If Black America Were A Country, It Wouldn’t Make It Into The OECD

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Luke Ford

REPORT: What you’re looking at here is a chart showing how “Black America” and “White America,” if they were countries in their own right, would rank in terms of incarceration and mortality. For instance, the USA’s total homicide rate is pretty bad, at 4.5 murders per 100,000 people. That’s right between Ukraine and Niger. But for white Americans, the murder rate is much lower, at just 2.5 per 100,000. That’s not far off Norway’s 2.2.

“Black America,” on the other hand, is just astonishingly bad, with 18.2 murders per 100,000 people. That’s worse than Haiti, worse than the Central African Republic, and more than double the rate of Kazakhstan or even Iraq.

A look at infant mortality, a key indicator of development, is just as grim. Iceland has 1.6 deaths per 1,000 births; South Korea has 3.2. “White America” is pretty bad — by developed-country standards — with 5.1 deaths per 1,000 births. But “Black America,” again, is much, much worse: at 11.2 deaths per 1,000 births, it’s worse than Romania or China.

The chart also shows how black Americans are incarcerated at a rate which boggles the mind: There is simply no other country that comes close to its 2,207 per 100,000 people number. That’s three times the rate of the worst country in the world —the USA — and almost 50 times the rate of Iceland.

If you click on the “OECD” button on the Economist’s interactive, you’ll see, in blue, the 34 sovereign members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — the group of the world’s developed nations. The United States sits towards the bottom of the group, on the chart’s indicators. But “Black America”, if it really were an independent country, might well not be accepted into the OECD at all.

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Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Luke Ford

by Garrett Hardin, Psychology Today, September 1974

Environmentalists use the metaphor of the earth as a “spaceship” in trying to persuade countries, industries and people to stop wasting and polluting our natural resources. Since we all share life on this planet, they argue, no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources.

But does everyone on earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources? The spaceship metaphor can be dangerous when used by misguided idealists to justify suicidal policies for sharing our resources through uncontrolled immigration and foreign aid. In their enthusiastic but unrealistic generosity, they confuse the ethics of a spaceship with those of a lifeboat.

A true spaceship would have to be under the control of a captain, since no ship could possibly survive if its course were determined by committee. Spaceship Earth certainly has no captain; the United Nations is merely a toothless tiger, with little power to enforce any policy upon its bickering members.

If we divide the world crudely into rich nations and poor nations, two thirds of them are desperately poor, and only one third comparatively rich, with the United States the wealthiest of all. Metaphorically each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth. What should the lifeboat passengers do?

First, we must recognize the limited capacity of any lifeboat. For example, a nation’s land has a limited capacity to support a population and as the current energy crisis has shown us, in some ways we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our land.

Adrift in a Moral Sea

So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being “our brother’s keeper,” or by the Marxist ideal of “to each according to his needs.” Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as “our brothers,” we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.

Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. But which 10 do we let in? How do we choose? Do we pick the best 10, “first come, first served”? And what do we say to the 90 we exclude? If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our “safety factor,” an engineering principle of critical importance. For example, if we don’t leave room for excess capacity as a safety factor in our country’s agriculture, a new plant disease or a bad change in the weather could have disastrous consequences.

Suppose we decide to preserve our small safety factor and admit no more to the lifeboat. Our survival is then possible although we shall have to be constantly on guard against boarding parties.

While this last solution clearly offers the only means of our survival, it is morally abhorrent to many people. Some say they feel guilty about their good luck. My reply is simple: “Get out and yield your place to others.” This may solve the problem of the guilt-ridden person’s conscience, but it does not change the ethics of the lifeboat. The needy person to whom the guilt-ridden person yields his place will not himself feel guilty about his good luck. If he did, he would not climb aboard. The net result of conscience-stricken people giving up their unjustly held seats is the elimination of that sort of conscience from the lifeboat.

This is the basic metaphor within which we must work out our solutions. Let us now enrich the image, step by step, with substantive additions from the real world, a world that must solve real and pressing problems of overpopulation and hunger.

The harsh ethics of the lifeboat become even harsher when we consider the reproductive differences between the rich nations and the poor nations. The people inside the lifeboats are doubling in numbers every 87 years; those swimming around outside are doubling, on the average, every 35 years, more than twice as fast as the rich. And since the world’s resources are dwindling, the difference in prosperity between the rich and the poor can only increase.

As of 1973, the U.S. had a population of 210 million people, who were increasing by 0.8 percent per year. Outside our lifeboat, let us imagine another 210 million people (say the combined populations of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Morocco, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines) who are increasing at a rate of 3.3 percent per year. Put differently, the doubling time for this aggregate population is 21 years, compared to 87 years for the U.S.

The harsh ethics of the lifeboat become harsher when we consider the reproductive differences between rich and poor.

Multiplying the Rich and the Poor

Now suppose the U.S. agreed to pool its resources with those seven countries, with everyone receiving an equal share. Initially the ratio of Americans to non-Americans in this model would be one-to-one. But consider what the ratio would be after 87 years, by which time the Americans would have doubled to a population of 420 million. By then, doubling every 21 years, the other group would have swollen to 3.54 billion. Each American would have to share the available resources with more than eight people.

But, one could argue, this discussion assumes that current population trends will continue, and they may not. Quite so. Most likely the rate of population increase will decline much faster in the U.S. than it will in the other countries, and there does not seem to be much we can do about it. In sharing with “each according to his needs,” we must recognize that needs are determined by population size, which is determined by the rate of reproduction, which at present is regarded as a sovereign right of every nation, poor or not. This being so, the philanthropic load created by the sharing ethic of the spaceship can only increase.

The Tragedy of the Commons

The fundamental error of spaceship ethics, and the sharing it requires, is that it leads to what I call “the tragedy of the commons.” Under a system of private property, the men who own property recognize their responsibility to care for it, for if they don’t they will eventually suffer. A farmer, for instance, will allow no more cattle in a pasture than its carrying capacity justifies. If he overloads it, erosion sets in, weeds take over, and he loses the use of the pasture.

If a pasture becomes a commons open to all, the right of each to use it may not be matched by a corresponding responsibility to protect it. Asking everyone to use it with discretion will hardly do, for the considerate herdsman who refrains from overloading the commons suffers more than a selfish one who says his needs are greater. If everyone would restrain himself, all would be well; but it takes only one less than everyone to ruin a system of voluntary restraint. In a crowded world of less than perfect human beings, mutual ruin is inevitable if there are no controls. This is the tragedy of the commons.

One of the major tasks of education today should be the creation of such an acute awareness of the dangers of the commons that people will recognize its many varieties. For example, the air and water have become polluted because they are treated as commons. Further growth in the population or per-capita conversion of natural resources into pollutants will only make the problem worse. The same holds true for the fish of the oceans. Fishing fleets have nearly disappeared in many parts of the world, technological improvements in the art of fishing are hastening the day of complete ruin. Only the replacement of the system of the commons with a responsible system of control will save the land, air, water and oceanic fisheries.

The World Food Bank

In recent years there has been a push to create a new commons called a World Food Bank, an international depository of food reserves to which nations would contribute according to their abilities and from which they would draw according to their needs. This humanitarian proposal has received support from many liberal international groups, and from such prominent citizens as Margaret Mead, U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, and Senators Edward Kennedy and George McGovern.

A world food bank appeals powerfully to our humanitarian impulses. But before we rush ahead with such a plan, let us recognize where the greatest political push comes from, lest we be disillusioned later. Our experience with the “Food for Peace program,” or Public Law 480, gives us the answer. This program moved billions of dollars worth of U.S. surplus grain to food-short, population-long countries during the past two decades. But when P.L. 480 first became law, a headline in the business magazine Forbes revealed the real power behind it: “Feeding the World’s Hungry Millions: How It Will Mean Billions for U.S. Business.”

And indeed it did. In the years 1960 to 1970, U.S. taxpayers spent a total of $7.9 billion on the Food for Peace program. Between 1948 and 1970, they also paid an additional $50 billion for other economic-aid programs, some of which went for food and food-producing machinery and technology. Though all U.S. taxpayers were forced to contribute to the cost of P.L. 480 certain special interest groups gained handsomely under the program. Farmers did not have to contribute the grain; the Government or rather the taxpayers, bought it from them at full market prices. The increased demand raised prices of farm products generally. The manufacturers of farm machinery, fertilizers and pesticides benefited by the farmers’ extra efforts to grow more food. Grain elevators profited from storing the surplus until it could be shipped. Railroads made money hauling it to ports, and shipping lines profited from carrying it overseas. The implementation of P.L. 480 required the creation of a vast Government bureaucracy, which then acquired its own vested interest in continuing the program regardless of its merits.

Extracting Dollars

Those who proposed and defended the Food for Peace program in public rarely mentioned its importance to any of these special interests. The public emphasis was always on its humanitarian effects. The combination of silent selfish interests and highly vocal humanitarian apologists made a powerful and successful lobby for extracting money from taxpayers. We can expect the same lobby to push now for the creation of a World Food Bank.

However great the potential benefit to selfish interests, it should not be a decisive argument against a truly humanitarian program. We must ask if such a program would actually do more good than harm, not only momentarily but also in the long run. Those who propose the food bank usually refer to a current “emergency” or “crisis” in terms of world food supply. But what is an emergency? Although they may be infrequent and sudden, everyone knows that emergencies will occur from time to time. A well-run family, company, organization or country prepares for the likelihood of accidents and emergencies. It expects them, it budgets for them, it saves for them.

Learning the Hard Way

What happens if some organizations or countries budget for accidents and others do not? If each country is solely responsible for its own well-being, poorly managed ones will suffer. But they can learn from experience. They may mend their ways, and learn to budget for infrequent but certain emergencies. For example, the weather varies from year to year, and periodic crop failures are certain. A wise and competent government saves out of the production of the good years in anticipation of bad years to come. Joseph taught this policy to Pharaoh in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Yet the great majority of the governments in the world today do not follow such a policy. They lack either the wisdom or the competence, or both. Should those nations that do manage to put something aside be forced to come to the rescue each time an emergency occurs among the poor nations?

“But it isn’t their fault!” Some kind-hearted liberals argue. “How can we blame the poor people who are caught in an emergency? Why must they suffer for the sins of their governments?” The concept of blame is simply not relevant here. The real question is, what are the operational consequences of establishing a world food bank? If it is open to every country every time a need develops, slovenly rulers will not be motivated to take Joseph’s advice. Someone will always come to their aid. Some countries will deposit food in the world food bank, and others will withdraw it. There will be almost no overlap. As a result of such solutions to food shortage emergencies, the poor countries will not learn to mend their ways, and will suffer progressively greater emergencies as their populations grow.

Population Control the Crude Way

On the average poor countries undergo a 2.5 percent increase in population each year; rich countries, about 0.8 percent. Only rich countries have anything in the way of food reserves set aside, and even they do not have as much as they should. Poor countries have none. If poor countries received no food from the outside, the rate of their population growth would be periodically checked by crop failures and famines. But if they can always draw on a world food bank in time of need, their population can continue to grow unchecked, and so will their “need” for aid. In the short run, a world food bank may diminish that need, but in the long run it actually increases the need without limit.

Without some system of worldwide food sharing, the proportion of people in the rich and poor nations might eventually stabilize. The overpopulated poor countries would decrease in numbers, while the rich countries that had room for more people would increase. But with a well-meaning system of sharing, such as a world food bank, the growth differential between the rich and the poor countries will not only persist, it will increase. Because of the higher rate of population growth in the poor countries of the world, 88 percent of today’s children are born poor, and only 12 percent rich. Year by year the ratio becomes worse, as the fast-reproducing poor outnumber the slow-reproducing rich.

A world food bank is thus a commons in disguise. People will have more motivation to draw from it than to add to any common store. The less provident and less able will multiply at the expense of the abler and more provident, bringing eventual ruin upon all who share in the commons. Besides, any system of “sharing” that amounts to foreign aid from the rich nations to the poor nations will carry the taint of charity, which will contribute little to the world peace so devoutly desired by those who support the idea of a world food bank.

As past U.S. foreign-aid programs have amply and depressingly demonstrated, international charity frequently inspires mistrust and antagonism rather than gratitude on the part of the recipient nation [see “What Other Nations Hear When the Eagle Screams,” by Kenneth J. and Mary M. Gergen, PT, June].

Chinese Fish and Miracle Rice

The modern approach to foreign aid stresses the export of technology and advice, rather than money and food. As an ancient Chinese proverb goes: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he will eat for the rest of his days.” Acting on this advice, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations have financed a number of programs for improving agriculture in the hungry nations. Known as the “Green Revolution,” these programs have led to the development of “miracle rice” and “miracle wheat,” new strains that offer bigger harvests and greater resistance to crop damage. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize winning agronomist who, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, developed “miracle wheat,” is one of the most prominent advocates of a world food bank.

Whether or not the Green Revolution can increase food production as much as its champions claim is a debatable but possibly irrelevant point. Those who support this well-intended humanitarian effort should first consider some of the fundamentals of human ecology. Ironically, one man who did was the late Alan Gregg, a vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Two decades ago he expressed strong doubts about the wisdom of such attempts to increase food production. He likened the growth and spread of humanity over the surface of the earth to the spread of cancer in the human body, remarking that “cancerous growths demand food; but, as far as I know, they have never been cured by getting it.”

Overloading the Environment

Every human born constitutes a draft on all aspects of the environment: food, air, water, forests, beaches, wildlife, scenery and solitude. Food can, perhaps, be significantly increased to meet a growing demand. But what about clean beaches, unspoiled forests, and solitude? If we satisfy a growing population’s need for food, we necessarily decrease its per capita supply of the other resources needed by men.

India, for example, now has a population of 600 million, which increases by 15 million each year. This population already puts a huge load on a relatively impoverished environment. The country’s forests are now only a small fraction of what they were three centuries ago and floods and erosion continually destroy the insufficient farmland that remains. Every one of the 15 million new lives added to India’s population puts an additional burden on the environment, and increases the economic and social costs of crowding. However humanitarian our intent, every Indian life saved through medical or nutritional assistance from abroad diminishes the quality of life for those who remain, and for subsequent generations. If rich countries make it possible, through foreign aid, for 600 million Indians to swell to 1.2 billion in a mere 28 years, as their current growth rate threatens, will future generations of Indians thank us for hastening the destruction of their environment? Will our good intentions be sufficient excuse for the consequences of our actions?

My final example of a commons in action is one for which the public has the least desire for rational discussion – immigration. Anyone who publicly questions the wisdom of current U.S. immigration policy is promptly charged with bigotry, prejudice, ethnocentrism, chauvinism, isolationism or selfishness. Rather than encounter such accusations, one would rather talk about other matters leaving immigration policy to wallow in the crosscurrents of special interests that take no account of the good of the whole, or the interests of posterity.

Perhaps we still feel guilty about things we said in the past. Two generations ago the popular press frequently referred to Dagos, Wops, Polacks, Chinks and Krauts in articles about how America was being “overrun” by foreigners of supposedly inferior genetic stock [see “The Politics of Genetic Engineering: Who Decides Who’s Defective?” PT, June]. But because the implied inferiority of foreigners was used then as justification for keeping them out, people now assume that restrictive policies could only be based on such misguided notions. There are other grounds.

A Nation of Immigrants

Just consider the numbers involved. Our Government acknowledges a net inflow of 400,000 immigrants a year. While we have no hard data on the extent of illegal entries, educated guesses put the figure at about 600,000 a year. Since the natural increase (excess of births over deaths) of the resident population now runs about 1.7 million per year, the yearly gain from immigration amounts to at least 19 percent of the total annual increase, and may be as much as 37 percent if we include the estimate for illegal immigrants. Considering the growing use of birth-control devices, the potential effect of education campaigns by such organizations as Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Zero Population Growth, and the influence of inflation and the housing shortage, the fertility rate of American women may decline so much that immigration could account for all the yearly increase in population. Should we not at least ask if that is what we want?

For the sake of those who worry about whether the “quality” of the average immigrant compares favorably with the quality of the average resident, let us assume that immigrants and native-born citizens are of exactly equal quality, however one defines that term. We will focus here only on quantity; and since our conclusions will depend on nothing else, all charges of bigotry and chauvinism become irrelevant.

Immigration Vs. Food Supply

World food banks move food to the people, hastening the exhaustion of the environment of the poor countries. Unrestricted immigration, on the other hand, moves people to the food, thus speeding up the destruction of the environment of the rich countries. We can easily understand why poor people should want to make this latter transfer, but why should rich hosts encourage it?

As in the case of foreign-aid programs, immigration receives support from selfish interests and humanitarian impulses. The primary selfish interest in unimpeded immigration is the desire of employers for cheap labor, particularly in industries and trades that offer degrading work. In the past, one wave of foreigners after another was brought into the U.S. to work at wretched jobs for wretched wages. In recent years the Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans have had this dubious honor. The interests of the employers of cheap labor mesh well with the guilty silence of the country’s liberal intelligentsia. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are particularly reluctant to call for a closing of the doors to immigration for fear of being called bigots.

But not all countries have such reluctant leadership. Most education Hawaiians, for example, are keenly aware of the limits of their environment, particularly in terms of population growth. There is only so much room on the islands, and the islanders know it. To Hawaiians, immigrants from the other 49 states present as great a threat as those from other nations. At a recent meeting of Hawaiian government officials in Honolulu, I had the ironic delight of hearing a speaker who like most of his audience was of Japanese ancestry, ask how the country might practically and constitutionally close its doors to further immigration. One member of the audience countered: “How can we shut the doors now? We have many friends and relatives in Japan that we’d like to bring here some day so that they can enjoy Hawaii too.” The Japanese-American speaker smiled sympathetically and answered: “Yes, but we have children now, and someday we’ll have grandchildren too. We can bring more people here from Japan only by giving away some of the land that we hope to pass on to our grandchildren some day. What right do we have to do that?”

At this point, I can hear U.S. liberals asking: “How can you justify slamming the door once you’re inside? You say that immigrants should be kept out. But aren’t we all immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants? If we insist on staying, must we not admit all others?” Our craving for intellectual order leads us to seek and prefer symmetrical rules and morals: a single rule for me and everybody else; the same rule yesterday, today and tomorrow. Justice, we fell, should not change with time and place.

We Americans of non-Indian ancestry can look upon ourselves as the descendants of thieves who are guilty morally, if not legally, of stealing this land from its Indian owners. Should we then give back the land to the now living American descendants of those Indians? However morally or logically sound this proposal may be, I, for one, am unwilling to live by it and I know no one else who is. Besides, the logical consequence would be absurd. Suppose that, intoxicated with a sense of pure justice, we should decide to turn our land over to the Indians. Since all our other wealth has also been derived from the land, wouldn’t we be morally obliged to give that back to the Indians too?

Pure Justice Vs. Reality

Clearly, the concept of pure justice produces an infinite regression to absurdity. Centuries ago, wise men invented statutes of limitations to justify the rejection of such pure justice, in the interest of preventing continual disorder. The law zealously defends property rights, but only relatively recent property rights. Drawing a line after an arbitrary time has elapsed may be unjust, but the alternatives are worse.

We are all the descendants of thieves, and the world’s resources are inequitably distributed. But we must begin the journey to tomorrow from the point where we are today. We cannot remake the past. We cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates. To do so would guarantee that our grandchildren and everyone else’s grandchildren, would have only a ruined world to inhabit.

To be generous with one’s own possessions is quite different from being generous with those of posterity. We should call this point to the attention of those who from a commendable love of justice and equality, would institute a system of the commons, either in the form of a world food bank, or of unrestricted immigration. We must convince them if we wish to save at least some parts of the world from environmental ruin.

Without a true world government to control reproduction and the use of available resources, the sharing ethic of the spaceship is impossible. For the foreseeable future, our survival demands that we govern our actions by the ethics of a lifeboat, harsh though they may be. Posterity will be satisfied with nothing less.

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Sheryl Sandberg’s Husband’s Weird Mexican Death

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Luke Ford

From comments to Steve Sailer:

* Further to Steve Sailer’s point about social media titans, from the NY Post:

Sheryl Sandberg has not made a public statement or commented about her husband’s death. The family is expected to hold an invitation-only celebration of Goldberg’s life on Tuesday at Stanford Memorial Auditorium in California.

Men looking to attend have been told to ditch the ties “in keeping with Dave’s lifelong hatred of ties,” according to an e-mailed invitation sent to friends of the couple.

Mourners have also been urged to not take pictures or make social-media posts related to the event “out of respect for the family.”

* Everyone should refrain from using Facebook, forever – out of respect for Sandberg’s family.

* This is getting fishier.

I bet his head trauma forensics are clearly criminal in nature. So you get the long delay in cause of reports and the hasty evacuation of the family.

Just because the body was found in the gym doesn’t mean the trauma occurred there.

Bungled ransom or perhaps mundane murder by a local or another guest.

* The rich and powerful suffer and die just like the rest of us. Mr. Goldberg was both, and relished speaking power to truth. It didn’t save him from an ugly and unfortunate death.

The things Mr. Goldberg apparently worshipped- wealth, power, and the peculiar combination expressed in upper-class feminism- are brief, fleeting illusions. One minute you’re enjoying a Four Seasons resort, the next the bag of meat, blood, pus and tears we call our body begins its return to its constituent elements.

It may seem hard to pity these people, but they live on the edge of the abyss, and they know it. The less fortunate have their small comforts, of religion or a better mortal existence, for themselves or their children. Things may not be good now, but they may get better. For the rich things cannot get better, they enjoy everything that can possibly be enjoyed, and they quickly tire of the pleasure. But to indulge in such peasant comforts as belief in God or an afterlife would be gauche, so they double down on the hedonism and the social justice activism.

We know not the day nor the hour.

* Even if Goldberg’s death wasn’t directly caused by cartel violence, it’s possible that the closing of roads by violence may have prevented him from getting medical treatment for a severe accidental injury.

* According to the Mexican medical report, it was head trauma and accompanying hypovolemic shock that caused Mr. Goldberg’s death.

This means he lost over 20% of his blood from a 4cm head wound, which was a severe, crushing wound that broke the skull. How you get that from falling off a treadmill beats me. That’s the kind of wound you’d expect someone who got hit full force on the head with rebar to have. Or perhaps hit with a dumbbell… The skull is pretty hard. Typically, if you fall and hit your head, it bounces, giving you a concussion. This can be deadly, but it doesn’t involve a “pool of blood” or open skull fracture. The kinds of impacts that create those wounds are seen in auto and occasionally bicycle accidents, which involve considerably more velocity and force than a fall off a treadmill, which operates at a maximum speed of only 10mph, and in Goldberg’s case probably more like four or five.

The details here, the reticence about revealing the cause of death, the sudden departure of the family and the crazy events in Puerto Vallarta on May 1 raise a lot of questions about Goldberg’s death.

“He is also a private person — 99.995% of Americans don’t give a FF who the husband of the COO of facebook is.”

No, he is not a “private person.” Sheryl Sandberg has used her family as the model for the contemporary American woman, pushing her “lean in” concept all over the country. She has sponsored events for girls and served as the public female face of Facebook. She calls herself a feminist. She actively pushes her ideals on the rest of us. Goldberg was a part of that package. He was no recluse, but rather very much a part of the debate about the role of the contemporary husband and wife.

Whenever public figures seem to be hiding something, it’s worth following up on it to see why.

Maybe he did die in an accident. Maybe the treadmill really did fling him headfirst into some corner at a high velocity, breaking his skull. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we know how on earth treadmills can do that so as to prevent more of these accidents?

And if he was murdered, shouldn’t that inform Americans’ decisions when it comes to travel destinations? Shouldn’t it give us more reason to monitor our border for potential criminal fugitives from Mexico?

* Sheryl Sandberg is a scold and a busy-body. She is also, as it appears, a bit of a hypocrite – in that her fortune is based on Facebook, an internet platform which encourages its members to broadcast their lives on the internet. That is not incidental to Facebook’s business. It IS Facebook’s business. If you are on Facebook, then YOU are their product – they sell information about you to marketers and data-miners.

Wealthy, powerful people who very publicly tell other people how they should live end up with the public scrutiny they deserve.

* A grown man went to the gym at a luxurious Four Seasons resort at 4pm and is discovered by his own brother almost 3 hours later alive but in a pool of his own blood with a 1.18 inch gash to the skull. State officials and the general manager of the resort giving conflicting statements about at what resort the fatal fall even occurred. Pretty classic scenario we have here.

* Steve is onto to something, Goldberg could have been a easy target of opportunity, rub out a el hefe in a exclusive resort to send a message that all are fair game for the cartels. And it would explain why his wife ran off like a scalded cat – she was probably informed the cartels did it or were nearby.

* Perhaps Dave Goldberg’s family was initially silent on the cause of death … precisely so people would NOT draw the possibility that iSteve describes. If Dave Goldberg’s death was an accident, his family certainly knew of the cartel’s co-temporal terrorist attacks that, regardless, seems to explain their quick departure from the area. Of note, the family also remained silent about the terrorist attacks. iSteve, as he so often does, connected the dots (of logical possibility) that others were systematically avoiding out of respect for political correctness. Good job Steve!

* A random act by the cartel per Sailer’s theory?

Goldberg’s the unluckiest bastard in the world. There have to be witnesses, something will come out.

A targeted kidnapping gone bad?

Cartel (or others) saw that he exercised alone and tried to nab him. He resisted. Again, there have to be witnesses.

A crime of passion?

Goldberg’s wife and brother are having an affair and/or some other attempt to extort Goldberg. Young boys and/or underage prostitutes are involved. The brother sees his chance, provides deep comfort to the widow. Unlikely that we’ll ever know anything.

Association of Tie Manufacturers is behind the deed?

Goldberg’s hatred of all things ties is well-known, a clear threat to the ATM. Goldberg must go.

An overweight dweeb slips and falls?

I’m rather uncoordinated and lack a lot of balance. I can easily see myself dying like this poor bastard.

There’s a Cohen brothers movie in this somewhere.

* Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation for an overweight middle aged guy dropping dead next to a treadmill is that the treadmill had something to do with it and Mexican drug cartels did not.

It was admittedly a freak accident – treadmills don’t kill many adults. But freak accidents happen now and then – that’s what makes them freak accidents. Sometimes the very richness of super-rich people ends up hurting them. If Goldberg was an ordinary Jewish rich guy instead of a plutocrat, he would have been staying next door at the Four Seasons and using the hotel gym and as soon as he slipped off, someone else in the gym would have called for help. But he was so damn rich that he didn’t have to pant in the presence of even other moderately rich people, he could afford his own private gym where he could bleed to death alone. Karma is a bitch.

If the cartel wanted to kidnap him, they would have gotten farther than just leaving him in place. If they wanted to send a “no one is safe” message, they would have machine gunned him or cut off his head or something – they are not subtle kind of guys.

That being said, I can understand why the surviving Sandberg/Goldbergs did not want to stick around and complete their beachside vacation, even if the $11,500/day was prepaid to the end of the week and was non-refundable.

* I have been to quite a few gyms and I have never seen sharp, pointed metal objects near the treadmills. I am sure that there were no uncapped valves on radiators nearby.

There is usually a large open space behind a treadmill, often covered with rubber-like padding, because gym operators know that people fall off treadmills quite often and they want to cushion the impact. Because of the treadmill’s motion, people fall off the treadmill in one direction only, and then they land on the padding. In an expensive resort’s gym, I would expect to see extra space and extra padding.

The whole deep-headwound-from-falling-off-a-treadmill story is not credible. The flimsiness of this story is evidence of the panicked state of the people who concocted it.

* The only thing that would make the apparent cause of death interesting to me is if the reason he fell off the treadmill was because he was distracted with Facebook on his phone. Which actually doesn’t seem that farfetched.

Indeed, the most interesting part of this story is, I think, the request for no Facebooking at the funeral. These people sense, deep down, the vulgarity of social media. I guess this is just the white collar version of “don’t get high on your own supply.”

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Dennis Prager: Why the Left Won’t Call Rioters ‘Thugs’

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes: Two months ago, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by a professor of philosophy titled, “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts.”

This is how the professor began his piece:

“What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was.”

The problem, as the professor described it, is that a generation of Americans has been taught that there is no moral truth. There may be scientific truth and historical truth, but no moral truth.

The professor is, of course, right, as some of us — overwhelmingly from religious perspectives — have been lamenting for decades.

Now we have another example of the denial of moral truths. Last week, a number of leftists — black and white — announced that it is racist to label the rioters and looters in Baltimore “thugs.” Even though both the black mayor of Baltimore and the black president of the United States did so, the left-wing argument is that the term “thug” is never applied to whites, only to blacks. The T-word is, in effect, the new N-word.

Soledad O’Brien, former CNN anchor, on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”:

“I think when you examine when the word is used, it’s used to describe the actions of people of color, specifically people who are in the inner city.

“I can’t think of a situation where there’s ever been a headline or someone has called a white young person who is in the middle of a violent protest demonstration, whatever, a thug. We use it all the time when we’re talking about people in the inner city.

“Thugs” [is] a proxy, a word we use instead of the N-word.”

Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN:

Isn’t “thugs” the right word to describe the rioters and looters? CNN’s Erin Burnett asked the councilman:

He responded: “No, it’s not the right word to call our children ‘thugs.’ These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us.”

“But how does that justify what they did?” Burnett then asked. “That’s a sense of right and wrong. They know it’s wrong to steal and burn down a CVS and an old persons’ home. I mean, come on.”

“Come on? Just call them ‘Niggers.’ Just call them ‘Niggers,'” argued Councilman Stokes.

The left-wing website Daily Kos agreed with Councilman Stokes and challenged Burnett:

“Did she or anyone else at CNN use the ‘T’-Word” when the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl … or when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series?”

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Which Cities Have Improved Through An Influx Of Blacks?

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Luke Ford

Jim Goad writes: “For decades now, I’ve been begging the world to provide me with evidence of any place on Earth where basic living conditions—i.e., longevity, income, education, safety—improved rather than deteriorated subsequent to a large influx of blacks. Hell, I’d be satisfied to see a place where conditions even remained steady. I’m not saying such a place doesn’t exist, only that no one yet has been willing (or able?) to cough up evidence of such a place. Why does the general pattern—especially in Africa after the white colonialists are sent packing—seem to be destruction rather than creation? And why do I instantly become Evil Incarnate for asking that question? When people resort to calling you dirty names merely for asking honest questions, one starts to suspect that they don’t have an honest answer.”

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The Four Planks Of A Dissident Party

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Luke Ford

From Heartiste: There are 3-4 major issues that Americans should fight on.

1. Immigration. There needs to be a permanent end to immigration to the US. Immigration lowers wages, erodes American culture, and creates a low-trust society.

2. Oligarchization. Our media and govt are controlled by a few very wealthy oligarchs. The masses of America need to use a variety of tactics (raising taxes on the wealthy, financial regulation, forming labor unions, stopping immigration, protective trade barriers, tariffs, effective usage of anti-trust laws, forming pro-worker third parties, creating alternative media) to break the power of the oligarchs. This is our country, not theirs.

3. “Deep State.” The military-industrial complex, intelligence agencies, and a variety of organizations and individuals constitute the Deep State. From the JFK assassination onward, they’ve been too well entrenched. They’ve become particularly powerful since 9/11. My view is that this Deep State is eroding democracy, freedom, and privacy. It’s also bankrupting us through parasitism and promoting policies not favorable to the national interest. There need to be limits placed on their power.

4. Traditional norms. Traditional norms with respect to family, religion, masculinity, marriage, race, and cultural/national identity. This is an issue of lesser importance, but I think that many of this country’s problems could be solved through strengthening through bringing back some of these ideas. Traditional American culture is actually fairly moderate by global standards, so a partial return to traditionalism could be beneficial without being repressive.

I don’t see fighting for HBD to be nearly that important. The reason is that even if we proved our HBD principles were right tomorrow, that might lead to policies that aren’t especially favorable to us. For example, let’s say we prove NAMs have lower IQs than whites. What’s the consequence of that? I could see our elites pushing for large scale immigration of Chinese and Indians (as is the case in Australia, Canada, NZ), which is not in our interest.

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When Will The Goyim Get Their Act Together?

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Luke Ford

From Return of Kings: What amazes me is how methodical, patient, and determined Jews are in promoting their group interests. Such efforts should be commended and modeled. Why isn’t there such a group of Americans that do the same for Christian interests? The answer lies in the fact that gentiles are less organized, less ethnocentric, more altruistic to outgroups, and more prone to selling out their people if presented with money and power…

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I wonder if Dave Goldberg got this quality Mexican ambulance service?

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has been acting for several years like she’s intending to follow Fiorina and Whitman’s examples, although on the Democratic side, which may help explain the weird news coverage of her 47-year-old husband’s death on Friday. Yesterday, veteran NYT White House correspondent Jodi Kantor wrote a long paean to the marriage of Sandberg and Dave Goldberg as the perfect feminist union, but didn’t include any details on how the poor man died. Facebook, like social media in general, gets rich off encouraging you to overshare details of your life, but extraordinarily few facts were forthcoming about the death of the spouse of the Facebook COO relative to the gushers of spin.

COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:

* First that exercise band blinded Harry Reid, and now this.

* Oh, that’s what “leaning in” means . . .

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This Got On The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s ‘Top Ten Anti-Semitic Slurs” for 2010’

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Luke Ford

Christina Patterson writes: When I first moved to Stamford Hill, I didn’t realise that goyim were about as welcome in Hasidic Jewish shops as Martin Luther King at a Klu Klux Klan convention.

I would like to teach some of my neighbours some manners. I would like, for example, to say to the man who drove the wrong way up a one-way street on Sunday night, while chatting away on his mobile phone, and to the man who nearly backed into me yesterday, while also chatting on his mobile phone, and to the man who drove into my friend’s van last week, while also chatting on his mobile phone, that while they clearly enjoy the art of conversation, it’s one that doesn’t combine brilliantly with driving.
And I would like to say to the man who drove the wrong way into the car park at Morrisons, and then hooted me, and who parked in a mother and baby slot when he was on his own, and the car park was practically empty, that it seemed a rather aggressive thing to do, and also rather lazy, and I would like to say to the man from whom I bought some paper cups, and who handled my money as if it had been dipped in anthrax, that it wouldn’t kill him to say “please” or “thank you”, and I would like to say to the fishmonger who asked my (black) friend whether he really wanted to buy some fish from his shop, that you should probably assume that if someone is asking for fish in your shop, then the answer is in the affirmative.

And I would like to say to the little boy who sat bang in the middle of two seats on the bus and who, when I tried to sit next to him, leapt up as if infection from the ebola virus was imminent, that it does slightly make one feel like a pariah, and I would like to say to the women who roam the streets with double-decker pushchairs and vast armies of children, that it’s sometimes nice to allow someone else to get past, and I would like to say to all these people that I don’t care if they wear frock-coats, and funny suits and hats covered in plastic bags, and insist on wearing their hair in ringlets (if they’re male) or covered up by wigs (if they’re female), but I do think they could treat their neighbours with a bit more courtesy and just a little bit more respect.

When I moved to Stamford Hill, 12 years ago, I didn’t realise that goyim were about as welcome in the Hasidic Jewish shops as Martin Luther King at a Klu Klux Klan convention. I didn’t realise that a purchase by a goy was a crime to be punished with monosyllabic terseness, or that bus seats were a potential source of contamination, or that road signs, and parking restrictions, were for people who hadn’t been chosen by God. And while none of this is a source of anything much more than irritation, when I see an eight-year-old boy recoiling from a normal-looking woman (because, presumably, he has been taught that she is dirty or dangerous, or, heaven forbid, dripping with menstrual blood) it makes me sad.

It also makes me sad to see the three-year-olds in hijab, who want, of course, to look like Mummy (all three-year-olds want to look like Mummy) but who, in any case, soon won’t have much choice, and who are being taught that their tiny bodies, and their lovely hair, are things to be protected from the male gaze. It makes me sad to see young women in the niqab. I accept that some of them choose to wear it because they, too, have absorbed the message that they are a walking sexual provocation, and that this way they can shield themselves, and preserve themselves “as a precious jewel” for their husband, and maybe reclaim an identity that they don’t want to lose, and maybe even stick two fingers up at a country which is, according to new leaks this week, bombing quite a lot of their innocent brothers and sisters, and maybe even, get some (secretly enjoyable) attention. I accept all this, but it still makes me sad.

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Britain’s top rabbi warns against multiculturalism

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Luke Ford

AP 2007: Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and threatens liberal democracy, Britain’s top Jewish official warned in extracts from his book published Saturday.

Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm Britain’s diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and respected. But in his book, “The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society,” he said the movement had run its course.

“Multiculturalism has led not to integration but to segregation,” Sacks wrote in his book, an extract of which was published in the Times of London.

“Liberal democracy is in danger,” Sacks said, adding later: “The politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear.”

Sacks said Britain’s politics had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for rights, then for special treatment.

The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been “inexorably divisive.”

“A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others,” he said.

In an interview with the Times, Sacks said he wanted his book to be “politically incorrect in the highest order.”

COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:

* The question from here, though, becomes what culture becomes dominant. Does Britain revert to the classic concept of Britishness which served it so well, or does it adapt to a post-modern form of mass media imposed uniculture – a culture shaped not by British values but by globalism?

It seems to me there are two alternatives: uniculturalism, where those who refuse to adapt to at least most of the dominant culture are shunned, or multiculturalism, where society dissolves into a multitude of warring factions all looking after their own good.

Neither is really a great option for Jews. Multiculturalism has lead to the situation he finds dangerous. But uniculturalism is unacceptable to many Jews, too, since what they really want, in some form, is to remain separate from the rest of society.

So is he really, deliberately or not, advocating biculturalism, where everyone but the Jews assimilate?

I don’t think multiculturalism is just a government program that can be eliminated at will by a vote of Parliament. Multiculturalism is something which exists in any multiracial society, de facto, whether the government wants it to or not. So long as Britain has large numbers of immigrants coming from societies that are racially and relgiously different from itself, the hazards caused by “multiculturalism” will exist. In fact, even if immigration is ended completely it will continue to exist, thanks to the immigrants who are already there.

* I think the first great wave of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe and elsewhere has been detrimental to the United States. Even while most of them assimilated linguistically and economically by getting with the WASP program their descendants have been able to call into question the idea that America is fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon nation and paved the way for modern identity politics – at least of the ethnic sort.

* I for one, see people really getting into their “ethnic identity” more and more, leading to more separation–not melding. The blog, Inductivist, had a poll presented in which Jews and Mexicans by far wanted more immigration than anyone else, but suprisingly Jews wanted even more than Mexicans did. Native Americans wanted the most restriction of all, which was interesting at first glance, but makes perfect sense if one thinks about it.

A country that is composed of 10 different ethnic and religous groups is always going to have something averse going on between at least two of them at any given time.

* Mark — my sense is that Jews are still dealing with how to adapt to a world where industrialized pogroms are a reality. Nationalism’s downside led to the extermination of 6 million Jews. Europe’s collective lobotomy if you like. However multiculturalism leaves them vulnerable to unending assault and eventual extermination by Muslims. Since the heart of multiculturalism is abrogation of law — some communities and people are more equal than others.

The “traditional American” solution has been to embrace American nationalism, which is seen as more inclusive, i.e. you can still be Jew or Catholic or whatever as long as you embrace the symbols of American identity, speak English, and adhere to various “American” values. Think those WWII films with the Jew, Catholic, Cowboy out West, and Southerner coming together. Or the explicit creation of “patriotic” comic book characters like Superman, Captain America, etc. by assimilated US Jews.

More broadly, Multiculturalism is likely sustainable ONLY when the good times are rolling. When they stop, it’s a raw struggle for power. Germany ran out of money and stopped welfare payments. Now long-unemployed machinists and the like are hungry and going homeless. The young men won’t even have a chance at success. Meanwhile Muslims extract lots of goodies from the governments.

Britain is probably not much different. What happens when non-Muslim men are out of work and competing with Muslim men who are NOT British (and getting all the handouts)? Why they band together in various groups and start to extract money by force. Freikorps in Weimar all over again.

Multiculturalism is dead because Europe ran out of money too quick to pay people off — and most people are “stuck” and will have to fight to extract resources. Money that goes to Muslims, or gays, or whoever is money NOT going to out of work natives. Who are not likely to be too happy about it. Particularly if they have nothing to lose.

Revolutions have been started for less.

* A frequent curiosity in American blogs is coupling the concept of “multiculturalism” with the qualifier “Marxist.” Sorry if I come out as a jerk but technically that is flat out wrong. No part of Marxism (the official ideology) has ever propounded multiculturalism. Marxism is “monoculturalism” driven to its extremes.

Marx and diehard Marxists always saw non-Western cultures as the expression of ignorant and backward “forces of history,” versions of “false consciousness” invented by feudal oppressors to keep those huddled masses in subjugation, poverty, etc.

Ironically, today’s neoconservatism, which at times allies itself with the push to reform the education system to end the oppression from political correctness on campus, views the non-Western parts of the world with the same perspective: so many peoples waiting to be liberated from their backward cultures.

The idea of “multiculturalism” is a recent invention, a product of the EU enterprise. It emerged as this: “Europeans have fought the bloodiest wars on earth due to their national/cultural differences. If we want an integrated Europe (e pluribus unum), let’s accept that we’re all Europeans — British, Belgian or Bolognese — and live all the cultures of Europe simultaneously.” Then, it was extended by the New Left to include non-European immigrants, etc.

Another minor technical point. The world is a multicultural place, and that by itself is no anomaly. In fact, paleoconservatives do not necessarily object to keeping every culture in its sphere of natural influence. What is imposed by the left elites on the Western society should have been labelled “poly-culturalism” — co-existence of multiple cultures in the same habitat. The trouble with it is, since cultures have their specific ways of defining the fundamentals of human existence, they don’t particularly mesh well if they don’t share fundamentals. European cultures may be mixed and matched since they do, but Bantu and Bolognese cultures don’t. The result is “hetero-culturalism,” a mixed bag of discordant views creating racing conditions on the fundamentals.

The trouble is not really multiculturalism per se. The trouble is “poly-racialism” — i.e. two or more races co-existing in the same habitat. OK, I know you can’t go out and say this in today’s MSM, but isn’t that part of the problem? This is the same way the word “diversity” is now used to signify race-mixing. (Although even that is confused since the first country people point to to demonstrate the disasterous consequences of that is Brazil but that place is mostly different varieties of Euro-Hispanic white, Black, and some Amerindian; you’d think every group from the Eskimo to the Chuchi, from the Yemeni to the Maya is represented equally there but it isn’t. There is probably no place on earth where more than 2 races have mixed at a large scale. It just doesn’t happen because it doesn’t work.)

* Given that Jews are the ethnic group most culpable in agitating for mass immigration and minority special pleading, my message to Sir Jonathan, minus expletives, is ‘too little, too late.’

* Jewish immigrants flourished brilliantly in the unicultural environment of early and mid-20th century America. The key phrase is “adapt to at least most of the dominant culture”.

Jews succeeded – indeed, often came to sit not just at the table but at the head of it – because they enthusiastically adopted most aspects of the dominant culture except those that were explicitly religious. In doing so, they changed the culture, as I said earlier, from the inside. That is a good and welcome thing, as opposed to groups who insist on sitting outside the door but still want to be served the same meal as those in the dining room. Or, worse, want to redefine “dining room” to include the house, yard and street.

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