PayPal gets political and joins the side of NGO’s traffic of illegal immigrants.

The activities of the NGO’s in the central Mediterranean, shipping migrants from Lybian waters to Italy, have, in the last few months, become a national controversy in the Southern European country with many questioning where does the funding for the NGO fleet come from and what are their motives.

After initial background checks, prosecutors from Sicily are now investigating NGO members for the aiding of illegal immigration and association for criminal purposes; this reflects the fact that the overwhelming majority of migrants coming from the Central Mediterranean route are not refugees, but simply illegal immigrants: in 2016, over 180,000 migrants arrived in Italy, of which, according to the UNHCR database, 120,000 applied for the status of refugee with a 60% rejection rate while the remaining 60,000 did not apply; thus, increasing the amount of non-refugees to over 70%; at least 132,000 illegal immigrants. Continue reading →

A change in demographic trends takes 50 years before they become plainly visible. The decline in fertility in the sixties started to become visible after 50 years. Cerberus, our population simulator, shows with scientific precision that the replacement of the European society has started, and within 50 years it will be visible and irreversible.

Since the seventies of the previous century, the Western societies have not produced enough offspring to keep their communities growing. The fertility rate (i.e. the average number of children per woman) is far below 2.1. i.e. the level of replacement. A population with a higher rate will grow while a population with a lower rate will shrink. As it is, the Western and Japanese societies will begin to implode 40 years from the moment their fertility rate dropped, and this demographic winter, as this phenomenon is sometimes called, will affect the world more profoundly than the climate change, so politicians and investors should take notice. Continue reading →

David Cameron had called the UK referendum on the EU membership, hoping to get rid of the most Eurosceptic wing of his party and never expecting to lose, he ended up losing referendum and his job. Theresa May, comfortable in a 20+ percentage points lead in polls, called a snap election to have a stronger parliamentary support for her Brexit deal, she ended up without sufficient numbers at all.

If someone needed evidence that mainstream parties are detached from reality, it’s just there, one spectacular debacle after the other. After repeated terrorist attacks by Muslims in the United Kingdom, the best she could come up with was “internet censorship’’;everyone should have their freedoms restricted because the UK government is unable to fix a problem resulting from decades of open borders policies, unwilling to break ties with countries like Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that secret services know it sponsors terrorism,and negligence considering that attackers are often known to authorities for their views and previous crimes.

Unsurprisingly, the 20+ points lead evaporated within less than 2 months; the only reason Conservatives still come out as the biggest party is the disappearance of UKIP, former Conservative breakouts themselves in 1993, which having achieved their main goal, make the UK leave the European Union, have lost much of their purpose, their charismatic leader Nigel Farage and the funding; with former UKIP voters (12% of the total in 2015) switching to Conservatives, Theresa May managed to obtain more votes than her opponents, but not enough to secure the 326 seats majority needed in the lower chamber of the British Parliament.

What’s next? The last experience of the “hung government’’ saw a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but Liberal Democrats are against Brexit and won’t likely work with Conservatives needing a majority specifically about that issue. The “Tories’’ might have to call for another election and in that case victory is everything but assured. May seems to have secured the support of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (10 seats, added to her 318) which has a more left leaning economic platform. Continue reading →

The western world, its intellectual circles and academia, have barely a good word for President Donald Trump. To them he is almost a misogynist (look how very few women there are in his administration!), white supremacist (he wants to build the wall, stop the influx of immigration and deport illegal aliens!) and a proponent of autarchy (for him it is preferable to have the businesses inside the country rather than having them outsourced abroad). All the progressive ideas of the western left, like the gender parity in offices, a welcoming (guilt-ridden) culture and a free flow of people seem to have received a hit once Donald Trump has been voted into the highest office.

Since it is the American and European left i.e. epigones of the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that keeps complaining about the current United States administration, it would not be amiss to have a closer look at their leftist Asian counterparts or comrades in arms, and where should one search for them if not in the People’s Republic of China?

A cursory look at the highest echelons of the Chinese communist party reveals that there are very few women, none at the top positions. There don’t seem to be any gender quotas in the People’s Republic though the country officially pledges allegiance to the egalitarian philosophy which posits that there are no essential differences between the biological sexes and so they can be and are replaceable. Continue reading →

At the end of 2015 the Portuguese Socialist Party managed to form a minority coalition with the far left to oust center-right, pro austerity Social Democrats; this was a rather unique case in Europe where troubled countries like Greece (before the Syriza experience), Italy and Spain had instead opted for centrist (center-left and center-right) coalitions to solve the debt crisis, failing however to obtain any significant positive result.

The new left-wing coalition soon ditched the dogmatic austerity imposed by the European Commission and the IMF, going instead for an old-fashioned Keynesian fiscal stimulus, raising pensions and wages;after a year and a half, maybe surprisingly, Portugal is doing well. Continue reading →

Western Europe due to an enormous influx of the Third-World people that has continued for decades is now a multicultural society. The Old Continent’s establishment wants to change the ethnic composition even more and makes no bones about it.

If we are told diversity is great, we may accept this proposition or dismiss it, but then we need to make an informed choice. Unfortunately, this question is highly emotionally laden and rather than look for facts, face them and then act on them, people generally shut their reasoning off and rely on wishful thinking from a never-never land. Problems can only be solved when accurately diagnosed or else we are doomed to grope in the dark and waste time and resources in an attempt to cure the social ills with an inadequate medicament; for inadequate it must be if it does not correspond to the disease at hand.

If we, Europeans, fall for the idea of being enriched by diversity, we must know what diversity really stands for. In order to learn what it stands for, we do not need to do social experiments: they have already been done in a variety of places in the world and throughout history. The United States is one good example as it is a multinational, multiracial country with a long history of integration, assimilation, and immigration. All we need to do is to learn from the experience of others. Only then can we make a decision whether or not we wish to follow in their footsteps.

Crime rates are one of the litmus tests whether or not a nation is healthy. The fact is that cohesive and prosperous societies have a low crime rate. Still, in the Western world nowadays it is generally not allowed to deal with the relation between ethnicity and crime. In 1987 a civil servant of the Amsterdam municipality mentioned that Moroccan youth delinquency was quite out of proportion to the percentage of that ethnicity in society. Many demanded his resignation, claiming his observations were racist. Still, the statistical evidence is too compelling to be ignored. Continue reading →

We are at the dawn of profound demographic changes that will affect every investment. The Japanese population will shrink an astonishing 60% this century.

Europeans are trying to escape the same fate by repopulating the continent. All government data shows that the West as we know it will slowly disappear and while Europe is in full retreat, the population in Asia and Africa is exploding. The staggering number of new births in Africa will spell a human disaster and the Europeans will not be able to avert it. This process has already started and will change our world profoundly; investors and planners should take notice. This Gefira gives an outline of what is coming. Subscribe Subscribe