International Affairs: June 2011 Archives
The Netherlands has made a 180 and decided to reject multiculturalism in an attempt to avoid death by demographics.
The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.A new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads: "The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society."
The letter continues: "A more obligatory integration is justified because the government also demands that from its own citizens. It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands. The integration will not be tailored to different groups."
The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants to ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.
The government will also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner, "it is not the government's job to integrate immigrants." The government will introduce new legislation that outlaws forced marriages and will also impose tougher measures against Muslim immigrants who lower their chances of employment by the way they dress. More specifically, the government will impose a ban on face-covering Islamic burqas as of January 1, 2013.
If necessary, the government will introduce extra measures to allow the removal of residence permits from immigrants who fail their integration course.
If you believe that your culture is worth preserving and you have a lot of people who want to move to your country, then you need to limit immigration and/or take measures to ensure that immigrants assimilate into your culture rather than vice versa. The math is pretty simple.
(HT: Thomas Lifson.)
Abortion, the great bastion of women's rights, has led to the slaughter 163 million baby girls. What an incomprehensible tragedy and a terrible stain on humanity.
In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.
What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion. If the male number in the sex ratio is above 106, it means that couples are having abortions when they find out the mother is carrying a girl. By Ms. Hvistendahl's counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world.
All of humanity should be ashamed and horrified.
The WaPo editors say that Obama's position on Libya is "fatuous".
THE OBAMA administration’s depiction of its Libya venture as too halfhearted to be covered by the War Powers Resolution contains an unfortunately large dollop of truth. President Obama’s commitment is sufficiently halfhearted to undermine the NATO alliance. It is sufficiently halfhearted, and confused in its statement of purpose and its connection of ends to means, to give Moammar Gaddafi hope that he can hang on. It is not, however, so halfhearted as to justify the administration’s evasion of its legal duties under the war powers law. ...We supported Mr. Obama’s decision to join NATO allies in the U.N.- sanctioned effort to keep Libyan strongman Gaddafi from slaughtering his people. The president is right to sustain the effort until a regime less dangerous to its own people is installed, and he would be wise to heed U.S. allies and join in the effort more robustly. But it strikes us as fatuous to argue that the United States is not engaged in hostilities, given that the NATO bombing campaign could not be taking place without active U.S. support.
"Fatuous" is the perfect word: "–adjective 1.
foolish or inane, especially in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly. 2. unreal; illusory."
If Obama were a Republican the Democrats would be apoplectic.
In addition, the hypocrisy of the liberal establishment is stunning. For years, progressives, such as Mr. Obama, railed against President George W. Bush. He was denounced as a “fascist” dictator and compared to Adolf Hitler for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Bush lied, people died,” went the slogan. Yet, regardless of whether one supported those campaigns or not, Mr. Bush received congressional authorization. Ironically, it is Mr. Obama who is behaving like a political thug.
Althouse says that Obama himself can't believe what he's saying.
It seems like SecDef Gates doesn't believe it either.
The New York Times has reported that top lawyers for the department of Defense and Justice told the administration that the resolution did apply to the mission in Libya. Instead, Obama accepted a different point of view, which was offered by his own White House counsel as well as other members of his legal team.Gates, who is stepping down as defense secretary at the end of the month, said he would defer to Obama for legal definitions. But, he added, "I'm confident that he would not make judgment along these lines if he were not confident that he was acting in a constitutional manner."
You could read a book between those lines.
