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The deep Crisis of the West
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USA

In dire straits

21.10.2010. From the article It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt:

A lot of people are very upset about the rapidly increasing U.S. national debt these days and they are demanding a solution. What they don't realize is that there simply is not a solution under the current U.S. financial system. It is now mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off the U.S. national debt. You see, the truth is that the U.S. government now owes more dollars than actually exist. If the U.S. government went out today and took every single penny from every single American bank, business and taxpayer, they still would not be able to pay off the national debt. And if they did that, obviously American society would stop functioning because nobody would have any money to buy or sell anything.

And the U.S. government would still be massively in debt.

Continue reading at The Economic Collapse.

Individualism vs Collectivism

The unique thing about European culture

17.10.2010. In cross-cultural perspective, the unique thing about European culture is the tendency for individualism. Individualism is the basis for Western modernization — for why the West has dominated the rest of the world. It is intimately linked with a suite of traits, including democratic and republic forms of government, relatively high status for women, relatively low ethnocentrism, moral universalism, and science. Thus writes Kevin MacDonald in the introduction to his article Recent research on Individualism/Collectivism.

Out of Africa?

Is the Out of Africa theory out?

17.10.2010 (updated 13.07.2012). An examination of over 5,000 teeth from early human ancestors shows that many of the first Europeans probably came from Asia, writes Scientific American:

All the ancestors of contemporary Europeans apparently did not migrate out of Africa as previously believed. According to a new analysis of more than 5,000 teeth from long-perished members of the genus Homo and the closely related Australopithecus, many early settlers hailed from Asia.

[...] most evolutionary biologists and anthropologists believe there were three major waves of migration from Africa to Europe: [...] ending with the spread of modern humans, 50,000 to 30,000 years in the past.

The new findings, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, casts doubt on the second migration out of Africa. "[The researchers] are not denying that it happened," Trinkaus says, "just that it was less important than movement across Eurasia."

[...]

"Teeth are the best genetic marker that we have in the fossil record itself," Trinkaus says, because "they are as close as we can get to a reflection of the individual's genetic makeup." The reason: Tooth crowns are genetically determined—and thus reflect an individual's genotype—and are not affected by environmental stress during development.

Scientists found that teeth from African specimens were a different shape or morphology than those from Eurasian samples. [...]

"The continuity of the 'Eurasian dental pattern' from the early Pleistocene until the appearance of upper Pleistocene Neandertals suggests that the evolutionary courses of the Eurasian and the African continents were relatively independent for a long period and that the impact of Asia in the colonization of Europe was stronger than that of Africa," the researchers wrote in the new report. "This finding does not necessarily imply that there was no genetic flow between continents, but emphasizes that this interchange could have been both ways."

Read the entire article in Scientific American.

Austria

Is truth illegal?

17.10.2010. Although the trial of Dutch MP and critic of Islam, Geert Wilders, and its serious implications for free speech in Europe, is once again creating a furor in the press, another high-profile trial of a critic of Islam -- Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, in Austria -- is being overlooked. Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff now faces up to a three-year prison sentence if convicted of "inciting hatred against a religious group" and "defamation of religion" in a lecture in 2009 on the "Islamization of Europe." As allegedly criminal statements fill the indictments of "hate speech" prosecutions, as in the case with Mr. Wilders, the Dutch MP says that he has spoken the truth, and the truth cannot be illegal.

Continue reading in The Brussels Journal.

Wilders

Not guilty on all counts

16.10.2010. From DutchNews.nl:

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.

They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law'.

On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was 'crude but that did not make it punishable'.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

On Tuesday, the prosecutors said the MP should not be found guilty of group insult.

The public prosecution department was forced to take the case by the high court after anti-racism campaigners protested at its refusal to prosecute Wilders.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Calls for jihad against Israel and the USA

12.10.2010. The Muslim Brotherhood recently called for jihad on the US and Israel, adopting a view almost identical to al-Qaida’s, according to a recent article in Jerusalem Post:

Here’s something important: The Muslim Brotherhood’s leader has endorsed anti-American jihad and a view virtually identical to al-Qaida’s ideology. Since the Brotherhood is the main opposition in Egypt and Jordan and the most powerful group in Muslim communities of Europe and North America, this is serious stuff.

Does that mean all these branches are going to launch terror attacks, as one affiliate, Hamas, has long done? Not necessarily. But hundreds of thousands of Brotherhood followers are being given a signal. Some will engage in terrorism; others will redouble efforts to seize control of countries and turn them into bases for war on the West. The Brotherhood is the group that often dominates Muslim communities and runs mosques in the West. Its front groups are often courted by Western governments and media.

Continue reading at JPost.

Detroit

How immigration and multiculturalism destroyed it

09.10.2010. This is a powerful message about the failure of the so-called Great Society. How in the world do we get out of this mess? This is a perfect example of how good intentions without good foresight can produce an absolute nightmare. Never underestimate the downside of human nature. The author of the following piece, Frosty Wooldridge, is a U.S. journalist who writes for seventeen national and two international magazines. His article The tragedy of Detroit: How immigration and multiculturalism destroyed it begins as follows:

For 15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan. I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash was everywhere! Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it and just ignored it.

Tens of thousands then, and hundreds of thousands today, exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps! With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10 and, in one case, one woman birthed 24 kids as reported by the Detroit Free Press-all on American taxpayer dollars. A new child meant a new car payment, new TV and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” flourish in Detroit . If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out to take money for doing nothing.

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees. He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence and arrogance. As a black man, he said, “I am the MFIC.” The IC meant ‘in charge’. You can figure out the rest. Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.

As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state. Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same time, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000. Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit.

As the whites moved out, the Muslims moved in. As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. Detroit suffers so much shoplifting that grocery stores no longer operate in many inner city locations.

You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife! Detroit may be one our best (extreme) examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike and total separation from America! Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan, paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money. High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June according to NBC’s Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America. English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing. Unemployment hit 28.9 percent in 2009 as the auto industry vacated the city. In Time Magazine October 4, 2009, “The Tragedy of Detroit: How a great city fell and how it can rise again,” I choked on the writer’s description of what happened.

Continue reading Frosty Wooldridge's article The tragedy of Detroit: How immigration and multiculturalism destroyed it.

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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 never to 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.