@ Nataraja

1) It is Arundhati Roy (not Singh).  She, too, is a person of great talent who has been led astray by naive-left (Western) ideology.  It will hold back 'development' in India.

2) Too many different subjects at the same time prevent depth and understanding to be reached.

3) Stiglitz is a smart man, but he lost out in a power struggle at the World Bank and has a lot of (personal) axes to grind. 

4) I am glad to read that you disapprove of the persecution (and attempts at prosecution) of Mr van Hecke by the Belgian government.  Numerous Westerners have sacrified in the past to obtain freedom of speech in the West. As you can see, this cultural trait is under constant threat, and is not a permanent acquisition.  It is probably the best indicator that the next century will not be a 'European' one.  

5) I fear that you are temporarily lost to leftist and globalist media hype.  But, I trust that, given time, common sense will assert itself.  Meanwhile, 'development' will have to wait.  

.....

5) Yes, an IT specialist in Bangalore could be on the 'right' side of my "cultural scale". In fact, I know that many are, because I know some of them. And the same applies to the other 3 examples you cited. But - and this is a big BUT - I said "could", not necessarily "are". If they truly "sacrifice" for their own societies, like so many Westerners have done before in Western history for their own, then these non-western societies may some day also be prosperous and relatively 'free'. India is a special case, because I do consider it already largely 'free' (in part thanks to the past British influence, whether the Indians can recognise that or not), but not rich. BUT, if the IT specialist in Bangalore, the Iranian surgeon, the Bangladeshi and the Bahraini, were to start parroting - like you do - leftist nonsense about "unjust and unequal globalisation of economic welfare", then they fall on the wrong side of my cultural scale. Then they would buy into absurd victimisation theories (admittedly theories originating from Western academia) which are the exact opposite of 'development'. And then there would be little hope for the future of India, Bangladesh, Iran, Bahrein, etc... Development has to come from WITHIN. The use of foreign scapegoats is a hindrance, not a help to development. And, even in the wealthy West itself, the same kind of victimisation nonsense is also largely responsible for holding certain sub-cultures back or 'underdeveloped'. You mentioned California. Isn't it remarkable that, within 1 generation of stepping off the boat or the plane so to speak, a number of ethnic groups become among the most succesful (richest) groups in society. At the same time, other sub-groups who have been there for generations linger in squalor and government 'welfare' (assistance). Believe me, Armor is wrong. Democracy (political freedom) and economic success are fundamentally based on 'culture', on cultural behavior PATTERNS, not on race or any other physical phenomena (like climate, or natural resources, etc...). And, perhaps the most important cultural behavior pattern or feature that enables development', is the ability to engage in self-criticism and questioning of own culture.

@ Nataraja

1) Please, stop the pretense, and try for some honesty.  I am not your "dearest", and even a casual observer knows that I am not in the habit of pointing to "spelling mistakes".  My own posts are littered with such mistakes.  Words like "welfare" and "wellness" can have different meanings, depending on the context, and I honestly thought that you meant to distinguish your word "wellfare" from the commonly-used term "welfare" (which in the American context has a very negative connotation).  That is why I suggested you use "well-fare" instead of welfare.  But, all this is unimportant. And, FYI, I am not a native English writer either.

2) I am glad that you do not want to take money away from anyone.  Allow me to doubt that, if you use an expression like "just and equal globalisation of economic welfare".   I still don't know what you mean by "welfare"? I also wonder what "globalisation of welfare" could possibly mean?  So, I am definitely at a loss to understand why it would be unjust and/or unequal?  I suggest you try to do some explaining, instead of parroting naive-left slogans.

3) Who exactly is "denying succesfull entrepeneurship"?  Frank Van Hecke, Mahinder Singh, Vladimir Putin?....Who? 

Which "regulations" and which "international economic structures"  are you talking about?  You sound like a teenager or an anarchist, or Arundhati Roy (?)

Who is limiting freedom of speech? That is a good one!!  Coming right after your approval of the Belgian government persecuting Van Hecke precisely for 'speech'. By the way, I too am all for "economic development" and certainly for a good "education system". But, unlike you, I know that the latter has little to do with money.  When I was young, there was freedom of political speech in Belgium, but also much less money to spend on education. Today, there is less freedom of speech in Belgium, but certainly more money spent on 'education'.  Apparently, more money can go along with less 'education'.

4)  I agree that "culture" is a "blurry" concept.  It can be interpeted very broadly and also very narrowly.  Culture can be observed in human behavior. In a broad sense, it is going to be observable in patterns of behavior displayed by many individuals.  FYI, culture cannot "sacrifice", only individuals can do that.  Obviously, some individuals are capable of being more 'independent' from their surrounding culture, while undoubtedly partaking in that culture too to some extent.  I would never confuse an individual or a person with a culture, and if you could remain intellectually honest you would know that.  I have had too many arguments with morally-relativistic 'racists' on this blog for you not to know that.  

....

@ Nataraja

I presume that you wrote "weLLfare" with a double LL to distinguish it from the commonly used term 'welfare' (with 1 L) which connotes government largesse or forced or compulsory income 'redistribution' from tax payers to 'recipients'?  If so, perhaps "well-fare" would be a better way to put it.

Your latest contribution contains dangerous misperceptions.

1) What does "a just and equal globalization of economic well-fare" mean?   It is a nice slogan, but is it rational?  The people in Singapore and Japan are much richer, on average, than the people in say Russia and certainly in Myanmar.  In what rational sense is this "unjust"?  Russia and Myanmar have much greater control over natural wealth (natural resources) than Japan and Singapore do, and yet their peoples are much 'poorer' economically.  Differences in economic well-fare essentially reflect different cultural behavior patterns, i.e. the ways societies are able to organise themselves politically, whether there is genuine 'rule of law' or arbitrary 'rule of (some) men', whether they are able to allow markets to function in order to promote efficiency, etc... Taking money from Singapore and Japan in order to give it to Russia and Myanmar is not going to improve well-fare in the latter, UNLESS cultural behavior patterns change!  All it will do is tax (and thus discourage) the hardworking 'good-cultural-value' people to fund the 'bad-cultural-value' people.  That can only lower global or world-income, and it could just as well be called "unjust" as "just". 

2) Your example of the "brain drain" of young people to the West illustrates my point to some extent.  The wealth in the West did not fall out of the sky!  It is fundamentally based on the gradual acquisition of 'human capital' over centuries, i.e. on cultural behavior patterns which allow for the continual re-generation of income on relatively 'free markets' and under conditions of 'rule of law'.  Every year, GDP gets re-created, and this is not assured in the future, unless cultural behavior patterns can be 'maintained' or do not regress.  This acquisition of human capital has required enormous sacrifice of countless individuals in previous generations.  It was not automatically ordained or given by any 'deity' or whatever.  Thus, a general "brain drain" to the West suggests a lack of willingness to sacrifice for the well-nes of one's own community in the originating countries.  Obviously, I do not mean by "brain drain" the temporary acquisition of skills at universities or companies abroad, but I mean the refusal to go back and to put one's talents at the service of one's own 'poor society'.  It is an example of 'bad' cultural behavior traits, and it is not really different from the misgovernment by powerful 'elites' in poor countries.  They too put themselves 'first' over the well-fare of society.

3) You claim to have met and worked with "high educated people from most continents".  Do they have the same naive notions as you do about "a just and equal globalization of economic well-fare"?  If so, I must doubt the true 'level' of their "education". Education is not necessarily the same thing as understanding!  Because it would mean that they do not understand the real sources of economic well-fare, which are cultural behavior patterns that enable the organisation of societies along free-market and 'democratic' lines.  And that certainly includes a wide-spread adherence of members of the particular society to values that stress hard work, personal sacrifice, including sacrifice for the community, and tolerance for 'other' viewpoints in a wide variety of human domains. Your own advocay for, or at least acceptance of, government persecution of some individuals for opinions or speech (instead of deeds) suggests importation of 'bad values' that only strengthen already existing anti-democratic forces at the highest level of the state. Naive-left Europeans are very naive if they think that economic well-fare can only improve over time. It can regress due to bad cultural developments. A hundred years ago, Argentina was the richest country in the world. If today it is sinking fast again, it has nothing to do with "unjust globalization of economic well-fare"! It has everything to do with contemporary developments in Argentinian culture.

Very few cultures have really "dissappeared" througout history except through war or ethnic genocide.

You're wrong. In North America, most Amerindian cultures did not disappear through war or genocide, at least not principally. They were overwhelmed by European immigration and by the higher birth rates of European settlers. There is also evidence that family formation and birth rates collapsed among some tribes once they became minorities on their own lands.

As a general principle, I feel from a fairly libertarian perspective that nation-state borders should not be turned into rigid cages

Libertarianism is the market economy extended to all facets of human endeavour. A market economy, however, cannot exist without certain cultural conditions.

We see this in our past. For most of human history, we had markets but no market economy. Only a limited range of goods could be traded and such trade normally occurred within a discrete social space -- the marketplace -- where buyers and sellers could carefully supervise their transactions.

As Gregory Clark argues in A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, the market principle could not spread beyond the marketplace without certain cultural preconditions: a shift from a low-trust society to a high-trust one, a shift from present-oriented indulgence to future-oriented planning and budgeting, and rejection of violence as a routine way to settle personal disputes.

As Clark has shown, this cultural shift coincided in England with a demographic shift, namely the steady population growth of the upper and middle classes at the expense of the lower classes, who generally had below-replacement fertility. Today, most people in England, and elsewhere in Western Europe, have a mental outlook that was confined to a minority of the population as recently as five centuries ago. Human evolution is ongoing, and the rise of market economies was made possible by a recent evolutionary process.

I'm sorry to break the news to you, but this mental outlook is not held by most people on this planet. If you replace yourselves demographically with Third World immigrants, you will no longer have a libertarian society. You will have a low-trust society where everything has to be nailed down and where you must fight (or pay security guards) to defend your property. You will have an authoritarian society -- like most societies on this planet.

I furthermore believe that populations, not nation-states, but anything which classifies a population sharing same values and legal system, harbouring certain foundations of democratic and liberal social order, should have it as an assignment to be able to provide shelter for individuals afflicted by conflict if they need it.

You will be demographically overwhelmed and in the process will lose your shared values and liberal social order.

I made the comparison between Korean immigrants and Somali immigrants to show that the social costs of immigration (or 'externalities') vary by ethnic group. In most Western countries, current immigration policy assumes that no such differences exist.

For the record, I oppose any immigration to Norway. My reasons go well beyond economics and are really existential. Norwegians are part of our world's heritage. Their extinction would be a tragic and irreversible loss. And yes, extinction is exactly what will happen if current trends continue.

Let's suppose that the United Nations decides that the Somali people are irredeemably dysfunctional and have forfeited their right to survive. Henceforth, their birth rate will be cut to a level well below replacement. At the same time, their country will be repopulated with Europeans until native Somalis have been reduced to minority status.

Doesn't that sound awful? Even Nazi? Yet that is the prospect that now faces Norway and Norwegians in the not-so-distant future.

Frankly, I feel flabbergasted when I read some of your comments. You believe immigration is necessary because otherwise you may not get your bathroom renovated. Really? Is that so much more important than the survival of your people? Frankly, I would sooner piss in an outdoor privy than sell out my grandchildren's future!

@ Nataraja

1) Indeed, you did not recommend immigration as "good" to fill certain jobs, and I did not claim that you did.  What I did do was: first, attacking the notion that immigration is needed to tackle so-called unwanted jobs and, second, recognising that in rare cases immigration can make sense (from the perspective of the home country) when certain very rare skills are not available locally.

2) I would not put great stock in the purported "majority of studies".  Most of them are undertaken on behalf of particular interest groups, or by people with an ideological axe to grind.   Instead, one is beter off by relying on logic and on economic science.  

3) In genuine free markets, prices would be allowed to clear.  On any specific labor market, that means that if the wage rate is allowed to settle at its equilibrium level, there can be no "unwanted jobs".  Thus, at the equilibrium level, sufficient supply of labor will have been attracted onto the market to meet the demand. And, equally, at the equilibrium level, demand will have been suffciently restrained to the level of supply of labor forthcoming at that 'price' or wage rate.  You might say, that is all fine 'in theory'. No, that is not just theory, but corresponds to real forces of supply and demand that are constantly at work on markets IF prices are allowed to perform their equilibrating function.  It is only when they are not, that 'shortages' or surplusses will occur. And "unwanted jobs" are a clear indication of a supply (of local labor) shortage, while SIMULTANEOUSLY long-term unemployment is a clear indication of a supply surplus of local labor relative to demand for labor. The important point is to realise that these shortages and surplusses are ARTIFICIAL and not God-given.  They are artificially created as a result of bad government policies.

4) The very notion that there could be shortages of labor for 'UNskilled jobs' when there are high levels of long-term unemployment, as currently prevails in much of Europe, is ridiculous on its face.   I know, and you know, that there is high unemployment and that many unemployed prefer to go on Government assistance rather than join the labor force at prevailing wage rates.  The 'common sense' response would be for government to stop interfering in the market and (a) to let the wage rate rise to induce labor to come forth and meet the excess 'demand' by employers of those "unwanted jobs", and (b) not to 'compete' with employers by offering generous welfare payments to articially 'unemployed'.   But, of course, this is not what happens.  In the real world, governments tend to do the opposite. They allow immigration, which undercuts the wage rate and makes working less attractive for the unemployed, and they also maintain a comfortable 'safety net' which makes it more attractive to stay 'unemployed'.

5) So, the real queston is, why do governments pursue such bad policies that induce immigraton and that keep unemployment high?  There are multiple answers. But the two main ones are.  (A) First, businesses lobby for more immigrants.  They prefer a (relatively) 'low' wage rate, and will let government (and the tax payers) deal with the (social and financial) costs of both immigration and higer unemployment among the natives/locals.  (B) Second, many politicians do not understand macro economics, but they do seek votes from interest groups, including ethnic immigrant groups.  

@ onecent

You are right. The notion that immigration is needed to fill jobs "unwanted" by natives, is economic nonsense. Yet, it is constantly being repeated by economically-illiterate 'journalists' for ideological reasons.  If particular jobs are "unwanted" it is because they are not being properly remunerated, i.e. because the prices (wage rates) on those particular labor markets are 'too low', i.e the domestic labor markets are not allowed to function freely or properly so that the labor market is not 'clearing'.  Usually it is because of government 'interventions'  on the supply side (of labor), i.e. by allowing legal and illegal immigration, and also by offering sufficiently high welfare payments or subsidies to 'native' unskilled labor that then can 'afford' to join the unemployed and live off the tax payers.  In genuinely free markets, there can be no "unwanted jobs", except in very few extreme cases perhaps.  And, of course, an economic argument can be made for immigration in exceptional cases of very 'scarce' and highly-skilled labor. 

<i>"Especially not when migration is needed to fill in the type of jobs that Europeans are unwilling to invest in or educate people in." </i>

Hum. But, is that a fact?  Where's the hard data? That reasoning has been used by pro mass immigration factions here in the US, but, when independent think tanks here applied the economics, the cost versus the benefits, the projected demographics, the future need for skilled versus unskilled labor, the effect on native wages, etc, that premise didn't hold up very well. In every industry like housing construction or meat packing in the US when unaccountable numbers of Mexicans are unleashed the wages fall for the natives. Those are jobs that natives will take. Immigration in the US and Europe right now has no accountability.  That's not in dispute.

Japan isn't opening itself up to mass immigration. Why's that if it's so necessary for economic survival?  They've concluded something different.

....leading positions in private companies is still by far and large an overwhelming privilege of native Europeans...

That's totally meaningless.  Zimbabwe's white farmers and businessmen would agree. Past a critical point, their fate was sealed. Demographics can't denied. When you change them, there are consequences.  You paint a Europe that will be ghetto-ized and not a very wholesome civil society in the future. That's the point.  

Do you believe it is possible for an individual to be, say, a 'White Supremacist' AND a practical proponent of interracial marriage ?

"I don't agree with the idea that just because I support Mugabe, I have to defend the fact that he has killed a lot of people."

Spoken like a true sociopath.

You can't blame white colonialism anymore for the hell hole that is Africa. Too many decades of self-rule have passed and endless aid money down that rat hole have proven that Africans are their own worst enemy. I can't speak for all American conservatives but I feel the consensus is that Africa can't be salvaged. Only the left and their useless NGO's are still engaged in that farce. 

I guess the question is, where are the adults in the media in Norway that ought to be loudly countering this guy?  In the spirit of free speech as an absolute right, Abdullah has the right to spew his garbage, but, the problem is that the natives have no public forum to respond in kind when you don't have an open balanced press or airwaves. That's a big part of the problem in Europe as I see it.  It's why many of us love FOX news here. Conservatives have much more of a presence on the internet than lefties in the US.  They have the MSM on the run too.

A closer look on demographics shows a very different picture compared to that fjordman and Ahamba wants us to believe. Miscegenation is constantly growing, not only in Europe, but all over the world, even in Zimbabwe. Laws against it prevailed in nazi-Germany, apartheid-South Africa and the U.S-pre1967. Yet, an U.S.-'black'-American is 20% 'white', in average. Even conservative-religious hardliners interpret the Bible as forbidding inter-religious marriage, rather than inter-ethnic marriage. In Brazil, the percentage of 'white' citizens grew faster than the percentage of 'blacks', comparing data from 1835 and 2000 - 42,6% of Brazilians are 'multiracial', to use the common, incorrect, term. Even in Europe, incoming thai, philippine, chinese, african, etc. citizens will merge with 'white' Europeans, even in Norway. The claim of Robert Mugabe (and equally fjordman and Ahamba) is therefore backwarded, out of date, irrelevant, given the fact that there are no African 'nations' within the white man's borderlines, as ethnic violence proved recently in South Africa, triggered by Zimbabwean refugees. That Africans should govern their country without foreign patronization, is their natural right.

On this specific point, Fjordman is wrong and Nataraja is right. The spokespersons quoted by Fjordman are a small politicized minority. Most Third World immigrants have little in the way of political opinions and the ones they do hold are often contradictory. I have repeatedly encountered immigrants who, in the same conversation, will both praise and condemn Western societies for their greater degree of freedom. In this respect, they are like the rest of us, but only more so.

In any case, political opinions can be changed through reasoned argument. I myself have changed many of my views (albeit with some reluctance and loss of face). Such change is feasible and even common.

Does this mean Third World immigration is nothing to worry about? Hardly. There is another aspect of this immigration that is much, much harder to change than politics or ideology.

By this, I mean behavior, specifically behavioral predispositions: anger thresholds, ideation of violence, attitudes to women, strength of bonding with a mate, willingness to invest in the care of one's children, and so forth. These predispositions are much more deeply rooted and less susceptible to change. They have their origins in cultural conditioning from an early age and in factors that are partly or even largely innate, e.g., differences in IQ and testosterone levels.

When a Somali youth rapes a Norwegian woman, is he making a 'political statement'? No. He's simply enjoying himself. The same goes for violence. Yes, there are people in this world who get an almost orgasmic thrill from violence. That is the way they are, and they are not going to change easily.

Nataraja, let me ask you an honest question. Please give me an honest answer, i.e., the one you believe to be true. Is the social impact of a million Somali immigrants equal to the social impact of a million Korean immigrants?

If your answer is 'yes', you are truly an ideologue. You may be a neoconservative ideologue, but that scarcely makes you better than a Marxist one.

"Barbarophobia." I like that.

Well done, Fjordman.

You can easily explain all that saying it's, simply, a racial war against white people. Foreign people are not going to Europe to assimilate and turning themselves in Europeans, but rather for conquest and a sort of revenge of colonialism. It's very interesting to see that web site : you see this double standard where they speak of "black greatness", and define themselves racially, and same time are speaking about "racism". What they call white racism is in fact, white resistance to invasion of their country.
There are laws in history and relationship between peoples and races. These laws are clear : never in a same place two different populations with too much difference (language, race, religion) can live peacefully.

Thanks for the reaction Mark. I off course agree that Mr Sam has a ridiculous double standard, but my point was rather the question how seriously we should take his views as representative for a community (in this case, the african migrants in Europe), let alone influential in the public sphere. Not to say that colonial history and the different attitudes vis-a-vis local indigenous culture (which were as diverse as the regimes colonizing) should not be taken into account in any debate.

On yoour second remark: no I do not think that continuing migration (if this is even a relevant fear in the new Europe) would "inevitably change" the socio-economic balance so easily. Especially not when migration is needed to fill in the type of jobs that Europeans are unwilling to invest in or educate people in. 

Nataraja, you've missed the main point. Sam Ahamba is running with an ethnic double standard - a blatant one. He says:

"That people of European origins should deny us Africans a cultural nationalism, a pride and a fighting spirit is not acceptable, just or democratic."

Why then should Europeans be denied the same thing?

I'm also unsure why you believe that ethnic Norwegians will always dominate public positions and private companies. If patterns of migration continue, then this will inevitably change.

I always enjoy reading your reflections that show your passionate devotion to the debate on multiculturalism etc., and you sure always provide us with some oneliners that are worth remembering. However I really feel you jump from one conclusion to a new one like a wild horse, which I presume reflects a deep-rooted anxiety rather than a rational analysis of the matter.
Hope you dont mind me adding some thoughts:
First of all, I think it is strange that while Abdullah the kebab-man is not to be held responsible for big patterns in civilizational history, the opinion of one individual in Norway who was shoved a mic under his nose to satisfy media needs, is served on a plate as being representative, and key-reference for your analysis. I personally have met much more interesting, let alone influential, African journalists and academics (of all colours) that are able comment on a figure like Mugabe in a much more nuanced way. And just as a side-note, classifying Mugabe as a "freedom fighter" has been done just as consistently by the European political leaders for many years when he took over power.
Your lamentation about native Europeans being second-class citizens in their own countries sounds pretty crooked and paranoid to me, considering the fact that access to socio-economic wellfare, public functions, and leading positions in private companies is still by far and large an overwhelming privilege of native Europeans, and this is very likely to stay that way and (a discussion in itself off course) to me the one and only real tangible basis of social patterns and relations. Im not saying a sharp debate about for example migration is not needed (which you rightfully point out "en cours de route") , but I just really dont think the fact that a Norvegian/African or Kurdish cultural association receives a handful of money from the state (which is, let's admit it, usually peanuts) to employ one person and organise 5 music festivals a year for the white Norwegians that have travelled abroad, like watching discovery channel, and like to jump on african drumming every once in a while can be called a "threat" to native European culture, as long as the big majority of museums, history books and school curriculums, music and art production, and literature is based on, funded by, and generates income through its reference to that exact native European culture itself.
Furthermore, I am baffled that you dare to refer to the "human rights of other people" in this regards, which I honestly think is one of the great pillars of our European heritage, and which I dont want to compromise for anything at any point (and if Mr Sam would object to the protection of human rights I would fully agree to ship his ass elsewhere). Finally, I (as usual Im afraid) utterly fail to follow your jump from an analysis which first discusses at country level (e.g. an african immigrant to Norway), and then suddenly drags in "islam" as some all-encompassing Trojan horse to pin your conclusion on. Did Mr. Sam refer to Islam when discussing his point? Is it Indonesian, Pakistani, Chinese, Saudi, or Algerian muslims that is threatening Norvegian culture? A mixture of all of them? The womens rights? Norvegian sweet cheese (which I presume to be haram)? Beer? Art? Music?
In a Bat Ye'or-like paranoia-discourse I guess this kind of fine-tuning is unnecessary and even unwanted, but I will always keep on demanding that before being able to draw big conclusions about anything. And I can assure you it keeps me much calmer and less fearfull.
Thanks for a good read, I enjoyed it.