Poverty Draft & Veterans Benefits

One benefit of being a veteran is the leadership experience as an attractive resume point, nationwide jobs preference programs, massive training programs, all leading to better jobs prospects after time in the service.  Or not:

As of September 2012, 736,000 veterans were unemployed and the jobless rate for post-9/11 veterans was 9.9 percent, with young male veterans (ages 18 to 24) experiencing an unemployment rate of 18.1 percent.

The unemployment rate in USA is reported as around 5.5%, so veterans are running about double, and young veterans nearly four times.

How come?  Is the fact of the matter military experience makes people undesirable as employees?  Or is it just officers get the experience benefit and the grunts, no?

Since we now have a poverty draft, the young should know these figures, if any think they will escape poverty by joining the military.  They might, but the odds are they won't.

If you really want to be all you can all be, start a business, the most revolutionary act an American can perform.

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Ancestrally African Bookstore

Now here is the problem -

"You can't deal with this bookstore without dealing with the bigger sickness," Brown said. "So, you can't deal with Marcus alone without looking at the conditions, the public policy that created the conditions for the black community to be torn asunder."

Is it that the City is against people ancestrally African, or against all small business?  If you are ancestrally African, the solution is to fight institutional racism, which means you turn to the institutions that are robbing of your livelihood, and appeal.

But the appeal misses the point: they are not against the ancestrally African, they are against small business.  They want the tallies that flow with valuations of the false economy industries, and the increase in the leverage increased valuations gives in bond underwriting, that is debt financing.

Since the appeal misses the point, it can be ignored.  And that is how come there is no progress under the progressives.  The can pass civil rights legislation, but they cannot hide the facts on the ground today.

Turning to republicans to escape the democrat's abuse is never the answer, for clearly it is just more of the same.

Divide and conquer.  With vast swathes are entrepreneurs under the impression their challenges are due to being ancestrally African, non-Ancestrally African entrepreneurs cannot join up in common cause  to fight the real enemy - fascism.  It's economics, not race, that is the problems.  The patterns and practices of capitalism, which necessarily requires aggregation of power to some and denial to others. Free markets are to be recommended.

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Chaos in Kiev

When there is too much government, chaos follows.  For example, when the USA began destablizing the Ukraine, that was one government too many involved.  When the USA succeeded in their stated goal of overthrowing Yaks, then you had a split in the Ukraine people, and then three governments involved (four if you want to admit the Nazi elements).  All this invites a fifth government to intervene, Russia.

“It’s important for Russia to withdraw support from the separatists and to assist in removing people from the buildings and begin to deescalate the situation,” Kerry said in remarks to the press in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Congo?

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Safety Net vs Fishing Net

Being self-employed is risky in the sense you do not have to relative security of a safety net.  I don't get unemployment insurance, or any employer-paid insurance.  Everything I get is customer paid.

People who take real risks, say tight-rope walkers, they might have safety nets, but the have a rule: don't look down.  You mind goes where you look.  To have a "safety net" is to look at it, and your mind goes there.  Geronimo!

There are times when I am creating or designing, where I may not be making much of any money at all, for a while.  I am told I would qualify for some sort of aid based on my income.  No thanks, a need to earn keeps me more efficient.

What is it?  100 million Americans are on welfare.  The number of Americans claiming disability has doubled.  Most small business I speak to are afraid to hire for fear the employee is simplyging to put in the minimum time necessary to collect unemployment.  Apple has excellent screening processes for its stores.  Small business do not.

All of that welfare payment represents money, credit, sucked away from productive innovation.  It represents people who have been anesthetized to the point hey cannot innovate.

The face of welfare is a white woman, but the image is man with some African heritage.  Nonetheless, welfare and minority go together.  We know because the USA has strict racial identity codes.

When Margaret Sanger had trouble advancing Planned Parenthood among minorities, she was advised to buy off preachers of some African heritage.  It worked.  But this is not unique among people of African heritage, every country has people willing to sell their own down the river.





She is tired of hearing about the risks businesses take.  What is risky is being poor in America.

Well, it's bankers and republicans who talk about businesses take risks.  One job of businesses is to NOT take risks, to get rid of them.  When the state allowed banks to engage in usury, and then in turn to lend credit at fractional reserve, they had to introduce the idea of "businesses take risks" to get people to employ that extra credit.  People who should not borrow did so, and slavery of sorts, to some degree followed.  So I agree, I too am tired of hearing about businesses taking risks.

But I think she is wrong about equating being poor with experience risk.  Ghetto shoot ups are about being targeted, not about experiencing risk.  And the way out of that is not a "safety net" but freedom.  And certainly to end the state racial categorizations.

The "safety net" the liberals talk about is really a fishing net, for scooping up vast numbers quickly, gutting them, drying them out, consuming them, and then disposing of the waste.  That is no way to treat people.  And it denies the rest of us the good of the contributions we'd otherwise get from people, grounded in the creativity emergent with their freedom.

The banks too have a safety net, and that net led to the problems and denies us the solution.  Defund all safety nets.  Give us freedom.

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Hakka Hong Kong

A horrible thing happened after Gabby won her gold medal in gymnastics.  Someone at ABC ran an ad of a monkey training for the Olympics.

It is probably just a coincidence, like when a throat medicine company ran an ad featuring an auctioneer distressed by a sore throat when the TV Miniseries Roots was running in the 1970s.

Sensitivities run high because there is no doubt people with some African heritage in USA are a targeted class. Our prisons are full of people with some African heritage who self medicate or provide a missing product in society, and people with some African heritage are used for all sorts of experiments such as the Tuskegee thing.

Here an MD lets the cat out of the bag...

No one would likely notice if Nabisco ran cracker ads after every Romney news story.  Slights to people with some African heritage are noticed because people with some African heritage are clearly targeted.

You'll notice I try not to say "black" because racially categorizing is about as sensible as categorizing by shoe size. The bad guys use race, class and gender politics to destroy the market, through divide and conquer.

Every country in the world has a group targeted for abuse.  The Japanese have the Ainu, the Germans have their Turks, the French the Algerians, the Peruvians their Indians,  the British the Irish and so on.

Big economies have more than one despised group, and one group in China is the Hakka.  I first encountered these people in Hong Kong back in the mid-1970s.  They tended to be the ones who did the dirty work, and they were the only women I saw in China smoking.  They were plentiful in Hong Kong, and easily distinguishable by their distinctive hats.

fotosearch.com

Now to my point.  In Hong Kong people are no different than anywhere else on earth.  People will have a group upon which they look down.  The difference is no matter what your biases, you really do not have much chance to act on them in a place with a polity like Hong Kong.  It takes a powerful state for people to leverage hate into action, to where people can be exempt from punishment for perpetrating horrors on others.

Cops, doctors, jailers, building inspectors... it is always those backed by government who can be exploitative.  Little or no government, and bad guys have trouble getting the traction to do evil.  Remember the Jim Crow laws were laws, written and passed by racist cracker legislators.  And remember that when Abernathy and King finally appealed to business, instead of wasting their time appealing to the state, that the walls came tumbling down.



In Hong Kong people of merit can and do excel.  Because of Hong Kong, with so many people who would be despised for backwardness or lack of intelligence in fact excelling, no one can quite maintain the conceit that Hakka are somehow lacking.  Deng Xiaoping is Hakka, and the list of famous Hakka is quite long.  And note, China has no "affirmative action."  These Hakka rose on merit.  No affirmative action to shade their success.

So what to learn from this?  Instead of affirmative action, how about affirmative freedom?  Make a deal: if you ever qualified as "black" in USA, you can apply and become exempt: exempt from taxes, the draft, licensing, regulations, truly free in USA.  You can trade in illegal substances, and cannot be arrested.  You may have a passport for convenience sake, but otherwise have no connection to the State.

At the same time you can receive no Government benefits and you are subject to free market justice.

Now before you say this is unworkable, it is exactly the deal USA has with American Indians, in place, right now (with a few liberties thrown in).  Indians have restaurants at their casinos that are not subject to health inspectors.  Indians trade illegal fireworks and all manner of goodies.  The only difference is people who were once deemed "black" will not be limited to reservations, as they are now in USA prisons and in criminal supervision.

Put it to a vote.

Remember, to be in the black is a happy thing in business.  USA still allows slavery in its Constitution. Let's go for real freedom.  Reverse what we are socially conditioned to expect.

Warning: Diabetics may experience insulin shock:

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Ron Unz on Race And Wealth

Scientific racism is a pillar upon which the US economic system rests.  Ron Unz does an exhaustive refutation of leadings authors in support of this theory.  In the comments to this article, there is some serious heavy lifting going on in support of scientific racism

Unz works too hard. The evil is simpler to discern than parsing the numbers requires. The IQ tests are white man tests.  The more you are like the people who make the tests, the better you do on the tests.  The tests themselves are absolutely no predictor of success or wealth.  Nonetheless, they are widely employed?  How come?

Think about it.  We live in a regime of scientific racism.  That is some pretty vicious stuff.  If you can "pass the test" you'll be earmarked for a better life, but not guaranteed, by the scientific racists who are in charge of the commanding heights.  You can be a victim or a perpetrator.  Given the choice, who wouldn't take the latter?

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Gates & Darwin Join Forces

Following George Bernard Shaw's suggestion for getting rid of undesirables, following Darwin, the nazis came up with Zyklon B.    I believe the powers that be learned their lesson and now use slower acting chemicals to destroy populations.

Having failed to make any change in education, in spite of billions spent, Bill and Melinda Gates have thrown in the towel on education and now are getting back to their first efforts, reducing population in Africa and  Asia.  For women, for the children, all that.

The problem with capitalism is it denies us innovations to address problems because it concentrates too much power in too few hands.  Between usury, intellectual property law, and taxing the many to protect the few, freedom is so constrained that we are denied the good of all the competitors.  The Gates know their billions are safe from taxes in their "charity" as long as they stick with the program.

Update:  How come those white people who think there are too many people on the earth always work at reducing the number of people brown and darker?

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Coca Cola & Genocide

When the stated goals are genocide, the means are genocidal, and the results are genocide, at what point do we say, "What a minute, that is genocide."

Darwin specifically taught, later in his career, in order to clear up any doubt, that the negro and aborigine were marked for, well you read it....

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.


That is some seriously loose talk.  Is that permission to "hurry the inevitable?"  I met people who believe it does.  A Coca Cola insider tells us:

Putman, whose positions at Coca-Cola included U.S. head of marketing for carbonated drinks, said in the interview that among his achievements was tailoring the company’s national advertising campaigns to specific groups. The approach helped Coca-Cola intensify marketing to target audiences such as African Americans and Hispanics.

I don't drink coca cola products because they are nasty. Beer is my soft drink, and I raised my daughters to drink beer and wine as a beverage. OK, mostly clean water and juices, but we did not do soft drinks and I never minded if they drank alcohol, like the Italians. Anyway, I digress.

Are americans with some african ancestry targets for genocide?  Clearly.  What to do about it?  Well, shun companies that target americans with some african ancestry.  That is necessary.  That is sufficient. If we just stop targeting americans with some african ancestry, they will do just fine, like anyone else.

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Keep Blacks Out of Architecture!

When scientific racists get together, one item of evidence to indicate the inferiority of Afro-Americans is their apparent lack of capacity when it comes to the art of architecture.  Quick: name a black architect.

The idea offered is that Americans with some African ancestry are inferior, and the evidence is they had their chance of a million years or so to develop architecture in Africa, but failed to do so.

Let’s pause for a second and consider the Indian mathematician Ramanujan.  As the British Empire spread, it taught the liberal arts with a view to spotting the best and brightest to admininster their newly claimed lands.

Ramanujan, young fellow who was remarkable for his ability to work out solutions to problems, was introduced to the top people back in the UK, by means of some of his calculations.  A top mathematician was reading his solutions and laughing, thinking it some sort of joke, and how childish the calculations were, when bam!, the solution jumped out at the end.

Ramanujan was profoundly talented, in a way termed childish, and he was called to the UK to study, where the food literally killed him.    Before he died, the examiners asked how he came up with his solutions, and he answered a mother-god came to him in his dreams and gave him the solutions.  Not quite the thing, but his solutions were there.

Here is a point from his wikipedia:  

Ramanujan received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam, but lost it when he failed his non-mathematical coursework. 

Note he is a world class performer in mathematics, but a failure at the other subjects in a school with a UK curriculum.  He can master math on his own, and become fluent in English, but unable to handle history and geography.  Is it possible that his genius ran to the other fields as well, that he could only master those fields in his own unique way, a way that the tests cannot measure?

When I was pursuing a masters degree in education we studied testing, and the statistics professor demonstrated none of the entrance exams predict success n school, so they are for some other purpose.  And what tests we do have are what the people in education call “white man tests” that is, so replete with certain cultural references one must be steeped in the white man’s culture to pass the test.  Chinese tend to master both cultures and offer the white man his cultural references in reply when a test is indicated.

What we have in the USA is a system that limits the number of desks and the number of professors and strictly controls the content, scope and sequence of what is being taught.  Step outside of that range, you lose.  We have a very narrow definition of knowledge in the USA.

There are people who do step outside, but only after playing the game until their white man qualifications are impeccable.  Thomas Szasz is an example, he a psychiatrist with an unassailable critique of psychiatry as quackery.

Once upon a time doctors were like mathematicians, they advanced based on their results and reputation.  From Galen to Jenner, Jenner no doctor but he introducing vaccination to the west.

Now to architects of some African ancestry, something the scientific racists call “blacks.”

In a recent NPR report, less than 2% of architects in USA have some ancestry rooted in africa, reminding everyone of the argument that is ever-present in state-owned media, and that is the people with some African American heritage are somehow inferior.

Well, that blacks can master “white’ architecture,” if you want to call an unnecessarily narrow range of activity “white,” was well known to southern slaveowners.  It was a point of honor if your ability to select slaves to buy was so good you managed to get ones that could figure out house design, constructions, etc.  Although slavery is never acceptable, and truly some people abused their slaves, at $700 each most slave owners desired to get maximum benefit from their slaves.  Autodidact slaves did architectural work.

African American Antebellum Architecture 

During the revolutionary war, the British offered slaves their freedom if they would support the British, since the slaves were the ones who could actually build forts, dig irrigation, hunt, fish, cook, and handle all manner of arts, at times in their unique ways.  The sharp memory of American slaves supporting the British during the revolutionary war was stark in the mind of Southern soldiers.

With less than 2% of architects having some African heritage working architecture today,  we can say with confidence that people with some ancestry grounded in Africa had more freedom to develop their skills under slavery in USA than in "freedom" if that if what you want to call what we have.

Review the NPR website to see the amazing work of a “black” architect.

As usual read the comments, especially note how many comments have been deleted.  This topic gets people very hot.

Now, if it was a good idea to to protect society by keeping certian groups out of certain fields, then certaily architecture should be off-limits to Swedes.  Here is the result of three years labors of a dozen Swedes in Sweden.

*

And here is the home of a renown mid-century Swedish architect, Roland Terry, in the Seattle area.

We are not talking much progress here.

Here is an African hut, a few days work of a dozen Africans.

And an african girl who lives in a hut.

African girl.

Here is a mid-century home designed by an American with some African ancestry.

Paul Williams design, and American with some African ancestry

Compare the two African rooted homes. You'll perceive the African roots of the USA architecture, just as you perceive the Swedish roots of the Swedish USA architecture.  But which house would you prefer to live in?  

We in the USA do not have freedom, we have a system of tests and requirements that keep the fields of study so narrow few can perform within those narrow boundaries.  This limits who can work in a field, and denies the rest of us the benefits of competition with other cultures.

Let Americans with some African ancestry compete against the Americans with some Swedish ancestry, and let’s see who does best, or more to the point, how many categories of different we get.  Just unregulate the field of architecture.

A system that has fewer requirements to succeed is superior to a system that has more requirements to succeed.

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Blame the Jews Part Three

It has occurred to me, that a thesis in which Jews are used a front men for odious policies, here and here, may be criticized as suggesting some sort of lack on the part of Jews.  Why can Jews not be truly part of the powers that be in an original sense?

To which I would answer, “I do not know.  Why not?  Why have they not yet in history?”  

Or at least not since, when, David?  Solomon?

But to ask the question I see misses a point.  I picked “blame the Jews” for this series because they are the ones who get blamed for the really big problems. And it is clear from history they play a role in which the policies of the powers that be get blamed on the Jews who front them.

I imagine myself a Christian, and for reasons of aesthetics Roman Catholic (the Roman part is not the faith part, and so many Roman Catholics get that backwards, loving the Roman part and ignoring the Catholic (universal Christian) part).  I know from experience from meetings with the powers that be, or their representatives, if I attend the meeting as a christian the meeting is pointless.  The goals of the powers that be are at variance from the good the true and the beautiful, and with them it is all or nothing.  If my presence is to be tolerated, then I must serve the beast.

So why bother?

On the other hand, we have countless examples of people who have nothing to do with the beast at all, and do quite well.  I also have noted how Obama is getting blamed for being in essence George Bush’s 3rd term.  He will rank as USA’s worst president when he moves on.  Economy tanked, and no big wars.  What a disaster, from the court historians point of view. But mark this, none of the Geo Bush policies continued under Obama will change when Hillary is president.  To become president, Obama had to repudiate his minister, an authentic person.  

James Brown, as a black man, did more for USA than all black politicians have done, inasmuch at anytime said politicians identified themselves as “black.”

The Amish have nothing to do with the state and thrive quite well.

Orthodox Jews thrive without a connection to the state, as do Sikhs, Muslims, black or otherwise, Seventh Day Adventists, J’Witnesses and so on.  All such groups may have no share in the lot of the powers that be, but more to the point, they contribute nothing to the agenda of the powers that be.  But that is not to say they contribute nothing to society, nor is it to say they do not lead a better, fuller life.  They do, on both accounts, refulgently.  Note how they all have their own government but no state.  Self-government.

I was a guest at a dinner once, hosted by a husband and wife, who we will call K and R, circa 1980.  K, the husband, was a tall fine Berlin Jew connected to the finest families, R was a shtetl Jew, rubenesque and brilliant.  They were very much in love.

I knew this couple fairly well, and one time at the mention of her mother in law, a R went off on a soliloquy, in which she recounted how her people had warned and pleaded with the “Jews of Berlin” not to work with Hitler, etc.  And the Jews of Berlin replied “We can handle Dolphie...” (Dolphie!!??)  It was a mesmerizing performance, and the upshot was how dare K’s mother look down on R when K’s family escaped and R’s family burned.  And R had the resources and intelligence to restart the festivities after such a stunning performance. 

At times Jews presume I am Jewish and speak frankly, and the conversations are fascinating (I designate kosher meals on trans-oceanic flights, which may mislead aisle mates).  There is an active strain in conversations between too much and too little engagement with the powers that be.  That could be just me prompting the conversation, but the point is the tension is not far from the surface.

There are the powers that be, and we have a story about how they got their power.  The powers that be said yes, instead of no.  As Orthodox mothers say to their children about bacon burgers, “That’s not for Jews.”  All we of religious pretension should look at the state and say “that’s not for us.”

There is the power of saying, no thank you, I’ll do my own thing.

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Happy Mother's Day - in America!

Here is a heartwarming slideshow of kids with their moms, view it, click the link, I promise you will be moved.

Reuters, from above link

These moms are in prison largely for violating state drug laws.  How come we have such laws?  Why, look at the top five contributors to marijuana criminalization laws.  And to think the left worries about corporate America!

Happy Mothers Day, moms everywhere!


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Understanding Property vs Intellectual Property

Property is something we find in natural law, the result of mixing your labor with natural resources.  Intellectual property cannot be found in natural law, it is a construct in prescriptive law.

Intellectual property is grounded in the theory if you mix your ideas with others, you own the entire idea. Set aside the problems of "owning" idea, and look at just mixing your labor with others' ideas.  The labor in this case is thinking.  We all get paid to think, to some degree.  So thinking can be an example of productive labor.

One way, of the countless ways, Intellectual Property Rights theory goes wrong is it assumes, once thought, always owned (or for some length of time set by statute).  Where as property is valuable only to the extent it can be worked, Intellectual Property can be valuable to the extent that anyone works it.

My Fair Lady (Pygmalion), the George Bernard Shaw play that promotes the idea of scientific racist eugenics (the scientist ultimately rejects his "do little" untermenschen) can be put on by others if they pay for the "property. "  But wait! To mount a play, any play, people who must apply the labor of their minds to organizing and producing a play along with the countless details to attend to in order to make the play happen, including invest considerable amounts of money.   Why should they have to pay Shaw, or Shaw's estate anything at all, since Shaw is not offering any thinking power to the present effort?

You'll say "but Shaw thought up the play."  Nonsense, Shaw stole the idea from Ovid.  Shaw married the ancient plot with modern scientific racism,  thought up some clever dialogue and sold it in 1916 to a widespread audience eager to be socially conditioned to scientific racism.  Most of Shakespeare's plays can be traced back to earlier plays. Both sellable parts of the play are ideas Shaw "stole" from others, in the case of My Fair Lady, Ovid and scientific racists.  Shaw got paid for his work in 1916, and for decades thereafter, as people consulted him on subsequent productions and movies.  The play made Shaw rich because Shaw kept producing in relation to the play.  Making people feel warm and fuzzy about scientific racism takes talent.

Shaw no longer is breathing, let alone thinking and working.  Why should anyone pay anyone else for an effort to mount a play that in no way takes anything away form anyone else?  If I light your candle with my candle, do you owe me money for the flame on your candle?  How come?  I might agree to pay, but if you are not around and I light my candle, do I owe you?

I write books, and print them and make money from them.  Selling books is how I get paid for my time spent thinking.  Don't I want my kids to have the "royalties" from my books after I an dead?  I am an anarchist, and I do not like kings (an + archy = no  king) or their royalties.  If my kids want to make money off my books let them print them up and sell them, like anyone else.  If they want to make money off ideas, let them produce a version of the ideas they can sell.  A theatre and a production of a play, and a book, are property.  We do not need "intellectual property rights" and laws to make money from our ideas and thinking.  We do need property rights, something we find in natural law.

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Poor People's Tax

Before lotteries hit washington state, two politicians went to jail for discussing it.  Then the lotteries came.  A study was done to find out who bought tickets.  It showed the poor, minority and uneducated were the big buyers.  Ooooops... so another company was hired to study it, and guess what, they found it was actually rich white people who were buying the tickets.  Whew!

So comes a study that we all already knew, it is poor, uneducated minorities who buy the tickets, and they do so because it offers "the only chance for radical change." 

No one told them about self employment.

This is how it works:  discourage a group, flood its community with welfare money, drugs and lottery, and let gravity do its work.  It is genocide.

Newstimes.com

There is a reason religions forbid lotteries and lassitude, it kills.

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Reading Darwin In College

Charles Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man, 1st edition, pages 168 -169:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

I received a comment attempting to explain the above passage - my comments are in between the ***   ***

 This passage (and a number of others from The Descent of Man) is often used by creationists to attack evolutionary theory.

***Many people attack evolutionary theory, not just the odious creationists.  That is akin to arguing the nazis attacked stalinism.  Plenty of people of all stripes attack stalinism, as they do evolution theory.***

 I won't mount a full-scale defense of Darwin here, but I can tell you that the inferred bigotry in this passage is understandable, but in truth Darwin was much more progressive than the majority of his scientific peers.

***Irrelevant.***

In fact, at the time, polygenism was broadly supported in the scientific community, while Darwin was staunchly monogenist and frequently went against conventional wisdom by asserting that all humans were genetically the same species.

***There are many versions of Darwinism and evolution, and even Darwin had to keep recasting his hypothesis as counter arguments surfaced. Again irrelevant. ***

 If anything, his views were very progressive for the era and much closer to our own. 

***Perhaps your own, but certainly not mine.***

This passage, by the way, is not about racial inferiority (although I can see why it would set off alarm bells today), it is about the growing gap between humans of all kinds and their nearest non-human relatives.

***Not true: he states his thesis -

“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; “

He is merely addressing an objection to evolution due to the existence of gaps, nothing about “growing gaps.” ***

When you ask why they teach "it" in schools, I assume you mean Darwinian thought on natural selection. The reason why they teach Darwin is pretty obvious: Natural selection is not just a popular hypothesis, it's accepted as truth by the entire scientific community. 

***Simply not true, I’ve met countless scientists who consider it hokum.  I am a consumer of science, and I’ve passed on it since it does not measure up to science. Accepting a hypothesis as truth is religion, not science.***

There are disagreements on some elements of evolutionary theory, but literally no scientist has suggested that natural selection is unsupported. And Darwin's work is historically a game-changing moment for science and our understanding of the natural world, so yes, it should be taught. 

***Which version should be taught?***

One additional note: You're citing "The Decent of Man," which is not the source of most classroom lessons on Darwin; that would be "On the Origin of Species," which was published over a decade earlier and did not address any of the potentially offending language above. 

***The cited passage was written by Darwin in response to objections to the earlier versions.  It reflects considered and deliberate expression on the part of Darwin.  Darwin was clarifying his earlier work, and emphasizing that the theory argued the inevitability of the extermination of the negro and the Australian (meaning those some call aborigines.) This has given much comfort to progressives who need a theory for who lives and dies. For example, progressive and celebrated author and playwrite George Bernard Shaw.***

By the way, even if he had been obtusely bigoted, his scientific writing shouldn't be purged from classrooms. There are plenty of slave-owning (and likely horribly racist) Founding Fathers in American history, and we trust students to separate their great thoughts from their despicable observations on race. This is not a new issue.

***The founding fathers struggled mightily to eliminate the evil of slavery, even the slaveholding ones. The claim is science is behind this, and there is no effort, nor should be, to eliminate this odious teaching.  It is offensive enough to cause one student, a negro to be eliminated under this theory, to throw it all away in a classroom rant. Scientific racism is not a new issue.***

If anyone actually read Darwin, they might understand her despair.

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Have You Read Darwin?

Charles Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man, 1st edition, pages 168 -169:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

This is why I never cared for the hypotheses Darwin laid out.  If you actually read it, it is pretty obnoxious stuff.  I wonder why they teach it in schools.

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Blame The Jews

No one in polite society actually says "Jews" but when the financial crisis is discussed and perpetrators criticized ... it is Goldman Sachs, Greenspan, Bernanke, Geitner, Blankfein, Cohn, Paulson, Summers, Rubin, not to mention Madoff, and so on.

And to be sure any article that allows comments certainly features plenty of blaming of the Jews.

What?  Rockefeller, Gates and Buffet had nothing to do with what is going on?  Jews control the financial world by means of a vast conspiracy?  Really?  Hasn't that been always said?  If so, how come in every other time in history economic crises turn out very badly for the Jews? How does it turn out badly for them if they are in charge? Or is this time it is different?

When Michael Lewis wrote Liar's Poker to explain just how wicked the practices were on Wall Street and the utter abuse of the USA investor, he hoped to effect some change and improvement by his expose.  He was perplexed to get an overwhelming number of letters from the best and brightest at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Yale... Christians all, inquiring as to how they could get such jobs themselves.

Getting Jews to do tax-farming has a long tradition in the West.  A Jewish face on oppression makes life easier for a Prince.

Mustn't be naive and think no Jew would so jeopardize other Jews. Just like the Irish and the Turks and the Japanese and the Bantus any other group, there are always those who will sell their own tribe down the river for fame, prestige and fortune.  And there are plenty of Jews who will gladly front the desires of the wicked capitalists who do not want to take the blame when the exploitation comes crashing down.  Where would Warren Buffet be without his Jewish bankers doing his bidding?

If it is to be different this time, how about we do not blame the Jews this time?  Let's see how the patterns and practices of capitalism are inherently evil, and reorder our patterns and practices to inhibit the concentration of power that motivates the powers that be?  Let's prove USA is exceptional.

The English threw the Jews out for 400 years (they were the first to mark Jews with a yellow star) and they had the exact same problems without the Jews.  It ain't the Jews that are the problem, it is the ideas.  And the ideas aren't Jewish, they are human.  And it is not unique to Judaism that Jews sell Jews down the river.  We all do it.  Time to admit it and withdraw our consent to be governed by the state, and engage in voluntary association.

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Conditioning, Section 8, Follow The Money

While blaming Obama is the latest scapegoating in a country founded by men who dressed up like Mohicans to perform the Boston Tea Party (blame it on the Indians) I am noting far more articles portraying blacks in disgraceful habit.  In this episode unruly blacks race to get Section 8 vouchers, a federal program that pays the difference between what rent is and what you can afford.

Because I am wealthy and well connected I pay about $400 a month for 2 bedroom in a garden spot with private access to Lake Washington.  That is the going rate in a free market, one in which connections matter.

Blacks in USA, as they begin to develop separate but equal circumstances, find their worlds destroyed. Compensating programs appear to benefit groups, in this case Blacks, but that would be misleading.   Section 8 is landlord welfare, wherein if a landlord is experiencing a 40% vacancy rate, he need not cut rent to fill his building, he merely gets fed vouchers to put poor people in at full rent, so 100% occupancy at the highest rent rate.  This means the people in the building are subsidizing, on top of taxpayers, the landlords profits.

Now Section 8 can also be used for blockbusting purposes.  Say there is an apartment building district, nice upscale, with one building for sale.  An enterprising landlord will buy the building and load it up with section 8 tenants.   As the neighborhood goes down, the landlord can buy up the other buildings cheap, and load them with section eight too.  There goes the neighborhood.

If you are about to rent, always ask if the building accepts section 8.   The landlord will not know if you are pro or con, and will likely tell you the truth.  (If he hangs up on you, call back, it is not section 8)  If it is a section 8 building, expect more disease (I was renting once in a building where they began accepting section 8, within 2 weeks a memo went out, please do not leave garbage in hallways, it attracts rats...) and crime, and you'll be paying more.  Avoid Section 8 buildings at all costs.

It is not unique to Blacks that agitating leaders are bought of and the masses behind them continue to languish.  In USA as Pat Buchanan notes:

Though 10 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force, African-Americans are 18 percent of U.S. government workers. They are 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of the State Department, 37 percent of Department of Education employees and 38 percent of Housing and Urban Development. They are 42 percent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 55 percent of the employees at the Government Printing Office and 82 percent at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency....that 44 percent of Fannie employees and 50 percent of Freddie's were persons of color.

Every government needs its despised class, India the Dalit, Japan the Ainu, China the Hakka (among others), communism the Kulak, and capitalism has the Blacks.  And in every system they buy off the agitators.

There is nothing said about blacks today that was not said about the Irish a century ago.  O! But there is a difference: skin color!  Then you do not know how easy it is to spot an Irishman, if you are looking, and how socially conditioned the elite were to recoil in their presence, just as we are socially conditioned regarding Blacks today.

When a people allow power, sought and unsought, to aggregate in the hands of a few, those suffering from libido dominandi will strive to positions of leadership, and then exercise their terrible power.  I know a cop whose stated reason for joining the force was to hammer blacks.

Although I regret the unfairness and indecency shown Blacks in USA, it is no problem of mine.  I am sure there is even grace behind their suffering. Louis Farrakhan has demonstrated Blacks can live a separate but equal life in America, like the Amish, and what problem they have they can work on, like the Irish.  But that is no solution, because I am still denied the benefit of competing with blacks in business.

(There is a wonderful film clip, I watched the original, circa 1964, American Bandstand, where the Rolling Stones followed James Brown.  Mick Jagger stared offstage at James Brown, trying to mimic Brown's moves.  Jagger's trademark spastic moves are compliments of Brown's dynamism.)

We ought not be limited to competing with blacks in showmanship, imagine the benefit if blacks were allowed in architecture, science, medicine and so on!

I would note that the Black elite makes much of the N word, to the extent that using the word "niggardly" can cost you your job (one of the few words to come to English from Swedish.)  Reflect that the really damaging word is "black" as though there is such a thing.  Black implies a homogeneity, a group of people similar enough to have necessary leaders. No such group exists, any more than "white." We are all unique, and no leader can represent us in any way.  Of course no "black," then no black leaders.  Like all people forming groups and demanding a leader, the leaders get bought off and the followers are targeted.

Of course, in a free market there are no leaders, just commercial transactions... the colors that matter are gold and silver.

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Jews Return To Europe

There are many people who view Jews they way they view lawyers:  they are all the same.  Mark Kurlansky has written a book on the resurrection of Jewry in Europe after the holocaust. One thing you will learn from this book is Jews are not all the same.

Kurlansky along with Spence and Schama are my three favorite writers currently, and all of them are historians.  I did not care for history as a topic in school, but then even the Catholic schools were ladeling out tripe when they decided to drink the kool-aid and accept government oversight of Catholic schools.  School got boring for Catholics too.

Elsewhere Schama recounts that at a seminar at Balliol College circa 1968 a don suggested to write history about people and not so much events.  It has occurred to me that this is the case with all three writers.  In A Chosen Few, Kurlansky traces familes in Antwerp, Budapest, Cracow, Paris and North Africa, and at various points in time: prewar, war, post war, and a few points until the 1990s.

kurlansky

Of particular interest to me is how people survive a disaster, what are the best moves, since we too have experienced a disaster, that is the economic boom of the 2000s in USA, when all of that damage was done to our economy.  Since we are in the phase where we pay for it, blame is set, and scapegoats are “sacrificed” (a goat is killed ... just who made a sacrifice here?) it is interesting to me the best way to navigate these well trodden paths.  Some important points:  people generally did not see what was coming.  What we think of as a swift disaster in the holocaust unfolded rather slowly.  Kurlansky relates frankly how some Jewish elites cooperated with the Nazis, but it did them no good.  After the war, escape to Israel was for many worse than staying in Europe since Israel had no economy.  Being a Jew in Germany had more opportunites than a Jew in Israel.  This is of particular interest to me: for all the vaunted Jewish entrepreneurialism, how come Israel could not survive without massive financial intervention of the communist states (it is undebatable that Israel was a socialist state, certainly at the start.)  Is it simply impossible to have a productive economy under socialism?  Would Israel have thrived if it had free markets, something it does not have to this day?

For those who wish to believe all Jews are alike, this book shows a distressing range of thoughts and actions by Jews.  First there is the argument as to who is a Jew.  Is Jewry a race, a nation, a culture?  All of the above?  Next, is assimilation a good idea, or the maintenance of  Jewish identity?  If so, what is the Jewish identity? From this uncertain foundation, there is a dizzying array of ideas, actions and even outright antipathy, such as Ashkenazim vs Sephardim.

Although Kurlansky is a Jew himself, he excels at not letting his personal views get in the way of his storytellers.  A Jewish informant for the Stasi, who explains she was just building a socialist paradise in East Germany, gets as fair a shake as the Jew who escaped a concentration camp and went on to fight the nazis.  Just the facts in this book.  Kurlansky is even fair to politicians who have a tin ear to Jewish sensibilities, such as some French polticians.  

There may be something unique about Jewish experience, and it is not about Jewish experience per se, but that is about non-Jew reporting thereof. Much is made of gas ovens in concentration camps, but apparently disease was the big killer.  This is extremely important information, if true.  Another Jewish scholar was looking at the number of six million dead, and comes up with a number of four million, with two million escaped East.  The Soviet Union set up a Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934.  It still exists... how come we haven’t heard anything on this?  It leaves it up to Jews to write about Jews, but why?  Good scholarship is not something peculiar to Jews.  The fact is especially in academia, people are afraid to touch the topic.

The stories that Kurlansky tells, within the narrow bounds of the time and location of his subject,  about Jews is so very true about any people at any time.  The range of personalities, the ideas, the options, the actions, the motivations.

Something Kurlansky alludes to in this history like Speilberg in Schindler’s List, is Jews sell Jews down the river.  Perhaps this topic is simply too clear to Jews to bear stating, given that in their bible Cain kills Abel and Joseph’s brothers actually do sell Joseph down the river.  Perhaps it is too painful, and for a people feeling beset, an obvious lack of unity is too dangerous a notion to allow abroad.  When your enemy thinks you are all alike, it is dangerous to let them know that divisions run deep in your ranks.  But it seems it is exactly awareness of Jewish divisions that Nazis used so effectively.

Yet people selling their own down the river is nothing new.  Japanese sell Japanses down the river, American Americans, Congolese Congolese, Argentinians Argentines, Romans Romans... there is no story to tell in history unless someone sells someone down the river.  Jesus and Judas.

Kurlansky is adept enough to flesh out what differences there are, and when people kill over tennis shoes, I suppose these differences can have lethal consequences.  So Carmelite nuns put up a convent at Oswiecim, and American Jews (fascinating politics this story) object.    American Jews want this killing place left forever a desolate reminder.  Christians build a convent on the grounds.  Sort of a ground zero mosque story, circa 1995.  Yes, Jews tend toward “l’chaim,” and Christians tend towards “pray for me.” The difference may be religious views, but the fight is politics.

I do recognize the “the Jews” are a favorite topic of wacko-americans, indeed wackos worldwide, and much junk and libel is written about them. But why cede any ground to them?  We’ll be better off when reticence on certain topics is relieved.  

In the meantime, read this book, it is great storytelling, fascinating history.

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