Archive for August 2011

Huge population can be an advantage but if not well controlled and planned for, it becomes a time bomb waiting to explode. No doubt, Nigeria is one such huge population that is increasing astronomically and is neither being controlled, nor from all indications, planned for.

As at 2006, Nigeria’s population was put at 150 million, but a recent report estimates that at the end of this year, the country’s population will be 162 million. By 2025, according to the report, Nigeria would have hit 237 million, a figure that will almost double by 2050 to 433 million, if the trend in the nation’s population growth continues.

Currently, Nigeria is the world’s most populous black nation and by the projection of the Washington DC based-Population Reference Bureau (PRB), which put out the recent world population data sheet, Nigeria will by 2050 be the third largest country in the world, behind India and China, bigger even than the United States of America (USA) and with only 10 per cent of the land mass.

No doubt, Nigeria’s massive population is an attraction to investors who seek large markets, but the near zero infrastructure base, the high poverty level, with 84 per cent of the people living on less than US$2 per day, the huge percentage of unemployed, the pervasive slum conditions in urban centres and the high crime rate are conditions which make this vast population the time bomb that it is.

Two dozen gunmen burst into a casino in northern Mexico on Thursday, doused it with gasoline and started a fire that trapped gamblers inside, killing at least 45 people and injuring a dozen more, authorities said.

The fire at the Casino Royale in Monterrey, a city that has seen a surge in drug cartel-related violence, represented one of the deadliest attacks on an entertainment center in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.

“This is a night of sadness for Mexico,” federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire said in a televised address. “These unspeakable acts of terror will not go unpunished.”

Calderon tweeted that the attack was “an abhorrent act of terror and barbarism” that requires “all of us to persevere in the fight against these unscrupulous criminal bands.”

Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said the number late Thursday had risen to at least 45.

A key House Republican is calling for congressional hearings into President Obama’s decision to grant “administrative amnesty” by pulling out hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens already in the deportation pipeline.

“This is another effort on the part of the President to ignore the will of Congress, ignore the rule of law and ignore his own oath of office,” said Rep. Steve King (R. -Iowa), vice chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and policy enforcement.

“The President is on the verge of being lawless himself,” King told HUMAN EVENTS.

“It’s politically motivated because they think this will get them the Hispanic vote,” King said.

The Obama administration last week announced its new strategy to deal with the 10 million people who are in the U.S. illegally.

Subprime Scandal: The White House wants to keep Fannie and Freddie around to subsidize “affordable housing.” But why? Affordability has rarely been better for first-time homebuyers.

Recent data undercut the White House’s claim that the failed, government-sponsored mortgage giants still play a “vital” role in ensuring that lower-income Americans “have access to an adequate range of affordable housing options.”

The market is taking care of that.

This year, the Housing Affordability Index soared to its third-highest level ever, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Its index measures household purchasing power by looking at a combination of median home price, median family income and current mortgage interest rates.

Home prices and loan rates are expected to continue to fall, further boosting affordability. Yet the administration insists on preserving Fannie and Freddie and their dubious affordable-housing charter.

Watch the video here.

According to an article of the Greek newspaper “Eleftherotypia”, under the scope of reforms in the Greek Family Law, the Shariah will be abolished for Greek Muslims.

This Muslim law establishes among others the right of polygamy and gives only to men the right to divorce their wives which constitutes a problem for the women in Thraki, Northern Greece. Even in Turkey, this law was abolished in 1926.

In addition, this law does not comply with the Greek constitution which establishes the equality of Greeks regarding the application of the laws and the equality of men and women. The National Committee on the Human Rights considers that the Shariah does not protect minorities but abuses the rights and values of all the Greek Muslims.

Were Blount and Beyer sacrificed at the altar of Democratic machine politics?

A 32-year reign of engineered, single-seat black representation on Charlottesville’s City Council crashed to a screeching halt on Sunday, August 21 with the early morning release of results in Charlottesville’s Democratic Firehouse Primary. In their wake, racial turmoil and long overdue electoral reform increasingly are likely.

Colette Blount, assumed successor to the “black crown” on Charlottesville’s all Democrat and historically white City Council, has lost her electoral bid, reportedly finishing fifth in a field of seven candidates. Only the top three vote-getters can appear on the November general election ballot where the finalized Democrat slate is predestined for victory.

Blount’s defeat puts Charlottesville’s primarily white Democrat committee and the city’s black community at odds, threatening an uneasy alliance that has existed between the two entities since the early 1980s.

Charles Barbour was Charlottesville’s first black City Councilor. Elected in 1970, he served two terms. In 1978, black Democrat, James Hicks, was defeated in his attempt to follow Barbour leaving a two-year period of no black representation on Charlottesville’s City Council. Although Hicks would have been victorious running solely in either of the city’s two black precincts, Firehouse (Tonsler) and Lane (Carver), Charlottesville’s at-large voting scheme effectively nullified Hicks’s precinct victories when votes from white areas of the city were tallied.