"Gaping Hole" Blown in Global Warming

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed. [...]

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

Will this new data - data, not a model - have much effect on the global warming debate? Incrementally, perhaps, but on the whole not much. There seems to be almost no other current debate whether in science or any other area of endeavor in which minds are as fixed as they are in the AGW area, and I include myself in that characterization. Two pieces of evidence prevent me from giving much credence to the alarmists: one, that it is well-known and obvious that the climate has changed radically over the course of the earth's history, whether man was present in any numbers or not; two, our current global elite stands to make huge profits out of cap-and-trade (link thanks to jmperry), their preferred "solution" to AGW, and besides, they fund the scientists doing the research. And that leaves aside any question whether the earth's current climate is some kind of optimum, which seems to me doubtful.

On the other side, the alarmists are just too convinced of man's essential evil towards the environment - lately, with the arrival of Gaiaism, to the earth as a whole - to listen to opposing arguments. To them, industrial civilization is a disease that must be cured, the earth must be "saved", no matter the cost.

Is the Demographic Shift Permanent?

Al Fin discusses whether the world is doomed by demographic decline and economic collapse. We know that in the developed world, birthrates have fallen and this has created worry for welfare states that depend on transfer payments to the retired and elderly. Economic growth as well seems to correlate strongly with population growth. Pro-immigration forces, including governments, often cite declining populations as a reason for supporting immigration. But what if the "demographic decline" were temporary, a sort of bump in the road?

There was no precedent for the massive rise in the populations of the developed world that started around 1800, just as there isn't one for the decline in birthrates we are now seeing. But as recently as the 1950s and 60s, it was the norm for families to have 3 or 4 children. Behavior changed, there were causes of those changes, and different causes can take their place. If austerity becomes a way of life in the West at least for awhile, women may lose a main source of employment in governments, and thus have more children. Likewise if the much-touted college bubble ever pops. Those are only negative developments, and society can also positively promote more births. The Patriarch of Georgia singlehandedly raised the country's birthrate by 20%.

Japan has been dealing with declining birthrates for some time now, and this doesn't appear to have diminished the determination of the Japanese to keep their country for themselves. The chart at Al Fin's shows that Russia's population today is about the same as it was in the early 80s. That constitutes a crisis?

Today on an investment blog I read, I came across this:

That’s one of the issues with a paradigm shift—at the beginning, you can’t tell if it is temporary or permanent. Around 1900, it looked like the US might supplant the UK as the world’s industrial power. That turned out to be lasting. Around 1990, it looked like Japan might supplant the US as the world’s industrial power. That turned out to be temporary. Around 2010, it looked like China might supplant the US as the world’s industrial power—and we have no idea right now if that is a temporary conceit or will become a permanent feature of the landscape.

Same thing with demographic decline: it's difficult to decide whether a paradigm shift is in process and we usually can't know until long after.

Dim Bulbs

It's Dim Up North, So People Need Bigger Brains

People from northern parts of the world have evolved bigger brains and larger eyes to help them to cope with long, dark winters and dim skies, scientists said on Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - People from northern parts of the world have evolved bigger brains and larger eyes to help them to cope with long, dark winters and dim skies, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.

It's not because they are smarter, however, but because they need bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels at high latitudes, the scientists said in a report of their findings in the journal Biology Letters.

"As you move away from the equator, there's less and less light available, so humans have had to evolve bigger and bigger eyes," said Eiluned Pearce from Oxford's School of Anthropology, who led the study. "Their brains also need to be bigger to deal with the extra visual input.

"Having bigger brains doesn't mean that higher latitude humans are smarter, it just means they need bigger brains to be able to see well where they live."

I had thought that any differences in skull - and therefore brain - size were the inventions of racist scientists. Stephen Jay Gould said so, after all, and no one was a greater authority in crypto-Marxist paleontology than he.

Here's the abstract from the original paper:

Latitudinal variation in light levels drives human visual system size

Eiluned Pearce* and
Robin Dunbar

+ Author Affiliations

Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK

↵*Author for correspondence (eiluned.pearce@anthro.ox.ac.uk).

Abstract

Ambient light levels influence visual system size in birds and primates. Here, we argue that the same is true for humans. Light levels, in terms of both the amount of light hitting the Earth's surface and day length, decrease with increasing latitude. We demonstrate a significant positive relationship between absolute latitude and human orbital volume, an index of eyeball size. Owing to tight scaling between visual system components, this will translate into enlarged visual cortices at higher latitudes. We also show that visual acuity measured under full-daylight conditions is constant across latitudes, indicating that selection for larger visual systems has mitigated the effect of reduced ambient light levels. This provides, to our knowledge, the first support that light levels drive intraspecific variation in visual system size in the human population.

Hmmm, visiospatial cognition:

When we look at a scene we feel that we perceive the visual world in all its detail and richness. This experienced quality and effortlessness of vision masks the fact that scene perception is actually a highly complex cognitive process, which requires the explorative scanning by eye movements, the quick and accurate direction of attention, the anticipation of the consequences of actions, and the integration of current visual input with stored representations of previously viewed parts of the scene and knowledge of objects and their relationships. A number of striking visual illusions demonstrate that scene perception is in fact a rather fragile process that essentially builds upon assumptions about the visual world to optimally piece together the observations taken across multiple fixations.

Whether higher visual acuity translates into or correlates with higher IQ I don't know. But visiospatial tests, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices, are part of IQ tests.

Obama Speaks to La Raza

President Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza yesterday. In his talk, he emphasized the fact that he and the Democrats are solidly behind granting citizenship to those who came here illegally and helping along the genocidal immigration policies directed at white and other native-born Americans.

President Obama said it's not him or Democrats who are holding up comprehensive immigration reform, it's Republicans. The president emphasized at remarks to the National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C. Monday.

"[F]eel free to keep the heat on me and keep the heat on Democrats. But here's the only thing you should know. The Democrats and your President are with you. Don't get confused about that. Remember who it is that we need to move in order to actually change the laws," he said.

Groups like La Raza or the NAACP are not only granted privileges denied white Americans, namely the ability to organize themselves to advance the agendas of their own racial/ethnic groups, but given strong encouragement from the nation's leader. AmRen can't even hold a conference without threats of physical violence, and it even looks like the Mencken Club may suffer the same fate. But a non-white ethnic organization whose aim amounts to nothing less than the takeover of much of the U.S. operates in full view and doesn't attempt to hide anything.

According to Joseph Farah, illegal aliens murder 12 Americans daily, with another 13 daily deaths due to illegal alien drunk drivers. Is "our" government doing anything about this? It's a joke even to ask.

Does Information Want to be Free?

Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old Harvard fellow, has been arrested for downloading over 4 million articles from scholarly journals. The irony, if that's the word I want, is that he was legally entitled to do so, by virtue of being at Harvard, which has paid access to JSTOR. While JSTOR has said they consider the matter closed, a federal prosecutor accuses him of "stealing".

What we're faced with here, in my estimation, is that JSTOR and the scholarly journals never expected access to their articles to mean 4 million downloads, and cried foul when it did. And, where do you draw the line: can you download an article and loan a copy to a friend? What if you have millions of friends?

The difference here between the file-sharing of music and that of academic articles - because Swartz's plans included the sharing of those articles - is that much scholarly work is publicly funded on the grounds that the research produced is a public good. Yet I reckon that over 90% of scientific and other scholarly articles are gated, that is, they want you to pay some fairly outrageous fee, say 30 bucks or more, to read that one article. So plenty of the researchers get funded by governments, including my own, and then their research ends up behind a paywall.

A number of journals use a different model, which is that of open access for all articles, but this requires that the authors pay page fees. But, since that can come out of a grant, it doesn't seem onerous. Other journals, such as those of the American Physiological Society, give open access after one year from the publication.

"Information wants to be free" is just another way of saying "I don't want to pay for it." But in the case of many if not most scholarly articles, they have already been paid for. What the solution is I don't know, but people like Swartz are going to make the paywall solution difficult if not impossible.

R.I.P. Lucian Freud, Painter of Ugliness

Lucian Freud, Figurative Painter Who Redefined Portraiture, Is Dead at 88.

Lucian Freud, whose stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates, splayed nude in his studio, recast the art of portraiture and offered a new approach to figurative art, died on Wednesday night at his home in London. He was 88. [...]

In paintings like “Girl With Roses” (1947-48) and “Girl With a White Dog” (1951-52), he put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordinary people — many of them his friends — stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist’s ruthless inspection.

From the late 1950s, when he began using a stiffer brush and moving paint in great swaths around the canvas, Mr. Freud’s nudes took on a new fleshiness and mass. His subjects, pushed to the limit in exhausting extended sessions, day after day, dropped their defenses and opened up. The faces showed fatigue, distress, torpor.

The flesh was mottled, lumpy and, in the case of his 1990s portraits of the performance artist Leigh Bowery and the phenomenally obese civil servant Sue Tilley, shockingly abundant.

The relationship between sitter and painter, in his work, overturned traditional portraiture. It was “nearer to the classic relationship of the 20th century: that between interrogator and interrogated,” the art critic John Russell wrote in “Private View,” his survey of the London art scene in the 1960s.

Freud, a painter of mediocre talent, has been predictably lionized by the critics and by the sycophantic SWPLs who follow the lead of critical opinion. His paintings sought to undermine any sense of meaning and beauty that ordinary people see in life, and which painters of the past thought it their duty to uncover and celebrate. His nudes were deliberately ugly, and even Freudian - see "The Painter's Daughter" (sic).

The larger lesson in Freud's career and the acclaim which elite critical opinion gave him lies in the importance that he and they gave to epater le bourgeois, to being "transgressive". Modern painting, like much of modern serious music, has become a vehicle through which the artist can express his disdain for the past, including the past's artists, and show his contempt for ordinary notions of beauty and order. Not for him the reason and balance of classicism, nor the exaltation of human emotion found in romanticism, nor even the nostalgia for a world gone by found in the moderns like T.S. Eliot or Joyce. For Freud and the other post-moderns, it has been all about reducing the world to meaninglessness and undermining confidence in civilization.

Revolving Door

I came across the claim that Bill Clinton is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars:

I truly believe Clinton could have turned things around after the Long Term Capital collapse, but Rubin and the other puppet-master bankers/oil barons/defense industry magnates already had their hooks too deep into the Oval Office. Ironically, and I'm not the only one out "there" to remark on this, it was during the populist Clinton's Presidency that the extreme and blatant corruption we see on Wall Street and DC seems to have accelerated. Hell, Clinton himself barely had a pot to piss in when he entered the White House and now he's worth $100's of millions. I don't recall that ever happening to Harry Truman...You think that Clinton "self-made" that wealth? LOL

That seemed an exaggeration, but it turns out not by much. As of 2010, The Atlantic estimates his net worth as $38 million. CNN Money has Hilary Clinton at $35 million. While it isn't clear to me whether there's been double counting between the two, whether it's $35 million or over $70 million, that's a lot of money for former humble public servants.

But of course they're not former humble public servants, but servants of Wall Street, the banks, and the rest of the global elite, who are rewarding them handsomely for their services. The Clinton's net worth is as much or more than the combined totals for both Presidents Bush.

Prediction: within 5 years of leaving office, the Obamas will have a net worth of more than $50 million.

Homeland Security Paints White Americans as Most Likely Terrorists

DHS Video Characterizes White Americans as Most Likely Terrorists (Thanks to Martin B. for the link.)

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A new promotional video released by the Department of Homeland Security characterizes white middle class Americans as the most likely terrorists, as Big Sis continues its relentless drive to cement the myth that mad bombers are hiding around every corner, when in reality Americans are just as likely to be killed by lightning strikes or peanut allergies. [...]

Despite encouraging viewers not to pay attention to a person’s race in determining whether or not they may be a terrorist, almost all of the scenarios in the clip proceed to portray white people as the most likely terrorists. Bizarrely, nearly every single one of the “patriotic” Americans who reports on their fellow citizen is either black, Asian or Arab. Imagine if the video had portrayed every terrorist as an Arab and every patriotic snoop as white, there’d be an outcry and rightly so, but this strange reversal must have been deliberate on the part of the DHS, but why? Is this merely political correctness taken to the extreme or is something deeper at work?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the DHS’ own internal documents list predominantly white conservative groups as the most likely terrorists, such as Ron Paul supporters, gun owners, gold bullion enthusiasts, and a myriad of other comparatively banal political interests that are largely the domain of white middle class Americans.

This has little to do with the color of a person’s skin, and everything to do with the fact that white, middle class Americans are the biggest roadblock when it comes to Big Sis expanding its control over every facet of American society.

Paul Watson is perhaps not being paranoid enough for the famously paranoid InfoWars, or he's decided to make his message more palatable by mixing in a little PC. The reason I say that is that "portraying every terrorist as an Arab" would be much closer to the truth, but Watson wants us to believe that that is every bit as ridiculous as portraying all the terrorists as white.

Watson goes on to emphasize the aspect of the government encouraging citizens (or just plain residents, because soon they'll likely want the immigrants to spy on the natives), which is of course bad enough. But the video is obviously more anti-white propaganda, this time brought to you not by the New York Times, not by CNN, but courtesy of your own government and funded by our taxes. If any more evidence were needed of the campaign to demonize whites and everything about them, including their culture and their history, here you have it.

Back Now

I just returned from a short vacation and found a few emails expressing concern for my whereabouts due to the fact that the blog appeared lifeless. Thankfully, it wasn't a flash mob that got to me. I set comments to "moderate" while I was away, but they've all been published now, and you may now comment at will. Blogging will resume shortly.

Thank you for your attention. Carry on.

PS: Or, as my correspondent said, comments are now set to "immoderate".

Dominance

Costs and benefits of fat-free muscle mass in men: relationship to mating success, dietary requirements, and native immunity. The abstract (I haven't read the full paper):

On average, men have 61% more muscle mass than women (d=3), a sex difference which is developmentally related to their much higher levels of testosterone. Potential benefits of greater male muscle mass include increased mating opportunities, while potential costs include increased dietary requirements and decreased immune function. Using data on males aged 18–59 years from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and including other relevant variables, fat-free mass (FFM) and/or limb muscle volume (LMV) are significant predictors of the numbers of total and past-year self-reported sex partners, as well as age at first intercourse. On the cost side, FFM and LMV are strong positive predictors of daily energy intake and strong negative predictors of C-reactive protein and white blood cell count, measures of native immunity.

Men who have greater lean mass get more chicks, is what they're saying. Shocking, since this scientific discovery confirms outdated, socially-constructed gender stereotypes. As an aside - again stating that I haven't read the full paper - the authors say that the same lean muscle mass that causes an increase in sex partners is also a "negative predictor" of C-reactive protein levels and white blood cell count as well as a positive predictor of calorie intake, and they put these on the "cost" side of the equation. Evolutionarily speaking, having to increase one's calorie intake to compensate for increased lean mass is a cost, but in today's world it means merely that those with more muscle mass will be better able to maintain a normal weight in the face of the obesity epidemic. As for C-reactive protein and WBC count, these are measures of inflammation, and many if not all of the modern diseases of civilization feature increased levels of inflammation as a mode of action. Scientists looking at heart disease risk, for instance, find that lower C-reactive protein correlates with less heart disease. WBC counts are higher in diabetics, for instance. All this means that in the modern environment of low infectious disease load but high inflammation, greater lean muscle mass would have less downside than in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, in my opinion.

One of the constant themes that comes up on sites that discuss game is the recommendation to take up weightlifting. It instills confidence, goes the refrain, and it not coincidentally raises testosterone levels. It's just one data point, but I can confirm that. Now, with the above study on lean muscle mass and sex partners, we can confirm another tenet of the manosphere: weightlifting is good for one's sex life. Undoubtedly it would also help those laboring under the state of wedlock.

Women might be hard-wired for submission, which would help explain some of the weightlifting and sex connection:

The majority of women have submission fantasies. From classic romance The Flame and The Flower to classic erotica The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty to Twilight BDSM fan fiction, submission themes are immensely popular in cross-cultural female erotica. The fact of the matter is that most heterosexual women are wired to find sexual submission arousing--and so are most female mammals.

So, as Roissy might say, science once again proves game to be correct.

HT: The Breviary.

Update: Reader Wolf sent me the full paper. One thing that should be made clear is that the study is not talking about bodybuilders; rather, the data comes from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), conducted from 1988 to 1994. If I'm not mistaken, this is the same survey used by Kanazawa in his notorious blog post on the relative attractiveness of black women. In any case, one oddity (at least to me) in the survey is that of some 12,000 participants, only 38% were "non-Hispanic whites", 29% were black, 28% Hispanic, and 5% other. There's some racial skew here such that if one race were more likely to show the results seen, we couldn't be sure how universal the results were.

In response to some of the comments, according to the paper, "women do report finding muscular men more attractive [references given] and also report that their most recent short-term sex partners are more muscular than other sex partners [reference], giving some credence to the reported differences."

Anti-Jihadism

Over at Jihad Watch is a story about Donald Rumsfeld being subjected to a pat-down by the TSA. Somewhat beside the point, the TSA should pat-down Rumsfeld, for at least a couple of reasons: one, no government official (or former official) should be exempt from policies that they put in place for the rest of us; and two, when someone like him gets the TSA treatment, it highlights the idiocy of the TSA and its policies.

But, what about anti-jihadism, as exemplified by Jihad Watch itself? Some people in the alt right / reactionary blogosphere have a low opinion of anti-jihadists, the reason being that they refuse to see where the real problem is, namely that it is our own Western elite and ruling class who preach the virtues of multiculturalism and, more importantly, allow mass immigration, including the immigration of Muslims. The Muslim nations of the world are generally military and economic non-entities, with some exceptions - for instance, Saudi Arabia is loaded with money, though it has little to offer but oil, and Pakistan has and Iran may soon have nuclear weapons. But that is irrelevant to what our leaders have imposed on us in the name of fighting terrorism: a draconian infringement on our freedoms, most specifically the right to be free from search and seizure without a warrant. Presumably the anti-jihadists would want only Muslims searched, but as far as I know they have little or nothing to say about immigration of Muslims. It's easy to see why: that would be racist, America is the proposition nation, and anyone wanting immigration restrictions, even of Muslims only, must be an extremist.

However, I do think that the anti-jihadists serve a purpose, and that is the persuasion of the great unpersuaded masses. I doubt that they make much of an impact, but the same could be said of people like me; but they are out there doing what they know how. One shouldn't forget that the official public doctrine on Islam in this country is that it is "a religion of peace", that terrorists are only a tiny minority of Muslims, that nothing in the doctrine of Islam itself conduces to terrorism or even prejudice against non-Muslims. So to the extent that the anti-jihadists convince the public otherwise, they're doing a service, albeit a small one within a larger context.

It could be argued that they hinder the wider recognition of multiculturalism and mass immigration and the war against the white nations as the real problems. But some people must first take baby steps.

LGBT History

Gov. Brown signs bill requiring teaching of gay accomplishments:

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday that makes California the first state in the nation to require the inclusion of the contributions of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans in school history lessons and textbooks.

The legislation addresses omissions in history books, according to Gil Duran, a spokesman for the governor.

[Updated at 1:07 p.m.: Brown issued a statement in which he called the legislation an "important step forward for our state.’’

"History should be honest,’’ Brown said. "This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books.’’]

Yes, history should be honest, so here's an honest question: just what are the important contributions of LGBT Americans? The only greatly accomplished person who was gay that I ever see mention of is Alan Turing - and he wasn't an American. Many of the rest of the allegedly gay, well-known, accomplished people seem to be made up, like Plato or da Vinci being gay, supposedly. Others would seem to be fashion designers or choreographers.

What we'll be getting is the gay equivalent of George Washington Carver: surely a worthy man, but who would never be mentioned in the history books but for the fact of his color.

Coming soon to a classroom near you: notable white accomplishments?

Patriots Hire Illegal Immigrants

Bloomberg Businessweek says that patriots hire illegal immigrants.

In the meantime, the millions of illegal immigrants already here must continue to live and work in the shadows, one false move away from arrest and deportation. Indeed, legislation in states such as Alabama and Georgia is moving toward treating not just illegal immigrants, but also those who employ them, as criminals. And yet if forced to do without illegal labor, vast sectors of the U.S. economy, from agriculture to construction, would founder—not to mention the putting greens infested by crab grass and the children who would run riot without care. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports legalizing undocumented workers who are “already contributing to our economy,” provided they don’t otherwise run afoul of the law.

At a time when the U.S. is in a depression and unemployment rates are around 10% - the U6 unemployment rate, a more comprehensive measure, is at 16% - those "vast sectors of the U.S. economy" that would allegedly founder without illegal immigrants ought to go quietly to deserved oblivion. Even so, didn't the U.S. have thriving agriculture and construction sectors before illegal immigration? My recollection is that it did, but that was back when a middle-class man could support a family on his own. The writer's noting that "even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports" legalization would be amusing if it weren't for his insult to our intelligence: as if the Chamber of Commerce weren't all for cheap labor.

What makes the political impasse over immigration particularly frustrating is that hiring an illegal alien is good for the illegal alien, good for the U.S. economy, and good for the country he or she comes from. So what’s not to like? In cases like this, there is only one moral course available for true patriots: Go find an illegal to hire. Huge numbers of people in border states are doing precisely that.

Let's see, what did he leave out, hmmm... oh, yeah, "good for Americans" is what he left out.

(HT: Malcolm Pollack. I would write more about this piece, but it's just the same old crap in a publication owned by a plutocrat urging Americans to dispossess themselves.)

African-Swedish Cabinet Minister Harangues Swedes - updated

The Swedes aren't dissolving their nation on schedule:

The Swedish government plans to boost sexual education in schools, announcing a 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) investment to expand the subject from biology classes into history, social studies and religion.

“It will give teachers the tools necessary to inspire to dialogue and reflection,” minister for integration and equality, Nyamko Sabuni, wrote in an opinion article in daily Dagens Nyheter (DN) on Tuesday.

According to Sabuni sexual education is still controversial in Swedish schools.

When the national TV network Sveriges Television (SVT) together with sexual educators RFSU showed a film called “Sex on the map” (Sex på kartan) in Swedish schools it met with strong reactions as a dark skinned boy was shown having sex with a lighter skinned girl, and because the film featured homo-, bi-, transsexual and queer issues.

According to Sabuni there is a growing frustration with harassment and violence being swept under the carpet in Sweden.

“Sexual education in Swedish schools is important from an equality perspective and in order to combat sexual violence, sexual harassment and other violating behaviour,” Sabuni wrote in DN.

Treating sex ed as solely a part of the biology subject makes it too narrow, according to the government, arguing that issues concerning gender and sexuality should be discussed within the framework of other subjects as well.

By integrating sex education into subjects like social studies, history and religion, the government is hoping to bring a discussion on equality to the forefront of Swedish education.

Nyamko Sabuni is indeed the Swedish "minister for integration and equality", and she believes that the fountainhead of sexual freedom, Sweden, just isn't doing enough in the sex ed arena. She and her colleagues want to promote even more feminism, homosexuality, and abortion so that the Swedes will un-breed themselves out of existence sooner.

I was going to ask how in the world an African woman became a Swedish cabinet minister, but undoubtedly lots of Swedes are proud to have made her one, as it shows their commitment to anti-racism (i.e. anti-whitism). Oh, and if the Swedes are concerned about "harassment and violence", they might consider doing something about Muslim immigration.

Walking tall, Swedish Minister for Integration and Gender Equality Nyamko Sabuni is dressed for the part, as she participates in the annual Pride Parade in Stockholm, Sweden, July 31, 2010.

A reader found another photo of Minister Sabuni. Link.

Putative Claims on the Southwestern U.S.

A commenter suggested that I write a post on supposed claims on the sovereignty of the southwestern U.S., since a certain other commenter keeps suggesting that Mexico has a moral and possibly legal claim on that territory.

At the time of Columbus, the American Southwest was occupied only by scattered bands of Indians. The Aztecs ruled the heart of Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest, and they were unrelated to any Indian tribes in what is now the U.S. Spaniards, that is Europeans, conquered Mexico in 1521, and millions of Mexican Indians died of disease over the following century. During the Napoleonic Wars, Spain found itself faced with revolution and rebellion from virtually all of its Latin American colonies, and Mexico itself became independent in 1821, following years of war. So, Spain had a sovereign claim upon Mexico, including those lands Mexico later ceded to the U.S., for 300 years. A well-known example of Spanish colonization in the Southwest is that of the California missions, designed to make literate, taxpaying Christians out of the Indians. The project was carried out over some 70 years, ending around the time of Mexico's independence.

From 1846 to 1848, the U.S. fought Mexico in the Mexican War. (The name now appears to be politically incorrect, since it's referred to as the Mexican-American War, but "the Mexican War" is how I learned it. This may be some evidence for my contention that America's most successful war (arguably) is the one now uniquely reviled as imperialistic and unworthy of our high-minded intentions, unlike the American Civil War.) By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico lost over half it's territory.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, by American diplomat Nicholas Trist and Mexican plenipotentiary representatives Luis G. Cuevas, Bernardo Couto, and Miguel Atristain, ended the war and gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, established the U.S.-Mexican border of the Rio Grande River, and ceded to the United States the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. In return, Mexico received US $18,250,000[48] ($461,725,000 today)—less than half the amount the U.S. had attempted to offer Mexico for the land before the opening of hostilities[49]—and the U.S. agreed to assume $3.25-million ($82,225,000 today) in debts that the Mexican government owed to U.S. citizens.[10]

So, Mexico as a sovereign nation controlled, albeit nominally, the Southwest for less than 27 years. It lost that sovereignty through losing a war and accepting a payment of the equivalent of several hundred millions of dollars.

Spain controlled the territory of the Southwest for around 300 years, and lost it through losing a war, the war for Mexican independence.

If Mexico has a claim to the Southwest, it lost it through war, and if war is somehow deemed insufficient to abolish a sovereign claim - though I know of no instances in which international law in which this is the case - then Spain arguably has a better claim. But, the fact is that the U.S. has controlled this land as sovereign for 163 years, and has peopled it and developed it.

Furthermore, present-day Mexicans are unrelated to those who were here before the U.S., and the American government recognized private land claims of the Mexicans who lived in the Southwest. They were not dispossessed. Even so, only some 7,000 Mexican households were to be found in what is now the American Southwest, i.e. about half of Mexico's total land area; it was very sparsely populated.

More interesting perhaps but outside the scope of this post is how allowing immigration from all over the world represents justice for the removal of Mexican sovereignty. On its face, it looks like just another method of sticking it to whitey.

Elite Bilingual Education

A NYT article about educational entrepreneur Chris Whittle and the opening of a new private school in Manhattan makes a big deal out of bilingualism.

Invoke some Tiger-mom fear by pointing out that 200,000 Americans are learning Chinese, while 300 million Chinese have studied English. [...]

The founders say students at Avenues will learn bilingually, immersed in classrooms where half of the instruction will be in Spanish or Mandarin, the other half in English, from nursery school through fourth grade. The school will be part of a network of 20 campuses around the world with roughly the same curriculum. If Mom and Dad move to London, little Mateo doesn’t have to find a new school, or maybe even miss any class. When Sophia is in middle school, she can spend her summers in Shanghai, and when she’s in high school, she can globe-trot by semester. Avenues will foster “mastery,” finding students’ passions early and building on them.

“Schools need to do a better job preparing children for international lives,” Mr. Whittle said. He and his team call themselves “fervent evolutionaries,” purposefully shying away from the r-word since, as they (now) acknowledge, most parents aren’t too keen to mix “revolution” and “my children.”

English just isn't going away any time soon as a world language. For children of the elite, i.e. those who most likely will be the majority at schools like this, English will be the only language they need to know. Business, science, even international aid organizations: for all these, the language one needs to know is English.

Spanish, while it might be useful for someone conducting extensive business with Central and South America, just doesn't have any other uses. A Spanish-speaking scientist or economist publishes his papers in English, and in any case, not that much original science or economics comes from that world. Chinese suffers from several drawbacks, such as the ideograms it uses instead of an alphabet, and the complexity that means anyone trying to master it will need years of study.

To be sure, other languages may replace English in importance, but I don't see that happening soon. The embedded nature of English as an international language in itself makes it hard to dislodge. There's also the era of machine translation, which is upon us. Spending years learning another language when a computer can do it makes no sense. It would be as if the use of slide rules were still taught.

So what accounts for the enthusiasm on the part of elite educators and parents for bilingual education? Maybe it's an exaggerated sense of the importance of the world outside North America and Europe. Or perhaps it's due to not wanting their children to be like those in flyover country, provincial and stubbornly clinging to English. The best candidate for a reason is that they're infected with the multicult virus, which denigrates our own culture and exalts others.

Left and Right

Bruce Charlton:

In the space of forty years the Leftist Utopia has gone from being a hippy commune of free love, dreamy drugs and idleness; to a politically correct society in which every thought, word and deed are monitored and regulated by bureaucracies that are assumed (on the Left) to be intrinsically benign.

The difference is not subtle: you'd have thought they might have noticed...

Related, I would say: in the space of 40 or so years, the Right has gone from a Goldwater-Reaganite doctrine of ensuring the freedom of Americans, to arguing with the Left on the proper size of the bureaucracy and entitlements for seniors.

And it has gone from Eisenhower warning about the military-industrial complex, to arguing for starting wars in obscure corners of the globe.

(Sorry for scanty content over these last couple days. Time constraints and all.)

Colonists

There's a major street-maintenance project in my neighborhood that has lasted several weeks, the task having been contracted to a well-known regional construction company. As I've driven by, I've been surprised at the relative paucity of Mexicans on the crew, which looks mainly white, with a few blacks and Mexicans.

In contrast, another neighborhood project is the major renovation of a subsidized apartment complex for seniors. On that project, virtually every worker that I saw was Mexican, and they're speaking Spanish, indicating that they were not born here and are likely illegal. (Especially since most are youngish, and the last amnesty was decades ago.) The supervisors and actual contractors are white; these are the guys employing the illegals.

The difference between the two projects probably lies in the fact that the streets are being redone by a major construction company, one that can't afford to be caught employing illegals. They would lose their lucrative government contracts. The other project employs smaller, local contractors, and they probably figure that they can get away with employing illegals. They're right, of course.

Walking by the latter project is an exercise in the observation of the imperialistic colonization of California, aided and abetted by both their own government and ours, as well as the quisling contractors who employ them. When I see dozens of Spanish-speaking workers on that project in what was formerly a well-paying occupation, it becomes a lot clearer why so many middle-class Californians have fled: Mexicans have undercut their jobs. These aren't jobs Americans won't do, not by a long shot; when I was young, it would have been only native-born Americans working at them.

Colonists they are, and as was the case with most colonists, the native-born aren't too happy to have them. Except, that is, for those who make money from hiring them. Sanctions against illegal aliens need to hit these smaller employers, and it would be nice if a lot of them ended with jail terms.

And you've got to hand it to the Greatest and Boomer generations: not only have they managed to send the country into bankruptcy through their Ponzi Social Security scheme, but they then get subsidized housing because their SS checks aren't big enough for the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed, and they help employ illegal colonists to refurbish their residences.

The Future of Propaganda

Over at In Mala Fide, RYU wrote Race-Based Predictions for the Future (redundant header, I can't resist pointing out; posted originally at Pat Hannagan's M4 Monologue). It makes for the usual depressing reading, but let's focus on just one of RYU's sections, since I briefly touched on this myself recently, namely "Demonization/Blaming of Whites Will Increase".

The prime example for this is South Africa and Zimbabwe. One would think that with the whites out-of-the-way, both would be twin paradises on Earth. African-Americans would be immigrating back to Mother Africa by the thousands.

Except it hasn’t happened that way. Both countries have doubled down their reparations and persecution programs. Zimbabwe has less than 40,00 whites left, and still Mugabe talks about the “white devils.” Malema in South Africa wants to nationalize the mines to help the poor blacks by robbing from the rich whites. South Africa’s super affirmative action program, the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and other reparations-based programs have not only continued to exist, but have been ramped up in intensity. This has succeeded in doing only two things: enriching the countries’ leaders and impoverishing the black population. Whites, even liberal non-racists, left in record numbers.

I had asserted that "racist" was a modern parallel to older terms of abuse used by fascists and communists, such as "parasite" or kulak". When Nazis and Soviets wanted to prepare a section of the populace to be the subject of extreme government action, including mass killing, they knew that they needed the support of large sections of the population. To this end, they issued propaganda to the effect that these groups, whether Jews or landowners, were engaging in various nefarious acts which required action on the part of the government.

In these times, racism is considered by government, mass media, and elite opinion to be one of the greatest sins, if not the greatest. (It's not hard to see why; race realism is ruled out as an option to explain disparate achievement and social pathology among groups, and equality of outcome is the ruling principle of government. Therefore whites must be demonized to explain reality.) Racism is caused by racists, so whenever one hears of racism, including the allegedly ubiquitous institutional form, that means racists must be found. Of course, racists no longer wear white robes; there are just too few of these people around to explain things. No, racism is caused by just about all white folks, unless they're in government or Wall Street or the media.

The history of whites has been demonized too. (RYU touches on this in "The Rewriting of History", but he mainly emphasizes the writing of minorities into great achievers.) The official narrative has the history of white, Euro Christians as one of unremitting imperialism, colonialism, racism, and even genocide. Given that history, it would be a wonder if any whites could escape their heritage.

All this, as whites steadily slide into minority status, will only get worse, because human biodiversity doesn't change quickly, and non-Asian minorities will continue to underperform - or overperform in the case of crime. (As RYU points out, governments in Zimbabwe and South Africa propagandize against whites more than ever.) More excuses will be manufactured, the main one being that somehow the minority of whites are still racist and still control too much of the economy.

Hormesis, Antioxidants, and Longevity

Extending life span by increasing oxidative stress, a new paper by Ristow and Schmeisser, examines the mechanisms behind calorie restriction and various other interventions that prolong life in experimental animals. (Thanks to Paul Jaminet for sending me the full paper.) The authors conclude that the free radical theory of aging is seriously wanting.

In simple terms, the reasoning goes like this. A scarcity of food causes an organism to upregulate oxidative metabolism, since this is more energy efficient. In turn, oxidative metabolism generates more free radicals, leading to a stress response that ultimately increases resistance to stress and increases longevity. This is basically the opposite of the free radical theory of aging, which contends that free radicals damage organisms and cause aging. Free radicals do cause damage, but the response of the organism leaves it more stress resistant. Call it the military school of aging: what doesn't kill an organism makes it stronger.

Why is this important? One reason is that it shoots down the free radical theory, which has been the most prominent theory of aging over about the last 50 years or so. During this time, the supplementation of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E and beta carotene, has been advocated, but it now looks like these may have the opposite of the intended effect, that is they might promote aging. Indeed, some epidemiological studies have found worse health and shorter lifespans in those who supplement with these.

Another is that it shows the importance of hormesis in longevity and provides an explanation for the effects of such diverse phenomena as calorie restriction, fasting, exercise, and carbohydrate restriction. Each of these causes a stress to which the organism responds by becoming more stress resistant.

For those interested in longer life and better health, keeping carbohydrate consumption low, intermittent fasting, exercise - especially of the high intensity type - and avoiding antioxidant supplements, should all be on the menu.

Another takeaway from all this is that the trend for taking antioxidants, which has been huge over the past 20 years or so, has very likely been all wrong.

How to Suborn a Nation

The following is from the beginning of an interesting paper by two Stanford University economists, How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru (thanks to a reader). The paper attempts to quantify the degree to which one man, the Peruvian head of secret police, saw politicians, judges, and the media as threats to the power of the regime which he served.

Peru [ed: like the U.S.] has in place the full set of democratic mechanisms: a constitution, opposition parties, regular elections, a presidential term limit, safeguards for the independence of the judiciary, and a free press. In the 1990s, Peru was run, in the name of President Alberto Fujimori, by its secret-police chief, Vladimiro [ed: bad sign, a secret police chief named after Lenin] Montesinos Torres. In the course of exercising power, Montesinos methodically bribed judges, politicians, and the news media.
Montesinos kept meticulous records of his transactions. He required those he bribed to sign contracts detailing their obligations to him. He demanded written receipts for the bribes. Strikingly, he had his illicit negotiations videotaped.
In what follows we use Montesinos’s bribe receipts and videotapes to study the breakdown of checks and balances. Montesinos and Fujimori maintained the façade of democracy—the citizens voted, judges decided, the media reported—but they drained its substance. We discuss how they went about undermining democracy: the negotiation and enforcement of the secret deals, the workings of covert authoritarianism.
Of the checks and balances that underpin democracy, which is the most forceful? We use the bribe prices to quantify the checks and balances. The size of the bribes indicates how much Montesinos was willing to pay to buy off those who could have checked his power. The typical bribe paid to a television-channel owner was about a hundred times larger than that paid to a politician, which was somewhat larger than that paid to a judge. One single television channel’s bribe was five times larger than the total of the opposition politicians’ bribes. The strongest of the checks and balances, by Montesinos’s revealed preference, was television.

I'd say that this paper lends some backing to those who decry the influence of the mainstream media. Whether it's bribes or advertising, the media serves those who pay for it. The media also won't disseminate anything that threatens the sources of their profits. The secret policeman Montesinos appears to have known full well that the media could be a huge influence on the matter of who gets to run a country, and nothing in the paper leads me to believe that the same doesn't apply to the U.S. Most obviously, the corporations that advertise want their labor costs to remain cheap, and so favor mass immigration, whether legal or not.

Another aspect of this is all the journalists, over 90% of whom are left-liberal, who have said that they went into journalism to change the world, or for the sake of "social justice", rather than because they wanted to report the news. Given their motivations, they made a good career choice.

Send Migrants from Israel to Australia

From The Jerusalem Post: Danny Danon: Send African migrants to Australia (thanks to a reader.):

Likud MK and Australian MP discuss "humane solution" for thousands of 'Muslim infiltrators' in Israel: Send them to live down under.

Talkbacks (6)   MK Danny Danon (Likud) asked Australian MP Michael Danby on Wednesday to propose, in parliament in Canberra, sending African migrants from Israel to Australia.

Danon and Danby discussed the issue during the Australian politician’s visit to Israel for the World Jewish Congress’s International Conference of Jewish Parliamentarians.

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“The arrival of thousands of Muslim infiltrators to Israeli territory is a clear threat to the state’s Jewish identity,” Danon told The Jerusalem Post.

“The refugees’ place is not among us, and the initiative to transfer them to Australia is the right and just solution.

“On the one hand, it treats the refugees and migrants in a humane way. On the other hand, it does not threaten Israel’s future and our goal to maintain a clear and solid Jewish majority,” he explained.

Danon said Danby enthusiastically agreed to present the idea to the Australian Parliament.

Danby was not available for comment, however, as he was in-flight on his way back to Australia.

According to the Knesset’s Research and Information Center, there were 35,638 migrants in Israel as of May.

Fewer than 1 percent are recognized by the UN as refugees.

Some 61% of the migrants – 21,748 people – are Eritrean, however, and categorized as members of a “temporary humanitarian protection group” by the UN, because they cannot be returned safely to their home country due to internal strife.

“Since Australia has a policy of accepting refugees and groups under protection, I would appreciate it if you could promote a solution in which Australia would accept those who seeking refuge,” Danon wrote in a letter to the MP from Melbourne following their meeting.

So, "the arrival of thousands of Muslim infiltrators is a clear threat to the state's Jewish identity", yet somehow Australia's identity isn't... wait, Australia doesn't have an identity, since it was founded and peopled by white, mostly British and Irish, Christian people. Australia has become the latest proposition nation, just a piece of land that's to be made available for anyone with the moxie to leave their own sh*thole countries and make it elsewhere.

Note that when these people, mainly Eritreans, are in Israel, they're "infiltrators", but when this member of the Israeli parliament wants to send them elsewhere, all of a sudden they've become "refugees" who need a humanitarian solution, one that Israel shouldn't have to provide them but which should be provided by a Western nation.

What was the whole point of the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia if not for these people to have a nation where they could live? They're not refugees, they just don't want to live in the Third World hellhole that they and their countrymen have created.

If Israel just can't handle anyone who isn't Jewish, which according to the the standards by which the West is judged is clearly racist, Saudi Arabia or Iraq or some other Muslim country would be much more appropriate. But of course the rulers of those countries aren't stupid enough to admit thousands of African illegal immigrants. The rulers of white nations obviously are.

I gotta hand it to MK Danon: he has the interests of his own nation at heart, unlike the rulers of Western nations. That Australian MP quoted in the article can't jump high enough to fulfill Danon's "request".

One more thing: commentators of the likes of Pat Buchanan or Kevin MacDonald often criticize Israel for alleged inhumane treatment of Palestinians, which is a tactic that has seemed to me destined to backfire, since the Pals aren't exactly the most sympathetic bunch around. But one can see in a case like this how richly deserving of criticism Israel is here: not willing to entertain the idea of illegal immigrants staying in their country, but all too eager to foist their problems on some other nation. As far as I'm concerned, let Israel keep them. And make sure they have adequate housing and support paid for by the Israeli people.

DSK to Walk?

Looks like the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is "near collapse".

The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.

I know you'll find this as hard to believe as I did, but the hotel maid, an immigrant from Guinea, who was formerly described as "deeply religious" - allegedly even hijab wearing - completely devoted to her daughter, and an exemplary employee, has been lying through her teeth, is involved with a drug dealer and money laundering.

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

In addition, one of the officials said, she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.

Yet another upstanding immigrant who has enriched the U.S. with the wonderful diversity of her native land.

If this case plays out as it now looks like it will, DSK is owed a huge apology from the media and prosecutors. Even if a rape had occurred, there's just no way that decent defense lawyers will leave the lying sack of s--t of a chambermaid with any credibility on the witness stand.