EUROPEAN DEMOGRAPHIC & MIGRANT CRISIS OUTCOME OF FAILED STATES — SYRIA, IRAQ, LIBYA, SOMALIA…

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Germany's Muslim Demographic Revolution: Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 31, 2015 — Germany's Muslim population is set to skyrocket by more than 700,000 in 2015, pushing the total number of Muslims in the country to nearly 6 million for the first time.

Where There Is No Border, the Nations Perish: Mark Krikorian, National Review, Sept. 1, 2015— The ongoing migration crisis in Europe, with its drownings and other deaths, is forcing Europe’s post-borders elites into an uncomfortable position.

As Tragedies Shock Europe, a Bigger Refugee Crisis Looms in the Middle East: Liz Sly, Washington Post, Aug. 29, 2015 — While the world’s attention is fixed on the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees swarming into Europe, a potentially far more profound crisis is unfolding in the countries of the Middle East that have borne the brunt of the world’s failure to resolve the Syrian war.

Obama's Legacy and the Iran Nuclear Agreement: Gary C. Gambill, National Post, Aug. 18, 2015 — U.S. President Barack Obama's choice of American University, where John F. Kennedy gave a famous 1963 speech calling for peace and nuclear disarmament, to deliver his most impassioned defence of the recently signed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier this month was no accident.

On Topic Links

Manfred Gerstenfeld Interviews Jacques Neriah: the Islamic State: Exterminate the Jews and Israel: CIJR, Aug. 25, 2015

Migrant Crisis Tests Core European Value: Open Borders: Alison Smale & Melissa Eddy, New York Times, Aug. 31, 2015

ISIL is an Evil We Have Not Yet Begun to Comprehend: Robert Fulford, National Post, Aug. 28, 2015

ISIS 'Mein Kampf' Blames Israel for Global Terrorism: Sara A. Carter, Arutz Sheva, Aug. 16, 2015

GERMANY'S MUSLIM DEMOGRAPHIC REVOLUTION                                                                            

Soeren Kern        

Gatestone Institute, Aug. 31, 2015

Germany's Muslim population is set to skyrocket by more than 700,000 in 2015, pushing the total number of Muslims in the country to nearly 6 million for the first time. The surge in Germany's Muslim population — propelled by a wave of migration unprecedented since the Second World War — represents a demographic shift of epic proportions, one that critics of the country's open-door immigration policy warn will change the face of Germany forever.

At a press conference on August 19, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière revealed that a record 800,000 migrants and refugees — the equivalent of nearly one percent of Germany's total population — are expected to arrive in Germany in 2015, a four-fold increase over 2014. He said that 83,000 migrants had arrived in July alone, and that the figure for August would be higher still. De Maizière said that although many of the migrants are from the Middle East and North Africa, a large number (40%) are from countries in the Balkans, including Albania and Kosovo. This implies that nearly half of those arriving in Germany are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing war zones.

Of the 800,000 migrants and refugees arriving in Germany in 2015, at least 80% (or 640,000) are Muslim, according to a recent estimate by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD), a Muslim umbrella group based in Cologne. This estimate is not in dispute. In addition to the newcomers, the natural rate of population increase of the Muslim community already living in Germany is approximately 1.6% per year (or 77,000), according to data extrapolated from a recent Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.

Based on Pew projections, the Muslim population of Germany reached an estimated 5,068,000 by the end of 2014. The 640,000 Muslim migrants arriving in Germany in 2015, combined with the 77,000 natural increase, indicates that the Muslim population of Germany will jump by 717,000, to reach an estimated 5,785,000 by the end of 2015. This would leave Germany with the highest Muslim population in Western Europe. By way of comparison, the surge in Germany's Muslim population would be equivalent to the Muslim population of the United States increasing by 3 million in just one year.

Critics say that German officials, under pressure to solve Europe's migration crisis, are ignoring the long-term consequences of taking in so many migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to security concerns (Islamic radicals are almost certainly trying to enter Germany disguised as refugees), they say, the surge in Muslim immigration will accelerate the Islamization of Germany, a process that is already well under way. Islam is the fastest growing religion in post-Christian Germany. This is evidenced by the fact that an increasing number of churches in Germany are being converted into mosques, some of which are publicly sounding calls to prayer (the adhan) from outdoor loudspeaker systems. The increase is such that some neighborhoods in Germany evoke the sights and sounds of the Muslim Middle East.

Islamic Sharia law is advancing rapidly throughout Germany, with Sharia courts now operating in all of Germany's big cities. This "parallel justice system" is undermining the rule of law in Germany, experts warn, but government officials are "powerless" to do anything about it. At the same time, German judges are increasingly referring and deferring to Sharia law in German law courts. Polygamy, although illegal under German law, is commonplace among Muslims in all major German cities. In Berlin, for example, it is estimated that fully one-third of the Muslim men living in the Neukölln district of the city have two or more wives.

According to an exposé broadcast by RTL, one of Germany's leading media companies, Muslim men residing in Germany routinely take advantage of the social welfare system by bringing two, three or four women from across the Muslim world to Germany, and then marrying them in the presence of an imam (Muslim religious leader). Once in Germany the women request social welfare benefits, including the cost of a separate home for themselves and for their children, on the claim of being a "single parent with children." Although the welfare fraud committed by Muslim immigrants is an "open secret" costing German taxpayers millions of euros each year, government agencies are reluctant to take action due to political correctness, according to RTL.

Spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by shiftless immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans have turned parts of German cities into "areas of lawlessness" — areas that are de facto "no-go" zones for police. In Wuppertal, groups of bearded Muslim radicals calling themselves the "Sharia Police" have tried to enforce Islamic law on the streets by distributing yellow leaflets that explain the Islamist code of conduct in the city's Sharia zones. In Hamburg, Muslim radicals have infiltrated dozens of primary and secondary schools, where they are imposing Islamic norms and values on non-Muslim students and teachers.

In Berlin, local officials have waived rules prohibiting religious dress in public buildings so that Muslim women can wear headscarves. In Bavaria, Muslim children are being exempted from mandatory visits to former concentration camps as part of Holocaust education programs…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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WHERE THERE IS NO BORDER, THE NATIONS PERISH                                                             

Mark Krikorian                           

National Review, Sept. 1, 2015

The ongoing migration crisis in Europe, with its drownings and other deaths, is forcing Europe’s post-borders elites into an uncomfortable position. Because they preside over polities that are still somewhat democratic — and the peoples of Europe do not choose to commit national suicide — governments there can’t abolish immigration limits altogether, much as they might want to. At the same time, Europe’s rulers are unwilling to take the steps needed to enforce the limits nominally on the books. The result is hundreds of thousands of people from less happier lands calculating that it’s worth the relatively small risk of death to make it to Europe, where they will almost certainly be permitted to stay, whether they’re formally awarded refugee status or not.

Given the Middle East’s disintegration and sub-Saharan Africa’s general dysfunction, this means that Europe is at the mercy of the countries to its immediate south. So long as Qaddafi kept order in Libya and Turkey was willing to contain most of the Middle Easterners trying to pass through, a spineless Europe could maintain the façade of immigration limits. There was a lot of immigration even then, but the heat rose slowly enough that the frog, while increasingly restless, had not yet been induced to jump out of the pot.

But with Libya’s collapse into anarchy and Turkey’s evident unwillingness to stop the flow through its territory, the charade can no longer be maintained. There are hundreds of millions who would undertake the journey — whether jobs await them or not — to ensure that their children grow up in Germany, France, England, or Sweden rather than Syria, Chad, Afghanistan, or Mali. What we are seeing is the vanguard of those millions calling Europe’s bluff.

And Europe’s elite seems to have no idea how to respond. Germany’s immigration chief on Monday said “There can be no upper limit set on the intake of people who are fleeing persecution and need protection.” And France’s prime minister over the weekend said that anyone and everyone “fleeing war, persecution, torture, oppression, must be welcomed.” The push for a common EU response to the migration crisis is basically an attempt by Germany to get other nations to take some of the illegal aliens off its hands.

But the publics of Europe’s various nations aren’t going to tolerate unlimited flows. The diminution of sovereignty engineered by the EU is bad enough for some share of the population, but many more will object to extinguishing their national existence à la Camp of the Saints…Either Europe’s governments will start taking muscular action to stem the flow, or those governments will be replaced. I don’t think the people running those governments have it in them to do what’s required, which means they might have to start getting used to addressing Marine Le Pen as “Madame la Présidente.”…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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AS TRAGEDIES SHOCK EUROPE, A BIGGER REFUGEE                                                           

CRISIS LOOMS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Liz Sly

Washington Post, Aug. 29, 2015

While the world’s attention is fixed on the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees swarming into Europe, a potentially far more profound crisis is unfolding in the countries of the Middle East that have borne the brunt of the world’s failure to resolve the Syrian war. Those reaching Europe represent a small percentage of the 4 million Syrians who have fled into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, making Syria the biggest single source of refugees in the world and the worst humanitarian emergency in more than four decades.

As the fighting grinds into a fifth year, the realization is dawning on aid agencies, the countries hosting the refugees and the Syrians themselves that most won’t be going home anytime soon, presenting the international community with a long-term crisis that it is ill-equipped to address and that could prove deeply destabilizing, for the region and the wider world. The failure is first and foremost one of diplomacy, said António Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The conflict has left at least 250,000 people dead in the strategic heart of the Middle East and displaced more than 11 million overall, yet there is still no peace process, no discernible solution and no end in sight.

Now, the humanitarian effort is failing, too, ground down by dwindling interest, falling donations and spiraling needs. The United Nations has received less than half the amount it said was needed to care for the refugees over the past four years. Aid is being cut and programs are being suspended at the very moment when those who left Syria in haste, expecting they soon would go home, are running out of savings and wearing out the welcome they initially received. “It is a tragedy without parallel in the recent past,” Guterres said in an interview, warning that millions could eventually end up without the help they need to stay alive. “There are many battles being won,” he added. “Unfortunately, the number of battles being lost is more.”

It is a crisis whose true cost has yet to be realized. Helpless, destitute refugees are strewn around the cities, towns and farms of the Middle East, a highly visible reminder of the world’s neglect. They throng the streets of Beirut, Istanbul, Amman and towns and villages in between, selling Kleenex or roses or simply begging for change. Mothers clutching children sleep on traffic circles, under bridges, in parks and in the doorways of shops. Families camp out on farmland in shacks made of plastic sheeting, planks of wood and salvaged billboards advertising restaurants, movies, apartments and other trappings of lives they may never lead again.

“This is not a life,” said Jalimah Mahmoud, 53, who lives on handouts with her 7-year-old granddaughter in Al-Minya, a settlement of crudely constructed tents alongside the coastal highway in northern Lebanon. “We are only alive because we are not dead.” Inevitably, those who can are leaving. Families pool their savings and borrow from friends to pay smugglers who pile them onto boats crossing the Mediterranean to Europe and the chance of a better life.

There they are duplicating, on a lesser scale, the scenes of misery playing out across the Middle East — camping out on the beaches of Greece, sleeping on the streets of European cities and joining the queue for asylum. A sign of the dangers of their journeys emerged this past week in Austria, when authorities discovered the decomposing bodies of 71 people in an abandoned truck — apparently migrants being smuggled into the country. Syrians accounted for the largest percentage of asylum-seekers in Europe over the past two years, and their numbers are growing fast — 63 percent of the 160,000 people who have washed up in Greece so far this year were Syrian.

But Europe is an option available only to refugees with the means to pay the $5,000 or $6,000 fee demanded by smugglers. Anecdotal evidence based on interviews with Syrians in Turkey and Lebanon suggests that those who have already made the journey tend to be people who were better off before war erupted. Others are saving what little they receive or earn, selling their land and possessions, in the hope that they, too, will eventually be able to make the journey.

“Everyone I know is trying to go,” said Nada Mansour, 37, a mother of two girls who is waiting for approval to join her husband in Sweden after he paid $6,500 to be smuggled there via Libya.  “I am so happy,” she added, her eyes shining with anticipation, “because I will guarantee my children a good life.”

For most refugees, there is no escape from the squalid settlements, the humiliation of panhandling or the quiet despair of waiting out the war in the camps set up by governments or the United Nations. The UNHCR estimates that two-thirds of the refugees in Lebanon and Jordan live in absolute poverty. “We would leave if we could, but we don’t have money,” said Fitnah al-Ali, 40, who has seven daughters as well as a son, who occasionally finds ­daywork. She said the family’s aid was cut off by the United Nations after she sold food vouchers to pay for her sick husband’s medical care. “On some days we don’t eat at all,” she said.

The risk to the stability of the already fragile, volatile countries that have taken in this wave of human misery is evident. About 750,000 children are not attending school, their parents are idling away their productive years, and teens are coming of age without hope of ever finding full-time work. The crisis has gone on so long that some children have forgotten where they are from. Rashid Hamadi, 9, remembers his house, with bedrooms for himself and his siblings and a garden where roses grew. He remembers tanks and bullets and running in fear from bombs. But he hesitated when asked the name of his home town. “I don’t remember,” he said.

Ali’s daughter Bushra, 11, is forgetting how to read. At school in Syria three years ago, reading was her favorite subject, she said. Her face lit up as she rushed to retrieve her only reading material from the back of the family’s gloomy tent — an anti-smoking leaflet distributed by an Islamic charity. As her fingers traced the words, her voice faltered. “I can read less and less,” she said. “It’s getting more difficult.”

The long-term future of children such as these is bleak, and the risk of radicalization is real, said Peter Harling, senior Middle East adviser with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank. “This is a whole generation of people deprived of anything they can hope for or believe in,” he said. “The scary thing is to what extent this conflict is sowing the seeds of something else in the future that is chronic.” That there has not yet been any significant refugee-related unrest is a testament to the resilience of both the Syrians and the nations hosting them, said Rochelle Davis, an associate professor in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. But, she added, “you can’t have 25 percent of your country full of another citizenry and not have problems. There are going to be problems in Lebanon, and the same with Jordan.”…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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OBAMA'S LEGACY AND THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT                                                                

Gary C. Gambill                                                                                                 

National Post, Aug. 18, 2015

U.S. President Barack Obama's choice of American University, where John F. Kennedy gave a famous 1963 speech calling for peace and nuclear disarmament, to deliver his most impassioned defence of the recently signed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier this month was no accident. In seeking to convince Congress and the American people that the JCPOA adequately defuses the Iranian nuclear threat, the White House and its supporters have been routinely referring to the agreement as the cornerstone of his foreign policy legacy.

This messaging is partly intended as a signal of resolve to fence-sitting Democrats, who might think twice about opposing the signature foreign policy initiative of a president from their own party. But there is a deeper message implicit in the endless repetition of this talking point — that Obama wouldn't be foolish enough to double down on the JCPOA if what the critics are saying about it is true. "Look, 20 years from now, I'm still going to be around, God willing," the president told The Atlantic in May. "If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it's my name on this."

This argument, which National Review opinion editor Patrick Brennan paraphrases as, "Settle on a deal that would ruin my foreign policy legacy? But I want to have a good legacy!" is not without logic. Obama's a smart guy, with the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus at his disposal. If he's willing to bet his own farm on the JCPOA, it can't be that bad, can it? Unfortunately, yes. If smarts, knowledge and the desire to be judged favourably by history guaranteed foreign policy success, presidents would seldom make mistakes. Obama says he has "never been more certain about a policy decision than this one," but he also thought overthrowing Qaddafi would be a hoot and look how that turned out. Clearly he's not omniscient.

But the larger problem with the my-name-on-it argument is that legacy-making and the defence of U.S. national interests are two different things. Good policy decisions don't always highlight White House leadership in ways that can fill a wing of a presidential library. Whatever the merits of Obama's handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, presidential historians don't rave about preventing a bad situation from getting worse. Moreover, a favourable legacy doesn't always require the clear-cut advancement of U.S. national interests in the here and now. Legacy-making concerns how one's actions will be perceived by future generations who have little sense of the context and details. Whereas elected officials ordinarily strive to be responsive to the interests and preferences of constituents, a legacy-seeking president seeks vindication in the political hereafter.

Good policy doesn't always highlight White House leadership in ways that can fill a wing of a presidential library. This is a slippery slope for a progressive like Obama, who surely assumes that future generations will be more sympathetic to his worldview than his contemporaries. He may therefore reason that a charitable judgment can best be ensured by staying true to himself, as it were, even if it entails serious security risks, all the more so because his administration has deviated from these presumed future norms in other areas (e.g., drone strikes).

This may have given Obama reason to prefer a deeply flawed agreement that embodies his worldview over walking away from the table with nothing at all. Failed negotiations — or a continued succession of interim agreements that hands the ball to his successor — don't interest Steven Spielberg. At a time when prospects of an unvarnished domestic policy triumph have dimmed, and after his ambitious effort to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian talks went nowhere, the Iran negotiations were his last chance to do something big.

Whatever his reasons, Obama's approach has been to extract as many concessions from Iran as possible before he leaves office, but not leave the table without an agreement. Unfortunately, the Iranians correctly ascertained that he could not afford to take no for an answer, and that standing firm on unreasonable demands would bring American flexibility. The end result is that an "international effort, buttressed by six UN resolutions, to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option," former secretary of state Henry Kissinger explained in congressional testimony early this year, soon became "an essentially bilateral negotiation over the scope of that capability," with the scope of capability acceptable to the administration widening dramatically as the negotiations wore on.

Congress and the American people should give the Obama administration a fair hearing and evaluate the JCPOA on its merits, but pay no attention to the president's expressions of boundless confidence in the agreement. It's a good bet even he never imagined he'd have to settle for such a crappy deal.

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On Topic

Manfred Gerstenfeld Interviews Jacques Neriah: the Islamic State: Exterminate the Jews and Israel: CIJR, Aug. 25, 2015—“It is extremely important to understand the plans of the Islamic State. According to this movement both the State of Israel and Jews the world over should be exterminated.”

Migrant Crisis Tests Core European Value: Open Borders: Alison Smale & Melissa Eddy, New York Times, Aug. 31, 2015 —The desperate migrants and asylum seekers now flooding into Europe by the tens of thousands, and the inability so far to accommodate them in an organized way, may be starting to fray Europe’s commitment to erase old borders.

ISIL is an Evil We Have Not Yet Begun to Comprehend: Robert Fulford, National Post, Aug. 28, 2015—The man on the French train with a Kalashnikov last week has become a symbol of the new terrorism across Europe.

ISIS 'Mein Kampf' Blames Israel for Global Terrorism: Sara A. Carter, Arutz Sheva, Aug. 16, 2015 —Intelligence officials are comparing a newly discovered secret Islamic State document to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” as it blames Israel for the rise of the Islamic State and crowns U.S. President Barack Obama as the “Mule of the Jews.”