Category Archives: Media Criticism

Better Early Than Never

The Times couldn’t even wait until the storm was over:

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?

And the old answer is, as always…no.

But you can predict warm-monger propaganda like this every time the ocean spins up.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Of course, as Andy McCarthy notes, it might be easier to find a convincing answer to that question if the University of Virginia would stop trying to hide the ball. Speaking of which, no Phil, Climaquiddick was not “manufactured,” the case is not “closed,” and Michael Mann has not been exonerated. That whitewash will not end this.

Angry Nature

Twice this morning on ABC I heard the storm referred to as having emotions. “The ire of Irene,” (OK, I see the alliterary appeal) and “the wrath of the storm.”

Folks, don’t anthropomorphize rotational fluid dynamics. The storm didn’t really have it in for anyone, honest. Besides, it hates when you do that.

Losing Malmo

The slow-motion invasion of Europe continues apace and continues to make ground:

If we cared to look for the root cause of what’s happening in Europe — happening primarily without “violent extremism” — the answer is very simple: Islamist leaders have adopted a strategy of voluntary apartheid in their quest to Islamize the West.

The strategy has been championed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Its chief jurisprudent, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, urges Muslims to relocate to Europe, Australia, and North America. There, they should live among other Muslims, conduct their affairs in accordance with sharia (the law of Islam), and pressure Western governments to accept the primacy of sharia in Muslim enclaves — enclaves that will grow and spread and connect. By convincing “Western leaders and decision-makers of our right to live according to our faith — ideologically, legislatively, and ethically,” Qaradawi reasons that Muslims would “traverse an immense barrier in our quest for an Islamic state.”

…That is the plan, and it’s making extraordinary progress with a minimum of violent extremism. As Soeren Kern elaborates, in England Islamist organizations are now pressing to turn twelve British cities into Islamic emirates: autonomous Muslim enclaves governed by sharia law, independent of the national justice system. They call one proposed emirate “Londonistan” — surely not to honor Melanie Phillips, who wrote a book by that title, but confirming nevertheless the phenomenon she so brilliantly diagnosed. In these cities, non-Muslims are serially harassed, women are threatened (and worse) for failing to don the veil, and visiting officials such as former home secretary Jon Reid are heckled, “How dare you come to a Muslim area?”

In France, the government now posts on its official website the list of 751 Zones urbaines sensibles, the Muslim enclaves considered no-go zones. Non-Muslims are on notice: Enter at your own considerable risk. The police no longer go in. The nation no longer exercises sovereignty. The same pattern is seen in Brussels, Rome, Amsterdam, and the Ruhr: As the number of Muslims increases, so does the number of enclaves. The police will not enter without police escorts, which often means the police will not enter, period. As one police chief told the German press, the governments may deny it, but everyone knows these no-go zones exist, and “even worse, in these areas crimes no longer result in charges.” The Muslims are “left to themselves. Only in the worst cases do we in the police learn anything about it. The power of the state is completely out of the picture.”

The conquest, so far, is relatively bloodless, as these things go. That will change, though, if the Europeans decide to resist.

[Update a few minutes later]

On the other hand, is Islam as fragile as communism?

An index of Islam’s loss of faith is the unprecedented collapse of fertility in many Muslim countries, most notably Iran. The average Iranian has six siblings, but will have 1.5 children. The Persian nation will not survive this demographic collapse. There are seven working-age Iranians to care for each set of parents; in the next generation there will be one and a half. That is an impossible tax even for industrial nations whose per capita GDP exceeds $30,000, and an unimaginable problem for a country with a per capita GDP of only $6,000. Iran is going to die.

Why so few children? Just as Fr. Schall suggests, we will find when we poke through the rubble that Muslims are as rare in today’s Iran as Communists in the Russia of the 1980s. According to a BBC account Iran has the lowest mosque attendance of any Muslim country at just 2%.

The problem that the West confronts is not engagement with Islam, or reform of Islam, or democratization of Muslim countries, but the utter and final ruin of some of the most important Muslim nations. Turkey’s problems are just as severe: the fertility rate of native Turkish speakers is just 1.5, the same as Iran’s, while Kurdish fertility is around 4.5 — which means that the Kurds will comprise about half the country’s population a generation from now, in contrast to just under 20% today.

Much of the Muslim world remains rooted in traditional society, to be sure; 44% of Egyptians are illiterate and more than 90% of Egyptian women are subject to genital mutilation. But that model also has crashed and burned: a country immured in backwardness cannot survive in the globalized world. Egypt imports half its caloric consumption, and Chinese pigs will eat before the Egyptian poor.

The problem is that, as with communism, too many are willing to accept it as inevitable and accommodate it. Perhaps we need a new version of Reagan/Thatcher and their old strategy — we win, they lose.

Well, This Was Inevitable

New scandal at D of J, as illegal guitars find their way into the hands of Mexican druglords:

The secret program came to light early this morning in the border town of Nogales, Arizona, after what was described as a wild battle of the bands between members of the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas, two of Mexico’s most notorious violent drug gangs.

“Usually these guys are armed with Mexican Strats and Squires, Epiphones, small caliber stuff like that,” said Pedro Ochoa, 36, an eye witness to the sonic melee. “This time they were packing the heavy firepower.”

The steady barrage of power chords and piercing solo attacks attracted the attention of nearby U.S. Border Patrol agents, who arrived at the scene just as Los Zetas broke into Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song.’ By the time the dust had cleared, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Oscar Jimenez was found in a catatonic state of headbanging. He was later flown to University of Arizona Hospitals, where his condition is listed as seriously rawked.

And the cover up will continue.

[Update a couple minutes later]

What’s the difference between Martin and Gibson? Nope, not the “illegal” wood. One donates to Dems and the other to Republicans. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Prescient

Others have noted today how prophetic Gerald Warner was on inauguration day:

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

Maybe they’ll listen to us the next time around. But probably not.