German jobless hits Nazi-era highs (German unemployment soars to new 5 million record)

You're right. Since it can NEVER be their own fault for pursuing idiotic policies, the US must be to blame. I almost forgot, Old Europe is not responsible for its own actions and is totally at the mercy of outside forces over which it has no control except its vaunted moral suasion.

Schroeder, the Bush-hater, is in deep doodoo.

I can't stand him either. But the sad thing is that he may lose the election primarily because he's actually trying to do things to control spending, like cutting the unemployment freeloaders.

Chancellor Schroeder IS employed. It is not to HIM it is happening.

Hehehe, the Steuersong, "Steuern spar'n ist ganz einfach. Ich zum Beispiel hab nen Chaffeur: Da kann ich mir das Steuern spar'n"

Loosely: "Saving taxes is very easy. I, for example, have a chauffeur; therefore I can save taxes."

I love that song.

As I recall they came pretty close to knocking Schroeder out in the last election and in desperation he used Bush bashing to save his job.

Bush-bashing, plus he got lucky that Dresden flooded just before the election, allowing him to look like a hero sending all that money to help the people.

They barge into buffet lines

That's a problem newcomers have in Germany. Germans don't get into nice, neat lines, but have their own system for getting up to the counter. It seems pushy, but if you know what you're doing then everybody kind of knows their place in the queue.

The problems is they do the same as the "ugly American" image -- don't change their behavior to fit the country they're visiting.

Both France and Germany are staunch supporters of the EU scheme hoping the EU would deflect their failing economies.
Little wonder why Chirac wants a global taxation scheme!

UK should not join the EU! Dumbest thing possible!

BTW, France's unemployment rate is @ 14+%. At least 40% of France's employed work for the *government* which owns about 40% of industry and business. France suffers a stale and stagnant economy. I would say Chirac's anti-Bush and anti-American rants are face-saving deflections from France's rapidly growing social problems and rapidly declining economy.

Chirac's sense of promoting "egalitarianism" is to ban religious symbolism! (With bleeps & sarcasim)
It seems Chirac recently attended ACLU "civil rights" workshops.

I'd forgotten about those floods. Didn't the left wing press blame them on global warming?

Of course. That, and the hot summer we had, plus the very cold winter. Oh, and the big wind storms a couple years ago too. I think they'll blame their dog's getting worms on global warming.

German jobless hits Nazi-era highs (German unemployment soars to new 5 million record)

Maybe they have not figured out that socialism tends to bring economies down, not lift them up.

12.1% Unemployment Rate

Yet LW moonbats proclaim we need the advice of allies who run their own affairs so poorly.

German jobless hits Nazi-era highs...soars to new five million record...
France is a runner-up, along with the other Europeein' socialist paradises.
So keep importing more mooslims and giving them jobs and social benefits.
Why not?!

Muslim Europe

“Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam.” So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione (“The Force of Reason”). And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianity’s ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam.

Two factors mainly contribute to this world-shaking development:

The hollowing out of Christianity. Europe is increasingly a post-Christian society, one with a diminishing connection to its tradition or its historic values. The numbers of believing, observant Christians has collapsed in the past two generations to the point that some observers call it the “new dark continent.” Already, analysts estimate Britain’s mosques host more worshippers each week than does the Church of England.

An anemic birth rate. Indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union, the overall rate is a one-third short, at 1.5 per woman, and falling. One study finds that, should current population trends continue and immigration cease, today’s population of 375 million could decline to 275 million by 2075. To keep its working population even, the EU needs 1.6 million immigrants a year; to sustain the present workers-to-retirees ratio requires an astonishing 13.5 million immigrants annually.
Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious. As Europeans under-reproduce at advanced ages, Muslims do so in large numbers while young.

Some 5 percent of the EU, or nearly 20 million persons, presently identify themselves as Muslims; should current trends continue, that number will reach 10 percent by 2020. If non-Muslims flee the new Islamic order, as seems likely, the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades.

When that happens, grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization (the jahiliya?) – at least until a Saudi-style regime transforms them into mosques or a Taliban-like regime blows them up. The great national cultures - Italian, French, English, and others - will likely wither, replaced by a new transnational Muslim identity that merges North African, Turkish, subcontinental, and other elements.

This prediction is hardly new. In 1968, the British politician Enoch Powell gave his famed “rivers of blood” speech in which he warned that in allowing excessive immigration, the United Kingdom was “heaping up its own funeral pyre.” (Those words stalled a hitherto promising career.) In 1973, the French writer Jean Raspail published Camp of the Saints, a novel that portrays Europe falling to massive, uncontrolled immigration from the Indian subcontinent. The peaceable transformation of a region from one major civilization to another, now underway, has no precedent in human history, making it easy to ignore such voices.

There is still a chance for the transformation not to play itself out, but the prospects diminish with time. Here are several possible ways it might be stopped:

Changes in Europe that lead to a resurgence of Christian faith, an increase in childbearing, or the cultural assimilation of immigrants; such developments can theoretically occur, but what would cause them are hard to imagine.

Muslim modernization: For reasons no one has quite figured out (education of women? abortion on demand? adults too self-absorbed to have children?), modernity leads to a drastic reduction in the birthrate. Also, were the Muslim world to modernize, the attraction of moving to Europe would diminish.

Immigration from other sources. Latin Americans, being Christian, would more or less permit Europe to keep its historic identity. Hindus and Chinese would increase the diversity of cultures, making it less likely that Islam would dominate.

Current trends suggest Islamization will happen, for Europeans seem to find it too strenuous to have children, stop illegal immigration, or even diversify their sources of immigrants. Instead, they prefer to settle unhappily into civilizational senility.

Europe has simultaneously reached unprecedented heights of prosperity and peacefulness and shown a unique inability to sustain itself (one demographer, Wolfgang Lutz, notes that “Negative momentum has not been experienced on a large scale in world history”).

Is it inevitable that the most brilliantly successful society also be the first in danger of collapse due to a lack of cultural confidence and offspring? Ironically, creating a hugely desirable place to live would seem also to be a recipe for suicide. The human comedy continues.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Militant Islam Reaches America. You may visit his website by clicking here and purchase his books by clicking here.

(This article courtesy of the Middle East Forum.)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Muslim Europe


		“Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam.” So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione (“The Force of Reason”). And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianity’s ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam.

Two factors mainly contribute to this world-shaking development: The hollowing out of Christianity. Europe is increasingly a post-Christian society, one with a diminishing connection to its tradition or its historic values. The numbers of believing, observant Christians has collapsed in the past two generations to the point that some observers call it the “new dark continent.” Already, analysts estimate Britain’s mosques host more worshippers each week than does the Church of England. An anemic birth rate. Indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union, the overall rate is a one-third short, at 1.5 per woman, and falling. One study finds that, should current population trends continue and immigration cease, today’s population of 375 million could decline to 275 million by 2075. To keep its working population even, the EU needs 1.6 million immigrants a year; to sustain the present workers-to-retirees ratio requires an astonishing 13.5 million immigrants annually. Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious. As Europeans under-reproduce at advanced ages, Muslims do so in large numbers while young. Some 5 percent of the EU, or nearly 20 million persons, presently identify themselves as Muslims; should current trends continue, that number will reach 10 percent by 2020. If non-Muslims flee the new Islamic order, as seems likely, the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades. When that happens, grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization (the jahiliya?) – at least until a Saudi-style regime transforms them into mosques or a Taliban-like regime blows them up. The great national cultures - Italian, French, English, and others - will likely wither, replaced by a new transnational Muslim identity that merges North African, Turkish, subcontinental, and other elements. This prediction is hardly new. In 1968, the British politician Enoch Powell gave his famed “rivers of blood” speech in which he warned that in allowing excessive immigration, the United Kingdom was “heaping up its own funeral pyre.” (Those words stalled a hitherto promising career.) In 1973, the French writer Jean Raspail published Camp of the Saints, a novel that portrays Europe falling to massive, uncontrolled immigration from the Indian subcontinent. The peaceable transformation of a region from one major civilization to another, now underway, has no precedent in human history, making it easy to ignore such voices. There is still a chance for the transformation not to play itself out, but the prospects diminish with time. Here are several possible ways it might be stopped: Changes in Europe that lead to a resurgence of Christian faith, an increase in childbearing, or the cultural assimilation of immigrants; such developments can theoretically occur, but what would cause them are hard to imagine. Muslim modernization: For reasons no one has quite figured out (education of women? abortion on demand? adults too self-absorbed to have children?), modernity leads to a drastic reduction in the birthrate. Also, were the Muslim world to modernize, the attraction of moving to Europe would diminish. Immigration from other sources. Latin Americans, being Christian, would more or less permit Europe to keep its historic identity. Hindus and Chinese would increase the diversity of cultures, making it less likely that Islam would dominate. Current trends suggest Islamization will happen, for Europeans seem to find it too strenuous to have children, stop illegal immigration, or even diversify their sources of immigrants. Instead, they prefer to settle unhappily into civilizational senility. Europe has simultaneously reached unprecedented heights of prosperity and peacefulness and shown a unique inability to sustain itself (one demographer, Wolfgang Lutz, notes that “Negative momentum has not been experienced on a large scale in world history”). Is it inevitable that the most brilliantly successful society also be the first in danger of collapse due to a lack of cultural confidence and offspring? Ironically, creating a hugely desirable place to live would seem also to be a recipe for suicide. The human comedy continues. Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Militant Islam Reaches America. You may visit his website by clicking here and purchase his books by clicking here. (This article courtesy of the Middle East Forum.)