Friday, February 29th
Israel: Holocaust awaits Palestinians
Israel's deputy war minister has threatened Palestinians with a 'bigger holocaust' if rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip continue.
"The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai told the Army Radio on Friday.
[The use of words raises an important remark: genocide is the most extreme measure what nations are willing to do to secure their existence. Survival knows no good or evil, because it is what everyone desires.]
owl on 02.29.08 @ 01:10 PM CST [more..]
Politicians shun reality
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.: that is the full name of the junior Senator from Illinois - neither a contrivance nor, at face value, a slur. But John McCain couldn't apologize quickly enough after Bill Cunningham, a conservative talk radio host, warmed up a Cincinnati rally with a few loaded references to "Barack Hussein Obama." Asked afterwards if it was appropriate to use the Senator's middle name, McCain said, "No, it is not. Any comment that is disparaging of either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama is totally inappropriate."
Obama's campaign thanked McCain's for his apology, claiming a victory for the high road. Fine. But McCain might also know that if middle names become fair game, John Sidney McCain III has his own liabilities. Recently, it has been the unmanly middle names that have caused their owners the most political trouble. In 2006, Jim Henry Webb hammered home the fact that his Virginia Senate opponent was actually George Felix Allen - a middle name that conjured up images of Felix Unger, or perhaps the real life Prince Felix of Luxemburg, either one a far cry from the tobacco-chewing good ole boy Allen styled himself as. In the last presidential election, both Bush and Kerry had middle names inherited from elite East Coast families. But Bush's middle name had much more swagger; you'll never see a TV show called Forbes, Texas Ranger.
[Modern politics is insane egodrama. Preferring appearance over competence dooms the society.]
owl on 02.29.08 @ 12:17 PM CST [more..]
News-Entertainment media getting beat by real news
Even without the ever-newsworthy Spears gracing its pages, the Economist is making its mark in the U.S. Spokesman Justin Hendrix told me that the magazine expects to show 13% circulation growth in its upcoming filing, on top of the 8.5% jump in the number of advertising pages in 2007. With a circulation of about 722,000 in North America now -- and more than 1.3 million in total -- the magazine intends to crack the 1 million threshold on this continent in the next five years.
[ For too long, the media have focused on entertaining idiots. Those who have their act together are showing their demographic strength. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 08:16 AM CST [more..]
Illegal immigrants taxing legal system
U.S. immigration officials said they doubled the number of deportation proceedings as enforcement increases in the nation's courts, The Washington Post said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are combing through court cases, criminal records, jails and courtrooms to identify immigrants eligible for deportation following age-old accusations that the matter went largely ignored.
Authorities involved in immigration law told the Post that, as a result, the legal community is overwhelmed with very minor offenses as illegal immigration becomes a matter of anxiety in the United States.
[ This article muddies the truth: immigrant crime (what do you expect from manual laborers who willingly leave their homelands) overwhelmed the legal system, so now they're trying to deport them before they can cause more crimes. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:40 AM CST [more..]
"Activists" are often frauds
A tax preparer by trade, Robert Green was interviewed by countless news agencies and film crews after the storm, recounting for anyone who cared to listen the heart-wrenching story of how he lost his home and two family members in Katrina's 2005 flooding.
Before word of his guilty plea surfaced in December, Green had been championed by actor Brad Pitt to be among the first to receive a home through Pitt's Make It Right program.
Green had pleaded guilty in April to federal felony charges stemming from a scheme in which he prepared false tax returns attached to fraudulent home loan applications from as early as 2001.
[ Most "reality" is a media fabrication to make you feel good, and keep giving money and buying products. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:36 AM CST [more..]
Pollution turns river red and bubbly
Pollution has turned part of a major river system in central China red and bubbly, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to 200,000 people and close schools, a government news agency reported Wednesday.
Gao Qijin, head of the water company in Xingou township, said officials discovered the Dongjing River — one of the tributaries — was red and bubbly Sunday.
Tests showed the polluted waters contained elevated levels of ammonia, nitrogen, and permanganate, a chemical used in metal cleaning, tanning and bleaching, Xinhua said. The source of the pollution had not been determined, and an investigation was ongoing.
[ Ick. But the pollutants you don't see are just as bad. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:30 AM CST [more..]
Media biased for Obama like addicts prefer drugs
Still, Downey can't help but notice how many people in the news media have been seduced by the Illinois senator. The Clinton campaign has expressed frustration that it is getting a tougher ride from the press.
Clinton has been the first person questioned in six of the past 10 Democratic debates, and some argue this puts her at a disadvantage.
"It's like when the mom is in the grocery store and the kids rush up with this brand new cereal saying `We've got to get it, we've got to get it!'" Downey said. "The mom is the one who is supposed to read the box, check the ingredients. She's not supposed to go, `Oh, my gosh, this is great! It has marshmallows and chocolates and sprinkles."
[ He looks like racial reconciliation, and change. Looks differ from reality. That's news to democracies everywhere. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:27 AM CST [more..]
Ireland "transformed" by immigration, beset by problems
For centuries, Ireland was a racially homogenous land of emigrants. Now it is a multicultural nation of immigrants, whose share of the population, 11 percent, is nearly as high as that in the United States.
Years of Irish prosperity have drawn Polish plumbers, Lithuanian nannies, Latvian farm workers, Filipino nurses, Chinese traders, and sub-Saharan asylum seekers. The town of Portlaoise, about 40 miles southwest of Dublin, has the country’s first African-born mayor. The Synge Street School, where George Dimbo says his Hail Marys beneath a plaster Virgin, is walking distance from the city’s first mosque and rents classroom space to two Chinese academies.
“I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one,” writes the Irish novelist, Roddy Doyle, in a collection of short stories called “The Deportees” (Viking, 2007). They depict characters as diverse as an African war survivor on his first day of class, and Fat Gandhi, a gay tandoori vendor who “quickly realized that his loud embrace of Christianity was very good for business.”
[ Culture is destroyed by multiculturalism, which creates monoculture everywhere it goes. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:24 AM CST [more..]
Corporations encourage snooping on private data
A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend's account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child's father's address so she could serve him court papers.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say.
Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.
Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.
[ More of society "protecting" you. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:20 AM CST [more..]
Consumer advocates rarely represent the consumer
Dan Parsons, president of the BBB, said his agency has been receiving renters' complaints for decades. However, he said, in the past 10 years, his agency has not had much influence with apartment owners and the Houston Apartment Association.
"We used to see them as a very good advocate," Parsons said. "In other words, consumers could go there and have a hearing. These days, they seem to represent the industry more than the renter."
[ Unions, renters advocates, neighborhood associations and other NGOs are mentioned as ways to control capitalism and our rising parasite population. They don't work. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:17 AM CST [more..]
Charities create crime
Much of the crime in the area, Terrill claims, is related to a nearby shelter run by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets. As many as 1,000 people crowd into the facility on winter nights.
The Task Force's director, Anita Beatty, said the area's crime can be traced to drug dealers who prey on the homeless, many of whom suffer from drug addiction.
"I'm not saying everybody who lives here is an angel," said Beatty. "But it's simply not true that this place attracts crime to the neighborhood."
[ The attitude of charity is that one takes people who cannot function of their own volition, and subsidize them, so that their lives are not lost. However, charity can never give them what they would have if they were functional, so they commit many crimes. Charity itself is the problem. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 07:02 AM CST [more..]
Ancient civilizations developed "at the same time"
The discovery is further evidence that civilization thrived in Peru at the same time as it did in what is now the Middle East and South Asia, said Ruth Shady, a prominent Peruvian archaeologist who led the team that discovered the ancient city of Caral in 2001. Shady serves as a senior adviser to Peru's National Culture Institute and was not involved in the project.
The find also raises questions about what prompted "civilizations to form throughout the planet at more or less the same time," Shady said.
[ Indeed, the most obvious cause is some meta-civilization that produced them all. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 06:57 AM CST [more..]
Contaminants travel far from source
Pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska, turning up at sometimes dangerously high levels in lakes, plants and fish.
A sweeping, six-year federal study released Tuesday found evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments — from Denali in Alaska and Glacier in Montana, to Big Bend in Texas and Yosemite in California.
The findings revealed that some of the Earth's most pristine wilderness is still within reach of the toxic byproducts of the industrial age.
"Contaminants are everywhere. You can't get more remote than these northern parts of Alaska and the high Rockies," said Michael Kent, a fish researcher with Oregon State University who co-authored the study.
[ Apparently, most people no longer spend enough time in nature to observe how ecosystems radically distribute water and air for the purposes of keeping it refreshed. Amazing, but good to see in print, underlining the fact that "global warming" may be the least of our concerns. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 06:54 AM CST [more..]
White liberals upset they are losing their "white skin privilege"
Racially aware observers are relishing the meltdown of the Democratic Party along racial lines, as the Hillary Clinton campaign continues to disintegrate. The phenomenon, with essentially 100% of blacks backing Obama, is a standing indictment of the fiction peddled by the politically correct Democrats (and others) that America has "moved beyond race" and that "race no longer matters" in the US.
In the latest development, black Clinton ally and "civil rights icon" John Lewis has stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back, turning his coat at the last minute in favor of black hopeful Barack Obama. Lewis is one of the "Black Elected Officials" (BEOs) or "black faces in high places" allowed into the halls of power by the ruling elite in the wake of the racial upheavals of the 1960s in exchange for an unspoken end to unrest. In effect, white liberals could point to the likes of Lewis as a sign of their commitment to "civil rights." Malcolm X characterized the likes of John Lewis as Uncle Toms, a charge that still smarts Lewis and was clearly part of his Clinton switch.
The news of the Lewis defection is gut wrenching to white liberals like Hillary, who have long depended on coalition politics to rule. Now, with the chips down, Clinton and others are surprised and confused. Some observers are calling Hillary Clinton "the Amy Biehl of presidential politics," in reference to the young Stanford University student and Fulbright Scholar who was lynched and murdered by blacks in 1993 apartheid South Africa while attempting to "help" organize them against "racist" white rule.
[ Build your party politics upon division, and then be surprised when that division comes back to you -- clearly, white liberals haven't thought this whole thing through. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 06:52 AM CST [more..]
China may stop one-child policy, expand to cover all earth
China, worried about an ageing population, is studying scrapping its controversial one-child policy but will not do away with family-planning policies altogether, a senior official said on Thursday.
With the world's biggest population straining scarce land, water and energy resources, China has enforced rules to restrict family size since the 1970s. Rules vary but usually limit families to one child, or two in the countryside.
[ Everyone who industrializes faces the same problem: native population declines, and gets replaced by interchangeable cog morons imported to work the machines. Hmm... maybe that Unabomber guy had a point! ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 06:45 AM CST [more..]
Life arose from inherent conditions of the universe
Since the classic Miller-Urey experiments, science has steadily expanded the range of essential molecules that can be produced under conditions that might reasonably expected to have been present on the early earth.
With the components of nucleic acids in place, Ellington traced a path through the RNA world to a molecule that could self-replicate. Past attempts to jump to a complex, self-replicating RNA molecule seem to have been on the wrong track. Short palindromic RNA sequences can apparently help catalyze the formation of complementary sequences, meaning what's needed is actually an RNA that can link these short sequences into longer, more complex ones. A number of such sequences, termed RNA ligases, have been identified. Several labs have shown that these ligases can then be improved by an essentially Darwinian process of random mutation followed by selection for increased efficiency.
Ellington's final point was that we can still see remnants of the RNA world in aspects of biology that are common to all life. He noted that many of the cofactors used by modern proteins, including ATP itself, are derivatives of the chemical components of RNA.
[ The Universe is its own prime mover. Not a paradox when you think deeply on it. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 06:42 AM CST [more..]
Guilt makes Obama popular among whites
One of Britain's most influential black figures today accused Barack Obama of cynically exploiting America's racial divide and gave warning that he could prolong, rather than heal the rift.
Writing in Prospect, the monthly current affairs magazine, Mr Phillips suggested that guilt over transatlantic slavery was behind Mr Obama's support from middle class whites.
"If Obama can succeed, then maybe they can imagine that [Martin Luther] King's post-racial nirvana has arrived. A vote for Obama is a pain-free negation of their own racism. So long as they don't have to live next door to him; Obama has yet to win convincingly in white districts adjacent to black communities," he wrote.
Mr Phillips compared Mr Obama to Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey, prominent black "bargainers" – those who strike a deal with white America not to make an issue of historical racism if their own race is not used against them.
[ Bill Clinton ran on the same platform. White America is used to making problems go away by electing fools or buying products. In this case, it's not so simple, so the domesticated humanzees are waving their short-arms and flapping their hands in hopeless cluelessness. Obama's just attempting to profit from that. ]
news on 02.29.08 @ 06:38 AM CST [more..]
Wednesday, February 27th
Liberalized sexuality harms young girls, makes profits
The media's portrayal of young women as sex objects harms girls' mental and physical health, US experts warn.
Magazines, television, video games and music videos all have a detrimental effect, a task force from the American Psychological Association reported.
Sexualisation can lead to a lack of confidence with their bodies as well as depression and eating disorders.
[ People love to sell things to others and then to ignore the consequences. ]
news on 02.27.08 @ 05:53 PM CST [more..]
A brief history of American immigration law
With its requirement for careful physical examination of all entrants and the establishment of quotas, McCarran-Walter remained national policy for many years. Its major provision stated that if 40 percent of the American people were of British origin, then 40 percent of the legal immigrants could be British. Similarly, if five percent of the population had come from Italy, then five percent of those granted immigration could be Italians. The purpose of this policy was simply to maintain the population blend that had built the nation.
Over time, McCarran-Walter faced numerous challenges and was amended in 1965 and 1976 to adjust the national-origin quotas. In 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) authored and saw enacted a major Refugee Act that undermined the McCarran-Walter approach by establishing an additional quota for refugees, with the term “refugee” broadly defined based on a 1967 United Nations protocol. The new law resulted in Fidel Castro releasing, and the United States accepting, hundreds of thousands of his undesirables who came to our country from the Cuban port of Mariel.
[ See how quickly things went downhill: multiculturalism doesn't work. ]
news on 02.27.08 @ 05:48 PM CST [more..]
Doubts raised about Kennedy assassination scapegoat
But the lone gunman explanation has always looked shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested that all four shots that hit him came from behind, and powder marks on his skin showed they must have been from close range.
But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff, who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the room and in the victims.
The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5 seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver carried.
Also, there are two pairs of double shots that occurred so close together it is inconceivable that Sirhan could have fired them all. The third and fourth shots and the seventh and eighth were separated by 122 and 149 milliseconds respectively. In tests, a trained firearms expert firing under ideal conditions could only manage 366 milliseconds between shots using the same weapon. And he was not being pinned to a table at the time.
[ Signs of a dying empire: whether it's organized crime, foreign governments, your own corrupt government, or simply unchallenged radicalism, your nation is falling apart and has been for many years. Its seeming stability has been nothing but illusion. ]
news on 02.27.08 @ 05:45 PM CST [more..]
WWI unstable Eastern European hegemony repeats itself
On February 20, the German government officially recognized the independence of Kosovo. It did so despite the foreseeable political dangers: an impending conflict with Russia, the eruption of new conflicts in the Balkans, and the incitement of separatist tendencies in other crisis regions across the globe.
Leading political and business circles in Germany and the European Union are increasingly worried about the dependence of Europe on oil and gas imports from Russia. The Balkans serve as an important transit region for pipeline projects, whereby oil and gas from the Caspian Sea are to be pumped to Western Europe, circumventing Russia.
[ For the economy, you'll do anything, even destroy yourselves. It is imaginary. The only economy that matters is people working together. Isn't this obvious? Well, it is, unless you're totally afraid of change. ]
news on 02.27.08 @ 05:36 PM CST [more..]
White nationalists hope for Obama win
Perhaps, Fezell observed, some whites will begin to take notice that blacks are flocking to Obama out of racial loyalty and wonder why they can't do the same. "Only white voters are expected to look beyond race," he said.
Taylor thinks white people want to vote for the right black candidate out of generosity of spirit. They want things to go better for black people, which, he said, is also why they recoil at the IQ argument, and, time after time, recall for him how "the smartest kid in their class was black."
"I think many smarter, far-thinking blacks are going to be worried that any time they start talking about discrimination, certainly institutional racism, people are going to say, 'Hey, look, you've got a black president for heaven's sake.'"
[ Multiculturalism rears its ugly head: people vote for who they think is like them, except those who fling the pity vote. ]
news on 02.27.08 @ 05:28 PM CST [more..]
Saturday, February 23rd
Hollywood putting spin on election
Scarlett Johansson was born and raised in New York City, but you probably wouldn’t know it from watching this video, in which she stumps for Senator Barack Obama. In the clip, filmed at Carleton
College, a small liberal arts institution in Northfield, Minnesota, Ms. Johansson speaks to a group of students in an almost pitch-perfect Standard Midwestern accent.
Amid the “yuh knowas” and “makun’ likes,” she recounts the first time she met Mr. Obama, someone she calls “an incredible thinker and mind.” The 23-year-old actress was apparently so “starstruck” by the encounter that a slightly unusual greeting tumbled out of Ms. Johansson’s mouth: “I love your wife!” The
presidential hopeful returned the compliment, she tells the crowd, by “paddun me on tha hayd.”
[ Beware of those who deceive as a profession, especially when their interest is supported by a single candidate. ]
news on 02.23.08 @ 11:05 PM CST [more..]
UN says USA is racist
THE United States is guilty of "persistent and systematic" racial discrimination across all aspects of society from Guantanamo Bay to the justice and school systems, rights groups said.
"The persistent and systematic issues of racial discrimination have not been addressed" by the US government despite its adoption in 1994 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial
Discrimination, said Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the US Human Rights Network .
"Unfortunately since 1994 we have found that the Government has not lived up to its obligations," Mr Baraka said, citing issues such as the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the black population of New
Orleans, the treatment of immigrant workers, police brutality and housing.
[ If anytime multiculturalism fails, you assume the reason is "racism," you will always see racism everywhere you go -- because multiculturalism always fails, as history proves. ]
news on 02.23.08 @ 11:02 PM CST [more..]
Montana tires of Fed abuse of gun rights, threatens secession
But officials in Montana, including dozens of state lawmakers as well as Secretary of State Brad Johnson, have joined together in a statement that the U.S. already has determined the application, and 2nd Amendment rights apply to "any person."
In a joint resolution from the Montana leaders, including Congressman Denny Rehberg, they caution that should the Supreme Court decide to change the U.S. interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and allow those rights to apply only collectively, it would violate the contract under which Montana entered the union as a state.
"The Montana Resolution cautions that a collective rights decision would violate the Montana contract for statehood because when that contract was entered the collective rights interpretation had not yet been invented and the individual rights view was an accepted part of the contract," an announcement from the leaders said.
[ The USA isn't working anymore. Let's split it up, let everyone live as they see fit, and see who survives. ]
news on 02.23.08 @ 10:52 PM CST [more..]
"Racism" as the new witch hunt
Suspended Judge Beverley Nettles-Nickerson lied, fabricated evidence, coerced subordinates and made false charges of racism, a judge found Wednesday in a scathing report to the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission.
Nettles-Nickerson, Ingham County’s first black female judge, only a few years ago was viewed broadly as a pioneer and role model.
Her career has been in a downward spiral since she made allegations of racism against Circuit Court Chief Judge William Collette two years ago. A Michigan Supreme Court-ordered investigation exonerated Collette and led to the probe of Nettles-Nickerso
Borrello also found that Nettles-Nickerson used race and allegations of racism inappropriately in several instances when her work ethic was called into question. According to the testimony of her law clerk, she once said “I will not hesitate to play the race card.”
“A charge of racism is a bell that cannot be unrung,” Borrello wrote. “Respondent’s (Nettles-Nickerson’s) wanton use of the word has damaged individuals and the judiciary as a whole.”
[ The average white person now wants to blame this one judge. Better to blame multiculturalism, which sets up such bells that cannot be unrung, and makes it an easy excuse for both personal failings and the failure of multiculturalism, which African-Americans tend to see as their own failures both as individuals and as a group. The solution is simple: no multiculturalism. ]
news on 02.23.08 @ 10:47 PM CST [more..]
Tuesday, February 19th
Inequality in organ transplants
Blacks with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were less likely to receive a lung transplant and more likely to die or be removed from the transplant list than whites, according to Columbia University Medical Center researchers.
The researchers did find that blacks were also less likely to have private insurance and more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods and have greater cardiovascular risk factors, such as diabetes, pulmonary hypertension and lower six-minute walk distances than whites.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215082820.htm
In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine explored why blacks are less likely than other races to become living kidney donors, and the reasons are obesity and failure to complete the donor evaluation.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070508072842.htm
news on 02.19.08 @ 09:43 PM CST [link]
Sharks face ecological threat
Sharks are disappearing from the world's oceans. The numbers of many large shark species have declined by more than half due to increased demand for shark fins and meat, recreational shark fisheries, as well as tuna and swordfish fisheries, where millions of sharks are taken as bycatch each year.
[ Just a reminder that your species is still about the destroy the best gift ever -- our living world. What will stop Joe Average from building new malls and buying large SUVs? A boot on his lower back and a gentle word of contrary instruction whispered over the barrel of a Schmeiser, and anything less is ineffective. Hello, reality calling! ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 09:03 PM CST [more..]
People vote for people who look like them
"In this particular study we showed pictures in a computer screen very briefly, at the threshold of conscious recognition. Subjects had to report whether they recognized or not the particular picture showed in each trial. The key point is that, since the pictures are shown very briefly, for exactly the same visual input sometimes the subjects reported recognizing the picture and sometimes not recognizing it. Then we could ask whether the neurons fire according to the subjects' conscious perception or the actual visual inputs.
"We found that the neurons we recorded responded to the conscious perception in an "all-or-none" way by dramatically changing their firing rate only when the pictures were recognized.
"For example, a neuron in the hippocampus of one patient fired very strongly to a picture of the patient's brother when recognized and remained completely silent when it was not, another neuron behaved in the same manner with pictures of the World Trade Centre, etc.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080214114517.htm
"Voters identify with political candidates in many ways, including agreeing with their positions on issues, holding the same party affiliation, belonging to the same social categories such as race or gender, or even having common physical traits such as height and facial appearance," notes the study's authors. "In the current work, we examined the relative effects of different forms of similarity on candidate evaluations by using an experimental design that manipulated the degree of candidate-voter facial similarity."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080218-study-familiarity-often-breeds-votes-for-the-next-president.html
http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2007/bailenson-facial-similarity.pdf
[ We're born to tribal loyalty, and gradually trained to the promise of more food/money from our captors. ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 09:01 PM CST [link]
People flock just like sheep
Results from a study at the University of Leeds show that it takes a minority of just five per cent to influence a crowd's direction -- and that the other 95 per cent follow without realising it.
The findings could have major implications for directing the flow of large crowds, in particular in disaster scenarios, where verbal communication may be difficult. "There are many situations where this information could be used to good effect," says Professor Jens Krause of the University's Faculty of Biological Sciences. "At one extreme, it could be used to inform emergency planning strategies and at the other, it could be useful in organising pedestrian flow in busy areas."
[ This alone should invalidate democracy and consumerism. ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 08:59 PM CST [more..]
Video games are biologically addictive
A new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.
[ Hard-wired time wasters, like that 60 hz flicker of TV screens our eyes find hard to ignore. Are we being unwitting and indeliberately mass hypnotized by our machines? ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 08:44 PM CST [more..]
Emotional support no substitute for knowledge, accomplishment
In recent years, officials and educational experts have sought to solve the problems afflicting learning environments through behaviour management. Increasingly, the focus is on students' "wellbeing", "emotional literacy" and "self-esteem". Since this reorientation, the ambitions of therapeutic education have gone from strength to strength. Yet there is no evidence that it works.
It is depressing news that the self-help manual has made it on to the university curriculum. In therapy-obsessed America, positive psychology is one of the most popular new classes at Harvard. And Britain is going the same way, with a whole institute devoted to wellbeing at Cambridge.
In schools, decades of silly programmes designed to raise children's self-esteem have not improved wellbeing, and the new initiatives designed to make pupils happy will also fail. Worse still, emotional education encourages an inward-looking orientation that distracts children from engaging with the world.
Perversely, the ascendancy of psychobabble in the classroom has been paralleled by an apparent increase in mental health problems among children. The relationship between the two is not accidental. Children are highly suggestible, and the more they are required to participate in wellbeing classes, the more they will feel the need for professional support.
[ We want to make everyone feel OK, so we eliminate challenge. That eliminates meaning, and then we are sad. Did we engineer our own doom? ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 08:33 PM CST [more..]
German professors suggest balanced approach to Israel
This statement comes at the heels of a manifesto, recently published by 25 German scholars, which maintained that Germany must be more ‘balanced’ in its political relations with Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The aforementioned professors stated that Germany helped strengthen the burgeoning State of Israel by deporting 160,000 German Jews during the Nazi reign. These refugees ultimately ended up in Israel and bolstered its Jewish population at the Arabs’ expense.
Furthermore, noted the professors, Germany has paid its “debt to the Jewish nation” in full through its reparations agreement with Israel.
Whereas the Holocaust was an indelible stain on the annals of German history, they stated, Germany must now improve its relations with the Arab world by taking on a more balanced approach to its foreign policy and its treatment of Israel.
[ This seems fairly innocent so far. ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 08:30 PM CST [more..]
Ethnic salvation begins with cultural renovation
But everybody recognises that it is not that simple. Which is to say that everybody knows that we have a far more profound dilemma: Britain does not have a unified, coherent, identifiable self-image, either as a people or as a political entity, which it can offer to incomers as an inspiration and a ready-made value system.
There is a reason why all the attempts to define Britishness seem to end in fatuity: not only because they dribble off into nebulous virtues such as tolerance and decency, which should be common to all
civilised people, but because the British opinion-forming classes tend to find the whole concept of national identity either sinister or risible.
[ Most people in cities indulge in the pretense that they are so unique they do not need culture. ]
news on 02.19.08 @ 06:43 PM CST [more..]
Monday, February 18th
Denmark rocked again by race riots
Bands of youths set fire to cars and trash bins overnight in a fourth consecutive night of vandalism mostly in immigrant neighborhoods of the Danish capital, police said.
Seventeen people were arrested, Copenhagen Police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said, adding police were not sure what sparked the violence.
Some observers said immigrant youths were protesting against perceived police harassment and suggested the reprinting of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers Wednesday, may have aggravated the situation.
[ Oh come on. Cultural frictions create race riots. Just say the truth. Aren't we bored of lying to each other yet? ]
news on 02.18.08 @ 11:42 PM CST [more..]
USA resembles "a third-world country" says NYC mayor
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has unleashed another flurry of jabs on Washington, ridiculing the federal government's rebate checks as being "like giving a drink to an alcoholic" on Thursday, and said the presidential candidates are looking for easy solutions to complex economic problems.
The billionaire and potential independent presidential candidate also said the nation "has a balance sheet that's starting to look more and more like a third-world country."
[ Leftist anti-Semitism will be unleashed in response to this moment of clarity. ]
news on 02.18.08 @ 11:31 PM CST [more..]
Forced multiculturalism in elected reps in the UK
White candidates should be barred from standing for Parliament in up to eight constituencies in order to get more black and Asian MPs elected, says a controversial report commissioned by Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman.
Positive discrimination is illegal in the UK, but the report concludes that, without a change in the law allowing parties to impose all-black shortlists, it would take more than 75 years for Britain's ethnic make-up to be fairly reflected at Westminster.
[ Must adjust reality to meet expectations, not the other way around. That used to be called "insanity." It will be again. ]
news on 02.18.08 @ 11:28 PM CST [more..]
Wikileaks.com censorship causes accusations of Anti-Semitism
A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.
Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.
The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7250916.stm
"Jeffrey White, a member of B’nai Shalom for 30 years was recently appointed to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He took his oath and began his service with the court on January 2, 2003." page 8
http://www.bshalom.org/images/pdf/hadashot/May_2003_FINAL.pdf
[ The Left has discovered anti-Semitism. Either way, this case seems fishy. ]
news on 02.18.08 @ 11:26 PM CST [link]
Nuclear power rising: India tests sub-based missiles
India will soon conduct its first test of a submarine-based ballistic missile which can be tipped with a nuclear warhead, an official announced on Monday.
The missile, named K-15, has a top range of 700 kilometres (438 miles).
If the test is successful, India will be capable of launching missiles from air, land, ships and submarines, and it will join an elite group that includes the United States, Russia, France and China, experts said.
[ Too late to stop proliferation. Now what, liberal democracy? ]
news on 02.18.08 @ 11:24 PM CST [more..]
Austria bans construction of new mosques
A southern Austrian regional parliament gave its go-ahead on Tuesday to a change in the law that would effectively ban building mosques and possibly other non-Christian establishments in the region.
While no mention was actually made of mosques or minarets in the bill approved by lawmakers in the province of Carinthia, the change to the so-called ‘Ortsbildpflegegesetz’ - or law on the upkeep of towns’ appearances - meant that special dispensations would now be required for the construction of ‘buildings of unusual dimensions.’
Carinthia’s governor, far-rightist Joerg Haider, said it was high time ‘to send a signal,’ accusing the centre-left Social Democrats of not doing anything to stop ‘the advance of Islam.’
[ The middle east is a nice place for mosques, synagogues and ancient tribal cults. ]
news on 02.18.08 @ 11:23 PM CST [more..]
Sunday, February 17th
The Faustian Roots of Western Culture
In The Geography of Thought, a study of the Western and Asian mindsets, the cognitive scientist Richard E. Nisbett addresses the reasons for these differences in innovation. Nisbett believes whites are motivated by a desire to discover the truth, whereas Asians desire harmony above all things. Consequently, the West is a culture of debate, and Asia , one of consensus. This fundamental difference can be seen at the origins of Western and Chinese culture, as represented by the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and that of Confucianism and Taoism.
The Greek philosophers investigated not only the truth about the natural and the human worlds, but also the moral truth. They debated whether the best state was a democracy, a republic, an oligarchy, or a dictatorship, and whether morality had a transcendental basis or was merely a means for man to dominate man.
[ I don't know whether it's the best way, but I like our way. It leaves us open to parasites, so we need stricter defenses than most. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 08:03 PM CST [more..]
Come Back, Colonialism, All is Forgiven
Le Blanc and I are into our 500th kilometer on the river when he turns my view of modern African history on its head. "We should just give it all back to the whites," the riverboat captain says. "Even if you go 1,000 kilometers down this river, you won't see a single sign of development. When the whites left, we didn't just stay where we were. We went backwards."
Le Blanc earns his keep sailing the tributaries of the Congo River. He's 40 years old, and his real name is Malu-Ebonga Charles — he got his nickname, and his green eyes and dark honey skin, from a German grandfather who married a Congolese woman in what was then the Belgian Congo. If his unconventional genealogy gave him a unique view of the Congo's colonial past, it is his job on the river, piloting three dugouts lashed together with twine and mounted with outboards, that has informed his opinion of the Democratic Republic of Congo's present. "The river is the artery of Congo's economy," he says. "When the Belgians and the Portuguese were here, there were farms and plantations — cashews, peanuts, rubber, palm oil. There was industry and factories employing 3,000 people, 5,000 people. But since independence, no Congolese has succeeded. The plantations are abandoned." Using a French expression literally translated as "on the ground," he adds: "Everything is par terre."
[ Interesting. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 07:40 PM CST [more..]
Mass culture follows culture into death
What happened to mass culture? It seems to have died without anyone even noticing. You will no doubt remember when there were songs, television shows, movies and books that most everyone had heard of.
These shared cultural reference points helped us communicate by doing things like citing an incident from Seinfeld to illustrate a point. Or Shakespeare, if you are more cultured.
[ First they came for culture, and I did not speak up, because I was not cultured. Then they came for the moronic faux culture I talk about with my brain-dead coworkers, and there was no one left (awake enough to) object... ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 07:22 PM CST [more..]
Most associate blacks with apes
Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.
In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.
[ The usual academic game: take one factor out of thousands, look at it only, and then draw convenient conclusions. Multiculturalism always fails, and the excuses used to justify disliking it are unimportant. To many black people, white people look and smell like (washed) pigs. If nothing else, this article should be used to encourage better treatment of animals. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:25 AM CST [more..]
Immigrants flee Arizona as public mood changes
The signs of flight among Latino immigrants here are multiple: Families moving out of apartment complexes, schools reporting enrollment drops, business owners complaining about fewer clients.
While it is too early to know for certain, a consensus is developing among economists, business people and immigration groups that the weakening economy coupled with recent curbs on illegal immigration are steering Hispanic immigrants out of the state.
[ They perceive it's no longer easy pickings and Mexico is actually more comforting, because people there understand them. Multiculturalism never works. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:21 AM CST [more..]
HDTV subsidized for Hispanic workers
As research figures showed that Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to be left without television service following the nationwide transition to digital broadcasting next year, the Government has announced a plan to use taxpayer’s money to subsidise those households who cannot afford the switch to the new digital TV boxes.
The government is accepting requests for coupons to subsidize the cost of converter boxes for those who need them. Each household is eligible for two coupons worth $40 apiece, regardless of whether they have pay-television service or not. To request a coupon, consumers can apply online at http://www.dtv2009.gov or call the 24-hour hotline.
[ Keep our new slave class/future masters happy. Totally neurotic. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:20 AM CST [more..]
Minorities hurt by immigration also
Morris asserts that America's leaders are misinformed or are simply ignoring the plight of low-income Black American workers victimized by mass immigration. Morris has vowed to get the facts about the negative consequences of mass immigration into the hands of all Americans as well as America's leaders whose public statements contradict the facts.
Dr. Morris commented, "America's leaders need to wake up. It's a fact foreign workers are taking jobs and depressing wages of Americans from all backgrounds. However, Black workers are being disproportionately affected. Studies prove 40% of the decline in Black employment is due to immigration. And the effects will become even more pronounced for our most vulnerable workers as the economy gets worse. It's time for America's leaders, especially our Black leaders, to put the most vulnerable American workers' interests ahead of foreign workers' and the cheap labor businesses that hire them."
[ Multiculturalism works for no one in the long term. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:18 AM CST [more..]
No change coming from elections
Let's face it, politics is a superficial activity in which (most) candidates try to create a mood by pushing buttons expected to stimulate positive responses in significant constituencies. If one button doesn't have the intended effect, you push another and keep pushing until you have assembled a winning coalition. That's all you need to know about electoral politics. It explains the staged events, the self-serving declarations about the passion to "serve," and the hubristic claims to the mantle of leadership.
What's this have to do with the cause of freedom, free markets, and peace? Precious little.
Note the dominant themes in the current campaign: hope, change, experience, straight talk.
Hope for what?
Change toward what?
Experience at what?
Straight talk about what?
It doesn't matter. These terms, and there are others, are not meant to inform. They are meant to seduce. Unfortunately, most voters are waiting to be seduced -- by a sound bite, a smile, a possible tear in the eye. We have a good indication why this is so. As Bryan Caplan explains, since the consequences of the individual's vote are negligible, voters have every incentive to select candidates according to their own pre-rational prejudices, most of which run contrary to economic wisdom and libertarian principles. They vote for the man or woman who makes them feel good.
[ This article is a delightful insight into why democracy fails to make essential decisions and focuses on trivialities. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:15 AM CST [more..]
Phoenix Police to Check Arrestees’ Immigrant Status
The police in this city at the center of the immigration debate will soon ask all people arrested whether they are in the United States legally and will in certain cases report the information to the federal authorities, Mayor Phil Gordon announced on Friday.
People stopped for civil traffic violations like speeding will not be questioned, nor will crime victims or witnesses.
All those arrested on criminal charges like drunken driving and murder will be asked by officers whether they are in the United States legally.
[ More people are tired of carrying the weight of these quasi-citizens just for cheap construction and lawn care. We can mow our own lawns and remove our own cabinets, thanks. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:06 AM CST [more..]
Free speech only occurs with anonymity
The first few comments on the online WGRZ Buffalo Forum aimed some gentle sarcasm at the market's executive director and ruminated on the impact of KeyBank's departure. Then the racism started.
"The more it gets blacker, the more decay and cancer you get," wrote "James Z from Kaisertown."
Not every post targets blacks. The Orange County Register in California profiled an obese 40-year-old woman who didn't know she was pregnant until two days before she gave birth to her son.
This generally positive story drew a wave of false attacks from readers on the woman's purported laziness, unhealthy lifestyle and even claims that she made money off her story.
But that is what some online forums have become, where reasonable discussion can quickly degenerate into vile and nasty commentary — all behind a veil of anonymity.
[ No, that's what happens when you make it impossible to discuss certain issues in public. Stupid fat people who don't know they're pregnant are going to get skewered as well as insane racial policy. All the recommendations in the articles -- buy more software, hire monitors, force registration -- just raise costs for the newspaper and its readers, all for the pretense of hiding dissent. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 10:05 AM CST [more..]
Angry white man still a factor in election 2008
There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.
His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.
The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.
He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.
[ Why Angry? The average white man is interested in making reality work for his family, not worrying about injustices invented by the mentally incompetent. ]
news on 02.17.08 @ 09:58 AM CST [more..]
Saturday, February 16th
More jobs created by crackdown on illegals
The business provisions of House Bill 1804, Oklahoma’s anti-illegal immigration legislation, may actually help Oklahoma weather the effects of any impending recession, State Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, said Friday.
With the exodus of illegal immigrant workers, jobs should be more available to legal residents, he told Norman Chamber of Commerce members and guests.
[ Fewer people means we tighten our belts and do more with each job, but wages also rise. Cheap labor destroys this comfortable balance. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 04:53 PM CST [more..]
Obama supporters from least diverse areas
Still, it says something fascinating about our political and racial landscape that the Democratic voters with the most experience living in multiracial, multicultural communities are the ones most immune to Obama’s “beyond race” rhetoric. At the same time, the whitest states are the most gaga for Obama. (He beat Clinton 80 percent to 17 percent in white-supremacist-rich Idaho.)
One possible explanation for this might be found in the work of Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. In 2006, the scholar of civil society and author of Bowling Alone released some controversial findings: The more diverse a community, the less trusting it becomes.
[ Those who have experienced multiculturalism distrust it. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 04:52 PM CST [more..]
Debasing maleness creates useless males
The [Single Young Men, preferring, as Hymowitz says, "to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and, in many cases, underachieving"] phenomenon is rooted in the failure of contemporary culture to provide young men with worthy ideals and aspirations. Traditional maleness isn't is to blame for the child-men, as feminists might claim, but the debasement of maleness.
I've made this argument elsewhere, so I'm repeating myself here: It has been assumed that men are inherently violent, and, thus, we have used our education system, societal pressure (think: political correctness) and even the economic system to suppress traditional concepts of masculinity -- pride, honour, courage, tenacity. Instead, technologically dependent societies want cooperative, consensus seeking masses that will be content with the baubles and beads of the consumer society.
If you raise boys on violent video games and give them easy access to pornography, don't expect them grow up to respect the law or to respect women.
[ You tell the Caucasian male that he is worthless, an oppressor, and that women and minorities want to lead the way. Then anything he does is automatically seen as selfish advancement of the white male. You hand him tons of PC regulations to follow and cut him off from his culture. He is shown as an idiot in the media. Consequently, he checks out mentally and does what is fun for him in the meantime, as if he knows that society is on a path to wreckage. It's his way of saying "destroy yourselves, but not on my dime." ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 04:41 PM CST [more..]
Sexual propaganda unleashed on young children by schools
Teachers should not assume that their pupils have a "mum and dad" under guidance aimed at tackling anti-gay bullying in schools.
It says primary pupils as young as four should be familiarised with the idea of same-sex couples to help combat homophobic attitudes.
It states that children who call classmates "gay" should be treated the same as racists as part of a "zero tolerance" crackdown on the use of the word as an insult.
Teachers should avoid telling boys to "be a man" or accuse them of behaving like a "bunch of women".
[ To protect a few, we will deprive all children of the sense of an order to life itself. How neurotic. Wouldn't teaching respect for others be more universally effective? Oh that's right... we're dealing with a special interest lobby, not a sane outlook here. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 11:48 AM CST [more..]
Pornography causes sexual impotence
Porn warps normal sexual responses. It enslaves people into a self-destructive lifestyle that ruins their relationships while making their puppet-masters very rich.
If it wasn't for sex education classes at school, most of today's youth would learn about sex purely from pornographic imagery. In countries like China and India this is already the case. Such imagery used to be fairly hard to find, and would be bought and sold surreptitiously to "dirty men". Now, however, porn is everywhere and with its pervasive presence on the internet it has become mainstream and virtually uncontroversial, except in the most vile forms. Before ever experiencing sexual intercourse with a woman, many boys have spent years gaining their sexual experience by watching porn.
[ The fantasy world is easier than reality. When reality bites, go into the fantasy world. When you return to reality, you will be even less adapted to it. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 11:44 AM CST [more..]
Autistic people lack self-awareness
According to the new findings, people with Asperger's play the game just as a nonautistic person would, but they lack the characteristic "self" signal in the brain. Normal people lack the signal only when they think that they are playing against a computer, suggesting that autistic people view interactions with other people similarly to the way that normal people think about interacting with a computer.
[ Maybe they're just more functional and less dramatic. Possibly a lot of good could come from others learning from the autistic kids. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 11:38 AM CST [more..]
Modern dating causes many to avoid it
Most young singles in America do not describe themselves as actively looking for romantic partners. Even those who are seeking relationships are not dating frequently. About half (49%) had been on no more than one date in the previous three months.
Large numbers of single Americans are not actively looking for relationships and even significant numbers of those looking for partners are not that active on the dating scene.
[ Rocky road ice cream, a movie and a cat who really loves you makes a superior weekend evening to chasing after distracted, delusional, selfish people who will divorce you after three years and leave you with a half-jerkoff kid. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 11:35 AM CST [more..]
Black cop mistreating white guy causes racism
As outrage spread nationwide over a Hillsborough County jail inmate being tossed from his wheelchair onto the floor, the detention deputy at the center of the controversy has been getting nonstop phone calls, many racist in nature.
"It's not even just in Florida," said Beverly Crecy, the roommate of suspended Deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones.
"These calls are from out of state," she said, with tears in her eyes. "People calling her 'n---' and 'fat' and all kinds of stuff. Seven o'clock in the morning and all through the night."
[ Black cops give it to white people hard, and vice versa. There will always be an Other. The solution is to stop trying to moralize it, and to realize that multiculturalism fails from a defective design. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 10:17 AM CST [more..]
Liberals agonize over sexism versus racism
The simple fact that either Hillary Clinton, a white woman, or Barack Obama, a black man, will likely be the Democratic nominee for president is fueling a nationwide debate about how sexism and racism may shape this campaign.
Voter Babette Feibel told us, "Sexism of the nature Hillary Clinton is experiencing has been around as kind of an acceptable joke for years. As far as racism, it's definitely not politically correct or acceptable."
[ It's not sexist or racist to decline to vote for a corrupt woman or an inexperienced, delusionally idealistic young black man. ]
news on 02.16.08 @ 10:15 AM CST [more..]
Immersion in national culture
We were discussing some independent movie by an unknown black director he had just seen at a special screening at his local art house. It would be cool, said The Poet, to be able to see more movies like that, movies by black writers and directors. Perhaps even see only movies like that, for some designated period of time.
"Sure," said I. "See only movies which reflect us and our experience."
"Only black movies," said The Poet. "Also, read only black books and magazines."
"A year of black culture," said I, buzzing now. "Imagine the experience. Imagine how one's perspective might change and shift."
"Either that," said The Poet, "Or the effort would drive you insane."
American culture is black culture, of course. The music, the language, the food, the literature, the very definition of what it means to be American – all of it is shot straight through with us. Try to remove the African presence from the house that is America and the whole thing collapses upon itself.
[ This would benefit anyone. Immerse yourself in the art and ideas of your ancestors. You'll see what needs work in the current time, and what is eternal and should be passed on. ]
Cool idea.
news on 02.16.08 @ 10:12 AM CST [more..]
Tuesday, February 12th
A migrant arrested every four minutes
Figures show that a foreigner is being arrested every four minutes on the streets of Britain.
Alan Gordon, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, said: “Immigration on the scale we have experienced is putting an intolerable strain on all public sectors, not only policing. We have got to recognise the need for additional resources where there are large congregations of migrant workers.”
It shows that violence is one of the most common offences committed by migrants, along with theft, fraud, immigration violations and drugs. The revelation comes just a week after three police chiefs warned that the influx of migrant workers has contributed to a crime explosion.
A Tory MP warned that gypsy children are worth as much as £100,000 a year each to immigrant crime lords who use them to steal and to milk the benefits system.
[ If you have wealth, and want to give it away to feel good about yourself, others will take it and soon become parasites upon you. ]
news on 02.12.08 @ 10:57 PM CST [more..]
Racial divide in support of mass killer
With so many people asking why, a brother of gunman Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton provided answers Friday that prompted fresh anger over the shooting rampage at a Kirkwood City Council meeting Thursday.
At a neighborhood meeting in the mostly black Meacham Park neighborhood, where Thornton lived, people cried, prayed and spoke of a racial divide. Some spoke sympathetically of Thornton and his rage over repeated parking and permit citations. One man called him a "hero."
Many say they are sickened by Thornton's brand of vigilantism. But others say they're left outside the mainstream and oppressed by unfair rules. Those people mourned Thornton and directed their anger back at Kirkwood officials.
[ Multiculturalism outright fails both groups. So... why are we persisting? ]
news on 02.12.08 @ 10:54 PM CST [more..]
Chinese continue successful spying
Four people have been arrested in the United States accused of spying for China to acquire trade and state secrets, including details of the Space Shuttle programme.
The Justice Department said that a Boeing engineer was arrested on charges of stealing trade secrets relating to the Shuttle and other aerospace programmes and passing them to officials in "the motherland".
[ For every one they catch, ten get away. ]
news on 02.12.08 @ 10:44 PM CST [more..]
Hippies and Republicans agree: nooses are bad, m'kay
"The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history," Bush said at a black history month event at the White House, which began with serious comments about prejudice and ended with music performed by The Temptations.
"The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice," the president said. "Displaying one is not a harmless prank. Lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest."
As a civil society, Americans should agree that noose displays and lynching jokes are "deeply offensive," Bush said.
"They are wrong," the president said, referring to such displays and jokes. "And they have no place in America today."
[ They tell you what they think you want to hear. But reality is always offensive to someone. Who steers the ship? ]
news on 02.12.08 @ 10:43 PM CST [more..]
Are we Mexico yet?
Non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in the United States by 2050, with immigrants and their children driving 82 percent of U.S. population growth in coming years, a new study said on Monday.
The U.S. population will grow to 438 million in 2050 from 296 million in 2005 if current population trends continue, the Pew Research Center study found.
Non-Hispanic whites would account for 47 percent of the total in 2050, it concluded.
By that time, one in every five Americans will be a foreign-born immigrant, compared to one in eight in 2005.
While the white population, with its lower fertility rate, ages, the Latino population, the nation's largest minority, will triple in size. Latinos will be responsible for 60 percent of the population growth until 2050.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080212/ts_nm/usa_population_immigration_dc_1
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday decried anti-immigrant perceptions in the United States and argued that Mexican immigrants complement American workers.
On his first trip to the U.S. as Mexico's president, Calderon said he is working to combat anti-Americanism in Mexico and to improve job prospects there to reduce migration. He said he hopes that Americans resist anti-Mexican sentiments.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_re_us/mexico_president_harvard
[ Multiculturalism always fails. ]
news on 02.12.08 @ 09:54 PM CST [link]
Values, methods are genetic not trained
Many scientists believe how our brains work is influenced by our genes -- that to some extent we're hard-wired from birth to process information in a certain way.
This doesn't mean, these scientists say, genes dictate how we think; environment clearly plays a huge role. Nor does it mean there's a Republican gene or a Democrat gene. Scientists who espouse the genetics-politics connection say that probably hundreds of genes influence how we think and how we see the world.
"Political tendencies are like being left-handed or right-handed -- you're born feeling more natural using one hand or the other," says John Alford, a political scientist at Rice University. "It doesn't mean you can't switch -- for many years lefties were taught to be righties. But it's not easy."
[ Let's correlate it to degree of awareness of the world and we'll see that people who have their act together are neither left, nor right, but are realists who like traditional values and don't want to try to regulate the unregulatable. These are rare, these days, which is a cause and sign of our decline. ]
news on 02.12.08 @ 09:52 PM CST [more..]
Sunday, February 10th
Nuclear proliferation now easier than ever before
International trafficking in nuclear material is progressing at an alarming rate, with about 150 cases reported each year, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Saturday.
Noting that most of this material was never recovered or reported stolen, he said his biggest concern was that extremists could soon get their hands on nuclear weapons.
The director general of the IAEA also said any country with an average industrial infrastructure was now capable of developing the necessary know-how to have a nuclear weapon.
[ We had a chance to nip this in the bud long ago. ]
news on 02.10.08 @ 07:48 PM CST [more..]
Nuclear proliferation now easier than ever before
International trafficking in nuclear material is progressing at an alarming rate, with about 150 cases reported each year, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Saturday.
Noting that most of this material was never recovered or reported stolen, he said his biggest concern was that extremists could soon get their hands on nuclear weapons.
The director general of the IAEA also said any country with an average industrial infrastructure was now capable of developing the necessary know-how to have a nuclear weapon.
[ We had a chance to nip this in the bud long ago. ]
news on 02.10.08 @ 07:46 PM CST [more..]
More neo-Nazis than Jews in Europe
Speaking at a special commemoration organized Monday evening in the European Parliament 's Yehudi Menuhin Hall on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kantor said : "There are more neo-Nazis than Jews today in Europe."
[ How do they measure this? "Hi, this is the census. Nazi or Jew?" ]
news on 02.10.08 @ 07:42 PM CST [more..]
Hispanics not voting for African-American candidate
Clinton, exit polls showed, won 63 percent of Hispanic voters, helping propel her to victory in places like Arizona and California, where a whopping 67 percent of Hispanics backed her.
"Let's face it," said popular Spanish-language radio host Luis Jimenez, "Hispanics will vote for a woman president before voting for someone who is African-American."
"That would say that Hispanics are racist. We are not," [Obama campaign chair Federico Pena] said. "What is really going on here is that Hispanics simply don't know this candidate, and he happens to be African-American and he happens to be named Barack Obama.
[ Race divides as long as multiculturalism exists. Since race is inherent, it's multiculturalism that divides. ]
news on 02.10.08 @ 02:06 PM CST [more..]
Black and white nationalists agree: multiculturalism fails
INTELLIGENCE REPORT: You say your job is to make people angry. Are you concerned that anger will lead to violence?
ANDERSON: I'm not talking about violence in the streets. I'm totally against that, although I predict it. If this thing ain't fixed, there will be a race riot in Los Angeles the likes of which you have never seen. We are now a third-class people. The Latinos have taken every political gain we made. We had better representation from some of these white mayors than we'll ever get from the Mexicans. Not only don't they care, but the Hispanics have disdain for the black population. They don't want us here.
INTELLIGENCE REPORT: How do you feel about the stands of many Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups against illegal immigration?
ANDERSON: I read the stuff they write--it's like I wrote it. It's not racially prejudiced. Usually it's a nationalist thing. They're a bunch of redneck, racist motherfuckers, but the statements they make are
true. I have black people tell me, "Man, you saying the same thing the KKK is saying." Well, then we're both right. I'm sorry. We happen to agree on this. And I think a lot of white supremacists are softening toward us, because now they got a new enemy.
[ Very insightful. What the LNSG has been saying since 1997: true national socialism is nationalism, or self-preservation. It has nothing to do with hating other races, only loving your own, because culture is necessary to avoid being replaced entirely by shopping malls. Multiculturalism destroys culture. Multiculturalism doesn't work. ]
news on 02.10.08 @ 12:51 PM CST [more..]
Saturday, February 9th
American empire en route to collapse
I have studied empires pretty carefully over the last few years, and I have figured out the basic nature of these systems and concluded that all empires collapse, and usually within less than a century, because of their inherent nature. They not only make mistakes but usually the same set of mistakes simply because of the inevitable character of the imperial structure, which ultimately fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, social stratification, economic disparities, heterogeneity, domination of people and nature, hierarchy, and environmental ignorance.
There are, to my reading, four basic reasons that empires collapse, and I’d like to set them out, particularly in reference to the modern American empire.
1. First, environmental degradation. Empires end by destroying the lands and waters they depend on for survival, largely because they build and farm and grow without a sense of limits.
2. Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource exploitation, in their heartlands and then in colonies farther and farther away from the center, because their populations become large and their armies too extensive, and when the resources fail the economy fails.
3. The third major cause of imperial collapse is military overstretch. Empires are by definition colonizers and trying to keep control over hostage peoples by force inevitably leads to large and often uncontrollable armies, massive drains on the economy, and ultimately rebellion on the periphery.
4. Finally, empires fall because of domestic dissent and upheaval. Crashing economies, food shortages, political repression, military drain, and increasing disparities between the rich and poor create domestic discontents that, lasting long enough, lead to rebellion and civil war.
[ Spengler said this ninety years ago, Nietzsche said it 130 years ago, and Plato said it 2000 years ago. The truth never changes. The lies and excuses always do. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 04:26 PM CST [more..]
Homework isn't terrible, schoolwork is useless
Homework is of little benefit to students from junior kindergarten to Grade 6, say the authors of a just-released Canadian study, who also found it is often the source of stress and burnout in children, as well the cause of conflict – even marital stress – for many families.
[ More likely schoolwork is 50% propaganda and the rest is dumbed down so that unequal kids don't have to feel their lack of promised equality. School, as the state makes it, is a waste of time. Moderate amounts of homework can be productive if it's not busywork. The writer of this article was not smart enough to think to investigate that. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 04:22 PM CST [more..]
More neurotoxins floating around in atmosphere
A federal appeals court said Friday the Bush administration ignored the law when it imposed less stringent requirements on power plants to reduce mercury pollution, which scientists fear could cause neurological problems in 60,000 newborns a year.
[ It's good we're not dropping the ball on this intensely destructive neurotoxin, which is also found in the new "green" fluorescent bulbs that we're JUST SO SURE will not get thrown out car windows, dropped in vacant lots, and left abandoned in rotting buildings like incandescent bulbs. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 04:16 PM CST [more..]
French politician sentenced for WWII comments
A French court gave far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen a three-month suspended prison sentence on Friday and fined him 10,000 euros (7,250 pounds) for saying that the Nazi occupation of France was "not particularly inhumane".
Le Pen was found guilty of "justification of war crimes" and "contesting crimes against humanity" in the trial which opened in December.
It centred around a comment Le Pen made in a 2005 interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol, which angered the government, anti-racism organisations and Jewish groups.
[ I thought we had free-as-in-freedom speech? False advertising! ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 03:51 PM CST [more..]
Americans less supportive of immigration
President Bush is asking Congress to spend money to help businesses root out illegal workers but he did not request additional funds to help legal immigrants become American citizens more quickly.
"The backlogs are pretty much back where they were when they started and the agency is back to doing what it used to do, which is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Right now they are taking resources from permanent residence to do citizenship," said Crystal Williams, associate director for programs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Immigration officials say they will be able to chip away at the backlogs as 1,500 new workers are hired and trained. Things should be back where they were before the application spike by 2010, the agency's spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan said.
[ Real answer: we don't need immigration. We need to support fewer parasites, which will make space for homegrown people of the next generation to take up the slack. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 03:46 PM CST [more..]
Constant stream of bad news depletes brains, hope
"When you wake up and get your cup of coffee and turn on the `Today' show and hear one story and say, `Oh, my,' and the next three are just as bad, it has an impact on how you start your day," says Brenda Garton, a former TV news anchor who teaches in the communication department at Western New England College in Springfield, Mass.
"We are surrounded and consumed by this news. It's at work, it's at school, it's at home, it's on our Web sites," she says. "We're certainly given more of a front seat to it today. ... I hope we're not getting numb when we hear about some severe tragedy."
[ Bad news sells. Good product isn't always good for you. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 03:31 PM CST [more..]
France bans GM corn
The French government on Saturday suspended the use of genetically modified corn crops in France while it awaits EU approval for a full ban.
[ It's smart to not use technology until we know what its ancillary effects are. Go France! ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 03:21 PM CST [more..]
Single women want to have stable families
Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist — vehemently, even — that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know — no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure — feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.
[ I observed the same thing, and it turned me away from liberalism, which I originally believed would benefit the worker, and now realize, harms the worker and everyone else. Neurotic, it is. Her analysis is good in this article, but her recommendation is poor. What we really need are more integral communities where people can meet, fall in love, and breed copiously. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 03:17 PM CST [more..]
Professor ostracized for views labeled "bad" by 1 non-profit
The Cal State Long Beach Psychology Department has recently initiated new plans to disassociate itself from controversial psychology professor Kevin MacDonald.
The department is currently considering publishing a statement to confirm its disassociation from MacDonald, with his research and writings on Judaism continuing to garner controversy and be used by publications considered to publicize neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.
MacDonald's three-part series in evolutionary psychology, "A People That Shall Dwell Alone," "Separation and Its Discontents" and "The Culture of Critique," was labelled as anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi propaganda in late 2006.
The labels came from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights organization based in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks hate groups. The organization sent a representative to CSULB to interview students and faculty members about MacDonald's work in November of 2006.
[ I've never read his stuff, but it seems to come from a firm ground of academic critique. If it were about Christians or Muslims or Buddhists, I don't think anyone would blink. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 03:04 PM CST [more..]
More TV means less conservation
As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say. Less time spent outdoors means less contact with nature and, eventually, less interest in conservation and parks.
[ News story of the year (thanks, CNN). Someone states the obvious but slightly offensive. We're becoming a nation of indoor prisoners who are so fixated on our stupid little lighted screens that we never notice the world around us, and are content to destroy it. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 11:24 AM CST [more..]
Liberals try to compensate for what they cannot individually do
The women's movement is about free choice, self-determination and challenging a status quo that fails a lot of Americans, not just women.
[ Self-determination isn't granted through political choice. It's granted through personal organization, a functional society that supports you in getting over your hangups, and a clear plan. Feminism and liberalism assume that if we grant people EXTERNAL recognition, they somehow magically become organized INTERNALLY, because we're all equal and can be treated like interchangeable parts. Lies! ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 11:21 AM CST [more..]
Why we approach technology as a religion
He has a theory for why religion first took root. He thinks human brains evolved to become "belief engines." Once our ancient ancestors understood cause and effect, they figured out how to manipulate the natural world. In essence, toolmaking made us human. Similarly, early hominids felt compelled to find causes for life's great mysteries, including illness and death. They came to believe in unseen gods and spirits.
[ Makes good sense. What he forgets is that the truly ancient religions were philosophies of value systems, not fantasy belief in immortality for proles like the gods from the middle east. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 10:17 AM CST [more..]
Re-definition of history causes multiculturalism to crumble
Blacks, then, are learning the kind of history that whites once learned—a history that builds identity and certitude. White children are learning that every interpretation is valid, that nothing is certain, that their nation’s past is all paradoxes and unsolved problems. Patriotism will not grow in the heart of a child who cannot look back with pride upon his nation’s past. We have come a long way from schooling that made Europeans into Americans. We now make Americans into nothing at all.
Multicultural history is like affirmative action. Just as whites are to step aside to give hiring preferences to minorities, whites are to set aside their own point of view and study those of others. Non-whites, on the other hand, are free to promote their own interests and exclusionist histories.
Like affirmative action, multicultural history is possible only because the majority has abandoned its position at the center. If whites insisted on their own history as strongly as non-whites insist on theirs, the inevitability of separate histories would have been recognized long ago. Nor will whites be willing to forego their own history for ever. They will eventually realize that only they are studying a past with no answers and no certainties. They will eventually see that there cannot be one history that satisfies all. And they will begin to wonder whether there can be one nation that satisfies all.
[ You can't be more than one thing at once. Postmodern idiots will tell you that you mean "type of thing," and that types are arbitrary. Pay attention to reality instead: we all are just what we are. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 10:15 AM CST [more..]
British deny multicultural law
The unusual suggestion from Britain's highest ranking Christian leader Thursday would, if adopted, allow British Muslims to choose to resolve marital and financial disputes under Islamic law, known as Shariah, rather than through British courts.
Archbishop Rowan Williams said in a radio interview with the BBC that incorporating Islamic law could help improve Britain's flagging social cohesion.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman immediately rejected Williams' proposal.
"The prime minister believes British law should apply in this country, based on British values," said Michael Ellam.
[ Like the rest of multiculturalism, having several radically different legal traditions is a stupid, chaotic, disorganized idea. ]
news on 02.09.08 @ 10:13 AM CST [more..]
Thursday, February 7th
Black invention myths unnecessary, say black scholars
In elementary school, were you ever told that without the contributions of African Americans, many of the things that we use everyday, like the lightbulb or peanut butter, wouldn't exist?
But in spite of the wide circulation of such accounts, some researchers are discovering another side to the story.
What's more, according to Dr. Russell Adams, author of "Great Negroes: Past and Present," it's not exactly the whole truth.
"Some of the myths have been put into the school system as gospel and truth," he said. There are people who will hang on to the myths because they are so comforting."
[ White people invent lies as "gifts" to the black man to prove white superiority. Notice how Bill Clinton finally revealed he's been racist all these years. White liberals are often the biggest racists ever, but they like to "raise up the black folk" and so claim they're not racist, even if they're doing it to be hip in front of their city friends. ]
news on 02.07.08 @ 10:47 PM CST [more..]
Culture = heritage = values = biology, new paper suggests
Ethnic groups may differ both in culture and in genes, but these two dimensions of ethnicity are not independent. Differences in culture are barriers to gene flow; over time, such barriers differentiate gene pools. Conversely, genetic intermixture bring separate gene pools closer together, but also serves to homogenize cultures.
[ No surprises here. ]
news on 02.07.08 @ 09:34 PM CST [more..]
Political propaganda changes how history is known
Asked to name the most famous Americans in history, high school students put 20th-century black Americans in the top three slots. Here are the top 10, with the percentage who chose each:
1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%
2. Rosa Parks: 60%
3. Harriet Tubman: 44%
4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%
5. Benjamin Franklin: 29%
6. Amelia Earhart: 25%
7. Oprah Winfrey: 22%
8. Marilyn Monroe: 19%
9. Thomas Edison: 18%
10. Albert Einstein: 16%
“Over the course of about 44 years, we’ve had a revolution in the people who we come to think about to represent the American story,” Wineburg says.
[ Dogma replacing reality. ]
news on 02.07.08 @ 09:11 PM CST [more..]
Immigration costs you more than the Iraq war
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. http://www.cisorg/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. http://www.cisorg/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers. http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. http://transcripts..cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U.S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
12 The National Policy Institute, “estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.”http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
14. “The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States”. http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
Total cost is a whooping . . . $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!
news on 02.07.08 @ 09:08 PM CST [more..]
Multiculturalism fails yet again, this time in Germany
In the wake of a tragic fire in the southwestern German city of Ludwigshafen, the Turkish media immediately concluded, without concrete evidence, that the blaze was the work of xenophobic Germans. The media reports underscore how troubled the relationship is between Turks and Germans -- and between Ankara and Berlin.
[ Both populations cannot exist, and know they'll be replaced by a hybrid. This won't end well, but because we can't say that in public, it gets worse. ]
news on 02.07.08 @ 08:56 PM CST [more..]
Black voters "unanimous" in backing black candidate
Black voters are backing Obama in numbers trending toward the unanimous.
[ Each race wants a candidate from its own culture, values and heritage. No surprise. ]
news on 02.07.08 @ 08:54 PM CST [more..]
