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UK demographics

Unprecedented changes taking place in the UK

28.08.2011. Excerpts from Witnessing the live birth of gangland by Damian Thompson, Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph (emphasis added):

In 2010, a quarter of births were to mothers born outside the UK, according to the ONS. The same set of statistics also showed that immigration added 239,000 to our population – a number which proves that this Government has no more control over our borders than the last one. The public instinctively senses this, but immigration figures are sufficiently complex that the BBC has no difficulty in finding liberal lobby groups to obscure their meaning. Not so those “live births”.

If a quarter of all babies born in England and Wales are to foreign mothers, then we’re experiencing the biggest change in our demographic identity since the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fifth century. Future historians will regard this as the major development in early 21st-century British history, more important even than the loss of our sovereignty to the EU, which I’m beginning to think may be reversed one day, thanks to the slapstick collapse of the euro. Demographic change, in contrast, can’t be undone by happy accidents.

Nothing like this has happened before. Please pay no attention next time a Left-wing historian pops up on TV to romanticise the arrival of the Normans, Huguenots, Eastern European Jews etc. These were significant influxes, but Great Britain has never been “a nation of immigrants”. Even cosmopolitan London has witnessed nothing remotely comparable to the population shift recorded by the ONS statistics. More than half of all babies born in the capital in 2010 were to foreign mothers; in the borough of Newham more than three quarters of all new mothers were born abroad.

Read the entire article in The Telegraph. Hat tip Document.

Flash mob racism

Black youth target white victims

21.08.2011. In Chicago, the District of Columbia, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, a group of “flash mobs” have unmercifully terrorized residents of those communities – attacking citizens, breaking windows of business establishments and stealing merchandise, and committing other random acts of violence. In each instance, the mobs have been overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, black youth, writes Ward Connerly is a former chairman of the University of California Board of Regents in his article Flash mob racism. He later continues:

The fact that these urban flash mobs are black youth is significant. These thugs have been singling out and attacking, with very few exceptions, only whites. Having gangs of black kids wandering the streets singling out whites is a fact about which the residents of urban cities should be aware so that they can be adequately forewarned. This is why the failure of the mass media, acting out of motives of political correctness, to report the racial dimension of these disturbances is so disturbing.

Mayor Nutter properly addresses the culture that many urban black youth embrace, but no one can fully explain why these individuals are engaging in racist criminal activity against whites. Some sociologists and pundits are advancing the theory that these thugs are being driven by other factors such as frustration about the economic conditions in the nation, particularly as those conditions affect their personal lives.

According to some reports, some of these kids are as young as eleven years old. It is hardly reasonable to believe that individuals of such a tender age would even be sufficiently aware of government activities for this to be a motive.

It is equally as difficult to believe that these individuals would single out whites merely because they (the perpetrators) are unemployed, although such a rationale is being used by many commentators here, perhaps emulating those in England trying to explain their even greater problem with even more violent flash mobs.

Although the pervasive unemployment of young people in America is a cause of considerable concern, I believe Mayor Nutter has hit the bulls-eye when he sees this racist violence as a cultural problem of profound consequences. If left unattended, this problem can result in circumstances similar to the riots that our nation confronted in the 1960s.

American tinderbox

Racially motivated violence on the rise

18.08.2011. For some time now, residents of some US cities have noted occasional incidents of seemingly random, racially motivated violence in which young Black males are involved. The hot weather and bad economy seem to be combining to generate a small but possibly significant uptick this year. The national media are doing their best to avoid looking too closely at this disturbing phenomenon, and perhaps for good reason. What the United States doesn’t need is a media firestorm that triggers copycat violence. Thus begins Walter Russel Mead his article in The American Interest.

Social degeneration

On both sides of the Atlantic

18.08.2011. Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race, remarks Afro-American scholar Thomas Sowell in his latest article at LewRockwell.com. He continues: .

After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence – as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and other places – Philadelphia's black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who did such things.

"Pull up your pants and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt," he said. "If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy," the mayor said. He added: "You have damaged your own race."

[...]

In the United States, young black thugs attacked whites with baseball bats and took their belongings in Denver, while voicing their hatred of whites. But it is all a very similar attitude to what has been found in other countries and other times.

Today's politically correct intelligentsia will tell you that the reason for this alienation and lashing out is that there are great disparities and inequities that need to be addressed.

But such barbarism was not nearly as widespread two generations ago, in the middle of the 20th century. Were there no disparities or inequities then? Actually there were more.

What is different today is that there has been – for decades – a steady drumbeat of media and political hype about differences in income, education and other outcomes, blaming these differences on oppression against those with fewer achievements or lesser prosperity.

Moreover, there has been a growing tolerance of lawlessness and a growing intolerance toward the idea that people who are lagging need to take steps to raise themselves up, instead of trying to pull others down.

All this exalts those who talk such lofty talk. But others pay the price – and ultimately that includes even those who take the road toward barbarism.

The orgies of violent attacks against strangers on the streets – in both England and the United States – are not necessarily just passing episodes. They should be wake-up calls, warning of the continuing degeneration of Western society.

[...]

Not only the trends over the years leading up to these riots but also the squeamish responses to them by officials – on both sides of the Atlantic – reveal the moral dry rot that has spread deep into Western societies.

Even when black youth gangs target white strangers on the streets and spew out racial hatred as they batter them and rob them, mayors, police chiefs and the media tiptoe around their racism and many in the media either don't cover these stories or leave out the race and racism involved.

[...]

In the United States, the color may be different but the attitudes among the hoodlum element are very similar. In both countries, classmates who try to learn can find themselves targeted by bullies.

Here those who want to study in ghetto schools are often accused of "acting white." But whites in Britain show the same pattern. Some conscientious students are beaten up badly enough to end up at Dr. Dalrymple's hospital.

Our elites often advise us to learn from other countries. They usually mean that we should imitate other countries. But it may be far more important to learn from their mistakes – the biggest of which may be listening to fashionable nonsense from the smug intelligentsia.

These countries show us where that smug nonsense leads. It may be a sneak preview of our own future.

"Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

Read Sowell's entire article at LewRockwell.com.

British degeneracy

«The riots should surprise no one who’s been paying attention»

15.08.2011. The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population during the current riots has not surprised me in the least. I have been writing about it, in its slightly less acute manifestations, for the past 20 years. To have spotted it required no great perspicacity on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance. There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy. Thus writes Theodore Dalrymple in the introduction to his recent City Journal article.

Conservatism and terror

Not the same thing

08.08.2011. There are those that seek to silence conservative thinkers by making a criminal connection between our writings and the acts of a terrorist, writes Caroline Glick in Jerusalem Post. Here are some further excerpts of the article in question:

Last Friday morning, Anders Breivik burst onto the international screen when he carried out a monstrous act of terrorism against his fellow Norwegians. Breivik bombed the offices housing the Norwegian government with the intention of murdering its leaders. He then traveled to the Utoeya Island and murdered scores of young people participating in a summer program sponsored by Norway’s ruling party. In all, last Friday Breivik murdered 76 people. Most of them were teenagers. Although he has confessed to his crimes, there are still important questions that remain unanswered.

For instance, we still do not know if he acted alone. Breivik claims that there are multiple cells of his fellow terrorists ready to attack. But so far, no one has found evidence to support his claim. We also still do not know if – for all his bravado – Breivik was acting on his own initiative or as an agent for others.

Finding the answers to these and other questions are is a matter of the highest urgency. For if in fact Breivik is not a lone wolf, then there is considerable danger that additional, perhaps pre-planned attacks may be carried out in the near future. And given the now demonstrated inadequacy of Norway’s law-enforcement arms in contending with terror attacks, the prospect of further attacks should be keeping Norwegian and other European leaders up at night.

Despite the dangers, very little of the public discourse since Breivik’s murderous assault on his countrymen has been devoted to these issues.

Rather, the Norwegian and Western media have focused their discussion of Breivik’s terrorist attack on his self-justifications for it. Those self-justifications are found mainly in a 1,500-page manifesto that Breivik posted on the Internet.

[...]

The Left’s attempts to link conservative writers, politicians and philosophers with Breivik are nothing new. The same thing happened in 1995, when the Left tried to blame rabbis and politicians for the sociopathic Yigal Amir’s assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The same thing happened in the US last summer with the Left’s insistent attempts to link the psychotic Jared Loughner, who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents, with Gov. Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

And it is this tendency that most endangers the future of liberal democracies. If the Left is ever successful in their bid to criminalize ideological opponents and justify acts of terrorism against its opponents, their victory will destroy the liberal democratic foundations of Western civilization.

Read Glick's article in its entirety at Jerusalem Post.

Fjordman

An afternoon with the police

06.08.2011. The Norwegian police had made it clear that they wanted to speak to Fjordman (who has now publicly identified himself as Peder Nøstvold Jensen). Yesterday he turned up at a police station in Oslo, only to be treated as if he were a suspect. Here's his own account, which I take the liberty of copying in its entirety from Gates of Vienna:

I am shocked by the hostile treatment I received at the hands of the police.

Lars Hedegaard heard my story and commented that he had never known of any witness who has been treated in this manner in any Western country, except for totalitarian societies such as the Third Reich.

My lawyer, who is experienced and has seen many tough cases before, did not expect anything like this to happen. He assumed this would be relatively easy, and even suggested that I might get by without a lawyer. I insisted on having one present just in case, which most likely helped a little bit. Things would have been even worse had that not been the case. My lawyer later said that in my case they operated at best at the very fringes of what could be considered legal.

I was never accused of doing anything criminal, obviously because I had nothing to do with the terror attacks and they know this. Yet without the slightest hint of proof of any lawbreaking, I was treated as a murder suspect.

To my total surprise I had to go to my flat, where for several hours half a dozen police officers went through all of my DVDs, searched through my old printed travel photographs from years back, searched through all of my (many) books, checked my kitchen equipment, went through all of my clothes, and confiscated a suitcase that contained nothing more than clothes and some books. They also confiscated several digital devices, including my camera and my laptop. It is quite clear that they wanted information about non-violent Islam-critical networks in Europe that they suspected might be contained in my PC, even though they denied this to me.

Please remember that the police and the Police Security Service (PST) apparently had no clue who I was until I literally knocked on their door of my own free will, even though I knew full well that I would have to give up my anonymity after doing so. I had very little information about Breivik since I have never met him, something which he himself has admitted, yet I still handed over what little information I had. I also answered their questions honestly, even though, technically speaking, I did not have to do so.

If you believe the mass media, the police were still not sure that I really was Fjordman until a couple of hours after I had turned up at the police station. As soon as they understood that this was indeed the case, they rushed through a quick decision to search my flat and confiscate my computer equipment immediately. They must have realized at this point that I had nothing at all to do with the terror attacks.

I personally suspect that this was mainly a political decision.

HonestThinking comments: The police have made it clear they want to speak to other bloggers as well. While I will be happy to speak to them if called upon (and while I have for the past two days answered every question posed to me by a host of journalists) I think the above account is slightly worrying.

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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.

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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.