The Inner Nature of the U.S.

Richard Spencer, after a discussion of the extent to which Russia is anti-PC and open to the possibility of systematic, genetic differences between races, writes:

Looking at the outcome of the 20th century from a Hegelian standpoint, one might suggest that it was America that was on the left—and the post-Lenin USSR, on the right—all along; tag lines like “capitalism” and “socialism” simply obfuscated the inner natures of each regime.

Whether Russia is simply behind America—and will soon follow it into cultural decadence—or is truly charting an independent course remains to be seen.

While I'm not sure whether anything can usefully be looked at from a Hegelian standpoint, Hegel having been one of the most deliberately obfuscating philosophers ever to have lived, Spencer's core idea here about the inner natures of Russia and America is an interesting one. In a couple of posts on this blog (American Diversity Outreach and Permanent Revolution), we've* tried to make the case that the U.S. comprises the locus for the spread of diversity, "democracy", and in general making the world safe for the project of the globalists. Other nations - such as in one of our examples, France - still have a residual, nearly reactionary sense of self, which various organs of the U.S. such as the State Department feel the need to break down. The globalist project of democracy and diversity, which effectively means the breaking down of Western nations plus one or two in the East, such as Japan, cannot succeed so long as some of these nations maintain a stubborn sense of self and of particularity.

So, what about the "inner natures" of Russia and the U.S.? It would appear that, despite many decades of Communism and dictatorial oppression, the Russians have maintained a robust sense of nation, and are not easily swayed by diversity propaganda, most of which appears to emanate from the U.S. government and the American media. Perhaps one of the reasons for Russia's nationalism is that it has benefited much less, or even harmed, by a globalized economy. The nations of North America and Western Europe have until recently been happy to go along with the globalist project so long as incomes were rising.

Can any nation, such as Russia, that reflexively opposes the policies of FedGov, be all bad? The debacles of American foreign intervention and the reasons for undertaking them, from Kosovo to Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya, as well as the strident calls for ever more immigration, demonstrate which nation is the source of global revolution, the imposition of diversity, and the deconstruction of Western peoples. It is our nation.

*Not the editorial "we", but a literal one which includes commenters.

Government Confiscation of Retirement Accounts

Quantitative easing, i.e. money printing by the Federal Reserve, looks like it's set to continue forever, there being no other source of large amounts of money with which to fund the government's huge and growing deficits. But wait, maybe there is another source of funds: your retirement accounts. Gonzalo Lira makes a convincing case for the ease and plausibility of government confiscation of retirement accounts:

What pool of money is just sitting there, not doing much, while being legally barred from its owners? What pool of money is easily accessed, yet is large enough to fund the deficit?

The retirement accounts of the American people: Both individual private accounts, and pension funds.

After all, the total for all pension monies is roughly 100% of GDP (this includes Social Security). And the Federal government has already raided the “Social Security lock box”—that box is stuffed with Treasury IOU’s.

So the Federal government might well turn to the private sector for cash. The Federal government might conceivably claim that ongoing funding needs require that every single 401(k) and IRA divest from its portfolio of stocks and bonds, and be fully invested in Treasuries.

This could be accomplished very easily, from a practical standpoint—just inform banks, and have them turn over to the Federal government all your mutual funds and stocks you agonized over, and get long-term Treasury bonds of nominal equal value in exchange.

401(k)’s and IRA’s would be the first ones the Federal government would go after—for the obvious reason that union pension funds have the union’s political muscle. But individuals? They have no political machine. So they’re screwed. [...]

There might be short-term political damage, but like losing your virginity or carrying out state-sponsored torture programs, it would be the necessary start for a slide that will never end. After this first “retirement asset swap” carried out on the 401(k)’s and IRA’s, the Treasury department would start doing more of this to ever-bigger pension funds, until eventually all retirement assets would be converted into Treasury bonds.

Hey, they did it in Argentina. And as Yves Smith always sez, America has become Argentina, but with nukes.

I'm not so sure about the lack of political damage; it seems to me that a huge public outcry would ensue, which doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. The wealthy - and that means just about anyone who's been reasonably frugal and saved their money for retirement - are a huge target; the 51% of the population that has little money would love to get their hands on it, and the elite on Wall Street and in Washington will help them do so.

An article at Lew Rockwell's site recommends a number of actions to take for those who believe that this threat is real. For starters, stop contributing to your retirement account - that's an action I've already taken.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now we have to worry about America becoming another Argentina.

The Lipid Hypothesis Is Dead

Now that I've broken my 16-hour intermittent fast with four eggs scrambled in butter, we can look at some recent discussions of cholesterol and the lipid hypothesis of heart disease.

Uffe Ravnskov, one of the more outspoken opponents of the lipid hypothesis, gave an interview: High Cholesterol Is Good. Quote:

The cholesterol campaign is based on the false idea that [human consumption of] animal food and high cholesterol causes atherosclerosis and heart disease. It’s a mistake because high cholesterol is not dangerous to health; it is beneficial. For instance, high cholesterol protects against cancer and infectious diseases. Today millions of healthy people all over the world are taking medicine that may create muscle weakness, bad memory, bad temper, impotency, painful legs and cancer. But most doctors do not know it because they have been mislead by the drug industry and their researchers.

Next, let's look at a couple of papers.

Total cholesterol and risk of mortality in the oldest old.: "INTERPRETATION: In people older than 85 years, high total cholesterol concentrations are associated with longevity owing to lower mortality from cancer and infection. The effects of cholesterol-lowering therapy have yet to be assessed." [Emphasis added.]

Lack of Association Between Cholesterol and Coronary Heart Disease Mortality and Morbidity and All-Cause Mortality in Persons Older Than 70 Years: "Conclusions. —Our findings do not support the hypothesis that hypercholesterolemia or low HDL-C are important risk factors for all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease mortality, or hospitalization for myocardial infarction or unstable angina in this cohort of persons older than 70 years."

So, if they find either no association or a negative correlation between high cholesterol levels and heart disease in those older than 70 years, there's nothing that would lead us to think that there's an association in younger people either. My money is on Ravnskov: high cholesterol levels are good for you.

Here is a paper (peer-reviewed!) by Ravnskov and McCully, the latter of whom is known for recognizing the link between homocysteine levels in the blood and coronary artery disease, which hypothesizes that infections cause a chain of events leading to heart disease. Here is an article by McCully for laymen on the same idea, which will be familiar to those who have read about Paul Ewald and Greg Cochran's hypothesis.

Alas, while many of the sharper minds that cruise the blogosphere have cottoned on to the nonsense that is the lipid hypothesis of heart disease, it's still the reigning wisdom among medical practitioners. If a cholesterol test comes back "abnormal", doctors will reach for the statins, and patients will continue with the same practices that got them into trouble in the first place.

Slackers and Immigrants

Patriotic Teen Fails Spanish

You may have seen this at Alt Right, but I thought it too funny not to pass up. Strangely enough, I believe that the video touches on a more serious point - serious, that is, beyond the fact that America is becoming Hispanic - and that is the depiction of the slacker dude. Many commenters here (and many more elsewhere) make the point that America's economy couldn't function at a high level without the current crop of high-IQ immigrants. For instance, one commenter who says he works at a hedge fund with probably a minimum IQ requirement of 150 for many of its positions, and many are filled by high-IQ immigrants. The point, and I don't want to stretch it too far, is that, like the slacker dude, by now I could really give a rat's ass about that. People will be making the argument from economic utility until kingdom come, and while if the U.S. weren't being inundated with tens of millions of (low IQ, for the most part) immigrants, I might be more open to that argument, for now most of us will turn a deaf ear to it.

By the way, that hedge funder argued that the only requirement for his employer was being really smart. But it seems pretty obvious that the fund can pay much less for immigrants. Not so long ago, many Americans with degrees in physics and mathematics went into financial engineering - maybe they still do, for all I know - but foreigners in general are willing to work for much less, and there seems to be a bottomless supply of foreign PhD.'s.

As for the slacker, it would be fruitless to deny that people like him exist. But how many of them have become so out of failure at finding decent employment or at despair for their future?

PS: OK, for some reason, the video isn't playing for me. Click the link below the pic to go to The Onion and watch it.

Taylor's Letter to Alexandra Wallace

Jared Taylor has penned an open letter to Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA student who made a "controversial" video about Asian students' behavior in the library, and who is now leaving UCLA due to anonymous death threats and a generally very hostile atmosphere. You should read the whole thing, but I'll emphasize what I consider the salient points.

Perhaps it is beginning to dawn on you that your sin was not what you said but who you are. If you were black or Hispanic and made a mocking video about Asians no one would care. The Asians and others who have made video “replies” address you as “bitch” and say awful things about your appearance and imagined sex habits, but no one has criticized them. Many of them seem to be students. Is the administration “appalled and offended”? Have they received death threats? No. [...]

And you must never, never, never notice that whites are outnumbered at UCLA. Next you might notice that whites are being outnumbered in the whole country—outnumbered by people whom your very own Professor Wong is urging to “replace those old white men.” You are not an old white man; you are a young white woman. Judging from the obscene “replies” on YouTube, the people who are replacing the old white men have different plans for you. [...]

In the eyes of the people who are driving you off campus, your greatest sin, Miss Wallace, is that you are white.

When I first saw the video (over at Oriental Right), I couldn't even watch it all the way through, as it looked like the sort of mindless drivel that so many people post online, and also because it looked a bit too much like inside baseball: I mean, do I care what Asians in the library behave like? Does anyone?

Evidently, whether the video's allegations are true or not, a lot of people do care. They care enough to make death threats, the administration at UCLA cares enough to threaten her with suspension, say that the video was at least as egregious as the death threats and, when they discovered that the video was completely within Wallace's rights of free speech, did nothing to defend her.

Taylor hit the nail on the head: if Wallace were other than white, no one would likely have even noticed the video. Is it even worthwhile trying to discover what she said that deserved death threats? Probably not, but I suppose I can see some actually rational Asians being annoyed with it. But, whites have to put up with far worse every day, as Taylor notes, and we aren't allowed to say anything about it.

I haven't seen much if any coverage of this at more mainstream conservative sites, so the events surrounding Alexandra Wallace probably aren't going to serve as some kind of wake-up call, though they should.

Permanent Revolution

Back in 2003, Charles Krauthammer wrote the following:

Well, it would have been one thing if France had just opposed the war or voted against it. Nobody would have faulted them for that. But they went way beyond that to not just obstructing us, but trying to undermine our efforts in a way that in the end made the war more likely. That's not how allies act. And France has now made itself a non-ally of the United States. As for our past and France's past, I would urge you to take a tour of the beaches of Normandy in deciding who owes whom what. We have three times in one century saved France -- twice from Germany, once from the Soviet Union. France's behavior reminds me of the immortal statement of Prince Schwertenberg of Austria, who, after the Russians helped him put down the Hungarian rebellion, and then asked about his support for Russia in return, stated, "We will astonish them with our ingratitude." Except that when it comes to the French, one is never astonished.

Krauthammer currently seems quite happy that the U.S. is getting itself into another Mideast war, and "credits" the Bush Doctrine for it.

France's attitude about astonishing us with ingratitude is the correct attitude to have in international relations. There are no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Yet the nations of Western Europe are as close to permanent allies that the U.S. is likely to have. Now that France appears to be on board with invasions of Middle Eastern countries that have committed no act of war against us, presumably for the neocons, all is forgiven; the French are no longer cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Sarkozy appears to be the George Bush of France.

For the neocons, it's permanent revolution everywhere, with the U.S. as the agitator and enforcer of the revolution. Even though no one in charge seems to have a clue as to what they're doing, whether the rebels are linked to Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood, and whether victory would really result in any kind of democracy - not necessarily a good outcome anyway - they rush in where angels fear to tread.

The U.S. government is far from being run in the interests of the American people; it's being run in the interests of a globalist, revolutionary elite who just can't stand to leave a country alone - unless it has no oil, like say the Congo, in which case the slaughter is allowed to happen. Just because Obama is in power, that doesn't change the dynamic of our foreign policy and seemingly doesn't change who calls the shots.

Richard Spencer notes that some mainstream, National review-type conservatives are expressing great reservations about our latest military adventure, so there's some hope that at least some people are learning. Of course, conservatives aren't supposed to learn this type of thing, they're supposed to know it already.

Wait, we didn't mean it

Arab League criticizes Western strikes on Libya:

CAIRO, March 20, 2011 (AFP) - The Arab League on Sunday criticized Western military strikes on Libya, a week after urging the United Nations to slap a no-fly zone on the oil-rich North African state.

"What has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone and what we want is the protection of civilians and not bombing other civilians," Arab League secretary general Amr Mussa told reporters.

"From the start we requested only that a no-fly zone be set up to protect Libyan civilians and avert any other developments or additional measures," Mussa added.

On March 12, the Arab League urged the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone on Libya and said Moamer Kadhafi’s regime had "lost legitimacy" as it sought to snuff out a rebellion designed to oust him from power.

Wait until the corpses of civilians start showing up on television. The Arab League isn't even waiting for that; they're re-positioning themselves back into their usual anti-American stance. One of the facets of the neocons' and neoliberals' thinking that is most foolish is the notion that the Arab masses will love us after we come in and blow up a good part of their countries.

Peter Hitchens asks why we can't just let the Libyans fight it out and them make friends with the winners. Peter, my boy, you would never be successful in politics; your suggestion makes too much sense.

Politics seems to have become a sort of mental illness. We have no bloody business in Libya, and no idea what we hope to achieve there.

Yes, it appears that virtually everyone in Washington - and London and Paris - has gone completely mad.

On the bright side, our new war appears to be bullish for precious metals.

Why Do Parents Let Their Daughters Dress Like Sluts?

Writing in the left-wing WSJ, Jennifer Moses asks, in yet another thumbsucker about modern manners and morals, Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That? Like how? According to Moses, "like prostitutes".

Yet in the entirety of her screed, she never once speaks of doing anything to stop her own teenage daughter from dressing like a prostitute. On the contrary, she relishes the opportunity to aid and abet her daughter's slutty dress:

In my own case, when I see my daughter in drop-dead gorgeous mode, I experience something akin to a thrill—especially since I myself am somewhat past the age to turn heads.

Especially since she's past the age to turn heads. Elsewhere she talks about not wanting to be accused of hypocrisy because she and her peers went through the era of the sexual revolution - even though she hints that she regrets her behavior. In other words, it's all about this woman, so typical of narcissistic boomers who, even though they now have got at least a glimpse of what it means to do the right thing, refuse to rein in their daughters because that would be "hypocritical".

I wouldn't want us to return to the age of the corset or even of the double standard, because a double standard that lets the promiscuous male off the hook while condemning his female counterpart is both stupid and destructive. If you're the campus mattress, chances are that you need therapy more than you need condemnation.

No further excuses needed to let your daughter dress like a whore, because not allowing her to would be tantamount to rolling back the clock, when the nation was conservative and Christian. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of progress, not even your children's welfare.

Benefits of Smoking

Over at In Mala Fide, Simon Rierdon wonders whether tobacco could be good for you. We've discussed this a bit before here in The Scientific Scandal of Anti-Smoking, the nub of the matter being that there's never been any truly randomized trial of the effects of smoking, i.e. studies look at smokers vs. non-smokers, who have already selected themselves. Furthermore, there appears to be no differences in mortality between people who continue to smoke and those who quit.

The other day Seth Roberts discussed smoking in the context of hormesis. Smoking does appear to exhibit a hormetic effect, which makes sense, and which causes Seth to remark that he doesn't worry about smog. We probably shouldn't worry much about so-called secondhand smoke either.

We probably shouldn't get too carried away here. Although the evidence in humans is all correlational, correlation is evidence of causation.

Bruce Charlton recently suggested that smoking could be important for creative accomplishment, and one of his readers compiled a list, from Murray's Human Accomplishment, of writers who smoked. As Bruce says,

Could it be that the decline of smoking among creative intellectuals may have contributed to the decline of genius?

Could it be that we have sacrificed a human accomplishment for a longer life span?

Maybe.

Nicotine increases scores on IQ tests.

If You Can't Find Potassium Iodide

The following is information, not advice.

Since there's been a run on potassium iodide, you may not be able to find it for radiation protection. However, tincture of iodine, which is used as an antiseptic and is a form of iodine dissolved in ethanol, is widely available and cheap. (Check out what profiteers sellers on Amazon are asking for potassium iodide: $280 for a pack of 14 tablets!.) Each drop of tincture of iodine contains about 1 milligram free iodine, in the form of both inorganic iodine (I2) and iodate. According to Dr. Guy Abraham, probably the leading advocate of iodine supplementation,

A daily intake of 50 mg is also the amount of elemental iodine that saturates the iodide thyroidal symport system and could serve as a preventive measure against unexpected exposure to radioactive iodine/iodide.

Dr. David Brownstein, another advocate of iodine supplementation, writes:

The CDC recommends using iodine to prevent injury from radioactive iodine fallout. Adults and women who are breastfeeding should take 130mg of potassium iodide. Children who are between 3 and 18 years of age should take 65mg of potassium iodide. Children who are adult size should take the adult dose. Infants and children between 1 month and 3 years of age should take 32mg of potassium iodide. Newborns from birth to one month of age should be given 16mg of potassium iodide.

When should you take iodine? For an acute exposure, you want to take iodine just before the exposure hits. Iodine is cleared out of the body within 24 to 72 hours after taking it. However, if you have been using ortho-iodosupplementation as I describe in my books and lectures (taking from 6-50mg/day of iodine and iodide), you should be covered. Remember, the goal is to not let the radioactive iodine bind in the body.

Potassium iodide can be found in many health food stores. Combinations of iodide/iodine can be obtained from holistic physicians. Iodoral, Iodozyme HP, and Lugol’s solution are examples of this form of iodine.

Note that a bottle of tincture of iodine is labeled "poison", so use at your own risk, but it can be used to disinfect drinking water at 5 drops per liter (according to Wikipedia). Dr. Brownstein also says:

There is risk with taking iodine, just as there is risk with any substance, but my experience has shown this dose to be safe for the vast majority of people. Please discuss this dosage with your health care provider before beginning supplementation.

My feeling is that none of this will be necessary anyway. Let's hope not.

Disclaimer: Not to be construed as medical advice.

Raising Teacher Status

As part of our ongoing, seemingly eternal debate over American education, the NY Times has an article urging the U.S. to raise teachers' status:

To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.

“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday.

On one level, this can be easily dismissed as the lobbying effort of a special-interest group.

It can be dismissed on many other levels too. As will be well-known to everyone here, "top-scoring" (South) Korea, Singapore, and Finland have high IQ populations, and of these three, only Singapore has significant ethnic diversity. In 2009, the U.S. came in 30th place in math, 23rd in sciences, and 17th in reading. (Link.) However, according to a report (pdf) written by B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown and Hal Salzman of The Urban Institute - who are unlikely in the extreme to be any sort of conservatives, much less race realists -

An important difference between the United States and most of the other nations tested is the comparative race/ethnic diversity of the U.S. student body and social conditions. In fact, the United States stands quite alone in terms of its diversity as, for example, “Germany and Italy were nearly 100% white, and Japan’s [population] nearly 100% Asian [and] Canada’s [minority population is predominantly] Asian” (Boe and Shin 2005, 693). Boe and Shin analyze the test scores of U.S. students and find that white students handily outscore students in the Western G5 nations in math and science, albeit they do not do as well as Japanese students. On the other hand, U.S. white students (with a percentile rank of 92) handily outscore Japanese students on reading (with a percentile rank of 69).

Undoubtedly plenty of incompetent or otherwise sub-par teachers shouldn't be in the schools, and mainly responsible for this is the fact that they belong to unions and are employed by the government. But that top-scoring countries only employ highly qualified candidates for teaching has little to do with their performance on the PISA tests.

Even Richard Posner comes to the same conclusion, although his preferred remedy - or more likely the only remedy he's willing to discuss - has been shown not to work:

If IQ is playing a significant role in America’s mediocre showing on the PISA tests, improvements in secondary school education are unlikely to have dramatic effects. The white and Asian kids in American schools are already doing fine, for the most part; the black and Hispanic kids may not do much better until their early childhood environment is improved to the point at which black and Hispanic IQs are raised significantly.

Men: Who Needs 'Em?

Daily Mail:

But 180 workers this afternoon bravely headed back towards the plant to pump water on to the over-heating reactors. Some experts speculated that they were on a 'suicide mission' as options to control radiation leaks rapidly run out.

The group of 180 employees rotate shifts working at the plant in teams of 50 men. The men - nicknamed the 'Fukushima Fifty' - had this morning been pulled back 500 yards from the complex as radiation levels became too dangerous.

However the technicians later headed back in to the reactors for difficult and dangerous work, wearing radiation suits and gas masks or oxygen tanks that provide little protection from the invisible radiation rays bombarding their bodies.

Radiation work is far too male. Around 93% of workplace fatalities are those of men. This situation needs to be corrected immediately.

More on Japan and What Everyone Wants to Know

John Derbyshire has some thoughts on why there's no looting in Japan. He believes that ethnic homogeneity is a necessary but not sufficient condition - I agree - and that cultural explanations are tautological - agree with that too.

But, Derbyshire believes that IQ couldn't account for Japanese behavior, since there ought to be some 20 million Japanese with IQs below 90. Therefore there would seem to plenty of people available for looting.

Looting however is a crime of opportunity as well as one best practiced in gangs. Since no one, concentrated group in Japan has an IQ less than 90 (unlike in these United States), the low IQ people are not instantly identifiable to each other and therefore can't form these gangs.

Herrnstein and Murray stated that the average IQ of anyone ever interviewed in jail was about 90, and from that we can perhaps infer that the average IQ of convicted criminals is lower. (Here is a reference that speaks of "the robust IQ-crime correlation.) But most people with IQs of 90 or lower are not criminals. Looting occurs during a breakdown of social order, and one might guess that most looters do not habitually commit crimes, whether for fear of getting caught or some other reason. It could be said that so much social order exists in Japan that it takes more than an earthquake and a tsunami to break it down. Social cohesion is internalized.

Derbyshire's preferred explanation:

Population genetics, as it affects those parts of the nervous system involved in social behavior, together with geography and a long common history, predisposed the Japanese to strong ethnonationalism and social stability in a well-organized and well-supervised hierarchical order. Under premodern conditions this did not preclude intracommunal violence under codes widely understood and enforced; but in the affluent post-WW2 world, with good standards of health and education, and under imposed consensual government following certain highly salutary experiences, these old factors directed the Japanese to an exceptionally high level of nonviolent social cohesion and intense but benign racial-national consciousness.

Simply amazing how ethnonationalism can make a country a decent place to live, who would have thought that?

By the way, I'm reliably informed that better than 95% of Japan's nuclear workers, military, firemen, and police forces are men. Men are expendable, and despite feminist demands for equality, women want to keep it that way and have no plans to change that facet of the gendered world.

Addendum: From a review of Wilson and Herrnstein's Crime and Human Nature:

Criminals tend to be young males who are muscular rather than thin, and who have lower-than-average IQs and impulsive, "now"-oriented personalities, which make planning or even thinking about the future difficult.

Is there any group other than the Japanese for whom that description would be less fitting?

Japan: High IQ, Low Diversity

Image from The Daily Mail. The caption reads: "Incredibly patient: People queue for water in Sendai two days after the earthquake and tsunami struck"

Anything I have to say here has already been better said by others, but the response of the Japanese to their biggest earthquake in 100 years and the subsequent tidal wave has been both a wonder to behold and a lesson in how the world works to anyone paying attention with an open mind. Rather than looting and raping and killing, the Japanese have banded together to help out, and their superb emergency planning appears to be functioning as well as could be expected of any country.

Compare and contrast the response in Haiti after their earthquake:

Sporadic violence, looting and gang-related gunfire broke out under sweltering Caribbean skies even as thousands of US forces awaited deployment from a newly-arrived aircraft carrier sitting in the waters off the city.

In chaotic scenes, United Nations food trucks were rushed by hungry people clamouring for handouts of nutritional biscuits and water purification tablets. Children and the elderly were pushed aside in the crush.

UN peacekeepers patrolling the capital said frustrations were rising and warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting. [...]

In one particularly shocking incident, a looter was spotted hauling a corpse from a coffin at a city cemetery so that he could drive away with the wooden box. There were reports of armed gangs setting up roadblocks to demand money and essential supplies from passing lorries and the UN said that the poor security situation meant it could not reach outlying areas with aid operations.

A year after the earthquake, Haiti is still a mess, with cholera epidemics, government corruption, and massive dependence on foreign aid.

Japan has at least two things going for it: a high IQ population, and lack of diversity. Some people appear to think that relatively high wealth is the sole factor in Japan's superior response, and of course it is a factor, but Japan's high IQ population has created that wealth. The lack of diversity - Japan's population is 98.5% Japanese - contributes to the sense of trust and cooperation. Although Haiti isn't so diverse either, depending on how you define diversity.

In attempting to explain the world, those who refuse to understand or to even contemplate the reality of human biodiversity consign themselves to failure. In the Financial Times, Peter Tasker wrote:

The greatest cause for optimism about Japan is the reservoir of social capital that has sustained it through two tough decades.

And social capital is in turn a product of the people themselves, so we might rephrase Tasker's sentence as, "The greatest cause for optimism about Japan is that it's full of Japanese."

Addendum: Ed West of The Telegraph asks Why is there no looting in Japan? I just can't figure that one out.

Feminism in the Environment

Recent adverse trends in semen quality and testis cancer incidence among Finnish men:

Impaired semen quality and testicular cancer may be linked through a testicular dysgenesis syndrome of foetal origin. The incidence of testis cancer has been shown to increase among Finnish men, whereas there is no recent publication describing temporal trends in semen quality. Therefore, we carried out a prospective semen quality study and a registry study of testis cancer incidence among Finnish men to explore recent trends. A total of 858 men were investigated in the semen quality study during 1998–2006. Median sperm concentrations were 67 (95% CI 57–80) million/mL, 60 (51–71) and 48 (39–60) for birth cohorts 1979–81, 1982–83 and 1987; total sperm counts 227 (189–272) million, 202 (170–240) and 165 (132–207); total number of morphologically normal spermatozoa 18 (14–23) million, 15 (12–19) and 11 (8–15). Men aged 10–59 years at the time of diagnosis with testicular cancer during 1954–2008 were included in the registry study, which confirmed the increasing incidence of testicular cancer in recent cohorts. These simultaneous and rapidly occurring adverse trends suggest that the underlying causes are environmental and, as such, preventable. Our findings necessitate not only further surveillance of male reproductive health but also research to detect and remove the underlying factors.

What environmental factor operative over the past generation or so could have caused the decline in sperm counts? Most speculation centers around chemicals in the environment, but psychological and social factors in the environment also affect sperm counts. Testosterone, a key hormone in spermatogenesis, varies according to whether one's football team has won or lost. Playing football (soccer) on home territory causes testosterone to increase:

Two doctors from the University of Northumbria found in tests that footballers' level of testosterone went up "significantly" when they were playing on home territory.

So, what pervasive environmental factors could have caused low sperm counts?

I suggest two: feminism and the denigration of men. As feminism has become more powerful, women have moved into the workforce, divorce has become epidemic, and men have seen their social roles diminished. Simultaneously, we've seen a rise in the social denigration of men: we're all familiar with the way movies, TV, and advertising denigrate men, especially white men, and men are discriminated against in the workplace. Women now constitute a majority of university students.

If all this has led to the widespread demoralization of men, then declining sperm counts could result. If men's testosterone levels and subsequently sperm counts are sensitive to such things as winning or losing a football game, then subtle but pervasive suggestions that men are no good might do the job too.

While I doubt that this is the whole story, the suggestion is meant seriously. One way to check this would be to see whether sperm counts have dropped in countries little affected by feminism, such as in Muslim lands.

Racial Identity and Happiness

Racial Identity Tied to Happiness, Study Finds. (Hat tip: Malcolm Pollack.)

African American people who identify more strongly with their racial identity are generally happier, according to a study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University. [...]

For the study, the researchers surveyed black adults in Michigan. The results suggest the more the participants identified with being black -- or the more being black was an important part of who they are -- the more happy they were with life as a whole, Yap said.

The study also explored the reasons behind the connection. Yap said it may be fueled by a sense of belongingness -- that is, blacks with a strong sense of racial identity may feel more connected to their racial group, which in turn makes them happy.

While the results leave the degree to which these results apply to other races open to question, since blacks are a minority and could conceivably derive greater value from racial identity because of that, it seems pretty obvious that racial/ethnic identity continues to be extremely important to most people in the world.

Once again, it's only whites who are demonized for when they claim a racial identity. One could hardly imagine this study being carried out among whites, and if it was and it were found that whites were happier the more they identified with their race, the denunciations by the usual suspects would be swift.

So, along with being deliberately deprived of their nations, along with the campaign to delegitimize any expression of white identity, whites are being deprived of one of the psychological bases of their physical and mental well-being. The global jihad against whites aims to turn them into a deracinated mass that neither shows nor has the ability to show solidarity with their fellows.

The Biological Basis of Music

A recent study performed in Finland - whose people interestingly might have among the highest per capita rates of appreciation for and cultivation of classical music - has found that "willingness to listen to music and the level of music education varied in pedigrees." (Hat tip: hbd chick.)

This is one of the first studies where listening to music has been explored at molecular level, and the first study to show association between arginine vasopressin receptor 1A (AVPR1A) gene variants with listening to music. Previously, an association between AVPR1A and musical aptitude has been reported. AVPR1A gene is a gene that has been associated with social communication and attachment behavior in human and other species. The vasopressin homolog increases vocalization in birds and influences on breeding of lizards and fishes. The results suggest biological contribution to the sound perception (here listening to music), provide a molecular evidence of sound or music's role in social communication, and are providing tools for further studies on gene-culture evolution in music.

I would like to know what the correlations between active listening and IQ were, which I would guess would be highly positive and significant. It's no coincidence that northern and western Europe developed classical music, and that appreciation for it today is largely confined to it, its offshoots, and certain areas of East Asia.

This also reminds me of something noted by Toby Huff in his The Rise of Early Modern Science, namely that Western music and Western science are of a piece: Europeans subjected music to the same degree of rationalization as they did science; music was developed in an almost scientific manner, with the result being the symphony orchestra and the heights of music being captured by the likes of Beethoven and Brahms, of whom the world has not seen their equal.

Music has long been considered something of a conundrum in philosophy and psychology, but the main result of this and other studies seem obvious in retrospect. How could music not have a biological or evolutionary basis?

Schopenhauer, one of the best philosophical theorists on the arts, thought that music was the highest and greatest art, since it is "about" nothing, but at least in its higher forms is pure abstraction. However, he lived before the age of Mendel and Darwin, and though he anticipated some of their findings, for instance in assertions of the heritability of character and the clash of will in nature, all his theorizing was just that: theorizing. He had little science on which to base his ideas.

Much the same could be said about many other philosophers in the past, e.g. John Locke's idea of the tabula rasa, which surely made a lot of sense at the time but which we know now to be completely wrong. Kant's notions of what can be known a priori vs. a posteriori were likewise uninformed by biology.

Studies like this show that the revolution in our knowledge of the biological basis of human culture and psychology is only beginning.

Mexican Emigration Hurts Mexico

Mexico suffers as its citizens leave for U.S.:

The mass migration of Mexicans to the U.S. is not good for that country, said Agustín Escobar of Mexico's Center for Investigation and Higher Study in Social Anthropology Friday at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The country has to deal with large numbers of its citizens being removed from the U.S. and returned to Mexico, the rate of immigrants dying as they try to enter the U.S. is increasing and Mexico's households are hurt when breadwinners head to another country, Escobar said at the Bilateral Perspectives on Mexican Migration Conference at UTSA's Mexico Center.

And while many Mexicans working in the U.S. do send money back to their families, known as remittances, other Latin American workers send back more, Escobar said.

“When you look at what Mexican migrants send (home), you see that that amount is much lower than the Mexican (gross domestic product) per capita,” he said. “In terms of remittances, Mexico benefits very little by sending people abroad.”

The fact that Mexicans in the U.S. send lower remittances than other Latin Americans abroad doesn't seem as if that also means that "Mexico benefits very little" from it, at least without seeing research that this statement is based upon.

However, it seems possible that Mexican out-migration to the U.S. could simultaneously harm both countries, since it deprives Mexico of human capital while lowering the average human capital of the U.S.

One thing I've wondered lately without being able to make much headway on the thought is whether and how Mexican emigration to the U.S. is related to the rise of drug violence in Mexico. It doesn't seem likely that the two are unrelated: shortly after millions of Mexicans move to the U.S., there occurs a breakout of violence which even in Mexico was previously unimaginable (I believe). Any suggestions as to how that could work are welcome.

Apologists for illegal immigration have often stated that the immigrants are good for the U.S., do jobs that we allegedly won't do, etc. But if they are good for the U.S., they must be even better for Mexico, since Mexico has a lower average level of human capital. Therefore American boosters of illegal immigration deserve blame for whatever harm Mexico has suffered due to the out-migration of tens of millions of its citizens. And therefore a large plank in their platform falls apart: the notion that immigration helps poor people. While it may help individual poor people, on the whole it harms the larger number of them in their home countries, a fact which holds whatever the country. Indeed, the consequences to a country like India which expensively educates millions of doctors and engineers and then sends them abroad must be substantially deleterious.

Are Whites Racially Oppressed?

A long, surprisingly fair article from CNN asks whether whites are racially oppressed. Some excerpts with my comments:

But not everyone buys that script. Mona Charen, a conservative columnist for the National Review, challenges that view with this question: If more white Americans feel like an embattled minority, why did they elect President Barack Obama?

"Did they become racist after electing the first black president?" she asks.

Charen says the United States today is "incredibly tolerant and open."

Sure, she says, there are individuals who nurture racial animosity, but most Americans deserve praise for looking past race.

Mona, you ignorant neocon slut. She's all worried that any sign of racial consciousness on the part of whites is automatic evidence of being racist. She says that "most Americans deserve praise for looking past race", which means that whites must continue to overlook their dispossession. Next up, Tim Wise:

Many white Americans have lived under the assumption that if they worked hard, they would be rewarded. Now more white Americans are sharing unemployment lines with "those people" -- black and brown, Wise says.

"For the first time since the Great Depression, white Americans have been confronted with a level of economic insecurity that we're not used to," he says. "It's not so new for black and brown folks, but for white folks, this is something we haven't seen since the Depression."

The best response to Tim Wise is to quote him:

And in the pantheon of American history, old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms. [...]

So to hell with you and all who revere you.

By then, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it. [...]

Do you hear it?

The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.

Tim Wise hates white people, enough said.

James Edwards, host of the "Political Cesspool" radio show, isn't shy about naming those interests. He says white Americans have become the "dispossessed majority" and that coming demographic changes may turn the United States into a "Third-World flop-house."

Edwards, who is considered a white nationalist by the [$PLC], says whites must organize like other stigmatized groups.

"There is nothing wrong for Jewish organizations to promote the self-interest of Jews or black organizations to promote the interest of blacks," he says. "There is no organization to stand up to advance the interests of the dispossessed majority."

Those white interests have been compromised by what he sees as the "preferential treatment" blacks have received in the job market to compensate for slavery, Edwards says.

"Whatever mistakes might have been made in our pasts, they have not only been corrected, but they've been overcompensated for," he says.

Now whites are victims of pervasive racism, Edwards says.

"They're the victims of it every day. Anything a white conservative does that a liberal doesn't like is called racism."

Both Brimelow and Edwards reject outright the [$PLC]'s description of their organizations as extremist.

Japan: The Best or the Worst?

Commenter Martin B. pointed us to another piece by Rana Foroohar - in Newsweek, the publication recently sold for $1 - Japan: The World's Worst Economy. While Rana loves "the Japanese aesthetic, as well as the country’s art and music", she "wasn’t sorry to leave last week." Why? Apparently the Japanese have too many rules for her taste, rules of the sort that make being a foreigner there awkward. Anyway, Rana diagnoses Japan's malaise:

The simple answer is that they are stuck in old paradigms – the same political party has been running things for 50 years, companies can’t move on from their 1980s business models, demographics are dismal, and people are terrified of embracing new ideas (gadgets aside) and newcomers (immigrants make up less than 2 percent of the population, and aren’t encouraged despite a rapidly aging society).

It's difficult to see how any immigrants at all could add value to Japan, seeing as how the Japanese are about the world's most talented and successful people. For an immigrant to be a net benefit to the country, he would have to be some kind of superstar, and the countries that send most of the world's immigrants aren't exactly bursting with them. Perhaps Rana would like Japan to take a few hundred thousand Tunisians.

Meanwhile, Eamonn Fingleton writes on the myth of Japan's lost decades. By his account, Japan is doing well, with a high standard of living:

How can such facts be reconciled with the "two lost decades" story? I don't think they can. There is clearly a contradiction here, and after studying the facts on the ground in Tokyo for decades I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that the story of Japan's stagnation is a media myth.

Certainly anyone who visits Japan these days is struck by the obvious affluence even among average citizens. The cars on the roads, for instance, are generally much larger and better equipped than in the 1980s (indeed state of the art navigation devices, for instance, are more or less standard on many models). Overseas vacation travel has more than doubled since the 1980s. The Japanese boast the world's most advanced cell phones, and the biggest and best high-definition television screens. Japan's already long life expectancy has increased by nearly two years. Its Internet connections are some of the world's fastest -- something like ten times faster on average than American speeds.

Fingleton believes that the Japanese deliberately understate their economic growth. Contrast his account to Foroohar's all-too-typical account of Japan's stagnation, along with a recommendation that it take in more immigrants and get with the program of First World destruction.

Steve Sailer has often remarked that, absent immigration, Los Angeles would be "Seattle with sunshine". On a similar analogy, perhaps Japan is the U.S. without immigration, with a government that actually cares about its people and ensures that the country keeps its high standard of living.

Your Incredible Shrinking Paycheck

Your Incredible Shrinking Paycheck
Time.com

By RANA FOROOHAR

...The drop in wages occurs in part because unemployment rose so sharply and widely after the crisis and has remained higher for longer than in past recessions. Both factors have led to a disconnect between labor supply and demand that makes it tough for workers to negotiate better deals. Forget about driving a hard bargain with a new boss. Most of us feel lucky just to have bosses, and we work as hard as we can to keep them happy - as the productivity figures emphatically show. [...]

The best way to mitigate the fallout - which may include the rise of ugly populist politics - is to focus on social mobility.

Personally, I think that the author overlooked one of the main factors behind rising unemployment, and since the clue is hard to overlook, it must be obfuscation. The clue is the author's own name. With the increase in the number of people with names like Rana Foroohar, it's a race to the bottom in wages and employment.

Dear old Rana is worried about "the rise of ugly populist politics", but as always, ugly is in the eye of the beholder. What she really means is "white people asserting their still-majority status, along with making their ire at being race-replaced known". Because while every ethnic group but whites is allowed, even encouraged, to assert themselves and their grievances, when whites do it it's "ugly", which is actually a mild word compared to what we're usually called.

As Edwin S. Rubenstein recently showed, immigrants are displacing American workers at a record rate.

Over the past 12 months:

* The immigrant labor force (people working or looking for work) increased by 2.5%; the native labor force declined by 0.8%

* Foreign-born employment rose by 838,000; native employment fell by 48,000

* The share of foreign-born holding jobs rose 1.5%; the share of natives with jobs fell by 0.7%

* The foreign-born working age population rose 2.4%; the native-born working age population rose 0.6%—one fourth as fast.

This is the result of a well-orchestrated scheme of global labor arbitrage, meant to kill off the American middle class and reduce wages to Third World levels, enriching the global elite in the process.

Perils of Democracy

Gonzalo Lira, after a discussion of America's huge debt, deficit spending, and the monetization of the debt by the Federal Reserve, writes:

Yet for all these terribly depressing facts, here’s the rub: 

No one seems particularly concerned. 

It’s as if it were happening to someone else—it’s as if it were happening to the Canadians, not to America. The American people are taking the whole budget deficit thing so la-di-da that you would think that the entire country had dropped extacy in one giant, collective, “Don’t give a fuck about nuthin’ ‘cept dancing!” moment. 

Why is no-one concerned about this fiasco which is the Federal government’s budget? Why is everyone buying the patently ridiculous notion that the American economy will “grow its way to prosperity, and out of debt”? Why is no one freaking out over the incredible monetization of the Federal government debt that is being carried out by Ben Bernanke and the Gnomes at the Federal Reserve? 

I have a theory—unscientific, but I think it’s true: 

The American people have thrown in the towel. They collectively realize that the shit is gonna hit the fan big time. So in this little window of time before The Big Splatter, everyone’s pretending that nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine—we’re doing hunky dory, couldn’t be better. Any bad news—like the monster deficit? Ignored, blatantly. 

My theory, as unscientific as Lira's, is that Americans are simply not paying attention, at least beyond what they see in the mainstream media. And even then, Americans are far more interested in Charlie Sheen's latest adventures - admittedly pretty interesting - than in American fiscal policy.

But why aren't they paying attention? At least a couple of reasons come to mind: they've got their own lives to lead, or they don't think much could be done about it anyway, or at least some of them are too dumb to understand. Some may also believe that our elected leaders will solve these problems; that's why we elected them, right? That leads us to the agency problem: the interests of our elected government agents are not necessarily the same as our own.

As some evidence for the theory that many Americans are too dumb, here's Philip Greenspun:

It would not have occurred to me that Americans would actually want to pay higher taxes so that the Department of Motor Vehicles clerk could earn more than they do, or to work until age 75 to support a policeman who retired at 42 and moved to the Philippines, telling New York City to send his checks there (one of my helicopter students! He was up from NYC for a year or two while the taxpayers paid him to attend the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard). Yet this is the conclusion of a New York Times poll (story).