American Jewish Groups Oppose Arizona's Illegal Immigration Law

According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, virtually all of the major American Jewish groups oppose the new Arizona immigration law.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Jewish groups are slamming Arizona’s stringent new immigration-enforcement law, but hope outrage over the measure will reignite efforts to push comprehensive immigration reform on a national level. [...]

The new law has been criticized by an array of Jewish groups, including the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Simon Wiesenthal Center, National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a public policy umbrella group comprised of the synagogue movements, several national groups and scores of local Jewish communities across North America.

Of course these same groups completely support Israel being the Jewish State, with a right of immigration and citizenship for any Jew who wants it. Yet they have no compunction in denying the right of Americans to define the immigration laws of their own country. If they do so, they're little better than Nazis, is what they seem to be saying.

If they wanted to alienate the majority of the American people, they could hardly have done better. The majority supports the new law and sees nothing wrong with it.

Groups like these are engaging in hysterics and bad faith when they liken enforcement of already existing laws to a police state, or when they say that because the U.S. has had immigrants before, it can never refuse any others, legal or not. One would think that they themselves know this, hence the conclusion one comes to is that they have contempt for the white, non-Jewish majority and wish to see it become a minority. If so, their tactics are working.

It's been often said that American Jews don't truly understand their own self-interest, in that America has been the best thing that ever happened to them, and mass immigration can do nothing but hurt them. Conservatives often say the same about blacks and affirmative action. Yet, blacks in general are all for AA, and one would think that they know their own interests better than whites. So with American Jewish groups: when they speak in such a unified voice, one must conclude that they know what they're doing, and correctly see the demotion of whites to a minority as in their best interests.

In fairness, it must be pointed out that a number of religious leaders, for instance among Catholics, have criticized the new law, such as the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Mahony. (Though "criticized" seems a mild term for comparing the law to Communism and Nazism.) The difference is that on any other topic, the opinions of people like Mahony are dismissed as irrelevant, while American Jewish groups have considerable clout, and the media takes their pronouncements seriously.

Man's Dominion

The graph above comes from Helmuth Nyborg's paper, Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status, which I discussed in The Persecution of Politically Incorrect Scientists. In the paper, Nyborg looks at many other studies to try to determine whether sex differences in IQ exist and, if so, which sex does better on which subtests and by how much. He comes to the conclusion that women do slightly better in verbal tests, men better on spatial, and in sum, men have an IQ advantage over women of between 3 and 8 points, his best number being around 7 points. Men also have a wider dispersion of IQs than women.

The result, as the graph shows, is that at an IQ of 145, which could reasonably be deemed an elite level, men outnumber women by a factor of 8. Nyborg concludes that this must be highly significant for male dominance in "higher educational and socio-economic spheres", such as academia, science, and business. Add the male dominance in IQ at the highest levels to the fact that men are predisposed to take more risks and work longer hours, and I'd say that the feminist case for discrimination against women vanishes.

Of course, Nyborg was dealt a "Larry Summers" for showing this.

Israel and the West

I've been a bit overwhelmed with work and other activities the past few days, so for today I just want to highlight a comment. Hope we haven't already talked this topic out.

A commenter here re-posted a comment by VFR reader Sage McLaughlin (original can be found here) which the commenter deemed "excellent". Martin B. made this reply, which I found excellent (McLaughlin's comment in quotes.)

"First of all, anybody who thinks that it would be a matter of indifference for any country to abandon their closest ally to complete slaughter--......."

Funny, I thought the UK was our closest ally. Now all of a sudden it's Israel, a nation with which we have no formal defence treaty. And why are the pro-Israelites in this discussion saying that we want to abandon Israel to slaughter. I'm perfectly happy for the U.S. to sell Israel all the arms it can buy (and, were it up to me, I wouldn't sell any to any Arab country). I just don't think we should GIVE them 3 billion dollars a years. Nor do I think we should allow a concerted lobby for Israel to make policy for this country.

Moreover, I don't particularly care how they deal with the Palestinians. The Palestinians have made themselves obnoxious. They're tiresome. To hell with them.

"Secondly,......
Do these people not realize the importance of Israeli scientists in the fields of medicine, energy, military research, aeronautics, and on and on? Do they have so little imaginations as to be incapable of seeing how the world will change forever when Jewish brilliance is erased from the intellectual store of mankind? Are they not aware of the necessity of a Jewish homeland for defending that unending font of achievement? Do they not know how directly their lives are impacted every day by the explosion of productive intelligence unleashed by the formation of an ethnic Jewish state?"

So, the world, and all it's history, is nothing but a play starring Jews, and the rest of us are just supporting players. If that's your belief, then all I can honestly say in reply is: "Screw you!". I, and my people, don't exist to serve Israel and the supposed historic mission you ascribe to it.

"We have a stake in this because just as whites are slowly being overwhelmed by the Third-Worlding of America, so also the Jewish state is threatened by a tide of foes bent on submerging it in a sea of intellectual and civilizational barbarism. And do they think that, once driven from Israel, Jews will be safe in an ever-Islamisized West?"

And it is has not escaped the notice of a lot of Gentiles that Jews have been among the most enthusiastic supporters and instigators of the third-worlding of America.

The "excellent" comments by Sage McLaughlin are a prime exhibit for the reason why many Americans, including people who used to consider themselves philo-Semites, have begun to think that they can't trust anyone who is a supporter of Israel to make decisions for our nation. Good job, fellahs - you're making those who are friendly indifferent, and those who are indifferent hostile.

Immigrant Crime in Sweden

Tino Sanandaji takes a look at immigrant crime in Sweden. Since the government of Sweden will not report crime rates of immigrants, Sanandaji looks at the crime rates of foreign nationals, which counts less than half of immigrants.

Foreigners are thus 6.2 times as likely to be incarcerated than Swedes, or 520% higher incarceration rate.

The over-representation is even higher for middle eastern citizens, who are 6.6 as likely as Swedish citizens to be in prison.
Lastly African citizens are 10.9 times as likely as Swedish citizens to be in prison.

Swedish citizens have an incarceration rate of 45 per 100.000.

African citizens in Sweden in contrast have an incarceration rate of 490 per 100.000.

One imagines that these are not exactly Tom Friedmans' high IQ, risk-taking immigrants - more like low IQ risk-takers.

Presented with this evidence, it's obvious why the government of Sweden won't report immigrant crime: it might interfere with their plans to make the country more diverse and vibrant.

Sweden, being of course part of Europe, shares northern and western Europe's high levels of trust. The immigrants do not, coming as they do from nations with low levels of trust, and one might surmise that they commit even more crime in Sweden than they would have at home; finding themselves among such gullible trusting people, they take advantage, whereas at home, their compatriots would be much warier.

Equal Opportunity in Workplace Fatalities

The chart comes from Mark Perry, who writes that closing the pay gap between men and women necessarily means that women's workplace death rate must rise to that of men's. Men are much more willing to take on risk for more pay (or any pay sometimes) in jobs such as coal miner and policeman.

The psychologist Roy Baumeister has said that men are expendable, that, since most men historically have not reproduced, men are more driven to take risks. Perhaps this hard-wired drive in men still operates even in the modern world.

But, feminists gripe about the pay gap and complain about discrimination, yet very few women want to become coal miners. Per Baumeister, that's a good thing, because population growth depends on "wombs", so in a sane society, i.e. most of them until the late 20th century, women are kept out of harm's way, and men do the dirty work.

It's all pretty commonsensical, but I suppose we can't expect anyone to understand that these days.

Duesberg's paper in full

A number of comments both here and at Seth Robert's blog led me to think that many people would like to see the complete version of Peter Duesberg's paper, the one that got him and a few others in hot water, and which has been officially withdrawn by the publisher. Dr. Duesberg sent me a copy some time ago, so here it is. Grab it now, because I'll probably be deleting it before long, as I'm a little concerned about repercussions - this is doing my little bit for the advancement of free expression and against censorship. You can also find a copy here, also no guarantee how long that will last.



HIV?AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS - a new perspective

Some Observations on Gambling

Last week, for the first time in over 35 years, I went to my local Indian casino and played blackjack, and did so again yesterday. Generally I loathe the very idea of Indian casinos, but I wanted to try it out and it's a lot closer than Las Vegas. In a number of books on investing that I've read, the name of Ed Thorp comes up as one of the fathers of quantitative investing. A mathematics professor, he turned his gimlet eye to blackjack, published a paper called "A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty One", then a book called "Beat the Dealer", along the way winning a fortune. Later he won an even bigger fortune in the stock market.

So anyway, I read Thorp's book and went to the casino - the casino and I are at break-even at the moment. Here are some observations.

In many if not most cases, other than the dealer, I was the only white person at the table. The place was filled with Chinese, which may not be surprising, but there are virtually no Chinese living in my or the casino's general vicinity. I imagine that they all rode the bus from San Francisco. The other nationality highly represented at the blackjack table was Mexican, some of whom looked like they couldn't afford to lose any money. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the slot machines, to which the casino must have given 80% of its space, but what white people I saw appeared to be at the slots - besides working for the casino.

I wonder how the proverbial Chinese love of gambling fits into the discrepancy between Chinese IQ and their objective accomplishment. It's been observed that the practice of science requires a belief in the regularity of the world, the existence of patterns that can be understood. But if a group believes in the prevalence of luck, maybe it's difficult to do science, or even to undertake great enterprises of any kind. Obviously there's been plenty of superstition (or ignorance, however you want to call it) in the West, so maybe it's a matter of the degree to which one believes in the dominion of fortune.

Indian casinos are the only places in California where it is legal to smoke indoors. To my mind it's no coincidence that gambling and smoking go together, because they're both examples of actions denoting low future time orientation and impulsivity. Taking a hit from a cigarette and telling the dealer to "hit me" would seem to have much in common, both giving the recipient a short-term shock to some reward center in the brain. I felt some of that too, getting so involved in rapid-fire blackjack, the mind so concentrated, that time passes almost frighteningly quickly. (I wish it would pass that quickly at work.)

All in all, though, unless one can win boatloads of cash, the whole thing seems a mindless pursuit. Blackjack isn't exactly difficult to play, though card counting, Thorp's edge, would take a great deal of practice to master. The social surroundings are depressing, as is the physical aspect of the place.

Thorp later realized that the stock market was a much bigger casino with better odds, and very successfully applied his talents there. Which seems a lot better than hanging out in casinos.

Update: Steve Sailer made a few observations of his own on Indian casinos a few years ago:

While gambling retains a little of its European upper-class aura -- the image of a tuxedoed James Bond placing a daring bet at a Monte Carlo baccarat table while beautiful women gasp at his audacity -- the American reality, as Indian casinos sprout up ever closer to the inner cities, is increasingly downscale. [...]

The one ethnic outlier was that there were a few more Chinese and other Northeast Asians than you'd see at a World Wrestling Entertainment "Smackdown!" The Chinese have always been fascinated by numbers, prosperity and good fortune. It's no accident that the two best-known movies about Chinese-Americans -- "The Joy Luck Club" and the new teen drama "Better Luck Tomorrow" -- contain the word "luck" in the title.

Most Important Aging Research of 2009

A paper from the most recent issue of Aging discusses what the authors consider the most important papers on aging that appeared in 2009. Among the research they highlight, several stand out as being linked to a common factor: insulin.

Caloric restriction (CR) without malnutrition delays aging and extends life span in diverse species; however, its effect in primates had not been clearly established. In 2009, a 20-year longitudinal study of adult-onset CR in rhesus monkeys demonstrated that moderate CR lowered the incidence of aging-related deaths. [...]

It has been shown that disruption of growth hormone receptor (GHR) prevents calorie restriction from improving insulin action and longevity [36]. [...]

Finally, it was tested whether reallocation of nutrients from reproduction to somatic maintenance could explain the life extending effect of CR. If this were the case, long life under dietary restriction and high fecundity (reproduction) under full feeding would be mutually exclusive. Adding methionine alone to the dietary restriction condition was necessary and sufficient to increase fecundity as much as did full feeding, but without reducing lifespan. Reallocation of nutrients therefore does not explain the responses to dietary restriction. In contrast, reduced activity of the insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling protected against the shortening of lifespan with full feeding [37].

Calorie restriction appears to work by its actions on the insulin receptor; therefore, anything that lowers insulin receptor activity should be beneficial to health and perhaps increase longevity. This gives some theoretical backing to the carbohydrate theory of heart disease: since one of the main physiological actions of dietary carbohydrate is to raise insulin levels, excess intake of carbs is likely unhealthy, even on purely theoretical grounds.

Carbohydrate intake is likely important in the development of cancer as well.

Reduced incidence and delayed occurrence of fatal neoplastic diseases in growth hormone receptor/binding protein knockout mice. These changes of fatal neoplasms are similar to the effects observed with calorie restriction and therefore could possibly be a major contributing factor to the extended life span observed in the GHR/BP KO mice.

Further evidence for the involvement of insulin with aging comes from the drug rapamycin.

The most striking event of the year was the demonstration that rapamycin, administrated [sic] to middle-aged (600 day old) mice, significantly extended their life span [39]. The effect was seen at three independent test sites in genetically heterogeneous mice, chosen to avoid genotype-specific effects on disease susceptibility [39]. Rapamycin also prolonged the life of 22-month old mice [40].

The mammalian target of rapamycin, or mTOR, is a part of the insulin receptor pathway.

Noteworthy also is the continuing demise of the free radical theory of aging.

On the other hand, the free radical theory, which posits that aging is caused by an accumulation of oxidative damage, was critically questioned in 2009. First, overexpression of major antioxidant enzymes, which decrease free radicals, did not extend the lifespan of mice [16]. Second, deletion of mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (Sod-2) extended life span in Caenorhabditis elegans [17]. [etc.]

Since aging and decreasing function of the organism are practically synonymous, it follows that even those who don't give much thought to longevity, but who do care about health (presumably most of you), ought to strive to keep insulin levels in the low normal range, an intervention that can be achieved through diet and exercise. Cardiovascular disease and cancer, the two leading killers in this country, are diseases of aging, so slowing the aging process will result in lower rates of these illnesses.

Major League Harassment of Duesberg

Seth Roberts has published a copy of UC Berkeley's letter to Peter Duesberg that accuses him of misconduct. It seems clear to me that he is being punished for heterodoxy, and Seth aptly files this one under "academic horror story".

Seth comments:

This is major-league harassment, similar to the human-subjects complaint against Michael Bailey. And it’s Berkeley’s second Academic Horror Story. Previously, Berkeley administrators carefully delayed an experimental subject from learning she had a big lump in her brain. 

Regarding the charge of a conflict of interest of one of his co-authors, I'd say this falls under the category of "we'll get you on something". A cop, if he looks hard enough, can find that someone has violated some law or other; Berkeley looks to be trying the same tactic. The same thing happened to Michael Bailey, the author of The Man Who Would Be Queen, when his ideas proved to be profoundly unpopular with a certain segment of academia - come to think of it, a segment that likely overlaps with the segment that hates Duesberg.

Adopting an Arsonist

Russia furious over adopted boy sent back from US. So, why exactly did the adoptive mother put the 8-year-old boy on a plane back to Russia? From the article:

"He drew a picture of our house burning down and he'll tell anybody that he's going to burn our house down with us in it," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It got to be where you feared for your safety. It was terrible."

Uh, oh, not a good sign. Now we just need to know whether the boy wet the bed and/or was cruel to small animals.

Psychopaths appear to be born that way, and no amount of warmth and love from an adoptive mother will change that. I'd bet that the mother figured that out for herself.

Malema to be stopped?

According to a post by Paul Theron at Business Insider, ANC firebrand Julius Malema - he of the "Kill the Boer" song - is on the verge of being "thrown overboard". Supposedly the ANC has had just about enough of his antics, which threaten to hurt South Africa's economy.

Gregory White noted yesterday that The Mining Industry Is Terrified By The Rise Of South Africa's Julius Malema.
Malema is the enfant terrible of South African politics.
This week’s inflammatory comments about Zimbabwe and his verbal scuffle with a BBC journalist were just the latest in a series of bizarre antics.
Unlike most public figures in this unusual country, Malema makes little attempt to endear himself to the rich and powerful. [...]


Even more disturbing to local elites are Malema’s comments about Zimbabwe. The prospect of this country turning into an economic hell hole like our northern neighbor is their worst nightmare.
Is the threat that he poses to the stability of the country and its economy to be taken seriously?

We do not think so. It is likely that he will self-destruct before he can do too much damage.

He leads a flamboyant lifestyle, and journalists have recently uncovered stakes in engineering businesses which have benefited improperly from contracts awarded by municipalities in his home province, Limpopo.  It seems that no taxes have been paid on these irregularly gotten gains, and investigators are closing in.

Malema’s colleagues also finally seem to have had enough. Today, in response to his attacks on the media, the party spokesperson issued this stern rebuke.
South Africa’s formal economy is well developed and resilient.  Apart from the mining companies to which White refers, there is a substantial financial services sector, which is very profitable and highly regarded globally. Tourism, telecommunications, retail, property and manufacturing are also growing strongly.  The business community is well organised, but low-profile politically.

Interesting that widespread calls to kill the Boer don't worry anyone, but threatening to kill the economic golden goose, from which the ANC elite are lining their pockets, does. That's probably what is to be expected.

The writer of the above purports to know of what he speaks, but I have my doubts that the ANC is so rational that they worry about becoming another Zimbabwe. Mugabe didn't worry about becoming Zimbabwe, and the standard view in places like this is that the economy is just a given, and that whites prosper more than blacks because they steal.

Duesberg Accused of "Misconduct"

Peter Duesberg, HIV/AIDS maverick, has been accused of "misconduct" by an anonymous source at UC Berkeley, and the university is taking the charges seriously. They have refused to disclose to Dr. Duesberg the name of the accuser and, even more worrisome, the nature of the alleged misconduct. Duesberg writes (via email):

As far as I understand, it is now "misconduct" at UC Berkeley to publish or advance non-mainstream theories. This "hypothesis" of mine explains everything that happens here and has been happening to me here at UC Berkeley for a long time.

The AIDS establishment brooks no opposition; in addition to attempting to get Bruce Charlton sacked, a move likely to succeed, and to emasculate Medical Hypotheses, they're now going after Peter Duesberg's job.

Dairy and the Rise of Europe

From The Guardian, Cows are key to 2,500 years of human progress:

A study of the remains of almost 20,000 people dating from the 8th century BC to the 18th century AD has found that the Roman empire reduced our level of nutrition, which increased again in the "dark ages".

That is because the key factor in determining average height over the centuries – an indicator of nutritional status and wellbeing – has been an increase in milk consumption due to improved farming. Higher population densities and the need to feed the army during Roman times may have worked against this.

The "anthropometric" approach pursued by Nikola Koepke of Oxford University, which combines biology and archaeology, suggests longer bone length is indicative of improved diet. Koepke's study, presented at the Economic History Society's 2010 annual conference, also challenges assumptions about the effect of the industrial revolution. Urbanisation did not improve wellbeing, she argues, at least as measured by height.

Rather, Koepke says, the key factor in determining average height growth over the past 2,500 years has been the increased consumption of milk as a result of the spread of, and improvements in, farming. She found that overall European living conditions improved slightly in the past 2,500 years even in the centuries prior to the industrial revolution.

Her study is based on data compiled from analysing the skeletal remains of more than 18,500 individuals of both genders from all social classes, from 484 European archaeological dig sites. "Higher milk consumption as indicated by cattle share had a positive impact on mean height," Koepke writes. "Correspondingly, this determinant is the key factor in causing significant European regional differences in mean height."

(Via r/h/e notes.) Some commentary:

Nikola Koepke of Oxford University has cleverly worked out, from measuring bones and matching up with deduced diet, that level of milk consumption was a key factor in determining average height between the 8th century BC and 18th century AD. Dairy farmers were taller than other pastoralists or farmers. She found that the level of dairy farming plummeted in the Mediterranean region of Europe as the Roman empire took hold. Rome lived on grain and vegetables, with meat mainly for the rich. So native Romans were smaller than their uncivilised forefathers.

As the empire expanded, Roman soldiers found themselves fighting milk-fed Celts and Germans who towered over them. Diodorus Siculus described the Gauls as tall of body, with rippling muscles. Strabo marvels that mere lads from milk-drinking Britain were as much as half a foot taller than the tallest people in Rome. Tacitus declared that the Germanic tribes had huge frames. It says much for the discipline of the Roman army that it triumphed over such fearsome foes.

In the Roman era, much of warfare depended on physical strength, so the tall, milk-consuming barbarians would have had an edge there. But, Roman military organization could have overcome this; think of the ballistas, battering rams, the superb discipline of the legions.

On the other hand, those barbarians were probably getting smarter as they consumed all that dairy, and reproducing more too. So, could this figure into the fall of Rome?

Though dairy is not a paleolithic food, it is much closer to the paleo ideal, full of fat and protein. Contrast with wheat ("Roman meal"), a neolithic food item, full of anti-nutrients, poor in protein and fat. When humans shifted to agriculture from hunting and gathering some 10,000 years ago, they became several inches shorter, probably dropped a few IQ points, and became less healthy. So those milk-consuming barbarians came much closer to the paleo human ideal, tall and vigorous.

Note: I've written "milk-consuming" and "dairy-consuming" rather than "milk-drinking" deliberately. Before the modern era and refrigeration, it seems doubtful that milk would have been drunk directly; instead, fermented products such as yogurt and cheese would have been more common. All the evidence says that the fermented products are much healthier than milk itself, and in addition store much longer.

Eugene Terre'Blanche, Victim Number 3,150 of the Boer Genocide

Eugene Terre'Blanche, the Afrikaner leader whom just about every news site insists on calling "far-right" and a "white supremacist", has been murdered, apparently by two of his own farm workers, ages 15 and 21. His death makes him number 3,150 on the list of whites murdered on farms in South Africa since 1987.

Prominent members of South Africa's black leadership have called for the murder of white farmers, and have achieved substantial success.

Terreblanche's killing comes soon after a senior figure within the ruling African National Congress, Julius Malema, was barred by a judge from singing the anti-apartheid song, "Kill the Boer" or "Kill the farmer."

The court ruled the song was tantamount to "hate speech." But the ruling party and its allies came out in defense of the song's violent lyrics, saying it reflected their heritage and struggle for freedom against the white apartheid government.

And then the man who represented the worst of that old, apartheid South Africa is bludgeoned and hacked to death on his farm. He was apparently attacked while taking an afternoon nap.

Richard Spencer makes the good point that, since the end of apartheid, Terre'Blanche's goal was a separate Afrikaner state, and that the liberal press normally thinks of separate states for separate peoples as a good thing, unless the people that wants it is a white one. But, as Spencer writes, by using the term "white supremacist" to describe Terre'Blanche, the media hints less than subtly that he "probably deserved to die anyway".

I don't know just how defensible the racial views of Terre'Blanche are, but his goal of a separate nation for the Afrikaners is eminently defensible, especially given how many of them are being murdered, and how the South African nation is steadily falling apart under black rule. Unfortunately, the goal of an Afrikaner state looks remote, and I see nothing but further deterioration in South Africa. Terre'Blanche fought a good fight, standing up for his people, and he paid the ultimate price, for there's little doubt that this murder was racially motivated, and encouraged by leading elements among South Africa's rulers.

The white people of South Africa can be seen as the first victims of global white demographic decline, and Terre'Blanche's fate an extreme example of what happens when a group loses control of its country.

IQ, SES, and Mortality

Chart above (via Steve Hsu) is from Cognitive epidemiology: With emphasis on untangling cognitive ability and socioeconomic status (pdf) by Lubinski, appearing in the journal Intelligence. The data comes from pairs of siblings, one of whom was in the "normal" range of intelligence - 25th to 74th percentile - paired with a sibling who was not, either very dull, dull, bright, or very bright. The idea is to disentangle the effects of socioeconomic status from that of intelligence, since it has often been claimed that SES is the real factor behind differences in income, health, criminal activity, and so on. The siblings will presumably have all been raised in the same SES in childhood. So, after controlling for SES, IQ still exerts a powerful influence.

The paper also reports another study in which the top 1% in intelligence of a group of 10th graders, as well as the top 1% in SES, were selected, the resulting groups having "minimum overlap" - less than 10% of the students belonged to both groups.

The abstract to another paper, Reaction time and established risk factors for total and cardiovascular disease mortality: Comparison of effect estimates in the follow-up of a large, UK-wide, general-population based survey, among the authors of which is Ian Deary, says this:

Higher cognitive function is associated with faster choice reaction time (CRT), and both are associated with a reduced risk of mortality from all-causes and cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, comparison of the predictive capacity of CRT, an emerging risk factor, with that for established ‘classic’ risk factors for mortality, such as smoking, hypertension or obesity, is lacking. [...]

In age- and sex-adjusted models in which all-cause mortality was the outcome of interest, CRT mean (RII=2.57, 95% CI=1.98, 3.33) was the second most important predictor of death after smoking (RII=3.03, 95% CI=2.45, 3.75). For death from CVD, CRT mean (RII=2.31, 95% CI=1.55, 3.43) was again the second most important risk factor for death, behind systolic blood pressure (RII=4.37, 95% CI=3.03, 6.29). These analyses suggest that CRT, a moderately high correlate of intelligence, is an important risk factor for death from all-causes and CVD.

That deserves emphasis: in both all-cause mortality and heart disease, reaction time was the second most important predictor of death.

Conservatism as Adversary Culture

Dissent features Conservatism as an Adversary Culture, in which a specious attempt is made to paint present-day conservatives as modern Jacobins.

The health care debate suggests the respective tempers of Left and Right have flipped. We are the sober bourgeois now and they are the anarchists engaged in their expressive performances of identity.

The Democrats championed a prosaic bourgeois idea: health care for citizens. They used the quintessentially bourgeois form to do so: narrative. In the spirit of Dickens and Gaskell and Eliot they told moving stories about people who can’t get insurance cover. And the Democrats have compromised so that reform can be passed - so, no public option, and no federal funding for abortion.

It has been on the Right that we have found the antinomian temper of the adversary culture. They have spurned responsibility for the 30 million uninsured Americans. They opposed ‘Obamacare’ as a dictatorial assault on freedom. Theirs was a quasi-religious revolt and seemed rooted in their own inner emmigration of spirit from a fallen world.

Funny. What the author, Alan Johnson, calls "a prosaic bourgeois idea: health care for citizens" is in reality a grand scheme of wealth transfer, a picking of pockets of the white and middle class in order to give their money, via a well-paid corps of bureaucrats who will get their take, to the largely non-white, immigrant, and unproductive. Those 30 million uninsured that he mentions must be largely illegal aliens but, even if they are not, that 10% of the population lacks health insurance hardly seems like a good reason to overturn the Constitution and nationalize 15% of the economy, much less giving the government a license to steal.

How self-deluded are these social democrats, i.e. Communists in no great hurry. That conservatives are now in opposition is to be expected given the leftist government we live under, but that the socialists paint themselves as the essence of prudence and propriety and bourgeois morality is a laugh.

Gold Manipulation and an Assassination Attempt

A news story has been percolating for the past week, but with a single exception that I'm aware of, it hasn't been covered by the mainstream media.

Background: for years now, many people with expertise in the area have alleged that the precious metals markets are being manipulated by big banks at the behest of the U.S. government. As with all conspiracy theories, it's been difficult to prove, though lately the case has become much stronger. The U.S. has good reasons for wanting to suppress the price of precious metals, namely to keep interest rates down and to maintain the illusion that the dollar is a secure store of wealth.

Earlier this month, a London metals trader by the name of Andrew Maguire wrote detailed emails to U.S. regulators, providing evidence of gold manipulation. Details can be found here. The day after the emails were released, Maguire and his wife were the victims of a hit-and-run accident. The NY Post has the story:

A London-based precious-metals trader who had accused JPMorgan Chase of manipulating the gold and silver markets was involved in a bizarre weekend car accident that triggered a police chase before the suspect was nabbed.

Andrew Maguire, a metals trader at the London Bullion Market Association, and his wife were traveling in their car when a second car coming out of a side street struck their vehicle. That car then hit two more vehicles before fleeing.

London cops using helicopters and patrol cars chased the hit-and-run driver before nabbing that person, whose name has not been released by authorities.

Maguire and his wife were released from the hospital yesterday. London police would not comment on the accident investigation.

The hit and run occurred after Maguire's name came to light Thursday during a US Commodities Futures Trading Commission hearing on limiting gold and silver positions held by large market participants in order to prevent manipulation.

During the hearing, Maguire was identified as having sent e-mails to Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner, and Eliud Ramirez, head of the commission's enforcement division, alleging that JPMorgan had used its massive metals positions to manipulate the commodities markets.

In one e-mail, Maguire wrote, "It is common knowledge here in London among the metals traders that it is JPM's intent to flush out and cover as many shorts as possible prior to any discussion in March about position limits," referring to last week's CFTC hearings.

JPMorgan inherited the positions when it acquired Bear Stearns two years ago.

When the allegations first surfaced last week, JPMorgan declined to comment.

This is the stuff of spy novels, and I suspect that whether this was a genuine assassination attempt will never be known, though I doubt that JPMorganChase would ever get involved in something like that. The federal government...?

PS: A recent story of nefarious gold dealings that has been making the rounds is that of "Brown's Bottom", in which then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown sold almost all of Britain's gold between 1998 and 2002 at prices about one fourth that of today's prices, a startlingly terrible decision. Zero Hedge has the latest, including questions about whether the U.S. really owns all the gold it says it does.

PPS: Nathan Lewis details gold manipulation, writing in The Huffington Post:It's Ponzimonium in the Gold Market. Must read.