Usefully Useless

Hard-line extremism seems to be everywhere. Stop them talking about who’s god is bigger than who else’s, and you’ll find the BNP and Iran have a lot to agree on. Far-right extremist parties are popping up all over the place, typically playing on the hyped-up “Islamisation” card to convince people that doing as the Muslims do is a good thing, sacrificing your own freedom for some “greater good”. It doesn’t make much sense when put like that, does it?

The latest band of gullible idiots comes to you from Switzerland. Newcomers to the extremist brigade, the Swiss have recently decided that they’re going to ban minarets. Yes, you read me right, minarets. So much for the Swiss’ muchly bragged about “direct democracy” protecting the rights of the people, how can it protect the minorities from the tyranny of the majority?

The Swiss apparently agree with Iran that banning the construction of religious buildings they don’t like is the way forward. As Iran doesn’t permit the construction of Christian churches, the Swiss believe the Muslims are worth copying, so have pretty much banned the construction of Mosques.

Here’s a hint, you idiots, if you want to fight something you don’t generally accept and copy their beliefs!

So while Europe seems to be busy converting to extremism, is there really any need for external threats like the Taleban anymore? We’re quite capable of destroying ourselves, thankyou very much.

About time!

In the UK, the House of Lords has traditionally been our highest court of appeal (apellate court) where the Law Lords, former judges given peerage for exemplary service, would hear appeals. This separated judicial power from legislative power but did not separate legislative power from judicial power, the disjoin was only one way.

This made many wonder whether the House of Lords was fair under the European Convention on Human Rights. It became a very real danger that the House of Lords couldn’t provide a fair trial under that convention. Our archaic legal system was (and remains) a badly suited mess, Blair wanted to reduce the power of the House of Lords to further the cause of democracy; The House of Commons is elected, the House of Lords is not.

Detractors have claimed that the Supreme Court’s justices could use their power to elevate themselves above the House of Lords committee they’re succeeding, which Lord Phillips said was possible but unlikely.

I suspect the next step will be to a codified constitution, which may well be a dangerous step to take. Constitutions have a habit of becoming obsolete and dated, reflecting the views of their time and being very hard to alter.

For example, a clause (Second Amendment) in the United States Constitution came before the establishment of professional police forces, so provides for a peacekeeping militia, who did this job before police. Nowadays the Second Amendment has been corrupted into a "right to bear arms", a purpose it was never intended for and merely a byproduct – The militia being an amateur "police force", the amateurs would need weapons. The firearms debate goes on (I’m personally on the pro-gun side) but it’s not what the Second Amendment intended to do.

The Irish Constitution identifies the woman’s place as in the home and has numerous references to the Catholic religion, both guaranteeing freedom of faith in one sentence and outlawing it in another. Then again, it WAS written by a crazed bunch of religious terrorists in Fianna Fail who, back then, WERE little short of jihadists in all but name.

In both cases, the highest apellate courts have the power to strike down a law as unconstitutional, that is, running contrary to the protections afforded by the respective constitutions. Without a constitution and with merely codified law and case law, our highest appellate court has traditionally been somewhat underpowered. The best a Supreme Court can do is call a law "illegal" or "inconsistent" with other laws, but then it’s up to Parliament to change it or to change what it’s inconsistent with.

Some of the more authoritarian laws Blair enacted, such as warrantless searching ("Stop and Search") as well as the incredible and widely abused powers given to police and local councils by the Terrorism Act could use this kind of oversight as they are an abomination in the face of liberty.

I’d be quite pleased if the Supreme Court were to elevate itself above the puny committee of the House of Lords it replaced.

Countless otherwise-productive hours have been spent discussing the nature of religion and its gods, spirits and other associated invisibles. This thought is very old, but still manages to entertain discussion. I forget who originated this, possibly Voltaire.

If we take that evil exists, then…

Is your god unwilling to prevent evil and unable?
Then he is powerless, evil and thankfully irrelevant.

Is your god willing to prevent evil, but unable?
Then he is powerless and irrelevant.

Is your god unwilling to prevent evil, but able?
Then he is evil.

Is your god willing to prevent evil and able?
Then why do we have evil?

An eight minute long video titled “Muslim Demographics” warns Europe that Islam will take control of the whole place. Now usually, right wing fearmongering has little truth in it so let’s take a look.

90% of population growth in Europe over the last 20 years has been Muslim immigration.
There’s the claim, what’s the reality? The reality, according to EU statistics, is that the 90% figure is accurate for all immigration. 90% of Europe’s population growth comes from immigration but Muslims are only a small percentage of that immigration.
Truth 0, Lie 1

30% of everyone aged 20 or below in France are Muslim
According to the video, a typical French family has 1.8 children while French Muslims have 8.1 children. The video gives no source and the French national office of statistics does not collect statistics by religion. It would appear this claim is plain invented. The main source of French immigration is Morocco (as well as Algeria) but their fertility rates hover around 2.4 (UN estimate, 2008). No nation on Earth, not even Islamic republics like Saudi Arabia or Iran, have that kind of fertility rate
Truth 0, Lie 2

France will be an Islamic republic within 39 years
Correlated with the last claim, neither method nor reason is given for this one. Again, it would appear to be simply made up.
Truth 0, Lie 3

Half of all newborns in the Netherlands are Muslim, making half the entire population Muslim in 15 years
According to the Dutch Office of Statistics, Muslims are 5% of all Dutch. Now according to my working here, this means that Dutch Muslim women have to have a birth rate fifteen times the national fertility rate, which is 1.9. This means that every Dutch Muslim woman has thirty children! This is obviously completely invented. Assuming a woman starts at 16 and has menopause at 45, she can possibly have 38 children if she’s always pregnant. So unless every Muslim woman in the Netherlands is constantly pregnant, this claim cannot be even close to accurate.
Truth 0, Lie 4

A quarter of all Belgians are Muslim
The actual figure is 6%.
Truth 0, Lie 5

British Muslim population has grown thirty times over in the last 30 years
This claim is that the Muslim population has doubled every year, from 82,000 to 2.5 million. The 2001 census had 1.6 million Muslims so I don’t think 2.5 million is unreasonable. But 82,000 thirty years ago? The 1981 census had no question on religion but a baseline minimum can be taken from it: Immigrants who were born in Pakistan or Bangladesh numbered 300,000. This is, of course, not at all close to every Muslim in 1981, most would estimate closer to 700,000. Using the firm figure from the 2001 census and the estimate of 700k from 1981, the Muslim population has just over doubled in 20 years, hardly a great rate of growth.
Truth 0, Lie 6

“The fall in German population can no longer be stopped. Its downward spiral is no longer reversible. It will be a Muslim state by the year 2050.” – Walter Radermacher, vice president of the German Federal Statistics Office.
Radermacher indeed said the first two sentences. He did not say the third.
Truth 0, Lie 7

The German government believes the numbers of Muslims in Europe will double to 104 million
The German government believes no such thing and population projection isn’t terribly exact. 1930s models of British population gave us 20 million by 2000, yet we actually numbered 60 million.
Truth 0, Lie 8

The truth of this matter is that Muslim birthrates have been falling for some time now. Increased education access among Muslim women, especially in Europe, and their acceptance of the social standards and mores of Europe has meant that (as with all immigrants) the Muslim birthrate in Europe is almost identical to that of their host nation. Even in Arabic countries, births among women under 20 are plummeting as more women take education and take employment.

Islamic countries are indeed experiencing a drop in fertility rates, but another shift is going on. Remember how 90% of all Europe’s population growth is from immigration and that most European countries have a fertility rate of only 1.8 or so? A stable population needs a fertility rate of 2.1 (one child to replace each parent, and an extra tenth to cover infertility or infant mortality) and so the population of Europe is actually expected to decline a little by 2050. Women are holding careers, more of them are reaching menopause without any children at all. Britain’s population is expected to be around 55 million by 2050, then remaining steady. And no, they won’t all be Muslim, the Muslim population is also expected to remain steady at a mere 5%, slightly up from the 2.6% it was in the 2001 census.

A report from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (specific to the UK) concludes that “Awful things are said to happen on extremist websites and in Internet chat rooms, but few are able to identify what exactly it is that causes so much concern. As a result, many of the policy proposals that are currently in circulation are either irrelevant or unworkable.” (clicky for a longer analysis)

They go on to say that content filtering is likely to drive extremists underground and that extremists online anyway simply attract other extremists: Preaching to the converted. Recruitment and indoctrination are done offline, like with all religions.

This isn’t dissuading our insane Home Secretary, who seems determined to force on her political beliefs to everyone’s Internet by censoring anything she doesn’t like.

Terrified reactionists who just so happen to be running the damned country are widely being reported to have suffered a bloody nose at the Old Bailey as jail wasn’t sentenced but nothing could be further from the truth.

In truth, a young Muslim woman and a contributing tax-paying member of society was arrested, tried and convicted of terrorism for nothing more than a few bad poems she posted online and owning “of owning terrorist pamphlets, including The Al-Qaeda Manual” according to the BBC. Why do we not see similar arrests made for owning copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the various works of Lenin or works that have caused more conflict throughout history than any others, the Holy Bible and the Q’ran? Exactly what kind of society forbids mere information, speech, if the Government doesn’t approve of it? The same kind of society the Islamic extremists want to turn the world into. Our most valued liberty, that of free speech, has not been taken from us by evil bearded turban-wearing terrorists, but by Whitehall and the traitors to Britain in Government.

Those extremists probably don’t realise that they’ve successfully convinced the West to use its left hand to chop off its right hand. In the name of defending our “freedom”, we’re surrendering it instead. We’re not fighting a threat to freedom, we are that threat.