bogarde73 wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2016 at 11:15am:


Turkey can’t apply for at least 12 years, and won’t. Nobody wants poor old Turkey anyway.

History, innit.

The massive unemployment in Greece and Spain is indeed a problem, but seems so far, to have changed nothing politically - unlike, say, the Great Depression.

The countries "fighting back" against refugees are in northern Europe, where the refugees are going. Note that they’re notgoing to join the dole queues of Greece and Spain, but the job opportunities of Germany, France and the UK.

People have good reason to be worried. The new years violence showed what largely African refugees are capable of. The West sympathises with the plight of women in north Africa. Now, the refugees have brought the problem to Europe. It’s a big worry.

Northern Europe, it seems, has the police resources to deal with it. What it might not have is the will of its people to tolerate some of the teething problems.

The economic problems you mention are not an issue in northern Europe. Yes, Germans are rightfully annoyed to be bailing out Greece and Spain, but ultimately, it’s the payoff for having those markets to sell to. Germany is hugely prosperous because of this. Just think, it tried taking over Europe for the same reasons in the 1930s. Today, it has the same benefits without all the grief.

Today, Europe is as close to a German and French-led empire as you’ll find anywhere in history. The difference, I guess, is sovereignty and autonomy. For Europe, it really is the best of both worlds.

A few million refugees and the resulting tightening of borders, won’t change this. Europe has weathered the Greek crisis and come out intact. The UK will get a vote on pulling out of the EU soon, but there is no way its leadership will allow this to happen. The common market is too beneficial to the UK to allow a few pesky Polish and Romanian immigrants to get in the way.

Europe will prevail, and it should. It is the best security Europe has. Rather than fighting between themselves as they have for milennia, European states have joined forces. Sure, competitors like the US mightn’t like it, but European integration is in the world’s best interest too.

Europe is the best example we have of the success of focusing on what unites people rather than what divides them. It’s worth defending Europe, Bogie, just as it’s worth supporting closer partnerships with our neighbours too.

If the opportunities are shared, economic integration brings peace. In Europe, this is not a utopian dream, but a reality.

How could this possibly be a bad thing?

Melanias purse wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2016 at 9:30am:


Without giving any secrets away what type of industry/workplace do you work in Karnal?

and how many muslims are we talking about?

men? women?

Redmond Neck wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2016 at 12:21pm:



he could be in the prayer mat weaving business...

its just a thought.

Redmond Neck wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2016 at 12:21pm:


I work in.social services, in which I include a range of government agencies and NGOs. I’ve worked closely with 5 Muslims - one Australian, twoTurks, a Syrian and an Indian. None were too religious. I know others in different agencies. Most celebrate festivals like Eid, but don’t regularly attend the mosque. Most follow minimal dietary restrictions, such as not eating pork, but they’re not adverse to having a drink.

I’ve worked in other jobs with Muslims. Again, few were religious. The closest I came to religious Muslims was a course I did at the Bankstown campus of UWS. The footballer al.Masri’s brother was one, but he wasn’t all that religious. A few shaved their arms according to rules on shaving body hair, but none had beards. One had a prominant prayer bump on his forehead, and was well respected by the others as "spiritual".All were kind, considerate and interesting people to be with. They were all Arabs. Their families, like many immigrant parents, instilled the virtue of studying hard and joining the professional class.

I now live in an immigrant neighbourhood with a lot of Muslims in Western Sydney. It’s not majority Muslim because it doesn’t work that way. Suburbs seem to shape demographically along ethnic, not religious lines. Hence, my suburb has Lebanese churches and a Lebanese mosque. There’s a predominantly Lebanese Muslim prayer hall on my street. Only men and boys attend.

Down the road, in Auburn, they get largely Turks, hence the Gallipoli Mosque and a few smaller Turkish Coptic Christian churches. The largest ethnic group in the area is Chinese, and many of them have become Christians. I live near an old sandstone Anglican cathedral, and I think the only services they do now are in Mandarin and Cantonese.

North from here, Indians have congregated in Harris Park. I’m not sure of the ethnic group the majority of Indians belong to, but a lot are Gujuratis. They’re nearly all Hindus. I haven’t seen an Indian church or mosque around here. I’m told there’s a Pakistani mosque somewhere in Sydney. I knew a Pakistani Muslim who attended the Lebanese mosque in Cleveland Street, and he wasn’t too fond of Arabs. He believed they look down on Pakistanis. He said the most racist and intolerant people in the world are from the rich gulf states.

I currently work in the community, but I have only ever worked with one Muslim family - Iranians. They were more communist intellectuals than Muslim, and didn’t practice. A colleague worked with an Iraqi family who were quite religious. They were planning, believe it or not, to move back to Iraq. I don’t know if they made it back.

"It's the demography, stupid!"

In a globalized economy, the environmentalists want us to worry about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. Yet, insofar as "globalization" is a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite--that the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First World. Pigs are valued assets and sleep in the living room in rural China--and next thing you know an unknown respiratory disease is killing people in Toronto, just because someone got on a plane. That's the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald's and Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Buffalo . . .

What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%.

...

There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called population explosion was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.

Nineteen seventy doesn't seem that long ago. If you're the age many of the chaps running the Western world today are wont to be, your pants are narrower than they were back then and your hair's less groovy, but the landscape of your life--the look of your house, the layout of your car, the shape of your kitchen appliances, the brand names of the stuff in the fridge--isn't significantly different. Aside from the Internet and the cell phone and the CD, everything in your world seems pretty much the same but slightly modified.

And yet the world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20%.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122531242161281449

Read the whole thing.

bogarde73 wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2016 at 1:45pm:


And yet, all the evidence points in the other direction. Nation states are knocking down trade, finance and even migration barriers quicker than at any other time in human history. This is not only multi-lateral (the EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, etc), but bi-lateral. We share a very loose "border" with New Zealand, and this is occurring between neighbours all over the world. In our region, even Burma is finally opening its borders. 

The only idea destined to implode is the re-erection of trade walls and barriers. The Great Depression saw this happen, and it led, inevitably, to WWII. The architecture of the post-war world, the UN, World Bank, IMF, and yes, the European Common Market, was designed to prevent WWIII.

There is no sinister campaign for One World Socialist Government, but a form of global governance will, most likely, be required. The majority of global business today is done by multinationals, those who fly outside the radar of nation states. We are heading towards a global rule of law.

I say most likely because we could go either way. We can close the shop, draw up alliances and mobilize our forces. Or we can keep trade barriers down and search the expanding horizon for more investment opportunities. This is literally the dichotomy we face.

Personally, I can't imagine us taking the former route, but I'm not ruling it out. If we stay on the current trajectory, we will eventually need a global rule of law, in whatever form that takes. The refugee crisis in Europe is a good example of the use of a multinational forum to solve local problems. The EU will be required to manage this problem, given the borders are shared. If the EU had existed in 1939, WWII would never have happened.

Believe it. The fall of the EU, if it ever occurs, will be the opening curtain for WWIII.

Soren wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2016 at 8:40pm:


Only at Bretton-Woods, dear boy.

Still, we'll give up all that Keynesean nonsense. Let's pray for the acceleration and Final Ascention instead.

You should be alright. You're a Lutheran, ya?

Yes west did so many things wrong in Europe so far so the time is coming to face the music and "enjoy" the fruits of own greed and arrogance.
For example in Balkans instead to sport Christian population against Muslims west even bombarded them.  Well, now enjoy the party.