vdare--2020-09-30--Sailer Review Of Isabel Wilkerson's CASTE

Earlier , from Steve Sailer on Rwanda : East Africa 's Tall Vs. Average War My new Taki ’ s Magazine column is a book review of the bestseller Caste , which argues that , because we all know that Race Does Not Exist , instead of talking about the black race and the white race we should refer to the subordinate caste and the dominant caste .
The critically lauded Caste by Isabel Wilkerson asks : What if success correlated not with skin color but with height ?
Doesn ’ t that sound absurd ?
But skin color is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enjoys caste privilege .
Actually , there is a country where the dominant caste is the same color as the subordinate caste , but the ruling class is taller .
For example , here are two of the president ’ s children with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg : Read the whole thing there .
Granted , Bloomberg is not very tall .
Michelle Obama is tall , however , and yet : Still , the dominant caste in this country that was much in the news in 1994 is so extraordinarily tall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who lists her height as 6 ’ 4″ or 6 ’ 5″ , was able to recently find a rich husband , mentioned in the Panama Papers , who is considerably taller than her : It ’ s almost as if race is less about arbitrary metrics like pigment or height and more about who is related to whom .

Earlier, from Steve Sailer on Rwanda: East Africa's Tall Vs. Average War
My new Taki’s Magazine column is a book review of the bestseller Caste, which argues that, because we all know that Race Does Not Exist, instead of talking about the black race and the white race we should refer to the subordinate caste and the dominant caste.
The critically lauded Caste by Isabel Wilkerson asks: What if success correlated not with skin color but with height? Doesn’t that sound absurd? But skin color is just as arbitrary a measure for who enjoys caste privilege.
Actually, there is a country where the dominant caste is the same color as the subordinate caste, but the ruling class is taller. For example, here are two of the president’s children with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg:
Read the whole thing there.
Granted, Bloomberg is not very tall. Michelle Obama is tall, however, and yet:
Still, the dominant caste in this country that was much in the news in 1994 is so extraordinarily tall that the president’s daughter, who lists her height as 6’4″ or 6’5″, was able to recently find a rich husband, mentioned in the Panama Papers, who is considerably taller than her:
It’s almost as if race is less about arbitrary metrics like pigment or height and more about who is related to whom.


vdare--2020-10-02--FBI: the Murder Offender Ratio for Blacks to Nonblacks Is Greater Than the Ratio for Males to Female

FBI: the Murder Offender Ratio for Blacks to Nonblacks Is Greater Than the Ratio for Males to Females

Earlier : FBI : Blacks Made Up 55.9 % of Known Murder Offenders in 2019 According to recently released FBI @ @ @ @ @ here is an extraordinary statistic : although males were an unsurprising 7.6 times as likely @ @ @ @ @ females , blacks were 8.2 times as likely to be murder offenders as nonblacks :

Earlier: FBI: Blacks Made Up 55.9% of Known Murder Offenders in 2019
According to recently released FBI crime data for 2019, here is an extraordinary statistic: although males were an unsurprising 7.6 times as likely to be murder offenders as females, blacks were 8.2 times as likely to be murder offenders as nonblacks:
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-10-02--Will Trump Derangement Syndrome Outlast Trump?

Imagine what it will be like to never have to think about Trump again If you are like me and you watched Tuesday ’ s debate with a voice in your head screaming make it stop , take heart : We have the power to do just that .
We can evict President Trump from the territory he has forcibly seized in our minds .
We can — we must — vote him out of our thoughts .
We can remove this awful man from our collective headspace , which he has so thoroughly befouled .
We can reclaim our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 0f common humanity .
We can return to a time when it was possible to go hours or even entire days without once thinking about what our president might be saying or doing .
We can exhale .
… Think of all the time and energy we all must presently devote to the outbursts driven by Trump ’ s bottomless appetite for attention .
Imagine having that psychic burden lifted .
… Imagine what we could do with the brainpower that is now sucked into Trump ’ s massive black hole of an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ systemic racism be able to start without the president questioning whether racism even exists , or ever existed , in the faux-America of his limited imagination ?
… Doing so is exhausting , Sisyphean , psychic labor that drains the soul .
… A vote for Biden is more than a vote for sane governance .
It is a vote for American sanity , period .

From a Washington Post opinion columnist:
Imagine what it will be like to never have to think about Trump again
Opinion by Eugene Robinson, Columnist
Oct. 1, 2020 at 12:34 p.m. PDT
If you are like me and you watched Tuesday’s debate with a voice in your head screaming make it stop, take heart: We have the power to do just that. We can evict President Trump from the territory he has forcibly seized in our minds. We can — we must — vote him out of our thoughts.
We can remove this awful man from our collective headspace, which he has so thoroughly befouled. We can reclaim our serenity, our equilibrium, our sense of common humanity. We can return to a time when it was possible to go hours or even entire days without once thinking about what our president might be saying or doing. We can exhale. …
Think of all the time and energy we all must presently devote to the outbursts driven by Trump’s bottomless appetite for attention. Imagine having that psychic burden lifted. …
Imagine what we could do with the brainpower that is now sucked into Trump’s massive black hole of an ego. …Where might the conversation about systemic racism be able to start without the president questioning whether racism even exists, or ever existed, in the faux-America of his limited imagination?
… Doing so is exhausting, Sisyphean, psychic labor that drains the soul. …
A vote for Biden is more than a vote for sane governance. It is a vote for American sanity, period.


vdare--2020-10-02--Don't Mention the Race of Your Victimizers

Monica Lewinsky says her mental health was bad for years after being almost carjacked in 2011 by armed men ( @ @ @ @ @ mental toll from predatory crime can be severe , but you aren ’ t really @ @ @ @ @ victimization if you are white and the criminals weren ’ t .
For example , @ @ @ @ @ more each year about the Emmett Till case of 1955 than of all the black-on-white @ @ @ @ @ had such a disastrous effect on America ’ s cities .
In 2020 , nobody @ @ @ @ @ person talk about being victimized by a black , even if talking would be helpful @ @ @ @ @ sanity .

Monica Lewinsky says her mental health was bad for years after being almost carjacked in 2011 by armed men (race unspecified).
Monica Lewinsky reveals a group of armed men tried to carjack her in 2011 https://t.co/pjF5KmDrgy — Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) October 2, 2020
The mental toll from predatory crime can be severe, but you aren’t really supposed to bring up your victimization if you are white and the criminals weren’t.
For example, the newspapers probably remind us more each year about the Emmett Till case of 1955 than of all the black-on-white crime in subsequent decades that had such a disastrous effect on America’s cities. In 2020, nobody wants to hear a white person talk about being victimized by a black, even if talking would be helpful to the victim’s sanity.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-10-02--Caste and Social Distancing

Caste and Social Distancing

Following up my review in Taki ’ s Magazine of the bestseller Caste by Isabel Wilkerson , I ’ m reminded that many of the practices of the Hindu caste system sound like our current Social Distancing festishes gone nuts .
From Wikipedia ’ s article on caste in Kerala in southwestern India : The entire Malabar region had strict pollution rules that were considered by the observers to be the most extreme in all of India .
Lower caste people could only use separate paths and their houses were in places where they could not be seen .
Lower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not by mere touch but also coming within certain feet from them .
… The lower castes were known as tintal jati , i.e .
castes which pollutes at a distance .
… The lower castes , particularly the Pulayars were not even allowed to breathe the same air with the other castes or use a public pathway .
A lower caste person could pollute a higher caste person by merely coming within certain distance from him or in extreme cases the pollution is transmitted even by simply seeing a lower caste person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and he sees an approaching Nair or a Brahmin , he must make a loud howling sound to warn the upper castes from getting near until he went away or climbed up a tree .
If a Nair meets a Pulayar in the highway by accident , he cuts him down like a others cut an unpleasant animal .
The Nair ’ s right to kill any Pulayar imminently he met on the pathway is confirmed by almost all visitors to Kerala .
… Pollution rules were also observed in touching and sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pollution by approaching a Muslim , Christian or a Jew is not observed but their touch is considered polluting .
The custom for removing pollution is a bath by complete immersion in water .
[ 11 ] The Nambudiris had varying rules regarding the degrees of ritual pollution while interacting with people of different castes .
In return , most castes practised the principles of untouchability in their relationship with the other regional castes .
Untouchability in Kerala is not restricted to Hindus , and George Mathew says that , “ Technically , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but in practice a system of inclusion and exclusion was developed … ” .
Among Christians , the established Syrian Christians also practised the rules of untouchability .
… The rules of untouchability were severe to begin with , and they were very strictly enforced among Hindu communities by the time of the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century .
[ 4 ] Robin Jeffrey , who is a professor specialising in the modern history and politics of India , quotes the wife of a Christian missionary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … a Nair can approach but not touch a Namboodiri Brahmin : a Chovan [ Ezhava ] must remain thirty-six paces off , and a Pulayan slave ninety-six steps distant .
A Chovan must remain twelve steps away from a Nair , and a Pulayan sixty-six steps off , and a Parayan some distance farther still … Pulayans and Parayars , who are the lowest of all , can approach but not touch , much less may they eat with each other .

Following up my review in Taki’s Magazine of the bestseller Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, I’m reminded that many of the practices of the Hindu caste system sound like our current Social Distancing festishes gone nuts. From Wikipedia’s article on caste in Kerala in southwestern India:
The entire Malabar region had strict pollution rules that were considered by the observers to be the most extreme in all of India. Lower caste people could only use separate paths and their houses were in places where they could not be seen. Lower castes can pollute a Brahmin or Nair not by mere touch but also coming within certain feet from them. … The lower castes were known as tintal jati, i.e. castes which pollutes at a distance. …
The lower castes, particularly the Pulayars were not even allowed to breathe the same air with the other castes or use a public pathway. A lower caste person could pollute a higher caste person by merely coming within certain distance from him or in extreme cases the pollution is transmitted even by simply seeing a lower caste person. If by accident he was there and he sees an approaching Nair or a Brahmin, he must make a loud howling sound to warn the upper castes from getting near until he went away or climbed up a tree. If a Nair meets a Pulayar in the highway by accident, he cuts him down like a others cut an unpleasant animal. The Nair’s right to kill any Pulayar imminently he met on the pathway is confirmed by almost all visitors to Kerala.
… Pollution rules were also observed in touching and sexual intercourse with the lower castes. … Pollution by approaching a Muslim, Christian or a Jew is not observed but their touch is considered polluting. The custom for removing pollution is a bath by complete immersion in water.[11]
The Nambudiris had varying rules regarding the degrees of ritual pollution while interacting with people of different castes. In return, most castes practised the principles of untouchability in their relationship with the other regional castes. Untouchability in Kerala is not restricted to Hindus, and George Mathew says that, “Technically, the Christians were outside the caste hierarchy, but in practice a system of inclusion and exclusion was developed …”. Among Christians, the established Syrian Christians also practised the rules of untouchability. …
The rules of untouchability were severe to begin with, and they were very strictly enforced among Hindu communities by the time of the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century.[4] Robin Jeffrey, who is a professor specialising in the modern history and politics of India, quotes the wife of a Christian missionary, who wrote in 1860 that:
… a Nair can approach but not touch a Namboodiri Brahmin: a Chovan [Ezhava] must remain thirty-six paces off, and a Pulayan slave ninety-six steps distant. A Chovan must remain twelve steps away from a Nair, and a Pulayan sixty-six steps off, and a Parayan some distance farther still … Pulayans and Parayars, who are the lowest of all, can approach but not touch, much less may they eat with each other.


vdare--2020-10-02--Very Few Deaths These Days From Covid, In Case You're Worried About Trump

Earlier : Drudge , Bloomberg , Scare With 200K Covid Milestone , But Ignore The Fact That The Curve HAS @ @ @ @ @ frequently points out that if you look at the logarithmic scale of the Infection2020.com site @ @ @ @ @ slower growth than you 'd expect from media coverage—the curve has flattened .
In this @ @ @ @ @ zero .
This is not actually zero , some people are dying , but it @ @ @ @ @ are now less than half of one percent , so it rounds to zero .
@ @ @ @ @ healthy Chief Executive being cared for at US Navy Hospital is pretty good .
Biden @ @ @ @ @ , could be killed by the common cold at this point .
They 've made @ @ @ @ @ Biden has tested negative for Coronavirus , but after all , Trump is the guy @ @ @ @ @ dementia .

Earlier: Drudge, Bloomberg, Scare With 200K Covid Milestone, But Ignore The Fact That The Curve HAS Flattened
VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow frequently points out that if you look at the logarithmic scale of the Infection2020.com site, it shows a much slower growth than you'd expect from media coverage—the curve has flattened.
In this case the deaths column shows basically zero. This is not actually zero, some people are dying, but it means that deaths from coronavirus are now less than half of one percent, so it rounds to zero.
So the prognosis for a healthy Chief Executive being cared for at U.S. Navy Hospital is pretty good. Biden, on the other hand, could be killed by the common cold at this point. They've made a point of announcing that Biden has tested negative for Coronavirus, but after all, Trump is the guy who's tested negative for dementia.


vdare--2020-10-02--English Earnestness vs. Microaggressiveness

More English pairs who represent English earnestness vs. English microaggressiveness : Here ’ s a greatest hits collection of Prince @ @ @ @ @ such as : “ If it has four legs and it is not a chair @ @ @ @ @ two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and @ @ @ @ @ , the Cantonese will eat it .
”

More English pairs who represent English earnestness vs. English microaggressiveness:
Here’s a greatest hits collection of Prince Philip’s mesoaggressions, such as:
“If it has four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”


vdare--2020-10-02--Richard Lynn's MEMOIRS OF A DISSIDENT PSYCHOLOGIST: Life Story Of A Genuine Scientist

Earlier : Richard Lynn Stripped Of Emeritus Status For Saying The Same Things That Made Him A Professor In The First Place and “ He Kept The Faith ” —A Conversation With Richard Lynn Everyone with an interest in why our world is the way it is owes a debt of gratitude to Richard Lynn , the indefatigable psychometrician best known for his studies of how human intelligence various by country , race , and sex , as well as over time .
He has provided ironclad documentation of the differences themselves , theorized about their evolutionary origins , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Finnish colleague Tatu Vanhanen ) demonstrated their explanatory value in relation to economics and politics .
Lynn has now written an account of his life , Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist .
Lynn ’ s work has made him many enemies , and as science seems to be moving into a new Dark Age , things seem to be getting worse .
Two years ago , long after Lynn ’ s retirement he was formally stripped of his ( purely honorific ) emeritus status at the University of Ulster where he had created @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for twenty-three years .
This was in response to a students ’ union resolution accusing Lynn of advocating “ racist and sexist ” views .
Of course , Lynn never simply “ advocated views , ” but rather published findings : a distinction apparently lost on both students and university authorities .
He writes of a lifelong attraction to “ big ideas.
” In his youth , this meant joining the Young Communist League .
There he learned that capitalist countries needed two parties , one to represent the capitalists and one the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overcome class conflict , only required one .
Within about a year , he began developing doubts about Communism , but he remained a socialist for some time .
While Lynn was still a schoolboy , his father—a scientist and world expert on the genetics of cotton—gave him Wilfred Trotter 's Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War , a study of the human tendency to identify with groups , and suggested he consider studying psychology .
The young Lynn had been attracted to history , but eventually he became dissatisfied with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to find the patterns that can be found in the sciences.
” He was drawn to psychology as a way of getting at the ultimate wellsprings of such human behavior as warfare .
During a stint of Army service before he went to Cambridge , Lynn also found time to read Francis Galton ’ s Hereditary Genius ( 1869 ) .
Galton believed , and subsequent research has verified , that intelligence is a single entity and largely hereditary .
He observed that in advanced civilizations the more intelligent individuals tend to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the intelligence of the population declines .
Lynn writes : “ I found all this very interesting and it confirmed my intention to take psychology when I went up to Cambridge.
” He was to be disappointed .
The intellectual heirs of Galton at this time were known as the “ London School ” of experimental psychology , led by Sir Cyril Burt and Hans Eysenck , but the entire psychology faculty at King ’ s College , Cambridge , where Lynn studied , detested them : Lynn ’ s mentors favored environmental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him that the low IQ of blacks in the US was attributable to discrimination .
Lynn ’ s introduction to hereditarianism came when his father introduced him to the botanist and geneticist Reginald R. Gates , who said the lower IQ of blacks was due to genetics : Adam Smith , whom Lynn read as a Cambridge undergrad , proved too much for his socialist convictions .
Nor did British workers appeared more satisfied under Attlee ’ s Labour government than they had been before .
And , Lynn writes , In 1959 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voted for the governing Conservative Party because they In the 1960s , Lynn joined the British Eugenics Society in an effort to find independent-minded people like himself , but this proved a disappointment .
By this time , the Society was running scared .
Within a few years they removed the word “ eugenics ” from their name and that of their journal , and took to limiting their focus to such bland subject matter as contraception in Third World countries .
Between 1967 and 1972 , Lynn was employed by Ireland ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ESRI ) .
The purpose of this body Lynn independently confirmed this , but with uncharacteristic caution decided not to publish on the subject at that point .
It was also at ESRI that he met the son of John C. Raven , developer of one of the world ’ s most widely used intelligence tests , Raven ’ s Progressive Matrices : These were the seeds from which Lynn ’ s later book IQ and the Wealth of Nations ( 2002 ) would grow .
https : //images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51B8T5T0DWL._SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_FMwebp_.jpgLynn went on to establish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Ulster and taught there for twenty-three years .
In 1991 he published a theory that the Ice Age had increased European and Northeast Asian IQ by applying selective pressure for intelligence .
In response , Emphasis added .
The current crisis in the West ’ s universities has been thirty years in the making .
A slightly less uncivilized incident involved Lynn ’ s attendance at an academic conference where he was outnumbered by colleagues who favored environmental explanations of human behavior .
One of these asked him whether he felt he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once pointed to his demonstration that Northeast Asians had higher average IQs than Europeans as one of his three most significant scientific achievements .
( The other two items were 1 ) discovering that the black African IQ was about 70 rather than similar to the Black American average of 85 ; and 2 ) his compilation of studies on race and IQ around the world along with the `` cold winters '' theory of their origin . )
[ Race , Dysgenics , And The Survival Of The West , The Occidental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disinterested approach to knowledge appears unintelligible to Lynn ’ s critics , who continue to accuse him of “ trying to prove ” the superiority of his own race .
Fanatical egalitarians have not been the only force working against Lynn ’ s ideas .
Another challenge has been the intellectual inertia and small-mindedness of most academics .
In 1998 , Lynn delivered a paper on dysgenic fertility .
He recalls : This academic mentality goes far to explain such anomalies as Hans Eysenck ’ s failure to be elected a fellow of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jensen ’ s never receiving “ any of the many medals that the American Psychological Association hands out each year to nonentities.
” Lynn once asked Jensen about his willingness to dissent from popular orthodoxies : Lynn reports a similar indifference in his own youth as to whether his school won or lost athletic matches .
He contrasts this with the behavior he observed in many graduates of English “ public ” ( i.e .
elite private ) schools , where boys were beaten for even trivial breaches of the rules : Of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lynn to point this out .
But , as he goes on , Our universities are increasingly authoritarian institutions designed for conformists .
It is hard to see that a young Richard Lynn would succeed in academe today .
In this age of academic corruption and cowardice , it is a joy to read the life story of a genuine scientist .
Don ’ t miss Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist .
Martin Witkerk [ Email him ] is an independent philosopher .

Earlier: Richard Lynn Stripped Of Emeritus Status For Saying The Same Things That Made Him A Professor In The First Place and “He Kept The Faith”—A Conversation With Richard Lynn
Everyone with an interest in why our world is the way it is owes a debt of gratitude to Richard Lynn, the indefatigable psychometrician best known for his studies of how human intelligence varies by country, race, and sex, as well as over time. He has provided ironclad documentation of the differences themselves, theorized about their evolutionary origins, and (with some help from his late Finnish colleague Tatu Vanhanen) demonstrated their explanatory value in relation to economics and politics. Lynn has now written an account of his life, Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist.
Lynn’s work has made him many enemies, and as science seems to be moving into a new Dark Age, things seem to be getting worse. Two years ago, long after Lynn’s retirement he was formally stripped of his (purely honorific) emeritus status at the University of Ulster, where he had created a psychology department from scratch and taught for twenty-three years. This was in response to a students’ union resolution accusing Lynn of advocating “racist and sexist” views. Of course, Lynn never simply “advocated views,” but rather published findings: a distinction apparently lost on both students and university authorities.
He writes of a lifelong attraction to “big ideas.” In his youth, this meant joining the Young Communist League. There he learned that capitalist countries needed two parties, one to represent the capitalists and one the workers—but that the Soviet Union, having overcome class conflict, only required one. Within about a year, he began developing doubts about Communism, but he remained a socialist for some time.
While Lynn was still a schoolboy, his father—a scientist and world expert on the genetics of cotton—gave him Wilfred Trotter's Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, a study of the human tendency to identify with groups, and suggested he consider studying psychology. The young Lynn had been attracted to history, but eventually he became dissatisfied with the discipline “because it was impossible to find the patterns that can be found in the sciences.” He was drawn to psychology as a way of getting at the ultimate wellsprings of such human behavior as warfare.
During a stint of Army service before he went to Cambridge, Lynn also found time to read Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius (1869). Galton believed, and subsequent research has verified, that intelligence is a single entity and largely hereditary. He observed that in advanced civilizations the more intelligent individuals tend to have fewer children, with the result that the intelligence of the population declines. Lynn writes: “I found all this very interesting and it confirmed my intention to take psychology when I went up to Cambridge.”
He was to be disappointed. The intellectual heirs of Galton at this time were known as the “London School” of experimental psychology, led by Sir Cyril Burt and Hans Eysenck, but the entire psychology faculty at King’s College, Cambridge, where Lynn studied, detested them:
They never tired of deriding this group. My father told me that Sir Cyril Burt was nominated for fellowship of the Royal Society from time to time, but Bartlett [chairman of the King’s College Psychology Department] invariably blackballed him.
Lynn’s mentors favored environmental explanations, and their intelligence specialist told him that the low IQ of blacks in the US was attributable to discrimination.
Lynn’s introduction to hereditarianism came when his father introduced him to the botanist and geneticist Reginald R. Gates, who said the lower IQ of blacks was due to genetics:
This was the first time I had heard this view and as Gates was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a distinguished geneticist I took it seriously. Gates also asked me my opinion about eugenics and I told him I had read the studies by Burt and Cattell showing that intelligence was declining and I agreed with Cattell that eugenic measures were needed to correct this. He told me that he took the same view.
Adam Smith, whom Lynn read as a Cambridge undergrad, proved too much for his socialist convictions. Nor did British workers appeared more satisfied under Attlee’s Labour government than they had been before. And, Lynn writes,
I was also concerned about the Commonwealth Citizens Act of 1948 which gave all Commonwealth citizens the right to come and live in Britain. As there were about a billion of these I doubted whether this was sensible. When the wisdom of this was questioned in the House of Commons by a conservative, a Labour minister assured him that very few would actually come. A week or two after the act was passed the first immigrants from Jamaica arrived on the Empire Windrush.
In 1959, for the first time, Lynn voted for the governing Conservative Party because they
…pledged to restrict the immigration from our colonies. I thought this was sensible because I believed it could be anticipated from Herbert Spencer's in-group-amity out-group enmity principle, rebranded as ethnocentrism by William Sumner in his 1906 book Folkways, that there would be tension and conflict between the immigrants and the indigenous population.
In the 1960s, Lynn joined the British Eugenics Society in an effort to find independent-minded people like himself, but this proved a disappointment. By this time, the Society was running scared. Within a few years they removed the word “eugenics” from their name and that of their journal, and took to limiting their focus to such bland subject matter as contraception in Third World countries.
Between 1967 and 1972, Lynn was employed by Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). The purpose of this body
…was to carry out research on the economic and social problems of Ireland. Foremost among these was that Ireland was quite economically backward compared with Britain, and I researched the literature to see what contribution I could make. It was not long before I discovered a study that reported that the IQ of Irish 12-year-olds was 90 compared with 100 in Britain.
Lynn independently confirmed this, but with uncharacteristic caution decided not to publish on the subject at that point.
It was also at ESRI that he met the son of John C. Raven, developer of one of the world’s most widely used intelligence tests, Raven’s Progressive Matrices:
Raven junior had a large collection of results from a number of countries but it apparently never occurred to him to calculate national IQs from these. He made these available to me and later I used many of them to calculate IQs for a number of countries and show that these are a major determinant of national differences in per capita incomes.
These were the seeds from which Lynn’s later book IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) would grow.
Lynn went on to establish a new Psychology Department at the University of Ulster and taught there for twenty-three years. In 1991 he published a theory that the Ice Age had increased European and Northeast Asian IQ by applying selective pressure for intelligence. In response,
two coaches of people from the Anti-Nazi League came to the university and disrupted my lecture and put up posters demanding “Sack racist Lynn”. The university administrators did not call the police or make any attempt to stop them.
Emphasis added. The current crisis in the West’s universities has been thirty years in the making.
A slightly less uncivilized incident involved Lynn’s attendance at an academic conference where he was outnumbered by colleagues who favored environmental explanations of human behavior. One of these asked him whether he felt he was among enemies:
I said I didn’t because I have never thought of these environmentalists as enemies and it is difficult for me to understand that this is how many of them regard me and others who regard genetic factors as important. Work on race differences excites a huge hostile emotional reaction in many people. This has always been difficult for me to understand, since for me race differences are simply a matter of scientific interest and I have never felt any emotion about the question.
Indeed, Lynn once pointed to his demonstration that Northeast Asians had higher average IQs than Europeans as one of his three most significant scientific achievements. (The other two items were 1) discovering that the black African IQ was about 70 rather than similar to the Black American average of 85; and 2) his compilation of studies on race and IQ around the world along with the "cold winters" theory of their origin.) [Race, Dysgenics, And The Survival Of The West, The Occidental Quarterly, Fall 2007] Yet this disinterested approach to knowledge appears unintelligible to Lynn’s critics, who continue to accuse him of “trying to prove” the superiority of his own race.
Fanatical egalitarians have not been the only force working against Lynn’s ideas. Another challenge has been the intellectual inertia and small-mindedness of most academics. In 1998, Lynn delivered a paper on dysgenic fertility. He recalls:
None of the audience expressed any interest. I had expected someone would say: “You mean the national intelligence is deteriorating genetically? Wow! This sounds really serious. What could be done about this?” But I did not get a single question. My paper was greeted with total indifference. This confirmed my previous experience that one of the strange things about psychology is that there are a few really interesting and important questions but hardly anyone is interested in them. I have always found that at psychology conferences virtually all the papers are concerned with trivia.
This academic mentality goes far to explain such anomalies as Hans Eysenck’s failure to be elected a fellow of the British Psychological Society, or Arthur Jensen’s never receiving “any of the many medals that the American Psychological Association hands out each year to nonentities.”
Lynn once asked Jensen about his willingness to dissent from popular orthodoxies:
He replied that he thought the explanation was that he didn’t mind being disliked by a lot of people. Most people, he said, have a dread of being disliked, but this was not something that bothered him. On another occasion, he told me that he had never had any interest in team sports. This is likely attributable to Jensen’s lack of identification with groups and is a further expression of his independence of mind.
Lynn reports a similar indifference in his own youth as to whether his school won or lost athletic matches. He contrasts this with the behavior he observed in many graduates of English “public” (i.e. ,elite private) schools, where boys were beaten for even trivial breaches of the rules:
The objective was to instill a respect for authority and fear of stepping out of line. This was frequently effective and perhaps a good discipline for those who would later enter the armed services, civil service or the church and generally stood them in good stead in their subsequent careers.
Of course, it is notably fair of Lynn to point this out. But, as he goes on,
It was not so good for the few who became academics who have to be breakers of the conventional consensus if they are to do good original work. I have noticed that several of those who attended one of these public schools retained a lifelong fear of breaking the conventional consensus and have a strong aversion to others who do so.
Our universities are increasingly authoritarian institutions designed for conformists. It is hard to see that a young Richard Lynn would succeed in academe today.
In this age of academic corruption and cowardice, it is a joy to read the life story of a genuine scientist. Don’t miss Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist.
Martin Witkerk [Email him] is an independent philosopher.


vdare--2020-10-02--"Migrant Caravan" Back Again, Breaks Into Guatemala, Will Probably Be Stopped By Mexico Before Getti

"Migrant Caravan" Back Again, Breaks Into Guatemala, Will Probably Be Stopped By Mexico Before Getting To US

Earlier : Jorge Ramos Berserk Over AMLO Cooperating with Trump to Block Central American Caravan at Mexico 's Southern Border @ @ @ @ @ '' is back , starting in Honduras and breaking into Guatemala : Trump has , @ @ @ @ @ , convinced the President of Mexico to not give illegal aliens free passage , and @ @ @ @ @ border , which is why the Guardian 's healdine is Thousands of migrants cross into @ @ @ @ @ reaching US The caravan from Honduras is the biggest since the pandemic hit Central America @ @ @ @ @ rise in unemployment and poverty , Guardian , October 1 , 2020 There 's always @ @ @ @ @ I 'm sure it 's worse with no tourism , et cetera .
That does @ @ @ @ @ Honduran criminals breaking into one sovereign country ( Guatemala ) in order to get to @ @ @ @ @ Mexico ) in order to invade a third sovereign country , the United States of @ @

Earlier: Jorge Ramos Berserk Over AMLO Cooperating with Trump to Block Central American Caravan at Mexico's Southern Border
The famous "migrant caravan" is back, starting in Honduras and breaking into Guatemala:
Migrant caravan heading towards the U.S. breaks through a police barricade and enters Guatemala illegally.pic.twitter.com/P7MV3U5zHC — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 2, 2020
Trump has, by tariff threats and jawboning, convinced the President of Mexico to not give illegal aliens free passage, and coronovirus-based lockdown at the US border, which is why The Guardian's headline is
Thousands of migrants cross into Guatemala with slim hopes of reaching US The caravan from Honduras is the biggest since the pandemic hit Central America in March, triggering a rise in unemployment and poverty, Guardian, October 1, 2020
Another headline says
Honduras caravan heads towards US to escape pandemic-induced poverty Story by
There's always poverty in Honduras, although I'm sure it's worse with no tourism, et cetera. That doesn't justify a gang of Honduran criminals breaking into one sovereign country (Guatemala) in order to get to a second sovereign country (Mexico) in order to invade a third sovereign country, the United States of America.


vdare--2020-10-02--Steve Sailer Right Again! Althea Bernstein Blood Libel Rejected By Police, Feds: "No Evidence Biraci

Steve Sailer Right Again! Althea Bernstein Blood Libel Rejected By Police, Feds: "No Evidence Biracial Madison Woman Was Attacked"

Earlier : “ Black Lives Matter ” Is A BLOOD LIBEL Against White America .
Here ’ s Why The Althea Bernstein case has been debunked by both local and Federal investigators .
Via Instapundit , whose comment is `` THE DEMAND FOR RACIAL HATE CRIMES EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY '' this story from the local press : “ There had been questions about the veracity of the woman ’ s report because , unlike in other crimes that occur Downtown , police never released video stills of the incident or possible suspects in attempt to find the perpetrators .
Very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are hidden from dozens of city-owned cameras and other private surveillance cameras police have access to.
” Police , federal law enforcement find no evidence biracial Madison woman was attacked , by Chris Rickert , Wisconsin State Journal , October 2 , 2020 This is an important point .
Althea Bernstein knows she 's biracial , she thinks about it all the time , she gave speeches about it rallies , but as with Meghan Markle and many other pale `` black '' people , you ca n't tell by looking at her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attack her ?
Below , all our coverage of the Althea Bernstein Hate Hoax/Blood Libel .
The earliest is Steve Sailer 's June 26 , 2020 piece asking Will the MSM Go All in on the Althea Bernstein Hate Crime Story Out of Madison ?
Ann Coulter took notice of it on Bastille Day as the kind of false rumor that starts riots .
And royalty , unbelievably , got involved .
Steve Sailer suggested that she may have been with people who committed a BLM inspired firebombing , and got caught in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also suggests that , and notes the Bernstein family is saying nothing : Bernstein 's family said in a statement that it appreciated `` the detailed investigative efforts by all involved in this case , '' asked for privacy and said it would not be granting interviews .
`` Althea 's injuries are healing and the support of our community has been invaluable in that regard , '' they said .
• At Least Meghan Markle Will Have Althea Bernstein 's Vote , by Steve Sailer , 09/26/2020 • Which NFL Players Will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Helmets ?
, by Steve Sailer , 09/13/2020 • Althea Bernstein Speaks : Does My Skin Color Offend You ?
Does My Success Scare You ?
, by Steve Sailer , 08/27/2020 • Protesters Demand Justice for Althea Bernstein ( Does She WANT Justice ? )
, by Steve Sailer , 08/27/2020 • Late-Breaking Althea Bernstein News : No Leads On Alleged Hate Crime , by Steve Sailer , 08/13/2020 • Ann Coulter : Bastille Day : The Beginning Of Liberal Madness , by Ann Coulter , 07/15/2020 • 12 Days and Counting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Atrocity , by Steve Sailer , 07/06/2020 • Arrests Made in Lighter Fluid-Fueled Firebombing of Madison Jail , by Steve Sailer , 07/02/2020 • Althea Bernstein Family 's Update— '' Our Family Is Still Asking For Privacy At This Time '' , by Steve Sailer , 07/02/2020 • Sailer In TakiMag On Althea Bernstein : Putting Out the Fire with Lighter Fluid , by Steve Sailer , 07/01/2020 • Althea Bernstein , Jussie Smollett , and Tawana Brawley : Is This A Hate Hoax Or Firebomb Coverup ?
, by Steve Sailer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sussex to Comfort Purported Hate Crime Victim Althea Bernstein , by Steve Sailer , 06/27/2020 • Will the MSM Go All in on the Althea Bernstein Hate Crime Story Out of Madison ?
, by Steve Sailer , 06/26/2020

Earlier: “Black Lives Matter” Is A BLOOD LIBEL Against White America. Here’s Why
The Althea Bernstein case has been debunked by both local and Federal investigators. Via Instapundit, whose comment is "THE DEMAND FOR RACIAL HATE CRIMES EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY" this story from the local press:
“There had been questions about the veracity of the woman’s report because, unlike in other crimes that occur Downtown, police never released video stills of the incident or possible suspects in attempt to find the perpetrators. Very little of the public parts of Downtown are hidden from dozens of city-owned cameras and other private surveillance cameras police have access to.” Police, federal law enforcement find no evidence biracial Madison woman was attacked, by Chris Rickert, Wisconsin State Journal, October 2, 2020
Instapundit commented
Also, the woman, Althea Bernstein, looks about as black as Rachel Dolezal. Not saying that she isn’t really biracial, but she doesn’t seem like someone who’d be targeted by someone out to get a black person.
This is an important point. Althea Bernstein knows she's biracial, she thinks about it all the time, she gave speeches about it rallies, but as with Meghan Markle and many other pale "black" people, you can't tell by looking at her. How would a racist know to attack her?
Below, all our coverage of the Althea Bernstein Hate Hoax/Blood Libel. The earliest is Steve Sailer's June 26, 2020 piece asking Will the MSM Go All in on the Althea Bernstein Hate Crime Story Out of Madison? Ann Coulter took notice of it on Bastille Day as the kind of false rumor that starts riots. And royalty, unbelievably, got involved. Steve Sailer suggested that she may have been with people who committed a BLM inspired firebombing, and got caught in the backblast. The Wisconsin State Journal also suggests that, and notes the Bernstein family is saying nothing:


vdare--2020-10-02--USA Today Tries to Fact-Check Viral Meme on Black on White Crime, Inadvertently Proves the Meme Corr

USA Today Tries to Fact-Check Viral Meme on Black on White Crime, Inadvertently Proves the Meme Correct

Previously : Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018 Survey of Criminal Victimization Shows Blacks Committed 90 % of Interracial Violent Felonies Between Blacks and Whites and from 2015 : Jared Taylor : What Donald Trump Should Have Tweeted Yes , USA Today is now fact-checking memes detailing black on white crime , to try and downplay the reality of just how bad black on white crime is in America .
A viral meme purports to list homicide statistics by race in the United States , as follows : The page behind one viral version of the post , I Support Law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on its post .
USA TODAY has reached out to the page for comment .
Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide are similar , at around 80 % and 90 % Overall , most homicides in the United States are intraracial , and the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black killings are similar , both long term and in individual years .
Between 1980-2008 , the U.S. Department of Justice found that 84 % of white victims were killed by white offenders and 93 % of Black victims were killed by Black offenders .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Investigation reported that 81 % of white victims were killed by white offenders , and 89 % of Black victims were killed by Black offenders .
In 2017 , the FBI reported almost identical figures — 80 % of white victims were killed by white offenders , and 88 % of Black victims were killed by Black offenders .
Though the numbers differ year-to-year , the stark difference that the viral post attempts to portray between the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide — which it puts at 16 % and 97 % @ @ @ @ @ @ @ numbers tend to hover between 80 % and 90 % and remain within 10 percentage points of each other .
Rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide also within 8 points Likewise , the post attempts to portray a gulf in the rate of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide — which it lists at 81 % and 2 % , respectively .
Statistics from the FBI in 2018 and 2017 contradict that claim .
In 2018 , 16 % of white victims were killed by Black offenders , while 8 % of Black victims were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2017 , 16 % of white victims were killed by Black offenders , while 9 % of Black victims were killed by white offenders .
In both years , the numbers remained within eight percentage points , a much smaller gap than the 79 % alleged in the viral post .
Black on white crime isn ’ t as bad as white people believe it to be on social media , when they share viral memes , but as USA Today admits , it ’ s still pretty bad .
But white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that ’ s the real crime in the eyes of The USA Today .

Previously: Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018 Survey of Criminal Victimization Shows Blacks Committed 90% of Interracial Violent Felonies Between Blacks and Whites and from 2015: Jared Taylor: What Donald Trump Should Have Tweeted
Yes, USA Today is now fact-checking memes detailing black on white crime, to try and downplay the reality of just how bad black on white crime is in America.
The claim: There are significant race-based disparities in civilian homicide rates, but not in police homicide rates.
A viral meme purports to list homicide statistics by race in the United States, as follows: Whites killing Blacks — 2%
Police killing whites — 3%
Whites killing whites — 16%
Blacks killing whites — 81%
Police killing Blacks — 1%
Blacks killing Blacks — 97% The page behind one viral version of the post, I Support Law Enforcement Officers, had over 611 shares on its post. USA TODAY has reached out to the page for comment.
Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide are similar, at around 80% and 90% Overall, most homicides in the United States are intraracial, and the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black killings are similar, both long term and in individual years. Between 1980-2008, the U.S. Department of Justice found that 84% of white victims were killed by white offenders and 93% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders. In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that 81% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 89% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders. In 2017, the FBI reported almost identical figures — 80% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 88% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders. Though the numbers differ year-to-year, the stark difference that the viral post attempts to portray between the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide — which it puts at 16% and 97%, respectively — is inaccurate. Both numbers tend to hover between 80% and 90% and remain within 10 percentage points of each other. Rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide also within 8 points Likewise, the post attempts to portray a gulf in the rate of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide — which it lists at 81% and 2%, respectively. Statistics from the FBI in 2018 and 2017 contradict that claim. In 2018, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 8% of Black victims were killed by white offenders. Similarly, in 2017, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 9% of Black victims were killed by white offenders. In both years, the numbers remained within eight percentage points, a much smaller gap than the 79% alleged in the viral post.
Black on white crime isn’t as bad as white people believe it to be on social media, when they share viral memes, but as USA Today admits, it’s still pretty bad.
But white people noticing how bad it is… well, that’s the real crime in the eyes of The USA Today.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-10-02--Polar Bear Hunting Attack on Actor Rick Moranis

Rick Moranis , the 5′-5″ , 67-year-old mostly retired comedian in movies like Ghostbusters , Spaceballs , Honey I Shrunk @ @ @ @ @ victim of an unprovoked racist attack as he walked down the street today .
Moranis @ @ @ @ @ 1991 , slowed his acting career in the 1990s to spend more time with his @ @ @ @ @ sick of big budget movies .
But he recently signed to do a sequel of @ @ @ @ @ up a list of celebrities you wouldn ’ t mind seeing randomly punched in the @ @ @ @ @ most people would put Rick Moranis ’ s name very near the bottom .

Rick Moranis, the 5′-5″, 67-year-old mostly retired comedian in movies like Ghostbusters, Spaceballs, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, was the victim of an unprovoked racist attack as he walked down the street today.
Moranis, whose wife died in 1991, slowed his acting career in the 1990s to spend more time with his kids and because he was sick of big budget movies. But he recently signed to do a sequel of Shrunk.
If you made up a list of celebrities you wouldn’t mind seeing randomly punched in the face for racist reasons, most people would put Rick Moranis’s name very near the bottom.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-10-02--Surprise, Surprise: FBI Can't Find Any Evidence Althea Bernstein Was Racistly Set on Fire by Four Cl

Surprise, Surprise: FBI Can't Find Any Evidence Althea Bernstein Was Racistly Set on Fire by Four Classic Wisconsin Fraternity Boys

Earlier : Steve Sailer Right Again !
Althea Bernstein Libel Rejected By Police , Feds : `` No Evidence Biracial Madison Woman Was Attacked '' As I pointed out back on July 1 , Althea Bernstein ’ s hate hoax was one of the most obvious yet , but it roped in a lot of media and the stupider celebrities such as Princess Markle or whatever her name is .
From Wisconsin State-Journal : Madison police announced Friday they have not been able to corroborate allegations made by a biracial Monona woman that she was burned by four white men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was initially reported as a hate crime and garnered national and international attention .
Althea Bernstein , 18 , told police someone sprayed lighter fluid on her and set her on fire in the early morning hours of June 24 after one of the men yelled a racial epithet .
But on Friday , the police department said it was closing the case because “ after an exhaustive probe , detectives were unable to corroborate or locate evidence consistent with what was reported.
” The case was also investigated by the FBI and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department of Justice , and in its own statement Friday , the U.S. Attorney ’ s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin said that “ after reviewing all available evidence , authorities could not establish that the attack , as alleged by the complainant , had occurred.
” Bernstein ’ s family said in a statement that they appreciated “ the detailed investigative efforts by all involved in this case , ” asked for privacy and said they would not be granting interviews .
“ Althea ’ s injuries are healing and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invaluable in that regard , ” they said .
Bernstein was interviewed on “ Good Morning America ” two days after she reported the incident , and Meghan Markle and Prince Harry of the British royal family reached out her her as well .
Madison and Dane County officials had also condemned the alleged attack , with Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway calling it “ a horrifying and absolutely unacceptable crime that … may have been a premeditated crime targeted toward people of color.
” Madison Area Crime Stoppers and the California-based Mizel Family Foundation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a combined $ 10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators .
But there have been questions about the veracity of the woman ’ s report because , unlike in other crimes that occur Downtown , police never released surveillance camera images of the incident or possible suspects in an attempt to find the perpetrators .
Very little of the public parts of Downtown are hidden from the views provided by dozens of city-owned cameras and other private surveillance cameras police have access to .
Despite the investigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ department is not recommending Bernstein be charged with obstructing an officer , which can apply in cases in which a person makes a false police report .
The U.S. Attorney ’ s office was not immediately available for comment , but Wahl said he doubted it would pursue charges against Bernstein , either .
Wahl said there is a difference between actively trying to deceive law enforcement and law enforcement not being able to corroborate a report of a crime , and he said Bernstein and her family have been cooperative throughout the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this 18-year-old woman carried out a hate crime by filing a false police report accusing another race of carrying out a hate crime against her .
There ’ s enormous evidence on the web that her lies exacerbated hatred toward a different race than hers .
Further , after lying low for most of the summer , she reiterated her libel in late August .
From the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram : One of the demonstrators was Althea Bernstein , the 18-year-old Black woman who was lit on fire as she sat in her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the light to change in June .
Bernstein told police a group of white men squirted lighter fluid in her face and ignited it .
Police have released little information about the attack .
Bernstein said she only recently returned downtown to protest and that it felt empowering , the State Journal reported .
“ It ’ s been mentally exhausting .
There ’ s good days and bad days , ” Bernstein told the crowd .
“ I realized I need to be down here .
I ’ m an EMT , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Does my skin color offend you ?
Does my success scare you ?
Does the fact that I ’ m a Black woman make you worried that change in going to happen ?
” The deal I would have offered before she went back to promoting herself was : No charges if she makes a public apology and calls for greater awareness of the prevalence and viciousness of anti-white hate hoaxes like her own .
But now … throw the book at her .
And … how much did this 3 month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it back .
“ We were unable to corroborate ( Bernstein ’ s story ) , but we are not speculating on what did and did not happen , ” he said .
He also confirmed that Bernstein ’ s injuries were consistent with being burned , and said she has offered no “ alternative explanation ” for what happened to her .
Police noted that Bernstein has been consistent in her description of the attack to friends and family , her phone ’ s GPS locations matched up with what she reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not indicate an intent to deceive law enforcement or the public .
Bernstein told police she was driving her brother ’ s 2007 Hyundai Elantra through Downtown following a date when she stopped at a stoplight , possibly on West Gorham Street at State Street , at around 1 a.m. June 24 and was approached by four white men , one of whom yelled a racial epithet .
One of the men squirted her with lighter fluid through her open driver ’ s side window and then threw a lit lighter or match @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her face and neck on fire before she patted out the flames .
Her family later released photos of her showing burns to her face .
She described the men as looking like “ frat boys ” — two of whom were wearing “ floral shirts ” and blue jeans and two of whom were in all black and wearing masks .
The man who allegedly sprayed her was wearing a “ salmon-colored ” floral shirt , she told police .
An exhaustive search of video from city- and privately owned surveillance cameras @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the attack , and the investigation identified a number inconsistencies in Bernstein ’ s story .
A surveillance camera at West Gorham and State .
for example , captured images of the Elantra at 12:44 a.m. but nothing to substantiate the alleged attack .
… A review of 17 city cameras in the Downtown area from 12:15 a.m. to 1:15 a.m. found no groups of white males matching Bernstein ’ s descriptions .
Police also did not find any fire damage in the Elantra , according to police reports , and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not find evidence of them of in the car .
… A forensic analysis of the shirt she was wearing at the time of the attack did turn up evidence of a “ medium petroleum distillate , ” such as charcoal lighter fluid , according to the police investigation .
But no such evidence was found on the shorts she was wearing at the time , nor on swabs taken of the vehicle .
The police investigation also found evidence that Bernstein had her window rolled up at the time of the alleged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stoplights where it might have occurred .
It also determined she had been driving in a different lane than she told police and was uncertain about where exactly the incident occurred .
In addition to 157 pages of reports in the case , police released a timeline of the events of the night in the form of a nearly three-minute-long video and 23-page report .
Investigators told the Bernstein family ’ s attorney that “ the attack , as Bernstein had described it , had not occurred , ” according to police reports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was “ no evidence that Bernstein had colluded with anyone to make a false report or that there was any mal-intent or pre-planning that occurred in regards to Bernstein ’ s statement to police.
” … The alleged attack on Bernstein happened on the same night police were dealing with violent Black Lives Matter protests in the Downtown in which protesters tore down two statues on the Capitol Square , including one of a Union Civil War soldier and abolitionist , and threw a Molotov cocktail through a window of the City-County Building @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told police she was attacked around 1 a.m. , or about 20 minutes after the CCB was firebombed , but Wahl said it was “ pretty clear ” from the investigation that Bernstein was neither a perpetrator nor a victim in the CCB attack .
A rioter was videoed squirting lighter fluid on the County Jail .
Are we supposed to believe that the lighter fluid that got on her in downtown Madison around the time of the arson attack on the CCB building was a completely unrelated lighter fluid ?
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her with arson , but the most plausible explanation is that some of the BLM/Antifa rioters ’ lighter fluid got on her somehow , and she made up her racist libel to distract from that .

Earlier: Steve Sailer Right Again! Althea Bernstein Libel Rejected By Police, Feds: "No Evidence Biracial Madison Woman Was Attacked"
As I pointed out back on July 1, Althea Bernstein’s hate hoax was one of the most obvious yet, but it roped in a lot of media and the stupider celebrities such as Princess Markle or whatever her name is. From Wisconsin State-Journal:
Madison police, federal law enforcement find no evidence biracial woman was attacked
Chris Rickert | Wisconsin State Journal 4 hrs ago Madison police announced Friday they have not been able to corroborate allegations made by a biracial Monona woman that she was burned by four white men in Downtown Madison in June in what was initially reported as a hate crime and garnered national and international attention. Althea Bernstein, 18, told police someone sprayed lighter fluid on her and set her on fire in the early morning hours of June 24 after one of the men yelled a racial epithet. But on Friday, the police department said it was closing the case because “after an exhaustive probe, detectives were unable to corroborate or locate evidence consistent with what was reported.” The case was also investigated by the FBI and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and in its own statement Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin said that “after reviewing all available evidence, authorities could not establish that the attack, as alleged by the complainant, had occurred.” Bernstein’s family said in a statement that they appreciated “the detailed investigative efforts by all involved in this case,” asked for privacy and said they would not be granting interviews. “Althea’s injuries are healing and the support of our community has been invaluable in that regard,” they said. Bernstein was interviewed on “Good Morning America” two days after she reported the incident, and Meghan Markle and Prince Harry of the British royal family reached out to her as well. Madison and Dane County officials had also condemned the alleged attack, with Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway calling it “a horrifying and absolutely unacceptable crime that … may have been a premeditated crime targeted toward people of color.” Madison Area Crime Stoppers and the California-based Mizel Family Foundation and Center for Combating Antisemitism had offered a combined $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators. But there have been questions about the veracity of the woman’s report because, unlike in other crimes that occur Downtown, police never released surveillance camera images of the incident or possible suspects in an attempt to find the perpetrators. Very little of the public parts of Downtown are hidden from the views provided by dozens of city-owned cameras and other private surveillance cameras police have access to. Despite the investigation’s findings, Wahl said his department is not recommending Bernstein be charged with obstructing an officer, which can apply in cases in which a person makes a false police report. The U.S. Attorney’s office was not immediately available for comment, but Wahl said he doubted it would pursue charges against Bernstein, either. Wahl said there is a difference between actively trying to deceive law enforcement and law enforcement not being able to corroborate a report of a crime, and he said Bernstein and her family have been cooperative throughout the investigation.
Oh, come on, this 18-year-old woman carried out a hate crime by filing a false police report accusing another race of carrying out a hate crime against her. There’s enormous evidence on the web that her lies exacerbated hatred toward a different race than hers.
Further, after lying low for most of the summer, she reiterated her libel in late August. From the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram:
One of the demonstrators was Althea Bernstein, the 18-year-old Black woman who was lit on fire as she sat in her car at a Madison intersection waiting for the light to change in June. Bernstein told police a group of white men squirted lighter fluid in her face and ignited it. Police have released little information about the attack. Bernstein said she only recently returned downtown to protest and that it felt empowering, the State Journal reported. “It’s been mentally exhausting. There’s good days and bad days,” Bernstein told the crowd. “I realized I need to be down here. I’m an EMT, I’m here for medical service. Does my skin color offend you? Does my success scare you? Does the fact that I’m a Black woman make you worried that change in going to happen?”
The deal I would have offered before she went back to promoting herself was: no charges if she makes a public apology and calls for greater awareness of the prevalence and viciousness of anti-white hate hoaxes like her own.
But now … throw the book at her.
And … how much did this 3-month-long investigation cost? She should pay it back.
Back to State-Journal:
“We were unable to corroborate (Bernstein’s story), but we are not speculating on what did and did not happen,” he said. He also confirmed that Bernstein’s injuries were consistent with being burned, and said she has offered no “alternative explanation” for what happened to her. Police noted that Bernstein has been consistent in her description of the attack to friends and family, her phone’s GPS locations matched up with what she reported to police and her phone messages did not indicate an intent to deceive law enforcement or the public. Bernstein told police she was driving her brother’s 2007 Hyundai Elantra through Downtown following a date when she stopped at a stoplight, possibly on West Gorham Street at State Street, at around 1 a.m. June 24 and was approached by four white men, one of whom yelled a racial epithet. One of the men squirted her with lighter fluid through her open driver’s side window and then threw a lit lighter or match at her, she said, setting her face and neck on fire before she patted out the flames. Her family later released photos of her showing burns to her face. She described the men as looking like “frat boys” — two of whom were wearing “floral shirts” and blue jeans and two of whom were in all black and wearing masks. The man who allegedly sprayed her was wearing a “salmon-colored” floral shirt, she told police. An exhaustive search of video from city- and privately owned surveillance cameras, however, turned up no evidence of the attack, and the investigation identified a number inconsistencies in Bernstein’s story. A surveillance camera at West Gorham and State. for example, captured images of the Elantra at 12:44 a.m. but nothing to substantiate the alleged attack. … A review of 17 city cameras in the Downtown area from 12:15 a.m. to 1:15 a.m. found no groups of white males matching Bernstein’s descriptions. Police also did not find any fire damage in the Elantra, according to police reports, and a dog trained to sniff out accelerants did not find evidence of them of in the car. … A forensic analysis of the shirt she was wearing at the time of the attack did turn up evidence of a “medium petroleum distillate,” such as charcoal lighter fluid, according to the police investigation. But no such evidence was found on the shorts she was wearing at the time, nor on swabs taken of the vehicle. The police investigation also found evidence that Bernstein had her window rolled up at the time of the alleged attack and hadn’t stopped at stoplights where it might have occurred. It also determined she had been driving in a different lane than she told police and was uncertain about where exactly the incident occurred. In addition to 157 pages of reports in the case, police released a timeline of the events of the night in the form of a nearly three-minute-long video and 23-page report. Investigators told the Bernstein family’s attorney that “the attack, as Bernstein had described it, had not occurred,” according to police reports, but also told her that there was “no evidence that Bernstein had colluded with anyone to make a false report or that there was any mal-intent or pre-planning that occurred in regards to Bernstein’s statement to police.” … The alleged attack on Bernstein happened on the same night police were dealing with violent Black Lives Matter protests in the Downtown in which protesters tore down two statues on the Capitol Square, including one of a Union Civil War soldier and abolitionist, and threw a Molotov cocktail through a window of the City-County Building, starting a small fire. Bernstein told police she was attacked around 1 a.m., or about 20 minutes after the CCB was firebombed, but Wahl said it was “pretty clear” from the investigation that Bernstein was neither a perpetrator nor a victim in the CCB attack.
A rioter was videoed squirting lighter fluid on the County Jail. Are we supposed to believe that the lighter fluid that got on her in downtown Madison around the time of the arson attack on the CCB building was a completely unrelated lighter fluid?
There’s probably not enough evidence to charge her with arson, but the most plausible explanation is that some of the BLM/Antifa rioters’ lighter fluid got on her somehow, and she made up her racist libel to distract from that.
The timeline released by police tracks Bernstein’s movements and her vehicle for about two and a half hours beginning around 12:15 a.m., ending with what appears to be a redacted photo of Bernstein in a hospital gown around 3 a.m. at the UW Hospital emergency room on the Near West Side. According to the timeline and electronic messages reviewed by police, Bernstein first mentions the alleged attack while at home in Monona at 1:24 a.m. “Some (expletive) up (expletive) just happened,” she writes in a text to Nick Livingston, whom Bernstein had been on the date with earlier in the evening. “Someone on state street tried to set me on fire … yelled the n word and threw beer and a lighter at me … its still burning my skin … it was a group of white guys.”
Impunity …


vdare--2020-10-02--Second-Rate Debate, No Trump Bump, What IS White Supremacy? And Execution In Indiana, Etc

14m08s What is white supremacy ?
( A thought they ca n't think . )
19m33s More on meritocracy .
@ @ @ @ @ at it . )
26m34s First Couple get the virus .
( A politicians ' @ @ @ @ @ in Indiana .
( What took so long ? )
31m24s The Twitter killer .
@ @ @ @ @ kill the app . )
33m25s Small war in the Caucasus .
( Not many @ @ @ @ @ 60th birthday , Nigeria !
( And good luck for 60 more . )

01m07s Second-rate debate. (It was a chore.)
07m01s No Trump bump. ("Fine people"? Really?)
11m36s Democracy's balloon. (Shavian cynicism.)
14m08s What is white supremacy? (A thought they can't think.)
19m33s More on meritocracy. (Kaus takes a bite at it.)
26m34s First Couple get the virus. (A politicians' disease.)
29m03s Execution in Indiana. (What took so long?)
31m24s The Twitter killer. (Pity he didn't kill the app.)
33m25s Small war in the Caucasus. (Not many dead.)
34m31s Happy 60th birthday, Nigeria! (And good luck for 60 more.)
36m46s Signoff. (With Gracie.)
01—Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners. This is your grimly genial host John Derbyshire with news of the hour.
Four weeks this coming Tuesday to voting day, ladies and gents. Then we look set for another four weeks, at least, of wrangling over vote counts. A depressing prospect; and I'll admit honestly, I'm depressed.
My mood wasn't improved by Tuesday's Presidential candidates debate. Why would it have been? Hoo boy. Well, let me start with that.
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02—Second-rate debate. Yes, I watched Tuesday's Presidential debate; and yes, I'm going to be sniffy and snobbish about what a chore it was to sit through the wretched thing.
In my forty years of hanging around on the fringes of the worlds of power and influence, I have, a few times, found myself in a roomful of real movers and shakers with seriously impressive job titles in government or the media. None of those events included an acting U.S. President, although one of them did include an acting U.S. Vice President.
It was always the case at some point, as the event wore on and the cigars burned low and the ice diminished in its bucket, it was always the case at some point that I found myself thinking: "These guys aren't very smart."
I know from smart. I've hobnobbed with very seriously smart people: world-famous physicists and Fields Medal winners; also with prize-winning historians and other luminaries of the academic humanities. I know from smart. The people who run our public affairs are, with very occasional exceptions, not very smart. Trust me on this.
And that was the thought that kept intruding as I watched Tuesday night's debate. Not: "What a loathsome reptile that one is!" Nor: "What on earth does the damn fool mean by that?" Only, time and again, the thought: "What a bunch of second-raters."
One of George Bernard Shaw's many indictments of democracy went something like: "Democracy is the system where twenty million people are asked to choose the bravest, wisest, and best among them to be their leader, and they choose Stanley Baldwin." End quote.
That was actually an unfair slight against Baldwin, who was an intelligent and capable man. Writing about Baldwin a few months ago, I called him "Britain's Coolidge." Like Coolidge, however, Baldwin was regarded as something of a nonentity by the intelligentsia of his time—especially by those, like Shaw, who were of the opposite political persuasion.
Anyway, we take Shaw's point. Democracy does not bring forward the brightest and best. For sure it hasn't this year in these United States. For an hour and a half there on Tuesday I watched three guys talking, none of whom said anything interesting or original; none of whom, to the best of my recollection, has ever said anything interesting or original.
Has our public sphere always been this mediocre? Shaw plainly thought it was so a hundred years ago; but I'd swear I can remember better times. Richard Nixon was well-read and sometimes said things that made you think. Margaret Thatcher spoke good sense in properly grammatical sentences. Ronald Reagan could make us laugh … intentionally, I mean.
Perhaps these things go in cycles. Perhaps twenty years from now we'll be back to good sense, good manners, and wit. We can hope.
Where Tuesday night's debate is concerned, I'm definitely talking about all three people in the room. I can't say I've ever paid much attention to Chris Wallace before; but he came across on Tuesday as a dim bulb with a head full of ignorant flapdoodle gathered from the New York Times editorial columns.
I mean, really: Critical Race Theory is "racial sensitivity training"? Excuse me? That's up there with whoever it was that described Mao Tse-tung as "an agrarian reformer."
Are you getting that I was deeply unimpressed by the debate? I was.
"This world," said a wise man three hundred years ago, "is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." In my younger days, when my mind was sharper, I might have laughed at Tuesday night's debate as comedy. Now—and sure, you can put it down to twilight-years geezerdom if you like, I don't care—now I am more inclined to weep.
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03—No bump for Trump. What did the debate deliver in terms of practical political results, though? How many leaning-to-Trump voters came away from it leaning to Biden, and vice versa?
The analysts have of course been crunching poll numbers, to some approximate conclusions. Ipsos, one of the better outfits, concluded that, quote:
Biden may have gained a little support, but many still think Trump has a good chance of winning.
End quote, with italics on the word "little" there. That seems to have been the pollsters' consensus.
Drilling down in the numbers, A YouGov poll for CBS News found that 92 percent of Democrats who watched say that their man won the debate, but only 82 percent of Republicans thought their guy did. That sounds plausible to me. Trump was a bit too determined to make himself the dominant male in the room. That works up to a point, but beyond that point sympathy for the underdog takes over.
On voting intentions, a post-debate poll reported by U.S. News & World Report on Thursday showed 54 percent of respondents supporting Biden to 41 percent for Trump. I don't know how much of an outlier that is, but it sure doesn't indicate a debate bump for the President.
Trump also blew chances to make real substantive points in the debate. He didn't even mention immigration, the one topic above all others that won him the Presidency.
And again Biden unblushingly quoted the "fine people" hoax at us. The President should have jumped all over that and torn it to shreds, quoting the words he actually spoke at Charlottesville that day:
[Clip of Trump speaking: You had some very bad people in that group; but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides … [pips] … You had people—and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally …]
Trump should have those words that he actually spoke as an audio file ready to hand on his cell phone and just play it into the mike. That would be smart.
I have that sound clip in a folder on my computer, ready for when it comes up, which it keeps doing. Why does it keep coming up? Why haven't Trump and his people killed the "fine people" hoax stone dead by now?
Trump must have some variety of smarts to have succeeded as well as he has in life, but it's not the political variety.
Even that is more than you can say about Joe Biden. What on earth has kept this bumbling buffoon at the top of the greasy poll all these decades? What have the voters been smoking down there in Delaware?
When Barack Obama tapped Joe for Vice President, the joke going round was that it was for insurance against assassination. Nobody would be crazy enough to off Obama, knowing it would put Biden in the White House.
Bad taste humor? Sure: but I laughed at the time along with everyone else—well, everyone I was hanging out with. Now, watching Joe dithering his way through that debate, I'm not so sure it was a joke.
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04—The Democracy Balloon. On the upside of this not-very-penetrating commentary on the debates that I'm producing here, preparing for it at least got me riffling through the six full pages of George Bernard Shaw quotes at brainyquote.com. The old commie was very quotable. Sample:
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
End quote. That's not bad. I like this one, too, quote:
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
End quote.
Here's another one on democracy that sticks in the mind somehow … Well, it's been stuck in mine for many years. Longish quote.
I am going to ask you to begin our study of Democracy by considering it first as a big balloon, filled with gas or hot air, and sent up so that you shall be kept looking up at the sky whilst other people are picking your pockets. When the balloon comes down to earth every five years or so you are invited to get into the basket if you can throw out one of the people who are sitting tightly in it; but as you can afford neither the time nor the money, and there are forty millions of you and hardly room for six hundred in the basket, the balloon goes up again with much the same lot in it and leaves you where you were before.
End quote.
I can't think of much else to say about Tuesday's debate, so to fill out this segment I'll just leave you with a Trivial Pursuit question you can try out at your next dinner party.
Question: Only two people have ever been awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. Can you name them?
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05—What is white supremacy? In Tuesday's debate—yeah, I'm not quite through yet—in the debate Chris Wallace asked the President whether he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups.
Trump replied, quote: "Sure, I'm willing to do that." Wallace and Biden badgered him about it, though. Trump fought back, challenging them to come up with a name, pointing out the while, what of course is true, that all the violence and disorder we've been seeing these past weeks has been driven by leftist mobs like Antifa and BLM.
The Biden-Wallace team came up at last with Proud Boys, a multiracial group of young men trying to offer some lawful resistance to the anarchists. If the Proud Boys have torched any police stations, looted any Target stores, pulled down any statues, dragged any people from their cars, or gone through any auto dealer parking lots smashing all the windows, I missed it.
That's the gross imbalance, the fake moral equivalence that we get from all mainstream media types, Chris Wallace no exception. I'm glad the President spoke forthrightly about it.
What is white supremacy, anyway? I am personally acquainted with several people who the media have called "white supremacist," including the proprietor of this website. None of them wants to be supreme over anyone else. What they mostly want is to be left alone, and for the demography of their nations to be left alone, to not be transformed by mass immigration. You can approve of that or disapprove of it, but it has nothing to do with supremacy.
I understand of course that white supremacy was once a thing in the U.S.A. There was a system of social rules, and in some places actual laws, to keep black Americans subordinate to whites. That you can fairly call "white supremacy."
It's long gone, though, and about as likely to come back as barber-shop quartets or three-pack-a-day cigarette habits. In fact we haven't just corrected ourselves; we've over-shot the correction mark, into a zone where blacks enjoy favors and privileges not available to nonblacks—a state of affairs you could fairly call "black supremacy."
It's true that these decades of effort haven't brought about equality of outcomes by race: but given all we've done, the decades we've spent doing it, the jurisprudence we've overturned, the laws we've passed, the money we've spent, the goodwill we've gushed, the fair conclusion has to be that equal outcomes by race are not possible. The races are too different.
That's a thought that too many people can't think, though; so they burble on vapidly about "white supremacy" and "privilege" and "militias" when the desire for white supremacy is long gone, the privilege all belongs to affirmative-action hires and black criminals released without bail, and militias nationwide add up to a few dozen fantasists playing weekend games in the woods.
When all is said and done, there was a real difference intermittently visible in Tuesday night's debate, a difference in outlook and mentation. President Trump, with all his faults, has his feet on the ground, is willing to engage with true facts about the world.
Wallace and Biden, and all the Establishment folk behind them, are floating up in the clouds, detached from reality. Society, in their minds, is shaped not by facts of human biology and psychology, but by invisible vapors and magical influences: "privilege," "racism," "supremacy."
None of those is a real thing. Our ruling classes are not interested in real things, except when those things help to reinforce their own power.
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06—Is meritocracy slipping away? Speaking of Critical Race Theory, I note that one of the things Critical Race Theorists teach to the captive audiences herded and corraled for them by corporate HR departments, college Residential Advisors, and Assistants to the Under-Secretary for Diversity and Inclusion in government departments, one of those things is, that meritocracy is a form of oppression.
In that, at least, the Critical Race Theorists may be on to something. Meritocracy is a minor hobby-horse of mine, that I've returned to several times on these podcasts—six times, when I did a word-search on the archives.
The reason I'm a bit obsessive about it is chronological. Michael Young's book The Rise of the Meritocracy came out in 1958. By the time I went up to college five years later, everyone in England with any claim to be a thinking person was assumed to have read the book and to have an opinion about it.
To this day I don't believe the issues raised by Michael Young in his book have really been confronted, including the central issue of whether a society based on meritocracy can be stable. (Michael Young thought it couldn't.)
In my Diary for February 2018, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the book's publication, I quoted what Bertrand Russell wrote about the philosopher David Hume, quote from Russell:
To refute him has been, ever since he wrote, a favorite pastime among metaphysicians. For my part, I find none of their refutations convincing; nevertheless, I cannot but hope that something less sceptical than Hume's system may be discoverable.
End quote.
That, I said, is how I feel about The Rise of the Meritocracy. I don't much like that central argument, that a meritocracy can't be stable, but I have never seen any convincing counter-argument.
I've returned to the topic now because I've just read a rather good piece about it by blogger Mickey Kaus, September 22nd, title: Two Paths for Meritocracy.
Kaus agrees with me about the book's prescience. Quote:
Young foresees practically everything. I mean everything. The hiving off of the credentialed, the inevitable SAT-selected snobbery, the rise of Trump-like populists, Herrnstein-Murray genetics, the push for a guaranteed income (UBI), even a Silicon-Valley style elite. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in there Young told us the winners of next year's Grammys.
End quote.
Kaus notes that our increasing social stratification—the "coming apart" that Charles Murray wrote a book about—is a consequence of late-20th-century meritocracy. Further quote:
Highly skilled people make more money (increasingly more) and choose to live with other highly skilled people. They marry each other and have highly skilled children. Those without skills fall on harder times and increasingly rely on public subsidies.
End quote.
Kaus thinks, however, that meritocracy is slipping away. The SATs and the Graduate Record Exam are being discarded on social-justice grounds. New York City's specialized public high schools are under attack on those same grounds. You can just buy a place at Harvard nowadays, which, according to Kaus, you couldn't fifty years ago: He offers Jared Kushner as an example.
What's more, he says, the meritocratic elite are not very happy in their success. Changes in the way the high professions—law, medicine, banking, corporate management—work have made those professions unrewarding, except financially.
Is there a solution? Kaus doesn't seem to think so. He makes what seems to me a muddled pitch for a less-fair system. If success in life were just random, even nepotistic, citizens wouldn't feel so bad about being un-successful. It wouldn't be our fault!
It sounds as though Kaus's argument doesn't even convince himself. He allows, for example, that his less-fair system would depress GDP, leaving us all poorer.
Probably he's right. Michael Young's argument from 62 years ago stands, I think, un-refuted; and I'm still there looking over Bertrand Russell's shoulder at David Hume. I cannot but hope that something less sceptical than Young's system may be discoverable.
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07—Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: News this morning, Friday, is that our President and First Lady have been diagnosed COVID-19-positive. Vice President Mike Pence, however, has tested negative.
We shouldn't be surprised. COVID-19 is a politicians' disease if ever there was one, especially for a politician like Trump, who likes being out there among his supporters. They're supposed to be out there "pressing the flesh," as we used to say, though I guess that phrase has dropped out of the political vocabulary now. When indoors, they spend most of their time in rooms full of advisors, or foreign ambassadors and such, all breathing on each other.
So, not a great surprise. Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had the virus; he seems to have made a full recovery.
I also wonder if there's a generational thing in play. Trump's just a few months younger than me. Perhaps he shares my refusal to be bothered much about the COVID-19 panic. Perhaps, like me, he remembers the flu pandemic of 1957-58 that killed over a million people worldwide, when our planet's population was less than half what it is now.
I can remember a third of the seats in my school classroom being vacant, boys either sick with the flu or kept at home by parents in case. Actually closing down the school seems not to have occurred to anyone.
Politically, it's a nuisance for the President to have to go into quarantine just now, shutting down those rallies he's been doing, that he clearly finds so energizing. A possible upside, far as I'm concerned, is that we may be spared any more debates.
The First Couple have the virus but seem to be asymptomatic. I hope they remain so.
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Item: I still can't get any traction for my "One Strike and You're Dead" proposal: get caught jaywalking, go to the chair. I take what comfort I can from noting that the federal government, at least, is carrying out executions.
Thursday last week 40-year-old Christopher Vialva was killed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, for a double homicide he committed in 1999. The actual crime is hard to read about, and the only thing to regret about the execution is that it took 21 years to give the swine his just deserts.
Vialva was black and his two victims were white. That of course has progressives calling the execution racist. On the numbers, it looks to me as if black murderers are getting off lightly. This is the seventh federal execution since July. Of the preceding six, five were white and one was Navajo.
Given that, according to federal crime statistics, 56 percent of murderers are black, one out of seven looks to me like extreme favoritism towards blacks.
Something called the Death Penalty Information Center tells us that 26 of the 56 inmates currently on federal Death Row are black. That's 46 percent. If 56 percent of murderers are black, that's still a serious under-representation, evidence of more favoritism toward blacks.
Perhaps the President could mention that in the next debate, if there is one. Yeah, right!
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Item: Elsewhere they do things differently. I've been following the case of the Twitter killer in Japan.
When I saw the headline I thought for one joyful moment that the guy had killed off Twitter, sparing me the hour or so each day I spend browsing the damn thing.
No such luck. This is a young man, Takahiro Shiraishi, 29 years old, who opened a Twitter account to contact women who were contemplating suicide. He lured them by telling them he could help them die.
At least eight were thus lured, one only 15 years old. When he had them in his apartment, Shiraishi killed them, then chopped up the bodies. He also killed one male, a guy who had tracked him down when searching for his missing girlfriend.
Mr Shiraishi was arrested in 2017 but has only just this week come to trial. It's quite a sensation over there: 600 people lined up for 13 seats in the public gallery.
If found guilty, Mr Shiraishi will be executed. Japan executes average four or five people a year. The method is hanging, quicker and more honest than the hypocritical, pseudo-clinical method of lethal injection used in our federal prisons.
If the state is going to do lethal violence to a person, we should do it unapologetically, not pretend we're giving them some kind of medical treatment.
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Item: A small war has broken out in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
I guess war is a bad thing, and we should feel sorry for the people getting bombed, shot, and driven from their homes. I'm doing my best; but those nations are so small and remote, it's hard to work up much interest.
Viewing the war from this distance, in fact, with zero possibility the outcome will have any effect on us—unless we're such damn fools as to get involved, which of course we may be—from this distance it's tempting, though a bit macabre, to see the war as a kind of sporting contest to which we in the rest of the world are spectators. I wonder if an enterprising bookie somewhere is taking bets on the result.
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Item: In a different part of the world, Nigeria—the nation of Nigeria—has just turned 60. Congratulations to Nigeria on that, and good luck for the next 60 years.
The U.N. reports consistently show Nigeria as having the fastest-growing population among the ten biggest countries. The U.N. projects a population of almost 800 million by year 2100; so 60 years from now, on a linear interpolation, there will be 650 million Nigerians, twice the current population of the U.S.A.
That assumes Nigerian statistics can be trusted. Steve Sailer has written at length about this, his findings suggesting strongly that Nigeria's censuses are a bit of a joke, both sides of the country's major ethnic split—northern Muslims, southern Christians—fudging the numbers for political advantage. Whatever: There are a huge number of Nigerians, and the number's getting huger really fast.
Corruption is dire: Nigeria ranks 146 out of the 180 nations ranked by Transparency International last year. The price of oil is sinking and the Sahara Desert is advancing southwards.
On David Becker's stats, the country's mean IQ is 68. That's not helped by the fact that we've been strip-mining the place of its tiny number of smart people.
So, as I said: Good luck, Nigeria! You'll be needing it.
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08—Signoff. That was kind of a bleak Radio Derb, wasn't it? Sorry about that. Sometimes it's hard to be cheerful.
Thank you for listening anyway, and I shall strive to be a tad more positive next week, when there will of course be more from Radio Derb. Meanwhile, to cheer us up, here's Gracie.
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[Music clip: Gracie Fields, "Sing As We Go."]