Expect more of this

Iran contemplates taking away the ability to commit societal suicide from the female half of the population:

Two bills being discussed in Iran will turn women into “baby-making machines” if passed, Amnesty International warned on Wednesday. The bills seek to boost Iran’s population of 77 million. Population growth in the country has been declining since the late 1980s, despite the efforts of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to end family-planning programs. The new bills, which would limit women’s access to contraception and encourage companies to prioritize hiring men with children over other groups, would, Amnesty argues, effectively legalize gender discrimination in the workplace and result in more women seeking out dangerous, unsafe and illegal abortions.

“The bills reinforce discriminatory stereotypes of women and mark an unprecedented move by the state to interfere in people’s personal lives,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Wednesday. “In their zealous quest to project an image of military might and political strength by attempting to increase birth rates, Iran’s authorities are trampling all over the fundamental rights of women—even the marital bed is not out of bounds.”

One thing that is becoming evident is that regardless of culture, women cannot be trusted to use contraception in a socially responsible manner. If it is left up to them, they will kill their societies rather than give up the pleasures of alpha-chasing. This indicates that it will not be left up to them very much longer, as societies that permit women to control their birth rates will prove to be unfit, decline demographically, and eventually expire, while those that control women will prove their fitness, remain stable or continue to grow, and expand to replace the dying societies.

Iran’s leaders understand that the future belongs to those who show up for it. It is a pity that so many political and opinion leaders in the West do not. That being said, historically attempts to legislate demographic growth have not been very successful, dating back to 9 AD and the Lex Papia Poppaea in Imperial Rome.

The real OU scandal

Instapundit points out that the media is focusing on the wrong scandal at Oklahoma:

It has been a bad spell for the University of Oklahoma. First, some members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity were videotaped singing a racist song on a bus, and a video went public. Then OU President David Boren kicked the fraternity off campus and summarily expelled two of the fraternity members.

You may think it’s unfair for me to treat these two incidents as comparable, and if you do think that you’re right: The difference is that David Boren broke the law, while the fraternity brothers merely behaved badly.

As a state institution, the University of Oklahoma is constrained by the Constitution. Among other things, that means that it must respect the free speech guarantees contained in the First Amendment, even if that speech is repugnant. Just because the university doesn’t like what students say, thinks it’s hateful, or worries that it will produce an unpleasant atmosphere on campus, doesn’t grant it the authority to punish people for speaking. One would think that Boren — a former U.S. senator who took an oath to uphold the Constitution when he was sworn into office — would know better. Apparently not.

Singing racist songs may be impolite. It may be jackassery. But it is Constitutionally protected free speech. Not allowing blacks into your fraternity may be rude. It may be boorish. But it is Constitutionally protected free association.

Meanwhile, OSU deserves to get its pants sued off and David Boren should be fired by the university immediately. As Glenn rightly points out, OU didn’t expel a black football player who beat up a girl so badly that he literally broke her face. But they expelled two white students for engaging in legal and Constitutionally-protected behavior.

Time to go

Jeffrey Goldberg considers whether it is time for the Jews to leave Europe in The Atlantic:

It is not 1933. But could it be 1929? Could Europe’s economic stagnation combine with its inability to assimilate and enfranchise growing populations of increasingly angry Muslims in such a way as to clear a path for volatile right-wing populism?

A few weeks after the January massacres, I met with a group of aggrieved Jews in a café near the main synagogue in Sarcelles, the suburb that was the center of last summer’s anti-Jewish riots. French troops in combat gear patrolled the street. The synagogue is now also used as a base of operations for the more than 40 soldiers who have been assigned to protect the town’s Jewish institutions.

“We’re very glad for the soldiers,” one of the men, who asked me to identify him only as Chaim, said. “But soldiers in the synagogues means that there is no life here, only danger. This is why I’m leaving.” It is, he said, using an expression common during the Algerian civil war, a choice between le cercueil ou la valise—“the coffin or the suitcase.”

But another man, who asked to be called Marcel, responded that it would be cowardly to flee for Israel at the first appearance of Molotov cocktails. “Running, running, running,” he said. “That’s the Jewish way.” He said his parents had arrived in Sarcelles from Tunisia in 1967, driven out by anti-Jewish rioters who were putatively distressed by Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. “We ran from Tunisia. We’re not running from here.”

“But no one wants us here,” Chaim said. “They’ll attack us again as soon as the soldiers go.”

I said that I didn’t think Manuel Valls was going to remove the soldiers anytime soon.

Marcel laughed. “I don’t count on the Socialists. I would count on the National Front before I count on the Socialists.”

His conclusion: I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews
in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so
quickly.

Goldberg’s predisposition is correct. There is no future for the Jews in Post-Christian Europe now that the great experiment in diversity and multiculturalism is ending. The various European nations trust the Jews no more than they trust the Europeans. What is happening in Europe now is going to be happening in the USA circa 2050, and I doubt the results will be any different.

Europe no more needs Jews than Israel needs Eskimos or China needs Bantu tribesmen. And the Jews presently make it difficult for the Europeans to address their Muslim problem, just as they currently make it impossible for the USA to even begin to address its own immigrant invasion. That is why the sooner that the diaspora returns home, to the land they have fairly won in sweat and blood, the better it will be for them as well as for the nations they still presently inhabit. The French are not going to patrol their own streets indefinitely on behalf of those who are not, in the end, even French.

War is coming. And wartime is seldom kind to those who have made it clear that their loyalties do not lie with those who are actively involved in waging it. I am no anti-semite; in fact, I am a pro-Zionist and one of the very few individuals who has ever been formally cleared of the charge of anti-semitism by a Jewish organization. But I am also a student of history and war who abhors unnecessary violence and bloodshed that could easily be avoided by even a modicum of reason and common sense.

The diaspora Jews must understand that they will never rule over the more numerous nations for long. That has always been the fatal flaw in their favored strategy; accumulating wealth and influence does NOT provide security, especially for an unpopular minority, as it makes one a legitimate target in the eyes of the oppressed and dispossessed, even if one is not responsible for the oppression and the dispossession.

There is a very good scene in HBO’s A Game of Thrones when Queen Cersei demonstrates to Littlefinger the salient difference between influence and power. And influence only trumps power so long as power is unwilling to exert itself.

SJW is anti-science and anti-mathematics

SJWs are against more than mere fun. They also oppose science as well as math in the form of probability. Mike Cernovich drops relevant statistics on those who have attempted to attack him over daring to mention scientific hate facts.

In a post about HIV I observed, “Straight men do not contract HIV.” I did not push a narrative. I did not share what I heard on some news channel or learned from a nit-wit teacher.

Rather, I analyzed data from the United States Center for Disease Control. When you look at CDC data, you notice something.

Where are all of the straight white male HIV infections?

Relying on CDC data is considered racist and homophobic, as morons believe a scientific judgment is a moral one. Zealots are simply unable to look at scientific questions with a scientific lens and moral questions with a moral lens.

Cernovich points out that even in the impossible event that every single man with HIV is honestly reporting his sexual activity (impossible because we already know it is not true), “According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, men almost never get HIV from women. A healthy man who has unprotected sex with a non drug-using woman has a one in 5 million chance of getting HIV. If he wears a condom, the odds drop to one in 50 million.”

To put it in perspective:

  • Killed by a Dog:     1 in 103,798
  • Killed by Lightning: 1 in 136,011
  • Contracting HIV: 1 in 5,000,000

The point isn’t that this means straight men should run around freely fornicating, it is that one can NEVER, EVER trust anything an SJW says about ANYTHING. They are all about the narrative, not the truth, not the science, not the statistics, not the probabilities and most certainly not the history.

Man the battlements

Mike Caputo raises the blue flag:

If you imagine the world of entertainment or leisure generally as a map, video games are one of the few geographic regions where boys are still allowed to be boys, and this is simply not tolerable to feminists. They look at that territory and see a dark black stain on the pink-tinted expanse of modern culture. Feminine sensibilities and political correctness dominate the traditional media, Hollywood, academia, and publishing, while video games serve a niche market that, though large in absolute numbers, impacts a far smaller percentage of the population than other media. In other words, they have us surrounded.

But what they—and most men—don’t appear to understand is that the only reason things have gotten this far is that we haven’t been fighting back. Men have spent 50 years meekly retreating, conceding cultural territory, and even defecting to the other side. It has taken a blatant, undisguised assault on some of the least-threatening members of the male population, people who mostly just want to enjoy their hobby in peace.

This is a test, and the answer is not to become an MRA so you can try to fight the feminists on their own well-fortified ground. The answer is to become a man in the traditional sense: self-sufficient, productive, ambitious, knowledgeable about the world you live in, and resistant to female emotional manipulation. Women who understand the benefits they get from living in a masculine environment will do what the majority of women do best: follow and support you, or get out of your way.

Do not give an inch. Do not accommodate them. Do not compromise with them. Do not agree with them with regards to their nebulous, noble-sounding goals. Reject them relentlessly for the orcs of Mordor that they are.

They don’t merely seek the destruction of masculinity, they are literal grinches who consciously seek the total elimination of fun.

The last laugh

A lot of people have laughed at me over the last few years because of the Warmouse, but I have to say, the 18-button brute is an absolute lifesaver when it comes to editing books. One of the new van Creveld books has nearly 500 footnotes and the process of adding them would be considerably more time-consuming if I couldn’t so easily cut, paste, backspace, space, enter, page up, page down, and delete with one hand.

I know that our tests reliably proved one could work 2x faster with the Warmouse interface, but on this particular task, I’m definitely going at a pace about 3X faster than before.

Taleb corrects Pinker

He observes that Pinker has been fooled by randomness and The “Long Peace” is a Statistical Illusion:

When I finished writing The Black Swan, in 2006, I was confronted with ideas of “great moderation”, by people who did not realize that the process was getting fatter and fatter tails (from operational and financial, leverage, complexity, interdependence, etc.), meaning fewer but deeper departures from the mean. The fact that nuclear bombs explode less often that regular shells does not make them safer. Needless to say that with the arrival of the events of 2008, I did not have to explain myself too much. Nevertheless people in economics are still using the methods that led to the “great moderation” narrative, and Bernanke, the protagonist of the theory, had his mandate renewed.

Now to my horror I saw an identical theory of great moderation produced by Steven Pinker with the same naive statistically derived discussions (>700 pages of them!).

  1. I agree that diabetes is a bigger risk than murder –we are victims of sensationalism. But our suckerdom for overblown narratives of violence does not imply that the risks of large scale violent shocks have declined. (The same as in economics, people’s mapping of risks are out of sync and they underestimate large deviations). We are just bad at evaluating risks. 
  2. Pinker conflates nonscalable Mediocristan (death from encounters with simple weapons) with scalable Extremistan (death from heavy shells and nuclear weapons). The two have markedly distinct statistical properties. Yet he uses statistics of one to make inferences about the other. And the book does not realize the core difference between scalable/nonscalable (although he tried to define powerlaws). He claims that crime has dropped, which does not mean anything concerning casualties from violent conflict.
  3. Another way to see the conflation, Pinker works with a times series process without dealing with the notion of temporal homogeneity. Ancestral man had no nuclear weapons, so it is downright foolish to assume the statistics of conflicts in the 14th century can apply to the 21st. A mean person with a stick is categorically different from a mean person with a nuclear weapon, so the emphasis should be on the weapon and not exclusively on the psychological makup of the person.
  4. The statistical discussions are disturbingly amateurish, which would not be a problem except that the point of his book is statistical. Pinker misdefines fat tails by talking about probability not contribution of rare events to the higher moments; he somehow himself accepts powerlaws, with low exponents, but he does not connect the dots that, if true, statistics can allow no claim about the mean of the process. Further, he assumes that data reveals its properties without inferential errors. He talks about the process switching from 80/20 to 80/02, when the first has a tail exponent of 1.16, and the other 1.06, meaning they are statistically indistinguishable. (Errors in computation of tail exponents are at least .6, so this discussion is noise, and as shown in [1], [2], it is lower than 1. (It is an error to talk 80/20 and derive the statistics of cumulative contributions from samples rather than fit exponents; an 80/20 style statement is interpolative from the existing sample, hence biased to clip the tail, while exponents extrapolate.)
  5. He completely misses the survivorship biases (which I called the Casanova effect) that make an observation by an observer whose survival depends on the observation invalid probabilistically, or to the least, biased favorably. Had a nuclear event taken place Signor Pinker would not have been able to write the book.
  6. He calls John Gray’s critique “anecdotal”, yet it is more powerful statistically (argument of via negativa) than his >700 pages of pseudostats.
  7. Psychologically, he complains about the lurid leading people to make inferences about the state of the system, yet he uses lurid arguments to make his point.
  8. You can look at the data he presents and actually see a rise in war effects, comparing pre-1914 to post 1914.
  9. Recursing a Bit (Point added Nov 8): Had a book proclaiming The Long Peace been published in 1913-1934 it would carry similar arguments to those in Pinker’s book.

Taleb is using a different means to reach much the same conclusions I have. Again. Pinker is essentially applying the same “This Time It’s Different” argument to violence that the mainstream economists applied to the dot com bubble, the housing boom, and the post-2008 “recovery”.

Simplistic thinkers inevitably think in linear terms. They assume tomorrow will be like today because today was pretty much like yesterday. Both those who know history and those who understand probability understand that at some point in time, this will no longer be the case.

History is rife with long periods of peace and tranquility. Those are quite often the sections missing from the history books, because there was nothing much that was noteworthy to record. But human nature being what it is, sooner or later events always becoming more exciting, which usually means more bloody.

It’s not hard to understand why there are fewer wars these days. Nuclear weapons have put an end to the post-French Revolutionary progress towards Ludendorffian total war. But that doesn’t mean they will never be used or that Man will not find other means to fight cataclysmic wars. It’s rather remarkable that anyone would make such abysmally stupid claims about the prospects for the continuation of the “Long Peace” when the USA is moving rapidly towards ethnic civil war, Europe is preparing for extreme ethnic cleansing, and the Dar al-Islam is in the process of uniting under a new and aggressive Caliphate even as the USA attempts to instigate war with Russia.

Don’t fight them over there

Fight them over here:

The accumulating evidence from high-quality public-opinion research is hard to ignore. A Quinnipiac University survey released March 4 found that terrorism now trails only the economy as a top public priority: 67% of the American people regard Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as a “major threat” to U.S. security. The public is not satisfied with the Obama administration’s response to this threat. Only 39% approve of the president’s handling of terrorism (down from 52% a year ago), while 54% disapprove. When it comes to ISIS, the public’s view is even more negative, with only 35% approving.

These sentiments translate into support for much more assertive policies. The Quinnipiac survey found that by a stunning 62% to 30%, the American people now support sending U.S. ground forces to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Those in favor include majorities of Democrats and independents as well as Republicans, women as well as men, and young adults as well as seniors. This result underscores a late-February CBS poll, which found 57% of Americans favoring the use of ground forces, up 18 percentage points since last September.

It is astonishing that the American public want to send ground forces to Iraq and Syria when there are millions of Muslims laying the groundwork for the Caliphate in the West. This is why the West is presently losing the Third Great War of Islamic Expansion.

Any time your grand strategy is based on an idea as intrinsically idiotic as the notion that the magic of geographical translocation will somehow transform invading enemies into clones of yourself, you deserve to lose.

The Left devours itself

The long-anticipated breakdown of the Rainbow Coalition has begun on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the White Minority has not really even begun to get into the game. But give them time.

I am a “lefty”. I have voted Labour all my life. I believe in the
abolition of public schools and the inviolability of the NHS, and that
the renewal of Trident is a vanity project. I believe the state must
work to ensure equality of opportunity for all: women, the LBGT
“community”, those with disabilities, those of minority cultures and
ethnicities, and the working class. The Guardian has been my newspaper
forever. I was glad to see the back of the Sun’s Page 3, and I believe
there should be more all-women shortlists for parliamentary seats. I
believe immigration is more of a positive force than a negative one.

However, you might be less certain about my status when I finish
laying out my stall. Because I find myself holding a “transgressive”
body of beliefs and doubts alongside my blue-chip leftwing ones that are
liable to get me branded a misogynist, an Islamophobe and a Little
Englander – at least by people on my Twitter feed, and others of my peer
group…. My stance on these issues makes some people in my “tribe” very angry. It is the anger of the pure believer towards the apostate….

One very key element of the liberal left has long been under threat: its liberalism – that is, its willingness to debate with anything outside a narrow range of opinions within its own walls. And the more scary and incomprehensible the world becomes, the more debate is replaced by edict and prejudice: literally pre-judging. Identity politics is one of the most significant developments of the last 50 years, but it has led to nerves being exposed in a way they rarely were by economic issues. Because identity is less about politics and more about that most sensitive of human constructions, the protection of the self – both group and individual.

And the more it becomes about the protection of self, the less it becomes about the back and forth of rational argument. All the beliefs, opinions and doubts I hold are just that: they are ideas, not ironclad convictions. I am not certain about any of them, and am quite willing to change my mind, as I have done many times in the past. But I will not alter them if I am faced with invective rather than debate; in fact, they will become more entrenched.

Meanwhile, in America, the low-intensity power struggle between blacks and browns stretches from Compton, California to Baltimore, Maryland:

A plan that would dedicate two public high schools in suburban Washington to immigrants and students struggling with English is pitting black and Hispanic communities -– usually allies — against one another.

The Prince George’s County, Md., chapter of the NAACP is strongly opposing the plan — which would take effect next school year, and cover about 800 students having English language difficulties — claiming it will pull resources from other students and unfairly redistribute them to Hispanic students. Some critics go so far as to compare the plan to segregation.

“It’s a slap in the face,” Bob Ross, president of the Prince George’s County branch of the NAACP, told FoxNews.com.

Ross believes the proposal to open two new schools violates the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ruled separate schools for black and white students violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

“It risks turning Prince George’s County into a segregated school system,” Ross said, adding that he realizes the need for better education in the county but believes it should not come at the cost of existing students.

Latino advocacy group CASA de Maryland sees it differently. The group, which has pushed for the schools, argues that it’s not a violation of the Constitution because the schools are not mandatory and are being built to provide options to immigrants.

One thing that most white people have almost religiously failed to grasp is that Hispanics dislike blacks considerably more than whites do. They completely lack both white guilt and white paternalism, and they view blacks as their primary economic and political competition. As Hispanics begin to bring their numbers to bear on both fronts, they are going to ruthlessly crush the traditional sinecures that white liberals have carved out for their black supporters.

Mailvox: suicide of a San Francisco church

A soon-to-be ex-member sends along his the decision of the church “elders” to knowingly embrace sin as church policy:

Dear Friends,

I want to speak with you on behalf of the Elder Board of our church about a pastoral conversation we have been having over the past 9 months. In May of 2014 the Board asked me for a book that was clearly grounded in Scripture that we might study on pastoring our brothers and sisters in Christ who are part of the LGBT community. We read Ken Wilson’s A Letter to My Congregation. The book is rare in that it shows great empathy and maturity to model unity and patience with those who are in different places on this conversation, all the while dealing honestly with Scripture. Since our church already lives in the reality of a multiplicity of viewpoints held with humility, this book seemed to us a good choice. I want you to hear where we have arrived as a Board and invite you into a conversation and healthy discussion about how we arrived there. 

Our pastoral practice of demanding life-long “celibacy”, by which we meant that for the rest of your life you would not engage your sexual orientation in any way, was causing obvious harm and has not led to human flourishing.

(It’s unfortunate that we used the word “celibacy” to describe a demand placed on others, as in Scripture it is, according to both Jesus and Paul, a special gift or calling by God, not an option for everyone). In fact, over the years, the stories of harm caused by this pastoral practice began to accumulate. Our pastoral conversations and social science research indicate skyrocketing rates of depression, suicide, and addiction among those who identify as LGBT. The generally unintended consequence has been to leave many people feeling deeply damaged, distorted, unlovable, unacceptable, and perverted. Imagine feeling this from your family or religious community: “If you stay, you must accept celibacy with no hope that you too might one day enjoy the fullness of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical companionship. If you pursue a lifelong partnership, you are rejected.” This is simply not working and people are being hurt. We must listen and respond.

Imagine the feeling! Someone, somewhere, has suffered FEELBAD! One guess what the response will be.

Summary: What has actually changed here?

On one hand, nothing. This aligns with our existing core vision: the doors of this church are as wide as the arms of the Savior it proclaims. We remain passionate about having as many people hear the gospel as possible. City Church will continue to receive into membership all those with a credible profession of faith and expect the same commitments represented in their membership vows.

On the other hand, we want to be clear what this now means. We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining. For all members, regardless of sexual orientation, we will continue to expect chastity in singleness until marriage. Please pray for our Board as we continue to discuss pastoral practices with our LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for our denomination, the Reformed Church in America, as it does the same.

One sad piece of news: two of our Elders, Tyler Dann and Bruce Gregory, resigned from the board. We received these resignations with sadness and understanding. These are fine members of our church who love Jesus deeply.

Well, I’m sure the City Church of Ken Wilson will flourish every bit as well as the Episcopalian and Anglican churches have since they embraced other forms of anti-Christian heresy. “By their fruits you will know them,” we are told.  And when the organizations wither and die, we’ll be assured that it had nothing whatsoever to do with their embrace of open and unrepentant sin.

I find it interesting that these progressive churches still insist on turning a cold shoulder to unrepentant murderers and child molesters. It’s really rather intolerant and unChristian of them, isn’t it?

Notice in particular the gentle and understanding tone in which the missive is written. That is the insidious whisper of Hell.