philip Jenkins knows all this. Recall his observation that “both Christianity and Islam face real difficulties in surviving within Europe’s secular cultural ambience in anything like their familiar historic forms.” Europe is a historical phenomenon, and Europe without its familiar historic forms is not Europe. To speak of the death of Europe is not to suggest that the continent called Europe will disappear. It is possible that “Eurosecularity” in sustained tension with an Islamo-Christian cultural ambience will flourish, at least economically, for generations to come. But, with the establishment of Eurabia or the Maghreb, Europe “in anything like its familiar historic forms” will be a memory. That is what is meant by the death of Europe.

At a recent dinner party with European intellectuals, I put to an influential French archbishop Daniel Pipes’ projection: Either assimilation or expulsion or Islamic takeover. That, he said, puts the possibilities much too starkly. “We hope for the first,” he said, “while we work at reducing immigration and prepare ourselves for soft Islamization.” Soft Islamization. It is a wan expression. Whether soft or hard, the prospect is that, in the not-so-distant future, someone will publish a book titled Allah’s Continent. In fact, several Muslim authors have already published books with very similar titles, anticipating the future of the Europe that was. Needless to say, and historical contingencies being as contingent as they are, I very much hope that they turn out to be wrong. As I very much wish Philip Jenkins’ God’s Continent provided better reasons for believing they are wrong.

A Christian Background for Political Correctness?

25.04.2007. The text below is taken from the last paragraphs of an article in Gates of Vienna:

One major component of Western self-loathing is the idea that we should we be punished for crimes, perceived or real, committed by our ancestors before we were even born. It could be argued that this idea has its roots in Christian thinking, in the concept of original sin, committed by Adam and Eve, but where all their descendants are subject to its effects. Christian ethics have proved more durable than Christian beliefs. Even when we have supposedly left the religion behind, we still believe we have to make atonement for the sins of our forefathers, but since we no longer believe that Christ has made that sacrifice for us and washed away our sins, we end up sacrificing ourselves instead.

This proves that unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing. Too much of anything will kill you. Christianity does make up a huge component of what Western civilization is, but not everything, since many countries that are Christian are not Western. Underneath a veneer of Christianity has always been the older and more brutal traditions of our Germanic or Roman past. Perhaps Christianity, despite its many great qualities, needs to be balanced out by other more worldly elements, such as attachment to nation states.

HonestThinking comments: These are interesting thoughts indeed. On the one hand, it seems that once people cease to believe in God, they will believe anything. And the current, secular version of Europe seems to be more than willing to believe any convenient lie. On the other hand, there are indeed problems with Christian thought and the general "Christian" attitudes that seem to prevent our politicians from thinking clearly. We've managed to get rid of the yoke of the power of the medieval priests, but we are now in the process of giving away our newfound freedom in the interest of political correctness. This multicultural suicide is applauded by secularists as well as by many a gullible Christian. Pretty paradoxical.

The great deception: Immigration 25 times higher than ever before

25.04.2007. HonestThinking would like to recommend the Saturday Essay in Daily Mail of 21 April, written by Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the think tank MigrationWatch and former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Syria. The essay begins as follows:

For many years now, the Government and the liberal Left's case for mass immigration has rested partly on their repeated assertion that Britain is a melting pot of different cultures - or as they describe it, "a nation of immigrants".

Our history, we have been told, is punctuated by regular waves of substantial numbers of immigrants to our shores; from the Romans to the Normans, from the Huguenots of the 16th and 17th centuries to the Jews of the 19th and 20th, in-comers have settled here over the centuries and have influenced the racial and cultural make-up of this country for the better.

The slogan was first promoted in Britain in 2001 by the then immigration minister Barbara Roche, who pronounced that "the UK is a nation of immigrants". This absurd claim will finally bite the dust with the publication today of an important new book - A Nation Of Immigrants? by Professor David Conway, senior research fellow for the political think-tank Civitas.

High immigration is harming Britain’s poor, says minister

25.04.2007. Large-scale immigration has damaged the poorest communities and deeply unsettled the country, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne recently said, according to The Times.

Immigrant ruining British way of life

25.04.2007. BRITAIN is losing its identity as a nation thanks to record immigration levels, a think-tank warned yesterday. Mass, unchecked flows into the country – especially under Labour – will soon lead to political breakdown, said Civitas. Fast-growing, segregated en­claves across the country do not accept our values. And the 7/7 bombers are an alarming example of how our stability is threatened by such groups, added Civitas academic David Conway. Thus begins an article in Daily Express.

Immigration has unsettled the country, says minister

19.04.2007. Mass immigration into Britain in recent years has left the country "deeply unsettled", Labour's immigration minister has admitted. Read more at This is London.

Fjordman: Jihad and the collapse of the Swedish model

19.04.2007. I decided to write this essay following the riots in Malmö this weekend. Malmö is Sweden's third largest city and by far the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim aggression. I read recently that an Arab girl interviewed in Malmö said that she liked it so much there, it felt almost like an Arab city. Native Swedes have been moving away from the city for years, turned into refugees in their own country by Jihad, not too different from the non-Muslims in some regions of the Philippines, southern Thailand or Kashmir in India, or for that matter, Christian Serbs in Kosovo.

...

Native Swedes have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and culture.

Read Fjordman's entire essay at JihadWatch.

3 slain at Bible distributor in Turkey

19.04.2007. ISTANBUL, Turkey - Assailants tied up three people at a publishing house that distributes Bibles in Turkey and then slit their throats Wednesday, adding to a string of attacks apparently targeting the country's tiny Christian minority, according to Yahoo News.

The Real Climate Censorship

18.04.2007. It’s happening, it’s systematic, and it is precisely the opposite story to the one the papers are telling, writes George Monbiot in an article first published in the Guardian, 10th April 2007.

Beyond the ‘consensus’

15.04.2007. Writes Melanie Phillips: The meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen one again injects some much-needed sanity – and scientific rationalism – into the global warming frenzy in an article in Newsweek. Here’s a flavour:

There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way, according to scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which released the second part of this year’s report earlier this month). Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing.

In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There’s even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth’s surface.

Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. Interpretations of these studies rarely consider that the impact of carbon on temperature goes down—not up—the more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Even if emissions were the sole cause of the recent temperature rise—a dubious proposition—future increases wouldn’t be as steep as the climb in emissions.

Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world’s average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its “forcing”—its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn’t been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

Tony Blair: “It’s Young Blacks Doing It”

15.04.2007. Tony Blair delivered the Callaghan lecture to the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce, where he focussed on the regeneration of the UK's cities. The following excerpts are taken from number-10.gov.uk (emphasis added):

What we are dealing with is not a general social disorder; but specific groups or people who for one reason or another, are deciding not to abide by the same code of conduct as the rest of us. This came home to me when, at the recent summit I held on knife and gun crime, the black Pastor of a London church said bluntly: when are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it. […]

The black community – the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening – need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids. But we won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young black kids doing it.

Questioning the Sanity of Liberals

09.04.2007. From the introduction to this article at Gates of Vienna: The British author Paul Weston has sent us [i.e., Gates of Vienna] another essay, this one on the topic of modern liberals. Needless to say, Mr. Weston does not think highly of today’s liberals.

Now, I have to say that some of my best friends are liberals. They are well-meaning people who support abortion, affirmative action, gun control, and a large and proactive role of the federal government in peoples’ lives — all for their own good, of course. These are not evil people; they are friends who happen to hold different political opinions, and we can agree to disagree. But Mr. Weston has a slightly different and more ominous kind of liberal in his sights. Read his article and see what you think.

Towards the end of the article Weston writes:

But now, with the advent of the Internet we have access to information that validates what we suspected but could not prove, and the means of using this information to spread and facilitate a defence. We’ve rumbled you, my liberal friend, you can no longer censor us out of your insane destruction of our countries and our cultures. You have lost your grip on the means of information and if you think that you are the self righteously angry defenders of the oppressed, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You have no idea how oppressed you make us feel, how angry we are, or how many we number. This justifiable anger is directed principally at the malignant narcissist liberal whose intention has always been to destroy, but you, the middle class liberals filled not with hatred but with well-intentioned guilt must understand that you have been duped, your alliance with politically correct liberalism is just as destructive, and we have had enough.

You, the Liberal, must understand that the people whose race and culture is being slowly swept away by politically correct liberalism are the very people who built the civilisation you have inherited. If this civilisation were to die we would become a tribal Iraq, Somalia or Yugoslavia. So I implore you, recognise the reality of what is happening, reappraise your idea of liberalism and channel your guilt not into the past but into the future, the guilt you would surely feel — you must surely feel — if you allowed your children and your grandchildren to inherit a Third World society, with all that implies, bought about by you — The Liberal.

Is European Civil War Inevitable by 2025?

09.04.2007. Below is the latest in a series of articles by the British author Paul Weston. It concerns the demographic future of Europe and the civilizational conflict that seems likely to occur sooner than one might have thought. See article at Gates of Vienna.

Will the United States Survive Until 2022?

05.04.2007. We have just come across an interesting article in New English Review by John Derbyshire, where he raises the issue of whether the USA can survive another fifteen years. He is concerned about the country's political, social, economic, cultural, intellectual, demographic, military, and spiritual problems, which, as he sees it, have the potential to bring the USA to its knees. Here are some excerpts (emphasis added):

Now of course any nation, at any point in time, displays some negative indicators. I don’t think I am alone in believing, though, that our own beloved nation, at this particular point in its history, is displaying far too many. There are too many fault lines, and the cracks are widening. We are separating out, drifting apart from each other, withdrawing into gated communities, both literal and metaphorical. [...]

Much of the damage, however, has been willfully self-inflicted. We did not have to swallow the multiculturalist suicide pill; we did not have to open our borders to the Third World flood; we did not have to delegitimize patriotism and abandon the assimilationist model of immigration. Why did we do those foolish things? From overconfidence, I think. It has been said that a nation can survive anything but success. Success is the one true lethal disaster. [...]

Plainly ethnic solidarity is not a sufficient condition for national cohesion, but it may be a necessary one.

Our biggest social failures have been our accelerating separation by race and class. The races—and I am speaking here of the two races that inhabit the USA, the black and the nonblack—are very nearly as segregated now as they were under Jim Crow. Of course, nonblack Americans take pride and satisfaction in the few successful, well-educated, middle-class black people they know. At the same time, we have created residential patterns all over our country in which schooling, social life, and house prices are driven by a single major factor: the very strong desire of nonblacks that they not live among too many blacks—most especially, that their children not have to attend majority-black schools.

It’s hard not to feel that what we have mainly succeeded in doing this past forty years has been to brush our racial issues under the carpet, where we don’t have to think about them.

HonestThinking comments: No amount of creative 'intellectual' activity can make these problems go away. And unless we honestly face them, these problems will destroy the entire Western world. Several American writers point to the disastrous developments in Europe, and they are right. What some of them fail to realize, apparently, is that the USA is in dire straits, too. Dishonest thinking in academia, dishonest reporting by the media, immigration out of control, and a lack of willingness to face the entire set of related problems, could cause that great country to disintegrate sooner than you think. Our guess is that it will take more than fifteen years for that to happen, but you never know.

If not only New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and Canada goes down the drain, but the USA too, the entire West has been conquered. The Islamists are very much aware of this, and so are the multiculturalists.

How Modern Liberals Think

05.04.2007. Writer, lecturer, and pundit Evan Sayet last month gave a talk about the way modern liberals think. The talk was hosted by the The Heritage Foundation, and can be viewed at YouTube (duration: 48 minutes).

HonestThinking comments: Sayet's talk is humorous and entertaining, and uses a lot of exaggerations and oversimplifications to get the message across to the audience. Our readers (especially non-Americans, many of whom will be unfamiliar with Sayet's style) should not let that keep them from getting the core message, which we believe is the following: When media, politicians, academia, and the general public no longer uses rational thought to distinguish between

• true and false
• good and evil
• right and wrong

society will necessarily be headed for trouble. Major trouble. That's precisely why we created this web site. And that's why we chose the name HonestThinking.

Gang mayhem grips LA

03.04.2007. A bloody conflict between Hispanic and black gangs is spreading across Los Angeles. Hundreds are dying as whole districts face the threat of ethnic cleansing. Paul Harris reports in The Observer from the epicentre of America's new urban warfare.

More riots in France

02.04.2007. It appears that youths have once more decided to do some rioting in France. This time the arrest of an African fare-dodger sparked the flames. Eight railway staff and one police officer were injured. Reports The Observer:

The mood shifted sharply in the wake of Tuesday's riot involving some 200 people in the commuter concourse of the Gare du Nord, where a fare-dodger's arrest sparked nine hours of clashes between youths and riot police. [...]

It was 4.30pm when Hoekelet skipped the barrier and was stopped. 'One of the inspectors spoke to me in bad language. I said "Stop or I'll block your ear". Our heads touched and he told his colleague, "Did you see that ? He head-butted me". That's when I realised it was personal - three of them were north African and I'm black - and I lost control,' he later told the police.

As Hoekelet was led away, rumours spread that the fare-dodger was a 14-year-old who had been beaten by police and a pregnant woman had been tear-gassed. Hundreds of youngsters descended on the concourse, shopfronts were smashed and riot police bussed in. Thirteen youths were arrested. Eight railway staff and one police officer were injured. Hoekelet was later charged with resisting arrest and insulting public servants.

See also Yahoo news. For more details on what happened, readers may want to consult the following blogs

• Gare du Nord Riots., including video.
• The "youths" are still rioting, but now at one of the main train stations, including video.

George Monbiot vs. Channel 4

01.04.2007. Readers interested in the controversy surrounding The Great Global Warming Swindle should have a look at the correspondence between science journalist George Monbiot and Head of History, Science and Religion at Channel 4 Hamish Mykura. For some background on all of this, please refer to our earlier writings:

• Channel 4's problem with science
• Kyoto Protocol based on flawed statistics
• The Great Global Warming Swindle

And we recommend that you consider the message of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth (see also the corresponding Wikipedia article).

The Retreat of the Western World Order

01.04.2007. These massive changes and the real or perceived weakness of the Western civilization that has been dominant globally for centuries could very well create a new world war. Multiculturalism and the inability or unwillingness of Western nations to uphold their borders from massive immigration is viewed by Muslims as an invitation for attack and a signal that their ancient Western rival is weak and ripe for conquest. This is no doubt the background for the ongoing aggressive posture by the Iranian president, among others. We should take this dead seriously, because it is meant that way.

Muslims really do believe that the time has now come for overthrowing the West and putting Islam into the global, dominant position it should have according to their scriptures. They will spare no efforts, including nuclear war, in achieving this goal. The Iranian president has quite openly stated that “Islam will soon rule the world,” which implies that they will have to destroy or subdue the West. Al-Qaeda strategists have earlier outlined a schedule for awakening the Islamic world and crushing the West, with a timeline stretching over the coming fifteen to twenty years. They still stick to this plan, which means that tensions are bound to escalate even further in the near future. Westerners need to understand that a world war of sorts with the Islamic world is already inevitable by now, no matter what we do. The only question is whether this will be a cold or a hot world war. We will rapidly approach the latter, if countries such as Iran are allowed to gain nuclear weapons and continued Muslim immigration pushes Western European nations to the brink of civil war. Iranian nukes need to be prevented at absolutely all costs, if we are to have any chance of avoiding further escalation of the most dangerous kind.

There are many possible scenarios for the first half of the 21st century. Let us have a look at some of them. Read the article by Fjordman in Global Politician.

Caucasophobia — the Accepted Racism

31.03.2007. I had written much of this essay more than a year before I finally decided to post it online. A couple of personal experiences brought me onto the subject of non-white racism. I hesitated to post it, mainly because I instinctively dislike writing about anything related to race. I was brought up that way. Partly, I also convinced myself that I was first and foremost against Islam, and that writing about skin color would only complicate this fight.

However, after thinking about it for some time, I find that none of these arguments hold true. I am tired of ideological censorship. Western nations can never mount a defense against Muslim immigration if this is always dismissed as “racism.” But above all, if you believe that non-white racism exists, it is actually immoral not to deal with the problem and its victims. I am convinced that not just non-white, but also anti-white racism, are real and underestimated phenomena. Thus begins distinguished blogger Fjordman a recent essay in Global Politician.

See also related article in Global Politician by Jan Lamprecht.

HonestThinking comments: Fjordman's essay is completely in accord with what we have been stating many times over the past couple of years (mostly in our Norwegian writings); issues and challenges having to do with ethnic groups, ethnic boundaries, ethnic identity, etc., have to be taken seriously.

Focusing exclusively on the tensions between Islam and the West is unfair to Muslims, and also prevents us from grasping the entire set of challenges that our societies are facing. Pretending ethnicity is a mere 'social construct', or in other ways making people believe these issues are non-existent, will in the long run only aggravate the related problems.

There appears to be at least four issues that are particularly important when it comes to people's identity, loyalty, and sense of belonging:

• Language
• Culture
• Religion
• Ethnicity

Unless we are able to deal with the challenges that each one of these raises, our societies are likely to be torn apart. That is why, as we recently pointed out in the Norwegian daily Klassekampen (see here as well), it is 'multicynical' to pretend the multicultural project is on track, when there is mounting evidence it is headed for catastrophe.

Don't confuse terrorism with Islam, says EU

31.03.2007. The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements. Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks. Banned terms are said to include "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist", according to an article in The Telegraph.

HonestThinking comments: When events can no longer be reported in a frank and honest manner, but need to be carefully phrased in order to avoid 'misunderstanding'; when the elite feels that the general public has to be shielded from certain aspects of reality; that is usually a pretty sure sign that society is moving in a totalitarian direction.

Channel 4's problem with science

It doesn’t give a damn about whether the facts stack up – as long as it creates a controversy

29.03.2007. The above lines are taken from a recent article in the Guardian by George Monbiot. Writes he:

Were it not for dissent, science, like politics, would have stayed in the Dark Ages. All the great heroes of the discipline – Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein – took tremendous risks in confronting mainstream opinion. Today’s crank has often proved to be tomorrow’s visionary.

But the syllogism does not apply. Being a crank does not automatically make you a visionary. There is little prospect, for example, that Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, the South African health minister who has claimed that AIDS can be treated with garlic, lemon and beetroot, will one day be hailed as a genius. But the point is often confused. Professor David Bellamy, for example, while making the incorrect claim that wind farms do not have “any measurable effect” on total emissions of carbon dioxide, has compared himself to Galileo(1).

The problem with “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which caused a sensation when it was broadcast on Channel 4 last week, is that to make its case it relies not on future visionaries, but on people whose findings have already been proved wrong.

HonestThinking comments: It's often refreshing to read Monbiot. In particular because he is one of the few journalists who is knowledgeable about science. And, sure enough, he has several good points in the intro quoted above. But when he refers to "people whose findings have already been proved wrong", he is overstating his case. None of us knows these things for sure, and in spite of all the (real or imagined) shortcomings of The Great Global Warming Swindle, this program clearly demonstrates that there are indeed scientists who think differently from the IPCC. That's important information, and Channel 4 deserves credit for letting us know.

Towards the end of his article Monbiot writes:

Cherry-pick your results, choose work which is already outdated and discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions; MMR injections cause autism; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contentions, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data. To form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.

Exactly! In order to form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question! This is not what appears to be happening in the case of global warming, and neither is it happening in certain other burning issues. Why? Because political correctness gets in the way.

Perhaps Monbiot would like to comment on the findings of Marcel Crok's award-winning article referenced below? IPCC and their supporters may very well be right, but something appears to be seriously wrong with the attitudes that some of them are displaying when it comes to scientific discourse. Frankly, some of them seem to have a hard time distinguishing clearly between science and politics. And Monbiot is under suspicion for suffering from the same problem.

Kyoto Protocol based on flawed statistics

29.03.2007. Few people dispute that the earth is getting warmer, but there are people – so-called “climate skeptics” – who question whether the change is historically unique and whether it is the result of human activity. These skeptics are generally outsiders, reviled by "true" climate researchers.

Thus begins the award-winning paper Kyoto Protocol based on flawed statistics (pdf) by Marcel Crok in the Dutch science magazine Natuurwetenschap & Techniek. The subheading reads "Proof that mankind causes climate change is refuted". Here are some further excerpts:

The conclusion of McKitrick and McIntyre, after being engaged in nearly two years of heated discussions with Mann and other scientists, is alarming: there is something amiss in climate research. Have Mann and his fellow researchers committed fraud? McIntyre:“That is too strong a legal term.What we can say is that the IPCC and many paleoclimatologists have not provided their readers with ‘full, true and plain disclosure’ (to use another legal term), especially if it involves reporting results adverse to their claims. There is no excuse for anything less than complete disclosure of all data and methods and it is shocking that the authors of the major studies refuse to do so. We have found that peer review of paleoclimate journals is a very limited form of due diligence. If scientific studies are going to be used to justify policy decisions costing billions of dollars, a much more rigorous form of review is needed.”

The wesite Climate Audit, run by Steve McIntyre, has a brief comment on the prize that was awarded for Crok's paper: Article on M&M Wins Dutch Science Journalism Award.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

25.03.2007 (updated same day). HonestThinking has several times warned its Scandinavian readers that we need to take seriously the human contribution to global warming due to CO2 emissions. We have among other things criticized the Norwegian Progress Party for not taking a clearer stance on reducing CO2 emissions.

According to the UK Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, our judgment might have been premature, and it seems we owe an apology to the Progress Party and others. This program has caused a lot of controversy, but we encourage our readers to watch it (available from Google).

For a long time now mainstream media (MSM) has created the impression that "all the world's leading scientists" agree that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is a major contributor to global warming. The above mentioned C4 documentary gives the lie to this claim. They do this simply by interviewing a number of prominent scientists and authors who think CO2 has little or nothing to do with the rising temperatures that we have indeed been witnessing since 1970 or so. This includes the following people (we apologize for any omissions or errors, please contact us if any such are found; names appear in random order below):

1. Prof Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris said the list of scientists endorsing the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was a "sham," because it included the names of panel scientists who disagreed with its exaggerated climate predictions. Reiter, an expert in malaria, told the London Daily Mail that he only got his name removed after he threatened a lawsuit. "That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed."
2. Prof John Christy, Place of work: United States of America, University: University of Alabama in Huntsville, Laboratory: Earth System Science Center, NSSTC, Field of research: Climate change.
3. Professor Philip Stott is an ecologist based at the Department of Geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Professor Stott's research interests include biogeography and tropical ecology, as well as the role and significance of environmentalist movements and debates.
4. Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu. Founding Director of International Arctic Research Center.
5. Professor Carl Wunsch, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
   Massachusetts Institute of Technology. NB: Wunsch said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed. He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two." See Wikipedia for more on the Wunsch controversy.
6. Dr Roy Spencer, Weather Satellite Team Leader, NASA. See also article in The Telegraph.
7. Nigel Calder. Former editor, New Scientist. See also article in The Times.
8. Prof Tim Ball, Dept of Climatology, University of Winnipeg.
9. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace. "... it's as if you're a Holocaust denier."
10. Paul Driessen, author and lobbyist.
11. James Shikwati, Director of the Inter Region Economic Network [IREN Kenya]. See also interview in Spiegel: "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"
12. Prof Nir Shaviv, Institute of Physics, Hebrew University,
    Jerusalem. See his article Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?
13. Prof Ian Clark, Dept of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.
14. Piers Corbyn, founder and managing director of the climate forecaster company Weather Action.
15. Prof Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See also his home page at MIT.
16. Prof Patrick Michaels, Research Professor and AASC-designated State Climatologist at the University of Virginia.
17. Prof Eigil Friis-Christensen, head of the Danish National Space Centre.
18. Prof Frederick Seitz, Former President of US National Academy of Sciences (also famous for his letter to WSJ criticized IPCC for creative editing and other deceptive practices).
19. Frederick Singer - Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (misattributed in the film as Former Director, U.S. National Weather Service. From 1962-64 he was Director of the National Weather Satellite Service.)
20. Nigel Lawson - Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer

The UK Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle was written and directed by Martin Durkin. He answers his critics in the article The global-warmers were bound to attack, but why are they so feeble?, published in The Telegraph. Again, we encourage our readers to watch this documentary, which is available from Google.

Whether the truth is that CO2 contributes significantly to global warming or not, this program provides strong indications that something is wrong with the intellectual standards within UN bodies as well as in many Western countries. And once more we see that much of Western media fails to give us the fair unbiased reports that democracy needs in order to function properly.

The silencing of critics, the suppression of unwanted perspectives, the politically correct bias in the presentation of research results, etc., is a very serious problem.

Norway Surrenders to Muslim Demands

22.03.2007. In a fresh blogpost at The Gates of Vienna, the noted blogger Fjordman conducts a point by point survey of a variety of areas of public and political life were the Norwegian authorities seem to be yielding to Muslim pressure and intimidation in an effort to contain and appease their aggression. This strategy affects everything from the Norwegian government's stance on the Palestinian issue, to strategies of dealing with internal political issues such as integration, Muslim crime, violence and rapes. Read the entire article.

NB! HonestThinking congratulates Fjordman on having his European declaration of Independence, originally published at the Brussels Journal (see below), republished in Frontpage Magazine, one of the leading, conservative publications in America.

Students try to oust MigrationWatch don

21.03.2007. Academics last night condemned as a witch-hunt a student campaign to oust an Oxford don because of his links to an immigration watchdog. Student members of a refugee support group launched a petition demanding that Prof David Coleman be sacked for stirring up hostility towards immigrants.

The professor of demography helped found MigrationWatch in 2001 to monitor the effects of overcrowding and integration caused by refugees and asylum seekers. Yesterday it emerged that Oxford Student Action for Refugees had urged Dr John Hood, the Oxford vice-chancellor, to "consider the suitability of Coleman's continued tenure as a professor of the university". More about this in The Telegraph.

HonestThinking comments: This is fantastic! One begins by having the authorities in Britain, just as in Norway, under-communicate the realities of the demographic development. This creates a need for someone to correct the false picture thus erected. Those people are of course branded as 'racists', 'xenophobes', 'right wing extremists', and what not. When the truth of their claims can no longer be denied, remove them and silence them.

It is becoming clearer every day that the multiculturalist ideology is moving in the direction of totalitarianism. This, of course, is what is bound to happen with every ideology that is based on denying reality.

Native Revolt: A European Declaration of Independence

20.03.2007. Excerpts from an article in The Brussels Journal by Fjordman: After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage in Utrecht. Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behavior.

This issue is not just about Utrecht or Holland. Similar resentment against Muslim immigrants, but at least as much against their own authorities, is quietly brewing among the natives all over Western Europe.  [...]

If European democracies cannot manage their ethnic tensions, democracy will break down, ushering in dictatorial rule. [...]

Here is what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence from 1776: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [...] It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

A Parallel Muslim Universe

19.03.2007. Germany's Muslim population is becoming more religious and more conservative. Islamic associations are fostering the trend, particularly through their work with the young -- accelerating the drift towards a parallel Muslim society. English article in Spiegel Online.

UN predicts huge migration to rich countries

Demographic tsunami headed for Europe (illustration from The Telegraph).

18.03.2007. At least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050, the United Nations said yesterday. The latest figures from the UN's population division predict a global upheaval without parallel in human history over the next four decades. There will be billions more people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Of these, tens of millions will migrate to Europe and America, while the indigenous populations of most countries in the rich world will either stagnate or decline. The UN's population predictions have proved largely accurate in the past. While the margin of error for these figures runs into the millions, the broad trends they disclose are undisputed. These are excerpts from an article in The Telegraph by David Blair.

The wretched BBC

18.03.2007. Baker rightly calls the BBC ‘a menace’ — rightly because, although most of the rest of the media shares the same outlook, the influence of the BBC is infinitely greater. Because it is regarded as a kitemark of objectivity, balance, fairness and truth, people trust what it says and absorb the message it delivers. It doesn’t occur to them to question what it says because the whole culture has been infused by BBC-speak to such an extent that the people of Britain no longer know what it is they do not know. The BBC is the principal reason why the political centre of gravity in Britain has shifted to the left. It is an instrument of cultural Marxism and, in the influence it has well beyond Britain, the most important cultural weapon in the armoury of the global jihad in the undermining of the west. And the British licence-fee payer is funding it. Article by Melanie Phillips.

Islamization Is Not Inevitable

18.03.2007. From an article by Diana West: Maybe they should have known that Tabloid America doesn't care about the likely transformation of Europe into an Islamic continent, let alone the fate of a French- and Dutch-speaking country of 10 million people. And while Literary America does write books about the transformation -- "While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer, "The War for the West" by Tony Blankley and "America Alone" by Mark Steyn come to mind Political America has yet to acknowledge or even notice this colossal, epoch-defining shift now taking place.

Why don't our leaders face it? This may be one of those questions our children will ask some day. But if such natural curiosity isn't expressed until the next generation, the civilizational struggle for Europe will certainly have been lost. Better to question our politicians now. Better to examine the issue today.

Europe, as we may readily observe, is very far along in an accommodation with its still-increasing Muslim immigrant population that is resulting not in the Europeanizing of Islam, but rather the Islamizing of Europe. As Bernard Lewis declared in 2004, Europe will have an Islamic majority by the end of the 21st century at the latest. As Vlaams Belang's Mr. Dewinter recently put it, "We are becoming foreigners in our own land." See article in Washington Times.

Roger Scruton on Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Need to Defend the Nation State

14.03.2007. A political culture that is in denial about a serious social problem will condemn those who seek to discuss it, and try its best to silence them. For a long time now the European political class has been in denial about the problems posed by the large-scale immigration of people who do not enter into our European way of life. It has turned angrily on those who have warned against the disruption that might follow, or who have affirmed the right of indigenous communities to refuse admission to people who cannot or will not assimilate. And one of the weapons that the élite has used, in order to ensure that it is never troubled by the truths that it denies, is to accuse those who wish to discuss the problem of ‘racism and xenophobia’.

Every society depends on an experience of membership: a sense of who ‘we’ are, why we belong together, and what we share. This experience is pre-political: it precedes all political institutions, and provides our reason for accepting them. It unites left and right, blue-collar and white-collar, man and woman, parent and child. To threaten this ‘first-person plural’ is to open the way to atomisation.

These are excerpts from a speach by Roger Scruton published as an article in The Brussels Journal.

Europe's Stark Options

04.03.2007. Europe's long-term relations with its burgeoning Muslim minority, the continent's most critical issue, will follow one of three paths:

• harmonious integration,
• the expulsion of Muslims, or
• an Islamic takeover.

Which of these scenarios will most likely play out? Read article by Daniel Pipes.

Letter to Lady Liberty: A battlecry from Europe to America

Western Values endangered

04.03.2007. New book by former member of the Norwegian Parliament, the historian Hallgrim Berg, published simultaneously in Norwegian and English language editions. HonestThinking has read the book. We think the author underestimates the multicultural, multireligious, multilingual, and multiethnic challenges faced by the USA, but it is our hope that this book will help stir up some much needed debate, and we do not hesitate to recommend it. Quoting from the publisher, Kolofon:

The goal of militant and imperialist Islam is absolute grandiose and global. The first step to world supremacy is to turn Europe into a Eurabia. The methods are not by armies, but combinations of oil, emigration, fertility, exploitation of tolerance and democracy, spread of fear, uninhibited terrorism, and millennial patience.

So far, Europe has been asleep. A confused continent, without a gathering purpose, and without sustainable integration policies, is at a loss what to do.

The Euro-Arab “bridge-building measures” are self-deceiving, as long as there is only one-way traffic on the bridge.

The author maintains the United States the only power in the world that may secure the world’s free nations. He is discussing the growing anti-Americanism in Europe, a phenomenon evolving despite America’s role as a guaranteeing force for democracy and freedom. Anti-American sleepwalkers do not see that if the American way goes down the drain, Europe will follow.

Hallgrim Berg attacks international leftism, which is constantly marketing twisted stereotypes of America, and is also criticizing the feebleness of European politicians, particularly France, where hypocrisy is developed into mastery.

Challenged by the most comprising and hard-core totalitarianism the world has seen, the only hope for Western democracy, culture, and our way of living is a more confident cooperation and pooling of resources among European nations and the United States.

About the author: Hallgrim Berg (61); Ph.D. in modern history from the University of Oslo; Member of Norway’s Parliament (1981- 97); Main Spokesman for the Conservative Party in matters of Culture and Media; Chairman of the European Democrat Group at the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg (1992-98); self-employed businessman in his native Hallingdal Valley; free-lance writer and entertainer in fields of folklore, music and story-telling.

Town branded too white and too British

04.03.2007. A town is being stripped of scores of public sector jobs because its residents are "too white and British". The Prison Service is relocating the posts to a nearby city where there are more ethnic minorities. The incredible decision, which could lead to an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality, was disclosed yesterday in a leaked official letter.

It is the first known case of its kind, but MPs warned similar moves could secretly be taking place across the country as civil servants are under enormous pressure from ministers to boost the number of ethnic minorities working in the public sector. The 80 office jobs are being transferred from the depressed former steel town of Corby, in Northamptonshire, to Leicester.

The Tory General Election candidate for the town, which suffers from deprivation and is in desperate need of jobs, wrote to the Prison Service to demand an explanation. In an astonishing reply, director of finance Ann Beasley - one of Home Secretary John Reid's top civil servants - said the town had too many white British residents. As a result, it does not satisfy the drive to recruit more ethnic minorities. See article in Daily Mail.

Political bias in BBC

20.02.2007. Working at the BBC can be a strange experience. On occasions during my 25 years as a journalist with the corporation it was jaw-dropping. [...] For three decades I was that rare breed - a Conservative at the BBC. In my time working on programmes such as Today and Breakfast News I couldn't have formed a cricket team from Tory sympathisers. As one producer put it, you feel almost part of an ethnic minority.

We all know the cliched critique of the BBC: a nest of Lefties promoting a progressive agenda and political correctness. Depressingly, that cliche is uncomfortably close to the truth: the BBC is biased,and it is a bias that seriously distorts public debate.

In the past 30 years, 'Auntie' has transformed from the staid upholder of the status quo to a champion of progressive causes. In the process, the ideal at the heart of the corporation - that it should be fair-minded and non-partisan - has all but disappeared. Read the article by ROBIN AITKEN in Daily Mail.

Poll sees hope in West-Islam ties

19.02.2007. Most people believe common ground exists between the West and the Islamic world despite current global tensions, a BBC World Service poll suggests.

The Truth about Tolerance

How our therapeutic thinkers threaten Western values

13.02.2007. Acceptance of a double standard has always been a sign of inferiority. To let someone behave according to one set of principles or values while demanding that you be subjected to others is to validate a claim of superiority that justifies the inconsistent and unfair behavior. A double standard can also reflect incoherent thinking, a failure to apply consistently a principle that presumably has universal validity. In the West’s struggle with Islamic jihad, doubts about the superiority of Western values have coupled with a breakdown in ethical reasoning. The result is the appeasement of jihadist aggression and the confirmation of the jihadist estimation of the West’s corruption. Article by Bruce Thornton, on victorhanson.com.

Public 'Don't believe' Government on Immigration

08.02.2007. The public overwhelmingly believe the Government has lost control of immigration and that they are not honest and open about its scale according to a new survey out today.

In the YouGov survey, for think tank Migrationwatch, only 4% of those polled thought the Government was in control of immigration while a massive 82% disagreed (57% strongly).

Similarly, when asked if the Government was ‘open and honest’ about the scale of immigration into Britain, 80% disagreed (53% strongly). See press release from Migration Watch UK.

The power of demographics

06.02.2007. One of the dominant themes emerging from Davos this year is the power of demographics. Manpower's studies of global workforce trends, some of the best available, estimate that in a few decades the European Union will have a shortfall of 60 million people of working age, including the newly admitted member states of Bulgaria and Romania.

This presents an enormous opportunity for workforce companies such as Manpower, which is advising European governments on bringing older workers back into the workplace, loosening labor rules, seriously retraining workers, and expanding the Continent's pool of part-time workers. All this will help Europe's looming labor shortage. But Manpower figures it won't be enough without a massive revision of immigration laws in Europe. Turkey and Egypt have the people—if Europe will have Turkey and Egypt.

To get an inkling of what might lie ahead, consult this article in Business Week.

Radical Islam vs. Civilization

05.02.2007. Text of a talk presented by Daniel Pipes on January 20, 2007, in London in a debate with the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, as transcribed by the 910 Group with the help of others, including, eventually, the official event transcript. The original posting of the video can be seen at YouTube; for a single clip version, see the posting at the Global Defense Group. For accounts of the debate, see the bibliography at "My Debate with London Mayor Ken Livingstone."

Thank you so much. I'd like to begin by thanking Mayor Livingstone for his kind invitation to join you today and I thank the Greater London Authority for the hard work it put into what is obviously a successful event. I am delighted by the interest that you, the audience, has shown. And I'm grateful to my supporters who have come from four different countries to be with me today.

The mayor is an optimistic man. I'm generally invited when people want some gloom, and I will, true to form, provide some for you. [audience laughter]

Let me start with my position on the question of world civilization or clash of civilizations. One: I am for world civilization, and I reject the ‘clash of civilization' argument. Two: The problem is not so much a clash of civilizations, but a clash of civilization and barbarism.

HonestThinking highly recommends this article by Daniel Pipes (from his talk in London).

The war against the west

05.02.2007. According to the latest report from the Community Security Trust, the defence organisation of British Jews, attacks on Jews in Britain reached their highest level for more than two decades last year.

There were nearly 600 antisemitic assaults, incidents of vandalism, cases of abuse and threats made against Jewish individuals and institutions, it found. The number of attacks was up by nearly a third on 2005. More than a third, 37 per cent, of attackers whose background was known were Asian or Arab. Since 1984, when the recording of antisemitic incidents by the trust began, white attackers have been in a minority only last year and in 2004. The report said a disprortionate number of the attacks were carried out by people from ethnic minorities. It said: ‘The percentage overall is clearly not contiguous with the ethnic breakdown of the general population of the UK.’

The poisonous climate of incendiary lies about Israel and the global Jewish conspiracy have resulted in the victimisation of Britain’s Jews. So how did the Guardian choose to reflect on this sobering revelation? With a comment piece by Maleiha Malik, which managed to write current Jewish victimisation out of the script altogether and claimed instead that Muslims were now the new Jews. Just as a tiny number of Jewish anarchists at the turn of the last century had led to the stigmatisation of all Jews in Britain, she asserted, so Muslims were now being demonised in an identical manner. Article by Melanie Phillips.

Special notice to our readers

This is what our home page looked like yesterday

04.02.2007. Our web site was, along with many others, hacked on 3 February by a Turkish islamist hacker. All updates to our pages since 15 January appear to have been lost. We will try to recover some of the stuff...

Young, British Muslims 'getting more radical'

31.01.2007. A bleak picture of a generation of young British Muslims radicalised by anti-Western views and misplaced multicultural policies is shown in a survey published today (pdf).

The study found disturbing evidence of young Muslims adopting more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than their parents or grandparents

Forty per cent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 said they would prefer to live under sharia law in Britain, a legal system based on the teachings of the Koran. The figure among over-55s, in contrast, was only 17 per cent. Article in The Telegraph.

See also the home page of Policy Exchange.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone vs Daniel Pipes

28.01.2007. It all began with a faxed letter from Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, arriving out of the blue on April 4, 2006:

I will be hosting a conference to discuss the thesis of the "clash of civilizations" first popularized by Professor Samuel Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. I would like to invite you to debate this thesis with me at the opening session of the conference, which will be held 10am-1pm on Saturday, 10 June 2006.

The conference was twice delayed, before finally taking place two days ago, on January 20, 2007. It was quite an event, held in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, across the street from Westminster Abbey. The mayor told me in a private chat before the event that when he conceived of the event two years ago, he wondered if anyone would show up. He need not have worried; the Greater London Authority's website indicated there had been "an unprecedented demand" for tickets and several days in advance of the event shut the ticketing. One organizer on the mayor's staff told me that the audience numbered about five thousand and that over 150 media had registered for the conference. From Daniel Pipe's account of what happened.

See also Ken Livingstone's account of what happened.

Muslims May Dominate Germany in 40 Years

15.01.2007. German Muslims may be a majority in the country by 2046, according to a study by the Islam-Archive Central Institute and financed by the Interior Ministry.

The Islamic think tank said that 4,000 Germans have converted to Islam in the year between mid-2004 and mid-2005. Along with an influx of Muslims in the country, they will form a majority in less than four decades. Reported by IsraelNationalNews.com.

Say Goodbye to Europe

10.01.2007. ISLAM, BY all accounts, is the fastest growing religion in Europe, spurred by immigration and high fertility rates. According to projections by the US federal government's National Intelligence Council, the continent's current Muslim population of 20 million will likely double by 2025.

And as Bruce Bawer noted last year in While Europe Slept, "Already, in most of Western Europe, 16 to 20 percent of children are Muslims…within a couple of generations many [European] countries will have Muslim majorities."

Not since September 8, 1683, when the Ottomans were threatening to breach the walls of Vienna, has Islam been so perilously close to seizing control over Western Europe. Article in Jerusalem Post.

Revealed: preachers' messages of hate

Islamist demonstrations in London, February 2006.

09.01.2007. Muslim worshippers are being urged by radical clerics to ignore British law.

An undercover investigation has revealed disturbing evidence of Islamic extremism at a number of Britain's leading mosques and Muslim institutions, including an organisation praised by the Prime Minister.

Secret video footage reveals Muslim preachers exhorting followers to prepare for jihad, to hit girls for not wearing the hijab, and to create a 'state within a state'. Many of the preachers are linked to the Wahhabi strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which funds a number of Britain's leading Islamic institutions.

A forthcoming Channel 4 Dispatches programme paints an alarming picture of how preachers in some of Britain's most moderate mosques are urging followers to reject British laws in favour of those of Islam. Leaders of the mosques have expressed concern at the preachers' activities, saying they were unaware such views were being disseminated. [...]

Another preacher says: 'The time is fast approaching where the tables are going to turn and the Muslims are going to be in the position of being uppermost in strength and, when that happens, people won't get killed - unjustly.'

By Jamie Doward, Sunday January 7, 2007, The Observer.

Thousands of Illegal Aliens Preying on Children

09.01.2007. Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security had announced that arrests during the first two years of Operation Predator, an initiative aimed at foreign nationals who prey on children, have exceeded 6,000. Story in The Concervative Voice.

Culture Clash in Denmark

09.01.2007. The close-knit Danes find their liberal ideals tested by a growing, alienated Muslim population. By Thomas Omestad, US News & World Report.

Sweden: Politicians Call for Foreign Language Ban in Schools

05.01.2007. Two local Liberal Party politicians in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, want to ban the use of languages other than Swedish in school classrooms. Allan Widman, one of the politicians, said “In Malmö we have a very unique situation: we are close to the point where a majority of pupils have a foreign background, which is to say that either they or their parents come from a country outside Sweden,” Some schools in Malmö have as few as 5 percent ethnic Swedes in their classrooms, reports The Brussels Journal.

Drawing a veil over common sense

05.01.2007. A horrendous crime has now taken on the character of the blackest and most sickening farce. PC Sharon Beshenivsky was gunned down in a bungled robbery, leaving a broken-hearted husband and three motherless children.

Earlier this week, four men were convicted of her killing. Two of the gang, Mustaf Jama and his younger brother Yusuf, were Somali asylum seekers with a string of criminal convictions.

But it has been reported — according to ‘police sources’ — that Mustaf may have managed to escape justice by fleeing back to Somalia using his sister’s passport and dressed as a woman in a niqab, a veil that covers the entire body leaving only the eyes visible. [...]

It happened because the Government has lost the will and the wherewithal to protect its citizens, and instead rewards their attackers. The case is a snapshot of a country that has lost its wits — and, just possibly, the instinct for survival.

Article by Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail, 21 December 2006.

Al-Guardian Organizes a Witch Hunt

04.01.2007. Officials from the English National Ballet [ENB] faced calls to sack one of their leading dancers yesterday after Simone Clarke defied criticism and gave a detailed interview defending her support for the British National party. Two weeks after she was named by the Guardian as a card-carrying member of the far right group, the ballerina hit out at her critics, voicing her belief that the BNP seemed to be the only party “willing to take a stand” against immigration, reports The Brussels Journal.

Se also the statement by Karen Choucan, chairperson of the Black Londoners’ Forum, that Clarke's membership in BNP and her views "represent an affront to multiculturalism".

• HonestThinking, English material, 2nd half of 2006
• HonestThinking, English material, 1st half of 2006
• HonestThinking, English material, 2005.

HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication to never suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.

Provoked or enthusiastic?

Please send e-mail to postmaster at honestThinking.org (replacing ' at ' with '@') if you would like to tip us about a web resource that we should link to, or if you wish to submit an article for publication here. Quality contributions are welcome from anyone.

The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.

Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.