Only Time And Fate Will Tell

Last week a (rare) commenter, pointed out that Donald Trump has really doubled down on his claims on and about Canada, Mexico, China and Greenland.

Trump Has A Gaza Plan

My reply was "I guess that Trump and his supporters would point out that he's been successful so far, with Mexico and Canada (and some extent Denmark/Greenland) all negotiating with him now. China has restricted its retaliation to lower tariffs than Trump has imposed .... so winner winner chicken dinner!!" 

Worrying Fact

The majority age group in Africa is now 15 years old with the median age of just 19 .... 

Graphics - The Visual Capitalist.

 ....while the median age in the UK is 40.7 years, and the USA 38.1 years, and the median age of the EU's population is 44.4 years!

Just think about that for a moment, and realise that world overpopulation hasn't slowed down, and that an ageing USA, Europe and Western Europe will be, or are under some threat of losing their identities as their birthrates decline. More than half the worlds population growth in the next 30 years will happen in just eight countries - the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania, and they will all probably retain high birth rates on to the end of this century and beyond. 

Mrs Ghandi in India, had realised that one of the prime drivers of India's problems of poverty was the unrestricted population growth, but her efforts to slow it down failed. In fact India's population growth will soon, or possibly has, overtaken China, as the country with the biggest population in the world with its 1.4bn people. Ethiopia, despite its occasional famines, has never made any effort to slow its population growth .... similarly Egypt, whose population in 1945 was 19.1 million and is now 103 million, a fivefold increase in 80 years. 

While 61 countries will see declines in their populations by at least 1% by around 2050, by November 2023, the planet was still home to 8.2 billion people (UN predict it will reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100), and the UN believes rising to a peak around the 2080's or 2090's, at about 10.4bn, though this disputed by some demographers who believe that peak could happen even sooner.

 

We could see the populations of the poorer countries simply marching into those with declining populations. Something for our children and grandchildren to worry about.

Smile Please

Its long been known that the Etruscans (900 BC–100 BC) of northern Italy, who were contemporaries of the early Roman Republic, were very experimental in their medical treatments, particularly dentistry. 

Etruscan Dentistry Was Advanced

In particular their gold band bridgework as opposed to the gold wires which are seen in other cultures (Egyptians, Phoenicians) of the same time.

The Complicity Of Silence

Another week of tolerance in the lands of the pure ......

Incitement To Murder Nothing New .....

.... and yet more Christians are in fear of their lives from the Muslim mobs.

The Life of Pie

Our snack foods have been around for far longer than most of us imagine .....

Crabby Pattys - Snack Food.

 

...  for example, whilst the Earl of Sandwich has given his name to two bits of bread, placed on either side of some meat (or other substances), its extremely unlikely that this was the first time this combination of bread and food was tried.

 

The West's View of Islam

Some cultures have little or no sense of self criticism - and before you start, the West is full of critics: e.g. we are for ever insulted by our own left-wing, for being 'racists', although we are the only culture in which we have to accept a non stop stream of immigration from outside and can say nothing about it.

al-Watan's cartoons - The West's blinkered view of Islam?

Sometimes its cultural, sometimes its religious, and in some its that unhappy combination of both. In the Arab/Islamic world it seems to be the latter.

 

'Maria' Islamic TV

I can only believe that many Islamists are actually proud of being socially backward. How else can you explain the fact that the Egyptian Revolution has thrown up the Muslim Brotherhood as rulers, and as a sign of how regressive the revolution has been for women in that land ..... 'Maria' Islamic TV. This is a TV channel where women appear as monsters without faces ......

Maria Islamic TV ..... Egypt

... its hard to credit that they expect that to be taken seriously, and even attract women to become more interested in being hardcore Islamists.

Let's not forget that this is the same country where gangs of men actively chase down and sexually assault and rape women in the streets ..... where women protesters are violated by gangs or even by 'medics' inside police stations.

Muslim women are treated as little more than objects by Islamists, owned by, and available to anyone to be sexually assaulted if they are not 'protected' by men.  A 2008 report by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights said two-thirds of women in the country experienced serious sexual harassment on a daily basis, and yet the Islamists consider that they treat their women better in Islamic lands than in non Muslim countries .... it would be laughable if it wasn't so bloody terrifying.

Women in the 'West', you just don't realise the full horror of what is being attempted to be implemented in the mosques of Bradford/Preston/Leicester/Oldham/Luton etc etc ........

Voices From The Past

Sometimes the oddest things catch my imagination, in this case it was a sort of conversation from the past.

 James Tappern plays one of the Trumpets 

Tutankhamen's Trumpets.mp3

The first to catch my attention was the BBC replaying a 1939 recording, made with the two trumpets found in Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter. They had got a British soldier, James Tappern, to play them, and the sound is a haunting echo of a music that has not been heard for over 3,000 years!

Strange Comment By Dictators

Over the last few weeks, as regime after regime in the Arab world has come under pressure from protesters, there have been strange utterances from each of the dictators who have been threatened. In  nearly every case they have said that the protesters were being misled by outsiders, or "armed gangs" of foreign-backed militants...... but also they are "drunk" or "drug addicts".


Libyan Drunks Marching ..... 

The Libyan woman lawyer who was gang raped by Gaddafi's men in Tripoli, and who in her distress went to the foreign press hotel to complain (before being bundled away by secret police, to not be seen again), was also described as "a drunk, a prostitute and a thief" by a regime spokesman.

Now, apart from the ludicrous nature of these statements, which are the same claims that these regimes have made against opponents for the last thirty or forty years, there is the strangeness that alcohol is illegal and prohibited to the Muslim faithful in any of these paradises on earth ..... alcohol is actually one of the principal rewards (along with sex) that is given to the faithful when they die (men only - women get nothing), so they only get to drink an alcohol beer when they are dead (which many of the regimes have tried quite hard to arrange).

All The Taste ... But None Of The Fun!

In fact alcohol is not sold anywhere openly in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia or Yemen where these protests broke out - only non alcoholic beers .... so just where are all these 'Drunks' coming from? 

I just can't work out where these dictators think all these are gangs of drunks were actually hiding for the last thirty years, nor where they were getting their drinks from to become 'Drunks'?

Post Script: The woman lawyer, Iman al-Obeidi ended up in Colorado USA, where she was later charged with a number of violent offences, including a February 2014 assault on two patrons at a down-town bar in Boulder, Colorado for which she was convicted in May 2015 of a Class 4 felony - she was sentenced in Boulder District Court to 6 years in prison. So she was in fact a violent drunk after all. Life is odd sometimes.

Nobel Prize, Ignoble Politics

China's behaviour over the award of the Noble Peace prize to Liu Xiaobo one of their own citizens, but one who is in prison for protesting for human rights, has been nothing less than shameful

..... but the behaviour of some of their 'friends' around the world has been equally disgraceful.

 

Where There's A Willy Theres A Way

In Egypt there has been a trend amongst young educated couples to use a legal devise known as the urfi marriage, which is actually not legally recognised in many Muslim countries, as a means of the boys getting pre-marital sex without the formal and legal need to get married.

Probably no real harm would be done when these teen 'arrangement's fell apart, but in the Muslim world women's rights are nominal at best and often proscribed by social convention as well as religious and legal ones. So when a child is the result of these unions, the girl is often left literally holding the baby and with a court fight to prove paternity in order to get financial support, which is by no means guaranteed.

Sadly this practise only arises in a society where intersex contact is so artificially constrained.

Christianity Under Attack In Muslim Lands

As has been mentioned in this blog in the past, some misguided Christians, casting desperately around for a 'tolerant Muslim state', fall upon Malaya as, in Tony Blairs words "“having [set] a very good example of interfaith cooperation”.

Malay Christian Herald Censored

However they are simply deluding themselves. Malaya is increasingly becoming an intolerant Muslim state as the "Allah" row has shown.

The Great (Underground) Wall Of Gaza

First there was the Chinese who had a Wall, then Hadrian built one, then the Germans had to have one and finally (or so we thought ) the Israelis had to have one.

Now however it appears that the Egyptians are building one as well, but with a difference, its wholly underground.

Yes, in order to stop smugglers arming the Hamas fighters in Gaza, the Egyptians (aided by the US ) have bulilt a wall thats 18meters 'high' but underground.

It's not expected to stop all smuggling (certainly not for weapons), but will certainly be a major deterrent against casual smuggling.

North African Dynasties

A few weeks ago I posted a comment on the trend towards new heredity dynasties being created around the world.

The Men Who Would Be Kings

This occurs when the 'democracy' didn't take, and is most obvious in the Muslim world, but the ex-communist countries such as North Korea have espoused this idea as well.

UN Irony? Egyptian Infamy

Proving once again that Muslims and the UN don't do irony, Egypt, the land of the imprisoned blogger and non bastion of free speech, has now got its own Internet domain name ......

Web Freedom

 

...... which was announced at a UN sponsored the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) during a session at the Internet Governance Forum held in Egypt.

Arabs Yearn To Get To West

On this blog we have discussed before the hypocrisy of Arabs chanting for the deaths of Americans and Britons, while at the same time queuing for visa's to get into Europe or America. They see no irony in claiming that Islam is perfect while trying to move to "Crusader lands" because there's more freedom, opportunity etc etc

Of course all might not have been too bad if they actually appreciated the freedoms, opportunities etc etc, and supported the pluralistic, tolerant democracies that granted them this chance to escape the Islamic world, but no, as soon as they get here and find that they actually have to start at the bottom and work, they start marching on the streets and chanting "Death to America, and Death to Britain" again.

Given long enough, they could easily turn Europe into the same state as the Islamic world, where people yearn for freedom and opportunity, but there will be nowhere free left.

In this video from Fort Lauderdale in the US, an 'american' Arab Girl shouts out "You need a Big Oven!" to a Jewish group ..... is this what we want for our streets?

No Room For The Dead

Statistics suggest that 1 in 18 people in Cairo now live in the City of the Dead, using catacombs and monuments as housing.

The reason? The Egyptian population, like much of the Arab world, has exploded over the last 60 years. Egypt for instance has a current population of 77 million, but had only 10 million in 1900, and still only 20 million in 1950. At current rates of growth, its expected to be about 117 million by 2050 AD, which is unsustainable, and means that Egypt has no way of providing potable water, food, housing, or creating enough jobs for this expected population.

So people are living in the tombs of medieval Egyptian 'notables', such as as the family mausoleum of Muhammad Ali, the founder of modern day Egypt, and his sons.

According to Dr Ibrahim El-Issawy, an economist for a government advisory body, The Institute of National Planning "It's a desperate situation for these people - but it is not only in the City of the Dead, there are tens of slums… they are everywhere around Egypt. They are crying out for 'basic' needs; good public education, health services, employment opportunities. They are not there," he added. "Except for the privileged few."

Added to the issues of jobs, housing and water, there are the added social problems these bring such as the fact that many young people can't afford a family. In the city of Cairo, the average age of marriage has jumped to 31 and this has led to mass sexual attacks on young women by males who have little chance of getting a wife.

The only option the young of Egypt have is the emigrate, but they don't want to go to other Muslim countries, because they are as bad or worse than Egypt, no they all want to emigrate to Non Muslim countries (The US or EU), legally or illegally, and that's why we should all be concerned about squatters in the Tombs of Old Cairo.

Sexual Harrassment in Egypt

You know how all those Mullahs and their supporters, always say that women aren't oppressed under Islam, but rather are respected and safe as long as they dress conservatively (hiding under a tent structure?).

Egyptian Sexual Harassment Is Rife

Well as is usual from that source, its actually complete garbage as evidence shows ........