According to Ettinger, from 1995 to 2013, the annual number of Israeli Jewish births surged by 65 percent – from 80,400 to 132,000. In 2013, the Jewish fertility rate was 3.04 births per woman – and trending upwards. It’s 3.04 births when both spouses are Israeli-born, no matter where their parents were born.
“Trending upwards” is the operational term here. There are many factors, including population age, which are important in predicting future population growth or shrinkage. But, taking all these factors into consideration, the Jewish population is growing fast, and will grow even faster.
That’s counterintuitive, if you’ve read all the literature about “sub-replacement levels” of society. Family size has been traditionally linked to the number of children it takes to run a farm or support an elderly parent. But as women become more educated, move to cities and have other economic resources, they have fewer babies. At least that’s the theory.
A CBS report earlier this year, citing UN estimates, shows there’s been a drop in family size among Muslims throughout the region. The most fertile Arab nation, Jordan, has a projected 2035 fertility rate of 2.41 children. Israeli Muslims are projected to decline from 3.37 to 2.71. This is consistent with the greater education and urbanization.
But it doesn’t hold for Israeli Jews.
Says Ettinger, “Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is currently higher than any Arab country, other than Yemen, Iraq and Jordan, which are rapidly declining. The Jewish population is also growing relatively younger, which bodes well for Israel’s economy and national security.”
The swell in Jewish population, in contrast to the downward trend among the region’s Muslims, has major implications for the geopolitics of our area, of course. But this is not the subject of this discourse.
I’m wondering why we have this surprising increase in population. It’s not from immigration.
Innately Jewish? Unhappily, this fertility pattern isn’t true for our American sisters. According to the most widely quoted survey, the National Jewish Population Survey 2001-2002, the average number of children born to Jewish women was less than 1.9. The so-called “effective Jewish birthrate” is below 1.9 children per Jewish woman.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on The Human Spirit: Israeli Jewish women and demography
* “my grandparents from Lithuania to South Africa, my parents from South Africa to London, my cousins from South Africa to Israel, myself from London to New York.”
So, basically, after helping to ruin South Africa, Roger Cohen’s family escaped it and now Roger is contributing his best to ruin the USA. Where does he think his grandchildren will go?
* Their shamelessness and total lack of reciprocal morality makes me sick.
* Dumping a few million unassimilable, violence prone Muslims into formerly peaceful western societies, thereby TRIPLING the incidence of violent rape (as happened in Scandinavia) and creating networks of domestic Jihadi terrorists where none existed before (as happened pretty much everywhere), has a way of triggering a “backlash” among the common folk. I can understand how their primitive response to the disintegration of their societies, the ongoing destruction of their culture, and their mounting economic insecurity would offend uber rational globalists such as the FT. But the irrational little dears are afraid of losing their homes, jobs, and all the other familiar things that make life worth living for people of limited imagination and a parochial perspective. Perhaps if the FT explained the many benefits of “globalisation” to them one more time they would see the light; I mean, discount HD TVs and cheap apparel give life its true meaning. Why can’t they can see that?
* “Arab Christians tend to integrate better into American life – among other things they are not prone to sudden jihad syndrome.”
That’s true but that doesn’t mean we should want them to come to the West (not that you are saying such, it’s just that I’ve encountered such sentiments on forums before).
Earlier this week Nassim Taleb said on his Twitter feed something about how Americans should forget about Mexicans and concentrate on Saudis instead. Now I’d be more than happy to see the Saudis (and other Sunni Gulf states) get their comeuppance, but how typical that a Christian Middle Easterner would rather Americans focus on his enemies in the old country rather than the Mexicans who are no threat to Professor Taleb’s people or his position in the US.
As for Cohen, he advocated Western intervention in Syria to remove Assad back in 2013. And IIRC he was rather bitter towards the Germans for not going along with it. (Or was that another Cohen? There are so many of them). Now the Germans are his heroes because of their willingness to flood Europe with Syrians and the Americans (and other Westerners) who were great when wanting to bomb Syria are a disappointment! The mendacity of the Cohens of the world knows no limits.
* It must be a great comfort to Cohen’s editor and readers that Hafiz Nassar is an Arab rug merchant, just as Cohen’s daughter is a Jewish psychiatrist, Cohen himself is a peripatetic Jew from an wandering family,* and a nameless Navajo woman shows up on cue to pawn** a turquoise ring for ten dollars. Those are all stock characters, archetypes which New Yorkers recognize faster than Malcolm Gladwell can blink. And those aren’t all! Cohen also gives us four Syrian Christians in a lonely monastery, Dust Bowl migrants on Route 66 to California, and Israeli roadblocks that “cement the violent status quo.” Cliches, every one. (Cohen’s readers understand that “Israeli roadblocks” are people as much as objects– probably Likudniks.)
Why this remarkable barrage of stereotypes? Is it just to flatter New Yorkers’ beliefs that nothing ever changes outside the five boroughs? Nope. The cliches are part of the hypnotist’s patter, lulling the reader into a uncritical state of mind, preparing him to accept suggestions. Nodding along as Cohen reviews familiar stereotypes, the reader is invited to just keep nodding as Cohen tells us swarms of migrants from violent societies half a world away are the same as the Okies of our nostalgic memories, and more importantly, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are really one and they are Nazis!
“The Vladimir Trump policy school,” Cohen writes, “teaches that big lies produce big fears that produce big yearnings for big strongmen.” New York Times readers know who invented “big lies,” Adolf Hitler! Flyover folks might think they’re afraid of being shot down by jihadists, but really, that’s just a big lie, put about to create a big yearning for Vladimir Trump’s election. And just look at Vladimir Trump, he’s really big!
If the New York Times caught someone outside their pages writing about Arab rug merchants and rootless Jewish psychiatrists and Navajo women pawning their jewelry they would demand an FBI investigation. The $PLC would feature the bigots in a fundraising letter. Loretta Lynch would hold a press conference to highlight the penalties for hate speech.
But Cohen, exploiting the prejudices of the comfortable, is just doing his job. As Camus’ Bernard Rieux tells us, that is the definition of decency.
* Israel would make a much better bazaar. We should withdraw all aid, enact sanctions, and bring all the pressure to bear we possibly can, until Israel becomes the Bazaar It Is Destined To Be. After all, location, location, location. Israel’s much better sited.
Posted inAmerica, Immigration|Comments Off on NYT Columnist Roger Cohen Wants America To Serve As A Dumping Ground For The Middle East
Haaretz: At the Petach Tikva Magistrate Court, where some of the key suspects in the latest wave of Jewish terror activity were having their remands extended this week, concerned family members huddled in the hallways while hearings were held behind closed doors.
A passerby paying close attention could not help but take note of the preponderance of English being spoken. And when not English, then American-accented Hebrew.
Is it pure coincidence that a disproportionate number of those taken into custody in the latest crackdown on Jewish extremism in Israel, as well as those cheering them on, are children of immigrants from English-speaking countries or immigrants who hold dual citizenship?
Take the fact that at least one of the key suspects in the arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma that killed three members of the Dawabsheh family in July has an American parent and holds dual citizenship.
This 17-year-old, whose name has been barred from publication, grew up in the West Bank settlement of Tsofim. Another minor suspected of direct involvement in that attack is also reported to hold U.S. citizenship.
Take, for example, the fact that three other Jewish-Israeli terror suspects being held in administrative detention since the summer, even though they are not directly connected to the Duma attack, also hold dual citizenship. The most famous in the group is Meir Ettinger, the grandson of American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose mother immigrated to Israel from the United States and who grew up in the settlement of Tapuach, a bastion of right-wing extremism. (The racist Kach movement, founded by Kahane, is outlawed in Israel). The other two are Mordechai Meyer, the child of American immigrants from Ma’aleh Adumim, a large, relatively moderate settlement outside of Jerusalem; and Evyatar Slonim, whose parents are Australian.
Finally, this week, another English-speaker – this one caught dancing with a weapon in a controversial wedding clip celebrating the Duma attack – was detained by security forces.
He is Daniel Pinner, a 50-year-old settler from the settlement of Tapuah, who immigrated to Israel from Britain many years ago.
And he was not the only English-speaker celebrating at that infamous wedding, where participants were caught on camera dancing with knives and guns, as one slashed a photo of the dead Dawabsheh baby. The bride, Roni Goldberg, is the daughter of American-born Lenny Goldberg, a former Kahane aide and author of “The Wit and Wisdom of Rabbi Meir Kahane.”
Here’s what Goldberg had to say this week in a column he published on the settler-run Arutz Sheva news service: “Not only don’t I care about Duma, neither do the left or the Shin Bet.
“It’s just a good excuse for them to harass and torture the hilltop youth they so despise for the Judaism that they represent,” he wrote, referring to the rogue group of youths who engage in illegal settlement activities.
When another daughter of his, barely a teenager then, sat in jail 10 years ago for blocking roads to protest the Gaza disengagement, he could hardly contain his pride. Back then he wrote on that same website: “Obviously, I am not a distraught parent over this. I’m pleased that she is occupied with this, and not with the trivial issues that concern most teenagers. I’ve educated them all their lives about the need for self-sacrifice for the Jewish People and the Land of Israel — all, of course, in the comfort of our living room, or over a cholent on Shabbat. To behave as a worried Jewish mother/father now would be the most hypocritical thing of all. It would make a lie of all that I had preached. Besides, I feel guilty that I’m not doing it, so my kids might as well.”
Laura Wharton, an American-born political scientist who represents the left-wing Meretz party on the Jerusalem city council, is not surprised by the large number of children of English-speaking families among the terror suspects, noting that immigrants from these countries tend to be highly ideologically motivated, and are more likely to have radical extremists among their ranks. “I think in general people who immigrate to Israel from English-speaking countries, in fact from all wealthy countries, need a stronger incentive to make the move,” she says. “They also want to make their mark when they come here, for better or for worse.”
Sara Yael Hirschhorn, who has spent many years studying American immigrants living in the West Bank, believes the radicalism could reflect a failure to integrate smoothly into Israeli society. “I think it has to do with the fact that these people are not assimilated in the way that their native Israeli or perhaps other immigrant peers have managed to be,” she observes.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on The Anglo Connection: Why Do So Many Jewish Terrorists Come From the English-speaking World?
NEWARK — A skirmish broke out between rival activists on the steps of City Hall Wednesday during what had been intended as a demonstration against violence in Newark.
Police were called to the scene after a small crowd began arguing over escalating violence and the city’s attempts to curb it.
The noon press conference was called by a group of activists led by Salaam Ismial, co-chair of the New Jersey Study Commission on Violence, and Abdul Muhammad, a longtime Newark anti-violence activist. In a release announcing the event, the two said they planned to ask Mayor Ras Baraka to “unleash his quality of life plan in addressing ongoing violence facing Newark residents.”
As the group spoke to reporters, however, a group of Baraka supporters including activist Donna Jackson and Tyrone “Street Counselor” Barnes began heckling and shouting from the base of the steps.
It soon evolved into an intense face-off between Jackson and Muhammad, which then erupted into a skirmish between members of the two camps. At one point, Barnes put his hands around Muhammad’s neck and pushed him to the ground.
Posted inBlacks, Crime, Islam|Comments Off on Fight breaks out at Newark anti-violence rally
If David Suissa is right and Marvin Hier is at heart a yeshiva boy, then I am more skeptical of yeshivas.
I don’t believe David Suissa is right and therefore I don’t regard yeshivas as the enemy of Western civilization. Nobody else regards Marvin Hier as the embodiment of the yeshiva. Everyone I know in 90035 regards him as the Jewish Jesse Jackson.
The longer I live in America, the more fascinated I become with the story of American Jewry — how a wandering and persecuted people discovered a free and open nation and have given so much back.
At the heart of this story are some larger-than-life Jews who have influenced every facet of American life, from Hollywood, Wall Street and Silicon Valley to academia, popular culture, media, social action and politics.
One Jew who surely belongs to this prominent cast is Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Here is a yeshiva boy from New York’s Lower East Side who grows up to become one of the world’s most influential Jews, thanks to a special brew of smarts, chutzpah, faith and humor…
When he moved his family to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, he had no idea he would ever be involved with the Holocaust or fighting anti-Semitism. His plan was to start a yeshiva for post-high school students of all backgrounds and denominations and contribute, as he says, “to the unbroken chain of Torah study that had sustained Jews over the centuries.”
…A key story in the book is how Hier convinced Wiesenthal, the legendary pursuer of Nazi war criminals, to agree to have his name on the center. Hier recounts a long courtship, punctuated by a hairy car ride through the streets of Vienna.
At a meeting with the great man, Hier mustered all his chutzpah: “Mr. Wiesenthal,” he said, “I recently visited a museum in L.A .where people come from all over America to learn about dinosaurs. In fact, there are a half dozen such places in America. But where can people go to learn about the Nazis? Who will teach them that thirty-two years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is still going strong? If we don’t teach young people now, we will once again be caught unprepared, and history will repeat itself.”
The Wiesenthal name helped put Hier’s Holocaust center on the map, just as the YU association did the same for his yeshiva. As they both took off simultaneously, the two tracks of Hier’s life began to take shape: an international leader around Holocaust remembrance and fighting anti-Semitism, and a local leader in Orthodox Jewish education in Los Angeles, first with the yeshiva and then with its successor high school, Yeshiva University of Los Angeles (YULA), which he led until 2005.
These two sides symbolize the two Marvin Hiers: the global storyteller who wants to change the world, and the yeshiva boy who stays loyal to his Jewish roots.
The yeshiva boy dreams of keeping the flame of Torah alive with the Jews of his community; the global storyteller dreams of keeping the memory and lessons of the Holocaust alive with people everywhere.
The yeshiva boy wears a yarmulke on his head; the global storyteller wears a smile on his face.
The smile and the stories help Hier attract prominent people to his projects; the yamulke keeps him grounded in the story of his people and the primacy of Torah observance.
Hier is not just one of these. He’s both. He’s as comfortable telling stories in Yiddish to a group of yeshiva students as he is receiving an Academy Award for one of the documentaries produced by his film company, Moriah Films.
But if I had to venture a guess as to which side is more dominant, I would pick the yeshiva boy. It is the yeshiva boy who drives the global storyteller in a way that always comes back to help the Jewish people. It is the yeshiva boy that nourishes his faith that, in the end, everything will come out for the good.
“As I look back over the trajectory of my life, from New York’s Lower East Side to Vancouver, Los Angeles and Jerusalem, from yeshiva bocher to rabbi, political activist, film producer and museum founder,” he writes near the end of the book, “I realize that I have always held firm to that deceptively simple idea. I have always believed that no matter how many people try to extinguish the flame of the Jewish people, they will never succeed, because the irrevocable covenant God made with Abraham will always produce unexpected helpers and new circumstances to rekindle it.
“I have always believed in miracles, whether the ancient types, staves that turn into snakes, seas that split, manna that falls from trees, or the greater miracles of our own time, the creation of Israel, the incredible victories of the Israeli army and the renaissance of yeshivas and Jewish day schools throughout the world.”
Hier’s obsession with Jewish education counters the critique that, for all of the universal imperatives of Holocaust remembrance, it’s not an enduring source for creating a Jewish identity. Showing how Jews died and how Jews are hated doesn’t teach Jews how to live. Hier understood that only Jewish education can do that.
The above-displayed meme purportedly states several factors which have allowed Japan to “keep Islam at bay,” but the majority of these claims are either false or misleading.
For instance, the claim that Japan is the only nation that does not give citizenship to Muslims is false. According to Becoming Legally Japanese, a web site dedicated to immigration issues in Japan, the application form for Japanese citizenship does not require applicants to identify their religion:
There is no place anywhere on the written application where one specifies their religion or creed. Nor have I read anywhere about anyone being asked about their religious beliefs in the verbal interviews.
Because there is no place on the written online application for one’s religion, the Ministry of Justice can’t publish statistics showing the religions (or races) of naturalization candidates; they can only publish sex and former nationality statistics.
The claim that in Japan permanent residency is not given to Muslims is also false. The Guidelines for Permission for Permanent Residence published by the Immigration Bureau of Japan make no mention of religion. In fact, according to an article published by the Asian Quarterly, the Japanese government does not inquire about religion:
The Japanese government does not keep any statistics on the number of Muslims in Japan. Neither foreign residents nor ethnic Japanese are ever asked about their religion by official government agencies. While it is conceivable that this policy may change in the future due to official concerns about international terrorism, there has yet to be any public indication of such an effort. Introducing such a policy might lead to objections by the Japanese public that the government has no business inquiring into matters of religion, which is regarded by most Japanese as a strictly personal affair that should exist outside of the public sphere.
While it’s true that the International University of Japan does not teach Arabic or Islamic languages (according to the university’s web site, only English and Japanese language courses are offered), the country has not banned the teaching of Islamic languages. The Arabic Islamic Institute in Tokyo, for instance, offers an Arabic-Japanese translation course.
There is also no truth to the claim that that you cannot import a Koran into Japan. There are several mosques operating in Japan. and according to an article on the web site Japan Focus about Muslims living in Japan, at least one mosque teaches both Koranic studies and the Arabic language:
At the mosque in Ebina, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 10 children around age 10 are learning the Arabic alphabet. Every day from 4 pm to 8 pm, the mosque holds Koran classes. They started last November, at the urging of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims living in the area who wanted their children to be properly versed in the ancestral religion and the Arabic language. The classes are taught by the parents themselves.
Slaiman, a 39-year-old Sri Lankan who lives in neighboring Yamato and deals in used cars, sends his two sons, age 8 and 4, to classes at the mosque. He himself began studying Arabic at age 5 at a mosque school in Sir Lanka. He wants to give his own children a similar religious environment. “The Koran is written in Arabic,” he says. “If the children don’t learn it now they won’t be able to read it properly or understand the meaning of the prayers.”
Islam is not faith in isolation. It teaches faith, morality and human relations as a whole, and children must learn it early if they are to fully master it. “Japanese schools teach only knowledge — not how to be a good human being,” says one Muslim father.
While the claim that Japan is the only country in the world that has a negligible number of embassies in Islamic countries hinges on the definition of “negligible,” the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintains embassies in several predominantly Islamic countries, including Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Comoros, and Egypt.
Several of the other rumors in the above-displayed meme can be debunked by the facts previously stated, using common sense (e.g., with approximately 100,000 Muslims living in Japan it is reasonable to assume that some of them are renting apartments), or by reading the 14th article of Japan’s constitution:
“All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”
The one claim that the above-displayed meme did get right is the assertion that there is no Shariah Law in Japan. Article 20 of Japan’s constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion to all Japan citizens, also states that religious organizations cannot exercise political authority:
No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. 2) No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious acts, celebration, rite or practice. 3) The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.
The above-displayed meme does not showcase different ways that Japan has been able to keep “Islam at bay.” In fact, the country’s immigration policies may have helped the Muslim population grow:
In 1982, Muslims numbered some 30,000; half of whom were native Japanese and the rest of different origins. With complete freedom of religion in Japan, the number of Muslims is expected to reach 100,000
There are countries in the world, mainly in Europe, that are presently undergoing significant cultural transformations as a result of Muslim immigration. France, Germany, Belgium and Holland are interesting examples of cases where immigration from Muslim countries, together with the Muslims’ high fertility rate, effects every area of life.
It is interesting to know that there is a country in the world whose official and public approach to the Muslim matter is totally different. This country is Japan. This country keeps a very low profile on all levels regarding the Muslim matter: On the diplomatic level, senior political figures from Islamic countries almost never visit Japan, and Japanese leaders rarely visit Muslim countries. The relations with Muslim countries are based on concerns such as oil and gas, which Japan imports from some Muslim countries. The official policy of Japan is not to give citizenship to Muslims who come to Japan, and even permits for permanent residency are given sparingly to Muslims.
Japan forbids exhorting people to adopt the religion of Islam (Dawah), and any Muslim who actively encourages conversion to Islam is seen as proselytizing to a foreign and undesirable culture. Few academic institutions teach the Arabic language. It is very difficult to import books of the Qur’an to Japan, and Muslims who come to Japan, are usually employees of foreign companies. In Japan there are very few mosques. The official policy of the Japanese authorities is to make every effort not to allow entry to Muslims, even if they are physicians, engineers and managers sent by foreign companies that are active in the region. Japanese society expects Muslim men to pray at home.
Japanese companies seeking foreign workers specifically note that they are not interested in Muslim workers. And any Muslim who does manage to enter Japan will find it very difficult to rent an apartment. Anywhere a Muslim lives, the neighbors become uneasy. Japan forbids the establishment of Islamic organizations, so setting up Islamic institutions such as mosques and schools is almost impossible. In Tokyo there is only one imam.
In contrast with what is happening in Europe, very few Japanese are drawn to Islam. If a Japanese woman marries a Muslim, she will be considered an outcast by her social and familial environment. There is no application of Shari’a law in Japan. There is some food in Japan that is halal, kosher according to Islamic law, but it is not easy to find it in the supermarket.
The Japanese approach to Muslims is also evidenced by the numbers: in Japan there are 127 million residents, but only ten thousand Muslims, less than one hundredth of a percent. The number of Japanese who have converted is thought to be few. In Japan there are a few tens of thousands of foreign workers who are Muslim, mainly from Pakistan, who have managed to enter Japan as workers with construction companies. However, because of the negative attitude towards Islam they keep a low profile.
* I listened to an interview with an Australian scientist who had scored a job in one of the research facilities in Japan. He said he had to come back to Australia early; he couldn’t stand it there. As all scientists do he reviewed papers from others in the group: get out the red pen, mark up any dodgy assumptions, non sequiturs, missing references, etc. It didn’t go down well: Dr Yamamoto has spent years on this paper, you can’t just excoriate it like that! The Japanese (/Asians) see criticism as a point of honour, whereas in the west (following Ancient Greece) it is seen as a key to scientific progress. Perhaps that is why, although many Asians do well in science, it is usually limited to those working in western universities – those who leave aside the Asian honour culture.
* “Harmony” is a word that comes up all the time in Western writing about Japan. Perhaps it’s a mistranslation, but it seems likely that the Japanese would not take well to Donald Trump. On the other hand, they appear to devote some thought to how not to make Donald Trump a necessity.
* Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was likely killed by a Muslim terrorist. I say “likely” because the killer was never caught.
* Steve, you risk discrediting yourself, the alt-right, and Ron Unz, by repeating these demonstrably incorrect claims without the verification and refutation they deserve.
Japan has no such policy, forbids no such thing, etc. You should google, factcheck, and then refute the claims. It’s your responsibility and duty to do your best to destroy this plague meme.
All that Japan does is to not actively import third-world muslims, with government funds. This is due to their elites no actively hating their own people, desiring to “multiculturalize” them. And that is enough.
* So I take it by the standards of mainstream America, Japan has essentially become an isolationist state by cutting itself off from the world’s one and a half billion muslims. Yet Japan is probably the most high-tech society on earth and seems to be doing quite OK. Crime is low and social cohesion is high.
Immigration, schmigration who needs it? We really need to find a way to get Japan and her approach to immigration front and center in our own domestic debate over this issue.
What I find most interesting about the Japanese approach to immigration and multiculturalism is the fact they flat out reject it despite all the promotional hype it has received from Western elites. The Japanese, and other NE Asian nations, are not shy about taking what they see as the best aspects of the West and incorporating it into their own societies. Yet somehow they all seem to reject mass immigration of alien peoples and the attendant multiculturalism it brings, even though the leaders of the West constantly preach about how our success is dependent upon it.
Evidently the Japanese are able to see through the double-talk coming out of our leaders because they sure aren’t buying into the meme that the success of the West was brought about by this rampant population churn.
* KSM, taking a vacation at Club Gitmo, confessed that he and his merry band of jihadists were planning to bomb up Japan when it co-hosted the 2002 World Cup of Soccer with South Korea, but quickly gave up on those plans because they couldn’t get a sufficient ground network going within Japan.
I wonder why they couldn’t get a sufficient ground network going in Japan.
* In true American form people here are referring to what is actually written down to judge what the Japanese do or don’t do.
Yes its true-Japan doesn’t forbid Islam. So?
For example you could also argue that Japan does forbid itself an army, just a ‘self-defense’ force because, darn it all, that’s what it says in the ‘Constitution’.
And of course it has no ‘navy’ just a ‘maritime self-defense force’.
I suspect unless you’re Japanese you will never understand the relationship between Japan and Islam (or anything else).
* In retrospect it appears that not we Americans, but the Japanese, won the Second World War, as the Japanese have attained for themselves all the objectives laid down in the Preamble of our Constitution, while we have relinquished those objectives and suffer under policies which, pursued further, will condemn us never to attain those objectives.
* I used to live and work in Japan circa 2000 and this post gets to the heart of the matter.
Snopes is irrelevant-their investigation of the inner workings of Japanese immigration policy is about as useful as a committee of Chisena speakers of the Lower Zambezi investigating the policies of the membership committee at the Augusta National Golf Club.
I’m not sure what the proportion of foreigners and immigrants is in Japan today. It was said to be about 300,000 in a population of 120,000,000 fifteen years ago.
If you think Britain has an unwritten constitution, Japan beats it hands down. The unspoken assumptions about the right thing to do, in every situation, including dealing with foreigners, are the invisible code and the map to the lives and actions of the Japanese. Little needs to be said, let alone documented, even behind closed doors.
An story about immigration into Japan. A colleague, born in Hong Kong of a Japanese mother, who had studied, lived and worked in Japan from his early teens, wanted to apply for citizenship, which was his right. He showed me his application form, a full 800 pages long. It took him eight years.
The Japanese have an iron grasp on their self-identity, life is good in an advanced industrial society, and they don’t want to change anything. Foreign economists and sociologists getting the vapors about zero growth rates and the labor requirements of aging populations could be on Pluto.
That’s the bottom line with the Japanese and everyone else.
Posted inIslam, Japan|Comments Off on How Does Japan Keep Islam At Bay?
Bloomberg: “Next year is about one thing in particular: our cohesion,” Merkel said. “It is important not to follow those who, with coldness or even hate in their hearts, want to claim Germanness solely for themselves and exclude others.”
Elizabeth Holmes was supposed to be the grrl powered answer to Steve Jobs, black turtleneck and all. At the encouragement of a professor, she dropped out of Stanford University at 19 years old to continue the startup that she (wait for it…) founded in her dorm room. She opened offices in Palo Alto, garnered high profile board members, heavy hitting financial backers, Ted conference appearances and eager media cheer leading as the dollars rolled in and she became America’s youngest female billionaire.
Her stratospheric rise was a shot across the bow to the male dominated tech industry (the medical tech industry, at least) demonstrating that yes, women can do it too and you’d better be ready for us.
The revolutionary product at the core of Theranos (a company name beget from “therapy” and “diagnosis”) was a proprietary blood test method that only required drops of blood through a pin prick at the pharmacy versus big needles and vials full of blood, a doctors visit and a lab order. Results would be delivered within a few hours, versus days, be more affordable, less intimidating and accessible to the masses.
This was the disruptive answer to the $75 billion dollar a year market dominated by lab testing giants Quest Diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp.) A deal was struck with Walgreens to offer Theranos tests in select locations, with more on the way.
Then, right before the IPO, the balloon popped. In October, a series of reports emerged ranging from FDA allegations of uncleared medical devices to employee allegations that Theranos isn’t using the technology they claim to have. What happened?
Reality check: she quits school at 19 years old to run a medical technology startup in several areas where PhDs spend decades researching just one aspect of each, and we are supposed to accept the fact that she’s got it all figured out, just like that? Got it.
SocialMatter: “Jobs and Musk were proven innovators who found a new career phase and new pitch for their products. Holmes was an unknown quantity. Holmes’ firm was not proving itself through its work but had collected a lot of interested and interesting allies and investors. No one bothered to look behind the curtain. Elizabeth Holmes was just too perfect for the media to stop. Holmes could have been their Steve Jobs with breasts. She could have been their Sheryl Sandberg with actual tech credentials. instead, Holmes is just another mirage offered up by the media to disappear in the lens of reality.”
* Apparently, her top technical guy was some experienced scientist in the field, who was an early hire in the company and was responsible for actually getting the “revolutionary new technology” built while she was going around celebrity cocktail-parties as the PR person armed with her reality-distortion field.
According to the WSJ article, a couple of years ago that top technical guy left a note saying “It Just Doesn’t Work!” and committed suicide. Naturally, none of the venture-capital firms paid any attention to that minor detail, and continued pouring in their mega-oceans of new funding.
* October article in the WSJ:
“In 2005, Ms. Holmes hired Ian Gibbons, a British biochemist who had researched systems to handle and process tiny quantities of fluids. His collaboration with other Theranos scientists produced 23 patents, according to records filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Ms. Holmes is listed as a co-inventor on 19 of the patents.
The patents show how Ms. Holmes’s original idea morphed into the company’s business model. But progress was slow. Dr. Gibbons “told me nothing was working,” says his widow, Rochelle.
In May 2013, Dr. Gibbons committed suicide. Theranos’s Ms. King says the scientist “was frequently absent from work in the last years of his life, due to health and other problems.” Theranos disputes the claim that its technology was failing.
After Dr. Gibbons’s widow spoke to a Journal reporter, a lawyer representing Theranos sent her a letter threatening to sue her if she continued to make “false statements” about Ms. Holmes and disclose confidential information. Ms. Gibbons owns Theranos shares that she inherited from her husband.”
Geeze, this company is supposedly worth $9 billion!
* The problems of working with “nano” blood samples have been known for years (basically capillary sourced blood isn’t chemically the same as blood from a vein), but it’s a little counter intuitive to an engineering school drop-out like Betsy. Any competent Laboratory Medicine physician could have told them they were doomed years ago. Also the medical testing field is so regulated there’s no real money to be made.
* “Ok, who is this young wunderkind related to?”
Good blood, good bone old money folks. Fleischman’s Yeast money from way back. Her father works for the government in foreign aid and has also worked as a high ranking staffer in the energy industry. Her mother was a Congressional aid in defense and foreign affairs before starting a family. Not super important people themselves, but extremely respectable.
* I like to show this TED Talk parody to kids to hit home the ideas-are-like-belly buttons thing, and to take these Snake Oil Change Agents with a grain of salt.
* It reminds me of the MCI ads in the 1990′s where they claimed they had a great new video conferencing feature. It turns out the idea was invented by their marketing people, sold to to top brass as real, and left to the IT grunts to implement. When the IT grunts told them it wasn’t possible, the IT grunts were the ones responsible somehow.
* Assuming it will take a few years for the investigation and all the details to come to light and then another year or two for Aaron Sorkin to write a screenplay and get it produced, I’d say Jennifer Lawrence (then 30) will have matured into the role.
She will give very conflicted interviews during the press junket, trying to spin the whole affair in a feminist way. Hopefully Sorkin won’t try to pin it all on the suicided stale pale male who failed to make the astounding genius tech grrrl’s dream come true, but Jennifer Lawrence will probably try to.
I hope there’s a gratuitous Quaaludes scene, perhaps involving people jabbing themselves with lancets.
* So, basically, there are billions of dollars to be made from modern Americans aversion to a pin-prick.
May I suggest y’all go and see ‘The Revenant’ to remind yourselves of the way we used to be?
Somewhere, the ghost of Hugh Glass is grunting in disgust.
* There is ONLY ONE REAL reason this company and individual is talked about – and that is because she is a woman. She was made famous because she is a woman, if this was a white man nobody would be talking about it, the people judging her are the people that decided to make her famous because of gender, the one falling to temptation is in fact you.
* There is obviously a calculated strategy to lowering her voice. Apparently, the lower her voice goes, the higher the valuation of her company goes. Too bad it’s privately owned. Looks like it would be a good short.
* Her manner is very affected. This is an actor playing a role, i.e., con job.
Some other superficial observations. Her facial skin is loose and sagging already. I’d be stressed and prematurely aging too if I were taking other people’s money for my bullshit product. I’d be interested to see what a sophisticated interrogator thinks of her presentation. She looks defensive and unsure even though she’s getting a gentle tongue bath from the interviewer. Top executives are forceful, charismatic people but she is doing nothing to capture the room. The haphazard hairdo is really odd as well.
I agree there has to be more to this story. Dad’s a USAID bureaucrat? If I’m George Schultz, you’ll have to do better than that. Who is propping this woman up? Who’s her puppetmaster? She doesn’t strike me as having the moxie to ringlead something like this. Why is she such a heavy hitter despite her utter lack of credentials and institutional memberships?
If this were a public company she would or should have the SEC/DOJ buzzing around her. As it is, she’ll probably just have a few investor lawsuits.
* Hedy Lamarr? She actually did have a new idea for broadcast spectrum, but didn’t have the engineering chops to make it work, so she found someone who did. This being the forties, she was able to put aside her ego, and people weren’t looking for Susan Jobs, as Nick Steves says, and we were able to put her actual talents to work…
* Just yesterday I was describing Hedy Lamarr to a young woman at my current consulting location. I had to refresh my memory of her inventions — she actually had several significant ones — on Wikipedia. Although it was not used until long after WW II, due to technical difficulties with implementation, her idea for synchronized frequency variation is the foundation for most broadband applications today. And Ms. Lamarr was also drop-dead gorgeous. At her first US movie premiere there were audible gasps of admiration from the audience when she first appeared on screen. Judging from the photos here, Ms Holmes wouldn’t cause any necks to turn at the better watering spots I’ve had occasion to visit.
* Race-realist Michael Levin proposed that feminism is the first system of thought that manages to be wrong every single time. No male philosophy can claim that.
Posted inAbuse, Feminism|Comments Off on Is Theranos A Girl-Powered Scam?
All over the world, globalisation is under challenge from resurgent nationalist forces. One of the great political challenges of the coming year will be to defend the benefits of globalisation — while fending off the arguments of nationalists such as Mrs Le Pen, Donald Trump in the US and his new admirer, President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The benefits of globalisation are both economic and political. In economic terms, they include enhanced global trade and international investment, which boost prosperity and enlarge choice for ordinary people. Believers in globalisation are more interested in opening borders than closing them. Globalisation is closely linked to internationalism in politics, since it involves a recognition that the world faces common problems, such as climate change or refugees, that can only be dealt with effectively through international agreements.
* This piece is so full of intellectual dishonesty, its barely worth taking serious. It takes the nationalist position to extreme positions without taking the globalist position to extreme positions. It uses strawmen arguments that nationalists don’t propose. It misquotes Trump to an extreme he didn’t suggest. It treats the US multicultural history as if it came from open border policies when it did not. It doesn’t address any key issues that concern nationalists that truly are legitimate, like difference in forms of government that matter to those wanting a society different from others in the world. It uses black and white statements to characterize the opposing side, while soft statements to characterize its side. And its simply plain disengenous. There is no discussion, as is the case with socialist type thinking, of freedom and private property rights, that different peoples have different views on this, and borders are necessary to protect freedom and private property rights.
And no one I know in the US is against immigration as you suggest.
With open borders and no control over the RATE of immigration, bad things happen, and a country can quickly become a two..or three language country. Liberals always want better communication. One key to that is speaking the same language.
A country without borders is not a country.
Some countries want everyone in their country to have equal incomes. I don’t. Thats a road to nowhere, to malaise, to a country of automotons. In the US you are free to sit at home and drink beer….or quit worrying about what other people make and make something of yourself.
Equal incomes is not ‘justice’. If some countries want that, they are welcome to it. Pick the country you want to live in, while you can, before some globalist tries to give you a bronze, silver or gold type country to live in.
* “Lets face it. The only people benefiting from this “globalization” are international traders”
Well, I benefit, and I’m not a politician.
I eat fine tomatoes from Israel, apples from New Zealand, etc.
I could clothe a family of four for peanuts by buying stuff at Costco that’s mostly made in China. I can buy very nice shirts for my son for $15 at TJ Maxx.
Almost everything except land is better and cheaper than it was when I was kid.
* Are you safer than you were before? Is your safety dependent on isolating yourself in an enclave of people who hold to the same norms of behavior that you do, now that the country increasingly doesn’t hold to those norms?
Do you feel that the scope of your freedom has been enlarged or at least maintained from the starting point of your parents and grandparents? Not just the freedom to consume, but freedom of speech, of association, freedom of safe movement or safe settlement wherever you want in your country? I’m thinking here of the growing ethnic enclaves and ghettos that accompany not just recent diversity injections, but past ones as well.
Do you feel that the erosion of your personal political power (your vote as it were, and your relative importance in the calculus of political agents) not through natural population growth, but through immigration driven growth, poses a danger to your interests and those of you community and group?
Do you feel that your country has accomplished something of value to you and your descendants through diversity that it would not have been able to do? Has it attained a higher level of human development, basic wealth and security, contentedness and formation of social capital to accompany the economic one?
* A big part of the reason that liberals have made a mess out of immigration is that they refuse to recognize any sort of group differences – Somalis and Swiss, Ashkenazim and Abyssinians – they are all the same according to their quasi-religious ideology. So the success of earlier generations of immigrants who may have been more adaptable to American culture is taken as irrefutable proof that the new ones will do great too. Cohen’s grandfather the talmudic scholar did great so surely illiterate Muslim shepherds will do well also.
Posted inNationalism|Comments Off on Why globalisers still retain the upper hand
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
