vdare--2020-11-30--Final Moderna Vaccine Results: 30 Out of 30 for Severe COVID Cases. But Will Blacks Trust the White(

Final Moderna Vaccine Results: 30 Out of 30 for Severe COVID Cases. But Will Blacks Trust the White(/Asian) Man's Vaccine?

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From Moderna’s new press release:
Moderna Announces Primary Efficacy Analysis in Phase 3 COVE Study for Its COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate and Filing Today with U.S. FDA for Emergency Use Authorization
November 30, 2020 at 6:59 AM EST Primary efficacy analysis of the Phase 3 COVE study of mRNA-1273 involving 30,000 participants included 196 cases of COVID-19, of which 30 cases were severe Vaccine efficacy against COVID-19 was 94.1%; vaccine efficacy against severe COVID-19 was 100% … Moderna plans today to request EUA from the U.S. FDA, to apply for a conditional marketing authorization with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and to progress with the rolling reviews, which have already been initiated with international regulatory agencies FDA has told Company to expect VRBPAC meeting for mRNA-1273 likely on December 17, 2020 … The primary endpoint of the Phase 3 COVE study is based on the analysis of COVID-19 cases confirmed and adjudicated starting two weeks following the second dose of vaccine. Vaccine efficacy has been demonstrated at the first interim analysis with a total of 95 cases based on the pre-specified success criterion on efficacy. Today’s primary analysis was based on 196 cases, of which 185 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group versus 11 cases observed in the mRNA-1273 group, resulting in a point estimate of vaccine efficacy of 94.1%. A secondary endpoint analyzed severe cases of COVID-19 and included 30 severe cases (as defined in the study protocol) in this analysis. All 30 cases occurred in the placebo group and none in the mRNA-1273 vaccinated group. There was one COVID-19-related death in the study to date, which occurred in the placebo group
So, out of about 15,000 people in the placebo group, 185 were infected and symptomatic (I believe Moderna and Pfizer haven’t been looking for asymptomatic cases while Astra-Zeneca has) over a few months, with 30 getting severe cases of COVID and one dying. It looks like case counts were slow to accumulate during the late summer/early fall lull between the second wave that hit the US sunbelt in July and the current third wave that started in the north central states with the coming of cold weather. But then the number of cases apparently doubled over the last few weeks as this third wave is now hitting hard.
In contrast, 11 in the vaccine arm came down with non-severe cases of symptomatic COVID.
A big unanswered question is whether these vaccines protect not only the recipients from severe symptoms, which they apparently do, quite well, but also protect the unvaccinated from being infected by vaccine recipients with no or only mild symptoms. If only the former, COVID would become Just The Flu, Bro for only the vaccinated, while it would continue to spread from the vaccinated to the unvaccinated. But, hopefully, if the vaccine also reduces infectiousness as well as severity, it can take a bite out of the pandemic’s spread fairly quickly.
Efficacy was consistent across age, race and ethnicity, and gender demographics. The 196 COVID-19 cases included 33 older adults (ages 65+) and 42 participants identifying as being from diverse communities (including 29 Hispanic or LatinX, 6 Black or African Americans, 4 Asian Americans and 3 multiracial participants).
I wish they would report how many of the 33 cases in 65+ volunteers were in the two arms. But, still, the worst case scenario of 11 in vaccine arm, 22 in the placebo arm is still pretty good.
My assumption is that they didn’t recruit volunteers who were both elderly and severely debilitated, the kind most likely to die in nursing homes. But it’s good news that it works at all in 65+.
The safety profile of the Phase 3 study of mRNA-1273 was previously described on November 16. A continuous review of safety data is ongoing and no new serious safety concerns have been identified by the Company. Based on prior analysis, the most common solicited adverse reactions included injection site pain, fatigue, myalgia, arthralgia, headache, and erythema/redness at the injection site. Solicited adverse reactions increased in frequency and severity in the mRNA-1273 group after the second dose.
Once again, some percentages would be useful.
The Company will submit data from the Phase 3 COVE study to a peer-reviewed publication. … Additionally, Moderna announced that the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting to review the safety and efficacy data package for mRNA-1273 will likely be scheduled for Thursday, December 17. The Company expects that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will make a recommendation on immunization priorities. The Company anticipates that the shipping of mRNA-1273 to designated distribution points throughout the U.S. will occur shortly after an Emergency Use Authorization is granted. Moderna is working with the U.S. CDC, Operation Warp Speed and McKesson (NYSE: MCK), a COVID-19 vaccine distributor contracted by the U.S. government, as well as global stakeholders to be prepared for distribution of mRNA-1273, in the event that it receives an EUA and similar global authorizations and approvals. By the end of 2020, the Company expects to have approximately 20 million doses of mRNA-1273 available in the U.S.
So, 20 million doses at 2 doses each equals 10 million innoculees. Pfizer could supply an equivalent amount or more. Pfizer, which is a week ahead, is beginning to practice flying dry ice containers around the country to work the bugs out of distribution.
Keep in mind that this is a 2-shot regimen, so it is assumed it takes about a month for the vaccine to have full effect.
A big question is whether, following the Democrats’ and Prestige Media’s months of declaring that white people are out to get blacks, and the Democratic candidates’ anti-vaxx dogwhistling against Trump’s emphasis on rapid vaccine development, whether enough blacks will allow themselves to be vaccinated. From a late summer Kaiser survey:


vdare--2020-12-01--Minneapolis: the New Sao Paulo of the Snowbelt

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From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (which is a contender for the iSteve Content Generator of the Year award):
‘Staggering’ surge in violent carjackings continues across Minneapolis
A triple-digit percentage increase over this time last year has residents in fear.
By Liz Sawyer Star Tribune DECEMBER 1, 2020 — 7:42PM
A housekeeper arriving early to her shift in south Minneapolis was confronted by two hooded teenagers outside her driver’s side window.
One pointed a gun at her head, demanding that she get out, before firing three shots: two ricocheted off the window and a third struck her side-view mirror.
Panicked, the teens fled in the stolen car they arrived in, the latest in a series of brazen attempted armed robberies and carjackings in a wave that is stretching across the city. Minneapolis residents are grappling with triple-digit percentage increase in these crimes, and incidents occurring at all hours, including broad daylight.
“She was completely traumatized,” said her employer, Kathy Higgins Victor, said of the Nov. 27 incident. “It’s just so bold.”
Over the past two months, Minneapolis police have logged more than 125 carjackings in the city, a troubling surge that authorities had largely linked to small groups of marauding teens. But an increasing number of adults have been arrested in recent weeks for committing the same crime.
Within a one-hour period Saturday morning, police reported three separate carjackings in southeast Minneapolis, including one where an elderly woman was struck on the head. The often brazen, daytime attacks are up 537% this month when compared with last November.


vdare--2020-12-01--Courtesy Of Record Rates Of Black On Black Homicides, St. Louis Has More Murders In 2020 Than COVID-

Courtesy Of Record Rates Of Black On Black Homicides, St. Louis Has More Murders In 2020 Than COVID-19 Deaths...

Earlier: St. Louis Murder Rate Has Doubled Since Ferguson/BLM
Somehow this is still the fault of white people/white flight/gentrification/redlining/white privilege/systemic racism/implicit bias and don’t forget, the legacy of slavery.
As the St. Louis Metro Police Department website makes clear, 91 percent of the suspects in the homicides (well… known suspects, because the city has such a horrendous clearance rate for murder) in 2020 are black. As suspects are identified, the percentage of black suspects will only tick closer to 100 percent.
Oh, and 90 percent of the victims in the 242 homicides in 2020 St. Louis are black… Black Lives Matter, right?
Perspective: St. Louis Has 239 Homicides this Year and 238 Coronavirus Deaths – At Least 50 Children Shot So Far This Year, The Gateway Pundit, November 30, 2020
There’s a pandemic affecting St. Louis and numerous Democrat-run cities this year. There have been 238 coranavirus deaths in St. Louis this year. So far this year there have been at least 239 homicides in St. Louis, a 25 year high. And at least 50 children have been shot in St. Louis city this year.
Recall: Out of 318,000 people,St. Louis is 49.2 percent black 43.9 percent white (as of 2010 US Census).
Again, somehow this is the fault of white people.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-12-01--Is The Car Crash Attacker In Germany An Immigrant Mass Murderer? MSM Calls Him "German National," Bu

Is The Car Crash Attacker In Germany An Immigrant Mass Murderer? MSM Calls Him "German National," But No Name

A man in an SUV killed 5 people in Germany by running them down in the city of Trier. Press reports are saying that he's some kind of mental case, of no fixed address, and had been consuming alcohol. They're also saying he's a "German national", which is true of a number of Muslims.
It's amazing how fast they can release the fact that someone is not an immigrant. He could still be a Muslim, of course. since apparently German privacy laws prevent police from announcing the suspect's name.
However, the Guardian's YouTube of the press conference seems to say he isn't, reporting
A German man who is suspected of having killed at least five people and injuring several others when he ploughed his car into a shopping street in Trier on Tuesday was driving while intoxicated, the city's chief prosecutor said, adding that there were 'no indications that the motive is of a terrorist, political or religious nature'. Five people including a nine-month-old baby were killed and up to 15 injured when the man's speeding SUV car hit shoppers in a pedestrian area in the south-western German city in what authorities said appeared to be a deliberate act
Here's a list of some of the many times this kind of attack was by an immigrant.
And if you wonder why I still suspect that the "German National" may not be named either Hans or Fritz, remember this, from the Nice attack: NYT Calls Bastille Day Muslim Kamikaze Truck Driver A "Frenchman Of Tunisian Origin"


vdare--2020-12-01--Michelle Malkin: No Election Justice, No Election Peace

PHOENIX—A motley throng of patriots amassed Monday at the Hyatt Regency for a raucously peaceful "Stop the Steal" rally. There were Zoomers and Boomers, "America First" leaders and Proud Boys, tea party veterans and indie Donald Trump loyalists. I flew down from Colorado to lend my support to all these anti-establishment activists brave and vigilant enough to take to the streets. Praise for "Christ the King" rang out amid demands that a special legislative session be convened.
My message to the rallygoers was the same one I delivered at the "Stop the Steal" rally in Colorado Springs last month: We, the people, must rise up to protect our constitutional republic and prevent it from becoming a full-blown banana republic. "Me First" Republicans such as Cindy McCain, who has been offered an ambassadorship by corruptocrat Joe Biden, are complicit in systematically disenfranchising law-abiding voters. If there is no election justice, then there can be no election peace.
With the sterling exception of Arizona GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, the absence of nationally known conservative figures at the protest was as glaring as an Arizona sunrise and as gaping as the Grand Canyon. Inside the hotel, Republican state legislators hosted Trump legal team lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis for a marathon presentation of election fraud evidence that began at 9 a.m. and did not adjourn until nearly 8 p.m. Bright-red flags ranged from electronic voting machine vulnerabilities to shady homeless voter registrations, to long-festering concerns about large-scale illegal immigrant voting, to a dizzying raft of statistical anomalies involving massive numbers of mail-in ballots.
Most compelling was a review of public election data in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada by respected number-cruncher Matt Braynard. He crowdfunded the Voting Integrity Project, which conducted vital election research this past month using government data from six battleground states.
The team scrutinized voters who had moved out of one state, registered in another and still voted in the state they had left. They contacted voters whose election records showed that they had requested a mail-in ballot and sent it in, but which were not counted as votes. Conversely, they found voters who didn't request a mail-in ballot and said they never received one, but who had discovered a vote had been illicitly cast in their name.
In Arizona, Braynard's team obtained early/absentee voter numbers from the hotly contested Maricopa County. They isolated a universe of voters who had been sent absentee ballots but did not return them. VIP workers reached out by phone to verify if the voters had indeed requested their ballot and whether they returned it. Out of 2,044 people identified who met the criteria, 44% said they never requested a ballot, despite records showing that votes were cast in their name. Another experiment allowed the researchers to identify an estimated 5,700 individuals (not including military voters) who registered in Arizona, also registered in another state and then illicitly cast early absentee votes in Arizona.
"I have a high degree of confidence that the number of ballots that were cast that should not have been—illegal ballots—surpasses the margin of victory as it stands right now," Braynard concluded. "I believe that unless the questions that I raised get answered, you can't be confident of the vote count actually is and no one can." How Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey certified the election results in favor of Biden yesterday while all those questions remain unresolved is simply unfathomable. Certifying a false statement in any other legal context would be criminal, as both Braynard and Giuliani noted.
The lackadaisical FBI now has possession of all the data and analysis from Braynard's project. If you're wondering why the Justice Department or any other government body didn't do this work themselves long before 2020, you're not alone. Braynard recommended an independent audit of all state voter registration files, authenticated absentee ballot requests via fingerprint machine scanning and matching, and fundamental reform of automated voting machines.
"It is unconscionable," Braynard testified, "for a democracy to operate with election equipment that is closed-source software and design."
Another star witness, cybersecurity expert Col. Philip Waldron, summed up the national security and privacy perils of the small, intertwined cabal of election software and hardware companies such as Dominion, Smartmatic, Sequoia and ES&S this way:
"Your vote is not as secure as your Venmo account."
Citizen investigators at home and abroad are putting the screws on these foreign-owned election tech conglomerates at considerable risk to their lives. They're monitoring Dominion machines in Georgia and Nevada. Glenn Chong, a top election watchdog and ex-congressman in the Philippines, believes his top aide was tortured and murdered in 2018 in retaliation for Chong's decade-long crusade to expose Smartmatic's election manipulation through automatic vote shaving and padding, algorithmic meddling and digital ballot image alterations.
"The government can rule over us only as long as it has the consent of the governed. The power to change our destiny lies in our own hands," he urged. "But if our elections are stolen, manipulated by a few people who want to control us, then we lose our future."
The firsthand victims of election fraud refuse to yield control and dominion over their votes to the thieves, cheats and liars—and so must we.
COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM
Michelle Malkin [Email her] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies, ,Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs, and Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best & Brightest Workers.
Malkin is author of the book, "Open Borders, Inc.: Who's Funding America's Destruction," available directly from VDARE.com in hardcover. To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM


vdare--2020-11-29--What Happens When Women Are Allowed To Play Actual Contact Football: Ten Weeks In Intensive Care Aft

What Happens When Women Are Allowed To Play Actual Contact Football: Ten Weeks In Intensive Care After One Scrimmage

The reason Vanderbilt was able to engage in what Steve Sailer called "the publicity stunt of dressing the school’s women’s soccer team goalie as their placekicker" is because no one is allowed to touch the (normally male) placekicker when he's kicking a field goal. This is why football teams can hire European soccer players who walk on the field, kick the ball, and walk off.
Placekickers in the NFL are smaller and older than regular football players, because they don't get hit, although occasionally they get bumped into during a kick return. Vanderbilt's Sarah Fuller was not doing a kick return, and it would have been irresponsible of Vanderbilt to let her do so.
Here's what happened in 1989, when 17 year old Tawana Hammond was allowed to play high school football for the Francis Scott Key Eagles as a fullback, notoriously one of the most brutal positions in the game—the job requirements involve "shedding tackles.
She was tackled in her first scrimmage, got internal injuries that required removal of her spleen and half of her pancreas and was in the intensive care unit for ten weeks, where she received 22 units of blood.
She and her parents sued the school, on the theory that they "failed to warn" her that football was dangerous.
None of these stories, by the way, make the obvious point that they should have warned her that football was dangerous for girls.


vdare--2020-12-01--DERB'S NOVEMBER DIARY (13 ITEMS):  Our Third World Election. Suzie Wong, Kyle Smith, Bruce Lee, And

DERB'S NOVEMBER DIARY (13 ITEMS):  Our Third World Election. Suzie Wong, Kyle Smith, Bruce Lee, And Indira Gandhi,  Etc.

Our Third World election .
The election ?
I called it—a year and a half ago .
Better yet , although it gives me no pleasure to report the fact : I called it for the right reasons .
• The quality of the opposition .
This was n't as big a factor as I predicted .
Joe Biden was barely a candidate at all ; he just stayed in his bunker and let the Establishment 's anti-Trump forces do their work .
That still made him a better candidate than Mrs Clinton in 2016 , though .
Zero is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media .
As I said : `` That includes the social media , where most Millennial airheads get their news .
Trump wo n't just be up against the New York Times , the Washington Post , and the big network TV channels ; he 'll be facing off against Twitter , Google , YouTube , and Facebook too .
Media-wise , Trump 's 2020 campaign will have to fight uphill all the way . ''
Called it .
• Trump disappointment syndrome .
`` Most to the point : How many 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ n't bother to turn out next November ? ''
I listed states where this could really matter : Michigan , Pennsylvania , Wisconsin , Florida .
Three out of four ai n't bad .
• Events , dear boy , events .
Yep : We got a pandemic—such a great gift to the Establishment election-fixers , even conspiracy-theory skeptics like me ca n't help but wonder … .
There was no way the entrenched forces of Orthodoxy—of the military-industrial-commercial-media-Big Data-academic complex—were going to let Trump get re-elected .
In 2016 he caught them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him seriously .
In 2020 they were ready , and took him very seriously .
They determined to stop him By Any Means Necessary , including of course massive vote tampering .
This year 2020 is a milestone .
It is the year the U.S.A. became , indisputably , a Third World kleptocracy with a ruthlessly amoral ruling class preaching an ideology of lies .
More on this in a later segment .
As I write this , at the end of November , there is still a faint hope that the courts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ key states , will annul this joke of an election .
I cling to that hope .
The world of The World of Suzie Wong .
In my November 6th podcast I let slip my sinogynephilia .
The occasion was my learning that the 27th James Bond movie , due in April 2021 , has a black lady , Lashana Lynch playing Agent 007 .
I commented thus : That prompted a curious listener to ask whether I had ever read Richard Mason 's 1957 novel The World of Suzie Wong : `` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between a British artist and a Chinese prostitute '' ( Amazon.com ) .
Indeed I had , long ago .
I even have some very slight personal connection to the book .
It was made into a successful stage play , then a somewhat less successful movie .
The Broadway production of the play featured 27-year-old William Shatner as the male lead .
For the West End ( i.e .
London ) production of the play , Gary Raymond played the male lead , with Tsai Chin as Suzie .
The third name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a first cousin of mine , daughter of my Dad 's baby sister .
That 's my slight connection .
I do n't see how it could be any slighter .
Is the novel any good ?
I remembered liking it , but the memory was distant and vague .
Prompted by my listener 's query , I found a library copy and re-read it .
It stands up pretty well—as middlebrow 1950s fiction generally does , in my experience .
Mason pulls off the trick of writing frankly about sex without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a normal and likable guy .
Suzie is a real literary creation , and very Chinese .
Some of the slang is dated ; but then , so is some of the non-slang .
When was the last time anyone unselfconsciously wrote the word `` gaol '' ?
And if you think it 's shamefully colonialist for Chinese hookers to be servicing white sailors , I can personally testify that the converse thing—white hookers for Chinese sailors—is by no means unknown .
Is anti-racism a psychiatric disorder ?
I did a couple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2015 , when he published a piece alleging that I am the white Ta-Nehisi Coates , `` a white person with a deep-seated dislike for black people , and … intent on training [ my ] son to feel the same way . ''
[ The Hard Untruths of Ta-Nehisi Coates by Kyle Smith ; Commentary , October 2015 . ]
When a friend recently reminded me of all that , I realised that at some point in the past five years my more charitable instincts must have kicked in .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ill-disposed towards Kyle Smith as I did back then .
How does this work ?
For one thing , Kyle Smith 's a good writer , when not kicking ex-colleagues who are down .
Writing is an odd sort of way to make a living : solitary and not very remunerative .
After a few years you develop a sort of guild loyalty that somehow transcends even the most vituperative differences of opinion or personality .
Inscribed on the guild 's marching banners are these lines of Auden 's : Check out , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chekhov in the September issue of The New Criterion .
( You probably need a subscription to read it ; but then , you really should have one . )
I have dozed through a few stage performances of Chekhov 's plays without seeing any big picture ; Smith offers one .
Next time I wo n't doze .
For another thing , there is a TV commercial that shows up occasionally when I 'm watching Tucker Carlson 's show .
The commercial is for some kind of medication that is some kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to people suffering from schizophrenia .
We see a person thus afflicted : He or she perceives every inconsequential glance from a passing stranger as malevolent , every cheery greeting as a belligerent shout of abuse .
I 've had some close personal acquaintance with a schizophrenia patient and yes , that 's what it 's like for them .
Impressions of the outside world brought in through their senses get grossly magnified and distorted by malfunctioning brain modules : Inoffensive casual glance becomes malevolent glare .
So possibly Kyle Smith is an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deception , but with a psychiatric disorder like that , twisting and coloring what he reads .
Which leads to the question : Is intense anti-racism—I mean , the fiercely outraged reaction to any kind of racial negativity , no matter how mildly expressed or well-supported by facts—a psychiatric disorder ?
This is treacherous territory , of course .
It 's only a hop and a skip from , `` You disagree with my opinions , therefore you 're crazy '' to , `` You oppose our State Ideology , therefore you 're @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dissidents in psychiatric facilities and dose them with psychoactive drugs to correct their thinking .
Yes , there 's a slippery slope here .
Still and all , there is a real world and there are people whose perceptions of it are distorted beyond all reason or utility .
If you have ever been personally acquainted with a schizophrenic , you do n't doubt this .
How far do your beliefs have to stray from everyday reality for you to qualify as a psychiatric case ?
Perhaps not as far as a real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ TV the other night telling me that black Americans fear to leave their homes because they might get shot by a rogue racist cop , surely qualifies .
And Kyle Smith , with his bizarre conception of my domestic arrangements and his assertion that I am `` statistically '' wrong ?
( Which of my statistics is wrong , Sir ? )
A borderline case , I 'd say .
I had just gotten through writing all that when I saw Pedro Gonzalez ' 12-part November 24th Twitter thread making essentially the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Not trusting that such heterodox ideas will survive the Twitter memory-holers for long , I have screen-shotted the thread as six images .
The first is here .
Jeet Kun Woo .
If martial-arts legend Bruce Lee had not died from heat stroke in 1973 , he would have turned eighty this November 27th .
I see that Lee 's daughter Shannon published a book of life advice last month , based on her Dad 's philosophy : Be Water , My Friend : The Teachings of Bruce Lee .
That , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my woo alarm .
I wrote up my own encounter with Bruce Lee here and advertised Matthew Polly 's excellent biography of Lee on Radio Derb , July 13th , 2018 .
( I did not know until I read Polly 's book that Lee was one-eighth Jewish . )
In that personal memoir of mine I wrote : I 'll stand by that ; and the New York Post 's account of Shannon Lee 's book confirms it .
Bruce Lee was a real and rare genius ; but his genius was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ punches and kicks what Mozart was to crotchets and quavers .
Below , you can watch him knock the young Derb , as movie extra in Hong Kong , backwards over a chair .
( Stage direction : `` Lee strikes the Westerners . ''
) Genius in some one narrow field does not imply wisdom .
Outside the sphere of musical composition , Mozart was a nitwit .
Would a book of life advice from Mozart enjoy good sales ?
I bet it would ; and I hope Shannon Lee 's does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very nice lady who 's been dealt some rough deals by life .
I would n't be a customer for either book , though .
I just have no tolerance for woo .
Back to the Middle Ages .
One of the more interesting ideas going around right now is neo-feudalism .
Joel Kotkin has written a book about it : The Coming of Neo-Feudalism : A Warning to the Global Middle Class .
Over at UnHerd.com , Ed West uses Kotkin 's book as a starting-point for a long discussion of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea , and it is surely true that access to the comfortable middle class is harder now for a low-born person than it was in 1950 , although perhaps not yet as hard as it was in 1250 .
There are some differences to be noted , though .
The thumbnail sketch of medieval European society we all learned at school was the Three Orders model : there were Those Who Fight , Those Who Pray , and Those Who Work .
Those Who Work will be always with us .
How long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contractors ?
( Me , recently : about two weeks . )
And no , the work wo n't all be automated : Read Mark Mills ' nifty little 2018 summary Work in the Age of Robots .
Those Who Pray ?
What is the lock-step uniformity of thought in our universities but a clerisy , the modern equivalent of the medieval Church ?
What is the President of Yale but a modern-day abbot or bishop ?
Ed West : And as with Christianity in the medieval world , persons of power and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cleave to clerical orthodoxy .
They do n't have to be ostentatious about it if they do n't feel inclined , and they might doubt in private , but they are expected to bend the knee in public .
Still , what about Those Who Fight ?
The male rulers of medieval states were raised as warriors .
They did not expect to get through life without some actual battlefield encounters : sword on sword , axe on axe , with the dread arrow-shower raining down .
When they were n't fighting for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their horses in mock battle .
Even monarchs were expected to fight , or at least to show up on the battlefield .
That expectation in fact survived well past the medieval era .
The last English King to lead his troops in battle was George the Second at the battle of Dettingen ( 1743 ) .
How does all that map into the modern world ?
I 'm trying hard to conjure up images of our own ruling class—Jeff Bezos ?
Charles Koch ?
Barack Obama ?
Jeff Zucker ?
—in full @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it 's not coming .
War-making today is for churls , not for the gentry .
There is also science , which the Medievals did n't have .
In particular , there are the human sciences .
Human nature itself , the human mind and human society , are slowly yielding to systematic scientific inquiry .
Real dispositive understanding is still decades away ; but when it comes , it will change our view of ourselves in relation to each other and to the cosmos , in ways no-one can predict .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If we truly are returning back into medieval ways of thinking , we are returning along the same road we trod when we emerged from those ways five hundred years ago , through a great dark forest of gibberish .
Ed West : We 're looking at you , Robin DiAngelo , and you , Ibram X. Kendi , and , yes , you , Ta-Nehisi Coates .
A family of talent .
Ed West , the author of that UnHerd piece ( and the Deputy Editor of UnHerd.com ) is a favorite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finger to keyboard without writing something interesting .
Try one of his pop-history books .
Ed comes from a talented family , too ; one I 've been engaged with as a reader for most of my adult life .
His Dad Richard West , who died in 2015 , wrote for the London Spectator when I was a subscriber forty-some years ago .
I remember his 1981 book An English Journey very fondly , as a small masterpiece of social observation and historical reflection .
Ed 's Mom is Mary Kenny , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I 've been recommending for twenty years .
It 's a classic in a tiny genre which I wish were tinier : obituaries for a nation .
Ed is also a first cousin once removed of actor Timothy West , who lingers in my mind as the definitive stage portrayal of Stalin .
That was in David Pownall 's play Masterclass around 1984 , when the U.S.S.R. had loosened up some and there were a lot of Russians in London .
It seemed like every one of them was in the theater that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stalin hoicked up his withered arm they all sighed Aaaah !
in unison .
That 's a lot of talent in one family .
Thanks to them all this Thanksgiving month for decades of instruction and entertainment .
Yet another Indian novel .
In last month 's diary I reported having read Aravind Adiga 's 2008 novel The White Tiger , which is about today 's India .
I wrote that : That 's a bit of a gap from the 1940s to 2008 .
A reader of the Diary recommended Rohinton Mistry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gap , so I bought a copy and read it .
A Fine Balance mostly takes place in the time of Indira Gandhi 's `` Emergency '' of the mid-1970s , so it plugs the gap quite precisely .
It 's a human-interest novel , though , not annoyingly political .
I enjoyed it , but I thought it collapsed towards the end , as if the author got tired of writing it .
( Which would be understandable : At 600 pages , it 's rather long as novels go nowadays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention span . )
The book 's title is taken from a conversation in pages 228-229 .
( All page numbers here refer to the Vintage Books paperback ; Mistry does n't number his chapters . )
A secondary character remarks , in regard to life in general , that : `` You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair . ''
To the degree that observations about life in general are worth anything at all , that 's one of the better ones .
The joke about Anna Karenina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the jam recipe in Chapter Two .
If that 's your kind of thing , pages 393-4 of A Fine Balance include a recipe for masala vada ( although Mistry spells it `` masala wada '' ) .
Rigging the election Indian style .
The mid-1970s Emergency was a local maximum for corruption and official lawlessness in India .
On page 144 of A Fine Balance we get a national election .
That was a Third World election in a vast , poor nation under temporary dictatorship 45 years ago .
Thank @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on demographic collapse .
A listener to my November 13th podcast takes issue , thus : I chewed over this topic considerably in Chapter 11 of We Are Doomed , summarizing some then-recent exchanges between Mark Steyn and Ralph Peters .
Steyn had argued in his 2006 book America Alone that Europe is a goner , leaving … well , America alone .
Ralph Peters , responding to that , predicted that the Europeans would eventually get in touch with their inner fascist .
In my book I tentatively came down on Ralph @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That was in 2009 .
So the question before the house is : Why now , eleven years later , am I leaning Steynwards , to the view that Europe 's demographic future is darker than ours ?
One factor has been eleven further years of reading , well-nigh daily , stories like these from the British press .
Note that both stories are from the same newspaper on the same day .
I read hundreds of similar stories every year .
Does the U.S.A. have crazy ethnomasochists like the Stansted 15 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; but they focus their attention mainly on our native blacks and their imaginary grievances , leaving not much energy for foreign invaders .
Stories like those two are not common here .
The civilizational death-wish seems stronger in Europe .
That was n't the case eleven years ago when I published We Are Doomed .
There were real signs of nationalist-populist awakening in Europe .
UKIP was already well-established in Britain .
In Germany , Thilo Sarrazin 's book Germany Abolishes Itself came out the following year ; it was a best-seller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the AfD party three years later .
Matto Salvini was rising in Italy ; in France , Marine Le Pen was breathing new life into her father 's National Front party .
Now most of that 's gone flat .
Sure , the Brits got Brexit ; but it 's being implemented by open-borders neoliberals who look on unconcerned as people-smugglers ply a busy trade across the English Channel .
And those open-borders neoliberals are from the less ethnomasochistic side of British politics—in fact from the Conservative Party !
Possibly I 've become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Old Continent as far gone in decadence , while we Americans retain some of our original pioneering vigor .
And perhaps all that is a happy illusion .
Perhaps we are just as decadent as they are .
All I know is , I sit down at the monitor every morning to browse the news for my podcast and commentary , and I look for signs of civilizational confidence in the Old Continent , and day after day after day I do n't see any .
And then there 's cold geography @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention to in 2009 .
The great ticking demographic time bomb of this century is sub-Saharan Africa .
When that bomb goes off , Europe will be a lot closer to the blast than us .
Math cartoon of the month .
This one !
Math revenge of the month .
For the first two years of my three-year math undergraduate course , we all took the same classes .
For the final year , we were allowed to pick electives .
Making inquiries , I heard that Fluid Mechanics was an easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ `` You only have to memorize one equation . ''
This proved not to be the best advice I ever had .
The Navier-Stokes Equation is hard .
I did not do well on the exam .
Since Navier-Stokes got the better of me , I was somewhat cheered to see that Artificial Intelligence is getting the better of it .
Brainteaser .
Here 's the November 1st `` Mind-Bender for the Quarantined '' from Dr. Peter Winkler at the National Museum of Mathematics .

Our Third World election. The election? I called it—a year and a half ago.
Better yet, although it gives me no pleasure to report the fact: I called it for the right reasons.
The quality of the opposition. This wasn't as big a factor as I predicted. Joe Biden was barely a candidate at all; he just stayed in his bunker and let the Establishment's anti-Trump forces do their work.
That still made him a better candidate than Mrs Clinton in 2016, though. Zero is greater than negative one.
That still made him a better candidate than Mrs Clinton in 2016, though. Zero is greater than negative one. The media. As I said: "That includes the social media, where most Millennial airheads get their news. Trump won't just be up against the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the big network TV channels; he'll be facing off against Twitter, Google, YouTube, and Facebook too. Media-wise, Trump's 2020 campaign will have to fight uphill all the way." Called it.
Trump disappointment syndrome. "Most to the point: How many 2016 Trump voters are so disappointed they won't bother to turn out next November?" I listed states where this could really matter: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida. Three out of four ain't bad.
Events, dear boy, events. Yep: We got a pandemic—such a great gift to the Establishment election-fixers, even conspiracy-theory skeptics like me can't help but wonder ….
There was no way the entrenched forces of Orthodoxy—of the military-industrial-commercial-media-Big Data-academic complex—were going to let Trump get re-elected. In 2016 he caught them by surprise. They didn't take him seriously. In 2020 they were ready, and took him very seriously. They determined to stop him By Any Means Necessary, including of course massive vote tampering.
This year 2020 is a milestone. It is the year the U.S.A. became, indisputably, a Third World kleptocracy with a ruthlessly amoral ruling class preaching an ideology of lies. More on this in a later segment.
As I write this, at the end of November, there is still a faint hope that the courts, and the people's representatives in key states, will annul this joke of an election. I cling to that hope.
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The world of The World of Suzie Wong. In my November 6th podcast I let slip my sinogynephilia.
The occasion was my learning that the 27th James Bond movie, due in April 2021, has a black lady, Lashana Lynch playing Agent 007. I commented thus:
Shall I be watching No Time to Die? Nah—no offense to Ms Lynch, to whom I wish all the luck in the world. It's just that, as I've said, I lost the Bond thing altogether back in the Clinton administration.
Although, if they were to cast Zhang Ziyi as Agent 007, I might change my mind …
That prompted a curious listener to ask whether I had ever read Richard Mason's 1957 novel The World of Suzie Wong: "The timeless story of the love affair between a British artist and a Chinese prostitute" (Amazon.com).
Indeed I had, long ago. I even have some very slight personal connection to the book. It was made into a successful stage play, then a somewhat less successful movie. The Broadway production of the play featured 27-year-old William Shatner as the male lead.
For the West End (i.e. London) production of the play, Gary Raymond played the male lead, with Tsai Chin as Suzie. The third name on the cast list was Janet Derry, a first cousin of mine, daughter of my Dad's baby sister.
That's my slight connection. I don't see how it could be any slighter.
Is the novel any good? I remembered liking it, but the memory was distant and vague. Prompted by my listener's query, I found a library copy and re-read it.
It stands up pretty well—as middlebrow 1950s fiction generally does, in my experience. Mason pulls off the trick of writing frankly about sex without prurience or indecency. His first-person narrator is a normal and likable guy. Suzie is a real literary creation, and very Chinese. Some of the slang is dated; but then, so is some of the non-slang. When was the last time anyone unselfconsciously wrote the word "gaol"?
And if you think it's shamefully colonialist for Chinese hookers to be servicing white sailors, I can personally testify that the converse thing—white hookers for Chinese sailors—is by no means unknown.
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Is anti-racism a psychiatric disorder? I did a couple of rounds with writer Kyle Smith back in 2015, when he published a piece alleging that I am the white Ta-Nehisi Coates, "a white person with a deep-seated dislike for black people, and … intent on training [my] son to feel the same way." [The Hard Untruths of Ta-Nehisi Coates by Kyle Smith; Commentary, October 2015.]
Responding, I didn't hold back:
No honest person could put the construction on my "Talk" article that Kyle Smith has put on it.
Kyle Smith is not an honest person. He is a liar and a slanderer. Knowing, as he surely does, that all the Great and the Good of our society will take his side, while none of them will take mine, he is also a coward. [Derb: The White Ta-Nehisi Coates!; VDARE.com, September 30th 2015.]
When a friend recently reminded me of all that, I realised that at some point in the past five years my more charitable instincts must have kicked in. I mean, I don't feel as ill-disposed towards Kyle Smith as I did back then. How does this work?
For one thing, Kyle Smith's a good writer, when not kicking ex-colleagues who are down.
Writing is an odd sort of way to make a living: solitary and not very remunerative. After a few years you develop a sort of guild loyalty that somehow transcends even the most vituperative differences of opinion or personality. Inscribed on the guild's marching banners are these lines of Auden's:
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives,
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honors at their feet.
Check out, for example, Smith's essay on Chekhov in the September issue of The New Criterion. (You probably need a subscription to read it; but then, you really should have one.) I have dozed through a few stage performances of Chekhov's plays without seeing any big picture; Smith offers one. Next time I won't doze.
For another thing, there is a TV commercial that shows up occasionally when I'm watching Tucker Carlson's show. The commercial is for some kind of medication that is some kind of help (says the ad) to people suffering from schizophrenia. We see a person thus afflicted: He or she perceives every inconsequential glance from a passing stranger as malevolent, every cheery greeting as a belligerent shout of abuse.
I've had some close personal acquaintance with a schizophrenia patient and yes, that's what it's like for them. Impressions of the outside world brought in through their senses get grossly magnified and distorted by malfunctioning brain modules: Inoffensive casual glance becomes malevolent glare.
So possibly Kyle Smith is an honest person: not practicing any conscious deception, but with a psychiatric disorder like that, twisting and coloring what he reads.
Which leads to the question: Is intense anti-racism—I mean, the fiercely outraged reaction to any kind of racial negativity, no matter how mildly expressed or well-supported by facts—a psychiatric disorder?
This is treacherous territory, of course. It's only a hop and a skip from, "You disagree with my opinions, therefore you're crazy" to, "You oppose our State Ideology, therefore you're crazy." Totalitarian governments lock up dissidents in psychiatric facilities and dose them with psychoactive drugs to correct their thinking. Yes, there's a slippery slope here.
Still and all, there is a real world and there are people whose perceptions of it are distorted beyond all reason or utility. If you have ever been personally acquainted with a schizophrenic, you don't doubt this.
How far do your beliefs have to stray from everyday reality for you to qualify as a psychiatric case? Perhaps not as far as a real space-aliens-are-listening-to-my-thoughts! schizophrenic. The person on TV the other night telling me that black Americans fear to leave their homes because they might get shot by a rogue racist cop, surely qualifies.
And Kyle Smith, with his bizarre conception of my domestic arrangements and his assertion that I am "statistically" wrong? (Which of my statistics is wrong, Sir?) A borderline case, I'd say.
I had just gotten through writing all that when I saw Pedro Gonzalez' 12-part November 24th Twitter thread making essentially the same case. Samples at random:
… the modern white psyche conditioned to worship nonwhites in a religious psychosexual ethnomasochism …
Our politics, Republican and Democrat, are dominated by the accompanying neurosis and narcissism of whites suffering from what is basically a mental and spiritual illness. Conservatives aren't immune. They think they are, but they are just as bad …
It's not specific to either political orientation, it's like a psychic malaise that afflicts white people in either party …
[Not trusting that such heterodox ideas will survive the Twitter memory-holers for long, I have screen-shotted the thread as six images. The first is here.
2, 3, 4, 5, 6.]
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Jeet Kun Woo. If martial-arts legend Bruce Lee had not died from heat stroke in 1973, he would have turned eighty this November 27th. I see that Lee's daughter Shannon published a book of life advice last month, based on her Dad's philosophy: Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee.
Boiled down, she said, "the key to my dad's philosophy is self-actualization: It's the fulfilling of goals and ambitions." As for Bruce's most iconic line—"You must be shapeless, formless, like water"—Shannon interprets it to mean "achieving one's essence, being able to work with whatever is coming at you." [How Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, channels her father's philosophy by Michael Kaplan; New York Post, November 14th 2020.]
That, I am sorry to say, set off my woo alarm.
I wrote up my own encounter with Bruce Lee here and advertised Matthew Polly's excellent biography of Lee on Radio Derb, July 13th, 2018. (I did not know until I read Polly's book that Lee was one-eighth Jewish.)
In that personal memoir of mine I wrote:
Bruce's art was entirely physical. Though a martial-arts genius of the first order, he was no intellectual. His "philosophy" of fighting is a dull recycling of some commonplace clichés from Taoism and American self-help books.
I'll stand by that; and the New York Post's account of Shannon Lee's book confirms it.
Bruce Lee was a real and rare genius; but his genius was indeed entirely physical. Lee was to punches and kicks what Mozart was to crotchets and quavers.
Below, you can watch him knock the young Derb, as movie extra in Hong Kong, backwards over a chair. (Stage direction: "Lee strikes the Westerners." )
Genius in some one narrow field does not imply wisdom. Outside the sphere of musical composition, Mozart was a nitwit.
Would a book of life advice from Mozart enjoy good sales? I bet it would; and I hope Shannon Lee's does likewise. She seems to be a very nice lady who's been dealt some rough deals by life.
I wouldn't be a customer for either book, though. I just have no tolerance for woo.
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Back to the Middle Ages. One of the more interesting ideas going around right now is neo-feudalism. Joel Kotkin has written a book about it: The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. Over at UnHerd.com, Ed West uses Kotkin's book as a starting-point for a long discussion of the neo-feudalist notion.
[A]ll of these things, along with the polarisation of politics along quasi-religious lines, the decline of nationalism and the role of universities in enforcing orthodoxy, were the norm in pre-modern societies. In our economic structure, our politics, our identity and our sex lives we are moving away from the trends that were common between the first railway and first email. But what if the modern age was the anomaly, and we're simply returning to life as it has always been?
Inequality was almost universal from the agricultural to the industrial revolution, and medieval Europe would have had a GINI index higher than modern Latin America, with a handful of families owning up to a quarter of land in England, and the monarch a similar share. [Welcome to the New Middle Ages by Ed West; UnHerd.com, November 23, 2020.]
It's a neat idea, and it is surely true that access to the comfortable middle class is harder now for a low-born person than it was in 1950, although perhaps not yet as hard as it was in 1250. There are some differences to be noted, though.
The thumbnail sketch of medieval European society we all learned at school was the Three Orders model: there were Those Who Fight, Those Who Pray, and Those Who Work.
Those Who Work will be always with us. How long does today's homeowner go between hiring contractors? (Me, recently: about two weeks.) And no, the work won't all be automated: Read Mark Mills' nifty little 2018 summary Work in the Age of Robots.
Those Who Pray? What is the lock-step uniformity of thought in our universities but a clerisy, the modern equivalent of the medieval Church? What is the President of Yale but a modern-day abbot or bishop? Ed West:
[A]cademia … has likewise returned to its pre-modern norm. At the time of the 1968 student protests university faculty in both the U.S. and Britain slightly leaned left, as one would expect of the profession. By the time of Donald Trump's election many university departments had Democrat: Republican ratios of 20, 50 or even 100:1. Some had no conservative academics, or none prepared to admit it. Similar trends are found in Britain.
And as with Christianity in the medieval world, persons of power and influence outside the academy are expected to cleave to clerical orthodoxy. They don't have to be ostentatious about it if they don't feel inclined, and they might doubt in private, but they are expected to bend the knee in public.
Still, what about Those Who Fight? The male rulers of medieval states were raised as warriors. They did not expect to get through life without some actual battlefield encounters: sword on sword, axe on axe, with the dread arrow-shower raining down. When they weren't fighting for real they were jousting—knocking each other off their horses in mock battle.
Even monarchs were expected to fight, or at least to show up on the battlefield. That expectation in fact survived well past the medieval era. The last English King to lead his troops in battle was George the Second at the battle of Dettingen (1743).
How does all that map into the modern world? I'm trying hard to conjure up images of our own ruling class—Jeff Bezos? Charles Koch? Barack Obama? Jeff Zucker?—in full armor swinging a sword, but … it's not coming. War-making today is for churls, not for the gentry.
There is also science, which the Medievals didn't have. In particular, there are the human sciences. Human nature itself, the human mind and human society, are slowly yielding to systematic scientific inquiry. Real dispositive understanding is still decades away; but when it comes, it will change our view of ourselves in relation to each other and to the cosmos, in ways no-one can predict.
In favor of the arguments for neo-feudalism: If we truly are returning back into medieval ways of thinking, we are returning along the same road we trod when we emerged from those ways five hundred years ago, through a great dark forest of gibberish. Ed West:
The internet has often been compared to the printing press, and when printing was introduced it didn't lead to a world of contemplative philosophy; books of high-minded inquiry were vastly outsold by tracts about evil witches and heretics.
The word "medieval" is almost always pejorative but the post-printing early modern period was the golden age of religious hatred and torture; the major witch hunts occurred in an age of rising literacy, because what people wanted to read about was a lot of the time complete garbage. Likewise, with the internet, and in particular the iPhone, which has unleashed the fires of faith again, helping spread half-truths and creating a new caste of firebrand preachers (or, as they used to be called, journalists).
We're looking at you, Robin DiAngelo, and you, Ibram X. Kendi, and, yes, you, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
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A family of talent. Ed West, the author of that UnHerd piece (and the Deputy Editor of UnHerd.com) is a favorite of mine. He can hardly set finger to keyboard without writing something interesting. Try one of his pop-history books.
Ed comes from a talented family, too; one I've been engaged with as a reader for most of my adult life. His Dad Richard West, who died in 2015, wrote for the London Spectator when I was a subscriber forty-some years ago. I remember his 1981 book An English Journey very fondly, as a small masterpiece of social observation and historical reflection.
Ed's Mom is Mary Kenny, whose 1997 book Goodbye to Catholic Ireland I've been recommending for twenty years. It's a classic in a tiny genre which I wish were tinier: obituaries for a nation.
Ed is also a first cousin once removed of actor Timothy West, who lingers in my mind as the definitive stage portrayal of Stalin. That was in David Pownall's play Masterclass around 1984, when the U.S.S.R. had loosened up some and there were a lot of Russians in London. It seemed like every one of them was in the theater that evening. Each time Timothy West's Stalin hoicked up his withered arm they all sighed Aaaah! in unison.
That's a lot of talent in one family. Thanks to them all this Thanksgiving month for decades of instruction and entertainment.
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Yet another Indian novel. In last month's diary I reported having read Aravind Adiga's 2008 novel The White Tiger, which is about today's India. I wrote that:
I can't say I was that dazzled by The White Tiger, but I found it an easy, entertaining read, and I'm pleased to have brought my acquaintance with India fiction forward another multi-decade leap from Kim (1890s India), A Passage to India (1920s), and The Raj Quartet (1940s).
That's a bit of a gap from the 1940s to 2008. A reader of the Diary recommended Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance to plug the gap, so I bought a copy and read it.
A Fine Balance mostly takes place in the time of Indira Gandhi's "Emergency" of the mid-1970s, so it plugs the gap quite precisely. It's a human-interest novel, though, not annoyingly political. I enjoyed it, but I thought it collapsed towards the end, as if the author got tired of writing it. (Which would be understandable: At 600 pages, it's rather long as novels go nowadays. The Cellphone Generation just has no attention span.)
The book's title is taken from a conversation in pages 228-229. (All page numbers here refer to the Vintage Books paperback; Mistry doesn't number his chapters.) A secondary character remarks, in regard to life in general, that: "You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair."
To the degree that observations about life in general are worth anything at all, that's one of the better ones.
The joke about Anna Karenina is that some people read it just for the jam recipe in Chapter Two. If that's your kind of thing, pages 393-4 of A Fine Balance include a recipe for masala vada (although Mistry spells it "masala wada").
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Rigging the election Indian style. The mid-1970s Emergency was a local maximum for corruption and official lawlessness in India. On page 144 of A Fine Balance we get a national election.
The election officer was presented with gifts and led away to enjoy the day with food and drink. The doors opened and the voters filed through. "Put out your fingers," said the attendant monitoring the queue.
The voters complied. The clerk at the desk uncapped a little bottle and marked each extended finger with indelible black ink, to prevent cheating.
"Now put your thumbprints over here," said the clerk.
They placed their thumbprints on the register to say they had voted, and departed.
Then the blank ballots were filled in by the landlords' men. The election officer returned at closing time to supervise the removal of ballot boxes to the counting station, and to testify that voting had proceeded in a fair and democratic manner.
That was a Third World election in a vast, poor nation under temporary dictatorship 45 years ago. Thank goodness for progress!
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America v. Europe on demographic collapse. A listener to my November 13th podcast takes issue, thus:
Could I ask why you are so much more pessimistic regarding immigration and demographic change about Europe than the U.S.? The U.S. is only slightly more than 60 percent white while most European countries have immigrant populations of approximately 10-15 percent. Additionally, many of the immigrants are from Eastern Europe.
I know the Europeans are very much more into virtue signaling about race than Americans, red state anyway, but they are in much better position to do something about it than the U.S. And a significant though minority portion of their populations are waking up to this reality much earlier than in the U.S.
I chewed over this topic considerably in Chapter 11 of We Are Doomed, summarizing some then-recent exchanges between Mark Steyn and Ralph Peters. Steyn had argued in his 2006 book America Alone that Europe is a goner, leaving … well, America alone. Ralph Peters, responding to that, predicted that the Europeans would eventually get in touch with their inner fascist.
When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened—even when the threat's concocted nonsense—they don't just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity.
In my book I tentatively came down on Ralph Peters' side of the argument. That was in 2009. So the question before the house is: Why now, eleven years later, am I leaning Steynwards, to the view that Europe's demographic future is darker than ours?
One factor has been eleven further years of reading, well-nigh daily, stories like these from the British press.
First story: In March 2017 the British government chartered a plane to deport 60 illegal aliens to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. The 60 included 25 criminals who had been imprisoned in British jails for serious offences including murder, rape of a minor and grievous bodily harm. The plane was to depart from Stansted Airport, near London.
A group of activists tagged by the press as "the Stansted 15" cut through the airport's perimeter fence and locked themselves together around the plane, preventing takeoff.
The Stansted 15 seem, from press pictures and names, to be all young white British people, except for one with a Hindu name. Nine of the 15 are female. ["Stansted 15" pro-immigrant activists who stormed runway to stop a jet from deporting 60 criminals to Africa and caused travel misery for thousands appeal their sentences by Mark Duell; MailOnline, November 24th 2020.]
And
Second story: About 500 illegal aliens, mainly Afghans, set up a camp in Paris's Place de la République. A charity named Utopia56 provided tents and food.
The Place is in the city center, a mile from the Louvre and Notre Dame. Equivalents would be London's Trafalgar Square or the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
On November 23rd, "Police used tear gas and baton charges to clear the refugees and their supporters away from Place de la République."
This—the clearing of the illegals' camp, not the camp itself—has raised shrieks of horror among France's great and good, including the government's own interior minister. [Outrage as Paris police violently break up a makeshift camp, dispersing hundreds of homeless refugees, as France's interior minister seeks a "detailed report" on the incident captured in shocking footage by Peter Allen; MailOnline, November 24th 2020.]
Note that both stories are from the same newspaper on the same day. I read hundreds of similar stories every year.
Does the U.S.A. have crazy ethnomasochists like the Stansted 15 and the French shriekers? Sure we do; but they focus their attention mainly on our native blacks and their imaginary grievances, leaving not much energy for foreign invaders. Stories like those two are not common here. The civilizational death-wish seems stronger in Europe.
That wasn't the case eleven years ago when I published We Are Doomed. There were real signs of nationalist-populist awakening in Europe. UKIP was already well-established in Britain. In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin's book Germany Abolishes Itself came out the following year; it was a best-seller, a factor in the rise of the AfD party three years later. Matto Salvini was rising in Italy; in France, Marine Le Pen was breathing new life into her father's National Front party.
Now most of that's gone flat. Sure, the Brits got Brexit; but it's being implemented by open-borders neoliberals who look on unconcerned as people-smugglers ply a busy trade across the English Channel. And those open-borders neoliberals are from the less ethnomasochistic side of British politics—in fact from the Conservative Party!
Possibly I've become too Americanized: too willing to see the Old Continent as far gone in decadence, while we Americans retain some of our original pioneering vigor. And perhaps all that is a happy illusion. Perhaps we are just as decadent as they are.
All I know is, I sit down at the monitor every morning to browse the news for my podcast and commentary, and I look for signs of civilizational confidence in the Old Continent, and day after day after day I don't see any.
And then there's cold geography, which I should have paid more attention to in 2009. The great ticking demographic time bomb of this century is sub-Saharan Africa. When that bomb goes off, Europe will be a lot closer to the blast than us.
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Math Corner.
Math cartoon of the month. This one!
Math revenge of the month. For the first two years of my three-year math undergraduate course, we all took the same classes. For the final year, we were allowed to pick electives. Making inquiries, I heard that Fluid Mechanics was an easy elective because, I was told, "You only have to memorize one equation."
This proved not to be the best advice I ever had. The Navier-Stokes Equation is hard. I did not do well on the exam.
Since Navier-Stokes got the better of me, I was somewhat cheered to see that Artificial Intelligence is getting the better of it.
Now researchers at Caltech have introduced a new deep-learning technique for solving PDEs that is dramatically more accurate than deep-learning methods developed previously. It's also much more generalizable, capable of solving entire families of PDEs—such as the Navier-Stokes equation for any type of fluid—without needing retraining. [AI has cracked a key mathematical puzzle for understanding our world by Karen Hao; MIT Technology Review, October 30th 2020.]
("PDE" stands for "Partial Differential Equations," the broad class of equations to which Navier-Stokes belongs.)
Brainteaser. Here's the November 1st "Mind-Bender for the Quarantined" from Dr. Peter Winkler at the National Museum of Mathematics.
A box contains nine billiard balls numbered 1 through 9. You repeat the following ten times: reach blindly into the box, pick out a random ball, note its number, and throw the ball back in the box.
What is the probability that the sum of the numbers of the balls you picked is even?
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John Derbyshire [ email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
Readers who wish to donate (tax deductible) funds specifically earmarked for John Derbyshire's writings at VDARE.com can do so here.


vdare--2020-12-01--Giving Tuesday Was A Great Success: Raised Over $20K, Which Will Be DOUBLED By Matching Grant

Our Giving Tuesday videocast , with John Derbyshire , organized by my wife Lydia Brimelow , and featuring a brief @ @ @ @ @ of our three daughters , was a great success .
The original goal was $ @ @ @ @ @ donor promised to match , but stretched to $ 20,795 ... after two more generous @ @ @ @ @ generosity and came forward with bonus matching goals !
Video can be seen here .
@ @ @ @ @ : fast forward through video to 05:55 for the start of actual talking .
An @ @ @ @ @ appear on BitChute tomorrow .
Thanks to everyone who donated .

Our Giving Tuesday videocast, with John Derbyshire, organized by my wife Lydia Brimelow, and featuring a brief appearance, at 07:20, of our three daughters, was a great success.
The original goal was $5,000, which a generous donor promised to match, but stretched to $20,795... after two more generous donors were inspired by your generosity and came forward with bonus matching goals!
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WE DID IT! We reached $20,795! Last year, our record-breaking #GivingTuesday sent Media Matters into a conniption fit. This year, we don't have YouTube, but we might even break a record again! Thank you so much! Click here to view the livestream replay!


vdare--2020-12-01--D.C. Cardinal Wilton Gregory Happy To Give Communion To Pro-Abortion Biden—Because He’s Opening The

D.C. Cardinal Wilton Gregory Happy To Give Communion To Pro-Abortion Biden—Because He’s Opening The Borders!

If you want to know why the Catholic bishops will cheerlead “ President-elect ” Joe Biden for the next four years , listen to Washington , D.C. ’ s Wilton Gregory , the first black American cardinal [ Wilton Gregory becomes the first Black American cardinal , CBS News , November 28 , 2020 ] .
Gregory says Catholic-In-Name-Only Biden ’ s full-throated support for abortion-on-demand is no reason to deny him holy communion [ DC archbishop affirms he will give Holy Communion to pro-abortion Joe Biden , by Michael Haynes , Lifesite , November 24 , 2020 ] .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 915 , the Catholic law governing the reception of Holy Communion , is a symptom of his open Leftism , along with his fellow Bishops , which in turn explains why they back Biden ’ s suicidal plan to open the borders , legalize 11 million illegal aliens , and hasten The Great Replacement .
Before elaborating on the link between the bishops ’ ignoring canon law and their leftism and immigration boosterism , it ’ s worth explaining why Gregory must deny Holy Communion to Biden , who thinks a “ palmist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m not a canon lawyer .
But I am a cradle Catholic , and an American patriot .
You don ’ t need a Ph.D. from the Gregorian University to know when someone can ’ t receive communion .
Last year , a faithful priest did deny Biden Holy Communion [ Joe Biden was denied communion at Catholic church in South Carolina , by Eric Bradner , CNN , October 29 , 2019 ] .
But it ’ s the rare and courageous priest who does so .
Cardinal Gregory won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a church in dialogue , even with those with whom we have some serious disagreements , ” Lifesite ’ s Haynes reported him saying : After a snow job like that , Biden might slip and break his other foot [ Biden breaks foot while playing with dog , to wear a boot , by Alexandra Jaffe , The Associated Press , November 30 , 2020 ] .
As a retired priest friend told me : “ Gregory commits mortal sin by taking the position he has taken , and again he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington violates Canon 915.
” And the bishops are no better , the priest said .
They ’ ve given themselves permission to commit the same mortal sin .
Here ’ s their website : Gregory will not be corrected , certainly not by Pope Francis , who terribly confused the matter in a controversial apostolic exhortation [ Amoris Laetitia ] .
In my view , the reason so many Bishops ignore Canon 915 : They themselves are corrupt , and indeed might be violating the law themselves .
In 2006 , Gregory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … along with 34 of 44 other bishops [ A Question That Won ’ t Go Away : Do Bishops Have A Sexual Orientation ?
by Richard Sipe , AWRSipe.com , August 1 , 2006 ] .
That was 77 percent of the men on the list .
Sipe isn ’ t popular among some good Catholics , but what if he ’ s right ?
What if he ’ s half right ?
And however many of those bishops have died or retired , Gregory is still with us .
So are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homosexual who publishes the orthodox Church Militant website , calls Gregory “ The African Queen , ” while a Catholic website that tracks perverts in the collar provides the long list of reasons to suspect Gregory is homosexual [ Why Faithful Catholics Should Reject Wilton Gregory as Archbishop of Washington , D.C. , by Peter , ComplicitClergy.com , March 30 , 2019 ] .
Now , consider what Gregory and the bishops do rage and obsess about : • President Trump ’ s visit to the John Paul II National Shrine , although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ SCOTUS legalized abortion in 1973 [ Archbishop Wilton Gregory Issues Statement on Planned Presidential Visit , June 2 , 2020 ] ; and , • Racism , at a meeting in Baltimore during height of the McCarrick sex abuse scandal .
Find out what a bishop does about Canon 915 and you ’ ll find out his politics .
And , to some degree , vice versa .
In other words , the bishops will sing hosannas when Biden stops deportations , revs up asylum applications , lifts the ceiling on refugees , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
USCCB ’ s Justice for Immigrants website explains what the bishops want : more foreign workers , more “ family reunification , ” and “ an opportunity for those who live in the U.S. as ‘ unauthorized immigrants ’ to transition to ‘ legal immigrants ’ if they can demonstrate good moral character and have built up equities in this country ” [ We Are Strangers No Longer ] .
The bishops cavil claim they oppose Open Borders .
But that ’ s obvious nonsense .
An Amnesty for 11 million illegals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are open .
And whatever they think Open Borders means , as a practical matter the bishops echo Slippin ’ Joey [ The Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants ] .
Yet official Catholic teaching is a far cry from what we hear from the bishops : Political authorities , for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible , may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions , especially with regard to the immigrants ’ duties toward their country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Catechism of the Catholic Church , Part 3 ] The bishops ’ website , apart from the Justice for Immigrants satellite , says this : Yet Justice for Immigrants features a “ Migrants Monday ” and denounced the Trump Administration ’ s plan to limit refugees to 15,000 annually [ USCCB President and Migration Chairman Respond to Announcement of Lowest Refugee Designation in the History of U.S .
Refugee Resettlement ] .
Then there ’ s Pope Francis .
Two years ago , he wrote that nations must provide “ humanitarian visas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visas for refugees from nearby wars.
” And no deportations , either : But of course an “ expulsion ” is not “ arbitrary ” if the “ refugee ” lied about why he jumped the border , as 90 percent of asylum applicants do [ Migrant Protection Protocols , DHS.Gov , January 24 , 2019 .
Francis refused to bless or even meet with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini because he cracked down on African illegal aliens .
And only a man who is seriously confused could believe , let alone utter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uncontrolled illegal immigration is comparable to the Berlin Wall that trapped people in a Communist tyranny [ Pope Francis Compares Trump ’ s Border Wall To Berlin Wall , by Thomas D. Williams , Breitbart , May 28 , 2019 ] .
Francis pontificates about “ the common good ” vis-à-vis WuFlu lockdowns .
But then he and his bishops forget it when illegal aliens overrun borders and threaten “ the good of the people ” who are taxed to provide free food , education , and health care .
The pope congratulated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigration with him [ Pope and Biden discuss equality , climate change and immigration , by John Lavenburg , CruxNow.com , November 12 , 2020 ] .
Francis and Biden , like Gregory and Biden , are simpatico .
Needless to say , Francis didn ’ t tell Biden to stay away from Holy Communion .
One lesson to learn from Gregory and the bishops ’ open Leftism and refusal to follow canon law comes from St. Thomas Aquinas : Sexual vice perverts reason and darkens the intellect .
Here ’ s how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump ’ s position on immigration is more Catholic than the Pope ’ s or the bishops ’ , who surely know that immigration promotes abortion because immigrants overwhelmingly vote for pro-abortion Democrats .
Gregory will work closely with the first Catholic president since JFK , the media tell us , while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will set up a special committee to do so [ Will Gregory ’ s ‘ dialogue ’ with Biden undermine USCCB ?
, by Ed Condon , Catholic News Agency , November 25 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s mitred defense team will downplay his commitment to abortion .
They ’ ll chatter about “ dialogue.
” Then they ’ ll say he ’ s a good Catholic for proposing Amnesty and “ welcoming the stranger , ” and a good American for embracing “ our values as a nation of immigrants , ” as Biden ’ s website puts it .
The upshot of it all : The Catholic bishops are part of the Treason Lobby that is fanatically determined to elect a new people .
If Biden takes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll have a co-religionist in the White House to make that wish come true .
Eugene Gant [ email him ] no longer lives in Baltimore .

If you want to know why the Catholic bishops will cheerlead “President-elect” Joe Biden for the next four years, listen to Washington, D.C.’s Wilton Gregory, the first black American cardinal [Wilton Gregory becomes the first Black American cardinal, CBS News, November 28, 2020]. Gregory says Catholic-In-Name-Only Biden’s full-throated support for abortion-on-demand is no reason to deny him holy communion [DC archbishop affirms he will give Holy Communion to pro-abortion Joe Biden, by Michael Haynes, Lifesite, November 24, 2020]. Gregory’s failure to uphold Canon 915, the Catholic law governing the reception of Holy Communion, is a symptom of his open Leftism, along with his fellow Bishops, which in turn explains why they back Biden’s suicidal plan to open the borders, legalize 11 million illegal aliens, and hasten The Great Replacement.
Before elaborating on the link between the bishops’ ignoring canon law and their leftism and immigration boosterism, it’s worth explaining why Gregory must deny Holy Communion to Biden, who thinks a “palmist” wrote the Psalms.
"Devout Catholic" Joe Biden doesn't know the "P" in "Psalmist" is silent, not the "s".pic.twitter.com/P4VAaYbJWT — LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) November 26, 2020
I’m not a canon lawyer. But I am a cradle Catholic, and an American patriot. You don’t need a Ph.D. from the Gregorian University to know when someone can’t receive communion.
Says Canon 915:
Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
Last year, a faithful priest did deny Biden Holy Communion [Joe Biden was denied communion at Catholic church in South Carolina, by Eric Bradner, CNN, October 29, 2019]. But it’s the rare and courageous priest who does so.
Cardinal Gregory won’t, because he claims “we should be a church in dialogue, even with those with whom we have some serious disagreements,” Lifesite’s Haynes reported him saying:
“On my part, it’s a matter of the responsibility that I have as the archbishop to be engaged and to be in dialogue with him, even in those areas where we obviously have some differences.”
After a snow job like that, Biden might slip and break his other foot [Biden breaks foot while playing with dog, to wear a boot, by Alexandra Jaffe, The Associated Press, November 30, 2020].
As a retired priest friend told me: “Gregory commits mortal sin by taking the position he has taken, and again he or any priest of the Archdiocese of Washington violates Canon 915.”
And the bishops are no better, the priest said. They’ve given themselves permission to commit the same mortal sin. Here’s their website:
The question has been raised as to whether the denial of Holy Communion to some Catholics in political life is necessary because of their public support for abortion on demand. Given the wide range of circumstances involved in arriving at a prudential judgment on a matter of this seriousness, we recognize that such decisions rest with the individual bishop in accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles. Bishops can legitimately make different judgments on the most prudent course of pastoral action. [Catholics in Political Life, USCCB.org]
Gregory will not be corrected, certainly not by Pope Francis, who terribly confused the matter in a controversial apostolic exhortation [Amoris Laetitia].
In my view, the reason so many Bishops ignore Canon 915: They themselves are corrupt, and indeed might be violating the law themselves.
In 2006, Gregory was openly accused of being a homosexual … along with 34 of 44 other bishops [A Question That Won’t Go Away: Do Bishops Have A Sexual Orientation? by Richard Sipe, AWRSipe.com, August 1, 2006]. That was 77 percent of the men on the list.
Sipe isn’t popular among some good Catholics, but what if he’s right? What if he’s half right? And however many of those bishops have died or retired, Gregory is still with us. So are others.
Michael Voris, a former homosexual who publishes the orthodox Church Militant website, calls Gregory “The African Queen,” while a Catholic website that tracks perverts in the collar provides the long list of reasons to suspect Gregory is homosexual [Why Faithful Catholics Should Reject Wilton Gregory as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., by Peter, ComplicitClergy.com, March 30, 2019].
Now, consider what Gregory and the bishops do rage and obsess about:
Find out what a bishop does about Canon 915 and you’ll find out his politics. And, to some degree, vice versa.
In other words, the bishops will sing hosannas when Biden stops deportations, revs up asylum applications, lifts the ceiling on refugees, and sends Amnesty legislation to the Senate.
USCCB’s Justice for Immigrants website explains what the bishops want: more foreign workers, more “family reunification,” and “an opportunity for those who live in the U.S. as ‘unauthorized immigrants’ to transition to ‘legal immigrants’ if they can demonstrate good moral character and have built up equities in this country” [We Are Strangers No Longer].
The bishops cavil claim they oppose Open Borders. But that’s obvious nonsense. An Amnesty for 11 million illegals will send the message that the borders are open. And whatever they think Open Borders means, as a practical matter the bishops echo Slippin’ Joey [The Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants].
Yet official Catholic teaching is a far cry from what we hear from the bishops:
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption [emphasis added]
[The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 3]
The bishops’ website, apart from the Justice for Immigrants satellite, says this:
[N]o country is bound to accept all those who wish to resettle there. By this principle the Church recognizes that most immigration is ultimately not something to celebrate [emphasis added]. [Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples, USCCB.org]
Yet Justice for Immigrants features a “Migrants Monday” and denounced the Trump Administration’s plan to limit refugees to 15,000 annually [USCCB President and Migration Chairman Respond to Announcement of Lowest Refugee Designation in the History of U.S. Refugee Resettlement].
Then there’s Pope Francis. Two years ago, he wrote that nations must provide “humanitarian visas” and family reunification, along with visas for refugees from nearby wars.”
And no deportations, either:
Collective and arbitrary expulsions of migrants and refugees are not suitable solutions, particularly where people are returned to countries which cannot guarantee respect for human dignity and fundamental rights. [Message of his Holiness Pope Francis for the 104th World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2018, Vatican.va
But of course an “expulsion” is not “arbitrary” if the “refugee” lied about why he jumped the border, as 90 percent of asylum applicants do [Migrant Protection Protocols, DHS.Gov, January 24, 2019.
Francis refused to bless or even meet with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini because he cracked down on African illegal aliens. And only a man who is seriously confused could believe, let alone utter aloud, that a wall to stop uncontrolled illegal immigration is comparable to the Berlin Wall that trapped people in a Communist tyranny [Pope Francis Compares Trump’s Border Wall To Berlin Wall, by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, May 28, 2019].
Francis pontificates about “the common good” vis-à-vis WuFlu lockdowns. But then he and his bishops forget it when illegal aliens overrun borders and threaten “the good of the people” who are taxed to provide free food, education, and health care.
The pope congratulated Biden after the election and apparently discussed immigration with him [Pope and Biden discuss equality, climate change and immigration, by John Lavenburg, CruxNow.com, November 12, 2020]. Francis and Biden, like Gregory and Biden, are simpatico. Needless to say, Francis didn’t tell Biden to stay away from Holy Communion.
One lesson to learn from Gregory and the bishops’ open Leftism and refusal to follow canon law comes from St. Thomas Aquinas: Sexual vice perverts reason and darkens the intellect.
Here’s how dark: As VDARE.com wrote in 2016, Trump’s position on immigration is more Catholic than the Pope’s or the bishops’, who surely know that immigration promotes abortion because immigrants overwhelmingly vote for pro-abortion Democrats.
So what’s coming next?
Gregory will work closely with the first Catholic president since JFK, the media tell us, while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will set up a special committee to do so [Will Gregory’s ‘dialogue’ with Biden undermine USCCB?, by Ed Condon, Catholic News Agency, November 25, 2020].
That means Biden’s mitred defense team will downplay his commitment to abortion. They’ll chatter about “dialogue.” Then they’ll say he’s a good Catholic for proposing Amnesty and “welcoming the stranger,” and a good American for embracing “our values as a nation of immigrants,” as Biden’s website puts it.
The upshot of it all: The Catholic bishops are part of the Treason Lobby that is fanatically determined to elect a new people.
If Biden takes the oath on January 20, they’ll have a co-religionist in the White House to make that wish come true.
Eugene Gant [email him] no longer lives in Baltimore.


vdare--2020-11-30--Patrick J. Buchanan: Has Bibi Boxed Biden in on Iran?

If Israel , as is universally believed and has not been denied , was behind the assassination of Iran 's leading nuclear scientist , questions arise : Why would the Israelis kill him ?
And why would they do it now ?
The scientist , Mohsen Fakhrizadeh , it is conceded , was a leader in Iran 's nuclear bomb program , but that program was disbanded in 2003 .
Under George W. Bush , in 2007 , all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies declared with `` high confidence '' that Iran no longer had a bomb program .
Four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that finding .
Since 2015 , Iran 's nuclear facilities , under the Iran nuclear deal , have been subject to U.N. surveillance and inspections .
And Iran has neither produced plutonium nor enriched uranium to the 90 % level needed for a bomb .
Israel claims Iran never stopped working on a bomb , but U.S. intel agencies and U.N. nuclear inspectors have agreed that the military nuclear program that Fakhrizadeh oversaw was ended in 2003 .
So , again , why would Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu authorize Mossad to send an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nuclear scientist ?
And why now ?
If Iran is actually running a secret program to build a bomb in violation of the nuclear deal , why not identify the site of the violation , demand that U.N. inspectors visit , expose Iranian duplicity to the world , and kill the deal ?
From Netanyahu 's standpoint , there are , however , many motives to make the call to kill Fakhrizadeh .
To humiliate the Iranian regime .
To demonstrate Mossad 's capacity to kill Israel 's enemies with impunity .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran 's nuclear program that the regime 's security forces can not protect them .
To Sunni and Gulf Arabs who see Iran as a sectarian and strategic rival and adversary , Israel 's ability to punish Iran and its regional militias with repeated , unanswered strikes makes Israel a far more desirable ally and partner than ever before .
But with this strike , Bibi was also sending a message to Joe Biden , who is seven weeks away from assuming the presidency .
Mr. President-elect : This Mossad operation should tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ determination to build a nuclear bomb , and how existential a threat that would be for us .
And we intend to deal with that threat sooner rather than later .
And if , on taking office , you try to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and lift U.S. sanctions in return for Iran 's full compliance with the terms of that deal , then we will not be restricted in the actions we take to prevent that from happening .
As President Trump put America first , we put Israel first , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we intend to face—preferably with you , but if necessary , alone .
From Bibi 's standpoint , the killing of Iran 's top nuclear scientist seems to be a win-win-win proposition .
Bibi 's personal scandals are eclipsed and put on the back burner .
He is seen by Israelis as a man of action and decisive protector of the nation against its greatest threat .
Should Iran answer the assassination with a counterstrike , that could lead to Israeli retaliation , escalation , and war .
This could turn Bibi into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and fulfill his dream of having America bring its full air , naval and missile power to deliver a crushing blow to the Iranian military and the Ayatollah 's regime .
However , the assassination of Fakhrizadeh and Iran 's resolve to retaliate complicates—if it does not close—Biden 's path toward rejoining the nuclear deal and reconciling with Iran .
If the killing ignites a war , Tehran knows there is a real possibility that America would align with Israel , as Donald Trump detests the Iranian regime as much as Netanyahu does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Tehran fail to maintain the national honor by retaliating against Israel , that could result in a hardline regime winning in this year 's elections .
A return of the hardliners could mean a total collapse of the Iran nuclear deal and a new cold war that could eventually end in the hot war Middle East hawks—in Iran , Israel and the USA—have long desired .
As Trump showed with the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in his car coming out of Baghdad airport , he does not recoil from direct action @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. flew two B-52s out of Minot , North Dakota , to the Middle East .
The USS Nimitz carrier group began moving out of the Indian Ocean toward the Persian Gulf .
Four days before the hit on the Iranian scientist , Netanyahu met secretly in a Red Sea port city with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo .
Was Pompeo told what the Israelis were about to do ?
Did the U.S. know of , approve of , or not object to the attack @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems closer today ?
Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers ; his books State of Emergency : The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America , and Suicide of a Superpower : Will America Survive to 2025 ?
are available from Amazon.com .
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “ The Greatest Comeback : How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority .
His latest book , published May , 2018 , is “ Nixon ’ s White House Wars : The Battles That Made and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” See Peter Brimelow ’ s review : “ Wheel And Fight ” —Pat Buchanan ’ s Nixon Book Provides Road Map For Trump .

If Israel, as is universally believed and has not been denied, was behind the assassination of Iran's leading nuclear scientist, questions arise:
Why would the Israelis kill him? And why would they do it now?
The scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, it is conceded, was a leader in Iran's nuclear bomb program, but that program was disbanded in 2003.
Under George W. Bush, in 2007, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies declared with "high confidence" that Iran no longer had a bomb program.
Four years later, the same intel agencies affirmed that finding.
Since 2015, Iran's nuclear facilities, under the Iran nuclear deal, have been subject to U.N. surveillance and inspections. And Iran has neither produced plutonium nor enriched uranium to the 90% level needed for a bomb.
Israel claims Iran never stopped working on a bomb, but U.S. intel agencies and U.N. nuclear inspectors have agreed that the military nuclear program that Fakhrizadeh oversaw was ended in 2003.
So, again, why would Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu authorize Mossad to send an assassination team to Iran to kill the nuclear scientist? And why now?
If Iran is actually running a secret program to build a bomb in violation of the nuclear deal, why not identify the site of the violation, demand that U.N. inspectors visit, expose Iranian duplicity to the world, and kill the deal?
Why kill the scientist?
From Netanyahu's standpoint, there are, however, many motives to make the call to kill Fakhrizadeh.
To humiliate the Iranian regime. To demonstrate Mossad's capacity to kill Israel's enemies with impunity. To send a message to others working in Iran's nuclear program that the regime's security forces cannot protect them.
To Sunni and Gulf Arabs who see Iran as a sectarian and strategic rival and adversary, Israel's ability to punish Iran and its regional militias with repeated, unanswered strikes makes Israel a far more desirable ally and partner than ever before.
But with this strike, Bibi was also sending a message to Joe Biden, who is seven weeks away from assuming the presidency.
What is Bibi's message?
Mr. President-elect: This Mossad operation should tell you how seriously we view Iran's determination to build a nuclear bomb, and how existential a threat that would be for us. And we intend to deal with that threat sooner rather than later.
And if, on taking office, you try to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and lift U.S. sanctions in return for Iran's full compliance with the terms of that deal, then we will not be restricted in the actions we take to prevent that from happening.
As President Trump put America first, we put Israel first, and Iran tops the list of threats we intend to face—preferably with you, but if necessary, alone.
From Bibi's standpoint, the killing of Iran's top nuclear scientist seems to be a win-win-win proposition. Bibi's personal scandals are eclipsed and put on the back burner. He is seen by Israelis as a man of action and decisive protector of the nation against its greatest threat.
Should Iran answer the assassination with a counterstrike, that could lead to Israeli retaliation, escalation, and war. This could turn Bibi into a wartime prime minister like Winston Churchill and fulfill his dream of having America bring its full air, naval and missile power to deliver a crushing blow to the Iranian military and the Ayatollah's regime.
However, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh and Iran's resolve to retaliate complicates—if it does not close—Biden's path toward rejoining the nuclear deal and reconciling with Iran.
If the killing ignites a war, Tehran knows there is a real possibility that America would align with Israel, as Donald Trump detests the Iranian regime as much as Netanyahu does.
And if the "moderates" in Tehran fail to maintain the national honor by retaliating against Israel, that could result in a hardline regime winning in this year's elections.
A return of the hardliners could mean a total collapse of the Iran nuclear deal and a new cold war that could eventually end in the hot war Middle East hawks—in Iran, Israel and the USA—have long desired.
As Trump showed with the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in his car coming out of Baghdad airport, he does not recoil from direct action against perceived enemies.
Last week, the U.S. flew two B-52s out of Minot, North Dakota, to the Middle East. The USS Nimitz carrier group began moving out of the Indian Ocean toward the Persian Gulf.
Four days before the hit on the Iranian scientist, Netanyahu met secretly in a Red Sea port city with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Was Pompeo told what the Israelis were about to do? Did the U.S. know of, approve of, or not object to the attack? Do Americans want this war that seems closer today?
COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM
Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? are available from Amazon.com. Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.
His latest book, published May, 2018, is “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”
See Peter Brimelow’s review: “Wheel And Fight”—Pat Buchanan’s Nixon Book Provides Road Map For Trump.


vdare--2020-11-30--A West Texas Reader Says With Voting Machines, It's Not Who Votes, It's WHAT Counts The Votes

Now that a highly respected appellate attorney and a well-known former U.S Attorney for the SDNY have solid evidence that @ @ @ @ @ , be hacked and the vote rigged , and that industrial-scale vote fraud was committed @ @ @ @ @ need to update a Stalinism .
Old version , attributed to Stalin : `` It @ @ @ @ @ it 's who counts the votes . ''
New version , globalist edition : `` @ @ @ @ @ , it 's what counts the votes . ''

Re: Brenda Walker's blog post Attorney Sidney Powell Describes Immense Voter Fraud
From: A West Texas Reader [Email him]
Now that a highly respected appellate attorney and a well-known former U.S Attorney for the SDNY have solid evidence that voting machines/computers can, indeed, be hacked and the vote rigged, and that industrial-scale vote fraud was committed via those backdoors, we need to update a Stalinism.
Old version, attributed to Stalin: "It's not who votes, it's who counts the votes."
New version, globalist edition: "It's not who votes, it's what counts the votes."
Prayers continue for a miracle to confirm Trump's win.