The rise of Islam and the end of Christian Europe

Mark Steyn welcomes the end of Christian Europe:

Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

Around the Blogosphere:

Islam - Jihad in Europe

Europes Looming Immigrant Assimilation Problem

Europe Implode? And what else in it's wake?

When Europe Implodes

See Europe before its gone

Watching Europe Implode

The Future of Europe

Italy and Islamic extremism

Italy has become a platform for Islamic extremism in Europe:

Investigations by the Italian security services since 2001 indicate that Italy has become a platform for Al-Qa’ida associated terrorist operations in Europe and Iraq. Italy's Muslim population is concentrated in Milan, with an estimated 100,000 Muslims residing in the northern city. Not surprisingly Milan appears to be the base of Italy's extremist network, which has connections to other Islamic radical groups in Europe, specifically in Spain and Germany. The primary focus of the Islamists' activities in Italy appears to have been that of a staging ground for recruiting suicide bombers to conduct attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

Nevertheless, the sizeable presence of determined Islamic militants in Italy make the country a potential target for a major Madrid-style terrorist attack.

The Italian intelligence services – in close coordination with the Spanish, German, and Dutch counterterrorism authorities – now believe that the majority of jihadis in their country are connected to North African radical groups and interestingly to Ansar al-Islam, an organization primarily based in the Kurdish areas of Iraq. The time-line of terrorist-related activity in Italy reveals an extensive campaign to support radical activities in other countries, send human and logistical resources to the Iraqi theatre, and possibly prepare the grounds for terrorist attacks on Italian soil.

Around the Blogosphere:

They are not 'terrorists' they are 'guerillas'

The Islamic Challenge In Europe Continues

Will immigration help the Tories?

The immigration issue may be helping the Tories in Britain:

For weeks staff at the Conservative campaign headquarters in London's Victoria Street have been counting the days since the party attacked over asylum and immigration. At first the opinion polls did not shift.

But the shadow cabinet was given clear guidance by Lynton Crosby, the campaign director who steered Australia's conservative government to unlikely election victories and who is now the indisputable master of the Tory campaign.

It would take seven days, he said, for an idea to travel from a Westminster policy announcement to the media and then the public. Then it would take at least another seven days for the issue to shift public opinion, then reach the pollsters and finally the newspapers in a published poll.

So this week's ICM/Guardian poll was bang on cue, coming after Mr Howard set out his warning that Britain was "full" and immigration quotas were the answer.

The poll, published on Tuesday, showed the Labour lead had been cut from nine points to three points - too big a change to put down to the polling margin of error.

When the news reached the Conservative headquarters campaign early on Monday evening, there was a mild outpouring of relief.

Further good poll news for the Tories came yesterday from Mori in the Financial Times, which reported the Labour lead was down to two points.

Around the Blogosphere:

Poll boost for Howard on immigrant health checks

Liberal parent joins white flight

It seems that even liberals are giving up on racially-mixed schools:

Harding Elementary School PTA President Meredith Brace has led a battle for several years to stop her white neighbors from transferring out of the heavily Latino Westside campus.

Now she's joining them, saying she's not willing to make her son the guinea pig any longer.

The Braces are like hundreds of other local families who, over the years, have sought transfers out of neighborhood schools that are filled with mostly poor Latino children.

"I'm gone," said Mrs. Brace, who on Tuesday requested and was granted a transfer for her first-grade son out of Harding and into the more affluent Hope School, within the nearby Hope Elementary District. "I've just got to the point where, 'Sorry guys, I need what's best for my kids and there's a school that's two miles away that offers all those things I want.' "

About 40 percent of the 462 students at Hope School are there on transfers from the Goleta or Santa Barbara elementary districts.

Some school officials and neighborhood families view Mrs. Brace's departure as a red flag. If someone who has advocated so fiercely against white flight won't stick it out, who will?

Mrs. Brace has a very interesting background:

A liberal whose father is Superior Court Judge George Eskin and stepmother is former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, Mrs. Brace had been considered over the years as the Great White Hope for Harding.

"This is a major blow," said Santa Barbara school trustee Bob Noel. "Meredith was kind of like Supermom in terms of doing things for her school. . . . You can read racism into this, but I read more of an issue of social class. People don't want to look and see their kid is in a classroom where most of the students are underachievers and where friendship circle possibilities are very, very small because they don't speak the same language."

Harding is 90 percent Latino, 6 percent white. Hope is 73 percent white, 20 percent Latino. Hope families have raised enough money every year to keep on staff an array of specialists in art, music, computers and science -- all the "extras" Mrs. Brace wants for her son, who is 7, and her 4-year-old daughter.

As PTA president, Mrs. Brace said she has tried to start after-school enrichment programs in art and theater at Harding.

"We made it so affordable, $20 for a six- to eight-week session. We told everybody, 'Come on, do something extra for your kids.' We had so few people sign up, we had to eliminate a lot of the classes," she said. "I've met some very lovely people, but we have nothing in common. Every time my husband and I would go over for an event, my husband would feel like it was his first time. We haven't made any friends."

How Brace became disillusioned:

It was about three years ago, before her son entered kindergarten, that Mrs. Brace started going door to door touting Harding's achievements, trying to convince her neighbors to join her in giving the school a try. She even took on the PTA president post before her son had entered kindergarten.

Once her son started, she remained PTA president, volunteered in the classroom, boosted fund-raising efforts, and continued to hold regular neighborhood meetings to make other white families feel comfortable with the campus. While she said she's not bilingual, she used the Spanish she picked up while living in Costa Rica and Mexico to try to connect with Latino parents.

Some of the white families she had convinced to enroll their kids at Harding later bailed out. She said her son has struggled to make friends.

"He hasn't been invited to a birthday party. There is absolutely no after-school interaction," she said. "For his birthday, he invited four of his classmates. Only one came."

Then she was miffed that her skills -- she's a credentialed librarian -- weren't capitalized on in her son's classroom.

Another Harding mother and friend of the Braces, Brenda McDonald, said she had independently decided to transfer her kindergartner out of the campus. Mrs. McDonald is also considering Hope School, or Washington Elementary, which is still within the Santa Barbara district.

"At Harding, the teachers are wonderful. The principal is great. It's the socioeconomic chasm. It's not a gap, it's a huge difference in the population," said Mrs. McDonald, who described herself as a middle-class professional. "We don't have a lot in common with the other families. At the same time, do I want to drive five days a week now every day for the next six years? Then again, if half of the Westside is going in that direction, maybe we can carpool."

Around the Blogosphere:

Advocate for staying joins fleeing parents

Fear and loathing in Rwanda

Steve Sailer writes about the inability of white liberals to accept the reality of tribal differences in Rwanda:

Further, "Hotel Rwanda" is less depressing than it sounds, offering one of the few Rwandan stories with a happy ending. On-screen gore is minimized, allowing the film a PG-13 rating.

Unfortunately, the screenplay aims at self-absorbed white liberals who think all Africans look alike and that white racism is the root of all evil. The script even claims that it's merely a white myth that Tutsis tend to be taller than Hutus, asserting that the Belgian imperialists arbitrarily assigned those identities to random Rwandans. Yet, soon the Hutu Power radio station is broadcasting the prearranged code to begin exterminating the Tutsis: "Cut down the tall trees."

Apparently, liberals believe that the Hutus and the Tutsis did not notice any physical differences between the two groups until the Belgians came and pointed them out.

Dutch finally wake up to Islamic threat

Dutch attitudes to Islamic immigrants are changing:

But the real pointer to how far Holland has shifted comes from Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam. Cohen is Labour, from the party that personified political correctness and the more-the-merrier, they-can-do-no-wrong approach to immigrants. "We have to admit," the mayor says, "that this was not a sweet and blameless youth, to put it mildly."

The consensus has shifted across the board. In a country that can still seem a parody of itself — a magistrate ruled recently that an armed robber was entitled to a tax rebate on the cost of his gun as a tool of his trade — even the leader of the Green party has called for it to be illegal for Muslims to import spouses through arranged marriages. Integrated teams, drawn from the police, social welfare and housing offices, are used to locate and arrest illegals. Social welfare knows who is drawing benefit, housing offices have addresses, and police check for criminal records. The number of asylum seekers has been slashed from 43,000 to 10,000 a year, nine-tenths of whom have their applications rejected.

Multiculturalism is damned. A recent poll found 80% in favour of stronger measures to get immigrants to integrate — and 40% said they "hoped" Muslims "no longer feel at home here".

Around the Blogosphere:

Islam & Europe

Europe Divided On Muslim Immigration

More Dutch Plan to Emigrate as Muslim Influx Tips Scales

Wilders in Prison (4)

More Dutch Plan to Emigrate as Muslim Influx Tips Scales

The Islamic Death Cult

Is Europe Dead?

Holland Confronts Jihad

An Islamic Europe?

Europe Before the Explosion

Islam and media bias

Robert Spencer accuses the media of engaging in pro-Islamic bias:

When the media prints innumerable bland whitewashes of known truths about Islam; when it smears those making legitimate inquiry into the inroads Islam, including violent jihadists, are making into Europe; when it declines even to ask the questions that need to be asked about what steps (if any) mosques in America are taking to curb enthusiasm for the Islamic jihad ideology among Muslims in America; when it consistently ignores evidence that that ideology is being taught in American mosques — then it is not strong enough to say simply that the American media has abdicated its responsibility. It has become an accomplice of the global jihad.

Maybe Spencer is being a little extreme but he is right that the media tends to downplay the problems that Islam poses to the West.

Around the Blogosphere:

We Lose Our Schools, We Lose Our Children, We Lose Our Future

Recognizing Extremists - Shabazz to Bray

The Mainstream Media Helps the Global Jihad

Misconceptions about Islam

Muslim Rape Epidemic in Sweden and Norway - Authorities Look the Other Way

Muslim man harasses synagogues

A Muslim man bombarded synagogues with telephone calls threatening to inflict violence on Jews:

Riaz Burahee, 25, of Edmonton, north London, who has photographs of Osama bin Laden at his home, admitted 10 offences.

Wood Green Crown Court heard Burahee told police he made the calls because he had been insulted by a Jew.

The court heard he had made as many as 92 calls, telling people to leave the building or be bombed.

Burahee, who described himself as a Muslim with strong religious beliefs, said he had no links to terrorism.

Photographs of Bin Laden and militant US civil rights activist Malcolm X were found in his room.

David Owen-Jones, prosecuting, said Burahee had made threats to bomb, threats to kill and threats to kill and rape children in March last year.

He said Burahee referred to "Hitler being right" and women who answered his calls were called "Jewish whores".

Around the Blogosphere:

Hate Crimes Increase: BBC *Still* Ask 'Who Were Those Masked Men?'

Importing Anti-Semitism

America's global affirmative action search

According to Gene Expression, US universities are now looking internationally for students to meet their affirmative action requirements:

Whatever you may think of Affirmative Action now, its genesis was noble (though misguided) in intent - to right the wrongs of the past and to equalize the paths to success for members of discriminated racial groups. I would imagine that those who wrote the legislation thought that the program would have a finite life and would end when the wrongs of the past had been righted.

However, University administrators, in their striving for diversity, are doing their best to insure that Affirmative Action never sees a sunset. (surprise!) They are recruiting students internationally to meet their diversity goals.

Around the Blogosphere:

Some blacks more equal than others

The End[s] of Affirmative Action?

New Debate Over Black Identity

For the first time in history

Illegal immigration and sex slavery

An illegal immigrant who made a fortune from trafficking East European sex slaves has been jailed for 11 years:

Vullnet Ismailaj, 27, an Albanian, smuggled scores of young Lithuanian women into Britain with the promise that they would earn good money.

Once they arrived, however, they were put straight to work, forced to surrender their passports and work up to 13 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.

In an “organised and sophisticated” prostitution empire, which stretched from Birmingham to London and employed about ten girls at any one time, Ismailaj bought the young women, often selling them on for up to £4,000 each.

The new arrivals soon found that they had to repay thousands of pounds of “debt” by servicing dozens of men in one day.

Only when they had settled their debts would they be entitled to 25 per cent of their earnings — Ismailaj kept the rest. Brian O’Neill, for the prosecution, said: “It is clear from the way the women were treated by Ismailaj and the others that he, in particular, did not regard these women as anything other than chattels.

“They were his to do with as he pleased, putting them to work, taking their money and offering them for sale.”

Southwark Crown Court was told that police had been alerted to the two-year vice ring by a 25-year-old victim. The court was told that one woman was made to entertain 34 clients on her first day in a brothel in Soho, Central London.

The Lithuanian woman, who was too ill to work the next day, had to hand over all of her £805 earnings.

One week and approximately 150 customers later, she called the police when Ismailaj threatened to kill her for complaining.

During a two-week undercover operation by Scotland Yard’s vice squad, officers discovered a network of prostitutes, all working for Ismailaj.

Mexican drug lords recruit police and soldiers

Former Mexican soldiers, police and federal agents, originally trained as an elite force of anti-drug commandos, are working as mercenaries for Mexican drug lords, bringing a new wave of drug-related killings into the United States:

Law-enforcement and intelligence officials said the well-armed gang, known as the "Zetas," is linked to hundreds of killings and dozens of kidnappings on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly over a wide area of southeastern Texas from Laredo to Brownsville and in cities throughout Mexico.

In protecting established drug corridors into the United States, gang leaders have targeted U.S. Border Patrol agents and state and local police, authorities said, along with Mexican military and law-enforcement personnel, even offering bounties of up to $50,000.

U.S. intelligence officials said the Zetas might have obtained Soviet-made SA-7 shoulder-mounted missile launchers off the black market, although information on the purchase is sketchy. The Bush administration has been concerned in recent weeks about the fate of Soviet-provided SA-7s in Nicaragua, about 80 of which have not been accounted for by the government and are thought to have been sold on the black market.

Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, recently described the Zetas as "extremely violent," adding that its members were "much feared in the region because of the bloodshed they unleash." But the Mexican government has sought to downplay the gang's significance, saying the Zetas had been targeted by Mexican authorities and are on the run -- a position disputed by U.S. officials and others.

A report this month by a U.S. security consulting firm hired by the State and Defense departments to study the presence of weapons in Latin America called the Zetas an expanding gang of mercenaries with intimate knowledge of Mexican drug-trafficking methods and routes.

Strategic Forecasting Inc., also known as Stratfor, said the organization maintained "connections to the Mexican law-enforcement establishment," noting that those connections had given the gang virtually unfettered access through the southern U.S. border.

"Based on the activities of both the drug cartels and their hired guns, sources suggest it is only a matter of time before Mexican drug wars spill over onto U.S. streets," the report said. "There is some evidence, in fact, that a number of unsolved drug-related murders in the Southwest could be linked to the Zetas.

"If true, it suggests the Mexican cartels' paramilitary forces already are operating within the United States," the report said.

Around the Blogosphere:

Mexican crime group has come as far as Nashville

Wrong Headline

U.S. officials say Zetas have killed in Texas

Dogs of War Running Loose

Mexican Commandos in U.S.

Is It Time To Decriminalize Some Drugs?

Mexican Assassins A Growing Threat

Mexican "Zetas" killing people in Texas

Racial differences in graduation rates

There is a significant gap in college graduation rates between blacks and Latinos born in California versus whites and Asian-Americans:

The study, released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that only 13 percent of Latinos, 15 percent of blacks and 11 percent of American Indians had earned a bachelor's degree. That compared with rates of 31 percent for whites and 62 percent for Asian-Americans, based on 2000 Census data.

Here are the findings in more detail:

The report found the percentage of California-born young adults earning bachelor's degrees went up in the '90s. Asian-American graduation rates increased from 53 percent to 62 percent and whites from 23 percent to 31 percent. The increase was lower for blacks, 11 percent to 15 percent, and Latinos, 10 percent to 13 percent.

Reed found gaps at every step of graduating from the University of California. Only 6.2 percent of black high school seniors and 6.5 percent of Hispanic seniors qualified for UC in 2002-03, compared to 16.2 percent of whites and 31.4 percent of Asian-Americans.

Hispanics make up one-third of the state's high school graduates, but only 12 percent of UC graduates, while blacks account for 7 percent of high school graduates but 3 percent of UC graduates.

Here are some of the possible causes of these differences:

For instance, black and Hispanic students were less likely to live with both parents, their mothers were less likely to have graduated from high school and their families more likely to be poor. Meanwhile, black and Hispanic children were more likely to attend bad schools.

Of course, one of the reasons why blacks and Hispanics are more likely to attend "bad schools" may be that schools are under pressure to improve their minority graduation rates and so end up watering down their curricula in order to achieve that objective.

Around the Blogosphere:

Study: Black , Hispanic College Graduation Rates Trailing

Our overwhelmed Border Patrol

The Border Patrol finds itself overwhelmed by the large number of illegal immigrants coming into the United States:

More than three years after the terrorist attacks in 2001, the 11,000 men and women who serve as the border's front-line defense are overwhelmed. Despite an influx of new technology, such as underground sensors and cameras that pan the desert, agents catch only about one-third of the estimated 3 million people who cross the border illegally every year.

Most of the illegals are poor Mexican laborers looking for work. But officials are alarmed that a growing number hail from Central and South America, Asia, even Mideast countries such as Syria and Iran. In 2003, the Border Patrol arrested 39,215 so-called "OTMs," or other-than-Mexicans, along the Southwest border. In 2004, the number jumped to 65,814.

Those figures worry intelligence and Homeland Security officials, who say al-Qaeda leaders want to smuggle operatives and weapons of mass destruction across the nation's porous land borders. James Loy, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress last week, "Several al-Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons."

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, says the Border Patrol has "reliable intelligence that there are terrorists living in South America, assimilating the culture and learning the language" in order to blend in with Mexicans crossing the border.

"We really don't know who comes into this country illegally over the Southwest border," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says. "This is a big problem."

Unfortunately, we have a President who is too busy fighting pointless wars in Iraq to deal with the real problems at home.

Around the Blogosphere:

Republicans: Golfing War Mongerers? Maybe It Is True?

Iraq: The Other Costs

Build a Wall

Smaller increase in agents criticized

As long as people complain, we will never be safe.

We have been warned, now what?

Department of Homeland Stupidity

Student protests in South Africa

South African students are engaging in violent protests:

Police have promised to take "appropriate action" to ensure that any planned protest by the radical Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (Pasma) takes place in a peaceful and lawful manner.

In reacting to threats by Pasma to bring violent protests to the main campus of the University of Pretoria after burning tyres and barricading gates at the university's Mamelodi campus yesterday, police spokesman Captain Piletji Sebola said police were concerned with the manner in which the protests were being conducted.

"We will not just fold our arms and watch. Where there is lawlessness we will react and arrest those responsible.

"We are prepared for any pending protest march and we hope this protest will be conducted within the parameters of the law," he said.

Sebola said they would not underestimate the possible threat and are warning protesters that if they become a law unto themselves then they must expect drastic action to be taken.

"We will kill the whites, all of them; Afrikaans and English," rioting Pasma students and their leaders at the university's Mamelodi campus chanted yesterday.

Students barricaded gates with burning tyres in an effort to prevent police from gaining access and dispersing the crowds.

Screaming "revolution is the only solution" and "kill the police, burn their cars", more than 200 students charged around the campus tearing up the university's flag, burning tyres and damaging trees.

Intimidating journalists and threatening to kill them if they covered next week's planned riots in a "biased manner", Pasma leaders tried to prevent the Pretoria News from speaking to the campus's Student Representative Council (SRC) and South African Students Congress members, grabbing notebooks and cellphones in attempts to stop interviews with the "pro-white organisation".

"We know that you white journalists are biased.
"You do not report properly on our cause and only cover white students' complaints. On Monday we will give you enough white students' complaints to cover," vowed Vusi Mahlangu.

Mahlangu, deputy secretary of the Gauteng Pasma regional office, promised that blood would flow at the university's main campus in Hatfield.

"We have had enough of racist students and their lecturers who profess to have our interests at heart. We are tired of being discriminated against because we cannot pay the fees and because we are not passing.

"We feel that this discrimination, which is leading us to fail our courses, must be stopped - with violence if needs be," he said.

Mahlangu said they had tried negotiating with the university's authorities but this had failed, leaving violence as their only recourse.

"If we cannot study because of these limitations, then nobody else should be allowed to," he said.

He also threatened that they would disrupt all classes at the university.

Mahlangu said the demonstrations would be carried over to all the other universities in the country until "all racists had been removed from the institutions".

Pasma spokesman Mametlwe Sebei said they had tried to remain peaceful in their protests but this had proved fruitless.

"We will become violent with the rightwing student groups and will fight the Afrikaner groups with fire and blood.

"We will take violence to all the white students and their lecturers and to any other bodies which do not support our movement and its demands," he said.

Sebei said the protests had to be continued until everybody had an opportunity for an education "as education is not exclusive".

An SRC leader, who asked not to be named for fear of being attacked, said they did not support Pasma's actions.

"We are all in the same boat with the fee hikes, but this is not the way to solve the dispute," he said.

Around the Blogosphere:

300 students trash Tuks campus

what is pasma?

The Pot calling the Kettle bigot

Illegal immigration and public schools

Allan J. Favish writes about the negative effects that illegal immigration has had on Los Angeles public schools:

As I lamented the death-bed condition of the school district from which I graduated high school in 1973, I noticed additional data that provides an explanation for the poor performance of the students in the LAUSD. Although I am opposed to government collecting racial and ethnic data and voted for the unsuccessful Proposition 54 in 2003 that would have prohibited the state from collecting such data, the collection of such data by the schools provides information that explains what has happened to the LAUSD.

The API Report for Tarzana Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 46% Hispanic/Latino, 32% White (not of Hispanic origin), 14% Black/African American, 5% Asian/Asian American, 1% Filipino/Filipino American. Tarzana had a statewide rank of 5.

The API Report for Canoga Park Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 89% Hispanic/Latino, 4% White (not of Hispanic origin), 3% Black/African American, 1% Asian/Asian American, 2% Filipino/Filipino American. Canoga Park had a statewide rank of 1.

The API Report for Noble Avenue Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 92% Hispanic/Latino, 1% White (not of Hispanic origin), 2% Black/African American, 2% Asian/Asian American, 2% Filipino/Filipino American. Noble had a statewide rank of 1.

The API Report for Carpenter Avenue Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 14% Hispanic/Latino, 72% White (not of Hispanic origin), 5% Black/African American, 7% Asian/Asian American, 0% Filipino/Filipino American. Carpenter had a statewide rank of 10.

The API Report for Shenandoah Street Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 70% Hispanic/Latino, 2% White (not of Hispanic origin), 26% Black/African American, 0% Asian/Asian American, 1% Filipino/Filipino American. Shenandoah had a statewide rank of 1.

The API Report for Castle Heights Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 41% Hispanic/Latino, 27% White (not of Hispanic origin), 21% Black/African American, 7% Asian/Asian American, 3% Filipino/Filipino American. Castle Heights had a statewide rank of 6.

The Ethnicity Report for the LAUSD for 2001-02 states that the district was 71.4% Hispanic or Latino, 9.6% White (not of Hispanic origin), 12.4% African American, 4% Asian, 2% Filipino. (The link will default to the latest year, so select 2001-02.)

The Ethnicity Report for the Saugus Union Elementary School District for 2001-02 states that the district was 15.9% Hispanic or Latino, 74.9% White (not of Hispanic origin), 2.6% African American, 4.6% Asian, 1.5% Filipino.

The API Report for Saugus’ Rosedell Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 13% Hispanic/Latino, 80% White (not of Hispanic origin), 2% Black/African American, 3% Asian/Asian American, 1% Filipino/Filipino American. Rosedell had a statewide rank of 10.

The API Report for North Park Elementary School stated that the ethnic/racial characteristics of the students were 10% Hispanic/Latino, 77% White (not of Hispanic origin), 3% Black/African American, 5% Asian/Asian American, 3% Filipino/Filipino American. North Park had a statewide rank of 10.

Much of the data on California’s government schools is here. Additional academic performance data is here. If you have a child in a California government school, you should look at it. If you pay taxes in California, especially property taxes, you should look at it. If you drive in California and have to contend with people like me who now drive an extra 30 miles a day to avoid poor academically performing schools, you should look at it. If you live outside of California, but want to see what is in store for your state, you should look at it.

Those who spend our tax money and publicly support what has happened and what is happening, or remain silent about it, have much to answer for. The data does not reflect the results of a controlled and legal migration from Mexico. The numbers only can reflect the results of massive illegal immigration from Mexico that has brought in largely a subset of the population from that country whose children do not speak English and whose academic performance generally is far below what I want for my child. Those who spend our tax money will not tell us how many of the government school students we taxpayers are supporting are here illegally and whose parents came here illegally.

Just more evidence that illegal immigration hurts Americans.

White flight and Hispanic schools

Some Nebraska politicians want to force white parents to send their children to public schools that have large numbers of Hispanic students:

The situation in Lexington and elsewhere in Nebraska has caught the attention of the state Legislature, which is considering a bill to thwart what some say amounts to de facto segregation in the schools.

The proposal would force the outlying elementary-only schools to merge with larger kindergarten-through-12th-grade districts. That could mean the closing of the smaller schools.

Beginning in the 1960s, white flight to the suburbs left many big-city school systems across the country predominantly black. But what is happening in Nebraska is a different phenomenon: The white families are staying put, but they are sending their kids to school outside town.

This is possible because Nebraska, unlike many other states and communities, does not require students to attend the schools in the district in which they live.

As a result, in Lexington, the in-town schools, with an enrollment of 2,500, have 804 students learning English as a second language, and 1,172 who are getting a free or reduced-price lunch. The six outlying elementary schools have about 130 students — none of them learning English as a second language and none of them living in poverty, according to the state Education Department.

The situation is similar in and around the small town of Schuyler, which also has seen an influx of Hispanics in recent years. There are 250 students there who are learning to speak English. None of them attends the outlying schools. Of 325 students living in poverty, all but 18 go to school in town.

When are liberals going to finally accept that forced integration doesn't work?

Around the Blogosphere:

Letting parents choose, but only if they make the right choice

Will Nebraska Coerce Bad Education?

What should we do about this?

What Do Liberals Fear The Most: Legal Segregation?

Can't the Left be consistent?

Class I schools and "White Flight"

Black crime in the suburbs

Mike Seate writes about how the murder rate in the suburbs has increased as more black families move there:

But what makes the growing homicide rate in Penn Hills so notable is just who is doing the shooting. Most of the shooters in recent events have been African-Americans, a group who, a good decade or two ago, barely were visible in the area.

Since 1990, the black population of Penn Hills has doubled from 13 percent to 24 percent, according to the 2000 Census. The rate of aggravated assaults and homicides using firearms has escalated slowly over the past few years, police say.

It's as if black Pittsburghers have finally made enough advancements to move away from inner-city ghettoes, but some of us flatly refuse to leave our ghetto ways behind when we reach the 'burbs.

This is anything but a new story in our region. The arrival of blacks into previously all-white communities is the principal backstory to the development of our city's eastern suburbs.

Blacks moved eastward from the Hill District during the mid-20th century to Homewood and East Liberty. By the 1970s, white residents of those areas responded to growing crime rates by moving east to places such as Verona, Plum and Penn Hills.

As blacks pressed onward to Wilkinsburg and eventually Penn Hills, white flight began in earnest in those neighborhoods.

At this rate, in a few generations the white population of Western Pennsylvania might find itself building gated communities 30 miles offshore of the Atlantic Ocean.

Or maybe their black neighbors could stop playing into the sort of violent stereotypes and prison-yard machismo that's threatening to eventually turn Penn Hills into another Homewood.

A study conducted last year under the auspices of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services found definite links between certain city neighborhoods -- the Hill District and Homewood, for example -- and shootings in Penn Hills. Folks seem to be moving to the suburbs and carrying their neighborhood beefs, grudges and rivalries along with them like old lawn furniture.

More evidence that black crime causes white flight.

The goal of Islam

Barbara Stock on what radical Muslims hope to achieve:

Our soldiers discovered in Afghanistan “The Al Qaeda Manual” quite some time ago but Americans didn’t learn anything from it. This manual lays out in great detail the plans of the Islamic enemy and everyday on the news anyone can see that Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists are following it to the letter and we are helping them.

Every organization has a “mission statement” and terrorists are no different. What is their goal? They have only one: “The overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.” The terrorists have some other minor goals, but they are all in place to achieve the main goal of world domination. In case no one has noticed, Islam considers America one of those “Godless regimes.”

One way to accomplish this goal is: “Assassinating enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists.” Of course, with Islamic terrorists, “enemy personnel” can be anyone from a Jewish toddler to an Iraqi humanitarian or a Dutch filmmaker. In short, the enemy is anyone not a Muslim who believes the world is destined to be ruled by Islam.

Around the Blogosphere:

CALL A SPADE A SPADE I SAY!

Kohanim genetic link

A rabbi is trying to use genetic research to prove a common ancestral link between different Jewish populations:

Does modern genetic research support the belief that all Jews share a common ancestry?

The answer is yes, according to Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman, director of the Center for Kohanim in Jerusalem’s Old City.

According to Jewish tradition, Jacob was the progenitor of the Children of Israel, known later as the Jewish People. Today, after a long period of exile, Jews live on five continents and have taken on the outward appearance of their host nations.

“So,” asks Rabbi Kleiman, “if a Moroccan Jew looks nothing like his Polish counterpart, who’s to say they’re related?”

The answer to this question begins in a Toronto synagogue, where Dr. Karl Skorecki, a nephrologist at the University of Toronto and a kohen (a member of the Jewish priestly class), observed another kohen of Sephardic background being called to the Torah.

Skorecki, a Jew of European descent, considered his own fair complexion, light hair and eye colour, compared with the dark skin, hair and eyes of his fellow kohen. He then recalled the Torah passage that states that all kohanim are descendants of Aaron the high priest.

Perplexed, he decided to investigate whether, despite outward differences, kohanim have a common genetic background. Skorecki conducted a study along with Dr. Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona. Together, they sampled a group of self-identified kohamim (priests), and analyzed their Y-chromosomes.

Their hypothesis was that since kehuna (priesthood) is patrilineal, the Y-chromosome of kohamin might contain a common “marker” (genetic sequence).

Indeed, this marker was found. The study showed that both Ashkenazic and Sepharadic kohanim have a very high percentage of one particular marker: YAP-. This marker, along with another group of markers found in follow-up studies, have come to be known as the “cohen modal haplotype” (CMH) – the standard genetic signature of the Jewish priestly family.

The results of this study intrigued Rabbi Kleiman, himself a kohen and the co-director of the Center for Kohanim, which was established to promote identity and knowledge among kohanim and increase commitment to their heritage.

Now, the belief that all kohamin have common genes was supported by cutting-edge scientific research.

“But it goes even further,” says Rabbi Kleiman. “Subsequent studies that track the rate of mutations on the Y-chromosome indicated that CMH started approximately 106 generations ago. This takes us back to the end of the Egyptian exile – right around the birth of Aaron the cohen.”

Rabbi Kleiman was so impressed by the research findings that he followed the growing trail of genetic research further back, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, searching for a genetic pattern common to all Jews.

“This too, has now been found,” he says. “According to the latest findings, all Diaspora Jewish communities share the “cohen modal haplotype,” but in lower percentages than are found in Kohanim.

“This is because ‘kohen’ is a genetic definition based on father-to-son inheritance. But ‘Jewish’ is more universal, since Judaism accepts converts.”

Rabbi Kleiman notes that further research indicates that all Jews, no matter where they live today, exhibit the genetic markers shared by other people native to the Middle East region – an indication that today’s Jews originated from the ancient Hebrews in this region.

What do these findings signify for kohanim and Jews?

“It’s a sanctification of God’s name,” Rabbi Kleiman says. “It strengthens the faith of those who believe with cold hard science. It’s an indication that the line of tradition has never been lost. Ultimately, the Torah promises that just as we will be scattered to the ends of the earth, so too, we will be gathered together at the end of days. Now we can track this promise in the genetic code itself.”

Kleiman is now investigating communities in the Diaspora who claim a connection to the Jewish people.

“Some of the findings are quite positive. The Cochin Jews of India have been found to have the genetic markers of the ancient Hebrews, indicating a very low rate of intermarriage over the centuries. Ethiopian Jews, though, show markers more similar to their North African neighbours. But there’s an African tribe called the Lemba, who claim to come from the ancient Hebrews, and they do have such a genetic connection.”

“Genetics is no replacement for tradition,” Rabbi Kleiman says. “But if someone is interested in being tested for ‘Jewish-ness’ or ‘kohen-ness,’ he’s welcome to contact the Center for Kohanim and we’ll do our best to help.”

Around the Blogosphere:

What are Kohanim?

Rigged elections in Iraq?

Steve Sailer has a post concerning Scott Ritter's claims that the recent election in Iraq was rigged:

Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter claims U.S. "cooked" Iraqi election results during the two week delay between the elections and revelation of the results, dropping the Shi'ite share from actual 56% to the reported 48%:

Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.

I have no evidence on this one way or another, but the much-denounced Ritter has been right before when he was a rare voice speaking the truth that there were no WMDs in Iraq. As I speculated a couple of weeks ago, this wouldn't necessarily be immoral on our part: Sistani might have signed off on lowering his own coalition's share, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa in 1994 in a statesmanlike gesture.

Around the Blogosphere:

Scott Ritter Says US Attack on Iran Planned for June

From Bad to Worse in Iraq

US RIGGED IRAQI ELECTION

Nothing Shocking

Justice Pakistani-style

Apparently, this is justice in Pakistan:

A tribal council in Pakistan's Punjab province ordered the betrothal of a 2-year-old girl to a man 40 years older to punish her uncle for an alleged affair with the man's wife, police said.

The Kacha Chohan village council decreed that the girl must marry 42-year-old Mohammed Altaf, her uncle's cousin, when she turns 18, police said. Altaf, a farmer, divorced his 32-year-old wife over her alleged affair with his 20-year-old cousin.

Around the Blogosphere:

Religion of Arranged Marriages

So if the two-year-old consents...

No matter what anyone says, these people are a loooooooong way from civilization

Pakistani man ordered to marry off young niece as punishment for his adultery

crime against humanity

Pakistanis Order Betrothal of 2-Year-Old

Out There Justice

More Craziness From the Middle East

This is just plain weird

Pakistani Tribal Council Orders 2-Year-Old Girl to Marry 42-Year-Old Man

Oooo...brutal

Democrats and the crime vote

On the issue of crime, politicians usually go after the votes of the victims, not the Democrats:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered a probable White House candidate in 2008, joined 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry and other Democrats today in urging that felons be permitted to vote by 2006.

The provision is part of an election reform bill, the Count Every Vote Act, which includes making Election Day a federal holiday to encourage voting.

There are an estimated 4.7 million Americans barred from voting because of their felonious criminal records.

"Once again we had a federal election that demonstrates we have a long way to go," said Clinton, who suggested the 2004 presidential vote count was questionable. Kerry lost the election by 3.3 million votes and 118,000 in the pivotal state of Ohio.

Kerry denied the legislation was an attempt to discredit or tarnish President Bush's election victory.

"This has nothing to do with me," said Kerry. "It is not partisan, or shouldn't be."

Clinton and Kerry were joined in endorsing the bill only by Democrats, including Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

One criminal, one vote?

Around the Blogosphere:

The "Count Every [Liberal Block] Vote" Act

Think Dems would be for this if most criminals and slackers voted Republican?

Felons to vote, Got to love those democrats

Hillary: Count Every (Felon's) Vote

Hillary reaches out to Felons

Democrats push vote reform-- to let felons vote

Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant

More Mexican guides are being published showing illegals how they can break US laws:

Officials in a Mexican state have published their own 87-page handbook for potential migrants to the United States, adding fuel to an international debate over whether such guides encourage illegal border-crossers.

The Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant, published by the southeastern state of Yucatán, comes with an accompanying DVD in Spanish and Mayan. It tells migrants how to apply for U.S. work visas but also gives detailed safety advice for crossing illegally, including where to find water in the desert and how to avoid the most dangerous areas. The guide includes a section specifically about Arizona.

Yucatán says it is the first Mexican state to publish such a guide, and U.S. immigration-control advocates worry it will be copied by other states. They already are angry over a similar 32-page book published by the Mexican Foreign Ministry in December.

Around the Blogosphere:

Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant

Here we go again, Calling The Honorable J. D. Hayworth, do you have a comment?

Guide for the Yucatecan Migrant

Mexican Perfidity - Bush's Stupidity

In a previous post

When did it happen?!?

Family customs in Africa

Steve Sailer on some harsh family customs in Africa:

The NYT finally tells some truth about Africa: One of my recurring topics is that sub-Saharan family structures tend to be radically different from the Europeans ones that most educated Americans are familiar with (and that African-Americans have tended to be poised in between). The New York Times finally gets around to discussing African family structures because they've figured out how to give the topic a feminist slant in "AIDS and Custom Leave African Families Nothing:"

There are two reasons why 11-year-old Chikumbutso Zuze never sees his three sisters, why he seldom has a full belly, why he sleeps packed sardinelike with six cousins on the dirt floor of his aunt's thatched mud hut.

One is AIDS, which claimed his father in 2000 and his mother in 2001. The other is his father's nephew, a tall, light-complexioned man whom Chikumbutso knows only as Mr. Sululu.

It was Mr. Sululu who came to his village five years ago, after his father died, and commandeered all of the family's belongings - mattresses, chairs and, most important, the family's green Toyota pickup, an almost unimaginable luxury in this, one of the poorest nations on earth. And it was Mr. Sululu who rejected the pleas of the boy's mother, herself dying of AIDS, to leave the truck so that her children would have an inheritance to sustain them after her death.

Instead, Chikumbutso said, he left behind a battery-powered transistor radio.

"I feel very bitter about it," he said, plopped on a wooden bench in 12-by-12-foot hut rented by his maternal aunt and uncle on the outskirts of this town in the lush hills of southern Malawi. "We don't really know why they did all this. We couldn't understand."

Actually, the answer is simple: custom. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa the death of a father automatically entitles his side of the family to claim most, if not all, of the property he leaves behind, even if it leaves his survivors destitute.

In an era when AIDS is claiming about 2.3 million lives a year in sub-Saharan Africa - roughly 80,000 people last year in Malawi alone - disease and stubborn tradition have combined in a terrible synergy, robbing countless mothers and children not only of their loved ones but of everything they own...

The tradition is rooted in the notion that men are the breadwinners and the property of a married couple represents the fruits of the man's labor. Women may tend the goats and plant the corn, but throughout the region's rural communities they are still regarded as one step up from minors, unable to make an economic contribution to the household.

When the husband dies the widow is left essentially to start over, much like a young girl, presumably to search for another husband. Since the children typically remain with the mother, her losses are also theirs.

The degree to which men control household property varies from country to country and tribe to tribe.

In matrilineal tribes, children are considered descendants of the mother, and the family typically lives in the mother's village. Should the husband die, the widow typically keeps the house and land, plus items judged to be women's essentials like pots, pans, kitchen utensils and buckets, according to studies by Women and Law in Southern Africa. Her in-laws collect the more valuable belongings, like bicycles, sewing machines, vehicles and furniture.

Most tribes are patrilineal, meaning that children are considered the father's descendants and men are viewed as the owners of all of the property. Here, a new widow's situation is truly precarious. Her in-laws may allow her continued access to her home as long as she does not remarry. But if she wants to move away, she leaves bereft of all property.

Alternatively she may be forced to marry one of her husband's relatives to keep her property. Or she may simply be driven out altogether.

The NYT's feminist angle isn't terribly illuminating here since this particular case involves a man discriminating against his son in favor of his nephew. So, let me explain the reasons behind this system, since it seems bizarre to us for a man not to want his estate to go to his widow and children. We wouldn't think of providing for our nephews before our children, but in Africa that is not uncommon. Why do Africans act like that?

The U. of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending, who lived with various African tribes for 42 months, recounts that once, when he was about to set out on a dangerous journey through lion country, his worried hosts asked him, "To whom should we send your property in case you are eaten?

"Uh, to my wife, of course," Henry replied, puzzled.

"To your wife!" the tribespeople exclaimed, aghast. "Why don't you want your property to go to your family instead?"

By "family," they meant Henry's birth family rather than his marriage family.

So, why, relative to the temperate world, is there less paternal investment in tropical Africa and more investment in siblings' children? The simplest explanation is because husband's enjoy less certainty of paternity. That, not coincidentally, is the same reason there is so much AIDS -- because African husbands are less likely to do what it takes to keep their wives sexually faithful, such as working hard to provide for them. So, they get cuckolded a lot. In turn, they don't put much effort into providing for their wives' children, since the odds that they are also their own children are not all that high.

This logic all makes perfect sense, but it goes a long way toward explaining why Africa is so poor.

African-American family structures are of course midway between African and white American norms, on average. Euro-American norms were winning out until the increase in welfare payments to single mothers in the 1960s, at which point monogamous two-parent families began to collapse. Today, about two thirds of African-American babies are illegitimate, although that rate has stabilized during the more hard-headed past decade.

Around the Blogosphere:

AIDS and Custom Leave African Families Nothing

New York Times has one powerful story on the front page to be proud of, otherwise they send in the Elite Fluff Patrol

Article on AIDS and poverty in Africa

For those who doubt the importance of strong and enforceable property rights...

Patriarchy and AIDS

Racial confusion and complexity

Steve Sailer has linked to some of his 2002 UPI articles on race:

The Diva of Diversity: Halle Berry's Oscar Speech
Who Exactly Is Asian-American?
The Name Game: Inuit or Eskimo?
Denzel Washington as an Afrocentrist Hannibal of Carthage?
The Success of the Parsis Threatens Their Survival
How Racially Tolerant Are the British?
The New Understanding of Race:
Part 1: Race Is Not So Black or White
Part 2: How White Is the Average Black? How Black Is the Average White?
Part 3: What Happened to Mexico's Blacks?

Political correctness in Britain

Rod Liddle writes about political correctness in modern Britain:

There are some things that you can say and there are some things that you can’t say. Paradoxically, they are sometimes the same things.

For example, did you know that black and Asian women commit far more crime than their white counterparts? Almost one third of the total female British prison population is drawn from black and Asian communities.

Now, that’s one of the things you can’t say, or shouldn’t say, unless you’re the British National party. Indeed, you may already be twitching at your breakfast table. Those who point out that black people commit more crime than white people tend to be racists, don’t they? To highlight the apparently greater propensity of black and Asian people to commit crime is what we call “playing the race card”. It foments resentment and antagonism, true or not.

Last week an organisation called the Fawcett Society said just this, however. The Fawcett Society is not a descendant of the League of St George or an ally of Migrationwatch UK or Robert Kilroy-Silk. It is an impeccably liberal pressure group. “Our vision is of a society in which women and men are equal partners in the home, at work and in public life,” it proclaims, and its latest report is about how women from ethnic minority backgrounds are having a rough time.

They are far more likely to be put in prison, for example. Now, that is one of the things you can say. Black and Asian women make up 8% of the general population and 29% of the female prison population, ergo they are the victims of an institutionally racist society.

But you can’t say that black and Asian women commit more crime. Just as you can say that our schools are failing male pupils from a Caribbean background, but not that boys from a Caribbean background are, for whatever reason, academically not up to scratch. It would seem to me to follow that if children from most other ethnic minority backgrounds do well in school, and that girls from a Caribbean background do very well in school, then the problem might lie with some facet of Caribbean male culture, rather than with the education system.

The Fawcett Society report is a perfect model of its kind; disingenuous, simplistic and quick to draw fatuous conclusions from selective data. We are told that British women from ethnic backgrounds (BMEs, as they charmingly put it, for black and minority ethnic) are subject to “systematic discrimination” and that they are “powerless, poor and passed over” and, worse still, “almost entirely absent from the rank of decision makers in the UK”.

The report’s conclusions ignore entirely the enormous and complex differences between the various British ethnic minorities: the implication is that all women from an ethnic minority background are discriminated against by the white male hegemony — and it’s bloody well got to stop.

The truth is rather different. In terms of employment and income (and education), British people from Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Malaysian backgrounds easily outperform their white counterparts, both male and female. In terms of earnings, women from ethnic minority backgrounds (excepting those from Pakistan and Bangladesh but including, for example, African and Caribbean women) easily outperform white women. The average weekly wage of a white British woman in 2002 was £180, compared with £187 for all black and Asian women, £199 for African women and £210 for Caribbean women. These figures come from the Cabinet Office.

One year later the Downing Street policy unit concluded, in a report entitled Ethnic Minorities and the Labour Market, that “the old picture of white success and ethnic underachievement is now out of date”.

Around the Blogosphere:

What you can't say...

This will have to stop

Fightin' Words

Playing the race card

A Daniel Come To Judgement

Things You Can't Say

Immigration problems in Sweden

TangoMan at Gene Expression has an interesting post on recent events in Sweden:

We seem to be on a Sweden kick of late, so let me continue the trend with a few more links of interest, these mainly dealing with immigration problems. Here is a clip from Swedish TV about a Fox report about Malmö's immigrant problem. Here is a lengthy article entitled A Swedish Dilemma. Here is an article that gives some background on issues facing Denmark. Here is a lengthy article from Policy Review entitled Denmark, the Euro, And Fear of the Foreign and last, but certainly not least, is the famous David Goodhart essay Discomfort of Strangers that challenged liberals to rethink their attitudes to diversity and the welfare state.

Around the Blogosphere:

Unease in Scandinavia

Islam Encourages Rape And Slavery

Muslims Invade Sweden

A Swedish Dilemma

Muslim Rape Epidemic in Sweden and Norway - Authorities Look the Other Way

The Swedish dilemma, Islam, sex segregation and the detached Swedes

A Swedish Dilemma

More Euro jihad

New Political Forces

Upside down Netherlands

Look at what happened to Geert Wilders:

Parliamentary representatives Geert Wilders, who receives many dead threats from Islamic immigrants is already for months housed in prison camp Zeist. A high secure prison that was also used for the Lockerbie terrorists. Wilders has to sleep in a prison cell. Representative Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is also on the Islamists hit list, is housed on a heavily guarded Marine complex in Amsterdam.

Hirsi Ali told this today to the press. She wanted to protest how they both are treated. Representative Wilders declined to comment on the matter.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali reveals their secret locations “out of fear that others discover it. I want to live on a place of which everybody knows: here lives a threatened representative, but she is safe there. That’s how they do that in countries like Israel and the United States, but also in Italy and Spain.”

She experiences it as “very unjust and pathetic” that she has to live on secret locations. She thinks the “basic rights to be involved in politics” is under threat by the security philosophy professed by Minister Donner and the National Security Coordinator (NCBB). She says the philosophy is this: “Who is under threat should disappear”.

Around the Blogosphere:

Freedom for Moslems means slavery for us

Who is under threat should disappear

Parliamentarians in prison = security?

Anti-Terrorist Dutch Politicians in Protective Custody

Russian anti-Semitism

There are fears of growing anti-Semitism in Russia after a number of Duma members put their support behind a letter that compared Judaism to Satanism and called for all Jewish organizations in Russia to be banned:

The Russian Jewish Congress says it is seeking legal advice and plans to take the MPs to court. But the parliamentarians are unrepentant. They've withdrawn the letter for now, but Communist MP Sergei Sobko says it will be re-drafted and re-submitted.

"Do they really think that by taking us to court the whole country will suddenly stop being anti-Semitic?" Mr Sobko said. "When our voters find out that their members of parliament are being threatened like this, the situation will grow worse."

Anti-Semitism has deep roots in Russia. Under the tsar, Jewish people were banned from living in huge swathes of the Russian empire. Anti-Semitism remained a government policy in the Soviet Union.

More recently, Russia's Jewish community has been enjoying a renaissance - with new freedoms, new schools and new synagogues opening up across the country.

President Vladimir Putin himself attended the opening of a Jewish community centre in Moscow four and a half years ago.

But anti-Jewish feelings remain widespread. When one of the MPs who signed the letter appeared on TV and blamed all of Russia's problems on the Jews, more than half of the 100,000 viewers who called in agreed with him.

Around the Blogosphere:

I’ve heard this before

OMG, IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING AGAIN!

Anti-Semitic letter embroils Duma :: Chemeketa College Republicans Face Similar Scenario

..and not good news

Makes me wanna puke

gotta love those communists

Islamists stalk Christians on the Internet

Radical Muslims are using the Web to track Christians:

On a free website at a datacenter in New York, on a server operated by a company in Quebec, we have found evidence that Islamists continue to gather information in an effort to hunt down Christians who participate in online chatrooms (presumably at PalTalk).

Around the Blogosphere:

Islamists Cyber-Stalking Christians

Islamics Stalking Christians On The Web

Islamists continue to stalk Christians using websites

Iraqi jailed for rape in Britain

An Iraqi refugee has been jailed for five years for raping a woman in Britain:

Mohammed Sha Shabaz, 20, who, the court was told walked across Europe to reach England, sobbed in the dock when the sentence was announced.

Shabaz had denied rape but was convicted after a trial at Nottingham Crown Court.

The judge said the matter of his possible deportation should be left for the appropriate authorities.

Shabaz's defence counsel said he had come to the UK to find freedom - and it was ironic it was here that he was being locked up.

She said Shabaz believed he had brought great shame on his family - and at one point had intended to harm himself.

Shabaz was told by judge Mr Justice Pitchers that it was a very serious offence - and that the minimum term for rape was five years.

I wonder how many women did Mr. Shabaz rape while walking across Europe to get to England?

Jews in South Africa

Apparently things are not well for South Africa's Jews:

World Jewish Relief has been helping impoverished Jewish communities around the world for more than 70 years.

Jews in places as diverse as Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine have all received aid from the charity, which was set up in 1933.

But South Africa was one place that WJR had not previously been involved with.

There have been complaints that Jews - like many other whites in South Africa - are being discriminated against in the job market as part of a nationwide government strategy to reverse the trends set by the racist apartheid era.

Louise delivered aid to fellow Jews who were living in economic and social hardship.

World Jewish Relief says: "The government has set a target for all businesses to accurately reflect the national demography in terms of the racial background of staff in their workplace by 2006.

"This means that in a year's time, 80 per staff of staff must be black and 20 per cent white, with huge fines and other penalties for companies who fail to meet the criteria.

"The current trend among skilled labour is in exactly the opposite proportion, which means that Jews are being laid off on a massive scale and those currently out of work are virtually unemployable."

Just another indicator that South Africa is probably not going to survive as a multiracial democracy where people are judged solely by their abilities.

Summers and Harvard

What Summers said at Harvard:

The president of Harvard included Jews as well as women in his controversial hypothesis about under-representation in certain disciplines.

Lawrence Summers, who is Jewish, has been under fire for a month for comments suggesting that women are under-represented in the sciences because “innate aptitude” differences in certain disciplines, and not just because of socialization and discrimination.

When Summers released his full remarks on Thursday it turned out he had ideas about other groups as well, stating that Catholics are under-represented in investment banking, whites are under-represented in basketball and “Jews are very substantially under-represented in farming and agriculture.”

I wonder if any Catholics, whites or Jews complained that they felt like they were going to be sick the way Nancy Hopkins did.

Around the Blogosphere:

Harvard vs. Columbia

Harvard President releases transcript of controversial remarks

Harvard's Prexy-provacateur

What Liberal Academy?

Why Do Women (Tend To) Suck at Super Math?

Furor Lingers as Harvard Chief Gives Details of Talk on Women

Sometimes, you should just be quiet…

Sex, Feminism, and Academia

Europe's leftist elites

Martin Peretz sums up the problems faced by modern Europe:

Europe is also making the disenchanting journey from social democracy, but via a different route. Its elites had not foreseen that a virtually unchecked Muslim immigration might hijack the welfare state and poison the postwar culture of relative tolerance that supported its politics. To the contrary, Europe's leftist elites lulled the electorates into a false feeling of security that the new arrivals were simply doing the work that unprecedented low European birth rates were leaving undone. No social or cultural costs were to be incurred. Transaction closed. Well, it was not quite so simple. And, while the workforce still needs more workers, the economies of Europe have been dragged down by social guarantees to large families who do not always have a wage-earner in the house. So, even in the morally self-satisfied Scandinavian and Low Countries, the assuring left-wing bromides are no longer believed.

Unfortunately, the Europeans seem to be a little too late realizing what a diaster Islamic immigration has been for their continent.

Around the Blogosphere:

The Norwegian military reports on Theo Van Gogh: The Al-Qaeda connection

The Islamic Iceberg

In Europe, new force for recruiting radicals

I Have a Bad Feeling About This, Captain Picard

Violence against Jews in Britain

Anti-Semitic violence is apparently on the increase in Britain:

The Jewish community faces a growing threat on British streets, a report claimed this week, with the number of abusive and violent attacks on Jews reaching an all-time high.

The Community Security Trust (CST), which advises synagogues and other Jewish organisations, revealed the number of anti-Semitic incidents had rocketed by almost 50 per cent to 532 across the UK the highest total since records began in 1984 with 90 incidents in Barnet.

Last year, 83 violent assaults took place in the UK, compared with 54 in 2003, including four incidents that were so ferocious they almost claimed the victims' lives.

Among the damage and desecration of Jewish buildings, four fires were started in a community centre belonging to Aish UK a Jewish educational charity in Hendon Way, Hendon, in June.

The blaze was started in two Torah scrolls, which had been torn apart, and damage was estimated at £250,000.

Anti-Semitic threats also increased three-fold to 93, mainly as a result of one man, Riaz Mohammed Burahee, who was convicted of making 218 abusive phone calls to synagogues in Barnet and across London. March, June, April and September saw four out of five of the highest monthly totals recorded by the CST.

Michael Whine, director of communications for the CST, said: "This increase is extremely alarming. The transfer of tensions in the Middle East to the streets of Britain has resulted in an unprecedented level of anti-Semitic incidents."

The CST defines an anti-Semitic incident as any malicious act aimed at the Jewish community or Jewish individuals as Jews.

Around the Blogosphere:

How the British left is in bed with radical Islamists

Anti-Semitism in Britain: blame the BBC!

British Anti Semitism Watch

British anti-semitism

RISING ANTI-SEMITISM IN UK BLAMED ON MEDIA

Why the fuss?

Terrorists, immigration and political asylum

Andrew C. McCarthy writes about how terrorists are exploiting weaknesses in our immigration policies:

After settling in Houston, Texas, upon first arriving in the United States on September 9, 1991, Ahmed Ajaj filed a petition for political asylum, claiming that the Israeli government had imprisoned and tortured him in retaliation for his peaceful opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He happily went through the screening process and was permitted to remain at liberty, but predictably failed to show up for the immigration hearing on his asylum claim. Instead, he made some necessary militant contacts and then left the country in April 1992 having arranged to attend a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

On September 1, 1992, he returned to the United States in the company of one of his camp-mates, Ramsey Yousef, aboard a flight from Pakistan. Ajaj was detained upon being found in possession of a terror kit, which included bomb making manuals and instructions on the creation of false identity documents. An INS inspector found Ajaj's fabricated Swedish passport suspicious, directed that he be subjected to an additional search, during which the terror kit was found and Ajaj was detained.

Naturally, Ajaj then produced his Jordanian passport and claimed political asylum — or, rather, reinstated his already filed asylum petition from 1991. He later pled guilty to passport fraud, was sentenced to a whopping six months in prison. During the course of those criminal proceedings, the court ordered Ajaj's kit to be returned to him (the thought being that he had a First Amendment right to possess these materials!), and some of them (but not all) were actually turned over to his attorneys. From prison, through intermediaries, Ajaj tried frantically to get those materials into Yousef's hands.

That's because Yousef was free and clear inside the U.S. Though he too had been challenged when he stepped off the plane on September 1, Yousef had immediately and shrewdly claimed...political asylum — based on a bogus Iraqi passport, which was the predicate for a frivolous contention that he feared being tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime. Due to the easy availability of this asylum claim under U.S. law, Yousef was fingerprinted, photographed, and released into the United States in exchange for his promise to show up for an immigration hearing to consider his petition.

Yousef, of course, did not show up for his asylum hearing. He had told those oh-so-rigorous screeners that he'd be living in Texas. But they never checked, and he, instead, hunkered down in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he spent the ensuing months plotting a massive terrorist attack. His cell included other aliens, including one whose authority to be in the United States (working in the well-known farming belt of Brooklyn, New York) was based on participation in the Immigration Service's Agricultural Worker Program.

On February 26, 1993, the cell led by Yousef detonated a bomb in the basement parking lot of the World Trade Center, killing six people (including a pregnant woman), injuring over 1,000, causing nearly a billion dollars in damage, and declaring militant Islam's war against the United States.

And yet, in spite of all this, Bush still wants to make it easier for people to migrate to the United States.

Around the Blogosphere:

What is going on at the WSJ op-ed page?

The coming of Eurabia

Diana West reports on the emergence of Eurabia:

Few of us have the long-view vision to make sense of the sweep of history as it smokes past our eyes; Bat Ye'or, as a historian of Islam, and, in particular, the dhimmi (the non-Muslim peoples who live as second-class citizens under Islamic rule), has precisely the laser-lens required. She also has the fortitude of the historian/gumshoe to wade through the stacks of articles, memoranda and conference declarations generated by something called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD).

Created 30-odd years ago at the instigation of France and the Arab League, the practically unknown EAD has provided structural and theoretical underpinnings to a Euro-Arab axis " Eurabia. These have fostered the political, economic and cultural bonds between Europe and the Arab world that Bat Ye'or maintains were designed to create "a global alternative to American power."

How? Very basically " and this is detailed in the book " by shepherding a meeting of Euro-Arab minds, first and foremost, on the Arab League war on Israel. This would come about in exchange for freely flowing Arab oil into Europe, which would come about in exchange for freely flowing Muslim immigration into Europe, which would come about in exchange for research and development and labor and education and tourism and cultural ties between the Europe and the Arab world... which would all come about with an increasing independence of, and, indeed, hostility toward America.

This goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of Old Europe " the heart of Eurabia " since September 11. It also leaves a question hanging when the New York Times pegs Muslim immigration into Europe to a simple "postwar labor shortage": Is that really all the news that's fit to print?

Trying to assess the rise of the anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang, which represents almost a quarter of the Belgian electorate today, the New York Times reporter seems perplexed. This is how I think he thinks: To be anti-immigration is to be, as he puts it, "far right" or "extreme right." And to be "far right" or "extreme right" is to be very, very bad. Weren't Nazis both far and extreme right " or is that the Republican Party? Whatever.

He knows Islam is a religion, although he doesn't seem to know it is also a political system. And to be prejudiced against religiosity (but not Christianity or Zionism) is very, very bad also. So, Mr. Smith writes: "Many people" " himself, for instance?" " "worry that the appeal of anti-Islamic politics will continue to spread as the European Muslim population grows." No mention, of course, that to be "anti-Islamic politics" is to be anti-sharia law, which sounds perfectly Jeffersonian to me.

Around the Blogosphere:

Frontline on Eurabia

An evening with Bat Ye'or

Syria a la Milius

Iraq war and terrorism

The Iraq war is actually increasing terrorism:

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

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The Left Coaster nails the problem

War in Iraq hurting us in GWOT

Dutch Christian concerned about Islam

The editor of a Dutch Christian newspaper is very anxious about the rising power of Islam:

Wim Kranendonk is editor of the Reformatorisch Dagblad (Reformed Daily), which is read by about 60,000 Dutch families. The veteran journalist says the concern about the influx of Muslims started in the 1970s when his country was prosperous and needed to hire cheap labor from North Africa. Then things changed, he explains.

"At the end of the 1970s, the economic situation was bad, and there was not so much work," Kranendonk recalls. Normal citizens and many elected officials, he says, then requested that the government curtail the immigration of Muslims, to no avail. "They didn't stop it," he says, "because of the left organizations in our society."

And because of the high birth rate among Muslim families in the Netherlands, coupled with the immigration rate, he says there are now Dutch towns populated entirely by Muslims. "These people have a high rate of births, so they have big families," he observes. "And then you see in towns where there are only people from abroad. Now we have [about] 600,000 Islamic people in the Netherlands."

According to the newspaper editor, the growing Islamic influence has led to the intolerance of critics, including the brutal murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh last fall.

"I was not a friend of Theo Van Gogh. He was cursing the Lord," Kranendonk says. "But it is an example of how Muslim people don't accept the freedom in the society."

Consequently, he says he is concerned about what the future holds for Holland and the rest of Western Europe. "I am anxious about what [the situation with the Muslim population] will be after another ten or fifteen years," he says.

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I Love it When I'm Right

Dragon's teeth

POST-COLONIAL FUN

A General Message to all Leftists