WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France: The New Collaborators And How to Protect France, Europe, the West by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

“They are those who believe that Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and love and do not want to hear about an Islam of war, intolerance and hatred”. — Michel Onfray, Le Figaro.
Le Figaro just devoted an entire issue to Muslim women in France who are trying to fight radical Islam. They are journalists, activists and writers who want equality between men and women, freedom of expression and sexual freedom. These Muslims clearly care more about the French Enlightenment than many non-Muslims who advocate appeasing Islamists.
In short, France needs to start fostering its side of this cultural war. Even if it is too late to recover all of the lost ground, if France does not start immediately but just limits itself to “manage” this “state of emergency”, the lights turned off will not be only those of the Eiffel Tower, as happens after every terror attack, but also the lights of one of the greatest civilizations that history ever gave us.

A few days ago Abdelkader Merah, the brother of the Islamic terrorist who gunned down four Jews in Toulouse in 2012, went on trial, charged with complicity in terrorism. “Beginning in 2012, we entered an age of terrorism, where before we believed ourselves protected; it was a turning point in French history”, said Mathieu Guidere, a professor of Islamic studies in Paris.

Since then, France has faced severe challenges by Islamic fundamentalists in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron is now trying to manage a terrible situation: some 350 Islamic terrorists currently sit in prisons; 5,800 are under police surveillance; an additional 17,000 have been classified as a “potential threat”, while since 2015, more than 240 lives have been lost to jihadi terrorists.

It seems that France has decided to accept what it might see as unavoidable: the Islamic takeover of parts of the country. This view is reflected in the very idea of a “state of emergency”. France’s lower house of parliament just passed a new anti-terrorism law, taking measures which have been in place for two years under a previous “state of emergency” and enshrining them into law.

After the murderous January of 2015 attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Macron’s predecessor, President François Hollande, officially declared that “France is at war”. Until now, however, the war has been fought only on one side, by the Islamic fundamentalists.

Although some scholars, such as Gilles Kepel, estimate that a “civil war” could break out in the future, there is a more realistic scenario: a country split along demographic and religious lines — the secular French republic vs. the Islamic enclaves, the “French 100 Molenbeeks”, from the name of Brussels’ jihadist nest.

France used to be regarded as a jewel of civilization. One of France’s great intellectuals, Alain Finkielkraut, recently said: “France has become for me a physical country, since its disappearance has entered into the order of the possibilities”. Finkielkraut, a member of French civilization’s holiest shrine, the Académie Française, was not thinking about the physical disappearance of French bakeries, boutiques or boulevards; he seemed rather to mean the disappearance of France as the capital of Western culture.

Under the assault of radical Islam, French civilization is eroding from within. And there are now large parts of French culture which are openly adding water to the mill of Islam. These have been just called by Le Figaro, “agents of influence of Islam”. Intellectuals, journalists, politicians, those who consider the Muslims “the new oppressed”.

The French essayist Michel Onfray recently called them “the new collaborators”, like the French who stood with the Nazis:

“They are those who believe that Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and love and do not want to hear about an Islam of war, intolerance and hatred… The collaborator wants to see only the first [type of] Islam by believing that the second has nothing to do with Islam. These collaborators are the Islamo-leftists”.

And they are winning the cultural war.

How can France prevent an Islamic takeover of parts of the country with fatal metastases for the entire European continent? “In order to disarm terrorists, we must disarm consciences”, Damien Le Guay just wrote in a new book, entitled La guerre civile qui vient est déjà là (“The Coming Civil War Is Here Already”).

France needs to stop talking with “non-violent Islamists”, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and instead to speak with the true liberal reformers, the internal dissidents of Islam. The daily newspaper Le Figaro recently devoted an entire issue to Muslim women in France who are trying to fight radical Islam. They are journalists, activists and writers who want equality between men and women, freedom of expression and sexual freedom. These Muslims clearly care more about the French Enlightenment than many non-Muslims who advocate appeasing Islamists.

France also needs to close its borders to mass immigration and select new arrivals on the basis of their willingness to retain the present culture of France, and to abandon multiculturalism in favor of respect for a plurality of faiths in the public space. That means rethinking the phony French secularism, which is aggressive against Catholicism but weak and passive with Islam.

France needs to close the Salafist mosques and ban the preaching of radical imams who incite Muslim communities against the “infidels” and urge Muslims to separate from the rest of the population.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Why Are So Many Claiming That Iran Is Complying with the Deal, When Evidence Shows They Aren’t? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

The evidence is mounting that Iran is not only violating the spirit of the no-nukes deal, but that it is also violating its letter. The prologue to the deal explicitly states: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” This reaffirmation has no sunset provision: it is supposed to be forever.

Yet German officials have concluded that Iran has not given up on its goal to produce nuclear weapons that can be mounted on rockets. According to Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper:

“Despite the nuclear agreement [reached with world powers in July 2015], Iran has not given up its illegal activities in Germany. The mullah regime also made efforts this year to obtain material from [German] firms for its nuclear program and the construction of missiles, said security sources.”

Frank Jansen, a prominent journalist, has reported that the “Revolutionary Guards want to continue the nuclear program at all costs.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently stated that it could not verify that Iran was “fully implementing the agreement” by not engaging in activities that would allow it to make a nuclear explosive device. Yukiya Amano of the IAEA told Reuters that when it comes to inspections – which are stipulated in section T of the agreement – “our tools are limited.” Amano continued to say: “In other sections, for example, Iran has committed to submit declarations, place their activities under safeguards or ensure access by us. But in Section T I don’t see any (such commitment).”

It is well established that Tehran has consistently denied IAEA inspectors’ access to military sites and other research locations. This is in direct contravention to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and bipartisan legislation set out by Congress, which compels the president to verify that “Iran is transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement.” Yet, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, as of the last quarterly report released in August, the IAEA had not visited any military site in Iran since implementation day.

For its part, the IAEA has been complicit in allowing Tehran to circumvent the agreement and act as a law unto itself. Consider that after the deal was negotiated with the P5+1 nations, it was revealed that Tehran and the IAEA had entered into a secret agreement which allowed the Iranian regime to carry out its own nuclear trace testing at the Parchin complex – a site long suspected of being a nuclear testing ground – and would report back to the IAEA with ‘selective’ videos and photos. This arrangement – which went behind the back of Congress – is especially suspect when considered in light of the Iranian regime’s history of duplicity.

To be sure, revelations about Iran testing the boundaries of the JCPOA – and crossing the line into violation – are not new. While many of these violations have not been disclosed by the previous U.S. administration, or by the IAEA, there is a myriad of information and analysis suggesting that Iran has previously failed to comply with several provisions of the JCPOA. It has twice been revealed that Iran exceeded the cap on heavy water mandated by the agreement, and has also refused to allow testing of its carbon fiber acquired before the deal was implemented. Moreover, it has also been reported that Tehran has found new ways to conduct additional mechanical testing of centrifuges, in clear violation of the JCPOA.

These violations are not surprising when considering Iran’s belligerent posture in the Middle East. Iran continues to exploit the instability in the region to prop up and fund terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, whose chants of “Death to Israel” are now also accompanied by vows of “Death to America.” For its part, the Iranian-funded Hezbollah has an estimated 100,000 missiles aimed directly at Israel. As such, it is clear that rather than combatting Iran’s threatening posture, the influx of money thrust into the Iranian economy, coupled with ambiguities in the text of the agreement, have had the reverse effect of emboldening the Iranian regime and fortifying its hegemonic ambitions. Iran also continues to test its vast ballistic missile program and deny its own people fundamental human rights.

Yet, even if Iran were to comply with the letter of the nuclear agreement, it would still be able to build up a vast nuclear arsenal within a relatively short timeframe. The approach adopted by the Trump administration – articulated in a statement delivered by the president several days ago – is justified by the realities on the ground. By announcing that he is decertifying Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, President Trump is giving Congress 60-days to act. Not only is President Trump giving the United States back some of its leverage, but he is also sending a powerful message to the rogue leaders in Iran and North Korea – who are believed to have cooperated on missile technology – that the era of containment and deterrence policies is over. The United States is returning to its original mission of prevention.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Gay Conservative Speaker Cancelled by NYU Republicans for Anti-Sharia Stance “It’s just another instance of College Republicans not standing up for free speech and not standing up for each other.” Mark Tapson

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

A speaking engagement featuring gay conservative James Merse was cancelled by the New York University College Republicans because of his association with “an anti-Islamic hate group,” according to the organization.

Fox News reports that Merse, a former Progressive who is now a Daily Caller contributor and Trump supporter, had reached out to colleges and universities in the northern New Jersey area offering to speak for free. The NYU College Republicans responded and scheduled Merse to speak at a club meeting today — until he received a message Monday night informing him that the group decided to cancel based on his association with ACT for America, the nationwide grassroots organization founded by outspoken anti-sharia patriot Brigitte Gabriel.

The club’s message to Merse read, in part:

Hey James, unfortunately as we have a lot of press on our a– right now, along with the administration (due to recent white nationalist events held on campus) and upon review of one of your group memberships (ACT for America) we thought it would be safer to not go through with this speaker event.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Merse told Fox News. “It’s just another instance of College Republicans not standing up for free speech and not standing up for each other.”

A NYU College Republican spokesperson told Fox News that “[t]he leadership decided it would be best not to associate with an organization that is widely regarded to be an anti-Islamic hate group.”

Widely-regarded as a hate group? By whom?

“Our club leadership did our own research on ACT for America,” the spokesperson continued, “and came to its decision using multiple sources, including the [Southern Poverty Law Center], Anti-Defamation League, multiple news articles from numerous sources and comments made by the group’s leadership.”

Ah, the SPLC. Now it begins to make perfect sense, since the SPLC is a leftist hate group that demonizes conservatives like David Horowitz and Daniel Greenfield as anti-Muslim haters. It has been given legitimacy by a complicit leftist media as an authority on which organizations in the country must be ostracized.

Merse’s perception of Islam was shaped by his experience as the son of a 9/11 cleanup worker. As a boy he saw his father come home “smelling like burnt hair and dusty chalk,” and it inspired him to speak out as an adult. “That day had a really big impact on me as a 9 year old, and it really shifted my thinking,” he said. “These Islamic terrorists really hate us.” Indeed, but the Southern Poverty Law Center believes that the likes of Horowitz, Greenfield, and Gabriel are the real haters.

NYU spokesman John Beckman sent a statement to Fox News, which defended the school’s commitment to free speech: “The free exchange of ideas is a bedrock principle at NYU, and if students or faculty members invite a speaker to campus, that speaker will be permitted to speak, other than in the rare instances in which there is a threat to public safety,” the statement read. “It is worth noting that last year, campus groups invited Charles Murray, Gavin McInnes, and Lucian Wintrich, and all of them spoke at NYU.”

Nonetheless, Merse called the NYU College Republicans “irresponsible” and he said he believes the group caved to political correctness.

It’s disappointing, to put it mildly, that the NYU College Republicans took the SPLC condemnation of ACT for America as gospel. Merse says he’s “very proud” to be a part of Gabriel’s organization. “I stand against Islamic sharia and that’s why I joined.” As a former lefty and an openly gay conservative, his voice can make a valuable contribution to the national conversation regarding the Islamic threat.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Grassley’s Big Questions, Sessions’ Non-Answers Written by: Diana West

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

1.

GRASSLEY: What are you doing to find out how the Russian takeover of the American uranium was allowed to occur despite criminal conduct by the Russian company that the Obama administration approved to make the purchase?

SESSIONS: Mr Chairman, we will hear your concern, the Department of Justice will take such actions as is appropriate I know, and I would offer that some people have gone to jail in that transaction already, but the article talks about other issues. So without confirming or denying the existence of any particular investigation I would say I hear your concerns and they will be reviewed.

2.

GRASSLEY: I think I know why you’re probably reluctant to go into some detail on that, but I would like to remind you that Deputy Attorney Rosenstein directly supervised the criminal case when he was US Attorney in Maryland. I don’t think it would be proper for him to supervise a review of his own conduct, do you?

SESSIONS: It would be his decision. He’s a man of integrity and ability. If he feels that he has a inability to proceed with any investigation, it would be his responsibility to make the determination and should consult, as I told you I would and as I have done, with the senior ethics people at the Department.

3.

GRASSLEY: Reports suggest the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from interested parties of the transaction. Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow, June 2010, from the Russian-government-aligned bank. The same month as the speech, Russia began the uranium acquisition process. This fact pattern raises serious concerns about improper political influence on the process by the Clintons during the Obama administration. Has the Justice Department fully investigated whether the Russians compromised the Obama administration’s decisions to smooth the way for transactions, and if not, why not?

SESSIONS: Mr Chairman, we’re working hard to maintain discipline in the Department. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on any ongoing investigation.

—

That was it. That was all and everything AG Sessions had to say, in that studiously evasive way of all good custodians of the Swamp, about the sell-out of American national security — the transfer of 20 percent of US uranium stocks to Russia for the multi-million-dollar-benefit of the Clinton Foundation and its cronies, and, of course, for the miitary benefit of Russia.

People seem to forget that.

The fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of US uranium stocks by a Canadian company called Uranium One (whose board members “contributed” some $148 million to the Clinton Foundation) to a Russian government entity called Rosatom became even more of a flaming scandal this week when we learned that Rosatom had been under US criminal investigation for bribery and extortion in the run-up to the Obama administration’s approval of the sale! Why are we learning about this criminal investigation only now? Because the Obama administration was so successful for so many years in hushing it up.

That would be the Obama administration of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the FBI of Robert Mueller and James Comey, the Justice Department of Andrew McCabe and US Attorney now Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Still, according to AG Sessions, it “wouldn’t be appropriate” for him to comment to the American people in reply to these questions Senator Grassley asked on our behalf. (Nor would it be improper for DAG Rosenstein to investigate himself!)

On the contrary, I think it’s highly inappropriate for Jeff Sessions not to comment. It’s an outrage. I would say it’s the last straw but I’m sure there will be many more. The Clintons have been chewing up and spitting out every law on the books that apply to public service, even as they have defiled its every tradition of decorum and integrity, over more than thirty years in our faces (once known as “public life”). Simultaneously, they have been imperiling national security, from Bill Clinton’s modernization program for the Communist Chinese military for campaign cash, to Hillary Clinton’s modernization program for the Russian military for foundation cash. (I refer to the Russian “reset” tech-transfer-project known as Skolkovo, which helped Vladimir Putin to develop hypersonic cruise missile engines and who knows what else, which I think has been mentioned in Congress about one time ever.) The damage to our nation is in fact literally unknowable when we factor in Hillary Clinton’s unsecured communications system, which both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration refuse to asssess for damage, flouting protocol and, again, national security.

The Rosatom case would seem to be an especially important key to cracking the whole thing wide open.

Think Jeff Sessions actually wants to turn that key?

I wish I could say yes.

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

David Horowitz: Battlefield Notes from a War Gone Unnoticed A new book unveils how the Left has despoiled American higher education. Peter Wood

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

Reprinted from Mindingthecampus.org.

Below is Peter Wood’s review of David Horowitz’s new book, “The Left in the Universities” which is volume 8 of The Black Book of the American Left, a multi-volume collection of David Horowitz’s conservative writings.

I have been reading essays by David Horowitz for nearly fifty years, starting when he became an editor of the radical new-left magazine, Ramparts, in 1968, and I was a high school student prepping for debates about the Vietnam war. David famously moved beyond his red diaper origins, his Marxist enthusiasms, and his admiration of Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party. In time he became a self-professed conservative. The “Second Thoughts” conference he co-hosted in Washington, DC in 1987 came at a crucial moment for me.

Though I had long since lost any respect for the academic left, and I was strongly anti-communist, I had trouble recognizing the deeper character of my own political views. The forthright stand that David took alongside other formerly radical intellectuals opened my eyes. They made conservative thought thinkable for me: a plausible way to ground my sympathies in a living tradition.

Related: The Roots of Our New Civil War

My debt to David Horowitz came home vividly to me in reading his new volume of collected essays—volume eight in a series collectively titled “The Black Book of the American Left.” This volume, The Left in the University, bears the hefty burden of gathering his significant writings on American higher education, 1993 to 2010. A fair number of the 53 essays collected here, I’d read before. Reading them afresh and as part of a whole, however, is to see them in a more valedictory light.

Horowitz—I’ll retreat to the patronym from this point on—has plainly failed at that part of his intellectual project represented by this book. He has not arrested the radical left’s takeover of the university, let alone restored the ideal of a university that teaches “how to think, not what to think.” The diversity of ideas and outlooks that he has tirelessly promoted as the sine qua non of higher education is less in evidence today than it was when he started. Repression of conservative ideas and highhanded treatment of the people who voice those ideas has grown steadily worse. The dismal situation brought by the triumph of the progressive left on college campuses has darkened still further as a new generation of even more radicalized identitarian groups has emerged.

Related: The Long Plight of the Right on Campus

It is not that Horowitz is unaware that he has fought a losing battle. He understands that keenly, and a fair number of his essays ponder that fact. The reader may wonder why, with this failure so evident, Horowitz continues to fight. Surely, he has the motive to collect these essays other than simply documenting twenty-some years of futile campaigning on behalf of a lost cause? Horowitz has seldom lacked for constructive ideas to reform the university. Much of the book consists of his efforts to advance “The Academic Bill of Rights” and other measures that would have improved the situation. The book even ends with a “Plan for University Reform,” accompanied by the plaintiff note, “Written in 2010, before the AAUP eviscerated Penn State’s academic freedom policy.”

Horowitz never holds out hope that his proposals will at some later point leap back to life, as a smoldering coal might with a fresh breeze return to flame. To the contrary, his introduction includes a disavowal of the possibility: I publish it [that last essay] now because I have given up any hope that universities can institute such a reform. The faculty opposition is too devious and too strong, and even more importantly there is no conservative will to see such reforms enacted.”

Why No Greater Success?

What then? Why read this record of failure? One answer is that we can reject the author’s own judgment. Yes, his specific proposals failed, but Horowitz has done heroic work in building a conservative movement that will, I expect, one day prevail in re-establishing a form of higher education centered on the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. There are those of us who look to his work not just with admiration but for practical help in building this movement. The recent Pew poll that found 58 percent of Republicans saying that contemporary higher education has a negative effect on the country is testimony to the existence of this movement and to Horowitz’s actual legacy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Age of Trump: View From a Supporter Never Trumpers’ myopia blinds them from seeing the greater danger that a Clinton presidency would have created. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

Reprinted from BadgerInstitute.org.

The Never Trump Republicans have been adamantly opposed to Donald Trump since the day in June 2015 that he announced his candidacy.

They argue that the New York mogul is singularly unfit for the presidency, that he has no experience in government, coming from the somewhat unseemly world of N.Y. construction, casino development and reality TV. They say his character and temperament are decidedly unpresidential –– vulgar, bombastic, prone to outbursts and loose with the truth. And, they argue, he besmirches the dignity of the office, tweeting promiscuously over trivial slights and announcing policy changes not discussed with his cabinet.

Most important, the Never Trumpers claim, he is not a true conservative — seemingly indifferent to the problems caused by the federal leviathan, especially runaway entitlement spending, debt and deficits. Rather, they say, he is a populist chameleon, championing those positions and policies that please his disgruntled base of working- and middle-class whites left behind by globalization and the tech revolution. More darkly, they claim, he shows authoritarian and nativist inclinations that could tar legitimate conservatism with a sinister brush.

To them, last November’s election was not a binary choice between a bad Donald Trump and a worse Hillary Clinton. It was opportunistic populism and exclusionary nationalism vs. traditional conservatism and its defining principles of small government and free markets; personal responsibility, character and virtue; and public dignity, decorum and decency. If true conservatism is to survive, they believe, conservatives must resist Trumpism and all its works.

These arguments, however, rest on questionable assumptions: that Trump is a politician unprecedented in his lack of experience, ignorance of policy and bad character and that, for all her flaws, Clinton would not have done as much damage to the conservative cause as Trump is likely to do as president.

This contrast is tendentious and blind both to the historical reality of a democratic polity that empowers the masses and to the greater dangers that eight more years of progressive policies a Clinton presidency would have created.

Presidential dignity

The complaints about Trump’s vulgarity and character flaws raise the question: compared to whom?

Presidential dignity left the White House during the presidency of Bill Clinton. HIs sordid affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, with its stained blue dress and abused cigars, marked a radical decline in what the American people expected of their presidents. Clinton’s bold lie under oath that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” led to articles of impeachment and disbarment. That lie was more consequential for the debasement of presidential dignity than all of Trump’s exaggerations and casual relationships with the truth put together.

As for vulgarity, how about when President Barack Obama called tea party activists “tea baggers,” a vulgar reference to a sexual act? And how much more undignified can the nation’s leader get than hanging out at the White House with rappers whose songs are filled with misogynistic sexual vulgarity and casual violence?

For many Trump supporters, the Never Trumpers’ talk of decorum smells of the anti-democratic elitism that politicians of both parties have always indulged in about the masses. Thus, the Never Trumpers don’t realize that their criticisms of Trump are criticisms of his supporters and that they reinforce the perception of a snooty elite looking down their noses at the common man.

Trump’s appeal rests in large part on the perception that the Republican establishment has more in common with Democrats than with the people — sharing the same ZIP codes, the same top 20 university educations, the same tastes in consumption and entertainment, the same amenities of celebrity and wealth, the same obeisance to political correctness and, ultimately, the same interests: keeping themselves in charge of a bloated federal government from which both sides get their power and wealth.

It’s no wonder that enough voters picked Trump, a vulgar, plain-talking outsider who gave voice to their discontent with Republicans.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Visit to Tivoli By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

Smack dab in the center of Copenhagen is an amusement park called Tivoli. First opened in 1843, it’s a special place. I always found Disneyland agitating, garish, and strangely disturbing – big and sprawling and fake and always insanely crowded, not just an amusement park but something more like a would-be alternate reality where you’re condemned to the hell of spending eternity queued up for some two-minute diversion surrounded by shrieking, ill-mannered children. (I’ve so far managed to avoid visiting Disney World.)

Tivoli’s not like that. It’s like a Japanese garden, modest and charming and meticulously put together. There’s a perfect mix of outdoor bars and cafes and fine eateries – a steak place here, a seafood place there, and charming restaurants with different architectures and atmospheres offering, variously, Spanish and Italian and German and Danish cuisine. There are rides for kids and rides for adults. There’s an arcade where you can throw a ball and knock things over and win outsized teddy bears and giant chocolate bars. There’s the smell of cotton candy and popcorn.

There’s a tree-shaded pond that’s lit up at night by multicolored bulbs You can have a world-class Wienerschnitzel with horseradish and baked carrots at a sumptuous restaurant overlooking the pond, then walk a few steps down a path and see a mother duck, on the small strip of grass between the path and pond, sleeping peacefully with her ducklings. You can put a five-kroner piece in a little machine by the pond and buy food to feed the fish in the pond. It’s sweet, not spectacular – compact and low-key, like Denmark itself. I’m exceedingly fond of it, and so are the Danes, for whom it’s nothing less than a national symbol not unlike the Eiffel Tower in France, the Colosseum in Italy, and Big Ben in Britain.

The travel writer Jan Morris doesn’t approve of Tivoli’s key role in the Danish psyche, saying that she finds it “childishly demeaning” that such a frivolous place “should stand at the very center of Denmark’s life and reputation.” That opinion appears in Morris’s 1997 book Fifty Years of Europe, and I remembered it when I first visited Tivoli many years ago. After experiencing the park for myself, I thought her criticism was unfair: for me, Tivoli seemed the perfect national symbol for a small, flat, pretty country inhabited by quiet, decent, pretty people who ride bicycles to work, whose most famous invention is Lego toys, and whose great author was a teller of children’s tales.

To be sure, even when I first visited Tivoli I knew there was a dark cloud over Hans Christian Andersen’s sunny little land. I had wandered through Nørrebro, the once-hip, Greenwich Village-type neighborhood of Copenhagen that was already becoming Islamized – this was in 2004 – and that will soon, I suspect, be a full-fledged no-go zone. (Copenhagen’s annual gay pride march used to go through Nørrebro; this year the organizers opted to re-route it, and insisted their decision had nothing to do with aggressive Muslim demands that the sodomites stay off “their” turf.)It was also in 2004 that a Danish journalist said to me over dinner that her countrymen, in the wake of 9/11, still didn’t see Islam as a danger to themselves, and she feared that that wouldn’t change “until the terrorists blow up Tivoli.” In fact, when it comes to these matters Denmark has turned out to be more sensible than many other countries, at least in terms of its immigration and integration policies and the openness with which Islam can be discussed in the media. To drive across the Øresund Bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö, Sweden, is to travel from a country that may still have a fighting chance to one that is obviously teetering on the edge of self-destruction.

BOOKS, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Edward Cranswick: Mass Immigration Suffocating Europe

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

In The Strange Death of Europe Douglas Murray notes among other dispiriting statistics that 130,000 women in Britain have suffered from female genital mutilation. That barbarity has been illegal for three decades, yet no one has been successfully prosecuted.

Amidst the near-daily accounts of suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings and foiled terror plots—from the streets of Paris to the Borough Market—the spectre of Islamic terrorism in Europe has taken on a wearying familiarity. That the response of many to these obscene incursions upon the values and liberties of the European peoples should be a sigh of resignation at the inevitability of it all, is itself a remarkable phenomenon. Oddly, few among the media class deem it fit to remark upon. Yet the sense of resignation is almost as palpable as the terrorism itself.

With this in mind Douglas Murray has written a stylish and tightly argued volume, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, that addresses the concatenation of events that has put Europe on the verge of “committing suicide”. Far from a boisterous call-to-arms in defence of Western civilisation, Murray’s book speaks with a deep regret that “by the end of the lifespans of most people currently alive Europe will not be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home”.

The proximate cause of this suicide is the decades-long current of mass immigration. Unplanned by those who originally set it in motion, it increasingly pushes Europe in the cultural direction of the very places from which many immigrants seek refuge. But another object of Murray’s critique is the cultural condition of Europe itself. Mired in a chronic state of torpor and self-abnegation, the media and political class of Europe lacks the courage of its convictions necessary to make a stand against developments it would once have found unthinkable.

murray bookDouglas Murray is an indefatigable debater and verbal jouster, ever on the offensive against thuggish Islamists and the cretinous Western apologists who give them cover. Yet his book draws much of its power from the sombre realisation that even the most basic and decent of European values—rule of law, equality of treatment, protection of minorities, freedom of expression and the artistic creativity it engenders—may perish with scarcely a word of protest from the culture that gave birth to them.

A unique virtue of the European peoples has been their ability to assimilate ethnicities and cultural currents initially strange to them. But successful integration can only occur if there is a stable core of values that can be successfully inculcated in the arriving population. Human beings are tribal creatures, and the virtues of a multi-ethnic and sexually equalitarian outlook in Europe have taken centuries to achieve. For this to occur the meaning of “European” identity has evolved to become above all a question of the ideas in someone’s head—communicable and amenable to debate—rather than being based on ethnic origins or skin colour. As Murray writes: “If being ‘European’ is not about race—as we hope it is not—then it is even more imperative that it is about ‘values’.” Murray wishes this condition of development to be maintained. But the future of such healthy pluralism is in doubt.

Murray cites the results of the 2011 census as showing that only 44.9 per cent of London residents now identified themselves as “white British” and that “nearly three million people in England and Wales were living in households where not one adult spoke English as their main language”. He quotes the Oxford demographer David Coleman as saying that, on current trends, within our lifetime “Britain would become ‘unrecognisable to its present inhabitants’”. Obviously, changes in ethnic identification would not matter if the values remained much the same—or improved—but it is here that we witness a disturbing trend; and where the question of mass Islamic migration becomes of particular concern. The 2011 census showed the Muslim population in England and Wales had risen from 1.5 million to 2.7 million in the previous decade. In a country as small as Britain, population expansion and integration are burdensome enough, but even more so if a foreign religious group is simultaneously the most culturally dissimilar minority and the fastest growing.

Those of us in secular societies are used to thinking of religion as something primarily cultural and private—something that spiritually sustains people in their personal capacity, but that is largely separate from their broader political convictions. But this conception of religious belief is anomalous in the long run of human history, and remains unusual in large parts of the non-Western world. In our own tradition, one need only consult the Old Testament or recall the Crusades to be reminded of a time when religious convictions were one and the same with political convictions—and to be reminded that religion is not only something people may die for, but often kill for.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Peter O’Brien Meet ‘Climate Girl’ and Abandon Hope

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

As the Coalition attempts to soften the economy-wrecking absurdities of the renewables it has assiduously promoted it faces a problem of its own making. Once you’ve fired up a generation that finds it easier to care than think, how to cool that activist ardour?

My wife listens to ABC Illawarra radio in the mornings (much to my irritation) but sometimes it pays a perverse dividend. Without a recent broadcast broadcast I would not have known that we, in the Illawarra, are blessed with our own superhero. Let me introduce you to – drumroll please – Climate Girl, aka Parrys (pronounced Paris) Raines. A law student (environmental law, naturally) at Wollongong University. Her ambition, she tells us, is:

…to become a world leader in Environmental Law and an environmental entrepreneur. I plan to use my law degree and environment knowledge to develop Climate Girl into world class sustainable business. The primary focus is to educate young people, to inspire and motivate them to take action locally on sustainable issues that ultimately benefits the communities they live in. Benefits gained from these sustainable actions will ensure a healthy planet, healthy people and a sustainable future.

As very few Quadrant Online readers will have caught this young woman’s insights at the time, let me refer you to the video clip below, which amounts to a neat self-portrait.

I caught only the tail end of Climate Girl’s ABC feting of its guest, in which she lamented with all the certainty of her 22 years that her Third World counterparts are hard hit by climate change because it is foiling their educations, but that was enough to pique a degree. I discovered she has impeccable credentials for a life in her chosen field, having boarded the UN gravy train earlier than most.

In Climate Girl’s own words, she has been a three-time keynote speaker for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Norway, South Korea and Java. A little research determines that these were children’s conference she attended at ages 13, 14 and 16. She’s also the recipient of a grant from the Layne Beachley Foundation. When she was 14 she launched her website Climate Girl, with the aim of educating fellow youngsters in the articles of her green faith.

She certainly has accomplished a lot in her short life:

I have travelled extensively through my environmental work. I have seen the planets natural capital being misused and not replaced. I have seen shrinking glaciers, I have seen vast amounts of precious rainforest cut down, I have seen animals that are on the brink of extinction, and I have seen extreme poverty. I have heard firsthand from children I have met from around the world about issues they are facing everyday due to environmental impacts.

Just what we need, I hear you say, another earnest young undergrad educating us about climate change. But fear not. Her climate change credentials are built on very solid foundations. Here she is explaining when she started:

I have had two defining moments where I have learnt how humans are having a negative impact on our planet. The first was when I was about six years old, I was at the beach and questioned why I had to wear sunscreen. I was told that the planet was changing and we needed to protect our skin.

The second moment was when I was ice climbing in New Zealand when I was 11. I noticed a red line in the ice and I was told it was red dust from central Australia that had blown across the South Pacific. I learnt about impact and how our actions impact on people and places elsewhere but because we don’t see what our actions have contributed to, we are unaware of the problems we have caused.

Who knew that CO2 causes ultra violet radiation?

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Rupert Darwall The World Bank’s Green Betrayal

Posted By on October 20th, 2017

When Barack Obama appointed Jim Yong Kim as the institution’s president, the emphasis switched from lifting the world’s poor out of poverty to prioritising ‘environmental sustainability’, not least by banning Third World investment in cheap, reliable power sources

For evidence that wind and solar energy wind and solar push up energy costs, wreak havoc on the investment needed to keep the lights on and compromise grid security, look no further than South Australia. The state has faced crippling black-outs, spiralling energy bills and fleeing businesses. Rich countries that have already built their grids can throw money at the problems created by weather dependent wind and solar. Poor countries that are still building out their grids don’t have that luxury. Why, then, would anyone think it sensible to push these expensive, flawed technologies down the throats of vulnerable developing countries?

Cheap, universal access to reliable grid power is the single most powerful boost to economic development and improving the lives of the world’s poor. The World Bank’s mission is to free the world of poverty. Yet under its current president, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, appointed by President Obama in 2012, the World Bank abandoned its core development mission and now prioritises environmental sustainability over poverty reduction. In 2013, it adopted anti-coal funding policies, effectively blocking investment in what, for many developing nations, is likely to be the cheapest and most reliable generating capacity. The World Bank’s near categoric refusal to finance coal-fired capacity is worsened by it favouring high-cost, unreliable wind and solar technologies.

The World Bank justifies doing this in order to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. But poor people in developing countries consume very little power. Their per capita consumption of coal can be measured in kilograms and pounds (in the case of Bangladesh, in ounces). The World Bank admits that the incremental greenhouse gas emissions from extending access to the grid to the world’s poor “will not make a material difference.” That being the case, the World Bank’s anti-coal/pro-renewable policy is morally and economically indefensible. For those genuinely worried by the prospect of anthropogenic global warming, enabling the energy-starved in the world’s developing nations is genuinely not a problem.

The World Bank’s own analysis also highlights the extra costs caused by the variability of wind and solar output and the extra grid infrastructure they need. In spite of this analysis, the World Bank decided to from a “unique partnership” with the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the 2011 Sustainable Energy For All initiative (SE4ALL). This set an arbitrary target of doubling renewables’ contribution to the global energy mix by 2030. Mr. Ban’s own numbers show why the World Bank made a colossal blunder: According to Mr. Ban, universal energy access has a price tag of $50bn a year. Renewable energy costs $500bn a year and a further $500bn a year for energy efficiency. To any objective analyst, these numbers should have settled the matter.

In giving its support to Mr. Ban’s aim of doubling renewables’ share in the energy mix, the World Bank went much further than the UN General Assembly, which in a March 2013 resolution noted that renewable technologies had yet to achieve economic viability. The UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed in September 2015, also watered down SE4ALL’s renewable energy target. When the governments of the world finalised the text of the December 2015 Paris Agreement, they removed references to renewable energy from the draft circulated by the French conference president.

Leaders in the developing world blast the West’s apparent hypocrisy in denying them the energy that made them rich. The West’s industrialisation was built on coal, notes Nigeria’s finance minster, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. Yet when Africa wants to use coal, the developed world says, “you have to use solar and the wind which are the most expensive.” There’s a similar story in Asia. At last month’s ASEAN+3 meeting in Manila, energy ministers affirmed the need to achieve energy security with economic efficiency and environmental sustainability before going on to recognise that “coal continues to be a major fuel source in the region.” The communiqué calls for continued public financial support for new coal-fired power stations and promoting of the newest clean coal technologies, including high efficiency coal-fired generation.

The World Bank’s self-imposed embargo on coal financing has opened up the field to rivals like China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Australia is also an investor in the AIIB. Responding to pressure from the Turnbull government, its lending guidelines allow it to support the latest generation of highly efficient, low emission coal fired power stations. As the world’s largest coal exporter, Australian mining jobs are on the line. So is the welfare of the world’s poor. It is irresponsible for a multilateral development bank to push high-cost, operationally defective technologies onto nations which will retard development and make electrification vastly more expensive.