The Kosovo Albanians proved that military skill doesn’t matter, because they tried and failed to conquer Kosovo the old-fashioned way: armed rebellion by the Kosovo Liberation Army. It was a wipeout: local Serb militias, a bunch of tired middle-aged part-timers and cops, crushed the KLA. What happened next is a beautiful illustration of the way losers win these days: the Albanians took the bodies of KLA men who’d been killed in battle, stripped all weapons and ammo from them, and showed them to gullible Western reporters as victims of a Serb “massacre.” It was a massacre, all right, but only because the KLA couldn’t fight worth a damn. Alive and armed, they were a joke; dead and disarmed, they helped win Kosovo by making their side the "victims," which led directly to U.S. military intervention.
To win the way the Albanians won in Kosovo, you need to make a lot of babies. It’s that simple. And to see how it works, you have to drop the namby-pamby liberal idea that people only have babies out of “love.” In lots of places on this planet, baby-making is a form of weapons production.
In some places, it’s open policy. For example, in Palestine there’s an all-out birthrate war going on between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And one of the most frustrating things about this kind of struggle, from the Israeli perspective, is that the worse you make life for the people in the occupied zones, the more kids they have. The Gaza Strip, for instance, has one of the highest fertility rates in the world outside Africa, at 5.6 kids per woman.
The rate for Israeli overall is about 2.8 children per woman, high for a rich country. But the most amazing rates anywhere, even higher than for the Gaza Palestinians, are in the most extreme Zionist groups, the Haredi “ultra-orthodox” Jews. Until recently they averaged eight or nine children per woman. There was actually a big panic in the Israeli settler press when news hit that their rate had dropped to a mere 7.7 kids per woman. That’s actually higher than the rate for Mali (7.38 per woman), which has the highest birthrate in the world.
23 comments:
Salut!
How great is their number in Israel (%)? "Ultra-Orthodox Jews'"
10%
As a matter of interest, are they Ashkenazim?
Anon.
I estimate half and half.
When I visited, my taxi driver (a Polish Jew who survived the war with some difficulty) was dismissive of the Orthodox, claiming they refused to serve in the army, did not earn their living, etc. Was he right?
Anon.
There is much resentment against the Orthodox population, as they live from generous child allowances and many continue studying all their life and getting postponements from the Army. There is a gut feeling that they are not pulling their weight in this very heavy country. This feeling can survive because they are a closed society and the general public does not know them very closely. In fact, the Ortodox are economically active at least like the rest of the population, and they provide more soldiers per 1000 persons than the general population (the average age is younger). The most infuriating thing about them is their public disrespect for State symbols, such as the hymn and the flag.
...and they provide more soldiers per 1000 persons than the general population (the average age is younger).
Like Anon, I was under the impression that they refused military service.
The most infuriating thing about them is their public disrespect for State symbols, such as the hymn and the flag.
Why do they not honor the flag?
Regarding Orthodox people not doing Army service: In Israel, like in every other country, divinity students get deferment of the Army service. Many Orthodox keep studying till age thirty, when they are already married with children. According to regulation, over age 29 military service is restricted, and if the man is married with children, he is free. That is the way that many avoid military service in Israel.
Now, following an Orthodox style of life is not to the taste of everybody. They cannot watch TV, they cannot go surfing, they cannot go to pubs. Most importantly, they have to study the Bible which is quite boring. They cannot learn in the University secular science or art. A significant percentage of the young people from Orthodox families strives for something else, and simply distances themselves from that environment and merges into the secular or semi-religious majority. Some become artists, writers, electric engineers, bums, normal everyday people. And go to the Army. Since Orthodox have large families, if one boy from four is lost to Ortodoxy and serves in the Army, they Ortodox population has provided the same or larger number of soldiers than secular population that has average one or two boy in the Army. That is why in my opinion the orthodox population is very vital and important for Israel.
Yes, but why do they not honor the flag? Is honoring the flag considered idolatry?
Do they encourage marriage only within their own community?
Anon.
Sort of.
They marry with religious people.
Obviously, this is the demographic battle that was lost in Africa as well, by the whites. One could argue it is a battle that can never be won. At least, not in a free society.
Yet the orthodox are clearly trying to make a stand.
Anon.
I think South Africans tried to solve the demographic problem by erecting bantustans, ethnic cantons. It did not work. In the end they lost because of international pressure, that made a pariah from white South Africans. It is very bad what is happening there.
I think that SA also imported a lot of Black labor in order to work their mines, but did not want to import Whites because that would have corrupted the Boer culture. Of course, I have no source to back that up. Here in the US business is easily one of the biggest cheerleaders for the mestizoization of the country.
I think the Boer had not enough power to control immigration after 1900.
Here's what happened in South Africa:
The Dutch had an empire in Batavia (ie Indonesia and Malaya), in the 1600's. They needed a halfway-house to replenish their ships, so they established a very limited outpost in the Cape of Good Hope. But the Dutch people sent there did not want to go home and started to farm on their own (the "Boers"). They brought in slaves from Malaya some of whom are still Muslim, and who stayed and now make up a big minority in the Cape. The Boers traded, and fought, with the local natives (Bushmen and Hottentots, who are ethnically very ancient, and different from the Blacks who
were still in the northern part of what is now South Africa). Very soon, however, the British were attracted and fought the Dutch, winning control. The British imposed the Rule of Law on the Dutch farmers who did not appreciate it, and who therefore trekked with oxen and waggons into the unknown interior ("Die Groot Trek"). They had a tough time when they ran into the Blacks (Zulu, etc) but succeeded in setting up 2 Boer republics-the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Meanwhile the British were trying to colonise the Eastern Cape, (in the land of the Xhosa, Mandela's tribe) and Natal (where they also had to fight the Zulu in several spectacular battles).
Soon, gold was discovered in the Transvaal, and the British were in there very quickly as miners, etc. There was also a steady influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who rapidly established themselves in business (eg Openheimer and Anglo American; Barny Barnarto). Cecil Rhodes fantasised about "painting the Cape-to Cairo road red" for Britain, and nearly succeeded. But the British were rapacious and wanted control of the goldfields and invented a pretext for a war; this was the very bitter and destuctive Boer War of 1899-1902 which the British Empire eventually won with massively superior manpower. They incarcerated the Boer women in the first concentration camps and burnt their farms.
They then decided to unite the whole country as the Union of South Africa, a British Dominion. The Blacks did not get the vote, but in fairness, were not at that point educated and barely integrated into the economy. Nonetheless, the ANC (black liberation party) was founded in 1812.
South Africa entered both World Wars on the side of Britain, even though many of the Boers did not want to get involved and some of them still hated British colonial domination of their homeland. A few were Nazi sympathisers, but less than is commonly thought.
Eventually the Black population simply outbred the whole white population and started a violent insurrection. The white nationalist Boers (Afrikaner) party had come to power in 1948 and stopped mass European immigration, which would have driven them from power; an incredibly short sighted policy. Many white South Africans decided they did not want to join the army and fight for apartheid (the policy of separation, in which Blacks did not vote for the real government but did vote for `stooge`local governments, and attended separate schools etc). Some degree of white flight ensued, more out of fear than morality.
By 1990, it was clear that it was not rational to try to fight the Blacks plus the whole world and the Boers capitulated.
Now South Africa has political peace, a booming economy but a difficult crime wave and some personal insecurity. The country has lost about half of its intellectual elite, including about 100 000 Jews who really did make an enormous contribution to business, culture and civilisation.
Nonetheless it is still rich and viable, for the moment, but needs to retain its white, Indian and mixed race population if it is to have good future. The future is not assured.
But it is a beautiful, exotic and deeply significant country which must not be allowed to go the way of Zimbabwe.
Anon.
Eventually the Black population simply outbred the whole white population...
I remember reading an article many years ago that SA imported Blacks as recently as the 1970's from the Portugese ruled parts of Africa to work in the mines. I could be wrong, but that would mean that the Afrikaners banned White immigration, but deliberately imported more Blacks. My government is doing this now, and it is an incredibly foolish move. Or maybe they want to destroy this country and they are following a tested plan.
I'm not blaming the Afrikaners, with them in power SA was a civilized country and I regret that my country helped bring them down.
As for the SA economy a post on SA sucks stated that most of Sa's exports consist of ore and raw materials.
J said...
There is much resentment against the Orthodox population, as they live from generous child allowances and many continue studying all their life and getting postponements from the Army.
Do you mean they live on welfare? Small numbers of them do this in the NY metro area.
What is a child allowance?
The old (white)South African government allowed foreign blacks in from adjacent countries eg Mozambique, to work on the mines but then they had to go home; so the intent was not to allow outside blacks to immigrate. They did, however, stop European immigration after the war, out of fear they (ie the white Afrikaner Nationalists) would be outvoted in their own country by Anglophone whites; and this was a catastrophic mistake.
The bottom line is that whites in South Africa simply did not have enough children, and local South African blacks had much higher birthrates; this is because of cultural factors in the white population favouring smaller families, and access to, and willingness to practice, contraception. The world could then no longer ignore the fact that a majority had no real voting rights. South Africa would be more peaceful and secure with a more balanced population distribution, and might have conceded black voting rights a long time ago without a war.
And this is the problem that the Jews face in Israel. It may be insoluble for them. Or maybe not. But it will be the defining struggle of the Jewish State in the next decades, and there is no way here to make everybody happy.
South Africa would be more peaceful and secure with a more balanced population distribution, and might have conceded black voting rights a long time ago without a war.
I think the best solution is break up SA into smaller countries. The southern cape area was never inhabited by Blacks, and was originally settled by Whites almost 500 years ago. Some of the Black tribes also want their own homeland, such as the Zulu. As it is now each group is forced to live with other groups they do not like.
The problem is that the small, overcrowded black "homelands" were not, and are not, economically viable. The men have to leave to seek work in the cities and mines.
The homeland idea was one of the pillars of apartheid, and all that happened was that these places ended up as reservoirs of poverty.
They did provide some blacks the opportunity to own property, and live their lives traditionally. This is OK, for some people, providing there is enough food to go round. But the land could not support the population with traditional farming, as you see now in Zimbabwe.
Anon.
Anon said...
The problem is that the small, overcrowded black "homelands" were not, and are not, economically viable. The men have to leave to seek work in the cities and mines.
I see your point, even in Nigeria a lot of the population seeks work in Lagos. I mentioned the Zulu because a post on SA sucks mentioned that the Boer wanted their own homeland and showed how many of the other groups wanted one too. Maybe SA will break up, maybe not.
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