I’m Not Yet Worried About Trump’s Military Action In Syria

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Luke Ford

I don’t believe it presages greater military involvement in Syria. I think he was just bowing to media and political pressure to make a symbolic strike, just the same way he bows to the overwhelming force of the Israel Lobby. I think Trump understands that Syria has no vital strategic interest to the US.

I read in the media that Trump’s military advisers were united behind this strike. So I think, fine, do it. Not a big deal.

I differ from the Alt Right in this respect. They’re appalled. I cut Trump more slack. Ideological purity is not as important as pragmatic results. Trump has to make compromises and this Syrian strike is a compromise to change the news cycle, to please his critics so he can get important things done.

If the United States proceeds to get bogged down in Syria, I’ll obviously be shown to be wrong.

Trump needs some media Jews on his side. He doesn’t need them all, just a significant number, and this Syrian strike insures that some media Jews remain on his side.

This action also shows that Trump is not predictable, which is a strength in his position. It makes him look a little bit crazy. Crazy dangerous. Underestimate him at your peril.

I find Trump’s strike on Syria hilarious. I love all the former Trump supporters saying they feel “betrayed.”

“Betrayed” is simply a hyper-emotional response to other people having different priorities from what you expected. I never feel betrayed. I only feel surprised at times and disappointed that I was not in touch with reality.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* It’s not very significant in and of itself but it’s part of a broader problem of not being able to stand up to establishment conservatives, which has been an issue since inauguration day but seems to be getting worse and worse.

* The Iraqi debacle soured Bush’s presidency.
The Libyan fiasco irrevocably marred Obama’s presidency, as Obama himself recognized. May have cost H. Clinton the presidency.
Trump himself said that Obama should NOT intervene in Syria years ago when Obama was in an identical situation.
People voted for Trump precisely because he promised to be a peace candidate.
The Internet is in an uproar. The_Donald on Reddit – a.k.a. Trump central – is vociferously against intervention.

It’s simple – don’t do it, Donald! Don’t listen to the Neocons who hate your guts. Listen to the people who voted for you. Learn from the errors of Obama and Bush. Don’t become another mass murderer and war criminal by engaging in an idiotic war. Don’t ruin your presidency three months in. Go after ISIS, not Assad. Be smart.

* The cool kids at treehouse and other places are saying OK Trump knew it was a false flag but calculated the benefits of this strike and decided it solved so many problems at once that he gave it the go ahead anyway.

So why wouldn’t the false flag perps do it again? The sickos might decide now is the time to stage a truly spectacular and gruesome operation. And what is Trump’s move then?

Seems like now the stage is set for the real chess move. Maybe another much larger false flag outside of Syria carried out by an angry supporter of Assad.

* Total Win for NeverTrumpers/Neocons. Trump is essentially a hostage of a Deep State & a Senate that won’t confirm Nationalists or Noninterventionists to his cabinet. A necessary precondition to a more nationalist presidency is to have an at least mildly nationalist Senate. It is getting harder to see what Trump can achieve this year with Deep State & their allies opposing him. The PaleoRight was purged from DC in the 98-2012 window & we are paying a big price for that now.

* Possible that the chemical bombing was a false flag operation by the CIA. Who knows? But overall, I think Trump made the right move sending in the Tomahawks. It accomplishes several things:
1. Sends message to the world that Trump is more aggressive than Obama. More willing to kick some ass.
2. Sends message to Premier Xi that he is willing to use direct intervention against North Korea, so they had better step up and help fix that problem.
3. Makes KJ Un wonder how far he can go before he may be next to get the Tomahawks.
4. Confounds Dems who are chasing the Trump-Russia connection, especially when this was a move against Russian interests (Tillerson saying Russkies were insincere or inept not to know about the gassing).
5. Provokes positive feelings for Trump from those (never Trumpers) who have seen the videos of the suffering children and feel good that ‘something’ wasa done about it.

There are probably some other benefits. Ultimately though, Trump will never send more than a few ground troops into Syria. His bigger play in the mideast is (or should be) destabilizing Iran politically to rid that country of the crazy Mullahs.

* I keep seeing people say this is a betrayal of Trump’s base. Do you really think so? He was the rank and file military’s candidate, not to mention the Israel lovers candidate. I would think a large part of his base is thrilled by this.

* In spite of media reaction, or perhaps befitting it, this was really nothing, like Bill C. dropping ordnance on the pharma factory in Sudan. By the way, there’s yer new headline talking-point, Trump wagging the dog to distract from his Russia Scandals or Kellyanne Conway’s feet on the couch. In other words, a day ending in Y.

I anticipate the Unz Rev bullpen getting disenchanted and crestfallen, and penning their new versions of The God That Failed to go on sale from CreateSpace for $8.95. Basically I still think Trump is non-interventionist, though not very ideological about it. Through the ideological lens, this looks like an error. The Colin Powell “If you break it you bought it” is true despite being clumsily expressed. We shouldn’t be prodding ISIS’s battlefield opponents except under utilitarian ends of protecting our soldiers (who shouldn’t be over there to begin with, yeah yeah, but guess what, they are). Through the barely ideological, shake-up-the-Beltway Trumpian amateur kabuki lens, this is easy for him to explain, like a caped superhero setting the drug dealer’s lab on fire. I think it will be hilarious to watch the contortions of the Russian Menace thumpers adjusting to this “nonsensical plot twist.” Day 28: Trump Still Offers No Evidence of R2P Quality-Assurance of Syria Strike.

* All that matters is that Trump does what he said he’d do on immigration. Who cares about anything else. God, I hope I never find myself in a fox hole with you cut and runners.

* I was with some friends tonight when the news broke, and they seemed genuinely confused that he’d attacked Syria because, in their words, “Isn’t he supposed to be friends with Russia?”

* If false flag atrocities are rewarded it will encourage more false flag atrocities.

With Trump accepting the latest performance by the White Helmets theater group at face value and giving the neo-cons what they want you can expect a made-for-the-cameras atrocity to take place in the Ukraine in the very near future.

* That’s one silver lining – more people woke to what a media con our entire society has become.

* We aren’t out as long as we are supplying Israel with $5 billion annually in military hardware and providing it with diplomatic cover.

* The “Strange New Respect” is right on schedule. I have always wondered why the Russians don’t simply threaten to retaliate against Israel in response to American aggression, this would probably be the most effective way to coerce America and the global media into total acquiescence. Hell, if Putin blackmailed our elites with a nuclear threat towards Israel, they would probably let him annex half of Europe without a peep.

* Trump is no George Bush in terms of rhetoric, but I note a distinct lack of passion for this.

The Washington Post ran a story that discussed the decision to use Tomahawk missiles. They are the least risky way to bomb something.

Trump did get burned on the covert mission in Yemen. That was the general’s idea. He started blaming them immediately.

This won’t go well and Trump, but Trump will be blaming it on someone else the second something goes wrong. He already blamed Obama for not doing it when he should have.

I was quite excited about Tillerson saying that we no longer cared about Assad last week. Why not pick the internationally recognized leader of state and winner?

If he is stupid enough to put boots on the ground …. and to actually try to remove Assad …. that makes him another Obama.

Somehow I can’t imagine Trump ‘taking one for the team’ and accepting any responsibility or blame. This deeply ingrained character trait could serve him well.

Overall, he looks like a sucker. For the moment.

* I think most of Trump’s cabinet picks and advisers are being influenced by the Neocons. Pence, Haley, McMaster, Perry, and even Mattis all sound like Neocons. I did kinda see this coming when John Bolton and Eliot Abrams were being seriously considered for key positions in the State Department. I guess Paul Gottfried was right when he said that the Neocons would survive a Trump victory.

* I don’t support attacking Syria either, but did you really expect the President of the United States to stay out of every single military confrontation in the world, especially in the Middle East? That just seems naive to me, expecting one man to overturn 40 years of Washington consensus in less than three months. I just think this isn’t as big a deal as some people are making it. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong in the coming days and weeks, we shall see.

* The Republicans decided in favor of the nuclear option regarding Supreme Court nominees.

However, I think we will see them start going nuclear on everything. I’ll admit I don’t fully get it, but the Senate Rules can be ignored with 50 votes plus the VP. It seems that a super majority is required to change the rules, but not to suspend them.

For all the handwringing over cloture, the filibuster was always just a work around. That is, it cut off debate. Period. But if the Senate was a well functioning deliberative body, they wouldn’t refuse to vote on most issues. Refusing to vote isn’t deliberation.

All votes (except treaties) are simple majority. It was only a beneficial tactic when it wasn’t used frequently. The media shorthand for the rules is that it takes 60 votes. Like 60 votes for everything.

This strikes me as potentially a huge deal.

Bombing something has become simply something to do when we don’t have a better idea. And this isn’t even bombing — just lighting up a military base.

I’m an optimist.

* This makes sense. Trump loves to throw curve balls and stay unpredictable. And seeending missiles is not the same as invading Iraq.

* Who cares about a few missiles? Israel bombs Syria every now and again and nobody thinks it’s going to be a prelude to an endless occupation. A superpower like the US can drop cruise missiles on whoever it wants, and will occasionally do so. Stop pissing your pants and focus on immigration.

* The evangelical Christians always enjoy a good war. They’ll be onboard.

What about the working-class voters in the Rust Belt states? Working-class voters are notoriously gullible when politicians start thumping the patriotic drum.

The big losers will be the alt-right. They’re about to be thrown under the bus. They’re no longer needed.

The thing about politicians who practise the gentle art of betrayal is that they usually thrive. Look at Churchill. Betrayal works.

* Yes, the last stand of traditional Americana failed. We will fade out like the Indians.

2020 won’t matter. Everyone politician has been bought by the Israel first eternal war lobby. I hate what my country is. I supposed it never really was what I thought.

Sexual perversion crammed down our children’s throats daily, anti-white hatred resulting in violence condoned by tptb, family & religious breakdown, cheerleading for poor foreign policy lest one be called unpatriotic, toxic feminism.

What exactly is there that is beautiful or meaningful to “conserve?”

* First problem: the US is the lone superpower.

That, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily bad since majority of Americans are decent people.

It’s the Second problem in combination with first problem that makes the world so toxic.

Among various groups in the US, there is only on superpower group. Jewish.

In the past, the lone superpower group within the US was Anglo or Wasp.

And then, esp after WWII, the power got more balanced among Wasps, Catholics, Irish, Ethnics, blacks, Jews. Also, there used to be the generational divide that pit Experience vs Youth.

But over time, Youth Culture took over everything, and even old people still listen to youth music and rock. And if boomer rebelled against elders, today’s youths take all their cues from teachers and Pop culture controlled by boomer/ X gen elders.

Wasp power declined fast. Ethnic power also faded as various ethnics — Italians, Irish, Polish, etc — just became generic Americans, hardly an identity to rally around. Blacks got stuck in rage politics and self-destruction. Religious identity faded and Catholics grew weak. Evangelicals and Southerners got numerical power but not much brains.

Meanwhile Jewish power rose and rose. In time, Jews became the superpower group in America. The only one. There was a time when Anglos were the lone superpower group. And then, there was balance among various groups since end of WWII. But then, the only group that was perpetually on the rise were Jews.

There has been massive non-white immigrants, but most Mexicans and other such are lackluster in gaining elite power. As for Asians, they do better in schools and make decent money, but they lack spark and unity among themselves. Whereas all Jews tend to become ONE in the US regardless of their national origin(Hungary, Poland, Russia, Germany etc), the various Asians groups don’t see eye to eye on anything. Chinese and Hindus as one people? Fat chance. Since Asians generally follow and suck up to power, they just do whatever is necessary to gain favor from Jewish elites.
Muslims haven’t amounted to much either.

So, we have a dangerous situation. US is the only superpower in the world, and the US is ruled by one ethnicity as the lone superpower group. This group is only 2% of the US population but have tremendous power over brain and nerve centers of law, economy, government, judiciary, and etc. If not for First Amendment of the US constitution, even this comment could be deemed illegal(as in Europe), and I could be hunted down. Thank Todd for the first amendment.

If Jews were the lone superpower group in a multi-polar world, it wouldn’t be so dangerous. In that case, even if Jews controlled the US, the US would not control the world that is multi-polar and balanced among other great powers. So, there would be balance, and the US, even if Jewish-dominated, would respect that balance.

But the US is the lone power and controls the world. So, WHO controls the US is very important to all the world. If there was balance of powers among various racial/ethnic groups within the US, it wouldn’t be so bad since different groups will balance each other’s interests.

It’s like various parties balance each other out in a democracy. One-party system can lead to autocracy. In the US, we have a one-group system despite there being many groups and despite the supreme one-group being only 2% of the population.

Suppose Palestinian Americans and Russian-gentile-Americans and Iranian-Americans also had considerable clout in the US. Then, US foreign policy wouldn’t be so rabidly Zionist and Judeo-centric. But since there is NO balance of powers among the various groups in the US, the US as lone superpower is essentially a War Machine for the Tribe as the only superpower group in the US. This is very dangerous. For all the world to tremble before the supremacist interests of such a small number… it’s out of whack. The New War on Russia is a Jewish War on Russia. Sure, Jews use homo proxies and pussy riots proxies — just like ‘white helmets’ are used as proxies in Syria —, but the puppet-masters are the Tribe.

Long ago, UK sought to maintain balance of power on the European continent so that no single nation will consolidate all of Europe and pose a threat to UK.
Now, something must be done to bring forth some kind of ethnic or group balance in America because Jewish lone-superpower-group domination is greedily exploiting and driving all of American power to serve very narrow interests, albeit under cover of ‘principles’ like ‘human rights’, ‘liberal democracy’, and etc.

Nikki Haley is just like the Azid kid. She will whore out in any way and anyhow to rise up the ladder and play the game. Just a whore of power and privilege.

Anyway, if the US were the lone superpower in the world BUT didn’t have a lone superpower group to hog all the power internally, there would be some restraint to US power. Even if US is the most powerful nation, its global agenda would be balanced due to various contending forces within the US. It’s like Greek Americans side with Greek Cypriots and Turkish Americans side with Turkish Cypriots. But as neither side is dominant, US doesn’t use its power to favor Turks or Greeks. Balance. And because Irish-Americans were very powerful, they applied pressure on the US to sue for peace in Northern Ireland than just side with UK. So, US respected both British interests and Irish interests. But pity the Palestinians. They got no power at all. So, even after so many yrs of Zionist occupation, all we hear from US politicians is “Israel, Israel, Israel”.

Problem is Jews have become the lone superpower group in the US. This is more dangerous than when Anglos were the only superpower group. For one thing, since Anglos were the majority for good part of US history, it seemed just that they wielded the most power. And even when wasps were no longer the majority, they made up substantial number of Americans, and besides, many ethnics had become Anglo-Americanized and shared in the values and interests.
So, Wasp power did represent many peoples and even groups within America.

But Jews have never been more than 3% of the US population. So, for them to have lone superpower status within the US throws things out of balance. If the US had three superpower groups, even that wouldn’t be so bad. If wasps, Jews, and Hispanics were three superpower groups, there would be some kind of balance among them. But Jews are the ONLY superpower group now. White gentiles could become a superpower group if they all pulled together, but white identity is deemed either suspect(even evil) or too generic. So, whites are like a slug with no backbone.

In the other scenario, suppose the US has Jews as lone superpower group but American power is on par with Iran or Brazil. In that case, Jews would dominate the US but the US would not dominate the world. And that makes for some balance in the world.

But when Jews are lone superpower in the US that is the lone superpower in the world, that is a dangerous mix.
Jews have achieved in America what Napoleon or Hitler sought in Continental Europe. Control over all.

Traditionally, the two powers that did most to maintain balance in the Continent were UK and Russia. Both feared the unification of Europe. Napoleon and Hitler who unified Europe attacked UK and Russia. In both wars, UK and Russia were allied. And it seems rather logical that UK would exit EU before others. Still, UK is no longer what it used to be. It’s a spent power, a poodle of the US. Russia is still a major power though also greatly diminished.

US and EU united under Jewish hegemony is very dangerous to the world. And we are seeing it.

* Trump was always a buffoon — the main point of supporting Trump was to keep HRC out of the White House — also to deliver a richly deserved kick in the teeth to the Establishment — the hope was that once in office, he would somehow grow into the job — surround himself with competent people ideologically aligned with his campaign rhetoric, especially on immigration and economic nationalism — people who would help him formulate a policy and legislative agenda — with this action he has alienated a great many of those who voted for him — but the people who always despised him will still despise him — which brings me back to where I started: he’s apparently too stupid to realize that, a buffoon — but then I already felt that way after seeing his son-in-law riding in a helicopter over Iraq.

* First thought: the US tipped off the Russians who, surely, tipped off the Syrians. Not much actual damage done.

1. A token display of force to divert his increasingly unhinged critics. Leverage with Russia in advance of Tillerson’s trip as they negotiate Assad’s exit and joint plan on squashing the cockroaches.

2. The bored generals and You-Know-Who’s finally got to him and it’s off to war and endless occupation of yet another country that deeply resents us. Billions to bomb them, billions to rebuild them. More immigrants, and more Muslims with a grudge.

The problem with 1 is, who do you put in power in the Big Man’s place? Syria is a snakepit and the Assads have spent so much time consolidating power that there’s nobody competent outside their circle left. Does anybody know ANYONE in Syria ready to step up to the plate? Or does the CIA have some gray-haired guy on ice in a Northern Virginia suburb ready to roll out, who’ll have to hire US mercs because he can’t trust his own countrymen?

I just don’t see how you implement 1 without it leading to 2.

I’m paused at grey-pill for now. But immigration was the issue that swept him into power (via the Electoral College) and he doesn’t seem to be doing much on it. And now he’s bit into something that could occupy his time 24/7 if he let it (like the perplexed LBJ with Vietnam).

* White people like me were hoping for a messiah who would kick the usurers from our temple instead we got a media driven charlatan we were hoping against all hope would turn out on our side.

* Sorry if I haven’t fallen in love and have been bedazzled by Ivanka Trump by so many others. I don’t dislike her, but she is a little too ambitious and aggressive for my tastes. I also think she is a bit light in her loafers.

I don’t think she has a core set of convictions and principles. She seems easily distracted and gloms onto stylish and fashionable things that are dragged in front of her. She has zero damned business being in the WH.

She is given an office there? WTH?!?!@@? NO! We didn’t vote for Ivanka, if she wants to hold office then let her run.

Ivanka should stick to her business and her line of clothing and so on. She has no business being involved in any national policy decisions and neither does her husband.

I am finding this all very disturbing and disappointing.

* The cynic and conspiracy theorist in me makes me think that Trump made a deal with some influential people where in exchange for bombing Assad, he gets Gorusch pushed through, some cabinet appointments that Democrats are dragging their feet on, and maybe some other deals not otherwise known to me at this time.

* Trump, if you or your staffers are reading this, I hope you’ve just done this to send a message to North Korea or China, or maybe one of your family just purchased some Raytheon stock. Learn from the example of GWB, whom you repudiated.

* What’s good for nothing is Trump’s base losing its shit because of something Bill Clinton used to do to distract from sex scandals. You have the first immigration restrictionist president of the modern era and you’re ready to throw it all out because he made Putin and the Iranians a little upset today? Take a chill pill and wait to see where this goes.

* Let’s build some context: Trump spent his life fighting for commercial and social legitimacy among New York Jews who would not let him into their elite country clubs and other circles in spite of Trump being a billionaire New York real estate mogul. Finally, Trump’s daughter is allowed to marry a wealthy New York Jew … but from a Jewish clan temporarily on the “out” because of the conviction of the clan’s patriarch for fraud and bribery.

So, Trump enters the political arena as a president caught between two New York Jews … his son-in-law acting as his senior advisor and New York Senator, Chuck Schumer, the Neocon leading the Democratic charge against the Trump administration — “good” Jew vs. “bad” Jew as it were. The pregnant question: Would Jared (and Trump) operate on the mantra, “What is good for Israel is good for the Jews …” or the original “America First” platform voiced by Trump during his election campaign?

Now we know. Although only 36 and without any political and foreign policy experience, Jared quickly purges the leading “Deplorables”, Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon, from the Trump administration and takes over effective control of the National Security Council. Then, as if a part of a pre-planned Jewish coup, the Trump administration quickly turns “180 degrees” in its foreign policy by joining the Neocon-sponsored anti-Russian crusade, announcing a plan for an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria, and attacking Syria.

The tally is in: Jews 1, Americans 0. Game over! It appears that the last presidential election was nothing more than an internal squabble between two Jewish clans in New York City. And, yes, we know they have made amends and now both support using US military power and wealth to eliminate Israel’s existential enemies in the Mideast, even if this takes us to WWIII and a nuclear exchange with Russia.

* It shows that the NY Democrats in the West Wing have defeated Breitbart. I suspect this will lead to a softening in other policy areas. NY Jews tend to be against Muslims but support high performing Asian and Indian immigrants. They are neutral on Hispanics. In the long run expect some kind of sensible amnesty policy along with reasonable but not fiscally destabilizing tax cuts. Trump’s popularity will soar, but probably among people who would never vote for him. If this makes him a one term President, this would still be the greatest third act for the NY showman in the history of the country.

* But the important thing is not the veracity of the evidence around WMD. The important thing is that, for the first time in history, a black man and a woman presented the evidence at the United Nations on behalf of the United States of America. We should all applaud the significance of that, regardless of the consequences.

* This debacle is a direct result of our negligence in failing to promptly hang the chiselers who lied us into Iraq. Though many believe the foreign policy establishment are incorrigible, I am quite sure that a row of corpses swinging from a hastily-built gallows on the National Mall would have done wonders to re-orient their priorities. If you find public hanging too gruesome, blindfolds and a pockmarked wall would have served equally well.

* If this is a one off rather than policy, this is not that big a deal. Reports indicate Russia was warned well in advance to remove their personnel, and statements from them indicate they no longer are giving Assad full support.

If however this is the first move in a ground war or more extensive military action in Syria, it’s a disaster. Would go against everything Candidate Trump’s sensibly said President Trump would not do. Further he had no Congressional authorization for this;’ he is walking into an impeachment trap should he go any further . For 3 decades our foreign policy has been dictated but what ever heart-wrenching video cable networks can show to pull at our heartstrings without concern for the cost in American blood and lucre.

* One hundred years ago – almost to the day – the United States entered WWI, sending us down the path to global empire while remaining a republic at home.

Around 50 years ago, we decided to turn a relatively homogeneous, prosperous nation into a multi-racial, multi-ethnic conglomerate and to adopt the national religion I call The Cult of Equality.

Now, we are witnessing the end of the Republic.

Trump was our last chance, as slim as it was. He had the money and arrogance to take on the establishment. He is failing us. There will not another politician who doesn’t need other people’s money or who is willing to get eviscerated in the press day after day.

Unless Trump start acting on immigration soon, we can list this time as the point where we knew for certain that the country was lost.

* For Israel? Is Israel pushing for a resolution to the Syria issue? Seems to me they’ve been enjoying watching their enemies kill each other. Plus, they get to hop across the border and bomb Hezbollah every now and then, and no one has the ability to do anything about it. Syria is a situation where the Iranians, the Assads and Hezbollah are fighting Al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas. Why would Israel want to stop that? None of the refugees are going into Israel. None of the fighting has been aimed at Israel. And if Syria breaks up, there is less pressure for Israel to give up the Golan Heights.

* Trump’s election itself was really improbable, but the Trump administration is even more improbable, and the reason is that gloablism is so entrenched among elites and within the Beltway that staffing a nationalist administration, whether a left nationalist or a right nationalist one, is a big problem. Trump himself is an example, as his lack of government experience has really shown in the last seventy or so days, but no one with experience at all was running on his agenda.

For example, both Ron and Rand Paul are good on many issues, but as open borders types neither can be employed in high positions in an administration whose main reason for existence is reducing immigration. Its really that simple. Getting someone who is lined up correction on all three “invade the world”, “invite the world”, and “in hoc to the world” is pretty much impossible. The best you can do is someone like Sessions, who is good on both immigration and trade, but will decide that the highest priority is going after pot smokers.

Then you have the issue that the federal government itself, as Mulvaney noted publically on Meet the Press, is in worse shape than most people realized. If there is a real chance of default because Congress can’t pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling, you probably have to let Goldman Sachs continue to run the Treasury department for the time being. My own suggestion earlier was that Trump punt on foreign policy, keeping the Obama policies but intervening just enough to keep the US out of a ground war (this was basically Obama’s own approach) and concentrate on trade and immigration, until he got up to speed.

But this is really just saying that the federal government and associated institutions may have gotten to the point where they are un-reformable. Well at least we will find out over the next four years.

* The limited statement of aims that Trump gave wasn’t bad (Stephen Miller’s work?): chemical weapons are illegal under international treaties, and it is in our interest to punish any use of them. In so far as that goes, fine. If it is limited to that, then maybe this won’t betoken a return to invade-the-world (which Trump hadn’t really stopped so far anyway).

Assad will just have to go back to killing civilians with explosives and shrapnel, which is how civilized governments slaughter innocents.

* This attack, while it wrenched those of us opposed to ME interventions, it actually triangulated Trump to a center of sorts.

McCain and Graham immediately issued a statement urging further hawkish action, as will many neocon-biased media commentators. And anti-war people will flank Trump now.

So a targeted attack like this, if it doesn’t escalate, is actually the “moderate middle”. As stupid as it is, that is where we are.

Posted in America, Syria | Comments Off on I’m Not Yet Worried About Trump’s Military Action In Syria

What Constitutes An Honors Student At A Black High School?

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Luke Ford

Stan writes: The success bar is set lower for black men, as Tom Wolfe noted in The Bonfire of the Vanities:

‘‘Actually, I’m calling to inquire about one of your students, a young Mr. Henry Lamb.’’

‘‘Henry Lamb. Doesn’t ring a bell. What’s he done?’’

‘‘Oh, he hasn’t done anything. He’s been seriously injured.’’ He proceeded to lay out the facts of the case, stacking them rather heavily toward the Albert Vogel-Reverend Bacon theory of the incident. ‘‘I was told he was a student in your English class.’’

‘‘Who told you that?’’

‘‘His mother. I had quite a long talk with her. She’s a very nice woman and very upset, as you can imagine.’’

‘‘Henry Lamb … Oh yes, I know who you mean. Well, that’s too bad.’’

‘‘What I would like to find out, Mr. Rifkind, is what kind of student Henry Lamb is.’’

‘‘What kindl’’

‘‘Well, would you say he was an outstanding student?’’

‘‘Where are you from, Mr.—I’m sorry, tell me your name again?’’

‘‘Fallow.’’

‘‘Mr. Fallow. I gather you’re not from New York.’’

‘‘That’s true.’’

‘‘Then there’s no reason why you should know anything about Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School in the Bronx. At Ruppert we use comparative terms, but outstanding isn’t one of them. The range runs more from cooperative to life-threatening.’’ Mr. Rifkind began to chuckle. ‘‘F’r Chrissake, don’t say I said that.’’

‘‘Well, how would you describe Henry Lamb?’’

‘‘Cooperative. He’s a nice fellow. Never gives me any trouble.’’

‘‘Would you describe him as a good student?’’

‘‘Good doesn’t work too well at Ruppert, either. It’s more ‘Does he attend class or doesn’t he?’ ‘‘

‘‘Did Henry Lamb attend class?’’

‘‘As I recall, yes. He’s usually there. He’s very dependable. He’s a nice kid, as nice as they come.’’

‘‘Was there any part of the curriculum he was particularly good—or, let me say, adept at, anything he did better than anything else?’’

‘‘Not particularly.’’

‘‘No?’’

‘‘It’s difficult to explain, Mr. Fallow. As the saying goes, ‘Ex nihilo nihil fit.’ There’s not a great range of activities in these classes, and so it’s hard to compare performances. These boys and girls—sometimes their minds are in the classroom, and sometimes they’re not.’’

‘‘What about Henry Lamb?’’

‘‘He’s a nice fellow. He’s polite, he pays attention, he doesn’t give me any trouble. He tries to learn.’’

‘‘Well, he must have some abilities. His mother told me he was considering going to college.’’

‘‘That may well be. She’s probably talking about C.C.N.Y. That’s the City College of New York.’’

‘‘I believe Mrs. Lamb did mention that.’’

‘‘City College has an open-admissions policy. If you live in New York City and you’re a high-school graduate and you want to go to City College, you can go.’’

‘‘Will Henry Lamb graduate, or would he have?’’

‘‘As far as I know. As I say, he has a very good attendance record.’’

‘‘How do you think he would have fared as a college student?’’

A sigh. ‘‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine what happens with these kids when they enter City College.’’

‘‘Well, Mr. Rifkind, can you tell me anything at all about Henry Lamb’s performance or his aptitude, anything at all?’’

‘‘You have to understand that they give me about sixty-five students in each class when the year starts, because they know it’ll be down to forty by mid-year and thirty by the end of the year. Even thirty’s too many, but that’s what I get. It’s not exactly what you’d call a tutorial system. Henry Lamb’s a nice young man who applies himself and wants an education. What more can I tell you?’’

‘‘Let me ask you this. How does he do on his written work?’’

Mr. Rifkind let out a whoop. ‘‘Written work? There hasn’t been any written work at Ruppert High for fifteen years! Maybe twenty! They take multiple-choice tests. Reading comprehension, that’s the big thing. That’s all the Board of Education cares about.’’

‘‘How was Henry Lamb’s reading comprehension?’’

‘‘I’d have to look it up. Not bad, if I had to guess.’’

‘‘Better than most? Or about average? Or what would you say?’’

‘‘Well … I know it must be difficult for you to understand, Mr. Fallow, being from England. Am I right? You’re British?’’

‘‘Yes, I am.’’

‘‘Naturally—or I guess it’s natural—you’re used to levels of excellence and so forth. But these kids haven’t reached the level where it’s worth emphasizing the kind of comparisons you’re talking about. We’re just trying to get them up to a certain level and then keep them from falling back. You’re thinking about ‘honor students’ and ‘higher achievers’ and all that, and that’s natural enough, as I say. But at Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School, an honor student is somebody who attends class, isn’t disruptive, tries to learn, and does all right at reading and arithmetic.’’

‘‘Well, let’s use that standard. By that standard, is Henry Lamb an honor student?’’

‘‘By that standard, yes.’’

‘‘Thank you very much, Mr. Rifkind.’’

‘‘That’s okay. I’m sorry to hear about all this. Seems like a nice boy. We’re not supposed to call them boys, but that’s what they are, poor sad confused boys with a whole lotta problems. Don’t quote me, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll have a whole lotta problems. Hey, listen. You sure you couldn’t use a 1981 Thunderbird?’’

Posted in Blacks | Comments Off on What Constitutes An Honors Student At A Black High School?

If You Can’t Connect With People, You’ll Have To Connect To Something Else Such As A Process Or Substance

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Luke Ford

I tweeted yesterday: “The higher my quality of life, the more secure my attachment, the less hold my addictions have on me.”

Harel responded: “Luke, this really hit home with me. Can you expand on this?”

We are wired to connect. People with secure attachment connect with other people without much effort and tend to form long-lasting relationships. They’re consequently less likely to be unhinged. They’re less likely to be sports fanatics, compulsive debtors, or porn addicts. People with insecure attachment such as myself tend to obsess about the quality of their most important attachments and this reduces one’s ability to connect normally. People with avoidant attachment feel that they don’t need to connect to others. This is the hardest attachment pattern to shift. By contrast, people with insecure attachment can become secure, and people with secure attachment can become insecure, depending on who they attach to. We affect each other. The insecure tend to make people around them more insecure and the secure tend to make others feel more secure.

I know that when I’ve been surrounded by secure people, my attachment system calms down and I feel more secure and as a result, I act out less and I am less likely to needlessly damage my relationships with other people and with myself.

When I was a child, I was often miserable and I learned to escape by fantasizing about myself as a very important person (aka narcissism served to protect my wounded self). When my adult life did not work right, I tended to relapse to past coping mechanisms such as grandiose fantasy, sex and love addiction, TV and sports addiction, and hiding and biting.

All addictions tend to spiral. They all tend to be progressive and fatal. Loneliness kills more people than cigarettes. When you feel insecure, you will naturally isolate and be easily thrown by the buffeting winds of normal life.

The quality of one’s life correlates with the quality of one’s relationships. If you’re relating well to others, you feel less need to escape from your life through familiar compulsions.

Posted in Addiction, Attachment, Personal | Comments Off on If You Can’t Connect With People, You’ll Have To Connect To Something Else Such As A Process Or Substance

Driving California

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Weren’t liberals arguing that the crime rates for illegals are relatively low because they want to keep a low profile? According to that logic, their accident rates should go up if you grant them driver’s licences.

Also why is the US the only western country that gives illegal immigrants drivers licences? If its such a good idea, why is no one following Uncle Sam’s enlightened example?

* My observation from the years I spent on LA freeways is that congestion limits people’s speed so much of the time that they don’t learn how to limit it themselves. They just go as fast as they can all the time, which is usually 32 mph but that magic moment when the traffic loosens up, it’s like the back straightaway at Talladega.

* Based on my own admittedly unscientific observations:

1. I don’t think the CA DMV denies anyone a license, unless they actually get into an accident during the behind-the-wheel portion of the test. There are too many noisy, unpleasant pressure groups that the DMV and the politicians would just rather not deal with: seniors, immigrants, etc. etc.

2. As someone involved in sales, a large part of my job is driving. I hate driving in the LA basin, because depending on the part of town you’re in, the drivers are super aggressive, distracted, or both. The San Fernando Valley is especially bad, most particularly the swarthy men with gold chains and shirts unbuttoned to their navels.

3. It used to be considered common knowledge that women were safer drivers than men, especially young women compared to young men. No more. Young women, thanks to the you-go-girrrlll ethos and a general get-out-of-my-way-I’m-more-important-than-you mindset are some of the worst, most aggressive drivers out there.

My own kid some years ago complained that her Nissan Sentra was a “clunker” because it wasn’t getting the gas mileage she expected and the brakes were wearing out too fast. I remarked that maybe it had something to do with her hard braking, general lead-footedness, and jackrabbit starts, which of course she denied. Then she asked “what’s a jackrabbit start?”

* The easiest way of ascertaining the driving capabilities of illegal aliens is looking at where they’re from. Is it bad? Then they’re worse than that, being the bottom of the barrel.

Interesting question: Is there any place in the world where the poor drive better than the rich?

I don’t think so. A big part of not crashing is being able to anticipate the future. If they had hardware with that kind of capability, they wouldn’t be poor. As with any pretty complicated task, navigating traffic is an iq test.

* The easiest way of ascertaining the driving capabilities of illegal aliens is looking at where they’re from. Is it bad? Then they’re worse than that, being the bottom of the barrel.

Interesting question: Is there any place in the world where the poor drive better than the rich?

I don’t think so. A big part of not crashing is being able to anticipate the future. If they had hardware with that kind of capability, they wouldn’t be poor. As with any pretty complicated task, navigating traffic is an iq test.

* There is a web site by that name: Narrative Collapse

Examples of current stories:

DC Police confirm that Corrina Mehiel was tortured — Still refusing to disclose the perp’s immigration status

February Killings — When it comes to interracial killings, the media, television shows, and Hollywood movies all have a certain narrative they push. But does it reflect reality?…So far we have found 28 black on white killings that occurred in February of 2017. We have not found any white on black killings yet.

If media outlets weren’t abrogating their responsibility to do honest, unbiased reporting by deliberately and dishonestly pushing a false ‘narrative’, there would be nothing to ‘collapse’.

* It’s like the scene in Yes Minister where Sir Humphrey is teaching his minister how to discredit a critical report.

Humphrey: Say that may of its findings have been questioned.
Minister: What if they haven’t?
Humphrey: Well, question them. Then they have.

Posted in California | Comments Off on Driving California

What’s Next After the Russian Brouhaha Peters Out?

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* It will keep going and going and going. Russia will be the major issue at the next elections. You can sell anything for any amount of time.

And why shouldn’t they? What’s the penalty? You’re treating the press like gentlemen from the past who, when shown to be wrong, would retire from the discussion voluntarily. Who knew when to stop lying just because there’s a line one does not cross. Who had a sense of shame that would itch unbearably when they went too far.

It’s the current year, Steve.

* Yeah, the thing that gets me about this Trump-Russia supposed connection is that it just doesn’t make any sense, given the guy Trump.

People on the left seem to have no theory-of-mind. They seem to reason like this: it would be very, very evil to collude with Russia, and Trump is an very, very evil-doer; therefore, Trump colluded with Russia.

But whatever Trump’s faults may be, sneaky conspiratorial behavior is hardly among them. He can hardly keep his mouth shut. He’s going to go off on a grand utterly secret conspiracy with any number of people including a bunch of Russians? Why on earth would he attempt to do this? Why would his inclinations lie in that direction?

You could sort of see Richard Nixon trying to pull something like that off. But “if-it’s-in-my-head,it’s-out-of-my-mouth” Trump, for God’s sakes?

* My guess is that the half-life of the “Russia brouhaha” on the left is going to be very, very long, essentially infinite. They’re never going to let it die. It’s basically going to be this decade’s 2000 Florida recount, mixed up maybe with “Bush did 9/11.” Or, to put it another way, it’ll be Birtherism for Democrats. Even in the absence of evidence, it will just, at worst, dwindle down into the realm of “serious questions having been raised,” or a “cloud over the process” in public conversation, and an animating foundational legend for the Democrats going forward, to be used all at once to motivate their own partisans, discredit Republicans, and absolve themselves of any responsibility for losing in 2016. Basically, it will become the Democrats’ Dolchstoßlegende. The political and psychological appeal of having an immortal, unprovable but thus also un-disprovable conspiracy theory that implicates your enemies in a nefarious and monstrous act of perfidy that completely explains all your misfortune is considerable, too considerable to be abandoned.

* We also have the counterpart to the Megaphone: The Underphone.

People like Sailer scribbling away in relative obscurity being secretly read by major players. Quiet whispers between Deplorables in places like this and the halls of power. ShitPosters on the internet rattling cages everywhere they can. All passing on the secret knowlegde that 2+2=4.

* They run “stories,” which amount to nothing more than innuendo, in their mainstream news outlets — “This raises questions!” — “Russia: The story that won’t go away!”

And why is it “story?”

Well, because it’s in the newspapers that’s why! It “won’t go away” because they keep running stories about it.

Repeat and rinse.

* Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice says “I leaked nothing to nobody” when asked about the Obama Surveillance Scandal. That means she leaked like a beer hound on a bladder-busting bender. Susan Rice is the monkey, and Obama is the organ grinder. President Trump will not punish the monkey and let the organ grinder go. President Trump will go after Obama.

Obama was the one who authorized the opening of the floodgates of raw electronic information. Obama was the one who did this for political reasons. Obama was sneakily using the power of the electronic eavesdropping ability of the United States to further his political goals.

We all know that Obama famously said he wanted to “transform” the United States. Obama’s “transformation” of the USA included the racial transformation of the USA into a third world hellhole. Obama used the advanced electronic surveillance system of the USA to make sure his “transformation” of the USA went on without interruption. Obama failed, President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.

I want Al Pacino to play Susan Rice in the upcoming movie of the Obama Surveillance Scandal. I can’t wait to see how Pacino will deliver this line: “I leaked nothing to nobody.” Pacino might just underplay it to increase its dramatic impact.

Pacino, because he is such a studious craftsman at the job of acting, will even put the blue makeup under his lower eyelid like Susan Rice does. Al Pacino will do what he must to convincingly play his part. Richard III to Susan Rice; Pacino can do it.

* The point is that Trump isn’t having the predicted effect: he isn’t moving the culture in his direction. If anything, he’s moving it in the opposite direction. Progressives who would have hated the CIA for its spying on American citizens two years ago think its justified today. Sanctuary cities are probably more supported today than they were three months ago.

In other words, there has been a lot of ‘things are about to burst’ talk. The revelations regarding Rice are ‘about to break the whole thing wide open.’ But it doesn’t appear that way. The public are continuing to forgive the Obama administration; controversies aren’t weakening support for him; they’re strengthening distaste for Trump.

Unless things change, post Trump is not going to be a renewed Nationalism: its going to be progressivism on steroids.

Posted in America | Comments Off on What’s Next After the Russian Brouhaha Peters Out?

Purists Kill Whatever They Believe In

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

According to The New York Times, 10 moderates, 15 conservatives, and eight other Republicans would have voted against the Republican repeal and replace Obamacare bill. So, then, 15 or so conservatives made it impossible to pass the bill favored by nearly every other Republican and by President Donald Trump. If that is the case, what we have here is another conservative example of purism and principle damaging another major opportunity to do good.
The first purist conservative example were the Never-Trumpers, who believed it was better for Hillary Clinton to be elected president and for the Left to have four more years of presidential power than for Donald Trump to win.
There were valid reasons to wonder whether Donald Trump was a conservative, and valid reasons to oppose him in the primaries. There were no valid reasons to oppose him in the general election. I said all these things then, and have thus far been validated beyond my wildest dreams.
In terms of policy, Donald Trump is a conservative dream. From appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, to approving the Keystone XL pipeline, to weakening the fanatical, hysterical, and tyrannical EPA, to appointing an ambassador to the United Nations who has moral contempt for that immoral institution, to backing Israel, to seeking to reduce economy-choking regulations on business – indeed essentially everything conservatives would wish for in a president – Donald Trump is almost too good to be true.
But he’s still not good enough for those conservatives who remain Never-Trumpers or good enough for the House members of Freedom Caucus, at least with regard to the repeal and replace Obamacare bill that President Trump worked so hard to have passed.
It is quite possible that I and most other conservatives who supported the repeal bill agree with just about every criticism of the bill that House conservatives made.
But, just as in the general election the question wasn’t whether candidate Trump was our ideal, the question now wasn’t whether the bill was our ideal. The question during the election was: What will happen if the Democrats and the Left win the presidency again? And the question now was and remains: What will happen if the Republicans don’t pass a bill favored by all but 25-30 Republican Congressmen and, most important, by President Trump?
But purists don’t ask such questions. They live in a somewhat different world than the rest of us who actually agree with them on everything. Because we don’t ask what is ideologically pure and true to our principles. We ask: What is closest to our ideology and to our principles?
Or, to put it another way, we have one larger principle than even the conservative ones we share with the purists – defeating the left because that is the No. 1 priority of those who cherish Western Civilization and regard America as the last best hope for humanity.
The conservative Never-Trumpers and conservatives who voted for Trump had everything in common except for that overriding principle. Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.
Passing even a tepid first bill to begin the process of dismantling the crushing burden of Obamacare would have been an important first step in weakening the left – not only by beginning to repeal Obamacare but by strengthening the Trump presidency and the president’s ability to go forward with tax-reform and other parts of his conservative agenda. The president is now damaged, and the Republican Party looks ludicrous – what other word can one use to describe the party that passed 60 resolutions in seven years to repeal Obamacare and then can’t pass a bill to repeal or replace Obamacare when it is given the House, the Senate, and the presidency?
Make no mistake, ye of pure heart, this may well be the last time in your lifetimes that Republicans control both Houses of Congress and have a conservative president. And understand that time is not on our side; there are congressional elections in a year and nine months.
Providence or luck made it possible to have a conservative president. Act accordingly.

Posted in America | Comments Off on Purists Kill Whatever They Believe In

It’s Time for Conservatives to Celebrate This President

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

Do conservatives — or non-leftists, for that matter — appreciate just how terrific Donald Trump has been as president? And how lucky we are that he won the presidency?
I don’t know the answer.
What I do know is that they ought to be deeply appreciative of him, and deeply grateful for luck or providence, and certainly for Trump himself, that he was elected president. First, it is unlikely that any other Republican would have defeated Hillary Clinton. Second, he has not only surpassed many of our expectations but also thus far governed in a manner more consistent with conservative principles than any president since Ronald Reagan, and arguably Calvin Coolidge.
I say this as one who vigorously opposed him during the Republican contest for the nomination. I said from the beginning, in print and on my radio show, that I would support Trump if he became the nominee, but I dreaded his becoming the nominee. His comments about the size of his hands, Sen. John McCain as a prisoner of war and former President George W. Bush lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; his lack of any history as a conservative; and the seeming absence of a filter between his brain and his Twitter app made it difficult for me to imagine him as a serious president of the United States.
Nevertheless, once he was nominated, I just as vigorously supported him on the simple and — I still believe — unanswerable grounds that while no one could be certain how Trump would govern, we were all certain about how Hillary Clinton would govern — as a leftist. And I truly believed that another four years of left-wing rule would mean the end of America as it was founded to be.
That is why I found the arguments of the conservatives who were Never-Trumpers, many of whom I work with, admire and count as friends, not just unpersuasive but incomprehensible. That a conservative could prefer Clinton — which was the only upshot of a Never Trump position — to any Republican could only mean that we have an entirely different understanding of the damage the left has done and would have done to America and the Western world if Clinton had won.
I remember Never-Trumpers calling my radio show and asking me how I could possibly believe that, if elected president, Trump would honor his commitment to nominate to the Supreme Court one of the conservatives on the list of judges from which he promised to choose.
He has honored that promise.
And given the supreme importance of the Supreme Court, isn’t that reason enough for conservatives to celebrate his presidency?
He has repealed many of President Obama’s energy regulations that would have strangled the American economy. He doesn’t believe that carbon-induced warming of the planet will destroy the human race — the greatest of the innumerable hysterias the left manufactures and then believes in.
Isn’t that reason enough for conservatives to celebrate his presidency?
He has appointed a woman who, as a billionaire, could have easily devoted her life to enjoying her wealth but instead has fought for American students and their parents to be able choose their schools just as the wealthy do. And he has taken on the teachers unions, the only group that has ever given American teachers a bad name.
Isn’t that reason enough for conservatives to celebrate his presidency?
He has appointed as ambassador to the United Nations a woman who is calling the U.N. the naked emperor that it is. And now, America is backing, rather than subverting, Israel in that benighted institution.
Isn’t that reason enough for conservatives to celebrate his presidency?
By building a wall along our southern border, he is reasserting the belief that America actually has borders.
Isn’t that reason enough for conservatives to celebrate his presidency?
And then there is tax reduction and simplification so that private citizens can keep more of their money and corporations can be far more productive.
Isn’t that reason enough for conservatives to celebrate his presidency?
And now, he has vowed, after decades of American obsequiousness, to confront the sociopathic North Korean regime.
The American media — most particularly, its elite — no longer even feigns objective reporting. It is solely an arm of the left and the Democratic Party, its task being the delegitimization of the Trump presidency.
If you live among liberals, it is not chic to express support for President Trump. But it is time more of us did. If people abandon you because you support this president, they weren’t serious friends to begin with. And, sorry to say, they aren’t worthy of you. Somehow, you have been able to look beyond their support for the America- and West-destroying left. But they can’t look beyond your support for the first conservative president in a generation — and the gutsiest perhaps ever.
If the president’s approval rating really is in the 30s, this makes overt support for him all the more imperative. Whether you like his tweets or not, his fate is our fate.

Posted in America, Conservatives | Comments Off on It’s Time for Conservatives to Celebrate This President

NYT: ‘Ancestral Climates May Have Shaped Your Nose’

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Luke Ford

If ancestral climates shaped your nose, could they have shaped other parts of you, including your brain? That’s only logical.

New York Times:

Ask anyone what the nose does, and the reply will most likely be related to smell. We appreciate our noses because they help us experience flowers and fresh-baked cookies.

In fact, our honkers have another, more important function: They warm and humidify the air we breathe, helping prevent illness and damage in our airways and lungs. Because of this, scientists have long suspected that nose shape evolved partly in response to local climate conditions. In cold, dry climates, natural selection may have favored noses that were better at heating and moisturizing air.

A team led by scientists at Pennsylvania State University has found more evidence of the relationship between the noses we have now and the climates where our ancestors lived.

In a study published in PLOS Genetics on Thursday, the researchers found that nostril width differed significantly between populations from different regions around the world. Moreover, the higher the temperature and absolute humidity of the region, the wider the nostril, the researchers found, suggesting that climate very well may have played a part in shaping our sniffers.

Physical traits that are in direct contact with the environment often undergo natural selection and evolve faster, said Arslan Zaidi, a postdoctoral scholar in genetics at Penn State and an author of the paper. “This is one of the reasons why we looked at nose shape.”

…Between the groups in this study, only nostril width and skin pigmentation showed greater differences than would be expected because of chance accumulations of genetic mutations.

Over all, people whose parents and ancestors came from warm, humid climates tended to have wider nostrils, whereas those from cold, dry climates tended to have narrower ones. Correlations between nostril width and climate were strongest for Northern Europeans, the researchers found, suggesting that cold, dry climates in particular may have favored people with narrower nostrils…

Studying how certain traits evolved as environmental adaptations that may no longer be relevant could also help us understand disease risk today, Dr. Zaidi said.

“We know there are variable risks of respiratory diseases across different populations in the U.S.,” he said. “Can we find an explanation for that in morphology?”

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on NYT: ‘Ancestral Climates May Have Shaped Your Nose’

Denial (2016)

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Luke Ford

I enjoyed this movie. “Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel.”

Deborah Lipstadt is portrayed by a beautiful actress (Rachel Weisz) while David Irving is portrayed by a creepy-looking actor (Timothy Spall). The real life David Irving looks similar to actor Tom Wilkinson who is in the movie but curiously given the role of the barrister attacking Irving.

Rachel Weisz, Deborah Lipstadt

Deborah Lipstadt

David Irving

Tom Wilkinson

NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 06: Actor Timothy Spall attends the 2014 National Board of Review Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street on January 6, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic)

The film makes clear that Lipstadt had unlimited funds and legal help at her disposal while Irving represented himself. Lipstadt’s team poured through Irving’s diaries to find a few passages to discredit him. Who has written an honest diary who would not be embarrassed to have parts of it read aloud in court?

Wikipedia: “Lipstadt hired the British solicitor Anthony Julius to present her case, while Penguin Books hired Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman, libel specialist from media firm Davenport Lyons. They briefed the libel barrister Richard Rampton QC and Penguin also briefed junior barrister Heather Rogers. The defendants (with Penguin’s insurers paying the fee) also retained Professor Richard J. Evans, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, as an expert witness. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, the German historian Peter Longerich and the Dutch architectural expert Robert Jan van Pelt. The latter wrote a report attesting to the fact that the death camps were designed, built and used for the purpose of mass murder, while Browning testified for the reality of the Holocaust.”

In his book, The Holocaust in American Life, Peter Novick has some sharp observations on Lipstadt’s work:

Deborah Lipstadt is more moderate than others when she describes Allied policy as merely “bordering on complicity” in the Final Solution. What prevented Auschwitz from being bombed, says Lipstadt, was the “deep antipathy” toward “contemptible” Jews held by key figures in Washington and London. David Wyman, perhaps the most cited member of the prosecution team, is at one with Lipstadt in seeing anti-Semitism at the core of the “abandonment.”

Forward Editor Jane Eisner writes:

The role of memory, and its fraught relationship to fact and truth, is threaded through Lipstadt’s legal battle with Irving, and so through “Denial,” the new film dramatizing that epic British courtroom struggle. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and will open in select cities in the United States on September 30. Starring Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt, it’s based on Lipstadt’s book recounting her ordeal, “History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier.”

Though in the end victorious, Lipstadt faced a legal saga that was filled with uncertainty and marked by intense loneliness. In the United Kingdom, the burden of proof in a libel case is on the accused, so it was up to Lipstadt and her British legal team to prove that Irving was wrong; that the Holocaust had, indeed, occurred, and that Jews were its intended victims. Lipstadt, then and today still a professor at Emory University, had put everything on the line to defend herself against the claims of a man who was driven by prejudice and anti-Semitism but also knew how to construct a cunning and cynical argument.

“History on Trial” was published in 2005, and it eerily resonates today. The rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the surge of derogatory Holocaust-related tropes on social media perpetrated by extremists in this country raise a similar quandary: How do you deal with those who deny history, who disregard factual evidence, who seem to care little for the truth? And can this one film — a solid, interesting, at times gripping film, but one not destined for blockbuster status — help counter an ugly narrative?

The contemporary echoes were one reason that Weisz, whose parents fled from the Nazis, wanted the part. “Obviously, the Holocaust being on trial is just a very outlandish notion to me,” the British-born actress said during an interview in a Manhattan hotel. “But the idea that there are objective truths, and there is a difference between opinion and fact — in the current climate of relativism, people just spout opinions as if they are facts! There doesn’t seem to be much respect for the difference of the two things. So I thought it was fascinating to put something on trial and prove it was irrefutably a fact and that someone’s opinion didn’t stand up.”

David Irving is a complicated chap. There’s an excellent five-part British miniseries “Selling Hitler” about the Hitler Diaries. Apparently, Irving lead the way in denouncing the diaries as fraudulent after first calling them genuine.

From Wikipedia:

In 1983, Stern, a weekly German news magazine, purchased for 9 million marks the Hitler Diaries of 61 volumes and published excerpts from them. Irving played the major role in uncovering the Hitler Diaries as a hoax. In October 1982 Irving purchased, from the same source as Stern’s 1983 purchase, 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to discover that many of the documents were forgeries.[52] Irving was amongst the first to identify the diaries as forgeries, and to draw media attention. He went so far as to crash the press conference held by Hugh Trevor-Roper at the Hamburg offices of Stern magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine.[53] Irving’s performance at the Stern press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news; the next day, Irving appeared on the Today television show as a featured guest.[54] Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because they had come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia from whom Irving had purchased his collection in 1982.[52] At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving announced, “I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here”.[52] Irving was proud to have detected and announced the hoax material and of the “trail of chaos” he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and took pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his sloppy work (not detecting the hoax) and criticism of Irving’s methods and conclusions.[55] Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries, such as a diary entry for 20 July 1944, which would have been unlikely given that Hitler’s right hand had been badly burned by the bomb planted in his headquarters by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg earlier that day.[56]

A week later on 2 May, Irving asserted that many of the diary documents appear to be genuine; at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler’s physician Dr. Theodor Morell.[55] Robert Harris, in his book Selling Hitler, suggested that an additional reason for Irving’s change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving’s claim in Hitler’s War that Hitler had no knowledge of it.[57] Subsequently Irving conformed when the diaries were declared as a forgery by consensus. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.

David Irving is the subject of a great Wikipedia profile. He lost his libel lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt. Here is David’s side.

Jack the Jew* emails:

David Duke of course came to his views on race through the KKK. It is easy to think of David Duke as a clown, but his views on Jews largely parallel Kevin MacDonald’s.

David Irving is a different case. He was a respected amateur historian and popular author about military matters. He is educated guy and a really talented writer. Because he speaks and reads German fluently, he has used original source material for his works. He is more responsible than anyone, other than Kurt Vonnegut, for publicizing British firebomb raid on Dresden (for fans of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, it plays a significant part in that book as well). What happened with Irving is that in all of his original research, he was unable to come up with anything linking Hitler with direct orders to exterminate the Jews. He also minimized the number of Jews who were deliberately killed. (The numbers, even from established historians of the Holocaust, are all over the map. Arno Mayer, who wrote, Why did the Heavens not darken, in that book said that more Jews died of disease and other causes than were put to death in gas chambers in Auschwitz.)

Deborah Lipstadt wrote a book in which she called Irving a Holocaust Denier, lumping him with people who were explicit Holocaust deniers. Irving sued her in England for libel and lost. In the process Irving’s historical research was shredded by Richard Evans, another British historian of WWII and the Nazis, because Evans said that Irving had deliberately shaped his books and opinions by ignoring some facts and stressing others to reach a desired result.

This result of the trial pretty much ruined Irving’s reputation among serious historians. However, there are a number of points that really have to be made in Irving’s defense: Irving foolishly represented himself at trial whereas Libstadt’s team consisted of the best barristers in England paid millions of pounds by wealthy Jews including Spielberg. Evans was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to testify as an expert witness, and in subsequent events, has been criticized by neutral sources as someone who has made serious errors in his own works. Irving made all of his source materials available to the defense and Lipstadt refused to turn over much of what she had that she based her claim in the book on.

Irving is probably the English speaking historian who knows the most about the Nazi leadership having read and translated Goebbels diaries, written a book on Goebels and on Himmler as well as on other aspects. Irving has also changed his views on the extent of the Holocaust. He still doesn’t think it can be attributed to Hitler, but does think that others in the leadership were involved, and he now concedes that there were extermination camps and that at least hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed.

Christopher Hitchens strongly supported Irving’s right to his opinions and his books. The question is always one of whether histories should be refuted by calling its author a racist or an anti-Semite or refuted with facts. Irving was not some crank pounding out tracts. He may have had an agenda as Evans testified, but if that is the case, identify the agenda as Evans did and show how Irving distorted the facts. However, that may be true for some of the parts of Irving’s works, its certainly not true for most of them.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Holocaust | Comments Off on Denial (2016)

Was Hitler Inspired by Racist American Laws?

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Luke Ford

Haaretz: ‘Hitler’s American Model,’ by James Q. Whitman, contends that America’s racist legislation served as a model for at least portions of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws.

“Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law,” by James Q. Whitman, Princeton University Press, 208 pp., $24.95
It’s not widely realized that Adolf Hitler wrote a sequel to “Mein Kampf.” Published only in 1961, “Hitler’s Second Book,” as it was titled, rehashed many of the themes from his earlier work but also included some significant additional material, including some fascinating praise of America’s immigration system in the 1920s.
“The American nation appears as a young, racially select people,” Hitler wrote. “By making an immigrant’s ability to set foot on American soil dependent on specific racial requirements on the one hand as well as a certain level of physical health of the individual himself, the bleeding of Europe of its best people has become regulated in a manner that is almost bound by law.”
Yale law professor James Q. Whitman, in his intriguing new book, “Hitler’s American Model,” contends that the Nazi leader’s praise of America was not merely some propaganda rant but reflected the Nazis’ genuine admiration for the laws governing race relations in America in those years.
More than that: Whitman contends that Nazi legal theorists not only extolled America’s racist legislation, but actually used it as a model for at least portions of the Nuremberg Laws. The centerpiece of Whitman’s case is a June 1934 gathering of senior Nazi attorneys and Justice Ministry officials to draft sweeping new legislation that would define the status of German Jews and their relations to non-Jewish Germans.
In preparation for the conference, the attendees examined legal systems around the world, in search of precedents for government-imposed legal restrictions based on race. They were not looking for ammunition to publicly justify the laws they were creating; in fact, there was no public aspect at that point, since the 1934 meeting was held entirely behind closed doors. Rather, Whitman shows, they were trying to determine how best to turn Nazi racial ideology into German federal law.
“This pivotal meeting on the road to the Nuremberg Laws involved repeated and detailed discussion of the American example,” Whitman writes. The Germans were not interested so much in U.S. segregation laws; their goals were to disqualify Jews from citizenship and to criminalize marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, in order to “protect German blood and honor.”
For this, they looked to a number of American legal innovations. One was the way in which the U.S. immigration quotas, adopted by Congress in 1921 and tightened in 1924, were structured to heavily favor what were considered “racially desirable” people in northern and western Europe, and severely reduce the number admitted from eastern and southern Europe (primarily Jews and Catholics) and from Asia. Although the U.S. was by no means the only country to decide immigration based on racist ideas, Whitman notes, it had become “the leader in developing explicitly racist policies of nationality and immigration.”
The Nazi jurists were also keenly interested in America’s development of a type of second-class citizenship for residents of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the territories that the U.S. captured and occupied in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Supreme Court upheld the conquered peoples’ status as “non-citizen nationals.” German legal scholars created an extensive body of literature on the subject, which the Nazis utilized. “America, in the eyes of this German literature, was a laboratory for experimentation in diminished citizenship rights,” Whitman notes.
Finally, the Nazis looked closely at the laws in 30 states prohibiting marriage between whites and blacks, the last of which (Virginia) was abolished only in 1967. In defining who could marry and who could not, these American precedents included helpful (to the Nazis) ways for deciding the status of persons of mixed-race. The issue of “mongrelization,” which entered the American legal system originally because of relations between white masters and black slaves, was important to the Nazis in addressing the question of Germans who were of partly Jewish descent.

As an example of the prominence of sentiment in America against race-mixing, Whitman quotes U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo (Democrat of Mississippi) railing, in 1938, about how “mongrelization” could “destroy white civilization.” Bilbo worried that “even one drop of Negro blood placed in the veins of the purest Caucasian destroys the inventive genius of his mind and palsies his creative faculty.” 
Many states—primarily, but not exclusively, in the south—defined a Negro as someone who had any Negro ancestors; hence the term “one drop.” Ironically, the Nazis considered the one-drop rule too harsh, and instead adopted the one-grandparent rule to define Jewishness.
Whitman should have mentioned that such views were held not only by crude southern demagogues, but by the president of the United States himself. In a document from 1939 (first published by this author more than 10 years ago), President Franklin D. Roosevelt was reliably quoted by a friendly senator as boasting, “We know that we do not have any Jewish blood in our veins.” Prof. Greg Robinson’s study of FDR’s writings in the 1920s uncovered statements warning that “the mingling of white with oriental blood on an extensive scale is harmful to our future citizenship.” And there can be no doubt (since it was a matter of public controversy) that the president approved his administration’s policy of segregating Negro blood donations during World War II.
Did America’s racist legislation directly influence any aspects of Nazi racial laws? Whitman concludes that although the Nazi statute criminalizing mixed marriage “was not directly copied” from the U.S. legal code, the German jurists’ thinking clearly was “influenced” by the American example, as demonstrated by their frequent reference to U.S. law during that crucial 1934 conference, and the inclusion of extensive American material in major Nazi law texts. While “it is perfectly possible” that the Nazis “would have succeeded in criminalizing mixed marriages even if they had not had an American example to cite,” Whitman writes, there is “no justification for ignoring the evidence of Nazi engagement with American models that litters the sources.”

Posted in Adolf Hitler, America | Comments Off on Was Hitler Inspired by Racist American Laws?