Europe Exhausting Herself Running From Energy Boogeymen

Cross-posted from Al Fin Energy


Europe's high energy costs are driving increasing numbers of industries and large employers overseas. Most of Europe's high energy costs are caused by Europe's reflexive flight from inexpensive energy of the hydrocarbon and nuclear varieties.

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.” _NewYorkTimes

Carbon dioxide is boogeyman #1 for the European greens who control much of the continent's energy policy. But Europe's ineffectual attempts to reduce carbon emissions amount to suicidal self-flagellation and self-strangulation. It is all grand theatre, with the end result being self righteous self-immolation.

Boogeyman #2 is nuclear power. Germany is the poster boy of sacrificial self-castration in this regard.

The changes have been rapid. Nuclear power supplies 17 percent of the country’s energy needs, down from 23, while renewables have climbed from 20 to 25 percent in just months.

...Despite technological advances, wind, solar, hydro and other green energy sources still remain an unprofitable investment in a fair market. The way to encourage their exploitation is through a set of feed-in tariffs, a policy where energy companies are forced to buy electricity from green generators at a price set by the government (which is usually legislated to remain the same for two decades).

The German government has passed the cost of the payment from the energy companies to the consumer... This week, energy companies announced that the charge would go up by 47 percent for next year. The average Germany household will now pay €250 a year to sponsor green energy producers, four times more than in 2009. _RT

But green energy is expensive and unreliable. Which means that big industries whose profit margins depend upon the use of inexpensive energy, must move overseas -- and take their good paying jobs with them.

On Dec. 19, Voestalpine, an Austrian maker of high-quality steel for the auto industry, announced that it would build a plant in North America that would employ natural gas to reduce iron ore to a kind of raw iron that would then be used in the company's European blast furnaces.

...Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.” _NYT

Europeans have unwittingly handed their futures over to saboteurs in high places. Green government officials and their advisors are pushing European economies over a cliff, for the sake of faux environmental fear mongering. They are running from the energy boogeymen, and in the process are destroying the economic futures of their people.

Europeans are no longer living in a democracy, but are being controlled by a non-representative quasi-feudal system known as the European Union, based in Brussels. And the EU is essentially in thrall to the faux environmental power interests.

With such suicidal leadership, it is no wonder that demographic projections show most European populations rapidly withering away.

The future of Europe rests in the hands of her people, although Europeans have not been noted historically for understanding that fact -- except for the popular uprisings against communist governments in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

And there is very little time.

Europe is Facing a Moment of Truth Largely Unawares

Europe is growing older, but not wiser. Debt is piling on top of debt, unemployment is rising, and workforces are ageing rapidly.

Pension and other welfare benefits, promised long ago when the workforce was expanding quickly, are at the heart of Europe’s current fiscal convulsions, which are perhaps a harbinger of worse to come. In David Canning’s view, the 2008 crash and its aftermath have merely moved up a long-inevitable implosion by 10 to 15 years. European nations “had unrealistic systems that were eventually going to cause a crisis,” he told me. _Megan McArdle

Low birthrates and a rapidly ageing workforce are not compatible with the European welfare state. There are not enough bailouts in the world to compensate for such a self-made decline.

In the European Union, how many nations will fall into irretrievable debt before Mario Draghi or Angela Merkel suggest that Europe’s 20th-century entitlement systems are incompatible with 21st-century demographics? And how many more G-8 and G-20 summits will pass without mention that two people turn age 60 every second of every minute – with an obvious impact on core questions of fiscal sustainability unless profound social and economic changes put in place that align with our new century’s demographic realities? _Fiscal Times

European unemployment is rising for a number of reasons, among them high taxes, burdensome EU regulations, and a policy of energy starvation from the top down.

Unemployment in the 17-country eurozone hit a record high of 11.6 percent in September, official figures showed Wednesday, a sign the economy is deteriorating as governments struggle to get a grip on their three-year debt crisis. _MiamiHerald

The European middle class is under assault, according to some sources. Certainly the old regime of guaranteed employment and early retirement is under assault by the harsh realities of the global economy, as exacerbated by European demographic decline.

Moving into this turbulent dynamic, to fill the demographic gap which reluctant European women are creating, are large numbers of immigrants from Africa and Asia. Many of these immigrants are untrained, uneducated, do not speak European languages, and are culturally unable and unwilling to assimilate.

One possible demographic scenario for the future of Europe, would be the significant replacement of native European populations with less advanced populations from the outside. These abundant newcomers may be antagonistic to an ageing Europe's cultural norms.

The video above presents a broad outline of one possible scenario of demographic change. As you will see if you view it completely, the video approaches the problem from the viewpoint of one religion being displaced by another. But the concept also applies to cultural and civilisational replacement, via demographic change.

Europe faces a moment of truth, largely unawares. Her people are being told everything else except what they need to know to preserve themselves, their families, and their cultures.

The end result may not be pretty.

Germany Screws the Energy Pooch Bigtime

German Consumers Pay Big Price for Government's Energy Mistakes




Germany is attempting the impossible: It is attempting to replace safe and reliable nuclear power with exorbitantly expensive intermittent unreliable energy sources such as big wind and big solar. German consumers of electric power are already paying the price of this ill-advised policy of quasi energy suicide.

Oddly for a so-called green government, the Germans are rapidly building up their coal generation capacity, in an effort to avert total energy disaster from the intermittent unreliables.

Germany’s foray into renewables has not converted most of its neighbors and a number of them are planning to construct nuclear power plants of their own, just as Germany is getting rid of hers. _Germans Pay the Price

Of course most intelligent leaders would not follow Germany's path to energy suicide. It is easy to understand what happens to industrial economies when their power grids can no longer supply high quality, reliable electric power: They lose their industries to other countries that are still capable of supplying industrial quality power.

Despite technological advances, wind, solar, hydro and other green energy sources still remain an unprofitable investment in a fair market. The way to encourage their exploitation is through a set of feed-in tariffs, a policy where energy companies are forced to buy electricity from green generators at a price set by the government (which is usually legislated to remain the same for two decades).

The German government has passed the cost of the payment from the energy companies to the consumer. Every German on the grid pays something called Umlage, a special surcharge for supporting green fuels that covers all the green energy subsidies, however much energy is produced.

_RT

Germany is one of the worst conceivable places to build solar power infrastructure. Constantly cloudy, at relatively high latitude -- with almost no useful sun over large parts of the year.

Wind is even worse, with an erratic unpredictability that is said to be more threatening to power grids than throwing live hand grenades into grid control centres.

Industries are already leaving Germany, and more will soon follow. The loss of energy and jobs will damage the German economy almost as much as the exploding cost of new infrastructure required to deal with the intermittent unreliables. And the cost -- THE COST!!! Hundreds of thousands of lower class workers in Germany already cannot afford to pay their skyrocketing power bills. That number will only grow larger.

In an effort to stay in power just a few years longer, Germany's leadership has made one of the worst decisions that a modern government can make.

Germany was unlikely to be destroyed by outsiders, in the absence of another provocateur such as Hitler. But in this case, it is the Germans who are doing it to themselves.

With Germany as the pivot point for the European power grid and the European economy, what does this tell you about the future of Europe?

h/t The GWPF

More:

Germany faces power blackouts this winter

More energy price explosions confronting German rate payers

One may wonder, "what is the point of all this, if global warming stopped 15 years ago?"

Political left crucifies itself on a great green cross

Big Green and the Coming Collapse of Europe

Taken from a previously published article on Al Fin Energy blog

Germany is proceeding along a path that puts it at greater and greater risk of potentially catastrophic power blackouts. Recent changes to German energy infrastructure introduce increasingly dangerous levels of instability which become more and more difficult for power grid managers to control. And the German grid is the power hub of Europe -- if it fails, Europe's grid fails.

Germany is phasing out its nuclear power plants and attempting to replace its infrastructure of baseload power generation with an infrastructure of intermittent unreliable energy sources -- big wind and big solar installations. Germany publicly hopes to provide as much as 50% of its electrical power from wind and solar within the next few decades.

Unfortunately, large power grids grow unstable when big wind and big solar -- intermittent unreliables -- attempt to provide more than 20% of overall power. Going far beyond that level of dependency on intermittent unreliables would place the German gird -- and thus the European grid -- in an untenable position.

More information on the danger of relying on intermittent energy sources
A look at Denmark's unfortunate experience with wind energy (PDF)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is unrepentant -- and almost boastful -- over her energy plan which commits Germany to invest at least $25 billion to upgrade its power grid.

The high cost of upgrades to the power grid could not come at a worse time for Germany or Europe, already stressed by a banking crisis. But the $25 billion or $30 billion needed to improve the grid systems is only the barest down payment toward the ultimate costs of Merkel's suicidal energy decisions.

Spain was once caught up in the green fantasy of the intermittent unreliables, just like Merkel's Germany. But Spain was forced to admit that it could not afford the green fantasy any longer. Eventually, Germany will be forced to come to the same conclusion. The only question is the price that the German people will have to pay for the stubborn stupidity of its leaders.

Greens are reluctant to admit the problems which intermittent unreliables pose for grid stability, particularly the higher the levels of penetration of the intermittent unreliable sources. But the truth will come out in the most painful ways, and many people will remember who has led them to suffer unnecessarily.

Europe is undergoing a demographic implosion, which is putting increasing -- although still subtle -- pressures on the ability of European nations to maintain technological infrastructures and to pay back large debts. If Europe goes through with this suicidal abandonment of reliable power sources in favour of the intermittent unreliables -- and goes even more deeply in debt in the process -- future generations of Europeans will pay the the price.

International Capital Seeks Safe Haven

Russia's capital flight is intensifying under a threatened international economic crisis and collapse of the global oil & gas price bubble

Russia, which relies on oil and gas exports for half of its budget revenue and Europe as a market for more than 50 percent of its exports, may suffer a worse recession than in 2009 if energy prices plunge, according to Dmitriev.

..."There is large-scale capital flight from Russia, despite the economic recovery," Dmitriev said. "And this capital is flying into the epicenter of the global financial crisis, which is in Europe. That is actually the same as creating a food supply in the center of an atomic explosion." _SFGate

China's rich elites are unnerved by the twin political and economic situations popping up in the middle kingdom, and are looking for a safe place to stash their cash and valuables.

The two China crises are entwined, although the China bubble had been looking for an excuse to deflate for a few years.

The Eurozone is beginning to feel the stress of the building chaos and fiscal crises in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. An underswell of capital flight is starting to build, even in Europe.

The world is watching the US for any sign that the former global economic bulwark is willing to turn away from its mindless and wasteful spending spree of the last few years that has occurred for no better reason than support for political cronies and a suicidal green energy starvation.

If November elections in the US provide reassurance of a long needed change in US fiscal and monetary policies, global markets may be reassured before the bottom completely erodes.

Europe's Trifecta of Doom: Debt, Demographic Decline, Energy Suicide

The ongoing economic crisis in Europe may have begun in Greece. But it will not end there. Eurozone unemployment is approaching a 15 year high, and the people of Spain appear eager to emulate the example of Greece.

None of the economic bandaids being offered are up to the job which seems to demand radical surgery. Europeans increasingly choose to riot, demanding that an economic faerie god mother grant them their entitlements, rather than to face the issues soberly. If governments give in to the rioters, the decline will only occur more quickly.

The underlying issues of energy suicide and demographic decline are not being addressed. If those problems are not solved, there is ultimately nothing that can be done to save the Eurozone or most individual Euro economies.

The misguided energy policies of the German government are representative of much that is wrong with Europe. Yes, European executives and functionaries will try to put the best face on things, but if manufacturers cannot operate due to designed high energy costs, and unemployment continues to skyrocket, a smiling face only reveals a refusal to do what must be done to prevent disaster.

And with low birthrates across Europe -- particularly southern and eastern Europe -- each generation of Europeans is smaller than the previous one, with less human capital and lower skill levels. Fighting back against the decline becomes more difficult as the numbers and skills levels decline.

Europe is not alone in its inability to save itself from slow motion collapse. Japan's debt and demographic problems are just as bad as those of southern and eastern Europe. The US under Obama has plunged into debt and energy suicide at a record rate. China is suffering from an increasingly dysfunctional economic infrastructure that threatens to squander all of its hard-won gains of the previous two decades.

Europe's doom is all the more poignant for having been entirely self-designed and well-intentioned. The lefty-Luddite green dieoff.orgy memosphere pervading European governments, universities, and populations, was meant to help save the Earth from too many people and too much consumption. If the end result of such memes was a demographic decline of ethnic Europeans and the intentional starvation of Europe's industries and economies of reliable and affordable energy, who could have known?

The social democracies of Europe and the public unions were meant to guarantee lifelong prosperity and health to Europe's people. If the end result of such good intentions was a hardening sense of dependency and entitlement, and a softening of the people's ability to adjust to adversity or threat, who could have known?

Europe is not a monolithic entity, of course. Parts of Europe may fall to the trifecta, while other parts may survive.

And certainly Europe is not the entirety of the civilised world. It is possible that other parts of the civilised world will learn the lessons of Europe, and pay closer attention to the need for abundant and affordable energy, fiscal discipline, economic opportunity, rule of law, and demographic replacement at equivalent levels of human capital.

Europe is changing quickly, particularly the cities of Europe. Eventually, the only way to know what Europe was once like in times of peace and prosperity, will be to take a virtual reality tour.

Angela Merkel: "I Picked the Wrong Century to Give Up On Nuclear Energy!"

German abandonment of nuclear energy in response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan could cost 1.7 trillion euros ($2.15 trillion) by 2030 if renewables replace much of the power, Michael Suess told Reuters Tuesday. That amounts to about two thirds of Germany’s 2011 GDP. If natural gas plants replaced much of the lost electrical generation, he said the estimate would be considerably lower, at 1.4 billion euros.

German legislators voted in May to eventually decommission all 17 of the Siemens-built reactors that once provided nearly a quarter of the country’s electricity. In response, Siemens announced in September that it would withdraw from the nuclear power industry. At the consumer level, the German Energy Agency (Dena) recently estimated the nuclear withdrawld could hike electric bills 20 percent by 2020. _NuclearStreet

Among the other countries opting out of nuclear power are Belgium, Switzerland, and Mexico. The costs of these plans vary _IEEE Spectrum Lite

All of this is happening at a time when the World Bank is warning of a potential global economic doomsday, originating in Europe. As the economies of Europe are hit harder, in succession, Merkel is likely to rue her rash choice.

Here is the punchline: While the Siemens estimate of the transition costs to the German economy are higher than what greens and sycophants have been telling the German government, the estimate of over a $2 trillion penalty paid by Germany is almost certainly too low. Perhaps by an order of magnitude or larger. Why? Because Siemens is only looking at the capital costs involved in converting to a nominal equivalent power capacity in renewables. It is not looking at the details where the devil resides, details which largely derive from the destructive intermittency and unreliability of wind and solar, and the much shorter lifetimes of the resource-intensive machinery of big wind and big solar..

After Fukushima, the German government jumped away from nuclear like a hysterical girl jumping from a spider or a mouse -- reflexively, and without thinking it through. If the Germans persist in pursuing this perverse green policy, the butcher's bill will be well into the $trillions and tens of $trillions, over the years. And Merkel's will be a name damned by future generations of Germans -- not the forgotten names of the greens who drove the woman to promote such a fateful choice.

Taken from a previously published post on Al Fin Energy

France, Germany, UK Agree: Multiculturalism Has Failed

France's Sarkozy declared, just yesterday, that multiculturalism has failed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

"My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," he said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups. _AFP

The UK's Cameron had asserted just this past Saturday, that multiculturalism is a failure:

Prime Minister David Cameron, in a speech attended by world leaders, on Saturday criticized his country’s longstanding policy of multiculturalism, saying it was an outright failure and partly to blame for fostering Islamist extremism. He said the U.K. needs a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to extremism. "If we are to defeat this threat, I believe it's time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past," he told an international conference in Munich. _MSNBC

Only this past October, Germany's Angela Merkel stated outright that multiculturalism had utterly failed:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this weekend that the "multikulti" concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany. _CSM_More_

For many years, lonely and persecuted writers, politicians, and speakers have attempted to convey this message -- this utter failure of multiculturalism and European self-abnegation -- to no avail. Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were assassinated for speaking this truth. Geert Wilders has been threatened with death by Muslim hate groups, and is being persecuted by his own government and by the UK Labour government which preceded Cameron's.

Europe has long been a weak-kneed patsy for an increasingly militant third world presence. In the face of decreasing birth rates among Europeans, both legal and illegal third world immigrants have flooded European schools and birthing wards with the coming waves of another Muslim youth bulge -- this time a threat from within.

Prisons of Europe are beginning to fill with newcomers and children of newcomers, as the native children of Europe find themselves in the minority on schoolgrounds and on the streets. Young girls of Europe are increasingly under threat from rape gangs and worse. Young native boys are beaten by gleeful immigrant gangs who laugh their victory over the natives -- a fading demographic.

Multiculturalism has failed? Of course it has bloody well failed, you pathetic political panderers and fools. For some of your countries it is already too late for anything meaningful to be done, even if your men had it in them to stand up. Sadly, your police forces themselves have been so overrun and subdued by multiculturalists, that any European with the temerity to stand up for himself or his family against outsider violence, would be treated worse by the police than the offenders themselves.

The demographic collapse of Europe was necessary in order to leave the continent helpless to assault from without, and increasingly from within. Now there is little that most European countries can do to reverse the decay and eventual overthrow.

Europe as Lebanon? Europe as Eurabia? Islam is a religion of fertility as it is a religion of hatred and violence. If Islam is involved in the particular multiculturalism that has invaded your country, then you will have a very difficult time coping -- particularly if your own birthrates are failing.

Cameron, Sarkozy, and Merkel can make all the noises against multiculturalism they wish. Unless they are willing to back those words with meaningful action -- and to be willing to go against the political correctness of their own decaying societies -- the effort will be too feeble, and ultimately futile.

Islamic Fertility: Far from Fading

More 4 Feb 2011: Dennis Mangan looks at this issue and receives many comments, including a thought-provoking comment from "Albert" who claims to be a US government diplomatic employee in Europe. Most of Dennis' commenters feel that the Pew numbers were understated -- not including illegal immigrants who may in some countries be as large in number as legal declared immigrants. Another valid point made is that although problems with crime and hostility are significant due to the rapid expansion if Muslim immigrants, perhaps a greater problem being ignored -- in terms of crime -- is legal and illegal immigration into Europe from Subsaharan Africa, whether Muslim or not.

“The Future of the Global Muslim Population”, produced by the Pew Research Centre, a non-profit outfit based in Washington, DC, reckons Muslim numbers will soar....by 2030....from 23.4% to 26.4% of the global total. _Economist

Since most of the Muslims in Europe and Canada will be concentrated into large cities such as London, Paris, Toronto, Hamburg etc., their influence will be greater on the nation at large. Muslims are a particularly vocal and visible population, exerting an influence on civil and political affairs far out of proportion to their actual numbers or percentage of population.

THE number of Muslims in Australia will grow four times more quickly than non-Muslims over the next 20 years as the continued instability in developing Islamic countries in Southeast Asia drives migrants and refugees to these shores.

A major new study by the US-based Pew Research Centre has forecast a global surge in the Muslim population, with Australia and New Zealand among the nations expected to see the biggest rises.

In Australia, the Muslim community will grow from about 399,000 to 714,000 by 2030, an increase of 80 per cent.

In that time the non-Muslim population will increase by about 18 per cent.

This trend is even more dramatic in New Zealand, where there will be a 150 per cent rise in residents who adhere to Islam. _TheAustralian

Australia and New Zealand are nations with relatively low populations. Both nations are beginning to see adverse affects from the growing numbers of newcomers bringing cultures which can clash badly with the majority -- sometimes violently. Schools, city streets, and prisons from Europe to Canada to Oceania will feel the growing swell of hostility and violence.

... in 2030 Britain will have a Muslim population of 5.5 million people, roughly 8.2 per cent of the total population.

That’s hardly Eurabia, I hear some saying. But that figure will not be spread evenly across the UK. By that stage Oldham, Bradford, Blackburn and Burnley, and possibly Birmingham, may well be Muslim-majority towns. What will race relations be like in those places, I wonder? _Telegraph

As Muslim populations concentrate in particular towns, the ability of individual Muslims within these zones of control to assimilate to the host country will be lost. Instead, growing ghettos of tribal and religious intolerance will be imported from the old countries, and there will be no safety for anyone who thinks or acts outside the narrow rules of the religious tribe.

Think in terms of multiple "no-go zones" run by local Taliban, Hamas, or Hizbollah equivalent gangs. Think of Beirut, Gaza, Baghdad, and the other perpetual hot spots of violence fueled by the endemic violence and intolerance of Islamic culture.

As poor migrants start families in Spain and Italy, numbers there will rocket; in France and Germany, where some Muslims are middle-class, rises will be more modest—though from a higher base. Russia’s Muslims will increase to 14.4% or 18.6m, up from 11.7% now (partly because non-Muslims are declining). The report takes a cautious baseline of 2.6m American Muslims in 2010, but predicts the number will surge by 2030 to 6.2m, or 1.7% of the population—about the same size as Jews or Episcopalians. In Canada the Muslim share will surge from 2.8% to 6.6%.

How will liberal democracies accommodate such variety? The clarity of a written constitution may give America an advantage over many European countries, where unwritten custom has more sway. Jonathan Laurence, an Islam-watcher and professor at Boston College, thinks Europe could rise to the challenge, but failure is also easy to imagine. _Economist

It is best not to think of Europe as a monolithic entity in this case. Clearly, some nations will fall to the human tide of tribalist primitivism, and some nations will assert their right of self-determination. It will depend upon the toughness of the indigenous Europeans within each country.

Some cities in France, Sweden, and the Netherlands are as good as overrun. As noted earlier, Muslims do not need to be in the majority to dominate over more passive, less assertive Europeans. They merely need to be positioned to intimidate a weak government -- first in cities and provinces, then national capitals, then the nation at large.

The borders of Islam are bloody around the world, from Africa to Asia and increasingly inside Europe itself. The hostile and intolerant folkways of Islam are entirely portable, capable of establishing themselves inside entirely foreign cultures -- creating completely new bloody borders at every turn.

If Pakistanis, Egyptians, Yemenis, Iraqis, etc. cannot maintain order within their own boundaries, how can one expect much weaker and more tolerant European governments to deal with these primitive violent tribal cultures?

Thilo Sarrazin Still Shaking the Continent: 1.2 Million and Counting!

German banker and politician Thilo Sarrazin's book about German immigration policy continues to shake Europe to its foundations. An early offensive by German politicians against Sarrazin failed to stop Sarrazin or shut down book sales. The book continues near the top of best-seller lists in Europe, after 1.2 million books sold and counting . . . It looks as if Sarrazin has triggered a debate which politically correct authorities are unable to shut down.

Sarrazin’s book is no tract. It is a subtle, well-documented, almost literary argument about the failings of the German welfare state by a top-rank labour economist. Inevitably, though, it is also an attack on the political correctness that has constrained German political discourse for decades. Half a century ago Germany’s citizens — with good reason — came to a consensus that they could not soon afford another freewheeling Teutonic discussion on the matter of, let’s say, Lebensraum.

Today, though, this limited scope for public discussion stymies the tiniest steps to fix problems that have been obvious in other countries for decades. You cannot say that Germany’s asylum policy draws idlers as well as refugees. You cannot say, as Sarrazin discovered during his time as a ‘finance senator’ in Berlin a few years ago, that welfare payments are more than sufficient to feed and shelter all but the most extravagant poor person, and ought to be reduced. Sarrazin apparently came to believe his country was dying of its etiquette, and spoke up. ‘I don’t have to respect a person who lives off the state while expressing contempt for it,’ he said in 2009, ‘who doesn’t plan for the education of his children in a rational way, and is constantly producing new little headscarf girls.’

Rough stuff, but really there is little in Deutschland schafft sich ab that has not been said at a respectable free-market think tank some time in the last quarter-century. Two things, though, are new about this book. First, Sarrazin is more comprehensive than his predecessors. Much like the German constitution, the German welfare state is elaborate and complicated by design. So this book is an interconnected discussion, at a very high level of sophistication, of German anti-poverty policy (which has promoted the growth of an underclass), the globalised labour market, the modern education system, the (small) successes and (big) failures of the Turkish guest-worker programme, and the predicament of Germany’s low birthrate.

Second, Sarrazin is not a conservative but a Social Democrat who believes in ‘emancipation through education, organisation and dogged, persistent efforts at reform’. Sarrazin considers the welfare state a mismanaged triumph, not, like most Anglo-Saxon conservatives, a sentimental mistake. Where a conservative would quote De Maistre, he quotes the Indian Nobel Prize-winner and theorist of justice Amartya Sen. Mr Sarrazin does occasionally say hurtful things (in a discussion of my own writing on Muslim immigration to Europe, for instance, he wrongly describes me as British), but never with any glee. This is the work of a social scientist, who happily deploys page after page of statistics and tables that assume you know the difference between Hartz IV and Arbeitslosengeld II unemployment payments, or between Kindergeld and Elterngeld.

‘Poverty’, Sarrazin shows, is a powerful tool of governmental mobilisation even though it does not, strictly speaking, exist. Today’s ‘poverty line’ measures inequality, not want. It is set at 60 per cent of average income — higher than the German average income in the 1970s. If everyone in Germany saw his income quadruple tomorrow, the poverty rate would not budge. And the payments to the poor create incentives for childbearing and against work. _More at Spectator

Sarrazin commits the sin of urging Germany's wealthier and more intelligent citizens to have more children. Foolhardy man! By giving such common sense advice, he offends not only the dieoff.org leftists, but the feminists as well. It's a wonder the man is still walking around in public on two legs.

Sarrazin also offends the growing armies of "diversity opportunists" -- bureaucrats and consultants intent on hamstringing entire societies with their own demented handicapping philosophy of impoverished monoculturalism (which they falsely call "multiculturalism").

So we either “celebrate” diversity, or get put out of business; but if something has to be enforced by law, then it can’t really be called a celebration as such. Is it any wonder people across Europe are rejecting “diversity”, if it comes at the cost of freedom, and requires a standing army of Gutmenschen to govern our lives? And they are rejecting it. As Caldwell writes: “A decade or so from now, Germans will be surprised that they ever looked on Sarrazin’s observations as anything but common sense. And that will be true whether they act on them or not.” _Telegraph

That would be an optimistic way of looking at it. I mean, the part where he assumes that there will be any Germans left in a decade or so . . . ;-)

Of course, the US under Obama has accelerated the schedule for its own train wreck along the same lines. Fortunately for the US, most of its third world immigrants merely want opportunities to succeed -- not opportunities to blow up their host country.

Opposing Totalitarian Islam: Resisting Eurabian Nightmare

For Europeans, Europe is becoming an expensive retirement home for a shrinking demographic. For third world muslim immigrants, Europe is a wealthy world of never-ending welfare payments and first-class obstetrical wards. Muhammad is becoming the most popular name for boys in newborn nurseries, grammar schools, and prisons across Europe. Third world immigrants and their children appear to be inheriting Europe from far meeker and far more anti-natalist Europeans.

Small pockets of pro-European and anti-IslamoTotalitarian resistance have arisen in various parts of the dying continent. German Thilo Sarrazin is one European courageous enough to stand up and brave the ire of the politically correct ruling classes of Europe. Sarrazin's book has sold well in Europe, and has been a wakeup call to concerned Europeans who had sensed the impending end of European liberalism, but had not been able to put words to the building sense of dread they had been feeling.

Dutchman Geert Wilders is another European willing to risk everything to save at least a small part of Europe's future for the European demographic. Wilders has recently been put on trial by a corrupt and dishonest Netherlands court for speaking the truth about totalitarian Islam's threat to Europe. When the corrupt and illegal behind-the-scenes byplay of the court became known, a re-trial was ordered.

In Germany, a new voice for free Europe is beginning to speak out. Rene Stadtkewitz has abandoned Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Party to form a new political party in Germany -- the new Freedom Party. Stadtkewitz has been encouraged by the pro-European actions of Wilders and Sarrazin, and hopes to turn Germany away from the suicidal demographic path along which its leaders are taking it.

The party is still small, but it is growing, particularly in Berlin and the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It welcomed its 1,000th member in December. There are plans to form state organizations in the coming months, and a central party office is in the works. Stadtkewitz would like to see his party headquarters located in downtown Berlin, in its political center, but for now the party meets in Reinickendorf, an outlying district in the city's northwest.

The party's future will be shaped next year, when Berlin holds its parliamentary elections. "That will be the deciding moment. If we don't manage to get into the parliament, the party will be all but dead," says Stadtkewitz. But he also says that he expects to capture "significantly more than five percent of the vote."

He would like to have a strong figure to lead the campaign, a prominent face. But he will probably end up having to assume that role himself. Stadtkewitz wants to hire a coach to show him how to write statements, how to get into the news and how to score points as a guest on talk shows. "I have to become tougher, clearer and more trenchant. I also have to provoke. Just like Wilders."

Geert Wilders, the hero of the European anti-Islam movement, is Stadtkewitz's role model, even though he would never admit it. Nevertheless, he is already benefiting from Wilders' contacts. Stadtkewitz is now part of a European movement. In December, it took him to Israel, together with Heinz-Christian Strache, the chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Belgian politician Filip Dewinter of the similarly oriented Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang Party, and Kent Ekeroth of the national and anti-Islamic Sweden Democrats. _Spiegel

The leaders of the EU have unleashed the Eurabian nightmare on the continent. The people are just beginning to respond, and it is unclear what the outcome of this particular battle against totalitarian Islam will be. However the people of Europe choose, we should hope that they do not choose the path that leads to being smothered under the soft pillows of their state-run nursing homes, by legions of young pro-natalist third world attendants named Muhammad.

Flooding the Back Streets of Europe

BackStreetsNearly one million illegal immigrants flood into Europe from the third world every year. Europe can expect a grand future of poverty, crime, and inbred decline, as it continues to fill with third world immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- and the rapidly expanding number of progeny from legitimate and illegitimate immigrants. Here is another look at Thilo Sarrazin's book, Germany Abolishes Itself:

Third World immigrants are attracted to Germany not by abstract concepts of free speech, the rule of law, liberal democracy and personal freedom but by the higher standard of living they can enjoy at the expense of the German taxpayer. In part because of the Nazi period, the pressure on Germans to conform to the United Nations-sponsored ideology of multiculturalism has been immense, much worse than anything we have experienced in the United Kingdom. History matters: the Nazi past will remain an integral part of Germany’s history but no other nation has submitted itself to such soul-searching and public flagellation in order to face up to its past and to make amends. However, one of the downsides has been to treat any assertion of national German pride as a manifestation of Neo-Nazi tendencies, as something hideously offensive and shameful when it is, in fact, the normal, emotional and rational pride in, and commitment to, one’s country of origin, to one’s Vaterland, to use that beautifully evocative German word.

It is this specifically German historical, social and political background that makes the publication of Thilo Sarrazin’s book in Germany so remarkable, and all the more remarkable for its having been written by one of Germany’s top technocrats, a person at the very heart of the German administrative establishment, a person, who whatever his misgivings about the state of Germany, I, for one, would have expected to remain silent. Clearly, Herr Sarrazin has had enough. He instinctively grasps the truth of Solzhenitysn’s eleventh commandment: thou shall not live by the Lie. There is something about Sarrazin that bears the stamp of Martin Luther, Pastor Martin Niemöller and the White Rose students who defied the Nazis in Munich. Moral courage is always inspirational and life-enhancing. Indeed, the fact that Sarrazin’s book has become a best seller in Germany and attracted enormous support for its author may well have prompted Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, publicly to admit (October 2010) that multiculturalism had utterly failed in Germany. Indeed, it has: and not just in Germany. _SMOA

Here is a 15 minute politically correct video look at Sarrazin's themes:

It is important to see beyond the self-blindered political correctness, and understand how Europe will decline as a result of its negligent attitudes toward immigration -- particularly immigration from the Muslim third world. One of the many problems that an Islamic explosion brings to the western world is a general decline in average human capital and a lowered capacity to meet difficult challenges. The average IQ of populations in most Islamic countries, for example, is 90 or lower.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called "consanguinity") and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants"

Statistical research on Arabic countries shows that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algiers are consanguine (blood related), 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (southern area in Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen (Reproductive Health Journal, 2009 Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs.).

A large part of inbred Muslims are born from parents who are themselves inbred - which increase the risks of negative mental and physical consequenses greatly.

The amount of blood related marriages is lower among Muslim immigrants living in the West. Among Pakistanis living in Denmark the amount is down to 40 percent and 15 percent among Turkish immigrants (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants".).


More than half of Pakistani immigrants living in Britain are intermarried:

The research, conducted by the BBC and broadcast to a shocked nation on Tuesday, found that at least 55% of the community was married to a first cousin. This is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.” (Times of India, 17/11 2005 Ban UK Pakistanis from marrying cousins).

The lower percentages might be because it is difficult to get the chosen family member to the country, or because health education is better in the West.


Low intelligence

Several studies show that children of consanguineous marriages have lower intelligence than children of non-related parents. Research shows that the IQ is 10-16 points lower in children born from related parents and that abilities related to social behavior develops slower in inbred babies:

"Effects of parental consanguinity on the cognitive and social behavior of children have been studied among the Ansari Muslims of Bhalgapur, Bihar.

IQ in inbred children (8-12 years old) is found to be lower (69 in rural and 79 in suburban populations) than that of the outbred ones (79 and 95 respectively). The onset of various social profiles like visual fixation, social smile, sound seizures, oral expression and hand-grasping are significantly delayed among the new-born inbred babies." (Indian National Science Academy, 1983 Consanguinity Effects on Intelligence Quotient and Neonatal Behaviours of nsari Muslim Children").

The article "Effects of inbreeding on Raven Matrices" concludes that "Indian Muslim school boys, ages 13 to 15 years, whose parents are first cousins, were compared with classmates whose parents are genetically unrelated on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices, a nonverbal test of intelligence. The inbred group scored significantly lower and had significantly greater variance than the non-inbred group, both on raw scores and on scores statistically adjusted to control for age and socioeconomic status." (Behaviour Genetics, 1984). _EuropeNews_via_IslamMonitor

Europe's indigenous women are not having children, so that the population of Europeans in several European nations is dropping rapidly. "Muhammed", or a variant, is swiftly becoming the most popular name in newborn wards of European hospitals. European schools, prisons, and poverty rolls are filling up with legal and illegal third world immigrants and their offspring.

The cities of Europe have already begun to change in most unpleasant ways -- in terms of rape, robbery, assaults etc. It is in the cities of Europe where the effects of this massive demographic handover are most prominent. Once a crime-prone sub-population grows above 10% in a city, quality of life begins to drop -- even outside the immigrant ghettos. As city populations with lower IQ and high criminal tendencies grows to 20%, 30%, and higher, all hope for a decent life in the city must be abandoned. If that city is a nation's capital or industrial center, the loss of quality of life within the city is felt well out into the country-side -- even if the percentage of the crime-bringing sub-population is very low outside of the city.

Western Civilisation Relentlessly Disappearing

Despite the denial of the disinformed, demographics is destiny. Demographic decline will lead to war. Civil wars, wars of ethnic secession and insurrection, wars of conquest from within and without. Crucial resources that are already scarce due to political and economic mismanagement will become almost unobtainable.

A new dark ages is a virtual inevitability, if the western world does not wake up to its accelerating decline due to debt and demography.


The Global Baby Bust
Europe's Baby Bust
America Alone (Google Books excerpt)
America Alone (Amazon page)
A Return to Pastoral Europe?
Fiscal Policy and Fertility in the US
Transition of Europe and Japan to labour shortage economies
Fascinating Philip Longman presentation on depopulation
Russian plans to reverse population decline
No Easy Answers

The Future of a Europe Without Babies.

Time
Europeans want cradle to grave security guaranteed by the state. But lately there are a lot fewer cradles in Europe, with the EU beginning to look more like a continent-sized grave. What do you say to a continent that refuses to have enough children to replace its population -- yet is willing to riot and strike to prevent the state from reducing generous handouts and pensions? There is very little left to say.

Germany is shrinking — fast. New figures released on May 17 show the birth rate in Europe's biggest economy has plummeted to a historic low, dropping to a level not seen since 1946. As demographers warn of the consequences of not making enough babies to replace and support an aging population, the latest figures have triggered a bout of national soul-searching and cast a harsh light on Chancellor Angela Merkel's family policies.
According to a preliminary analysis by the Federal Statistics Office, 651,000 children were born in Germany in 2009 — 30,000 fewer than in 2008, a dip of 3.6%. In 1990, German mothers were having on average 1.5 children each; today that average is down to 1.38 children per mother. With a shortfall of 190,000 between the number of people who died and the number of children who were born, Germany's birth rate is well below the level required to keep the population stable.

...The Federal Statistics Office says Germany's population of 82 million could drop by up to 17 million over the next 50 years. Demographers fear a shrinking workforce will stymie growth and struggle to foot the bill for a rapidly aging population. "Germany's working-age population is likely to decrease 30% over the next few decades," says Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. "Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear — Germany will become a weak economic power in the future."_Time

There are limits to the state-supported urban lifestyle, and the shrinking populations of Europe, Russia, Japan, and other "advanced" nations are starting to feel the squeeze. Germany is very close to the point of no return.

But why focus on Germany? Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Japan, and Eastern Europe are worse off than Germany in almost every way.

But it is precisely for that reason that one must focus on Germany's demographic meltdown. Germany is the most successful country in Europe -- and yet it has chosen the path of childless national suicide. What hope, therefore, do the rest of the hyper-indebted, under-procreating, proudly entitled, union obligated state disasters of Europe have?

Not that North America is doing much better. California, Michigan, and Illinois are drowning in public sector union debt and corruption. New Jersey has the chance to save itself, with a rare governor willing to go out on the political limb to save the state -- even at the risk of his own career. And what do New Jersey's unions do? Threaten to strike, riot, and even joke about assassinating the governor. The California governator has turned into a wimp in the face of public sector union threats. The US president is a Chicago Way machine politician steeped in the corrupt, fascist, populist pandering, union dominated, self-defeating styles of government that are bringing so much of the western world down.

North American demographics are slightly better than Europe's, but that is due to immigration -- and the significantly higher birthrates of new immigrants to America compared to multi-generational North Americans.

Can new technology save the developed world from itself? Automated industry and commerce? Nanotechnological fabricators? New longevity procedures and technologies for longer and healthier lives? Artificial wombs to allow high achieving women to have children AND continue their career paths? A partial reversal of urbanisation, with new farm and ranch technologies that allow for more pleasurable and profitable urban lifestyles?

We need new frontiers, big new challenges that can bring out the atavist in the young and the young at heart. We need to find tasks and places that force us to tap the deep strength of the primitive drives within ourselves at the same time we are utilising advanced skills and technologies undreamed of even a few years ago. Most of all, we need to raise our children to seek these new challenges and risks.

What we are doing now clearly isn't working.

More:

"The current welfare state is unaffordable," said Uri Dadush, director of the Carnegie Endowment's International Economics Program...."We have to adjust our social security systems in a way that they motivate people to accept regular work and do not give counterproductive incentives," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told news weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Saturday.

The uncertainty over the future of the welfare state is undermining the continent's self-image at a time when other key elements of post-war European identity are fraying. Large-scale immigration from outside Europe is challenging the continent's assumptions about its dedication to tolerance and liberty as countries move to control individual clothing — the Islamic veil — in the name of freedom and equality....

...Demographers and economists began warning decades ago that social welfare was doomed by the aging of Europe's baby boomers. Some governments had been trimming and reforming, but now almost all are scrambling to close deficits in order to prevent a wider collapse of confidence in the euro...

...Southern European countries that have not moved toward reforming welfare in the same ways are paying a steep price. _SFEx

Cross-posted to abu al-fin

The Decline of Europe: The Next 40 Years

ImgSource_H/T_BI
According to the Spanish language blog Venturatis, the fortunes of Europe will fall drastically over the next 40 years -- largely due to its imploding population. If there are no people, there can be no significant economic activity. Hence, the decline and fall of a once great continent.

According to these projections, the world of the future will be a largely bipolar world, with the US balanced by a wealthier China. India and Brasil will also make significant contributions to the world economy -- with Mexico, Russia, and Indonesia trying to keep up.

Most European nations are so far down the chart by 2050 that it becomes difficult to find them. Demography is destiny in far more ways than the modern PC-neutered dieoff left can ever let itself acknowledge.

SeekingAlpha
The runup of US national debt under Obama - Pelosi has genuinely ominous overtones, when one contemplates the fate of smaller -- though barely less responsible -- nations in Europe. Europe has been borrowing against future generations that are not being born. In the US, the future generations being borrowed against will be born -- but perhaps they will wish they hadn't been.

Unsupportable debt is a genuine killer for a national economy. As long as richer nations exist, who can bail out the weaker indebted nation, it remains possible to strive for some type of recovery and normalcy. But if the richest nations themselves become mired in unsupportable debt, there is no bailout. Without a sudden (unlikely) attack of discipline, there is only a growing turbulence of inflationary and deflationary forces, accompanied by increasingly corrupt government and the inevitable (?) path to revolution or civil war -- perhaps lasting for decades.

Spiegel

The banking crisis has turned into a crisis of entire nations, and the subprime mortgage bubble into a government debt bubble. This is why precisely the same questions are being asked today, now that entire countries are at risk of collapse, as were being asked in the fall of 2008 when the banks were on the brink: How can the calamity be prevented without laying the ground for an even bigger disaster? Can a crisis based on debt be solved with even more debt? And who will actually rescue the rescuers in the end, the ones who overreached? _Spiegel

Whoever rescues the deluxe retirement home that once was Europe, will have no one around later who is willing and able to rescue them in return. And yet there is no sign of an awakening of economic common sense in the PIIGS states of Europe, or in the Obama - Pelosi regime of the US.

The US budget deficit has now reached $1.6 trillion, or 10 percent of GDP. The national debt is now over $12 trillion and is forecast to expand to more than $20 trillion by the end of the decade. At that point, Americans will be paying $900 billion a year in interest alone...Today, only four areas consume almost all government revenues: defense, social programs, health care and interest on debt. Americans must pay for everything else with new debt. _Spiegel

Things will simply have to keep getting worse until enough people awaken to the dire straits they have gotten themselves into. At that point, the meaning of the word austerity may become clear to many decadent westerners (of all income levels) for the very first time in their lives.

And lest you think that perhaps a super-wealthy China will be able to prop up the formerly great nations suddenly sinking into debt and demographic decline -- better think again.

European Nations Sign Suicide Pact

Across Europe, once-mighty and ambitious nations are singing a siren song of death and oblivion. Once great empires that spanned the globe are now dedicated to passing from the world stage without leaving a trace. A sad benediction to societies and cultures that once looked forward to an unending ascent of the human spirit.

In Britain, a government commission has drawn up plans for a "steady state economy" that forgoes future economic growth in the name of sustainability by cutting work hours and banning TV commercials (to reduce consumerism). In Germany, new bestseller called Exit: Prosperity Without Growth is just the latest in a growing body of literature pleading for Germans to learn to live with less. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy—who once came to power exhorting the French to work harder and earn more—has thrown his weight behind an expert report that declares the pursuit of GDP growth a "fetish" and strives to replace the GDP statistic with a broader measure of national contentment.

...today's no-growthers seem to make the same mistakes as their many predecessors, from Thomas Malthus—who predicted in 1798 that rising populations would inevitably starve—to the Club of Rome, a group of scientists who warned in 1972 that the world would start running out of key resources in the 1980s. Such movements extrapolate growth rates for resource use and pollution but don't take enough account of technical innovation, environmental regulation, greater efficiency, and behavioral change. Take Exit author Meinhard Miegel's claim that the world is running out of food. It largely ignores, among other things, the barely tapped potential of genetic engineering and other plant-breeding technologies.

Such faults are often overlooked because the no-growthers resonate in Europe today for intellectual and political reasons, not economic or technological ones. Critiques of growth have always been, at their core, about uneasiness with capitalism itself. That this critique becomes mainstream when capitalism seems to be failing us is no surprise. After all, the Club of Rome made its first splash in the 1970s, during a long slowdown when people were also becoming newly aware of environmental degradation.

...the no-growthers are unrealistic about how painful a no-growth reality would be. As the Harvard scholar Benjamin Friedman argues eloquently in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, a society that gives up on growth invites nasty fights over the distribution of limited resources and paves the way for intolerance and populism. That economic growth isn't everything—it doesn't measure the value of our relationships, our communities, our culture—is obvious. But so is the correlation between prosperity and quality of life, including health, longevity, and the freedom to pursue happiness. _Newsweek

Indigenous Europeans are failing to replace their own numbers through rudimentary childbirth, and are steadily being replaced -- at least in their cities -- by Muslim immigrants who may be on welfare, but can reproduce all the same.

The failure of Europeans to reproduce is part and parcel of the dying Euro spirit, the culture of the human dieoff. It is the essence of the modern green left, which is strongest and most suicidal in Europe. But it is almost as strong in Toronto, Seattle, and Sydney. The Obama - Pelosi reich is fanning the flames of the dieoff with every legislative drive and push -- in the quest to catch up with Europe.

But do Americans really want to be like Europe in that regard? Perhaps of those who voted for Obama, half do. But of those who did not vote and those who voted for other candidates, it is likely that over 80% oppose the dieoff mentality.

Certainly China, India, Brazil, and other third world nations trying to emerge into a more modern era have no wish to share the Luddite dreams of death with Euro-greens. The billions of the third world, in all of their wasteful polluting splendour, will hardly miss Europe when it is gone. They will simply move in and call it something else, something more populated and polluted, to be sure.

Cross posted at abu al-fin

Europe in Chains: Return of Euro-Slaves

Slavery is not about race. Slavery is about strength and weakness. The strong will subdue the weak to serve in whatever capacity is demanded.

An ongoing demographic invasion of Old Europe by a faster-breeding culture that still incorporates slavery, polygamy, and concubinage, raises the spectre of the return of slavery to the European sub-continent.  Many commentators have made the claim that Europeans will fight back, if pushed into a corner by the faster-breeding newcomers.  Ralph Peters, in his novel The War After Armageddon, makes this claim by portraying Europeans rising up in a massive pogrom against all Muslims -- driving them into the sea in a bloody violent reaction against jihadi violence.

Certainly one can look at Europe and see faint glimpses of reaction against Muslim violence, crime, welfare dependency, and the failure to assimilate.  But these glimmers of reaction are too little, too late.  The massive  rising demographic tide of Islam is sweeping over the continent far too quickly for the masses of Europeans -- drugged on the welfare state and an oblivious multicultural leftism -- to wake up and defend themselves.

What happens when Muslims overwhelm a previously non-Muslim society?

Slavery was taken for granted throughout Islamic history. When it was finally abolished this was due to Western pressure, especially through the efforts of the British Empire: "Nor was there a Muslim abolitionist movement, no Clarkson, Wilberforce, or Garrison. When the slave trade ended, it was ended not through Muslim efforts but through British military force. Even so, there is evidence that slavery continues beneath the surface in some Muslim countries - notably Saudi Arabia, which only abolished slavery in 1962; Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970; and Niger, which didn't abolish slavery until 2004. In Niger, the ban is widely ignored, and as many as one million people remain in bondage. Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally treated like animals. There are even slavery cases involving Muslims in the United States. A Saudi named Homaidan al-Turki was sentenced in September 2006 to twenty-seven years to life in prison for keeping a woman as a slave in his Colorado home. For his part, al-Turki claimed that he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias."

Indian historian K. S. Lal states that wherever Jihadists conquered a territory, "there developed a system of slavery peculiar to the clime, terrain, and populace of the place." When Muslim armies invaded India, "its people began to be enslaved in droves to be sold in foreign lands or employed in various capacities on menial and not-so-menial jobs within the country." _BrusselsJournal

Either Islam will be Europeanised or Europe will be Islamised. There will be no peaceful coexistence in Europe, no more than there has been peaceful coexistence in Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, Thailand, the Balkans, or anwhere else along the "bloody borders of Islam."

And if Europe is Islamised -- as seems more likely -- officially sanctioned slavery will return to Europe in a big way. The prelude to this reality has been occurring among the young women and girls of parts of Eastern Europe. The slave trade in Eastern European girls is run by organised criminal gangs across Europe into Russia and down through the Balkans into the Muslim near East. But it is a mere hint at what will happen if the nations of western Europe fall to a human wave of Sharia, and the old world primitivism of Muslim tribal cultures.

Europe's population of indigenous young Euros is shrinking rapidly. The ability of Europe to field, equip, and train a defense force capable of taking back Paris, London, Brussels, Rotterdam, Malmo, Marseilles, and the rest of the once - European cities in transition, is slipping away. When the great cities of a nation and continent are submerged beneath an alien culture of crime and bloody fanaticism, the entire nation and continent become almost impossible to save.

Parts of Europe, and parts of most European nations, will survive and resist. But if the nuclear armaments and other advanced weaponry of the nations fall into the hands of the invaders, small bands of resistance can be obliterated with tanks, bombs, and artillery shells. The countryside might be made unlivable -- which will make the urban masses quite hungry -- but it is conceivable that the tide of war, death, disease, famine, misery, fanaticism, and slavery might travel very far indeed before it is stopped.

Historians often fantasise about going back in time and murdering a young Hitler before he writes "Mein Kampf" or solidifies a movement of death. Very few historians or intellectuals of any stripe live enough in the present to understand the rapidly forming atrocity of Islam in Europe. By the time they stop denying the reality -- stop mocking those who see all too clearly -- it will be too late for Europe.

After a great battle, the men and the old are typically slaughtered, and the young women and children are taken as booty. It is the way things have always been, and the way they will be again.

The "singularity" will eventually sweep much of the bloody primitivism away, as long as large areas of western civilisation can survive to support the necessary research and development. But there is a storm coming that no one seems to want to face head on. Political correctness has too great a hold on the media and western culture in general. The price to be paid for that politically correct leftist multiculturalism will be painful.

The Source of European Fertility, Now and Then

Update 21 March 2010: Blogger Statsaholic has posted a debunking of the two numbered lists below, taken from a comment in Reason magazine.  Sometime after copying the lists, and while putting together this article, it became obvious to me that the lists were wrong.  I decided to post them anyway, along with more primary sources, so that anyone who became suspicious -- as I did almost instantly -- could check them out, debunk them, and have a good laugh on Al Fin.   This blog is not about being an authority who is always right.  Sometimes, known errors -- as long as they are not too blatant -- are allowed into a published article as a type of test for readers.  If you see a mistake, be sure to point it out.  People who are truly intelligent love to be proven wrong, when they actually are wrong. 



There has been some disagreement as to the source of increased fertility in selected European nations. While fertility trends can have many underlying reasons, in this case the primary reason for a rise (or lesser drop) in fertility rates for most European nations with the highest TFRs appears to be immigration of a high-fertility population grouping -- the Muslims.

The following is taken from a comment following this article on Sweden.

Here’s the order of healthiest fertility rates for Western European countries:

1) France
2) Netherlands
3) Belgium
4) Switzerland
5) Austria
6) Germany
7) Italy
8) Spain

And here’s the order with the highest proportion of Muslims:

1) France
2) Netherlands
3) Belgium
4) Switzerland
5) Austria
6) Germany
7) Italy
8) Spain

In 50 years, Europe is going to be filled with two demographic groups: elderly Europeans and Muslims.

Below, you can see a graphical comparison of fertility rates and per cent Muslim population.



Fertility Rates in Europe

Islam in Europe, Wiki


Wiki List of Countries by Muslim Population (2009) data

CIA Factbook Fertility Rates by Country (2009 estimates)

Wiki Islam in Europe

Most advanced nations are experiencing a population crash due to low fertility alone. Russia's population implosion is due to both low fertility and high death rates.

Russia’s life expectancy at birth today is about four years lower than it was forty years ago. Its health reversal is concentrated in the working age groups. This peacetime death explosion has been triggered not by tuberculosis or HIV/AIDS, but by cardiovascular disease and injuries. Alcohol, of course, has played its part: indeed, one Russian study determined that almost half of the young and middle aged men who died of injury or cardiovascular disease were drunk at the time of death. Russians now in their 30s, 40s, or 50s have already accumulated a lifetime of insults to their health. _Source

Europe is based upon the welfare state model, where younger workers support retired persons and persons on welfare and disability. When the younger persons are themselves refusing to work and collecting welfare, Europe's system finds itself under deadly strain, with a diminishing tax base and an exploding government debt.

The US under Obama is experiencing a similar phenomenon, with the exception that the younger generations of Americans -- both native and immigrant -- are slightly more disposed to cultural assimilation and work, than the young incoming Muslim immigrants of Europe.

Europe Doomed by Debt and Demographics

The threat to the euro bloc ultimately stems from an overcommitted welfare state. Greece's situation is so difficult because a low birth rate and rapidly graying population automatically increase old-age assistance even as the government tries to cut its spending. At issue is the viability of its present welfare state. _RCP

Greece's demographic collapse will not allow Greece to pay for its corrupt welfare statism. Greece is a preview of coming Euro-attractions.

Concerns that Greece and other struggling European nations may not be able to repay their debts are focusing investor attention on another big worry: Economies across the Continent have used complex financial transactions—sometimes in secret—to hide the true size of their debts and deficits. _WSJ

Skyrocketing debt combined with rapidly aging and imploding populations. Not the best combination one might have dreamed up. Europe should have provided for her retirement ahead of time.

Demographics crises may be the ultimate determinant of the fate of nations and the easiest to predict. In most cases, the population shift has already occured that dooms a country to slow or sudden decline. __BI

Nations with the highest average IQ are shrinking, due to low birthrates. Nations with the lowest average IQ are exploding, due to high birthrates. This trend is dysgenic, leading to a worldwide idiocracy.

The Russians realize that they're in a race against the clock before their demographics kill them as a country, and so they want to make sure that they've got as wide of a buffer as possible. As long as Europe is at each others throats, even if its just with bureaucratic paper, the Russians are going to take advantage of that to strengthen their western perimeter and push the frontier into Europe as far as they can. They know in 20 or 30 years they're not going to be able to do much, so they want to buy as much time and space as possible.... _StratforPredictions_BI

Russia will take advantage of European turmoil as long as it can. But eventually Russia's own demographic crisis of high deaths and low births will do Russia in.

"First, China’s current economic model is not sustainable. That model favors employment over all other concerns, and can only be maintained by running on thin margins."
"Second, the Chinese model is only possible so long as Western populations continue to consume Chinese goods in increasing volumes. European demographics alone will make that impossible in the next decade."
"Third, the Chinese model requires cheap labor as well as cheap capital to produce cheap goods. The bottom has fallen out of the Chinese birthrate; by 2020 the average Chinese will be nearly as old as the average American, but will have achieved nowhere near the level of education to add as much value. The result will be a labor shortage in both qualitative and quantitative terms."
"Finally, internal tensions will break the current system. More than 1 billion Chinese live in households whose income is below $2,000 a year (with 600 million below $1,000 a year). The government knows this and is trying to shift resources to the vast interior comprising the bulk of China. But this region is so populous and so poor — and so vulnerable to minor shifts in China’s economic fortunes — that China simply lacks the resources to cope." _Stratfor:China Doom_BI

China has not taken the time to firm up the foundations of its hyperkinetic growth. Outside observors see only the high numbers, not the underlying corruption and crumbling of the foundational sandworks.

The hypothetical decline of China is most important as it impacts the overall instability and unpredictability of world affairs over the next ten years. Such a decline could force the Chinese government to attempt some audacious international expansions, not altogether of a peaceful variety. The reverberations from such international adventuring would be felt far and wide, and make the US' interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan look like pastoral picnics.