Pressure on Conservatives to go to the closet

Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: February 7, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1369955010-koFGET4mrerFxaF/CruL0Q

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SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

Viktor Koen

How do your moral intuitions shape your political ideology?

You can get a personalized answer by filling out a short questionnaire at Your Morals, a research project of Jonathan Haidt, the subject of this Findings column, and six other social psychologists.

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Viktor Koen

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Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. Inhis speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.

“I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.”

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” It’s easy for social scientists to observe this process in other communities, like the fundamentalist Christians who embrace “intelligent design” while rejecting Darwinism. But academics can be selective, too, asDaniel Patrick Moynihan found in 1965 when he warned about the rise of unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency among blacks — violating the taboo against criticizing victims of racism.

“Moynihan was shunned by many of his colleagues at Harvard as racist,” Dr. Haidt said. “Open-minded inquiry into the problems of the black family was shut down for decades, precisely the decades in which it was most urgently needed. Only in the last few years have liberal sociologists begun to acknowledge that Moynihan was right all along.”

Similarly, Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, was ostracized in 2005 for wondering publicly whether the preponderance of male professors in some top math and science departments might be due partly to the larger variance in I.Q. scores among men (meaning there are more men at the very high and very low ends). “This was not a permissible hypothesis,” Dr. Haidt said. “It blamed the victims rather than the powerful. The outrage ultimately led to his resignation. We psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage. We should have defended his right to think freely.”

Instead, the taboo against discussing sex differences was reinforced, so universities and theNational Science Foundation went on spending tens of millions of dollars on research and programs based on the assumption that female scientists faced discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias. But that assumption has been repeatedly contradicted, most recently in a study published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by two Cornell psychologists, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams. After reviewing two decades of research, they report that a woman in academic science typically fares as well as, if not better than, a comparable man when it comes to being interviewed, hired, promoted, financed and published.

“Thus,” they conclude, “the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort. Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past.” Instead of presuming discrimination in science or expecting the sexes to show equal interest in every discipline, the Cornell researchers say, universities should make it easier for women in any field to combine scholarship with family responsibilities.

Can social scientists open up to outsiders’ ideas? Dr. Haidt was optimistic enough to title his speech “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” urging his colleagues to focus on shared science rather than shared moral values. To overcome taboos, he advised them to subscribe to National Review and to read Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions.”

For a tribal-moral community, the social psychologists in Dr. Haidt’s audience seemed refreshingly receptive to his argument. Some said he overstated how liberal the field is, but many agreed it should welcome more ideological diversity. A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that’s 10 percent conservative by 2020. The society’s executive committee didn’t endorse Dr. Haidt’s numerical goal, but it did vote to put a statement on the group’s home page welcoming psychologists with “diverse perspectives.” It also made a change on the “Diversity Initiatives” page — a two-letter correction of what it called a grammatical glitch, although others might see it as more of a Freudian slip.

In the old version, the society announced that special funds to pay for travel to the annual meeting were available to students belonging to “underrepresented groups (i.e., ethnic or racial minorities, first-generation college students, individuals with a physical disability, and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered students).”

As Dr. Haidt noted in his speech, the “i.e.” implied that this was the exclusive, sacred list of “underrepresented groups.” The society took his suggestion to substitute “e.g.” — a change that leaves it open to other groups, too. Maybe, someday, even to conservatives.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 10, 2011

Because of an editing error, the Findings column on Tuesday, about political bias among social scientists, omitted the last four words of a sentence that countered the notion that female scientists face discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias. The sentence should have read: But that assumption has been repeatedly contradicted, most recently in a study published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by two Cornell psychologists, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 8, 2011, on page D1 of the New York edition.

liberal to conservative ?

Martin Parsons: Liberalism cannot defeat Islamism

Martin Parsons has a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and has written a major academic book on this subject.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2013/05/liberalism-cannot-defeat-islamism-.html

Has the damaged already gone beyond the point of no return? 

Will conservative just slow down the inevitable trend to Islalm? As any socialism really just continues a slow leakage when there is a lot of pressure by births and immigration.

Since the decline of Socialism, the major ideological fault line in British politics, insofar as there has been one, has been between, on the one hand, conservativism and, on the other, various forms of liberalism – espoused bynot just the Liberal Democrats, but also in large measure by the Labour Party.

This ideological divide is of critical importance in the fight against Islamism. I say this because there is a myth that has been propagated by liberals that the only answer to Islamism is liberalism. However, liberalism not only lacks the capacity to counter Islamism and has significantly failed to do so, but is seen by many Islamists as part of the back door by which they can take over and impose Islamic law and government on western society.The reasons for this are not hard to find:

• Liberalism promotes diversity rather than cohesion. The essence of Liberalism is that diversity is ‘good’, and so should not just be tolerated but actively promoted. The active promotion of diversity by the last government led to various forms of support for Islamist groups that were seeking to pull people away from traditional British values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In other words, it was doing exactly the opposite to community cohesion, which any right-thinking person would understand as encouraging people to adhere to the values that we have historically developed and learned as a nation to cherish – such as democracy, the equality of everyone before the law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and so forth. All of these are significantly diminished by sharia, which in various aspects treats men and women, Muslims and non Muslims differently. Liberalism’s politically correct promotion of groups perceived to have been historically disadvantaged has led to the strange combination of liberals advocating ,for example, partial implementation of sharia in Britain, while at the same time supporting legislation that diminishes historic rightssuch as freedom of religion for other groups that political correctness regards less favourably. This was vividly illustrated during the time of the last Labour Government, when the Home Secretary went on the Today programme to argue for freedom of speech for Islamists, while only a few hours later sought to pass legislation restricting the same freedom of speech for Christians.

• Social liberalism is the essence of the Islamist critique of western society and its attempt to recruit as yet unradicalised Muslims. The central narrative of virtually all Islamist propaganda is that: 1. The West is morally corrupt;  2. Therefore the solution is the enforcement of sharia, either by means of the political process (non-violent Islamist groups) or by means of violence (Jihadist Islamist groups). While the second point is wholly incompatible with British values, we have to recognise that the first point – the moral corruption of western society is one that many ordinary people readily and very rightly identify with.  This is particularly true amongst many Muslim families, who generally hold more strongly to traditional family and moral values than much of wider society. That I would argue is an extremely good thing. However, it also means that the promotion of social liberalism as an alternative to Islamism is not only ineffective at stopping the radicalisation of young Muslims, but is actually reinforcing the critique of western society that radical Islamists are basing their appeal on.

• Liberalism has a naïve approach to Islamism – often denying either their ultimate aims, or refusing to accept jihadists have a religious motivation. For example, the 2005 London bombings were followed by claims that such terrorism was due to socio-economic disadvantage as there could not be any link between Islam and terrorism. Similarly, in the USA, the Obama adminstration's State Department refuses to recognise that the repeated attacks on churches by the al-Qaeda linked Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria are religiously motivated, instead preferring to believe that socio-economic reasons are the cause of the violence.

• Islamists often deliberately use liberal human rights laws to further their own aims. This is illustrated only too well by the inability of successive British governments to deport Abu Qatada, despite him not being a British citizen and having been described by a Spanish judge as al Qaeda’s right hand man in Europe.

• Many Islamists see Liberalism as the backdoor that can enable them to gain power and impose Islamic law and government on western society. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikhwan) which has various offshoot organisations in the west, in 1991 produced a strategy document stating:
  "Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying western civilisation from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands…"

So liberalism, far from providing a solution to Islamism, is part of the problem - or at the very least is in danger of naively opening the door and making the problem worse. However, conservativism has at least the potential to provide a real alternative to Islamism.

1. Conservativsim is about conserving the best of the past. The accumulated wisdom and institutions we have inherited from previous generations, including our national identity and values, is a trust.  This is the exact opposite of liberalism which sees the past, at best, as largely irrelevant and, at worst, as something to be abandoned in pursuit of the liberal vision of actively promoting diversity. So, while Liberalism leads us to an unknown future, conservativism enables us to promote cohesion around our history, values and culture. Those values include democracy and equal treatment for all by the law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and so forth. All of these are significantly diminished by theenforcement of sharia which in various aspects treats men and women, Muslims and non Muslims differently.

• Social conservativism can appeal to ordinary Muslims – support for the family, traditional marriage, respect for old people, law and order are all things that are valued by the overwhelming majority of Muslim families. It thus provides an answer to the Islamist critique of western society, while social liberalism merely reinforces that critique.

• Conservatvism has a realistic view of human nature. Conservatives do not assume that all actions that come under the label ‘culture’ are equally valid – but instead recognise that there is both good and bad in every culture, including some aspects of white British culture that have developed in recent years. What this means in practice is that we are free to criticise those strands within the multifaceted mosaic of Islamic history that advocate violent jihadism, rather than denying, as liberals are inclined to, that there is any link between Islam and terrorism. Yet at the same time it allows us to positively affirm that the beliefs and practices followed by the majority of British Muslims are entirely peaceful.

• Conservativism values the British version of human of human rights laws that has evolved over the last 800 years in preference to the more recent European version of human rights that largely dates from the time of the French Revolution. The European version favoured by liberals is problematic because it is a ‘bottom up’ approach that gives specific abstract universal rights to individuals, including foreign Islamists such as Abu Qatada, that effectively trumps the most basic rights of British citizens - namely, to live in security. However, this problem does not arise with the British version of human rights law because it is a ‘top down’ approach that works by limiting the government’s power to interfere in ordinary people’s lives – no arbitrary arrest without trial before court and a jury etc. It therefore guarantees our freedoms, without the rights of ordinary people to live in security being set against the ‘rights’ of foreign terrorists. As Edmund Burke observed in 1790 in hisReflections on the Revolution in France , in Britain our freedoms are based "not on abstract principles ‘as the rights of men’, but as the rights of Englishmen", by which he explains he means the freedoms, starting with the Magna Carta, that we have inherited from previous generations.

Thus, while liberal naivety is in danger of leaving an open backdoor to Islamism, conservatism provides a genuine bulwark to safeguard Britain against Islamism. It does so by focusing on British identity and laws and historic British freedoms that we have inherited from previous generations, rather than on the abstract universal principles of Liberalism that, during the last two decades, politically astute Islamists have increasingly learned to exploit.

May 28, 2013 in Martin Parsons | Permalink

The last paragraph may be a starting point  for the UK . but very easily said than done, and l doubt very much that it will be a bulwark against Islalmism.  The true cost will be unfortunately in a lot of turmoil of blood sweat and tears

nicolai sennels muslim immigration

Danish Psychologist: ‘Integration of Muslims in Western Societies is Not Possible’

by FELIX STREUNING April 5, 2010

Danish integration problems with Muslims became public worldwide in 2006 when the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Exactly two years later riots broke out again because of the reprint of the Mohammed cartoons by all major Danish newspapers.

Currently 70 percent of the prison population in the Copenhagen youth prison consists of young man of Muslim heritage. Is this recent violence and general violent tendency among Muslims solely coincidental, or is there a direct connection?

In February 2009, Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist published a book entitled Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist’s Experience from Copenhagen. In his book, Nicolai Sennels shares a psychological perspective of this Muslim Culture, its relationship to anger, handling emotions and its religion. He based his research on hundreds of hours of therapy with 150 young Muslims in the Copenhagen youth jail. EuropeNews interviewed the author about his book and its consequences on integration of Muslims in Europe.

EuropeNews: Nicolai Sennels, how did you get the idea to write a book about criminal Muslims in Denmark?

Nicolai Sennels: I got the idea in February 2008 during a conference on integration in Copenhagen, where I was invited as the first and only psychologist working in a Copenhagen youth prison. My speech at the conference was about the fact, that foreigners’ culture plays a significant role concerning integration, crime and religious extremism. I emphasized, that people from a Muslim culture find it difficult, if not impossible, to create a successful life in Denmark.

This statement was met with great resistance from Danish politicians and also my own boss from the youth prison. I was quite surprised since I thought that my point is obvious: some cultures fit better into Western societies than others. All of Europe is currently struggling to integrate Muslims but this endeavor seems to be impossible. According to the Danish police and the Danish Bureau of Statistics more than 70 percent of all crimes in the Danish capital are committed by Muslims. Our national bank recently published a report stating that a Muslim foreigner costs more than 2 million Danish kroner (300,000 euros) in federal social assistance on average, caused by the low participation in the work force. On top of this, we have to add many additional types of social welfare that unemployed people can receive in our country: expenses in connection with interpreters, special classes in school – 64 percent of school children with Muslim parents cannot read and write Danish properly after 10 years in a Danish school – social work, extra police etc.

My statement resulted in a legal injunction, a kind of professional punishment, which stated, that if I ever repeat this, I could be fired. According to the Copenhagen authorities it is apparently permitted to state that the serious problems among Muslims are caused by poverty, the media, the police, the Danes, politicians, etc. But two things are definitely not allowed: 1) discussing the significance of culture and 2) our foreigners own responsibility for their integration in our societies. Unfortunately many very powerful politicians lack a clear understanding of the psychological aspect of culture and the influence it has on integration.

EuropeNews: What were the reactions in Denmark?

Sennels: The book was received with a great amount of attention, already before the book was officially published on February 24 2009. It was on the front page of one of the biggest national newspapers in Denmark, and I was on the radio and TV participating in debates with politicians and other experts on the subject. The first publication of the book was sold out after three weeks.

Since then, there have been some big changes in Danish integration policy, which seems to have been influenced by the book and the attention it got. From my personal point of view, the widespread attention shows that my statement is true: there is simply a great need for a deeper understanding of how Muslims’ culture influences their chances for integration.

The very famous politician, Naser Khader, who is Muslim and the author of the Honor and Shame, wrote a review of my book and stated that it should be “obligatory reading for students, social workers and teachers.” Jyllands-Posten, the brave newspaper that first published the Mohammed cartoons, calls the book “an original piece of pioneer work.”

EuropeNews: Let’s have a closer look at the book. You talk about four myths of integration. The first one concerns the difference between the cultures of immigrants.

Sennels: What I discovered during my work at the youth prison was that people of Muslim heritage have other needs for social work than Danes or people of non-Muslim cultures. These different needs require more attention, and psychologists need to do more research on these topics in order to be able to create effective social politics.

I completely agree with my critics that personal and social problems can lead to anti-social behavior among both Westerners and Muslims. However, there is still extremely disproportional anti-social and anti-democratic behavior among Muslims. The Danish Bureau of Statistics published a report (1 and 2) stating that Muslim countries take the first eight places on the top 10-list of criminals’ country of origin. Denmark is number nine on this list.

EuropeNews: So that means, we have to treat Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants in a different way?

Sennels: Seen from a psychological and also humanistic perspective, it is very clear that people from different cultures have different needs when they have or create problems. My own experience is that Muslims don’t understand our Western way of trying to handle conflicts through dialogue. They are raised in a culture with very clear outer authorities and consequences. Western tradition using compromise and inner reflection as primary means of handling outer and inner conflicts is seen as weak in the Muslim culture. To a great extent they simply don’t understand this softer and more humanistic way of handling social affairs. In the context of social work and politics this means that they need more borders and stronger consequences to be able to adjust their behavior.

EuropeNews: That leads us directly to the second myth: it is often said, that the criminality of immigrants is caused by social problems, not by their cultural background. In your book you disagree and point to the religion of the Muslims as a source of criminality.

Sennels: Well, I would rephrase it as “Muslim culture” instead of “religion” because there are a lot of Muslims who don’t know what is written in the Quran and who don’t visit the mosques. But they are strongly influenced on a cultural level. And there we see that especially anger is much more accepted in the Muslim culture.

One example: in Western culture and also in other non-Muslim cultures, like in Asia, you see aggression and a sudden explosion of anger as something you’ll regret afterwards, something you are ashamed of. It is completely opposite in the Muslim culture. If somebody steps on your honor – what I as a psychologist would call self confidence – you are simply expected to show aggression and often also verbal or physical revenge. So, aggression gives you a low status in our cultures, but a high status in the Muslim culture.

There is however another and much deeper reason for the wide spread anti-social behavior in Muslim communities and their strong aversion against integration – namely, the very strong identification that Muslims have with belonging to the Muslim culture.

My encounter with the Muslim culture has been a meeting with an exceedingly strong and very proud culture. This is certainly something that can ensure an ancient culture’s survival through changing times – Islam and the Muslim culture are excellent examples of this. A strong and proud culture unfortunately also makes the culture’s members almost unable to adapt to other values. In Germany, only 12 percent of their 3.5 million Muslims see themselves as more German than Muslim; in France and Denmark, only 14 percent of the Muslim populations respectively see themselves more as French or Danish than Muslim. Research among Muslims living in Denmark also shows that 50 percent of the 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrants are against free speech and 11 percent would like to see the Danish constitution exchanged with the sharia law (more numbers from this research can be found in the printed issue of the newspaper). These high percentages are of course frightening, but especially disturbing is the fact that there are no differences of opinion on this topic among Muslims who are born and raised in Muslim countries and the opinion of their children who are born and raised in Danish society. When it comes to identity among Muslims, nationality does not count at all in comparison with culture and religion. The consequence is a powerful and growing opposition to Western culture and values in Muslim ghettoes throughout Copenhagen and other major European cities.

EuropeNews: As you already pointed out, a lot of Muslims have a strong connection to their religious identity. The third myth you dismantle in your book is about the percentage of extremist’s and fundamentalists among Muslims. It’s often presumed that this percentage is relatively small. What is your experience?

Sennels: People hope that most Muslims are modern and accept Western values. My experience is different, and this has been proven by the statistics in Europe that I just quoted. In February 2008, we had some deadly serious riots by young Muslims in Denmark.

Those riots were partly a reaction to the great focus by the Danish police on the steeply rising crime rates in Muslim areas. The other reason was the reprinting of the Mohammed cartoons in all Danish newspapers. This reprinting was an act of solidarity with the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose life was, and still is, seriously threatened.

In these riots, we saw Muslims who don’t practice the Islamic religion in their daily lives standing up for their culture and religion in a very aggressive way. Copenhagen was smoking for an entire week due to several hundred of fires, and the police and firemen trying to calm the situation down were also attacked. A big part of the rioters ended up in the prison where I worked, and I therefore I had the chance to talk with them. Almost all of them were Muslims, and they all claimed that what they have done – starting fires, attacking the police etc. – was justified since Danish society, through its pressure on integration and through reprinting the Mohammed cartoons, has proven itself to be racist and against Islam and Muslim culture. The few Danish people among the rioters were completely different. Their explanation of their actions was predominately a search for adventure or excitement.

EuropeNews: The fourth myth is that poverty among immigrants leads to their bad social situation. In your book, you tell us that the opposite is true.

Sennels: You can formulate this important question like this: do people get social problems because they are poor, or do they become poor because they create social problems? My experience is that the very low focus on supporting one’s children in school and on one’s own education and the lack of motivation for creating a professional career is a crucial factor for the poverty, which many Muslims experience in both our societies and in Muslim countries. On top of it, one fourth of all young male Muslims in Denmark have a criminal record. Poor reading skills, a strong aversion against authorities and a criminal record simply make it very difficult for you to get a well paying job. It is anti-social behavior that makes you poor. Not the other way around.

Unfortunately many politicians see poverty as the main cause of integration problems. I think this is a horrible and one-dimensional view of poor people and of people in general. The idea that people’s behavior is decided by the amount of money they have on their bank accounts every month is an exceedingly limited view. I myself, as a psychologist who graduated from the humanities department of the University of Copenhagen, would say that people have many more and stronger factors in their lives than money, which influence their behavior and way of thinking.

EuropeNews: What is the conclusion on your research? Is the integration of people of Muslim heritage into Western societies possible?

Nicolai Sennels: I would say that the optimists, the people who say that integration is possible, carry a very great responsibility. There is a very great risk that they are selling us hope, a dream, that has no foundation in reality. This means that they will be the ones who are responsible for Europe looking away from and not addressing its problems until it is too late.

There is simply no research in Europe that supports the optimists’ view. On the contrary, all the research that we have on integration of Muslims in Western societies shows that we are continuing to head in the wrong direction. So I don’t know how these optimists come to their conclusion. Maybe it is a vain and childish hope that everything will turn out well, just like in the fairy tales. Or maybe it is a pseudo-Darwinistic idea that everything will develop in a positive direction. One thing is for sure: they don’t base their judgments on facts.

Of course there are exceptions but for the largest part integration to the necessary degree of Muslims is not possible. Clever and compassionate people are working all over Europe on the problem, and they have spent billions of Euros on the project, yet, the problems still continue to grow.

The psychological explanation is actually simple. The Muslim and the Western cultures are fundamentally very different. This means Muslims need to undergo very big changes in their identity and values to be able to accept the values of Western societies. Changing basic structures in one’s personality is a very demanding psychological and emotional process. Apparently very few Muslims feel motivated to do so. I only know a few who managed, but I also know that it was a long and exhausting struggle on an inner level for them and that they often pay a high personal price on the outer level because their Muslim friends and families despise and/or disown them for leaving their culture.

EuropeNews: But what we are going to do with the Muslims, who are already here?

Sennels: I see two possibilities. Firstly, we should immediately stop all immigration of people from Muslim countries to Europe until we have proven that integration of Muslims is possible.

Secondly, we should help Muslims who don’t want to or are not able to integrate in our Western societies to build a new and meaningful life in a society they understand and that understands them. This means to assist them in starting a new life in a Muslim country. We actually have the economic means to do this. As I mentioned previously, the Danish National Bank calculated, that every immigrant from Muslim countries costs 300,000 euros on average. With this money, we could help these people to live a happy life in a Muslim country without having to integrate in a society they don’t understand and therefore cannot accept. Having money enough to support one’s family and live in a country where one feels at home with the surrounding culture would be a great step forward in the quality of their lives. And we should help them achieve this. Not only the individual Muslim, but also European societies will benefit. Muslims immigrating from Europe to Muslim countries will function as ambassadors for more free and democratic societies: due to their experience from living in a democracy with real human rights and their knowledge of the social systems in Europe, they will take very important ideas and values with them. In this way they can do what hopefully most of them dream of, i.e. help their Muslim brothers and sisters in their home countries by changing the poor conditions and from which they moved away from initially.

Nicolai Sennels, 33 years old, is a psychologist and has worked for the Copenhagen authorities for several years. From 2005 to 2008 he worked at the Sønderbro youth prison in Copenhagen.

See also the article by Nicolai Sennels

And this report at Gates of Vienna
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Felix Streuning writes for EuropeNews.dk.

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.5905/pub_detail.asp#ixzz2UZ4MwqWQ
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Any one got Ben Jamin flatters quotes???

What precisely did     ben jam in  fl att ers  and his mate    say on face book ?
 or write it in comments ??

I just can not find it and I realize that a lot can not repeat it even if they know as they would take a hammering in this pc world

Anyone with any links ?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benjamin Flatters, of Swineshead, Lincs, faces a charge under the 1988 Malicious Communications Act following a message he posted on Facebook on 22 May which is alleged to be offensive to Muslims.
No details of the message were given at the hearing but another man was warned about his conduct on social media.
Flatters, who spoke only to confirm his name, age and address, was refused bail by Lincoln Magistrates following a 20 minute hearing.
The court was told he faces further matters including four charges of inciting under-age girls to engage in sexual activity by sending sexual messages by Facebook as well as two drugs charges.
Flatters was remanded in custody until Wednesday when he will appear before Skegness Magistrates via video link.  
Are there any links to the 6 charges??

     I found this site in searching for so called malicious comments on social media
http://edlnews.co.uk/index.php/latest-news
     The  EDL will have to do a lot of  pulling up their socks if this above site is even half way true, as not only if a lot of the claims are true, then to say that they are set up by the media is too easily done.. There just seems to be too much slurry overall, even if some possibly may be rubbish
        It just seems that they edl are shooting them selves in the foot, which as the other side of the immigrant debate are so shooting themselves in the foot , just makes a mess of their own messages!! and ruins any one else associated with them.  It makes the whole situation sad and tragic

     Their very ethics and principles need to be thought about a lot more, so the truth of any arguments are then well thought out, not tainted by their immaturity, and damaged by their antics.

     Leadership has started. The example set must stay on the truth, and keep disciplined at all times.
     Truth will always be outed but it is the covering, damaging, sideshows, that can delay it and even derail it.
     After all truth is stark, and needs no embellishments.

     Basically a grass roots beginnings, a lot to learn, not only politically, but for just the basics of their philosophies, histories and lives, to gain principles and ethics and then how to present/market their message. A lot of work, education, study and control. A true dedication and discipline. No easy task, as I would think when circumstances, priorities and pressures keep changing as one keeps on learning. Yet one must stay focused and to the point.

     Finally it seems, cut back the drink and pubs as the old saying is "When the drink is in, the wits are out" and walking out in the public and making speeches and comments when l2 sheets to wind is ;becoming more and more under scrutiny with camera phones videos and etc. When more publicity then more scrutiny and the price of stuff-ups and fools  becomes  very high and to the cost of credibility and  respect.

     Respect has to be earned, then vigilantly guarded with self discipline, as that will show that they truly  believe in their message.

CO2 how much? and due to what?

flipper (1,641) Says: 
May 21st, 2013 at 7:58 am

Hello DPF…

This is rather late since one cannot devote all of one’s life to this excellent blog.

Your reference to 5th Form (I’m glad that you talk in real, as opposed to “new”, educational terms) physics and a “disservice”, suggests to me that I touched a nerve that you have been scratching for some time, and that I should therefore reply, albeit some 12 hours later. Perhaps this exercise will bring you out, and finally convince you that you have eaten a dead rat. 

It will therefore belong long, and will include a paper by my colleague Rupert Wyndham (edited to exclude irrelevant matters), that I have previously sent in full to you on behalf of The Outside The Beltway Group.

For the first, second and third times , I did not deny (repeat, deny) a link between “greenhouse gases” and atmospheric temperature.

I remind you of the what I stated at the beginning of this discussion, namely (among the questions I posed):

**** Almost everyone outside the warmist cult accepts that CO2 does increase atmospheric temperatures.
But by how much, and due to what?

No one, I repeat, no one has yet established either the “what” or the “how much”.

And, to repeat, no one has shown whether any increase, if established, is injurious. ****

Your comment was therefore based upon a misapprehension on your part.

Now to the paper mention. This was delivered early last month to the UK Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee. Climate: Public Understanding and Policy Implications

**** R C E Wyndham stated …..
2. Declaration of interests
In conspicuous contrast to numbers of MPs, I have no financial or reputational interests whatsoever in the subject of alleged man-made climate change. Neither have I ever had.

3. Public perception of climate change
The public, rightly, increasingly perceives alleged anthropogenic global warming as a scam designed to:

• extract stealth taxes;
• reward rich third parties often, or even usually, family, personal friends or political allies of legislators;
….
Why?

3.1 Science – overview. AGW ‘science’ has been fraudulent from inception. Since it always lacked authentic
scientific underpinning, it was obliged to have recourse to chicanery – contrived claims of a scientific
consensus, refusal to observe protocols of scientific method (verification and replication),
subversion of peer review, avoidance of debate, denial of contra-indications, concoction of data,
misrepresentation, misinformation, disinformation. …….
3.2 Is there any aspect in which AGW ‘science’ is plausible?

No, quite simply impossible. The orthodoxy posits that fundamental and potentially dangerous alterations
to the Earth’s climate may be wrought by minute changes in the atmospheric concentration of a single
component, a trace gas amounting in total to less than 1/25th part of a single percentage point. By any
standard, this constitutes an hypothesis that can only be regarded as facile and unlikely, if not positively
flaky, the more so when taking into account that:

• CO2 is the sine qua non of all life on Earth;

• the geological record discloses numerous precedents for CO2 atmospheric concentrations many times greater than those prevailing today, during which there was no “runaway greenhouse effect” – another delusional concept. In fact, the interfaces between the Ordovician & Silurian epochs (4000ppmv) and the Jurassic & Cretaceous (2000ppmv) were periods of planetary glaciation, totally destroying the linkage between CO2 concentration and global mean temperature. CO2 atmospheric concentration currently stands at around 390ppmv.

An implausible hypothesis requires exceptionally strong proof.

Has there been any evidence to support of the AGW hypothesis? Not one example has yet been
put forward drawn from observation in the real world.

Nevertheless, this still does not represent the flaw au fond in the AGW edifice. That, ironically, is provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself, of which more in due course. Pro tempore, it is sufficient to note that, writing for once truthfully and accurately, in its First Assessment Report (AR1), it made the entirely correct (though obvious!) declaration that the atmosphere/climate is a vast, chaotic, non-linear system, not susceptible to prediction. In consequence, the IPCC added that it would/could deal only with ‘scenarios’.

By the advent of AR2, however, it was clear that it had every intention of promoting not only prediction but catastrophism also. And the supposed scientific justification for such predictions? Why, to be sure, they were to be attributed to minute alterations in a single variable, namely CO2. For members of this Committee and others:

N.B. By virtue of underlying realities, the acknowledgement on the one hand that prediction is impossible
and on the other an appeal to predictive determinism represents the juxtaposition of mutually
exclusive propositions!

4. Credibility of cited authorities

4.1 IPCC
Cataclysmic climate change propagandists frequently seek to dismiss questioning of their orthodoxy by reference to the alleged absence of specialist expertise possessed by dissenters. In spite of this, the public is not so dense that it cannot see the clash between this proposition and the appointment of a railway engineer to head up what is, supposedly, the world’s primary authority on proclaimed climate change. Moreover, as propaganda from the IPCC and pseudo-environmentalists has grown increasingly shrill, so too have investigations multiplied both of their claims and of their basic integrity. It did not take long for a string of outright falsehoods to be exposed:

• shrinking Himalayan glaciers;
• 100% peer reviewed research materials (more than 30% found to be the work of eco-extremists and even students);
• rising sea levels;
• rising global temperatures;

to name but a few. Neither did it escape public attention that Rajendra Pachauri had substantial conflicts of
interest between his official role and his business activities, nor that these were both insolent and brazen -
(“They’re of interest to me so are not conflicting.”). ……..

…….

That source is, in fact, within the public domain. It is vested, courtesy of the Tyndall Centre, in ‘Working Paper No. 58′ – The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change – Dennis Bray & Simon Shackley, Sept. 2004) [My underlining]

“Only the perception of positive anomalies will be registered as an indication of change, if the issue is framed as global warming.

Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as an indication of change, if the issue is framed as ‘climate change’.

We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming.”

In plain English, too hot and it’s CO2. Too cold and it’s CO2. No change and it’s CO2. What is clear is that Messrs. Bray and Shackley knew well that they were selling a pup; the ethics of the second hand car dealership or, perhaps more immediately, the solar panel salesman, are normative throughout the climate change industry.

Hypotheses that, at least in principle, are not capable of being disproved are not science; they are merely manifestations of cultist dogmatism and demagoguery.

………

4.5 The Royal Society
Under the stewardships of its last three Presidents, from being a national treasure, the Royal Society has become a propagandist for the human induced climate change paradigm. It is fair to state that over the course of the past decade, the RS has exercised all its authority and prestige in advancing the orthodoxy by lending to it a spurious veneer of scientific/intellectual respectability. It has gone to inordinate lengths to encourage acceptance of the proclaimed consensus and to discourage all debate. With respect to the latter, I am able to speak from experience. More to the point, even significant numbers of its own Fellows have expressed disquiet at the public stance of the Society. This too is in the public domain, and the public at large is increasingly aware that the alleged consensus is not even remotely as monolithic as is claimed by pseudo-environmental jihadists.

4.6 Academia
Mutatis mutandis, much of the foregoing relating to the RS may be transposed to academia at large, especially scientific academia.

4.7 The print media
Except amongst AGW cult fundamentalists, the reputations of The Guardian and The Independent have been increasingly under attack for their unshakeable left wing cultist prejudice. The Daily Telegraph has gained credibility, because it has consistently over a long period entertained both sides of the debate. A sea change, however, has occurred within the daily tabloids. Two years ago sceptical articles were rare to the point of extinction. They can now be described almost as the default position for both copy and editorial comment.

……

4.11 The blogosphere
Since officially sponsored information cannot be trusted, the internet is now the predominant source of dispassionate and reliable information on putative climate change. Numerous highly regarded blogs exist, which cover all aspects of the subject by recourse to data not unsubstantiated assertion, with many being run by, or closely associated with, scientists of immense prestige, who are dismissive of the orthodoxy.

5. Summary
This submission can be distilled as follows:

• The anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is a fraudulent chimera.
• Its adoption by Parliament has resulted in baleful and cripplingly expensive consequences for the country.
• Amongst these have been

– corruption of politics, both at national and local level;
– corruption of national institutions – the Royal Society and the BBC, most conspicuously;
– subversion of the integrity of the scientific enterprise and the education of the young;
– despoliation of the natural environment;
– immense pollution and habitat expropriation, albeit not necessarily on these shores;
– diversion of financial resources on a blanching scale into worthless palliatives to non-existent problems;
– impoverishment of populations, both at home and abroad, to no good end,which has been the subject of
repeated critical comment, as has been, in parallel, the self-enrichment of key players.
…..
7. Postscript
Anthropogenic Global Warming, speciously morphed to ‘Climate Change’, is not a scientific issue at all. The science is clear. There is no demonstrable causal linkage between carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and global mean temperature. Neither is there any evidence that modest rises in global mean temperature would be anything other than beneficial.

Rather, because it represents a full frontal assault on the very notion of open and objective debate and evidence led scientific investigation, it constitutes a fundamental ethical issue of unique significance. ******

Enough, or should I produce more, and arrange for some anonymous (real peer reviews are anonymous)scientific giants to review your data????

flipper (1,642) Says: 
May 21st, 2013 at 10:54 am

God this becomes boring when idiots like Griff believe in their dead rats. So let me try again:

**** Is there any aspect in which AGW ‘science’ is plausible?

No, quite simply impossible. The orthodoxy posits that fundamental and potentially dangerous alterations
to the Earth’s climate may be wrought by minute changes in the atmospheric concentration of a single
component, a trace gas amounting in total to less than 1/25th part of a single percentage point. By any
standard, this constitutes an hypothesis that can only be regarded as facile and unlikely, if not positively
flaky, the more so when taking into account that:

• CO2 is the sine qua non of all life on Earth;
and

**** What are the greenhouse gases?
There are several, water vapour being by far the most significant – responsible for 95% of the GHE. Why? Because H2O absorbs radiation over almost the entire IR spectrum. CO2 is only a secondary ghg, exists in minute overall concentrations (0.0385% of the atmosphere as a whole), and absorbs over only two narrow bandwidths, most usually quoted the 15 micron band. Consequently, the radiative potential of CO2 quickly becomes saturated. Other GHGs are occasionally mentioned, and include methane and nitrous oxide.
and
**** Do CO2 concentrations explain recent climatic variation – last 150 years, say, but especially since late 70s?
No. Even CO2 protagonists acknowledge that CO2 of itself explains nothing. The first 20 ppm of atmospheric CO2 give rise to roughly 1½ºC of warming. The next 1½ºC requires a further 400 ppm, and the next 1ºC calls for a further 1000 ppm. We are currently standing at about 385 ppm. In short, the forcing relationship between CO2 and surface temperatures is logarithmic not linear, for which reason alone its effects are self-limiting. It requires a feedback mechanism, for which H2O has been enlisted as the agent, ie more CO2 means more warming, which means more water vapour, which means more warming. However, and rarely if ever mentioned by AGW proponents, H2O also produces cooling by virtue of two mechanisms – evaporation and cloud formation. 70% of the earth’s surface comprises ocean and much of the land surface also transpires, so evaporative cooling is significant. Clouds directly radiate heat back into space. Overall, it now seems that H2O has a negative feedback greater than any positive feedback. Though they have consistently denied its importance, CO2 protagonists have never understood the influence of clouds as well as several other natural variables (eg so called aerosols – mostly pollutants, such as SO2, oxides of nitrogen, etc often blown off by volcanoes but occasionally attributed to power stations, when facts inconveniently fail to support theory). They have never successfully integrated them into their models.
and
**** Is there any evidence for the operation of this mechanism?
None. The AGW hypothesis is the product of computer models. The real world contains none of the signatures that the theory demands – for example and very importantly, greater warming of the tropical troposphere as against near surface temperatures. Two datasets (satellite and weather balloon) show almost complete stability of tropospheric temperatures over the relevant periods, ie since these two methodologies were available – say the last 50 years for radiosond (balloon) readings, a bit less for satellite.
and
****With regard to increases in CO2 concentrations, do humans contribute significantly?
No – about 4% of any annual increase, and that’s now, not 100 years ago, when temperature rises overall were greater. Vastly greater GHG increases, including those of CO2, spring from natural processes (see above plus volcanism and the planet’s biota).
and
****Couldn’t that extra 4% be doing all the damage?
What damage? And, anyway, CO2 proponents would still have to come up with a plausible mechanism to show how the additional 4% effects its supposedly malign and cataclysmic influence. CO2 concentrations in the past have been much higher than they are today. Ice ages came and went. Climate change remained a constant of planetary existence. And, as has already been stated, there is no empirical observational evidence. ****

The above extracts are by/from R C E Wyndham –
1. Presentation to UK House of Commons, April 2013
and
2. A Layman’s Guide to Climate Change issues (RCEW. revised Jan 2012)

flipper (1,646) Says: 
May 21st, 2013 at 12:11 pm

I cannot not resist quoting from Whale this morning, just to piss off the idiot melons:

” **** All over for the Greens?

by Whaleoil on May 21, 2013

The Green party in NZ put all their eggs in the AGW basket and have no position to retreat to from it.

They are also the enemies of the environment as the anti AGW policies they have advocated are creating massive harm – economically and environmentally – especially for the poor who – highly paradoxically – they claim to stand for in New Zealand.

The other aspect they have no morals on is the negative influence on, and exploitive use of, young people through the needless panic and worry they create .

Dr Matt Ridley says in the Times:

The latest science suggests that our policy on global warming is hopelessly misguided

There is little doubt that the damage being done by climate-change policies currently exceeds the damage being done by climate change, and will for several decades yet. Hunger, rainforest destruction, excess cold-weather deaths and reduced economic growth are all exacerbated by the rush to biomass and wind. These dwarf any possible effects of worse weather, for which there is still no actual evidence anyway: recent droughts, floods and storms are within historic variability.

The harm done by policy falls disproportionately on the poor. Climate worriers claim that at some point this will reverse and the disease will become worse than the cure. An acceleration in temperature rise, they say, is overdue. The snag is, the best science now says otherwise. Whereas the politicians, activists and businessmen who make the most noise about — and money from — this issue are sticking to their guns, key scientists are backing away from predictions of rapid warming.

Yesterday saw the publication of a paper in a prestigious journal, Nature Geoscience, from a high-profile international team led by Oxford scientists. The contributors include 14 lead authors of the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific report; two are lead authors of the crucial chapter 10:  Professors Myles Allen and Gabriele Hegerl.

So this study is about as authoritative as you can get. It uses the most robust method, of analysing the Earth’s heat budget over the past hundred years or so, to estimate a “transient climate response” — the amount of warming that, with rising emissions, the world is likely to experience by the time carbon dioxide levels have doubled since pre-industrial times.

The most likely estimate is 1.3C. Even if we reach doubled carbon dioxide in just 50 years, we can expect the world to be about two-thirds of a degree warmer than it is now, maybe a bit more if other greenhouse gases increase too….

It is true that the “transient climate response” is not the end of the story and that the gradual warming of the oceans means that there would be more warming in the pipeline even if we stopped increasing carbon dioxide levels after doubling them. But given the advance of nuclear and solar technology, there is now a good chance we will have decarbonised the economy before any net harm has been done.

Any chance the Greens will simply admit they are/were wrong and simply leave for the good of the nation? ****”