The most interesting man in the world

- and best of all, he's Hispanic! (Thanks to Tim.)

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Zimerman to quit the U.S.

Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the greatest classical pianists alive today, announced at his L.A. Disney Hall debut that he would no longer play in the U.S. because its "military wants to control the whole world":

Poland's Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists in the world, created a furor Sunday night in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation's military policies overseas.

Before playing the final work on his recital, Karol Szymanowski’s "Variations on a Polish Folk Theme," Zimerman sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience. In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that he could no longer play in a country whose military wants to control the whole world.

“Get your hands off of my country,” he said. He also made reference to the U.S. military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

About 30 or 40 people in the audience walked out, some shouting obscenities. “Yes,” he answered, “some people when they hear the word military start marching.”

On one level this is sad, as one would hope that an artist of the stature of Zimerman would refrain from preaching his political views, especially to a paying audience. But Leftists don't seem to be able to help it, convinced as they are of the righteousness and truth of their own side and the evil and stupidity of the other.

On the other hand, who cares what Zimerman thinks? Playing the piano well doesn't mean that one's political/moral outlook carries any weight. One imagines he believes that he'll be depriving us all of his music, but most of us never attend overpriced classical concerts anyway.

But finally, it's strange that he would say this while the Lightworker is in the White House. People used to announce that they were moving abroad when Bush was elected - never, to my knowledge following up on their pledges - but the world has now been healed, and America has got its mind right.

Update: In 2008 Zimerman announced in an interview (pdf) that he would not play in the U.S. beyond his current schedule, which may or may not have included his current gig. Was he a little short of cash, so that he have to give the Great Satan one more go around before his moral qualms had to be satisfied?

New Guineans, aided by Stephen Jay Gould's widow, sue Jared Diamond

Due to many distractions over the past few days, I don't have much to write about, so for today I'll leave you with this, which is not from The Onion: Jared Diamond sued by subjects of his article:

“While acting on vengeful feelings clearly needs to be discouraged, acknowledging them should be not merely permitted but encouraged,” wrote Jared M. Diamond in an essay in The New Yorker last April.

Now two of the subjects of that essay are acknowledging their own vengeful feelings. This week a lawyer filed a $10-million defamation claim in a New York court on behalf of two Papua New Guinea men whom Mr. Diamond described as active participants in clan warfare during the 1990s.

Mr. Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles and the author of the best-selling Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W.W. Norton, 1997), and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking, 2004), based the essay almost entirely on accounts given to him by Hup Daniel Wemp, an oil-field technician who served as Mr. Diamond’s driver during a 2001-2 visit to New Guinea. (The full text of the essay is open only to New Yorker subscribers, but a long summary is available here.

Mr. Wemp is now one of the lawsuit’s two plaintiffs; the other is Henep Isum Mandingo, a man who, according to Mr. Diamond’s article, was attacked and paralyzed on orders from Mr. Wemp.

For nearly a year, Mr. Diamond’s article has been scrutinized by Rhonda Roland Shearer, director of the Art Science Research Laboratory, a multifaceted New York organization with a sideline in media criticism. Ms. Shearer, a sculptor and writer, is the widow of Stephen Jay Gould, who preceded Mr. Diamond as a widely esteemed public interpreter of science.

It's hard to believe that Diamond would just make this stuff up, although one wonders how the New Yorker's famous fact-checking department would be able to verify Diamond's information.

Patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel

According to the Left, that is. In a video produced by Reason, Joseph Biden is seen twice saying that the "wealthy", those who make over $250,000 a year, need to be "patriotic" when it comes to paying higher taxes. (As an aside, the arrogant persona of Biden is nearly insufferable.)

Our Dear Leader is quoted as saying that "spreading the wealth around", i.e. stealing from taxpayers to give to the undeserving and incompetent, is a good thing.

The proportion of federal income taxes payed by the bottom 50% in income of the population is 3%, while the top 10% pay over 70%. Those who own stocks and receive dividends are victims of double taxation, as corporations pay taxes on their profits before any actual person sees the money, on which they then pay taxes. The government heavily penalizes those like myself, for instance, who have saved and invested their entire life. On top of that, the State of California has a top rate of nearly 10%, which kicks in at something like $45,000 a year in income.

I don't see much change afoot, as the change is all in the wrong direction. The majority of the American people probably have a net gain from the federal government, so it's no wonder that taxes keep rising.

But at least until the next administration, the left now celebrates patriotism.

Preventing and Curing the Flu

If you're concerned about the recent outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the U.S., you could do a lot worse than read Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D from Dr. John Cannell at the Vitamin D Council. The idea is that the flu becomes epidemic in the wintertime due to lower vitamin D levels in people, and Dr. Cannell marshals abundant evidence of the D connection. He also recommends the taking of 50,000 IUs of vitamin D (here) at the first sign of flu.

Most adults with little or no exposure to sunlight will require around 5,000 IU of vitamin D daily to build up adequate levels.

Geneva Convention: Officers Shall Not Work

Last night I started watching The Bridge on the River Kwai, the famous film about British and American prisoners in a Japanese POW camp, which I hadn't seen in decades. In one scene, after the Japanese commandant Colonel Saito informs the prisoners that they have to work, Colonel Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, protests that according to the Geneva Convention officers are not required to work.

The Geneva Convention III, "Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War", in Section III. Labour of Prisoners of War, states:

Art. 49. The Detaining Power may utilize the labour of prisoners of war who are physically fit, taking into account their age, sex, rank and physical aptitude, and with a view particularly to maintaining them in a good state of physical and mental health.

Non-commissioned officers who are prisoners of war shall only be required to do supervisory work. Those not so required may ask for other suitable work which shall, so far as possible, be found for them.

If officers or persons of equivalent status ask for suitable work, it shall be found for them, so far as possible, but they may in no circumstances be compelled to work.

This is quite strange; soldiers in the ranks may be compelled to work, but officers may not be compelled. The only explanation I can come up with is one based on class. The diplomats who formulated the Convention must have felt that officers were of their own class, i.e. upper middle to upper, and that forcing them to perform manual labor was declassé. There seems to be no good reason why otherwise fit officers shouldn't work at the same tasks as the men; they are prisoners of war, after all.

Ruling classes often have more fellow feeling for foreigners of the same rank than they do for their own countrymen of lower rank - this still holds to an extent, as can be seen with the globalizers and Davos-Men. Perhaps the Geneva Conventions are another instance of this phenomenon.

As addendum, I noticed that the Convention calls for more humane treatment in one area than the State of California gives imprisoned criminals today:

The use of tobacco shall be permitted.

Gottfried critiques MacDonald

Paul Gottfried has written a fair critique of Kevin MacDonald, In Search of Anti-Semitism, in which he addresses several issues I've often wondered about. In my opinion MacDonald makes some insightful observations at the level of politics, but at the level of science, which he claims to be doing, his theories are unconvincing.

Speaking of the attempt to get MacDonald removed from his tenured post at California State University, Long Beach, Gottfried writes:

It would be ridiculous to imagine the same ignominy would be visited on MacDonald if he were a black sociologist making critical remarks about white people. Assuming that he were a designated victim, he would be allowed to compose for profit and prestige diatribes against white Christian males, possibly from a cushy university post at whatever salary illustrious defamers of Euro-Americans are now earning. And if he were a Jew or Christian attacking Christians as the agents of human evil, the now browbeaten MacDonald could make a king’s ransom at some well-heeled institute or as a feature writer for The New Republic or New York Times.

Definite evidence of a double standard. Gottfried links to an article in The Jewish Journal ("The professor the anti-Semites love"), quite tellingly sub-headed "Kevin MacDonald, Cal State Long Beach, and the downside of academic freedom" - yes, free speech for me but not for thee. Academic freedom ought to be limited when you say something I don't like. To his credit, the president of Cal State Long Beach has said that he believes that MacDonald has every right to say what he wants and that he won't be a party to firing him. Naturally, Heidi Beria wants him fired too.

But getting back to MacDonald's ideas, Gottfried addresses the issue of the Jewish critique of Western society and whether that critique is specifically Jewish or not:

Having raised these critical points, I should also mention that MacDonald builds a thoroughly cogent case that the creation of “modernity” and the launching of a succession of indignant social crusades against bourgeois Christian civilization by Jewish intellectuals and political activists has usually betokened some degree of malice. But as I mentioned above, and as MacDonald is well aware, Jews are not the only minority that has attempted to subvert dominant outside cultures. They’re just better at doing this than any other group. Jewish intellectuals and activists excel at agitating in the name of some presumed moral high ground, acting like the cunning or resentful priestly class, to which Nietzsche compared the Jews in Genealogy of Morals. In Nietzsche’s analysis, Jews are good at transmitting “slave morality,” without being (immediately) infected themselves.

MacDonald’s newest anthology offers further evidence of what he understands as the Jewish practice of burrowing from within to weaken the cultural coherence of gentile societies. And he offers abundant proof that this burrowing has and is continuing to occur. Whether he is dealing with the predominantly Jewish Frankfurt School and its cultural influences, the role played by Jewish activists in opposing controls on immigration throughout the last hundred years, the penetration and takeover of the American Right by the neoconservatives, or the pressures placed on politicians and political parties by Zionist organizations, MacDonald creates the impression that Jews have worked collectively toward two ends: lessening the cohesion of gentile society and promoting specifically Jewish national ends.

An argument I have used in the past to counter his generalizations is that “not every Jewish community at all times and in all places have acted in this way”; nonetheless, MacDonald could respond to my objections by pointing out that his analysis applies to American Jews for at least the last several generations. And he offers evidence that the same behavioral patterns as the one he discerns among the predominantly Eastern European Jews in the U.S. could already be seen among the relatively assimilated German Jews since their emancipation in Europe.

But, and it's a huge but, the Jewish critique of white Christian society has been accepted and internalized by that society. Some recent debate on this blog has centered around this fact: Jews and others can criticize all they want, but the objects of their criticism do not have to accept it.

The problem here is that many strains of Western and Christian thought also critique the mainstream culture as thoroughly flawed, racist, and in need of transformation:

The institution of learning at which I work and the German Anabaptist denomination to which it was long connected are paradigmatically PC. Furthermore, Lancaster County, where our college is located, registered the largest vote for Obama in the Democratic primary of any county in Pennsylvania that’s not predominantly black. This result was owed much to Church of the Brethren, whose members in their zany anti-racism and open-borders postures make Abe Foxman sound relatively sane. The chance that such radicalized Protestants, who live in their own social bubble, would have picked up their lunacies from any Jew (me perhaps?) is next to nil. They came by their madness on their own, as a “peace church,” and as late entrees into the modern age after having spent an eternity on isolated farms in the Pennsylvania countryside. Like Jimmy Carter, Jim Wallis, Bill Moyers, and most of the Catholic hierarchy on the question of immigration, these Anabaptists exemplify aspects of Christianity that are totally compatible with cultural Marxism and the politics of Western suicide. They do not need Jews, blacks, or North African Muslims to teach them self-destructive behavior, any more than Swedes or Spaniards need the villains in MacDonald’s script to hand over their countries to hostile Muslims from North Africa.

The U.S. has had an internal culture of critique since before its founding, namely that of the Puritans, whose world-transforming, perfectionist creed has been hugely influential and to some extent at war with an opposing element in the American psyche, that which I see exemplified by the Scots-Irish and, to a lesser extent, the Virginia cavaliers, the latter representing the roots of many of the Founding Fathers. The Jewish critique of American society has been only too well received by the adherents and descendants of the Puritan creed, who see in it a world view entirely compatible with their own. But to the rednecks, the Scots-Irish, the Southerners, the Westerners, not so much.

Postcards from Wales

Commenter AngloAmerikan has provided us with these photos showing the spirited high-jinks of British youth today. If you wonder why they so readily let their flag be taken from them, the photos provide some helpful hints.

Harry Harlow's Pit of Despair

"Hellhole", a recent article in the New Yorker about the devastating psychological effects of solitary confinement, discusses the work of Harry Harlow.

In a later study on the effect of total isolation from birth, the researchers found that the test monkeys, upon being released into a group of ordinary monkeys, “usually go into a state of emotional shock, characterized by . . . autistic self-clutching and rocking.” Harlow noted, “One of six monkeys isolated for three months refused to eat after release and died five days later.” After several weeks in the company of other monkeys, most of them adjusted—but not those who had been isolated for longer periods. “Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially,” Harlow wrote. They became permanently withdrawn, and they lived as outcasts—regularly set upon, as if inviting abuse.

The research made Harlow famous (and infamous, too—revulsion at his work helped spur the animal-rights movement).

I've sometimes wondered whether, before Harlow came along, it was unknown that humans or other animals would grow up with severe psychological damage when deprived of all emotional and physical contact in infancy. Somehow I doubt it, but maybe Harlow put a scientific sheen on this idea with his patently cruel experiments. Even some of Harlow's co-workers were repelled by his experiments, some of which included devices called the "pit of despair", "the rape rack", and "the iron maiden":

Gene Sackett of the University of Washington in Seattle, who was one of Harlow's doctoral students, has stated that he believes the animal liberation movement in the U.S. was born as a result of Harlow's experiments.[15]

Willam Mason, another of Harlow's students who continued deprivation experiments after leaving Wisconsin,[16] has said that Harlow "kept this going to the point where it was clear to many people that the work was really violating ordinary sensibilities, that anybody with respect for life or people would find this offensive. It's as if he sat down and said, 'I'm only going to be around another ten years. What I'd like to do, then, is leave a great big mess behind.' If that was his aim, he did a perfect job." [1]

Some experiments are simply too unethical to perform, but Harlow didn't seem to mind.

Mayor calls those opposed to illegal immigration "rednecks"

In the pages of the NY Times, no less, in another in a continuing series of stories about how we just have to keep letting people in, the mayor of Irving, Texas now regrets having all those arrested checked for immigration status:

“And now,” Mr. Gears added ruefully, “I’m the hero of every redneck in America.”

Native born white Christians are the only group in America on whom one can unleash ethnic slurs. Hopefully the NY Times will soon go broke, and the mayor of Irving, Texas will have to get a real job.

Vitamin D and Autism

An excellent summary of the evidence is here. Whatever turns out to be the main cause, it will be something that has changed pretty radically over the past generation or so, as it's estimated that autism rates have increased up to 30-fold. Could it be sun avoidance?

This is another area where, as we've seen, modern medicine has made quite a mistake, namely telling people to avoid the sun, use sunscreens, and so on. Dermatologists still take the official stance that virtually any amount of sun exposure is harmful. Michael Holick, M.D., "the world's leading authority on vitamin D", was booted from his membership in the dermatology faculty of Boston University for his stance on sun exposure. (He still works in other departments there.)

So it's entirely possible that medical advice to avoid the sun might be responsible for the autism epidemic. While that advice was given in good faith, it makes one wary of whatever fad doctors are currently promoting, like low-fat diets.

Speaking of which, low-fat diets have become all the rage since, oh... the beginning of the autism epidemic? And the brain is composed of something like 80% fat, which is crucial to its development. I've no idea whether anyone has ever looked into that.

Meanwhile, get some sun, but don't burn.

Addendum: The Globe and Mail gives a perfect example of medical intransigence: a joint U.S.-Canadian scientific panel to examine whether recommended allowances for vitamin D ought to be increased has deliberately excluded all the top vitamin D experts from membership.

Hostage Situation at Immigration Center

At least 4 killed. NY Times reports:

The newspaper quoted the mayor of Binghamton, Matthew Ryan, as saying the gunman has a high-powered rifle.

Here's what the Times didn't report:

The suspect was described as an Asian male in his 20s, between 5-feet 8-inches and 6 feet tall, wearing a bright green nylon jacket and dark-rimmed glasses.

Broome Community College Assistant Professor Tuong Hung Nguyen was asked to work with police to communicate with the shooter. Nguyen is fluent in Vietnamese.

Update: 13 dead.

MacDonald's Strange Attitude Toward Zionism

I'm hardly the first one to notice this, but Kevin MacDonald has a strange, nearly hypocritical attitude toward Israel and Zionism. (I say "nearly hypocritical" because, contrary to the prevailing wisdom that hypocrisy is the eighth deadly sin, I couldn't care less if someone is a hypocrite, and I believe that La Rochefoucauld got much closer to the truth of the nature of hypocrisy.) MacDonald regularly excoriates the Israelis for apparently being too nationalist, for oppressing the terrorists Palestinians, and in general doing what needs to be done to ensure their survival. (Lawrence Auster excoriates them for the opposite.) Yet the Israeli actions that he denounces are merely the logical outcome of the nationalistic attitude he thinks (I do also) that Americans should also adopt.

MacDonald expends acres of pixels decrying Israeli nationalism, seemingly saying that Israel ought to accept Palestinians into the country and ensure its own demise. But isn't this - nationalism - the very attitude, pace MacDonald, that a nation that wants to survive should have?

It's one thing to criticize American Jews for a double standard: support of Israeli nationalism while asserting that American nationalism - in the sense that America has ethnic European roots and should be allowed to remain a white Christian majority nation - is not even a valid concept. It's another to say that, since we Americans can't have an ethnic nation, neither can you Israelis. It makes a lot more sense, given the putative objective of strengthening American ethnic nationalism and decreasing foreign misadventures, to encourage Israeli nationalism, even while retaining the attitude that the U.S ought to stay out of the Middle East.

A bit of confirmation comes from a letter to MacDonald (at the link) from one Mark A. Mendlovitz, Ph. D., in which he asks MacDonald essentially the same thing:

But what I am trying to understand also is why you oppose Zionism. Is not what Israeli Jews are doing analogous to what you and I are seeking to do here in the U.S.? We want liberty, and so do they. They wish to keep out those whose culture and politics are an anathema to their culture and liberty, and so do we. What is wrong with that?