The Thomas Chronicles

***Further Thoughts Below***

A friend of mine emailed me this recent article from Newsweek and it was ominously titled, “A Return to Pastoral Europe?” For a few years now, we were becoming acclimatized to the notion of a Eurabia, where with the catastrophic decline in European birthrates simultaneous with the infusion of Muslim immigrants will radically change the face of Europe. A Muslim Continental Europe is now a virtual inevitability, even if native Europeans decide to fight at this late date (provided they won’t nuke all the entire Mideast, that is).

But the implications of an imploding Europe is far more ominous than I would have imagined. Seeing spread of Islam into an imploding Europe is only seeing it from one angle.

This is not decades off. It’s happening right now…

Germans are getting used to a new kind of immigrant. In 1998, a pack of wolves crossed the shallow Neisse River on the Polish-German border. In the empty landscape of Eastern Saxony, speckled with abandoned strip mines and declining villages, the wolves found plenty of deer and rarely encountered humans. They multiplied so quickly that a second pack has since split off, colonizing a second-growth pine forest 30 kilometers further west. Soon, says local wildlife biologist Gesa Kluth, a third pack will likely form, possibly heading northward in the direction of Berlin.

Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany’s wolves. Today, it’s the local humans whose numbers are under threat. Wolf-country villages like Boxberg and Weisswasser are emptying out, thanks to the region’s ultralow birthrate and continued rural flight. Nearby Hoyerswerda is Germany’s fastest-shrinking town, losing 25,000 of its 70,000 residents in the last 15 years.

Such numbers are a harbinger of the future. Home to 22 of the world’s 25 lowest-birthrate countries, Europe will lose 41 million people by 2030 even with continued immigration, according to the latest U.N. Population Division report. The biggest decline will hit rural Europe. As Italians, Spaniards, Germans and others produce barely half the children needed to maintain the status quo—and rural flight continues to suck people into Europe’s suburbs and cities—the countryside will lose close to a third of its population, say both the United Nations and the EU. “It’s a triple time bomb,” says University of Lisbon demographer Nuno da Costa. “Too few children, too many old people and too many of the remaining young people still leaving the village.”

The implications of this transformation touch on everything from tourism to retirement locales to government conservation and agricultural policies. Our postcard view of Europe, after all, is of a continent where every scrap of land has long been farmed, fenced off and settled, where every tree has been measured, counted and named. But the continent of the future may look rather different. “Big parts of Europe will renaturalize,” says Reiner Klingholz, head of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. Bears are back in Austria. In Swiss alpine valleys, farms have been receding and forests are growing back in. In parts of France and Germany, wildcats and ospreys have re-established their range.

This sounds like an eco-environmentalist’s dream, inspiring loose talk of a Europe Pastoral—the return of wide-open spaces and primeval wilderness to a densely settled landscape. Yet the truth is more varied, and interesting…

You can read the rest here.

Further thoughts:

Within the context of Europe’s collapsed demographics, I think it’s understandable their coddling and surrendering to the Muslim extremists abroad and in their own soil. They cannot generate the numbers required to fight a war against the Islamofascists in the Mideast, and they don’t have the numbers required to defend themselves from the Islamofascists in their own countries.

What can they do but accommodate and surrender and buy time?

What the urban Muslims in Europe don’t understand is that once the native Europeans go, they’ll go down with them. No services. No electricity. Hell, they won’t even have enough people to operate the plumbing, and once the plumbing goes, diseases will again run rampant. They will be dominant in Europe for all of a few minutes before the curtain closes. Furthermore, the Arab Muslim states neighboring Europe heavily relies on European and American technology and food just to sustain itself. With Europe down for the count and the possibility of another period of American isolationism, what chance do the Arab Muslims have?

We are seeing an entire civilization implode with a whimper. The environmentalists/Leftists/Buildaburger crowd are trying to engineer the human population to its lowest possible number. The problem they just don’t seem to get is that everything shuts down. To live in a high-tech civilization and fly around in your private jets, you’ve got to have a critical mass of people doing the grunt work. That takes sheer numbers. Without sheer numbers, everything implodes back to a Dark Age.

For instance, you’ve got to have people to mine and drill the ground for oil. You’ve got to have people to mine the mountains for iron ores. You’ve got to have people to grow rubber. Etc. Etc. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum. The myriads of factors required to make a civilization go is virtually infinite and virtual incalculable. It would be folly to think you can game the system and divert it to do your bidding.

What’s more, I don’t think that the Muslims would resume their eternal war with the infidels if they thought they didn’t have a chance. They only halted their conquest of Europe because of the Crusades, gunpowder and the industrial revolution. And as it turned out, it was only a few hundred year hiatus. Now that Europe is imploding and is weak, they’ve resumed their offensive.

In any case, for Europe, it’s done. I don’t think we will have the luxury of sitting back with our binoculars from across the Atlantic and eat popcorn while Europe goes the way of the Titanic.

I think our current War on Terror is but just a prelude to the worldwide upheaval this event will cause.

The main attraction is yet to come…

“Did you know that women don’t like to have sex with small wee-wee’s? Here take this miracle pill! It’s a phase. You’ll grow out of it.”

“Plethoravitus. Guaranteed to enhance your sex life for up to two weeks. Side effects include, nausea, projectile vomiting, irradiated skin, bleeding, diarrhaea, weight loss, and other nondescript symptoms. Not all effects from daily ingestion are known. If you suddenly hear strange wispy voices from nonexistent people, please contact your nearest priest or preacher, as medical doctors and paramedics can no longer help you.”

Does any of this sound familiar to you? It should. Every time I get on MySpace, every time I flick on the boob-tube, every time I scan the magazine racks… hell, I can’t buy a stick of celery or an apple without being bombarded with sex ads. As you wait at the check-out stand you might notice this familiar caption on a “teen” magazine, “5 Sexual positions you’ve never heard of.” Or how about this one, “How she likes it in bed.”

From all the lascivious, you’d almost think that people are walking the streets conducting impromptu Bacchanalias, or are dosey-doing their partners round and round… and round. No doubt some people are screwing around more than a shaking bug-eyed Chihuahua in heat… and I’m not talking about the weather. I dearly hope they are a minority of a minority…

At times it feels as though we’ve stepped into Adulus Huxley’s Brave New World. The book had the Alphas and the Betas, we’ve got the terms Winners and Losers. The book has Soma, we’ve got anti-depressants. The book advocates sex with many partners in order to control the population, we’ve got our advertising firms saying the same thing on all levels (they leave out the control part though).

The particular similarity between modern reality and this book that gets me the most is Soma. When I read this book back in Middle School, everyone in my classthought this whole thing was strange. Pop a pill and feel better instantly? We just couldn’t wrap our minds around it. Just what the hell does Soma mean?

A few years later anti-depressants were introduced into the general public. It’s not used just for mental cases, you understand. In fact, when they were first introduced, they had a very narrow medical application, and it was supposed to be taken for only a very limited time. Now it’s used by parents who want to control their kids. It’s used by adults who want to block out all feedback from the world. It’s rather like the effect of alcohol but without the hangover.

Suddenly, you look around and you see hundreds of people everyday walking around with glazed-over eyes, like freakin’ animated zombies, and you’d swear you’d just entered the Twilight Zone.

Feeling out of it? Take a Soma. Feeling down because you’ve just fought with your girlfriend/boyfriend? Take a Soma. Can’t cope with work? Take a Soma. You wanna just numb out the world and not feel anything. Take a Soma.

Roughly ten years after I first read the book, I get it now. The Soma is everywhere and no one wants to see it. Tom Cruise made a few disparaging remarks about people’s Soma and they took the most famous actor in recent memory and flushed his sorry butt down the tubes. I mean, how DARE he mention my anti-depresssants! The OUTRAGE!

Of course, what most people don’t want to know, refuses to know, is that anti-depressants make people become suicidal… even while on their “medication”.

So methinks this pleasant civilization of ours will have a rude awakening at some point. I don’t know what it would mean when half the entire US population will go off this drug cold turkey. Addicts act very erratically when they’re skeching. And the supply of Soma will end eventually…

I think this whole thing is unfortunate. I used to have great respect and admiration for Danny Glover. His politics was generally much more to the Left than my own, but I didn’t begrudge him that. But this story coming out of the Guardian is just… Well, what can you say to it. The picture just about says it all, doesn’t it?

Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (£9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression.

The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover’s biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti.

It will also give seed money for a film version of The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez’s novel about the last days of Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism.

Glover, 60, who starred with Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, and more recently with Eddie Murphy in the film DreamGirls, is a civil rights activist and supporter of Mr Chávez’s radical leftwing policies.

A document from the congress’s finance commission said the culture ministry would be a partner with Glover and give $17.8m for “scripts, production costs, wardrobe, lighting, transport, makeup and the creation of the whole creative and administrative platform”.

The project could mark a breakthrough for Villa del Cine, a new government-funded studio outside the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, which is part of Mr Chávez’s effort to combat what he sees as American cultural hegemony.

You can read the rest here.

Do you ever sit and wonder sometimes how when you’re young (grade school, that is) time seems to stretch endlessly before you. Minutes and hours seemed to go on like Chinese water torture; eons between moves. You used to stare vacuously at the second hand of a clock. Drip. Tick. Drip. Perhaps back at that blissfully benighted age, as that clock hypnotizes you, you started to play with your drool, carefully yo-yoing from the side of you mouth. If time was a horse, you’d want to spur his sides and kick his rump into gear (Though I actually wouldn’t recommend you do the latter. Horses have a wicked snap kick, though I’d have to say it is preferable over an Amazon woman kicking you with four inch high heels…)

Anyway, I was thinking about how nowadays, time seems run like a mad pooch on mescaline and with less brains. On Monday morning, I wake up, shower, force down some breakfast and drive a rapid 30 miles per hour on the freeway towards work. (”Hey, get outta my way, Turdball!” Ahem. Actually, most of all that verbosity occurs somewhere between my ears…) I arrive at work, turn on my computer, and stare at the monitor for a few hours. Then I go home.

Rinse, repeat, spit.

Rinse, repeat, spit. And so on and so forth.

Then one morning a fellow co-worker who’s also plugged into the Matrix says to me, either at my cubicle or inside the elevator,

“Damn, did you know it’s Friday?”

“Naw, really?” I said. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Fuck yeah it is,” says my enthusiastic colleague. “Next thing you know it’ll be winter and 2008 and then I’ll be sitting my rosy ass in an old folks home. How’d you like that?”

“Not very.”

(Now don’t get me wrong here. I love my job despite its occasional monotony. It gives me time to ponder the imponderable. Fathom the Unfathomable. Unlock the mysteries of EXISTENCE ITSELF! Well… not really. I just kind of sit there writing things when I’m bored. But it’s worth it.)

But back to time. I occasionally get the impression God is pressing the fast-forward button, and suddenly we feel as though our lives are flashing across our eyes… because it is.

Or in the immortal words of that noted sage Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

***Update Below***

Hey, ya’ll want to hear a joke. It’s called a comprehensive immigration bill.

Deal Struck on Immigration Bill
May 17 02:12 PM US/Eastern
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Key senators in both parties announced agreement with the White House Thursday on an immigration overhaul that would grant quick legal status to millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and fortify the border.

The plan would create a temporary worker program to bring new arrivals to the U.S. A separate program would cover agricultural workers. New high-tech enforcement measures also would be instituted to verify that workers are here legally.

The compromise came after weeks of painstaking closed-door negotiations that brought the most liberal Democrats and the most conservative Republicans together with President Bush’s Cabinet officers to produce a highly complex measure that carries heavy political consequences.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said he expects Bush to endorse the agreement.

“Politics is the art of the possible, and the agreement we just reached is the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders and bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the sunshine of America,” Kennedy said.

Anticipating criticism from conservatives, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said, “It is not amnesty. This will restore the rule of law.”

….

The draft bill “gives a path out of the shadows and toward legal status for those who are currently here” illegally, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

The immigration issue also divides both parties in the House, which isn’t expected to act unless the Senate passes a bill first.

The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a “Z visa” and—after paying fees and a $5,000 fine—ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first.

They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.

A new temporary guest worker program would also have to wait until those so-called “triggers” had been activated.

I think it would be a mistake to glibly think that our illegals will become happy little Americans since many of our fellow countrymen no longer believe in the ideals of our country anyway. What makes us think that people who’ve come here illegally by the millions will assimilate into happy little Americans? What are we offering them other than money?

We currently have 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States, 90 percent of the Mexican, and assimilation with them is definitely not a given here in Los Angeles. I’m not sure we can absorb them into our culture. For assimilation to work, Americans must be the majority at any given place, and for many of our major cities, Americans are no longer the majority.

Many mistakenly believe that because assimilation worked in the past, it’ll work now. I’m not sure it will. The times and eras where mass assimilation has worked were in eras when Americans constitute the decisive majority; that is, not a 51 percent majority, but 80 percent majority.

Update

Perhaps I spoke too soon with this immigration bill. Readers of this blog would know that I am very emotional on the subject of illegal immigration. I think our current stance on immigration, and illegal immigration in particular, is just a travesty in the rule of law. Given enough time, it could very well destroy this nation.

In the course of the debate on this bill, I am sure we will know more about it. There are two particular items that I would like to see in this bill. One, to build and FUND the wall across our Southern border; not just 300 miles worth, but the whole damn thing. Two, to get rid of chain link immigration, where immigrants can bring every member of their family here.

I would also like to see a third item, very akin to that last item. Children that are born on US soil by alien nationals SHOULD NOT be automatically US citizens. Foreigners on a holiday having a baby shouldn’t suddenly be US citizens. Mexican women just can’t run across the border, have their baby and suddenly become US citizens.

Now, that I’d like to see too, though I understand we should take it one step at a time…

The Drudge Report is reporting on a developing story where Speaker Nancy Pelosi is attempting to silence the Republican minority.

PELOSI LOWERS THE BOOM
Wed May 16 2007 14:43:59 ET

After losing a string of embarrassing votes on the House floor because of procedural maneuvering, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to change the current House Rules to completely shut down the floor to the minority.

The Democratic Leadership is threatening to change the current House Rules regarding the Republican right to the Motion to Recommit or the test of germaneness on the motion to recommit. This would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822.

In protest, the House Republicans are going to call procedural motions every half hour.

Developing…

It would be very interesting where this goes. Is the party that used to championed free speech and free expression going to shut down free speech on the House floor? It could be the end of (!) … — … (Go back to sleep, says the legislator. Go take your ease.)

I’m going to be keeping one eye on this story…

In a European poll, 44% believe that Jews have too much say in international markets. 58% of the Polish people believe that it’s “probably true” that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust”. The poll was done in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, and overall, those countries averaged at 47% in agreement to that last question that Jews talked too much about the Holocaust…

Even as Anti-Semitism is rising worldwide to unprecedented levels, a shadow of war looms over the embattled state of Israel. Aside from the near-daily rocket fire they absorb from the Palestinian Gaza Strip, Syria is also reported to be conducting a quiet arms build up. According to the chief of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, for the moment Syria’s military is in a defensive posture.

This, however, doesn’t inspire me to warm fuzzy feelings. The fact is these countries are close enough to smell each other’s bad breath in the morning. They’ve only to roll over and look at each other. The further fact that Syria is cavorting with hardened terrorists should give both Israel and us pause. We should trust them just about as far as we can sling a piano— without the use of hydraulics and a crane, of course.

And I’m pretty sure Speaker Pelosi’s shenanigans with Syria didn’t help matters much. The fact that a member of the US House of Representative behaved like a direct Presidential legate to a foreign power without the authority a Presidential legate can only be described as muddling the waters at best. Treasonous at worse.

I do note, however, the sequence of events following Pelosi’s visit. She visits Syria’s Assad. She comes home and rams through the bill calling for the withdrawal of American troops despite Bush’s assured veto. Iran declares that there will be no peace with the United States unless we repent of our “Satanic” ways. (This, of course, echoes al Qaeda’s terms for peace, which is to either kill all our Jews or to hand over all our Jews to them for them to kill.)

The Iraqi government goes on recess in the middle of our troop surge and leaves their entire agenda dangling. (Who wants to stick around? Aren’t we handing them over to terrorists like we handed the Kurds over to Saddam?)

Our domestic Muslims demand ceremonial foot basins at airports. They can’t use the same ones as the infidels apparently. Our domestic Muslims are also demanding separate schools, separate restrooms, separate everything… like they already received from Europe. They wouldn’t have dared to issue demands for fear of our reaction just a few months ago, and now they are doing it wholesale. Islamophobia, indeed. Then, there’s that attack on Fort Dix…

All this followed within just a MONTH of Pelosi’s trip to the Mideast and our increasing calls for retreat… draw from these events what you will. Her statement when she was in Syria, that “The road to Damascus is a road to peace,” is becoming more ridiculous by the day.

Then, there is Israel’s problem with Syria…

Here is what Mossad chief Meir Dagan said:

“Anyone who thinks that our talking with Syria would sever them from Hezbollah is mistaken,” Mossad chief Meir Dagan told a closed forum last week. However, he added, “I do believe Syrian President Bashar Assad could agree to expel Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Damascus and stop supporting them.”

Nevertheless, Dagan issued a clear warning about the dangers of talks with Syria: “If we enter negotiations with Assad and they fail, the danger of war will be greater than if there were no negotiations at all,” he said.

In the discussion, Dagan laid out his views on the Syrian issue in detail. Yet sources who were present at the meeting said that his bottom-line position remained unclear, and at times, he even contradicted himself. This may have been related to his belief, as he put it, that “the decision on whether to resume negotiations with Syria should not be the business of the intelligence agencies.”

“I’m not a politician,” he said. “I’m an intelligence person, and it’s not my job to say whether we need to negotiate with Syria; that is the job and the decision of the prime minister and the government. My job is to present assessments and risks.”

Nevertheless, these sources said, their general impression was that Dagan, one of the most dominant figures in the security establishment, believes that talks with Syria would do more harm than good.