National Review Advocates Committing A Crime To Stop Donald Trump

Comment: This seems like a pretty big deal to me. National Review has published an article by John Fund that urges Republican delegates to commit a misdemeanor in order to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination:

“If Donald Trump won’t release his tax returns prior to the GOP convention, the delegates pledged to him on the first ballot should abstain from giving him their votes. Other than their vote not counting, there are no realistic consequences for any delegate doing so on the first ballot. A few states make breaking the first-ballot pledge rule a misdemeanor, but no one is ever prosecuted. In theory, state leaders could exact political retribution but such discipline is rarely exercised.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432326/donald-trump-tax-returns-must-be-released?target=author&tid=902877

National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, presumably approved this for publication.

I realize things are getting crazy on the donor side, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around this: National Review just knowingly advocated the commission of a crime in order to subvert the democratic process. It couldn’t be real … but it is! It really happened. That’s a big deal, isn’t it? Over its history NR has fired writers and editors for much less.

Because it’s an iSteve world, Fund’s author bio at National Review is hilarious:

“In 2004, he wrote Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. He has written two books with Hans von Spakovsky: Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

http://www.nationalreview.com/author/john-fund

Posted in Donald Trump, National Review | Comments Off on National Review Advocates Committing A Crime To Stop Donald Trump

Indians Are Nice

AP: “In its request for consultation, India alleges the U.S. had increased fees for temporary visas in December, officials said. It argues that as a result, some Indians receive unfair treatment compared with Americans in the United States in providing similar services in sectors like computer services.”

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Indians in India are nice, but there’s a reason progress is slow in India. It’s a low-trust, high-talk, all-time-politics, nepotistic, low-do culture.

* I’ve now worked in several places that go out of their way to hire H1Bs, usually Indian but not uncommonly Chinese. The main reason for hiring these people directly is that they are effectively indentured servants. To stay in this country and eventually get trhe coveted green card they must keep theit H1B employer happy. They will do anything to keep the visa including working uncompensated hours until late into the night and weekends.

Some are decent tech workers. Most are only semi-competent. Their employers rely on a small cadre of retained, native-born and educated workers to debug and correct all but the most obvious problems. higher level work beyond simple coding and support is almost invariably the purview of the native-born cadres. Employment contractors, like the notorious TaTa and various domestic exploiters like Covansys, Deloitte and Touche, etc., make a mint by over-rating their H1Bs, getting them high paying jobs that they cannot handle, and reaping enormous profits from fees and grossly overpriced G&A and Overhead charges. They don’t care whether the workers supply can do the work.

It’s a particular issue in state government work. US native-born tech workers are screwed over three times: (1) Their jobs are stolen from them by unqualified foreigners; (2) They wind up training and supporting these foreign workers; (3) Tax payers are stuck paying inflated wages for incompetent and destructive employees w ho have no investment in their work or the citizens they supposedly serve.

Meanwhile, the US pipeline of STEM workers is closing down as native-born students interested in these fields see that their is no future for them if they continue in STEM. If they do follow their interest, by the time they’re thirty they’ll have trained their incompetent H1B replacement and taken their place on the unemployment line behind their native-born predecessors.

Even if Trump wins and fulfills all his promises it will take more than a decade to correct the havoc wrought on native-born workers by these ill-advised immigration policies.

* Once people understand the loss of sovereignty in these trade deals, a move to repeal or renegotiate them will have a majority. If there’s a president who pursues it.

* I sometimes feel guilty about treating my own children different from other people’s. Aren’t they, like, all equal, man?

MORE COMMENTS:

* Global trade rules need to be renegotiated on this point of governments needing to treat foreign workers as the equal of their own. Is that really what American citizens want from their society or does society exist to serve the interests of global capital? No other candidate, Democrat or Republican, will touch this. It’s his for the taking.

* Shouldn’t the Indians themselves be against this? Where’s are India’s nationalists on this one? I would have thought the Indians needed tech savvy workers for their own ambitious infrastructure targets.

No country has ever gotten rich through remittance money. The only way to go from poor to rich is by producing useful products and developing a strong domestic infrastructure. The remittance road to prosperity story is yet another lie being peddled by the ultra-liberals.

* Over 600,000,000 of them still poop and pee on the ground, even though they know that it spreads disease. They don’t have the collective mental capacity to build an advanced civilization. Their leaders know this and therefore encourage anyone with talent to leave and colonize other countries, as would you if you were in their shoes.

If you were an elite Brahmin would you stick around in your country building toilets (that the peasants likely won’t use) or would you abandon your country and go live with a more advanced race and civilization?

* Why doesn’t the USA just give Puerto Rico its independence? This article is just one more reason for it. I have never seen what the benefit is to keeping an impoverished, Spanish-speaking island hundreds of miles from America. The USA has also gotten stuck absorbing millions of P.R’s excess population. America didn’t even manage to switch it over to English. If it ever becomes a state it could be the Trojan horse for bilingualism in the USA. As a Canadian, I can tell you that is the last thing in the world you want to have.

* It’s totally absurd that Puerto Rico is allowed to play a role in the Republican (and Democratic) presidential nominating process since Puerto Ricans play no role in Presidential elections. PR gets 23 delegates. Since Trump is unlikely to get any delegates from PR, it is ironic that PR may play a role in denying Trump the nomination. If you were to subtract the 23 PR delegates from the total, Trump would only have to get 1225 delegates, rather than 1237, to secure the nomination. It will be interesting to see how many delegates Trump gets by the time of the Convention. BTW there are other territories which don’t vote in Presidential elections yet get delegates to choose the party nominees. They should also be denied participation in the nomination process.

* If you think like a capitalist, the absurd thing is that Americans demand better treatment than indians when the latter is willing to do the same work for less.

To a non-nationalist migrant, the idea that you should particularly care about people that you share absolutely nothing with except that you happened to be born kind of close to them is also not a given. If you need visible ethnic breakdown to visualize it fully, think of South African whites migrating out. Co-nationals just don’t mean that much.

The nationalists here love to say “that is what separate nations are for.” To the elite of many nations, a separate nation might be a improvement but that is not easy to do. (look at south asian chinese expats consider singapore heaven) Failing that, walled compounds or migration to places that shares more of their values is better.

From a economics point of view, network effects counts for quite a lot and productivity is raised if you just gather enough smart people at one point. It is better to be in disadvantaged in a productive spot than be the most talented person surrounded by envious retards. National IQ have stronger correlation with income than the personal one.

If you view your in-group as a class as opposed to a nation and care about their interests, you get different answer for the immigration question.

* The documentary “Cartel Land” is on Netflix. Amazing film, it’s as good as drama as it is as reportage. Anyway, anyone who wonders why we need a wall, a big one, right now, should watch that movie.

* There are two basic approaches to voting. One is that voting is a job, and we want informed and conscientious voters, which I think is the approach most people take naturally without thinking much about it. In that case some people aren’t qualified to vote and you should spend time determining what the qualifications are.

The other approach was taken by Aristotle, who argued that if the government could cause you harm, such as through taxation, conscription, or imprisonment, then you should have a say in what the government does. Incidentally, Aristotle was not considered to be as much of a small “d” democrat as most Greeks because he favored keeping the older aristocratic and monarchical elements in the government. But he wanted the democratic portion to be really democratic.

I agree with Aristotle’s approach, and its hard from that line of reasoning to deny the franchise even to prisoners currently serving their sentence, because they are under the control of government more than most. And actually polling places in prisons and even lunatic asylums is not unheard of outside the US.

With the “voting is a job” approach, then you can get from their to disenfrachising prisoners and even convicted felons not in prison, but there is a problem in that it doesn’t stop there. Do you take the vote away from a high IQ felon and give it to a low IQ non-felon? Or do you deny it to both? Which level of IQ/ income/ problems with the law exactly do you draw the line? Does the nature of the crime itself matter? What if the law that had been broken was pretty much bs?

So I don’t think a criminal conviction should result in removal from the voter rolls, but I disagree with polling places in prisons or giving prisoners absentee ballots. But on paper you should be able to vote as long as you keep your citizenship.

* Thank you Mr. Trump for breaking through the Great Wall of Smugness these mainstream people were comfortably living within. Now they have to entertain the possibility that they haven’t got us all figured out.

It looks like one of the positive side-effects of Trump tearing the cozy neocon-cuckservative love nest to shreds is that he’s also forcing Guardian types to wonder whether things are more complicated than they thought. The Grand Vermifuge really is a tonic for our sick political body.

* So I am sitting in our mess hall next to an Episcopal priest from Virginia and across from one of my liberal colleagues from Massachusetts, and they are talking about Trump. The priest says with a condescending tone, “I’ve never met anyone who is going to vote for the man.” I stick my hand near his face and say, “Pleased to meet you.” They stopped talking about Trump.

* I’ve slowly been working on a story about how a young man comes out to his liberal parents from the father’s point of view. You know, the signs had been there, vulgar web sights, changing outlook on life, even the way he spoke and his vocal intonations changed at bit.

The boy had totally new friends of the working class persuasion. The family had not had a manual laborer in it since 1850, etc.

The boy had never believed in Santa Claus and even as a young child has a Matrix poster on his bedroom wall featuring some shiny Red Pills.

And of course the boy is coming out of the Trump-closet to his parents. His father then declares that boy is no son of his and the mother screams hysterically that it was the most disgusting thing she could think of was what he and his new friends get up to when they all go to the polling booth to pull the lever for Trump.

And in the end the boy is kicked out of the house and written off forever by his parents!

* This seems like a pretty big deal to me. National Review has published an article by John Fund that urges Republican delegates to commit a misdemeanor in order to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination:

“If Donald Trump won’t release his tax returns prior to the GOP convention, the delegates pledged to him on the first ballot should abstain from giving him their votes. Other than their vote not counting, there are no realistic consequences for any delegate doing so on the first ballot. A few states make breaking the first-ballot pledge rule a misdemeanor, but no one is ever prosecuted. In theory, state leaders could exact political retribution but such discipline is rarely exercised.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432326/donald-trump-tax-returns-must-be-released?target=author&tid=902877

National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, presumably approved this for publication.

I realize things are getting crazy on the donor side, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around this: National Review just knowingly advocated the commission of a crime in order to subvert the democratic process. It couldn’t be real … but it is! It really happened. That’s a big deal, isn’t it? Over its history NR has fired writers and editors for much less.

Because it’s an iSteve world, Fund’s author bio at National Review is hilarious:

“In 2004, he wrote Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. He has written two books with Hans von Spakovsky: Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

http://www.nationalreview.com/author/john-fund

* America. Both LOL and sigh.

A land where Jews force all politicians to pledge to AIPAC but then complain of Trump’s authoritarian style.

A land where a clown like Beck accuses Trump of not being serious.

* You can do a lot of stuff in a Latin American prison that you can’t do in an American prison.

Mel Gibson’s movie “Get the Gringo” is pretty informative: the traditional rule was that the prisoners can’t leave but anybody else in town could bribe their way in — e.g., prostitutes, families, cable TV hook-up guys, carnival ride operators, or gangsters needing a place to hole up from the law. Latin American prisons tend to be vibrant!

* Israel seems to have a booming high-tech sector without importing so much as a single Indian. So why does America need them? The Ashkenazi-White IQ gap isn’t that big.

* Lots of Israeli tech workers in America too, though they are unlikely to be at the low end of IT jobs. America is the tech workshop of the world, so every ambitious tech person wants to be there. Anywhere else (India definitely, Israel too) is a backwater doing grunt work.

* The whole world has noticed that America is now a nation of beta pushovers who have bent so far over backward they can see the other side. Women get whatever they want by simply demanding it “It’s unfair, Unfair, UNFAIR!” There’s no demand too extreme. Why shouldn’t India make demands? It’s unfair! America is descended from Britain and shouldn’t they feel guilty for having ruled India for centuries? No reparations will ever be enough.

* Free trade agreements prohibit India from giving priority to its farmers and local farm products over those produced by foreign countries. The US keeps its farm produce artificially cheap (and extremely competitive) by subsidizing its farmers. That has the effect of killing off agriculture in poor countries (and in India, literally killing off the farmers, many of whom commit suicide because they are unable to pay off their debts.) The percentage of population that is rural is much higher in India (and other poor countries) than it is in your country. But you all don’t see, or care for, the effects of free trade on others, and just raise a hue and cry when it affects you.

Go ahead and elect Trump. Let him roll back all free trade agreements. It’ll be an interesting experiment.

* “The US has a visa waiver program with many countries (typically OECD) which allows you to travel without visas.”

US citizens are free to visit most European countries without a visa, but the US government requires visas for citizens of European countries to visit the US. A pretty glaring non-reciprocity that is often pointed out by Europeans when they visit here.

* One of the driving forces behind unionization was the “sharing of tribal knowledge”. As workers got older and more experienced, they knew more about the equipment and processes and had developed various efficiencies. They had no incentive to give this knowledge away with coworkers. When people were laid off, they needed to show their value above and beyond that of their peers. Only by having union seniority rules (LIFO) could they be cajoled to work as a team and share their knowledge with the new guys.

Now that we are returning to pre-union employment conditions (wholesale replacement of existing workers with cheap alien labor) it would behoove every worker to keep their work practices and procedures secret. As all non-union craft and industrial workers knew in 1890, you need every edge.

Posted in America, Donald Trump, India, Puerto Rico | Comments Off on Indians Are Nice

Why Doesn’t Europe Defend Itself From The Muslim/African Invasion Of Refugees?

Steve Sailer writes: “It’s almost as if Europe should have policies in place to defend itself from being overrun by guys in shiny tracksuits so that it doesn’t really matter what Putin is up to with regard to immigration in Western Europe.”

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Basically anti-immigrationists are to be regarded like communists in the Cold war, as Russia’s potential fifth column. Really perverse how the nation-wreckers are trying to cloak their project in the language of patriotism.

* It’s almost as if nobody has any idea what is going on besides the people rushing in for free stuff and unprosecuted rapes.

NEWSFLASH:

People respond to incentives. Stop incentivizing crime, start enforcing laws.

For the love of god, Europeans take back your countries and restore order.

For the future well-being of the world to be ensured, the future well-being of European ancestry countries must be ensured.

Europeans brought the modern world into existence. If European ancestry countries decay, so goes the world. If Europeans flourish, the world flourishes.

* “Russians are messing with our patriotic duty to abolish ourselves!!!”

But the irony.

During the Cold War, the West encouraged nationalism in Eastern Europe to undermine Soviet domination.

Now, Russia is encouraging nationalism in the West to undermine EU domination.

But for real patriots, Putin is doing them a favor.

A scream that says WAKE UP, DAMMIES!!!

Posted in Europe | Comments Off on Why Doesn’t Europe Defend Itself From The Muslim/African Invasion Of Refugees?

Do you think we’ll have targeted assassinations and killings in the run up to the US election?

America is about to explode over Donald Trump. We’re right on the edge of killing.

The critics of Trump says he’s Hitler. To kill a Hitler is a mitzvah in many minds. The crazies are picking up this talk and may well act on it. On the other hand, white nationalists are desperate for Trump to win. They’ll stop at nothing to put him over the top. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them assassinate those who get in Trump’s way.

REPORT:

“Bad vibes.” “Scary.” “Tense.” “Physical.” “New level of menace.” “Vicious.”

Those are the words used by reporters who covered the New Orleans campaign rally by leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Friday evening to describe the leftist anti-Trump protesters who disrupted the rally and the reactions of fed-up Trump supporters.

There was even a report that Trump’s campaign manager was personally escorting protesters out of the rally.

Trump New Orleans
Image via Twitter.

“New Orleans protesters second line outside of Trump Rally at Lakefront Airport”

“Tonight was the most intense rally I’ve witnessed so far on the trail. This is just a clip:”

“NEW ORLEANS —This evening Trump rally has a bad vibe. Already a dozen angry protestors, many of them resisting and getting dragged out.”

“NEW ORLEANS — Never been at a Trump rally where protestors have been so disruptive, physical.”

“That was a tense rally. Scary at points.”

“Tense confrontations broke out at @realDonaldTrump’s rally in New Orleans moments ago.”

“NEW ORLEANS — Donald Trump’s campaign manager is having to personally escort out protestors at this rally.”

YouTube videos of protesters being ejected.

and

“Sign at Trump rally — “Trump Duke 2016” and “KKK 4 Trump””

“crowd here is angry. protester w KKK trump sign got it ripped away and then small fight ensued #trump”

“”This is a wild evening. This is one hell of a way to spend a Friday night,” Trump says, as yet another protestor gets hustled out.”

More from NBC’s Katy Tur via Twitter:

3 interruptions so far at Trump’s NOLA event. The crowd is deafening. Yells echoing thru the hangar as they turn against protestors.”

The thunderous echo in this airplane hangar is adding a new level of menace to the tone of tonight’s rally.”

A group of African American BLM protestors w their hands up standing their ground for ~10 mins. The crowd is getting vicious.”

Protestors now interrupting nearly every event. I’m told Trump team has added extra security for the crowd to throw out protestors.”

Trump camp brought back the candidate’s old security team (pre ss) to deal with the increasingly rowdy crowds.”

“BLM vs Security vs Crowd.”

A ray of hope was found in the crowd.

“Meet Nelson, dems’ worst nightmare: lifelong dem, marched w MLK, switched party 2 mos ago. Trump’s “struck a nerve.””

Posted in America | Comments Off on Do you think we’ll have targeted assassinations and killings in the run up to the US election?

Election Open Thread

Comments to Steve Sailer on Saturday’s elections:

* Traditional Republicans are uptight WASPs and Protestants who are mainly in the Midwest and West now and don’t find Trump, especially his style and demeanor, as appealing as Republicans in the South and Northeast do. Republicans in the South and Northeast today aren’t traditionally Republican. They’re traditionally Democratic and became Republican following the 60s and 70s. Trump does better with the latter Republicans and with Independents and disaffected nominal Democrats.

* Cruz over performs in low turnout caucuses. Trump is strong in the south, east, and rust belt, and probably the far west. This race is now down to Cruz vs Trump. Rubio and John have no chance after next Tuesday.

* USA Today Feb. 18, 2016: Cruz draws from married voters, evangelical Christians, the elderly and those who identify as “very conservative.” These folks might be angry about the political process, but their anger is ideological and their lives — filled with family and church — are fundamentally intact.

Trump’s voters, instead, wear an almost existential sense of betrayal. He relies on unmarried voters, individuals who rarely attend church services and those without much higher education. Many of these Trump voters have abandoned the faith of their forefathers and myriad social benefits that come with it. Their marriages have failed, and their families have fractured. The factories that moved overseas used to provide not just high-paying jobs, but also a sense of purpose and community. Their kids (and themselves) might be more likely to die from a heroin overdose than any other group in the country.

Cruz’s voters dislike Jeb Bush because he has strayed from conservative orthodoxy. Trump’s voters loathe Jeb Bush because their lives are falling apart, and they blame people like him.

* More-marginal Trump voters* who don’t have their lives together are less likely to have bothered to have gotten registered with a party, and are less likely to go to the trouble of caucusing. Think of them as the Republican party’s version of the Democrats’ poor Hispanic voters.

* It must be difficult to run against not only your opponents, but the entire media, entertainment, business, government, and academic establishments.

* If Trump loses the nomination he has only himself to blame. I fault him for two things.

He should have started behaving more like a president immediately after New Hampshire. Recent debates where he continues to call names and yell “Liar!” are raising real concerns about his self-control.

He needed to bone up on the issues, which some of thought he was going to do and it appears he did not. He doesn’t seem to fully understand his own position on immigration, for example. If a dummy like Rubio can memorize a bunch of facts and figures, Trump should be able to too. He’s still winging it.

* I don’t think the last debate helped Trump. I support Trump and enjoy watching his antics, but even I kind of grew tired of his obnoxiousness in the debate. In the earlier debates, there were more people debating so there were longer pauses in between Trump’s antics. But in the last one, it was relentless. It was embarrassing to watch and almost at Idiocracy levels. Also the last debate largely consisted of Cruz and Rubio constantly attacking Trump with things like Trump University, which doesn’t help.

* I love the armchair arbiters of decorum, with their criticism of Trump’s behavior as not being dignified enough. Few, if any men– especially alpha male ones– could withstand the dishonest attacks that Trump is receiving 24/7. One day of the attacks Trump is receiving and even Fred Rogers would be dropping f-bombs and throwing punches.

* Are you talking about the killing terrorists’ kin part? Because I agree with his idea for three reasons:

1. Knowing one’s kin are fair game would cause at least some would-be terrorists to think twice before terrorizing.

2. It would give kin incentive to stop terrorist kin at any cost. If I knew my brother’s crimes could get me killed I might kill my brother if he insisted on doing said crimes.

3. Kills lice while still nits. Cold af but war is hell. Dead kids don’t grow up to be terrorists.

* Relax. Trump’s pulling away in KY, will almost certainly romp in LA, a real primary. Looks solid in MI and MS on Tuesday. Massive early voting in OH and FL helps, in that Cruz already way behind in both and can’t easily catch up even with a surge.

Trump had a bad debate, needs to get some rest. He’s been going full bore almost 24/7 for the last two months facing off incoming from the entire GOP and media establishment. In retrospect, yes, he should have cancelled a rally or two — apparently he flew into the Thursday debate from Maine with no down time — and boned up on the issues. But he hasn’t had the time. This will all slow down after 3/15, and then he will have time to start listening to Sessions and Miller. I’m not giving up hope.

* Keep in mind the Kansas republican caucus picked Huckabee in 2008 with 59 percent of the vote. They picked Santorum in 2012 with 51 percent of their vote.

So Kansas is not exactly known for picking the eventual winner.

* Kentucky is meth country, so Trump should do well there and get the turnout he needs. And Louisiana is Duke territory, so Trump should also do well there.

* “I predict Trump will only win in Kentucky and Louisiana. ”

Why would he have been expected to win the caucuses? Those are Cruz voters. Anytime you have to publicly come in and support a candidate, the results are going to be skewed.

If Trump doesn’t win KY & LA, then be concerned. Otherwise, this is expected.

* Trump is a smart alpha male who leads from his gut. He goes in and out-alphas the opposition, and leaves his genius detail guys to mop up after his victory.

Trump can’t out-wonk Ted Cruz, but he can win the GOP debates as an alpha. Trump’s apparent flip-flopping is infuriating to us, but he’s out of his element in wonkville. That’s where Cruz can win.

Trump needs to convince voters that, yes he might mistakes on policy details because that’s not who he is, but detail-oriented voters can trust him because of his advisers.

* I hope Trump’s recent fumbling can just be put down to tiredness, he obviously needs a rest. He could have avoided the recent Fox debate through the same Megyn Kelly reason he employed before. He needs to stay the course. The only reason he is where he is, is because there are a lot of people who are fed up with political correctness and immigration (legal and illegal). Trump is a conduit for that frustration and if he thinks that he can turn off that spigot in order to entice the other side, all he will succeed in doing is causing his base to stay home. Dyed in the wool liberals already don’t trust him, he is not going to win them over.

The path to victory is to ride the wave of righteous anger, and embrace the Sailer Strategy right through to the end. Throw away the textbook that says pander to the base during the primaries and then betray the base during the general. If you get the white vote through tackling employment and standard of living concerns, you will pick up enough non-white votes simply because most everyone who votes in the USA has standard of living concerns that are impacted by immigration, even if it means that your other relatives may have to wait (permanently perhaps) to chain migrate.

* The alt-right is why Trump has gotten to where he is so far towards nomination. Even the NYT comments section tilts alt-right now. It’s not because our opinions aren’t popular. They are both popular and very strongly held. The anti-immigrationist right is coming to prominence all across the Eurosphere.

* It is remarkable that Cuban-Americans are only 0.1% of the American population, and yet there are not one but two Cuban-Americans vouching to become U.S president. That is remarkable. How formidable are Cuban-Americans? And how driven to power are they?

* Or maybe Trump needs to show he can build an organization to win where organizations are needed?

Posted in America, Donald Trump | Comments Off on Election Open Thread

The Erasing Of Tribal Identity

Interesting thread on Twitter:

Todd Gitlin: To Bay Area friends: I’ll be speaking on Jewish identity, courtesy the Berkeley Jewish Studies program…

Alan Neff: Shouldn’t that be Jewish “identities”? Owing to the fact that we have so many of them, one seems to undershoot the mark.

Casey: and really aren’t we all just humans and we can cut it out with tribal identities orrrrrrr…?

Alan Neff: That would be good.

Casey: Really? It seems “problematic” — it implies erasing existing tribal identities, like, say, “Jewish,” among others.

Alan Neff: You seem interested in taking my comment in a direction I did not intend, like toward another anti-semitic holocaust. Goodbye.

Posted in Jews | Comments Off on The Erasing Of Tribal Identity

CHILD ABUSE ALLEGATIONS PLAGUE THE HASIDIC COMMUNITY

Newsweek: While there is no evidence that child abuse is any more likely to occur in ultra-Orthodox schools than in public or secular institutions, stories like Reizes’s—an alleged abuser sheltered and victims unwilling to talk for fear of losing the only way of life they know—are common in the Hasidic school system. The many former students, advocates, sociologists, social workers and survivors interviewed by Newsweek, along with recordings, documents, public filings and personal emails that Newsweek obtained, place the blame on a confluence of factors: widespread sexual repression, a strong resistance to the secular world, and, most important, a power structure designed to keep people from speaking up about abuse.

Set on a leafy stretch of Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Oholei Torah is one of the most important institutions in the Chabad movement’s global yeshiva network and one of the largest of the dozens of Chabad schools in Brooklyn, with nearly 2,000 students at any given time. But stop any middle-school-age kid in the school’s hallways, and he—there are no female students—will likely know nothing of world history, won’t be able to do long division and will speak only rudimentary English—even though he’s growing up in the biggest city in the United States.

Oholei Torah conducts its seven-plus daily hours of religious lessons mostly in Yiddish. According to more than a dozen former students across three decades, it provides almost no lessons in science, math, English grammar or history. (The school did not respond to queries about its curriculum.) Many of these students go home to an apartment with no television, no Internet, no newspapers and no books except religious texts. Many will not gain the basic knowledge of how to navigate the world until they are married off around age 18, like how to write a check, how to order General Tso’s chicken or even what sex is. When you’re a child in this environment, you don’t question the fact that you can’t identify your own state on a map. And when you are molested, you don’t ask questions about that either.

In the ultra-Orthodox world, sexuality is simultaneously denied and monitored to the point of obsession. Starting in childhood, boys and girls are separated; the opposite gender remains a mystery until it’s time to marry, usually in an arranged pairing. Boys are taught to avoid looking at girls, while girls are taught that they are a source of sex and transgression, say former members of the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox Jewish, community.

Posted in Abuse, Chabad | Comments Off on CHILD ABUSE ALLEGATIONS PLAGUE THE HASIDIC COMMUNITY

Max Boot Prefers Stalin To Donald Trump

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Joseph Stalin was the leader of a creedal nation — a nation founded upon a specific set of ideas. Ideas that millions of people, many of whom were not Russian, cherished in their hearts. Allegiance to his nation and his nation’s founding ideas could be adopted by anyone irrespective of race or ethnicity. He also, in the fullness of time, exported those ideas abroad.

He had no use for nationalism or patriotism — look what he did to those pesky Ukrainians.

Seriously, what’s for the neocuckservatives not to like?

* I love how being “one of the world’s leading authorities on armed conflict” is based totally on being called “one of the world’s leading authorities on armed conflict”. It’s not like they took his various pronouncements and predictions on armed conflict over the years and checked how they panned out and determined that he was, indeed, “one of the world’s leading authorities on armed conflict”. He is one because they say so.

* Lately the media has also been reporting a story on Trump’s father and the Klan from the 1920s. Doesn’t that mean it’s also fair game to ask media figures and intellectuals to disavow ancestors if it can be determined they ever sympathized with Stalinism? An awful lot of people were killed in the communist purges.

* Damn, the neocons forgot to create their own Cheka/NKVD to deal with the Kulaks.

Are Dzerzkinsky and Kaganovich still alive?

Maybe Nuland and Applebaum can fill that role to deal with evil Nazi Kulaks.

But oh well, they are too busy working with Neo-Nazis in Ukraine against Russia for the moment.

PS. Boot is especially incensed because he is of Russian-Jewish background.

He saw how Jewish Bolshies lost the power to the gentiles.

He sees a replay. He also knows Jews fumbled in the 90s when they could have had it all.

Given Stalin turned on Jews, Boot really means he would rather vote for Trotsky.

Trotsky than Trump. Catchy.

But mentioning Trotsky would give away Neocon origins.

* “Max Boot is a military historian and foreign-policy analyst who has been called one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict” by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. ”

That’s funny. I just heard once again a TV commercial which contends that “Marco Rubio is generally acknowledged to be a foreign policy expert.” About a week or so ago, I heard Karl Rove on one of the Fox News programs giving a scorecard to the various candidates on various issues, and he gave Rubio an A on foreign policy on both style and substance. This is one area where I think Rove is spouting nonsense and acting like a shill. Rove didn’t reveal what standards he wasn’t applying, which are obviously subjective. Rubio is the guy who graduated from South Miami High School with a 2.1 grade average, supposedly earned a football scholarship to Tarkio College in Missouri (which went bankrupt about a year after Rubio left after less than a year), transferred to a junior college before transferring to U of Florida. He has spent five years in the Senate where he supposedly acquired all his foreign policy knowledge. In the meantime, he has endorsed GWB’s war against Iraq, agitated for the war with Libya and has called for no-fly zones over Syria. I see no evidence that he really knows what he is talking about in the area of foreign policy. He is a very shallow lightweight imo. It’s interesting to see how the neoconservatives are always boosting ignorant people for high political positions, like Dan Quayle, GWB, Sarah Palin and now Rubio. Each one an empty slate ready for a “smart” adviser to write policy prescriptions on.

* One thing I’ve been saying for a while to anyone who would listen is that evangelicals never really cared about the Zionist project. Given their support for Trump this is undeniable. The entire evangelical-Zionist alliance was fabricated out of whole cloth. Jews, to their credit, always knew this and openly denied any connection with the crazier Hagee type shills.

* Kanye West said George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people. In truth, the GOP (especially neocons) doesn’t care about White People.

* It’s also worth noting that Boot – a “defense expert” – has never served in the military. He is yet another neo-con chicken-hawk, happily sending (mostly gentile) soldiers off to die and be maimed in wars that he, from the comfort of his well-appointed think-tank office, thinks is worth the price.

* On the ‘marginal’ concept thing in the Sailer takimag article, politicians and candidates need to invoke context along with policy.

Too often, policy issues are dealt with abstractly as ideals and principles.

But all policies only make sense within context.

It’s like we need coat in winter, not in summer.

Just because it kept us warm in winter doesn’t mean it’s good for us in summer.

So, all policies must be seen in relation to context of reality.

Every position by ALL candidates has some validity on its own as a principle… but it must be measured in context of current realities.
It’s like ‘winter coat is good’ is a valid as a concept. But it is only useful in winter, not in all seasons.

So, our position isn’t anti-immigration as a iron eternal policy but anti-immigration for NOW since the system is broken and there are too many costs.

This is where Conservatism has failed. It keeps yammering about principle regardless of context.
It still talks of Russia as if cold war is still on.
It still talks of Jews as if it’s the Holocaust when, in fact, Jews are the most powerful people in the world.

For the longest time, GOP was all about lowering taxes just when the 1% was getting richer than ever. Principle totally apart from context. We need perceptive cons than programmed cons. It’s coming down to Perceptives vs Programmeds.

Given the current context of immigration problems and foreign policy mess, Trump is better than others. Do less invading and less inviting.

* How about this proposal for mutual understanding between Neocons and gentile cons?

Neocons serve their own Jewish interests, and gentile cons serve their own gentile interests.

Gentiles ask no favor from Jews, and Jews ask no favors from gentiles.

OK?

I think gentiles would let Jews go and let Jews do their own Jewish thing. The problem is Jews won’t let gentiles go and let gentiles do their gentile thing. Jews must keep gentiles as their tools.

It’s like Willy Loman won’t let Biff go. At least Willy did feel some kind of love for Biff.

But there is only the mentality of a master over slave in the neocon attitude toward the goyim.

Posted in Neoconservatives | Comments Off on Max Boot Prefers Stalin To Donald Trump

The Tragedy of a Hall of Fame Coach and His Star Recruit

Michael Powell writes in the New York Times: “The tragedy is that the adults in big-time high school and college basketball, despite attempts at reform and despite the presence of many fine student-athletes, exert far more energy trying to churn out wins than trying to provide an education. Young men like Frazier, who just three years ago was Brown’s top recruit, are collateral damage.”

Steve Sailer replies: “Why does the reporter assume that there’s something tragic about young Keith Frazier not getting much of an education? Is there any evidence that he would benefit from the academic life? Even if Mr. Frazier happened to be an intellectual diamond in the rough, we have to realize that because there’s not much positive correlation between basketball talent and IQ there exist a whole lot of young men who are much, much better basketball players than they are scholars. Should they be denied the opportunity to do what they are best at in life just because they lost the genetic lottery for brains while winning the height and athleticism lotteries?”

Posted in Basketball, Blacks, Education | Comments Off on The Tragedy of a Hall of Fame Coach and His Star Recruit

Israel’s Gaza Agony

Martin Van Creveld writes:

A decade after the last Israeli troops and settlers left Gaza, the withdrawal remains controversial in Israel. The former Israeli settlers there bewail their loss of the wonderful lives they claim to have led in the Strip; right-wingers rail against “Sharon’s crime” and try to use it as “proof” that any move in the West Bank would also be a failure. Time to look backward and take stock.

Some eighteen months have now passed since Israel’s last “war” with Hamas in Gaza came to an end. Since then the border, lined as it is with an electronic fence that has proved all but impenetrable, has been largely calm. Primarily, I suspect, for two reasons. First, the Israeli Iron Dome system’s success in neutralizing Hamas’ most important weapons, i.e. the rockets, was beyond all expectations. Second, the damage the Israelis inflicted on Gaza during the six weeks of Operation Protective Edge was vast; sufficient, it seems, to have taught Hamas a lesson. One which, looking back, could and should have been taught much earlier.

Ever since the Operation ended, says Israeli minister of defense Moshe Yeelon, Hamas had not fired even one bullet at Israel. That does not mean this have been absolutely quiet. Some incidents were provoked by all kinds of splinter organizations. Others were staged by individual residents of the Strip who, acting more or less on their own, decided to see what they could do by firing at Israeli patrols or trying to set up IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). In response the Israelis, obeying their reflexes, launched air strikes, occasionally killing and injuring a handful of people. In response the organizations in question, also obeying their reflexes, either launched rockets or fired mortar rounds at the neighboring Israeli kibbutzim. Amidst the occasional exchanges of fire, throughout 2015 and going into 2016 not a single Israeli was either injured or killed by anyone or anything coming from, Gaza. To be sure, luck played a role in this. Just one round or rocket hitting, say, an inhabited apartment would have changed the statistics. Still it is hard to believe that it is the only factor involved.

Looking further back, almost six years have passed since the Navi Marmara tried to break the Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza and was stopped at the cost of nine self-appointed Turkish do-gooders killed. People, incidentally, who came armed with every kind of edged weapon one could think of. At the time, the organizers threatened that the Marmara would merely be the first of many flotillas to come. Yet not only has nothing of the kind happened, but the Turks have lost much of their clout in the Middle East and are no longer in any position to bully anyone.

Back in the summer of 2006, the victory of the “extremist” Hamas over the “moderate” PLA in Gaza left most Israelis, and many non-Israeli as well, aghast. This author was one of the very few to argue that, in the long run, two weak governments, neither of which can speak for the Palestinian people as a whole, would almost certainly be better for Israel than a single relatively strong one. I still see no reason to change my view.

idf-trucks-keremshalom-novFigures on the Gazan economy are both hard to come by and unreliable. In part that is because, the two pieces of land, i.e. the Strip and the West Bank, are often seen as part of the same Palestinian economy. Still the CIA World Factbook claims that the economy grew 7 percent in 2012 and 6 percent in 2013. In 2014, due to Operation Protective Edge, it suffered a steep decline; however, UNSCO figures suggest a resumption of growth in 2015. In the lead are sectors such as construction (which went up by no less than 449 percent!) transportation and storage, agriculture, forestry and fishing, wholesale and retail trade, and mining, manufacturing, electricity and water.

Looking ahead into 2016 the PMA (Palestinian Monetary Authority) forecasts a growth of 3.3 percent. Not bad, considering the ongoing world-wide economic recession. Part cause, part consequence, of the expansion is the fact that 900 heavy trucks, crammed with merchandise of every kind, now enter the Stripe from Israel every day. To many Israeli right-wingers they are a thorn in the eye. But not one which is likely to disappear any time soon.

To be sure, both sides have been diligently preparing for the next round. Hamas has built more rockets possessed of longer range. They are now able to cover practically the whole of Israel and hit their targets much more accurately than before. Hoping to capture prisoners (hostages) if and when the next round takes place, Hamas has also been busy digging tunnels under the border. The Israelis on their part have been working on methods to detect tunnels—a surprisingly difficult task, it turns out. They are also trying to improve their early warning systems and missile defenses further still. Yet amidst all this both sides have repeatedly assured one another that escalation is not what they want. For the moment at any rate, and up to a point, live and let live seems to be the motto.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank and Israel itself hardly a day passes without some incident in which both Israelis and Palestinians (but mainly Palestinians) are killed or injured. So obvious is the reason that every half wit (but not Israeli right-wingers) can see it. In the case of Gaza, the two peoples are separated; in that of the West Bank, they are not.

Could Gaza serve as a model for the West Bank, or, to begin with, parts of it? Let’s start by putting aside all sorts of religious and ideological claims. In the world of strategy they do not count; nor is there any prospect of them convincing anyone except for part of Israel’s own population. Only one thing should count. To wit: how will Israel be stronger? With the West Bank or without it?

The main strategic argument right-wing Israelis use against a withdrawal from the lands in question is that doing so might lead to rockets being fired from them into Israel. But that is nonsense. Rockets and mortar rounds started coming from Gaza years before then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the Strip to be evacuated. Had the various militant Palestinian organizations in the West Bank wanted to, they could have used similar tactics long ago.

So it is up to Jerusalem to decide what it wants. Either an indefinite prolongation of the existing situation, with all its nasty implications for the country’s demographic balance, democracy and its standing in the world; or the erection of a wall and a withdrawal from occupied territory. Practically all of it, I would suggest. Including large parts of East Jerusalem which are purely Arab. Such a withdrawal would not necessarily have to be carried out all at once. One could start with the districts where Jewish settlements are thinnest on the ground and proceed from there, using each stage to see whether quiet is preserved and the time ripe for the next one.

After all, what does Israel have to lose? Except for the knifings, of course.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off on Israel’s Gaza Agony