Despair Porn of the Alt Right

OneSTDV, in a post about modern commercial culture as exemplified by a couple of... commercials, writes:

In opposition to the despair porn of much of the alt-right, I've posited that a conservative renaissance lies unawakened within the masses, illustrated by anti-Obama rage and last year's Tea Party movement. However, the media, academia, and government inhibit the means by which these apprehensive conservative-leaning individuals find each other and, more importantly, discover the social sanction to express their anti-PC views. Commercials can do much to convince people that others like them exist, that others romanticize about a return to traditionalist America - the one we see in our parents' black and white photos and hear our elders reminisce about wistfully.

I'm not sure who he exactly has in mind when he writes of "the despair porn of... the alt right", but since I've seen comments around the 'sphere regarding this blog's alleged undaunted grimness, I'll see whether I can answer the charge.

Optimism or pessimism are states of mind and as such are facets of reality. That doesn't mean that these states, which are meant by their possessors to reflect a true state of the outside world, are themselves accurate, only that any attempt at an assessment of the true state of affairs in this country and the world must take them into account.

But, rather than optimism or pessimism, my impression is one of complacency and acquiescence, on the part of those whom we want to motivate, to the powers that be. The people of whom One writes, that is those that have the older values - patriotism mainly - are living in a fantasy land. They believe that a change of government to Republican leadership is going to make a difference, and that a resurgence of patriotic fervor can make the country what it once was. They don't understand the concept of a hostile elite, one that is diametrically opposed to virtually everything that the patriots want, whether the issue is gay marriage, affirmative action, or, above all, immigration.

The patriots don't see that the elite wants to replace them, that the elite is no longer comprised merely of the more successful of their countrymen, but rather is comprised of a class of people with just about zero loyalty or fellow feeling for those who are at least nominally their own people. The patriots, with all of their embedded anti-racism, fail to see that the importation of a new people is part of a strategy to divide and conquer, for the immigrants and their offspring are mainly on the side of the elites.

The old America celebrated in that advertisement that One likes so much is just about gone, and nostalgia for it won't make it return.

In the last thread, there was a debate about how much responsibility the people of a country bear for the mess that's being made of it. While the elites with their mind-controlling PC do make it difficult to see clearly and to oppose when necessary, I'm inclined to think that that isn't much of an excuse.

As for the pessimism of the alt right, until (mainly white) Americans decide to put away their play stations and their football obsession and their belief that electing Romney or Cain will change much of anything, that pessimism is fully justified. But I can only speak for myself.

Blair Celebrates His Role in the Downfall of Britain

Blair defends opening the door to mass migration and says it had a very positive impact on Britain

Tony Blair has defended Labour’s controversial mass immigration policy by claiming that Britain cannot succeed unless it opens its borders to more people from different backgrounds.

Blair is as irredeemably illiterate as so many of his fellow Brits these days, having no cognizance of the fact that Britain practically ruled the world before it was bestowed with the gift of vibrancy. He also seems to think that just because he's the former PM that we will all believe his blatant lies.

The former prime minister said it was 'right’ that the country was made up of different cultures and faiths mixing together.

"Right", n., whatever advances the agenda of the left, esp. concerning a genocidal assault on European and American people.

Mr Blair added that migrants had made Britain 'stronger’ and said those calling for greater curbs on foreigners entering the country were wrong.

"Wrong", adj., right. "Stronger", adj., weaker.

His comments come just days after official figures revealed that the population is expected to soar by the equivalent of a city the size of Leeds every year for the next decade.

A defiant Mr Blair insisted his party’s policy on immigration was the right one. He said: 'It’s been a very positive thing and there is no way for a country like Britain to succeed in the future unless it is open to people of different colours, faiths and cultures.’

Under Labour, up to 5.5million people born outside the UK arrived as long-term migrants.

His comments also came just days after it was determined that non-white immigrants and their "strengthening" offspring comprised a majority of those arrested in the recent massive riots all over England.

Up is down, black is white, diversity is strength, population replacement is an opening to the world: these are the lies that people like Blair tell on a daily basis and then expect that we'll believe them. The reality is the PC has most people so cowed that they won't question the lies, which is the very purpose of both PC and the lies.

The Indoctrination of the French

The video (thanks to a reader) describes the effort to indoctrinate French schoolchildren into the multicult. The announcer and several interviewees say that the new history textbook is an instance of political correctness gone mad, and while it is that, one can't expect anything else in a system that has imported millions of non-French who feel zero ties to France. PC is just a system of thought control to stop anyone from expressing truths or opinions that might be detrimental to the reigning powers. In this particular case, I assume that it's the French government that has promulgated the textbook, the same government that has allowed those millions of aliens to live in France.

While it's great that some people in France are fighting back, this is a problem that's not going away. At the root of it all is the false notion of what makes a nation, a true nation being one that is largely connected by ethnicity, language, and religion. So long as large numbers of the residents of France share none of these with the historical French nation, and with many of them being actively hostile to French civilization, the problem of how one teaches the next generation will remain.

Porn Is Addictive

An article in Psychology Today notes that "porn-induced sexual dysfunction is a growing problem". This problem is being seen in the form of erectile dysfunction in men as young as their early 20s.

Recent behavioral addiction research suggests that the loss of libido and performance occur because heavy users are numbing their brain's normal response to pleasure. Years of overriding the natural limits of libido with intense stimulation desensitize the user's response to a neurochemical called dopamine.

Dopamine is behind motivation, "wanting" and all addictions. It drives the search for rewards. We get little spurts of it every time we bump into anything potentially rewarding, novel, surprising, or even anxiety-producing.

So, porn is addictive at least in the sense that it causes habituation, i.e. a stronger dose is needed to cause the same effect as a lower dose did previously. This causes heavy porn users to lose interest in sex with a real woman, or become incapable of it.

Humans have learned how to intervene in the brain circuits that evolved to produce evolutionary desirable outcomes. Pornography, drugs including alcohol and nicotine, violent video games, junk foods that stimulate food reward, gambling, even successful stock trading: all of these stimulate dopaminergic neurons that cause pleasure. We thus get the pleasure without the outcome, or with radically altered and undesirable outcomes like ED and obesity. Also, the evolutionary-desired outcomes are short-circuited, in this case reproduction, although men's sexual desire isn't the bottleneck in the frequency of sex; it's women's. Even so, this wasn't predicted to be among the consequences to widespread availability of porn, so it remains to be seen what consequences flow from this in turn.

Ever since they've been able, humans have desired to do this. One theory of the origins of agriculture states that it was the desire to grow drug-producing crops that led to farming; opium and cannabis seeds are some of the oldest archaeological traces of agriculture.

One wonders how the ubiquity of porn plays into the current sexual dynamic. Do beta men tend to be heavy users of porn, and does end up making them even less desirable to women? Could one major characteristic of alphas be that they simply don't look at pornography, and thus retain a healthier sex drive?

Group Wants Buchanan Fired

The irony is delicious- that is, if you're a connoisseur of irony. Otherwise, it just pisses you off. A black advocacy group wants Pat Buchanan fired for, well advocating for his own people.

African American political advocacy group Color Of Change has called for MSNBC to fire longtime analyst (and even longer-time lightning rod) Pat Buchanan for what it called his "white supremacist ideology."

The advocacy group sent petition letters to its members on Tuesday. The letter said that MSNBC gives Buchanan a platform to pass off his often loaded remarks as "legitimate mainstream political commentary."

While Color of Change cited comments made by Buchanan from as early as March 2008, the advocacy group highlighted Buchanan's new book "Suicide Of A Superpower" and a Saturday appearance on the controversial radio show "The Political Cesspool" (whose host has described his ideology as "pro-white") as current reasons the network should fire Buchanan.

"Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the 'End of White America.' This weekend, to promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show..." read the "Fire Pat Buchanan" petition letter.

Buchanan also appeared on NPR's "The Diane Rehm Show" on Tuesday and further discussed his new book and radio show appearance on "Political Cesspool."

He defended his decision to visit the radio show and asked "Am I supposed to go and vet all the people on these shows and get the list from [Anti-Defamation League chief] Abe Foxman on what shows I can go on to?"

He added, "The individual was very interested in the race issue...but I wouldn't be on the program if somebody started calling racial or ethnic names. Or rather, I'd be on it, but I'd say that's the last time we're going on that one."

Buchanan also told Rehm that "the argument that diversity is a strength is a canard. It is nonsense."

Yes, Mr. Buchanan, I believe all guests are required to be vetted by Abe Foxman. Besides, you said that "diversity is a strength... is nonsense", and I believe the expression you denigrated is written into the Constitution, possibly in the 14th Amendment.

The group that wants Buchanan fired, Color of Change, says about itself:

ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America's political voice. Our goal is to empower our members - Black Americans and our allies - to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone.

They should have added, "... and to silence white people, for their job is to go quietly into that good night." Hey, black people have group interests, but any whites who voice a positive opinion about and interest in the continuity of their own people are just raciss'.

The Autism and Obesity Epidemics: A Connection?

As Yogi Berra once said, "You can see a lot just by observing."

Research proposes common link between autism, diabetes

"It appears that both Type 2 diabetes and autism have a common underlying mechanism -- impaired glucose tolerance and hyperinsulinemia," said Rice University biochemist Michael Stern, author of the opinion paper, which appears online in this month's issue of Frontiers in Cellular Endocrinology.

Hyperinsulinemia, often a precursor to insulin resistance, is a condition characterized by excess levels of insulin in the bloodstream. Insulin resistance is often associated with both obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

"It will be very easy for clinicians to test my hypothesis," said Stern, professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice. "They could do this by putting autistic children on low-carbohydrate diets that minimize insulin secretion and see if their symptoms improve."

Apropos of Yogi Berra's remark:

Stern said he first realized there could be a common link between Type 2 diabetes and autism a few years ago, but he assumed someone else had already thought of the idea.

So, what else has increased at about the same time and rate as autism? What other disorder is linked to diabetes? Obesity.

Just as it seems likely that there must be some link between the severe cultural changes of the past 40 years and the obesity epidemic, so it could very well be that there's a link between the obesity and autism epidemics (the link being diabetes), and in fact it looks so obvious in hindsight that Stern felt certain that others must have thought of it and discarded the idea.

If government recommendations to eat a low-fat diet were in any way causative of the obesity epidemic, then, talk about unintended consequences. Guess FedGov got more than it bargained for there.

BTW, here is a longish UPI article which notes the apparent absence of autism among the Amish - who also don't vaccinate their children.

Fareed Zakaria, American

Fareed Zakaria: Americans should give half of inheritance to government

Time magazine columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria says Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” tax reform plan is “sloppy and, in parts, bizarre.”

So he offered his own version of a tax reform plan in his weekly column in Time. In it, Zakaria argues that Americans should give the federal government half of what they inherit.

“I would enact a 50 percent inheritance tax, because nothing is more un-American than an inherited elite that perpetuates itself,” Zakaria wrote for the magazine.

Only in America: an Indian Muslim immigrant, who wasn't even a citizen until recently, is given space by Time and airtime by CNN to lecture Americans on what it means to be American.

Why should we care about what a two-bit pundit has to say about the meaning of America? Precisely because some of our fellow Corporate-Americans believe that his opinions are worth listening to.

In reality, nothing Zakaria says or does will ever make him an American. He's an outsider because he acts like one: virtually everything he says promotes the changing of America from what it traditionally was, and to some extent still is, into something else more to his liking.

Zakaria is a good example of one thing that immigration has done to this country. Rather than assimilate to American norms (whatever they are these days), Zakaria and other immigrant political entrepreneurs - Soros comes to mind - set about changing the nation in ways adverse to the native population. It all ends up like this: they end up lecturing you on the meaning and ideals of your own country, as well as telling you what you may or may not do with it.

"Prejudice" Against Mormons

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Christian Science Monitor asks, Why is it OK to be prejudiced against Mormons?

You can’t be openly racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic in America. But anti-Mormon? Go for it. Maybe a White House run by Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman will shine enough light on actual Mormons to make us put aside the fears and fantasies about them.

By Jonathan Zimmerman / October 18, 2011

I have a dear friend who grew up in Utah and teaches at a major east coast university. When she first arrived at her job, a colleague asked her if she was a Mormon. She said yes.

“But you don’t really believe that stuff, right?” the colleague said.

Imagine if my friend were Muslim or Jewish. In the liberal confines of academia, no one would ever inquire if she “really” believed in her religion: The very question would be offensive, because it implies that the religion is somehow unbelievable. But my friend is a Mormon, so people feel free to ask.

And that tells you all you need to know about anti-Mormonism in America right now: It’s a prejudice you can get away with. You can’t be openly racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic. But anti-Mormon? Go for it.

It’s thoroughly bipartisan, too. Amid the recent controversy over Republican attacks on GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, it would be easy to conclude that conservatives have a monopoly on anti-Mormon bigotry. But it would also be wrong.

If anything, liberals are more prejudiced against Mormons than conservatives are. In a poll last June by the Pew Research Center, for example, 31 percent of Democrats – as compared to 23 percent of Republicans – said they’d be less likely to support a presidential candidate if he were Mormon. And in a Gallup survey taken the same month, 27 percent of Democrats – as opposed to 18 percent of Republicans – said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon for president.

To put these numbers in perspective, only three percent of respondents in the Pew survey said they’d be less likely to vote for a candidate if he were African-American. The real fraction of racists is probably much higher than that, sociologists say, because respondents are afraid to reveal anti-black biases. But they’re not nearly as reticent to express prejudice against Mormons. And that, too, speaks volumes about which kinds of intolerance our society is willing to tolerate.

The conservative brand of anti-Mormonism often takes an openly theological form. Consider Southern Baptist minister Robert Jeffress, who recently introduced his friend Rick Perry to the conservative Values Voter Summit as “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ.” The comment was a backhanded swipe at Mr. Romney’s religion, implying that Mormons aren’t really Christians at all.

And later that day, in a discussion with reporters, Mr. Jeffress made it explicit. Mormonism, he said, was a “cult.” And come election time, Jeffress added, every born-again Christian “ought to embrace a Christian over a non-Christian” – that is, a Perry over a Romney. Never mind that the Constitution – which conservatives like Jeffress also revere – explicitly bars any “religious test” for public office.

Allow me to offer my commentary to Zimmerman's piece: Zimmerman is a maroon.

First of all, the idea that any sort of critical remark amounts to "prejudice" is an example of the brain-dead, stifling, PC-infused public square that we all know and love in today's America. Uttering "prejudice" in the face of criticism is mere;y a way top get critics to sit down and shut up, "prejudice" being the general category under which is subsumed "racism", a very bad form of prejudice. We might say that "a bigot is someone who's winning an argument with a liberal". Zimmerman's first anecdote, about his Mormon friend and the allegedly prejudiced things said to her, shows that he doesn't understand the difference between criticism and prejudice, or deliberately obfuscates it. That the academic in question wouldn't say the same to a Jew or Muslim only means that Mormons aren't protected under the current PC dispensation; they can't play the bigot card in return.

Then Zimmerman criticizes - or is this really just Zimmerman's bigotry - the Baptist minister Jefress for asserting that Mormons aren't true Christians and that he, Jefress, would prefer a Christian like Perry for president. Zimmerman goes on to say that Jefress was out of bounds for the reason that the Constitution prohibits a religious test for public office, as if that had any bearing on whom Jefress would prefer as president. That Mormons aren't real Christians is a standard opinion among evangelicals and probably lots of others; just because the Mormons claim they are does not make it so.

Besides their inability to play the bigot card, Mormons also suffer from their religion's modern origins, the same debility under which the Scientologists or other cults labor. The main world religions get a pass because their origins are shrouded in the mists of time, because they have been believed so long and are so embedded in the cultures of their respective lands, and in the case where majorities within political boundaries are believers, because, well, they're the majority. Therefore critics feel less free to criticize. Not so with Mormons.

All this is not to say that, in everyday life, one should not be polite. But in the world of ideas and politics, Mormonism is as just a legitimate target of criticism as any other idea.

McCain Threatens Putin, Assad, the Chinese

'Dictator' Putin May Be Nervous After Qaddafi Death, McCain Says

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other "dictators" should feel nervous after the death of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, U.S. Senator John McCain said.

"I think dictators all over the world, including Bashar al-Assad, maybe even Mr. Putin, maybe some Chinese, maybe all of them, may be a little bit more nervous," McCain said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. late yesterday. "It's the spring, not just the Arab spring."

Qaddafi was killed yesterday after an eight-month armed conflict that left thousands dead.

Putin, 59, a former KGB officer who has been in power since 2000, may be at the helm for as long as 24 years after deciding to return to the Kremlin next year by pushing aside his protege, President Dmitry Medvedev. This would make Putin Russia's longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

"I think it's very possible that you will see people protesting a government that is clearly one that is not democratic in a fashion that I think the Russian people had the hopes and aspirations for once the Soviet Union collapsed," said McCain, the Arizona Republican who was his party's presidential candidate against Democrat Barack Obama in 2008.

Well, one can imagine that if McCain said that to the face of Putin or Assad or one of the leaders of China, their reaction might be, "Is that a threat? It sure sounds like one."

After the ignominious role of the U.S. government in the killing of Qaddafi - there's now to be a UN inquiry, probably because it looks like he was shot at point blank range - high officials in said government like John McCain seem to feel free to go around and threaten leaders of nations with which we have no beef whatsoever, and with whom it would be much better to stay on friendly terms. The U.S. now seems to be the biggest global supporter of revolution, taking over for the late, unlamented USSR.

In the case of Libya, once protests started, the US and other NATO nations declared themselves justified to intervene militarily, resulting in the death of Qaddafi. So, if protests break out in Russia or China, the wisdom and big mouth of McCain hint that we might do the same in those countries. There have already been protests in Syria but, since we're not on friendly terms with Assad, we seem to be letting him off the hook. Such is the perversity of our foreign policy that only our friends need to worry about us.




Hillary is 100% behind the killing of foreign leaders too. (Video hat tip: Richard Spencer.)

The Capitalist Network That Runs the World

New Scientist: Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs). [...]

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

A big problem of the 2008 financial crisis was the so-called "too big to fail" (TBTF) banks, and as can be seen, they are virtually all on the list of globally interconnected companies. Once a bank or other financial institution becomes TBTF, the risks arising from its failure affect the entire financial system and economy. Therefore it would be better if no financial institution becomes TBTF.

Of the top 50 companies on the list, it appears that fully 49 of them are financial institutions: banks, insurance companies, investment banks, and the like. It's a common criticism to say that the finance sector does no "real" work - unlike, say, China Petrochemical Group, the number 50 company on the list. It's possible that the financial sector has grown too large, but one can't say a priori how big it should be.

However, concentrations of wealth and ownership have the power to affect political considerations, including the consideration to further line the pockets of the already wealthy. If these institutions were kept smaller, as part of a deliberate calculation, the possibility of corruption would be lower.

Woman Demands and Gets Rescue from Antarctic Job

A woman "engineer" - in reality she appears to be an administrator, i.e. she was doing typical woman's work - demanded and got a rescue operation to get her out of the South Pole. The folks in charge of the station hadn't wanted to rescue her, as it's winter down there, and travel back and forth from the Pole is exceedingly dangerous for all concerned. In other words, something in the nature of a plane crash could kill the whole crew, therefore anyone who goes to the Pole must have at heart the interests of everyone concerned.

From the article, it doesn't appear that this woman is very ill:

"Back at hotel now to chill out," Douceur wrote. She added, "So nice to see green and smell freshly cut grass, flowers, birds chirping, insects, etc., since it's now been over a year on the flat polar plateau of just ice and snow." She landed in Christchurch on Monday.

Douceur, 58, is a Seabrook, N.H., resident who worked as a manager for research station contractor Raytheon Polar Services Co. She asked for an emergency evacuation after having what doctors believed was a stroke in August, but officials rejected her request because of bad weather, saying that sending a rescue plane was too dangerous and that her condition wasn't life-threatening.

Looks like the officials were right that her illness isn't life-threatening, not if she's "chilling out" at a hotel.

If you do a search on this woman's name, you quickly find a number of sites that popped up to pressure officials to rescue her, for instance this one, in which the writer paints the engineer as a victim of (presumably male) oppression:

We were successful in getting her the small things that were being denied to her and we couldn’t have done that without your help. [...] Our little voice was heard worldwide and we made a little dent into big corporational “NO” bucket. When they kept saying no, we made ourselves a little louder and we got some Yes’s. Thanks again!

Wonder what they would have said if the plane had crashed killing all aboard. There's also, of course, a Facebook page making the same demand, Evacuate Renee-Nicole Douceur from Antarctica Immediately.

Feminists constantly whine that women don't make as much money as men. But from Fukushima to the bowels of the earth, men take the most dangerous jobs. Over 90% of workplace fatalities are that of men.

If they can't take it like a man, then they shouldn't be there.

State of the Science?

This must be some sort of bad joke:

The Research on Supplement of Glutamine in Sports
Dunhai Wang, Yubo Han and Ancun Jiao

Abstract
By the method of documents and datum, This article describe the characteristics of metabolism of Glutamine and its physiological function. Its discuss the impact of exercise performance on Glutamine and the impact of exogenous Glutamine on improving exercise performance. The supplementary of Glutamine is very important in some area,such as antioxidant capacity for the body, immune function, measure the over-training, enhance hormone levels and other aspects. This article offers references for researching the application of Glutamine in sports.

This is obviously written by the authors themselves, or someone like them who isn't fluent in English, and also obviously not given a jot of editing, yet it's published by Springer, a respected scientific publisher. Are scientific publishers just throwing things up on their websites, sans editing, these days? Was this thing reviewed in any form whatsoever? And, what's behind its publication in a journal called "Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing"?

The mind boggles.

Bump in the Road to Globalism

Pat Buchanan - who apparently can't get booted out of the national conversation due to, what, tenure? - asks whether the NWO is unraveling:

Why is the New World Order suddenly going in reverse?

A primary reason is the resurgence of nationalism. Nations are putting national interests ahead of any perceived global interests.

A second reason is the decline of a West whose project this was. We no longer dictate to the world, and the world no longer marches to our tune. The deficits and indebtedness of Western nations preclude more of the big wealth transfers in foreign aid that once bought us influence.

A third reason is demography. Not one European nation has a birth rate sufficient to replace its population. Europe's nations are aging, shrinking, dying. A depopulating Germany cannot carry forever the deficit-debtor nations of Club Med. The oldest nation, Japan, is on schedule to lose 25 million people by 2050, as is neighbor Russia.

Militarily, America remains the most powerful nation. But Iraq and Afghanistan have bled the country and left us without the certain attainment of our goals. Old allies like Turkey go their separate ways.

Ethno-nationalism also explains a disintegrating world order. Aspiring nations like Scotland, Catalonia, Padania, Flanders, Ingushetia, Dagestan, East Turkestan, Kurdistan and Baluchistan seek a place in the sun, free of the cloying embrace of the mother country.

The desire of peoples for nations all their own, where their own language, faith and culture predominate and their own kind rule to the exclusion of all others, is everywhere winning out over multiculturalism and transnationalism.

The architects of globalism have counted upon one major item to further their project along: prosperity. In the West, while declining religious belief and the rise of feminism and divorce - the latter two closely related of course - have led people away from two traditional sources of stability and loyalty, rising prosperity has been available to keep the people content. Much of that prosperity has been due to rising levels of both public and private debt - in other words, a lot of the prosperity has been phony. But love of money has a way of overriding other concerns, so most people and nations have gone along.

But, I would say that the quest for the NWO has much in common with the quest for an egalitarian society. Society can't be remade according to the leftist model because people differ in their abilities and their pathologies, which are largely hardwired. And the New World Order is experiencing difficulties because declining prosperity means that people are more willing to fall back onto ancient loyalties, such as nationalism.

Since culture flows from human nature, and it's human nature to want to live in a nation that is controlled by people who share the most basic qualities - race, language, and religion, mainly - until the globalists abolish human nature or guarantee rising and universal prosperity, their project is in danger.

Ignorance of human biodiversity results in a society full of lies, much like the old Soviet Union. Ignorance of the ethnonationalist impulse results in a New World Order in trouble. They probably should have thought this through a bit more.

Heartiste recently noted a list of cultural items that America has been promoting for export:

obesity
feminism
multicult
ethnomasochism
wage gutting insourcing/outsourcing
parasitic oligarchism and
self-abnegating national suicide

These products and byproducts of the globalist initiative are beginning to make some of the recipients gag.

The U.S. vs. Christians in the Middle East

A post by Raymond Ibrahim discusses (and dismisses) a rumor that Hillary Clinton had promised to intervene in Egypt on behalf of the Copts, who have suffered many deaths and other massive abuse at the hands of Egyptian Muslims.

Any American must instinctively recognize such rumors as false: our political leaders do not say or do such things. But alas, some Christians in the Middle East, who have no direct experience of the West, still think of the U.S. as a "Christian" nation that will surely empathize with their plight and take action—hence why this rumor began and resonates.

Yeah, well, once upon a time, but this is now.

Ibrahim goes on to mention killings and other human rights abuses of Middle Eastern Christians. Lo and behold, most of these are in precisely the places where the U.S. has intervened in some form or another to promote democracy: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Egypt. Pakistan, another buddy of ours, appears intent on catching up to the others.

So, it appears that, just as the U.S. intervenes through its ambassadors to promote anti-nationalism in Finland or Sweden, Islam and the multicult in France, and gay pride parades in Serbia, so does it intervene in the Middle East with the end result of pogroms against people who at least nominally share our beliefs.

In the old days of the waning of the Ottomans, the Western powers looked upon themselves as the protectors of Middle Eastern Christians, with each power having their particular favorites, e.g. the French looked after the Maronites, the British the Middle Eastern Protestants, and the Russians the Orthodox. Now, we have the perverse situation of our own government undermining peoples with whom we ought to have some common ground.

The neo-Bolshevist state strikes again.

Bloomberg at it again

NYC Mayor: U.S. Needs More Foreign Tech Talent

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the U.S. is committing "national suicide" by limiting the number of green cards and visas available to hi-tech talent from overseas.

"In today's global marketplace, we cannot afford to keep turning away those with skills that our country needs to grow and to succeed," said Bloomberg, at a speech sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Partnership for a New American Economy. "I've called it national suicide--and I really think it is."

Bloomberg cited a number of studies that he said showed that immigrants working in hi-tech fields help to create jobs for Americans through investments, entrepreneurship, and by helping U.S. companies become more competitive globally. "These high-skill workers will not only help create thousands of jobs, they'll also give us knowledge of foreign markets that will help U.S. businesses increase their exports."

Bloomberg might think he's convincing some of his audience with his emphasis on immigrants skilled in technology, but the record also shows that he's in favor of illegal immigration, the better to keep golf courses neat and tidy without having to pay an actual American a decent wage.

Even so, the notion that we should be importing tens of thousands of foreigners because it will help the jobs situation, in the face of 10% unemployment, is ludicrous. About now, plenty of highly-skilled Americans would be willing to take those golf course jobs.

Face it, Bloomberg doesn't care about jobs, that's only his excuse. He's merely a perma-fan of mass immigration, and none of the facts on the ground will ever change his mind.

The Cultural Revolution and the Obesity Epidemic

A recent paper by a couple of economists, The Socio-Economic Causes of Obesity, shows how clueless are the mainstream theories of obesity.

Abstract:
An increasing number of Americans are obese, with a body mass index of 30 or more. In fact, the latest estimates indicate that about 30% of Americans are currently obese, which is roughly a 100% increase from 25 years ago. It is well accepted that weight gain is caused by caloric imbalance, where more calories are consumed than expended. Nevertheless, it is not clear why the prevalence of obesity has increased so dramatically over the last 30 years. We simultaneously estimate the effects of the various socio-economic factors on weight status, considering in our analysis many of the socio-economic factors that have been identified by other researchers as important influences on caloric imbalance: employment, physical activity at work, food prices, the prevalence of restaurants, cigarette smoking, cigarette prices and taxes, food stamp receipt, and urbanization. We use 1979- and 1997-cohort National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data, which allows us to compare the prevalence of obesity between cohorts surveyed roughly 25 years apart. Using the traditional Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique, we find that cigarette smoking has the largest effect: the decline in cigarette smoking explains about 2% of the increase in the weight measures. The other significant factors explain less.

Most of the factors mentioned and tested are other versions of the "calories-in, calories-out" thesis of weight gain, which has been pretty much demolished. For instance, taking into account the level of food prices assumes that if food is cheaper, people will eat more; and that more urbanization equals less exercise. Both of these ideas don't consider that more exercise normally translates into increased appetite and thus higher food intake, or that lower (higher) food prices don't increase (decrease) people's appetites. The fact that all other factors besides cigarette smoking account for less than 2% of the explanation would agree with this.

The obesity epidemic started around the mid-70s, and it will not escape notice that this was also around the beginning of enormous cultural changes in the U.S. and the world. That the U.S. has been among the leaders in the epidemic and that other countries, such as in Europe, have lagged slightly might also indicate a cultural influence, since the U.S. has arguably been in the lead (so to speak) in cultural changes. The changes I have in mind are feminism, the rising divorce rate, increased labor participation of women, broken families, increased commuting times, and others.

All of these have led to a huge increase in consumption of fast food. Food dollars spent in restaurants as a percent of total food purchases increased by 31% between 1977 and 2006.

The food reward hypothesis of obesity says that certain foods, the so-called cafeteria diet, in other words, fast food, stimulate certain brain reward centers and thus reinforce their intake.

So, fast food might be the direct cause of the obesity intake, but it's our broken culture that brought on the increased availability of and demand for fast food. By now, however, lots of people are essentially addicted to the stuff, so even were the culture to return to civilized norms, the epidemic wouldn't likely go away. But a return to these norms might be a prerequisite to abolishing the epidemic.

Illegals Fleeing Alabama

Ala. Immigration Law Worries Latino Parents. What NPR should have said is "Immigration Law Worries Lawbreakers"; but in any case, thousands of illegals have fled or are apparently in process of fleeing Alabama, thanks to the new immigration law, which the Feds have generously decided that the state is allowed to have.

As Audacious Epigone (whence comes the link) also points out, when Eisenhower carried out Operation Wetback in the 50s, up to eight times as many illegals self-deported as were forcibly expelled.

So, this gives the lie to the notion that the U.S. either lacks the capacity to deport illegals, or would be breaking down doors at dawn to do so. Make conditions inhospitable to illegals, and many if not most will leave of their own accord.

It seems to me that the states are where the anti-immigration action will be. Mississippi may well be the next state with a tough anti-illegals law. If other states see an increasing number of illegals entering after leaving the states with tougher laws, they too will want to enact their own laws.

Avoiding Hedonism

A lot of the game/manosphere blogs discuss "lifestyle" choices under the new sexual dispensation, the one that has made a mockery of marriage and has turned the beta provider role for men into one with a high probability of becoming a loser to alimony and child support, enforced at the barrel of the family court gun.

Most of these lifestyle choices revolve around travel, living abroad, "adventure", going where the women aren't of the masculinized and overweight type that's increasingly typical of American women. The choices also involve skipping the 9 to 5 cubicle culture of deadening boredom and kowtowing to the HR ladies, sucking up to the boss, etc.

But there's got to be a better way. While I'm mostly in agreement that the man who wants to get married and have a job ought to tread very carefully across the landmine-strewn field of marriage, feminism, divorce, and tax theft, the alternatives as set forth across the manosphere seem pretty unappealing to this blogger. Sitting on a beach? Yeah, I could do that for a few days, after which it would get old in a hurry. Clubbing? Nah, a pursuit for young (under 25) guys. Travel? Been there, done that, in spades.

One needs a sense of purpose in life, one that goes beyond the pursuit of pleasure, and I don't see that taken very seriously by these blogs. To each his own of course, but hedonism is a vapid ideology in which pleasure must run ever faster just to stay in the same place. There also seems to be little acknowledgement of the life of the mind, something important to many of us. And what of fighting for one's beliefs?

Avoiding the pitfalls of the modern scene while also avoiding dissolving oneself in the aimlessness of hedonism: that is the question. Finding one's purpose is all-important.

America Under Siege

The image comes from Michael Panzner, who highlights a recent report, Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment (pdf). From the report:

During the past two years the state of Texas has become increasingly threatened by the spread of Mexican cartel organized crime. The threat reflects a change in the strategic intent of the cartels to move their operations into the United States. In effect, the cartels seek to create a “sanitary zone” inside the Texas border -- one county deep -- that will provide sanctuary from Mexican law enforcement and, at the same time, enable the cartels to transform Texas’ border counties into narcotics transshipment points for continued transport and distribution into the continental United States. To achieve their objectives the cartels are relying increasingly on organized gangs to provide expendable and unaccountable manpower to do their dirty work. These gangs are recruited on the streets of Texas cities and inside Texas prisons by top-tier gangs who work in conjunction with the cartels. [...]

America’s fight against narco-terrorism, when viewed at the strategic level, takes on the classic trappings of a real war. Crime, gangs and terrorism have converged in such a way that they form a collective threat to the national security of the United States. [emphasis added]

It's long been my view that this is exactly the sort of thing that will finally cause some measure of enforcement against illegal immigration. If the U.S. is to remain an ongoing entity, even one that is safe for globalization, big business, and Wall Street, it can't allow foreign criminal gangs to operate in its territory. Absent even that, the American people (or what's left of them) will demand that the government take action. Just in the news today was the first arrest under the new Alabama immigration law, you know, the one that Eric Holder and Barack Obama want quashed post-haste. And guess what? He isn't working mowing lawns or washing cars; he's Mohamed Ali Muflahi, a 24-year-old from Yemen, and the report also states that "illegal weapons and other items deemed dangerous" (explosives?) were seized. This is the sort of immigrant that our admin wants America made safe for.

Occupy Wall Street: Just Leftist Nonsense

Those who may be tempted to sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations - possibly a fair number of readers - should take a look at a "proposed list of demands for Occupy Wall Street movement" (via Malcolm Pollack). A sampling:

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy. [emphasis added]

Like radical environmentalists - green on the outside, red within - Occupy Wall Street has another agenda than the one they say they have. Ostensibly protesting Wall Street's unreasonable influence with the government, a position even Ron Paul supporters could get behind, what they're really after is the full slate of leftist demands. If these people really wanted jobs, they would demand that open borders, which we essentially already have, should be stopped. But it appears that the elementary notion of supply and demand is lost on them. Those expensive college degrees were even more worthless than they thought.

An anomaly of Occupy Wall Street is that its demands are congruent with Wall Street itself: privatize profits, socialize losses. The sign that was held by one protester has already become iconic:

At 21 years old, I am...

-One semester from graduating college with a degree no one seems to hire

-In massive debt because of that once "dream degree"

-About to become a mother to a baby whose illness has gotten us booted off government health insurance...at 9 months pregnant...

-Scared for our future

-I am the 99%-

One can assume that if this woman had real prospects in the job market, she would be more than willing to keep the added income for herself, but since she faces a dire future, she wants the rest of us to help her out of her problems. Since she's about to have a baby, won't her husband support the family? But of course she probably doesn't have one, and wants her fellow Americans to support her bad life decisions. What was that degree in anyway? Women's Studies? Educational Leadership?

Blue Zones and Ethnic Identity

Demographers have given the name "blue zones" to those areas of the earth in which people live to a much greater age and where centenarians are much more common. The term "blue zone" has, as far as I can tell, no intrinsic meaning - in other words, the color blue has nothing to do with longevity - but seems to have been used for the first time in the following paper: Identification of a geographic area characterized by extreme longevity in the Sardinia island: the AKEA study. The paper's authors found a region in Sardinia with a high incidence of centenarians and furthermore, one in which there were many more male centenarians as a fraction of the total than either in other parts of Sardinia or elsewhere.

Dan Buettner worked with National Geographic to identify the world's blue zones, those areas where centenarians existed in numbers ten times that of the U.S., and found five of them:

Okinawa, Japan
Sardinia, Italy
Loma Linda, California
Nicoya, Costa Rica
Ikaria, Greece

By studying what these areas had in common, Buettner came up with a list of 9 rules that make for greater longevity. Some of them are concerned with diet and exercise, others with stress reduction and purpose. However, a few of the rules are not easily reproducible. These include:

7. Family First

Living in a thriving family is worth a half a dozen extra years of life expectancy. Invest time in your kids, nurture a monogamous relationship and keep your aging parents nearby.

8. Belong

Recommit, reconnect or explore a new faith-based community. It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist. People who show up to their faith community four times a month live an extra 4-14 years.

9. Right Tribe

Your friends have a long-term and measure impact on your health and longevity. Taking stock in who your friends are and expanding your social circle to include healthy-minded, supportive people might be the most powerful thing you can do to add years to your life.

Now, it's been often noted that black Americans have high self-esteem, higher than whites. It's thought that they have higher self-esteem due to ethnic identity:

Young blacks might experience slightly higher self-esteem overall because they often have a strong ethnic identity, while many young whites do not, she said.

Not only do they have that ethnic identity, but blackness in the present era is celebrated in the media, while the social pathologies in the black community are downplayed.

White ethnic identity is not only not celebrated, but is condemned. So what effect might that have on white longevity? Nothing good, would be the short answer. The government and media campaigns against white identity, the demonization of any form of white ethnic awareness, probably affect the health of white people, through psychological mechanisms. The people of the blue zones live longer in large part through a strong ethnic, religious, and family identity, which are denied white Americans. The fact that Christianity is largely ridiculed in public probably has its effect as well.

It also almost goes without saying that this goes double for white men, who are ridiculed in the media, and whom modern divorce and child custody laws often rip apart from their families.