The Arab Demographic Collapse
Discover Magazine’s blog reports on the collapse of the fertility rate in Arab countries, a major theme of my new book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too)
In the post below I stumbled upon a weird datum. Kuwait’s total fertility is now below 3. The average estimates seem to be ~2.5 or so. This surprised me, as my impression was that Gulf Arab petroleum based states tended to encourage pro-natalism. This was both a matter of ideology, and also because the small and wealthy native populations lived off rents, and had not had to modify their neo-medieval ideologies to foster productivity driven economic growth. But perhaps Kuwait is an anomaly? Well, it turns out that the Saudi fertility rate is now below 3 as well. Again, depending on which numbers you trust a value of ~2.5 seems plausible. In 1980, at the peak of OPEC’s power and a period when Saudi Arabia was flush with incredible per capita wealth the fertility rate was north of 7.0. But even in the mid-1990s Saudi Arabia’s fertility remained a robust 5.0. Obviously one has to account for the fact that some of the “Arab” nations are not very Arab. The UAE has huge South Asian and Persian populations, not to mention all other sorts. So its fertility of 1.80 can be chalked up to its unique demographics. But would you have guessed that Lebanon’s fertility rate is now the same as Finland’s?
The blog features an animated graphic that shows fertility collapse over time.
Stereotypes die slowly. The demographic decline of the Muslim world has been apparent since the mid-2000s, when I first began to write about the topic. But we are so attuned to the Muslim takeover-by-birthrate narrative that we do not consider something quite as scary: a chaotic breakdown engulfing a billion people, some of whom have nuclear weapons and others who are trying to get them.
Birthrates have collapsed in the Muslim world, but they are still well above “replacement level”, and they have plenty of “demographic momentum”, so they will continue to grow far into the future… The average TFR for all 49 Muslim-majority countries is an estimated 2.9 children in 2010-15. The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by 600 million in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030…
There are still plenty of Islamic nations with explosive birthrates — Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Mali, Sudan etc…
The populations of the Third World are exploding…and the populations of the West are aging, shrinking, and dying…
I don’t know whether God is behind all of this or not…and I don’t know which side God is on…to be honest with you. I have mixed feelings about it. Sometimes I feel that this country’s become so Godless, so degenerate, so sick…
Took the words out of my keyboard.
Cheer up. Who cares how many Yemenis or Somalis there are? Illiterate people running around with AK-47s are of small import to us. Pakistan is a bit of a worry, because it has nukes. But the sudden demographic transition and rapid aging of populations in extremely poor countries will lead to social breakdown.
1)They are immigrating to the West…
2)They are overthrowing their American-backed dictators who keep them under control…
3)Case Study: Afghanistan
In 2010 they had a population of 31.4 million (median age – 16.6)
In 2030 their population will be 53.3 million (median age – 20.0)
In 2050 their population will be 76.3 million (median age – 25.3)
How the hell is America supposed to win a war in a country like this where the number of fighting-age males (15-29) is exploding…
In 2010 the number of fighting-age males in Afghanistan was … 4.5 million.
In 2030 the number of fighting-age males in Afghanistan will be 8.1 million.
In 2050 the number of fighting-age males in Afghanistan will be 10.9 million.
(And this is assuming that Afghanistan’s birthrate falls from 6.62 to 2.88 by 2050. There’s no way in hell that is going to happen. So Afghanistan’s population may actually me much higher than 76.3 million in 2050.)
America is never going to “win” in Afghanistan, or any of these other “countries” in the Middle East…
You did it again.
Reality asked: “How the hell is America supposed to win a war in a country like this (Afghanistan)where the number of fighting-age males (15-29) is exploding”
Well … we begin by understanding that Afghans are divided into numerous tribes, sub-tribes and ethnic groups (Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbeks, etc.), so there is no need to fight all of Afghanistan. As a matter of fact, a lot of them are eager to work with us and are more concered about Pakistani and Iraninan influece in their country.
Note: I’m not a fan of our current Afghan campaign, but Reality seemed like he really needed an answer.
Reality: “How the hell is America supposed to win a war in a country like this where the number of fighting-age males (15-29) is exploding…”
If I may hazard a guess, I’d say the same way tiny Israel defeated several Arab countries with a population disparity much greater than the ones you cite – and the way Israel will defeat much larger Iran (and yes, I know Iranians are not Arabs) – provided, of course, that (1) Netanyahu is not replaced with a liberal and (2) the “international community” doesn’t pressure Israel into stopping short of victory as they always have done in the past. And even then, my money is on the Israelis.
And by the way, the Israeli birthrate is 3.03, so in time, Jews will outnumber Arabs in the Middle East. One just needs to be patient – as the Jews were for 2,000 years.
Re Afghanistan:
a) Israelis were always outnumbered by Arabs by a large margin, yet won all wars with the Arabs, though the Arabs are more advanced than the Afghans and the IDF is far smaller than the American army. What you need is superior weapons and better soldiers. As long as the Afghans keep their insulated stone age mentality, Afghanistan will never have an air force that is even remotely as good as the American air force or even the Israeli air force because they can’t create it themselves and can’t afford to buy it. Of course, it’s far more complicated when you’re dealing with urban warfare where the terrorists or guerrillas are operating from within civilian population, but the decisive factor there isn’t the number of fighters, but the fear of a great collateral damage. Technologically you can wipe off Afghanistan even if it had a billion people.
b) Why would you need to fight in Afghanistan in the first place? What you need is to stop letting terrorists into your country. I don’t think the US will go for another nation-building project as long as the memory of the last failures is still fresh enough, so if you have any problems with this country just make it a hit & run project. Nation-destroying rather than nation-building. That can be accomplished in weeks rather than never. Let them rip what they sow.
How reliable are your statistics – what methods are used to adjust for anomalies in Arab populations?
For example, in all wealthy Gulf Arab oil states, the populations are wildly skewed in favor of males. This is due in small measure to lack of value in female offspring, and widespread female infanticide among Muslims. The larger factor is due to the fact that huge numbers of (primarily) male itinerant workers are imported on a semi-permanent basis to perform all labor. Even though many of these intinerants are Muslim, hailing from places like the Philippines and Indonesia, that they ate not allowed to breed or maintain families among the Arabs. Yet they’d be counted in any statistic which identifies Muslims in those regions.
Also, plotting out the demographic increase in a poor Muslim nation such as Egypt from the 1960s thru 2010 indicates an increasing parabola – not a flattening or decreasing one. The impact of any putative reduction in Muslim procreation right now will not be manifest for many, many years.
You posit that declining demographic stresses will be a major destabilizing force among Muslim nations in the future, and that this translates into their eventual collapse. I disagree with your conclusion, but why would a decline which will take decades to play out, matter to us in the here and now? Today we see that chaos is now wreaking havoc within Dar ul Islam. And rather than diminishing or collapsing Islam, this chaos seems to be the ferris er which Islam requires to grow and flourish. Rather than seeing fewer Muslim nations pursuing WMDs, we see more. Rather than less Muslim emigration to the West, we see exploding numbers fleeing the terror and chaos, while preserving the seed Islam and perpetuating the same terror wherever they go. Again, the chaos is a force which drives Muslims to wage more Jihad, thus spreading more Islam.
I’ve written elsewhere that you seem to think that mayhem and chaos are somehow a bugs rather than features of Islam. That chaos will somehow weaken Islam’s grip. I argue that chaos and violence are features of authentic Islam – a features which destroy other institutions and civilizations, and leave only Islam to fill the void. So we see that Islam is not on the decline. Today e are witnessing the largest Islamic awakening since their heinous prophet began to slaughter his was across the landscape.
This doom, gloom, boom — reminds us of the Lyndon LaRouche era
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche
You were a key member of that movement–
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Haloween is such a fun American holiday. We get to dress as something we are not without trying to convince anyone otherwise.
One thing I have found works best on the internets over the years is even here a costume is just that.
Best to just be upfront and say what you mean without playing to an audience.
Don’t you agree Vic?
He’s just saying that it sounds like gloom and doom.
And that means…. what?
It is beyond stupid how some people are able to dismiss facts simply by labeling them, “doom and gloom” or some other convenient replacement for thinking.
The frightening thing is not the Arabs who live in poor countries, who are under pressure every day to not have babies. The problem is the ones who are occupiers in our world, who are under no economic restraints, because we pay for them to have babies. Unless I am very mistaken, most of the actual violent damage done to us has been by these Euro- and Ameri-Arabs. The rest are still way too busy trying to survive to fret about such things. Living with sharia law can’t be a picnic. Why do you think the Saudis continue to buy their people off? Because they can, but first those people need to be kept poor in the first place, so that the bribes work.
Remember when we were so afraid of the Japanese? We have a secret weapon: everyone wants to be a spoiled American. Once you buy into that, you are easy to enslave. Try finding anyone in Okinawa who would willingly die for the Emperor. Emperor, Schmperor. Let HIM commit seppuku, if that’s what he wants!
That is where the future lies. If we could just stop shooting ourselves in both feet, we would rocket to the economic moon, and they’d all follow us. Unfortunately, Obama is so busy stealing from everyone, and giving to his pals, that we are becoming Russia, in all its charming glory. If he even knows how to grow the economy, conduct foreign policy, or even golf, I am not aware of it.
The Arab Spring is the beginning of the end for the Crusaders, Zionists and Infidels in the Middle East. For several decades the Great Satan and the Little Satan have installed and propped up illegitimate stooges to repress us and cooperate with them. That is now coming to an end. We are now overthrowing the pro-Western and pro-Zionist puppets that you decadent infidels have installed and propped up for the last few decades.
A New Middle East is emerging. The pro-Western and pro-Zionist illegitimate dictators are being overthrown, one by one. And in their place we are establishing Islamic states ruled by the Sharia, from Egypt to Yemen, from Turkey to Somalia, from Libya to Syria, from The Land of the Two Holy Mosques to Sudan, from Tunisia to Gaza, from Jordan to Lebanon, from Indonesia to Pakistan, from Iran to Bangladesh, and many other places (and one day in Europe, and eventually in America).
It is our time now. This is the Great Awakening for Islam. We are returning to our roots. We live in Muslim countries, and our laws will reflect our religion — that’s natural. You infidels are dying. You infidels are retreating. You decadent infidels are bankrupt and your fraudulent economic system will soon collapse. Your fraudulent financial and banking system are destroying your countries, with their haram loans with interest which brings about exploding debts which you can never pay off. Your societies are collapsing. Islam is spreading throughout the world. We are on the march. Islam is on the rise. Christianity is dying. We have lots of children. You decadent infidels kill your children. We will rule over you.
We are also taking over Europe. We don’t even need to use nuclear bombs to conquer you decadent infidels. We already have nearly 50 million of our brothers and sisters in the infidel nations of Europe, who are growing rapidly in number, while the infidels are aging, shrinking, and dying, and are turning it into Eurabia. Our women’s wombs are our greatest weapon. We are conquering you in the maternity wards and kindergartens. You can’t stop it. Your grandchildren will be living under Sharia. It is inevitable. Your granddaughters will wear the burqa. Your infidel lifestyle has proven to be a total and absolute failure. We have the answer. You degenerate Westerners way of life is collapsing all around you. You are unable to solve your own problems. We have a better way of life. You will join us. Either voluntarily, or against your will.
We defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan…and we have now defeated you imperialist American infidels in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are gaining strength every day, while you infidels are becoming weaker and weaker. You are no match for us. We will defeat you easily. You are not ready for what is coming. You don’t stand a chance. It’s not too late. You can still join us. Time is running out for you infidels.
We will soon overthrow the American-backed dictator in The Land of the Two Holy Mosques, and we will cut off your infidels oil supply, and your economy will come crashing down. We are going to take on the fake illegitimate Zionist regime…and when we are done with them, we will come for you imperialist Americans, on U.S. soil, and we will fight you in the streets, house to house, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, until the Sharia is established and you decadent infidels are subjugated. Allahu Akbar!
this post is a joke, right? not even the most committed Islamic fundie still writes stuff like this! it’s like a really bad imitation of bin Laden or something.
nice try, troll.
(I am dead serious.)
Islam is rising. Christianity is dying. Zionists are an endangered species — and will soon be extinct.
You Infidels in America and Europe, your decadent nations are collapsing, while our population is exploding. You decadent Infidels are aging and dying out. We will enter your countries, and take over through our sheer numbers, and impose the Sharia — God’s Law. Our women’s wombs are our greatest weapon. We are conquering you in the maternity wards and kindergartens. Your Infidel lifestyle has proven to be a total and absolute failure. We have the answer. You degenerate Westerners way of life is collapsing all around you. You are unable to solve your own problems. We have a better way of life. Allah’s laws are for all nations, all countries and for all time. All other laws are man-made and must submit to the will of Allah. It will be hard for you at first, but once you get used to it, you will be much better off.
We defeated the Russians and the Americans. Allah is on our side! Our victory is inevitable. Time is on our side. Every day we get stronger and stronger, while you decadent Infidels get weaker and weaker. We are ascendent. You are declining. Now is our time. This is the Islamic Great Awakening. We are winning all over the globe. You Infidels are dying. You Infidels are retreating. You decadent Infidels are bankrupt and your fraudulent economic system will soon collapse. Your societies are collapsing. Islam is spreading throughout the world. We are on the march. Islam is on the rise. Christianity is dying. We have lots of children. You decadent Infidels kill your children. We will rule over you. Time is running out for you infidels.
We don’t want your filthy decadent Western culture coming into our societies, and poisoning the minds of our children. We don’t want to have anything to do with your sick poisonous culture — the sexual immorality, pornography, prostitution, filthy movies, homosexual marriage, drugs, alcohol, gambling, consumerism, materialism, hedonism etc. We want nothing to do with your decadent culture.
The Jihad and the Sharia are unstoppable! Allahu Akbar!
It’s you again, isn’t it?
Suggest that you’ve got a big leak in your trolling skiff, your net is full of very large holes…..your rant-post looks sillier each time it pops up.
You really need to take your medicine.
If you’re not decadent and backwards, why do you have promotions for soap and soda pop 5 times a day and have some guy shout it from a tower?
Ever hear of TV?
“We don’t want your filthy decadent Western culture coming into our societies, and poisoning the minds of our children. We don’t want to have anything to do with your sick poisonous culture — the sexual immorality, pornography, prostitution, filthy movies, homosexual marriage, drugs, alcohol, gambling, consumerism, materialism, hedonism etc. We want nothing to do with your decadent culture.”
But that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Your children WANT those things, and so do you when you’re alone in the middle of the night. The truth is that Western society, for all its ills and failures, offers FREEDOM. The freedom to do things that feel good, the freedom to ask embarassing questions, and the freedom to laugh at sanctimonius fools. It’s that freedom that terrifies the medieval mind, and it’s that freedom that has made the West the beacon of enlightenment that it is. Choke on it.
Michaganruth, you are profoundly ignorant. This is exactly what the majority of the world’s Islamic population believes.
It is what they write. But economically, exclude the oil states, and the Muslim world looks pretty pathetic. Turkey is better than most, due to its long-time European orientation. If Egypt and Pakistan–places without oil–cannot get their economic acts together they will collapse along with their Western aid donors.
I dunno. you conveniently leave out the Palestinians.
here’s wikipedia, which take with a grain of salt but they do link to the census bureau, so…
“According to Guardian (2008) the Palestinian territories have one of the fastest growing populations in the world, with numbers surging 30% in the past decade (2008). There was 3.76 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, up from 2.89 million 10 years earlier.[2]
According to the U.S. Census population growth mid 1990-2008 in Gaza and West Bank was 106 % from 1.9 million (1990) to 3.9 million persons.[3]“
Not so. I’ve written extensively about this. See for example
http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/72679/time-out/
The Palestinian data need to be read twice.
Spengler, re: “Cheer up. Who cares how many Yemenis or Somalis there are? Illiterate people running around with AK-47s are of small import to us.” Yes, but with the qualification that they remain in their nations and we in ours, separate and isolated from one another, much like the immune system walls off an infection. Alas, that isn’t what is happening, those Somalis are moving to the USA, and getting jobs as cab drivers in places like Minneapolis, MN,and… funding mosques, agitating for special rules limiting fares who do not conform to Islam (no alcoholl, no dogs, etc.), living in Muslim-only enclaves, attending sermons bt radical imams, and causing all sorts of other mischief. Oh, and they are subsisting on welfare whenever possible (it’s a form of jihad), and breeding like rabbits. Pace Mark Steyn, these folks aren’t immigrants looking for a better life, they are colonists – an advance party for Islam in America.
These data notwithstanding, I will try to cheer up, as you suggest – but I’d be alot happier if the government would enact an immediate moratorium on Muslim immigration… fat chance of that happening with the Muslim-in-Chief in the White House, though…
IOW, they are in offensive and the West is not even in defensive.
So it’s not just a matter of what they do and what we do, but what they do and what we do to self-destruct and help them.
And while we help them insinuate themselves in our societies, here’s what they do in their societies. And they’ve actually starting doing it in our societies too — just ask the Jews in EU.
Christian Student Beaten to Death for Wearing Cross
Arab Spring, Egyptian edition: a 17 year old Christian in a high school in Mallawi was ordered by his teacher to cover up a tattoo of a cross on his wrist. True to his faith, he refused to do so and instead exposed a crucifix that he wore around his neck. He was then beaten to death by his teacher and two Muslim students:
According to Ayman’s father, eyewitnesses told him that his son was not beaten up in the school yard as per the official story, but in the classroom. “They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault. When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/christian-student-beaten-to-death-for-wearing-cross.php
This may be a stupid question, but how do demographers factor in the issue of polygyny in Muslim society when looking at fertility? If you say the replacement birthrate is at 3.0 in a Muslim land, does that mean between a man and one of his four wives? And what about his fertility with the other three? I suppose there must be Muslim men who remain single because polygyny drives down the number of available female partners, but perhaps this is moderated by young men dying at higher rates in Arab countries, leaving behind fertile widows who can remarry, and that age disparity is less of an inhibiting factor than in the West (middle aged Muslim men are free to marry teenage girls).
Thoughts, anyone?
Fertility is calculated per female, not per male; polygamy is irrelevant to the calculation.
Another thing that birth rates conveniently ignore is age of marriage and childbirth.
Assume a couple of native Europeans will have 3 children, and an immigrant muslim couple also will have 3 children.
However, the muslims marry and have their first child at age 20. The Europeans at age 30. By the time the Europeans have made their first baby, the Muslims have made 3 and their oldest is 10. In just 10 more years he will marry and have a child – while the oldest European child is just 10 and wont marry for another 15-20 years – at which time the muslim child will have three of his own already.
While waiting for the collapse.
Iran, seeking to induce the 12th Imam, even in its death throes, launches against Israel.
Egypt et al are saved from total destruction by early starvation, and fewer replacements (or does this reignite the birth rate?).
As Islamic societies fail, what little secularization there is goes down the tubes, followed by loss of oil revenue, where it exists, and the original social security plan kicks back in, sons and sons and sons to support aging parents.
When medicine drys up, for all of the above…you get the point…Malthusian or anti-Malthusian, birth rates are the hardest for governments to control; even the one child rule in China has a limit.
I contend, still, that population trends notwithstanding, we need to think clearly about what the current populace does with its death rattle, now, as well as what the new populace will do if we do not attempt to alter the basic narrative of their lives….Islam is the problem.
1st, I think the West will collapse before all this happens to the new islamist regimes.
2nd, part of the reason is that the West will continue to bankrupt itself pumping jizziya into them, keeping them alive.
3rd, when the muslims in EU have enough demographic clout to gain political weight, policies that satisfy them will be adopted that will accelerate native decline.
4th, with the US out of the picture and incapacitated, there’ll be everybody for himself — king Abdullah is correct on this one — with China, Russia, Iran, Turkey and others doing their thing.
That’s what the PostWest is.
The PostWest
http://www.fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com
See what I mean?
====================
The EU is not at all pleased with Greek PM George Papandreou’s decision to hold a popular referendum on whether to accept the austerity terms the EU wants in exchange for a second bail out. They gave Greece what amounts to an ultimatum…either accept the terms now or leave the eurozone.
If the EU insists on this course of action, Greece will simply default on its debt and start from scratch, leaving the other eurozone members holding the bag
The problem for the eurozone is that if the other troubled members like Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain see Greece defaulting and going back into the drachma, they’re going to do exactly the same thing and flee back to their own currencies after defaulting on their debt.
And the entire rotten edifice could come tumbling down, with major repercussions for world financial markets.
An even bigger problem: the fantastic speculative side-bets on Greek CDS underwritten by the TBTF American banks.
There are only FIVE of these CDS writers — and their entire pool of assets is trivial compared to their CDS books.
Meaning: they can’t possibly lay off risk via other derivatives. You can toss out any notion of ‘net’ exposure — for these players Gross = Net.
BofA is already in such trouble ( credit downgrades trigger collateral calls ) that Bernanke permitted them to befoul their Bank ledger with parent company side bets. The gross notional betting pool is a cool $75 TRILLION.
This is why the powers that be are trying to arrange a Greek default that isn’t a default: it’s impossible for the system to pay off on the side bets. These speculative positions entirely dwarf the size and role of Greece in the global economy. Greece is just a nag for the crowd to bet on — THAT’s what’s going on.
The TBTF wrote these CDS so as to book profits great enough to stanch the absolute bloodbath in residential and commercial real estate that they are suffering. No one can find a styptic pencil big enough.
The light at the end of the tunnel is a hedge fund with a flashlight.
And while all this happens, there is no end to the US delusions about the Middle East, no matter how reality keeps kicking them in the balls. Ignatius in the WaPo:
=================
Diplomatic versions of the three-cushion shot in billiards are perilous, but let’s suppose you could accomplish the following: Lift the stature of Egypt’s fragile transitional government, support Israel’s desire for Arab recognition, reanimate the Palestinian peace process and deal a blow to Iran.
It’s a tricky shot, and it would take a while to line up, but it strikes me that these goals could gradually be advanced if Egypt could persuade the Palestinian group Hamas to recognize that a new wind is blowing in the Arab world — and to change its terrorist stripes. If the Muslim Brotherhood is now a player in a democratic Arab world, so eventually may be its ideological kin, Hamas.
================
If you believe that I got a bridge in Brooklyn and a tower in Paris to sell you.
But we are so attuned to the Muslim takeover-by-birthrate narrative…
Does Mark Steyn come to mind?
Anyone read the news? Europe is collapsing. Muslims who emigrate to Europe for the most part are corrupted by the ambient culture and stop having children in about ten years, with important exceptions (the Pakistanis, for example). Europe’s welfare state is going down the drain. What does that mean for the parasitical immigrant population? The whole rotten business will go down. Political correctness dies a sudden death when the social democrats can’t afford it. We are not going to have a gradual takeover by the Caliphate, but a chaotic mess.
As for large numbers of military age men: look at Iraq in 1990, let alone 2003. Mass armies haven’t been of interest since the adoption of the M19 grenade launcher.
Or the even more deadly precision guided Cluster Bomb (CBU)… It actually makes tactical nuclear weapons almost obsolete.
David,
I read the news. I just interpret them less rosy than you.
These are ideal circumstances for further flooding of Europe with immigrants. The notion of collapse will be slow to realize by the immigrants and the collapsing EU won’t be able to stop or control them. They will turn EU into versions of their home countries and for a while it’ll still feel better than the latter.
And those who will flood will have more children than the dying Europeans.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-09/immigration-the-other-greek-crisis/3652092
Parasites need a host to feed on. When the host dies, the parasites die along with it.
There’s a lot of proteins in a dying corpse to keep attracting parasites for quite a while and accelerate the decay, particularly relative to where they’re coming from.
Neither is it clear to me what you mean by “dying”. Muslims are much better at surviving in harsh conditions than Westerners.
Time to take your medicine.
Re: David’s comment above about Muslim immigrants, the melting pot has started boiling over in Moscow. No country other than the U.S. has absorbed more immigrants legal or illegal in the last twenty years than Russia:
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111104/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_nationalists
“We are not going to have a gradual takeover by the Caliphate, but a chaotic mess.” Yes. Though I’m still amazed that young men, especially at a militant nationalist gathering, can get away with saying “HH” in a country that lost 27 million people to Nazi aggression.
On the other hand, if things get very bad in Greece and the Turks press their luck too much with claims over gas off Cyprus or some such, that may give these unemployed Russian guys whose girlfriends are all on the lookout for older, more established minigarchs (the former USSR ladies, at least outside Moldova and the poorer parts of Ukraine, no longer seem as interested in foreigners) something to do.
On the positive side too, the Russian ultranationalists if not fascists only turned out 5-7,000 people. That may sound like a lot for Moscow but it’s not in a city with a larger population than New York and the most densely populated urban center in Europe.
Still, the Bolsheviks were also a minority within a minority.
You don’t need a majority for trouble, as you realized. What you need is an aggressive minority and a weak/apathetic majority.
Muslims are far from majority in EU countries, yet they already significantly affect the policies of those countries. As the West continues to die and they die at a lesser rate, it’s not long before they determine policies.
I’m afraid David will soon find something postworthy coming out of Russia, as these two events sort of represent ‘The Two Towers’ with the Rus in between:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/11/06/80000-muslim-pray-together-on-freezing-moscow-streets-for-eid/
PJM and Russia’s Muslim question
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2057649/Nazi-saluting-nationalists-Take-Russia-march-Moscow-Muslim-migrants.html
Nazi salutes in a country that lost 27 million to the Nazis — disgusting. And even more disgusting is the dowdy babushka doing it, instead of slapping one of the youths for it
I think the estimates of as many as 2 million Muslims in Moscow are somewhat high, and certainly the city has more mosques than Paris or London despite being larger (in terms of people within city limits). But as with many things in Russia who can be sure given the propiska (household registration) system and the fact that many of the Muslims are illegals from Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan who aren’t exactly inclined to open the door when the Russian census taker comes by? (Though I doubt even the Turkomen think of themselves as Turks or Turkics longing to return to their Anatolian homeland)It ain’t like here where we encourage illegals to participate in the Census and print the forms in dozens of languages.
If nothing else, if the Greeks get too uppity or drill for oil off Cyprus where the Turk claims the resource, we may find the odd spectacle of American deepwater drillers from Houston being protected by Russian navy ships. According to Stanislav Mishin aka Mat Rodina, it’s already happened with Leviathian. Though he’s not quite delusional enough as an Orthodox nationalist to believe the Russians are going to liberate Constantinople and give it back to Greek speakers…
So, if the European welfare cradle to grave state is going down the tubes, what’s the incentive for not having children?–generally speaking, cultures without state “social security” mechanisms and technologically driven economic growth have high birth rates. As I recall, demographers of the Malthus ilk were blindsided by that correlation between low birth rates and economic growth. I’m also reminded of the Black Death. Now there was a demographic catastrophe, but who could have possibly known that four centuries later the Europeans would rule the world? Birth rates change. I don’t know what the demographic reality of the Arabian peninsula was in the 8th century, but the Muslims certainly managed to sweep across North Africa and much of Spain in one century. Mass armies became obsolete with weapons of mass destruction–until you actually need boots on the ground to impose “reality.” Curiously, the Obama dream of a nuclear (bomb) free world essentially implies the return of mass armies to settle definitions of “reality.”
I support the idea of Arab demographic collapse.
If people understand how the Total Fertility Rate is computed they will understand that the CHANGE in the TFR and the TFR itself give very interesting results. TFR is the mean of all the children born from women between 15 and 50 years old. This is a 35 year time span. So, just now, in the TFR are computed the children of women that had they 5 children 20 years ago at age 30. The majority of the childbirth happen between 15 and 35 and earlier in these societies.
I would be interested to know how many children had the 15-30 bracket now compared to the same bracket 10 and 20 years ago. The TFR is falling like a brick and on a mathematical basis one wonder how many children are really born today in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab World.
How fertile will be the average Egyptian Woman when Egypt will not able to import all the food it need?
OK, it is not mass armies that we have to worry about, but perhaps mass migration. From still highly fertile Muslim countries to Democratic countries.
But no, probably Muslims cannot win anymore solely on the demographic advantage they once seem to have so much and for a long time to come. And let us tell them that, as “winners” do not listen to “losers”, but if they cannot “win” and democratic nations will not “lose” anymore, perhaps Muslims will smarten up and adapt?
And even before the demographic factor the faith-factor, or ideological factor, may be more important. And can we hope for lots of bright young people with a democratic idealism matching the commitment of Muslims to Islam? I suppose at least in Israel we can.
And then there is Energy-future. Can it be that diversified Democratic Nations also get more energy-independence, further strengthening them and weakening Islamic strongholds, like Saudi Arabia, Iran? Not necessarily with them selling less oil, but them getting lower prices for it, and at least Democratic Nations using an array of energy-supply; shale oil, shale gas, other gas, athabasca oil, and then the alcohol-contingent-possibilities, including bio-mass-usage, especially for transportation. And then the electricity-usage, for transportation also, with ever higher contributions of solar- and windpower?
What a great learning experience it was to read David P. Goldman. As it was to read Lawrence Solomon. And then checking their facts and findings, in other sources, as well in reading all those very interesting relevant posts all over the internet.
If I were Greek or Italian I would be worried about boatloads of starving Egyptians landing on my coast.