Magic Statistics

UK police are holding two men who appear to be linked with the accused terrorists arrested last weekend in Canada.  A 21-year-old Bradford resident was detained at Manchester airport on Tuesday night, and a 16-year-old was arrested this afternoon.

The arrest of the teenager from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, comes as police search three properties in the Bradford area.

The latest arrest and searches come after a 21-year-old Bradford man was held in Manchester on Tuesday night.

Both are being questioned in connection with terror arrests in Canada.

The two are being held under the Terrorism Act 2000.  Police says these arrests are not connected to the ongoing investigation in London.

The older man, nabbed by counter-terrorist police as he got off a flight from Canada, is said to be a “key figure” in the Canadian plot.

The 21-year-old man had arrived from Canada, where security services claimed that he had been living alongside some of the 17 terror suspects arrested in Toronto at the weekend in one of the biggest operations in North America. Hours later police in West Yorkshire arrested a 16-year-old youth after documents and mobile phone records seized in Canada revealed a British link to the alleged gang of Muslim militants operating from their homes in the Toronto suburbs.

RCMP learned of the link to the older suspect and alerted UK authorities when they realised he was leaving the country.  Canada is expected to initiate extradition proceedings shortly.

Matt Walcoff, business reporter for The Record of Waterloo, Ontario, has written a story that all Canadians should read.  He recently visited Caledonia to get a first-hand look at the stand-off between aboriginals and local residents.  It seemed peaceful enough when he arrived, more like a labour dispute than a war zone.  But it got ugly real fast when he stopped his car to take a photo of the barricades constructed by Six Nations members.

Immediately, a one-eyed protester came darting across the street, motioning to me to roll down my window. I complied, which was my second mistake.

"Gimme your film," he said.

"I'm sorry?" I asked.

"Give me your film. We have authority from the OPP to take your film."

I found it ironic that someone challenging the authority of the government of Ontario would use the OPP as his justification to harass a passer-by. My journalist's instincts set in. I told the one-eyed protester that one, the camera was digital and two, that I was on a public road and had the right to take a picture.

"What public road," my inquisitor asked.

"This one. Highway 6."

"This was Highway 6," he said with a humph. "It's our lane now."

Two more aboriginals moved in to intimidate Mr Walcott.  In a scuffle, one held him by the throat while another reached in and grabbed his camera.  They erased every photo in the camera and only agreed to return it after he showed them his driver’s licence so they could write down his name and address.

"If we see these pictures anywhere, we know where you live."

The Ontario Provincial Police stood a short distance away and watched the whole thing.

In their five-minute encounter with me, the protesters had broken several laws — interfering with traffic, assault, robbery and extortion among them. Throughout the incident, an OPP officer, perhaps 40 metres away, watched and did nothing. I suppose the one-eyed man was right when he said the protesters were operating with the sanction of the police.

In comparison to what Caledonia residents have suffered, of course, that is a minor infraction.  Nevertheless, it is a microcosm of the big problem: The OPP and the province of Ontario are doing nothing—absolutely nothing—to restore and enforce the rule of law.

I’m all in favour of busting up terrorist cells before they have a chance to strike.  But, at the same time, I have to ask: What’s the point if thugs are given free rein to terrorise law-abiding citizens in Caledonia?

Read the whole thing.

via Dust My Broom.

It's time to grow up, says Peter Hitchens, in a wide-ranging and thought-provoking blog post provoked by last weekend's London police raid against suspected Islamic terrorists.  He agrees with much of Islam's critique of Western society—"sexually debauched, infected with narcotics and poisoned by alcohol, vain, cruel and immoral"—but doesn’t think Islam offers a serviceable alternative.  Christianity, preferable to Islam for many prudential reasons, has nevertheless been scornfully tossed aside by the European elite.

[T]he religion I prefer, Christianity, is so despised and mocked by the European educated classes that it is fast becoming a sect, quite excluded from any debate about the future. The strange paradox of our culture is that political correctness scorns reformed, tolerant Christianity and seeks to remove it from public life in both Britain and the US. Yet it gives a free pass to unreformed, ferocious Islam, which is actually much harsher than Christianity in its condemnation of the things that political correctness loves, and much less tolerant of dissent.

The resultant religious vacuum in Europe is viewed by most Muslims as an opportunity to recover its former holdings and tack on some more—not by bombing but by proselytisation.

Those shiny new Mosques appearing all over Britain are there to impress us and to accustom us to a powerful new faith in our midst. If you really don't fancy Sharia law and the veil as your future, you might do well to reintroduce yourself to the Christian faith, which has a very different answer to the same deep questions that Islam claims to deal with. But don't imagine that military strength, police powers or consumer goods will halt the march of Islam into the West.

Given the weak condition of Christianity, Mr Hitchens would not be surprised to see an increasing number of European intellectuals embracing Islam in the coming decades.  Conversion—not terrorism—could be Islam's avenue to victory in Europe.

Since 1972, the overall global fertility rate has fallen by half.  In 59 countries with 44% of the world's total population, the fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1.  (In order to replace the current number of people and maintain a stable population, women need to have, on average, 2.1 children during their lifetime.)  Current projections indicate that, by 2050, fertility in three-quarters of the world's nations will fall below replacement.

Phillip Longman wrote an important book on these trends in 2004, entitled The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birth Rates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It.  Discussing the book in The Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last finds it unsettling. Decreasing fertility leads to socio-economic—and, indeed, civilisational—decline.

Forget domestic politics and international relations: Fertility is the thing. As Longman explains, it's the grand unified theory of everything. As fertility rates decline, populations, then economies, then military power, then world influence, diminish.

If fertility remains below replacement for a few decades, as it has in most Western countries, an aging population begins to place severe stress on the economy.  There are fewer working-age adults to support publicly funded old-age pensions, medical care, and other programs for the elderly.  If the system is to remain solvent, benefits must be reduced, taxes raised, or both.

As Longman explains: "Younger workers, finding that not only does the economy require them to have far higher levels of education than did their parents, but that they must also pay far higher payroll taxes, are less able to afford children, and so have fewer of them, causing a new cycle of population aging."

In other words, the further the fertility rate falls, the greater the incentive for people to have fewer children.

These effects can be seen in Japan, where the population has aged more rapidly than most countries and the economy has been stagnating for over fifteen years.  Russia and many other European countries are not far behind.

In order to ensure a viable socio-economic future, more children are essential.

via e-mail from Binks, who is currently running overtime keeping up with the Canada terrorism alert stories and the upcoming ECUSA General Convention.  For all the latest on those fronts, visit his site, the indispensable CaNN.

Previous related posts:

• Low-income countries are aging, too
• Are Germans an endangered people?
• Much of the western world will disappear in our lifetimes
• Canadian population rapidly aging

Michelle Malkin is the latest to wonder why Canadian police are trying to downplay the obvious connection among the 12 adults and 5 “youths” arrested last weekend on charges of plotting terrorist acts.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official coined the baneful phrase "broad strata" to describe the segment of Canadian society from whence Qayyum Abdul Jamal and his fellow adult suspects Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid came.
. . .
Undeterred by the obvious, Toronto police chief Bill Blair assured the public that the Muslim suspects "were motivated by an ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith. . . . I am not aware of any mosques that these individuals were influenced by." Well, Chief Blindspot, try the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education. That's the Canadian storefront mosque where eldest jihadi suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal is, according to his own lawyer, a prayer leader and active member — along with many of the other Muslim males arrested in the sweep.

Previous related post: Great Canadian self-delusion machine up and running

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