May 26, 2013

Israel shows benefits of having a pro-majority government

Here's an NYT article that makes a number of points about 21st Century Israel that I've been stressing. Israel is becoming a secure, wealthy, happy, hedonistic, successful, unintellectual, nationalistic, ethnocentric Middle Eastern country. Israelis are shedding their heritage of Teutonic high culture with all its idealism and neuroses and going back to the old ways. 
What Mideast Crisis? Israelis Have Moved On 
By ETHAN BRONNER 
FOR years, conventional wisdom has held that as long as Israel faces the external challenge of Arab — especially Palestinian — hostility it will never come to terms with its internal divisions. The left has sometimes used it as an argument: we must make peace with the Palestinians so that we can set our house in order — write a constitution, figure out the public role of religion. Others have viewed the threat as almost a silver lining keeping the place together: differences among Israeli Jews (religious or secular, Ashkenazic or Sephardic) are so profound, the argument goes, that if the society ever manages to turn its attention inward, it might tear itself apart. 
Back in Tel Aviv for a recent visit a year after ending my tour as Jerusalem bureau chief, I was struck by how antiquated that wisdom felt. At a fascinating and raucous wedding I attended and from numerous conversations with a range of Israelis, I came away with a very different impression. Few even talk about the Palestinians or the Arab world on their borders, ...Instead of focusing on what has long been seen as their central challenge — how to share this land with another nation — Israelis are largely ignoring it, insisting that the problem is both insoluble for now and less significant than the world thinks. We cannot fix it, many say, but we can manage it. 
The wedding took place near Ben-Gurion airport, where a set of event halls has gone up in the past seven years, including elaborate structures with a distinct Oriental décor of glistening chandeliers, mirrored place mats and sky-high ceilings with shifting digital displays. The groom’s grandparents emigrated from Yemen; the bride’s came from Eastern Europe, an example of continuing and increasing intermarriage between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. 
The music was almost entirely Middle Eastern in beat, some of it in Arabic, some of it religious. The hundreds on the dance floor, many staying until dawn singing along with arms gesticulating, came from across a range of political, geographic and religious spectra — from miniskirted to ultra-Orthodox modesty. ... Everyone was celebrating. ... Some talked politics with me. No one mentioned the Palestinians. 
ISRAEL today offers a set of paradoxes: Jewish Israelis seem in some ways happier and more united than in the past, as if choosing not to solve their most difficult challenge has opened up a space for shalom bayit — peace at home. Yes, all those internal tensions still exist, but the shared belief that there is no solution to their biggest problem has forged an odd kind of solidarity. 
Indeed, Israel has never been richer, safer, more culturally productive [?]or more dynamic. ... Israel has never felt more Middle Eastern in its popular culture, music and public displays of religion. ... The Israeli left is still there, of course, but in increasingly insignificant knots.

Other accomplishments that go unmentioned in the article include the government's decisive defeat of illegal immigrants ("illegal infiltrators").

Obviously, much of the high level anxiety in American culture over Israel is increasingly silly. For Israel, conflicts with neighbors are increasingly like Notre Dame's conflict with USC: fun for boosters, but not an existential threat. If the Trojans beat the Fighting Irish, they don't get to demolish the Golden Dome and rape all the coeds.

I would add that there is much Americans can learn from the success of 21st Century Israel. Israel is one of the few countries in the semi-Western world where the government is explicitly devoted to the welfare of the majority, even at the expense of minorities. Not surprisingly, the majority is doing well.

136 comments:

  1. http://vanguardradio.net/podcast/2013/5/20/nerd-socialism

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  2. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/22/biden-praises-jewish-leaders-for-helping-change-americans-views-on-gay-marriage/

    Northern European today.

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  3. If it hadn't been for the immigration of Russian Jews, Sephardim and Mizrahim would have swamped the Israeli Ashkenazi population. It is therefore not surprising that the culture of the place is becoming more Middle Eastern in feel. Not a good thing in the long term.

    Regarding the marriage described in that article, Yemeni Jews are Mizrahim not Sephardim. Many of the Sephardic Jews who left the Iberian peninsula did settle in the Middle East, but Yemen was not a major stopping point for them. The population genetic data suggests that the Yemeni Jews are largely descended from local peninsular Arab converts.

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  4. Regarding the marriage described in that article, Yemeni Jews are Mizrahim not Sephardim. Many of the Sephardic Jews who left the Iberian peninsula did settle in the Middle East...

    Not that many. Sephardim are essentially the same as Ashkenazim. The term is improperly, though commonly, used to refer to Jewish Middle Easterners (from North Africa to Iraq). Mizrahim is a more accurate term for these.

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  5. It is therefore not surprising that the culture of the place is becoming more Middle Eastern in feel. Not a good thing in the long term.

    Whatever that means. IT's not a bad thing either.

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  6. Watch what the Scots Irish do, not what they say.

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  7. "Israel has never felt more Middle Eastern in its popular culture, music and public displays of religion. ..."

    ....and this neatly expresses the nature of the real danger threatening Israel:Orientalization. The decay of the zionist dream was always intertwined with its realization. Relocating Ashkenazi Jewry to the Middle East was always a dangerous idea. It was inevitable that the lure of the Levant would prove too strong, that Germanic high culture would recede in the face of Middle Eastern mediocrity..

    Ah, well, at least my Riga-born grandfather did not live to see it...fortunate man. He lived to see the downfall of the Soviet Union (the Russians were always his bete noire; the Germans, he would say, simply made a mistake with Hitler, but communism was the Russian soul made manifest), but not the full-bore cultural decline of Israel.

    syon

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  8. Thank God that some Jews at least are shedding the "European disease" and rediscovering sanity and health. I have always felt that the Jews were the victims of a European nihilism that they found already well established upon their emancipation rather than its creators, as many white nationalists wish were the case. Jews merely assimilated the European disease, and in fact, were it's first and most thorough victims.

    Perhaps now Jews can now lead Europeans back to sanity and health as well - be a true "light unto the nations", as it were, as they always wished to be but never were.

    The Teutonic "high culture" (quotation marks not accidental) that the Jews fell victim to, with it's psychologically poisonous atmosphere, it's neurotic nihilism, its self-hatred, it's "idealism", its Prussian aggression and ferocity, it's extremism and lack of balance, lack of any ideal of balance, sanity, health, and happiness, is something that has been darkening the West for far too long.

    Peter Watson argues that American intellectual life has become thoroughly Germanized. That would explain some part of the calamitous element in modern American intellectual life, but many of the worst elements of the "European disease" trace their origins to French and English thinkers, particularly Rousseau, with his hatred of European civilization, and many others, so it becomes clear that the disease is the work of all the European nations together, and cannot be laid entirely at Germany's door.

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  9. ...and this neatly expresses the nature of the real danger threatening Israel:Orientalization.

    "Danger"? To whom?

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  10. Steve Sailer:"Israel is one of the few countries in the semi-Western world where the government is explicitly devoted to the welfare of the majority, even at the expense of minorities."

    Note, though, that large-scale immigration of Middle Eastern Jews has had a deleterious effect on Israel, both in terms of culture and in terms of dysgenics.....Sadly, the old Zionist leaders could not simply wall themselves off from their Oriental brethren...


    syon

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  11. "that Germanic high culture would recede in the face of Middle Eastern mediocrity.."

    An Israeli won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the single Germanest thing imaginable, a couple of years ago. i bet we won't see much of that in another couple of decades.

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  12. Israel is not "semi-Western". It's Western. In the decades ahead it could end up being more Western than many former Western countries.

    Also, I totally fail to see how your conclusions follows from what's written in the article.

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  13. I have always felt that the Jews were the victims of a European nihilism...

    The eternal victims...

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  14. "I would add that there is much Americans can learn from the success of 21st Century Israel."


    It helps if the elites and masses are of the same people, which is the case in Israel.

    In the US, the masses are gentile straights, elites are Jewish and homo.

    Israel also has a REAL rightwing government that is racially and politically for Jews.
    American conservatism serves Jews and now even homos.

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  15. An Israeli won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the single Germanest thing imaginable, a couple of years ago.

    And another Israeli (Ada Yonath) won in 2009. And two more in 2004.

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  16. Perhaps now Jews can now lead Europeans back to sanity and health as well - be a true "light unto the nations", as it were, as they always wished to be but never were.

    Why would Jews do that? European sanity and health is not in Jewish interests. Europeans rival Jews intellectually, surpass them physically, and potentially exceed them organizationally. They thus represent the most salient world source of the threat to Jews of assimilation and intermarriage.

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  17. The Teutonic "high culture" (quotation marks not accidental) that the Jews fell victim to, with it's psychologically poisonous atmosphere, it's neurotic nihilism, its self-hatred, it's "idealism", its Prussian aggression and ferocity, it's extremism and lack of balance, lack of any ideal of balance, sanity, health, and happiness, is something that has been darkening the West for far too long.

    Germans are some of the most balanced and holistic people on the face of the planet.

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  18. "Israel is not 'semi-Western'. It's Western."

    Jews are dualistic in their identity. They are 100% western and 100% semitic. It's a Zeligish element in their character.
    It's like a Jew can write lots of Christmas songs and fully participate in the business of Christmas, but he's never a Christian.

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  19. particularly Rousseau, with his hatred of European civilization.

    Rousseau didn't hate European civilization.

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  20. Steve Sailer:"An Israeli won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the single Germanest thing imaginable, a couple of years ago. i bet we won't see much of that in another couple of decades."

    You mean Dan Shechtman?Kindly note the Ashkenazi surname. Also note that he was born in 1941, back when Israel was still the British Mandate of Palestine. Bearing these facts in mind, I'm not quite so sanguine about Israel's future prospects as a source of high culture.

    syon

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  21. Four Israelis have won Nobel prizes in chemistry: Dan Schechtman (2011), Ada Yonath (2009), Aaron Ciechanover (2004) and Avram Hershko (2004). Sad to say, but Mr. Sailer is probably right that there will be fewer Nobel prizes as Israel becomes more Orientalized. The decreasing secular fraction of the population won't help either. I'm glad my family didn't end up there.

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  22. Perhaps now Jews can now lead Europeans back to sanity and health as well - be a true "light unto the nations", as it were, as they always wished to be but never were.

    European health and sanity, which make Europeans strong and appealing, create conditions for the Silent Holocaust.

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  23. But, I expect Israel to continue to do well making money in technologically intensive businesses for some time. Just not the Nobel Prize in Chemistry type stuff.

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  24. Oh, and Israel's prosperity is easy -- it comes at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

    It's not shedding neuroses that makes Israel successful, but manipulating the world's most powerful and prosperous nation (the U.S.) and exploiting it for money and for lives to fight wars on Israel's behalf that give Israel its cushy position.

    If Israel had to stand on its own, things wouldn't be so rosy for them.

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  25. Anonymous:"And another Israeli (Ada Yonath) won in 2009. And two more in 2004."

    2004:Aaron Ciechanover (born in 1947 to Polish Jewish immigrants).

    Avam Hershenko (born 1937 in Hungary)

    Ada Yonath (born in 1939 in the British Mandate to Polish Jewish parents)

    Somehow these people seem more evocative of Israel's Ashkenazi past than of its Oriental future...

    syon

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  26. "that Germanic high culture would recede in the face of Middle Eastern mediocrity.."

    Maybe rather than receding into mediocrity, it is transforming into more of a commercial/industrial culture, as it has in Germany since World War II? Germany is no longer the world leader in culture it was in the early 20th Century, but it remains a world leader in industry and commerce (and, increasingly sports; consider the all-German UEFA Champions League final yesterday). In addition to its historic strength in manufacturing, Berlin is now an Internet startup hub.

    Similarly, Tel Aviv is a startup hub in Israel, and one of Berkshire Hathaway's largest investments in recent years was in an Israeli company in, arguably, the most Germanic of industries, metal working: ISCAR. Berkshire Hathaway wasn't investing in any Israeli companies when Israel still had giants of Central European/Jewish culture such as S.Y. Agnon.

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  27. The latest figures I've seen indicate a large, mostly , Ashkenazi class still at the top, a large mostly Mizrachi class on the bottom, and a relatively small Askenazti/Mizrachi intermarried class in between. The notion that this distinction between Ashkenazi and Mizrachi is melting away or losing its significance is not supported by the facts.

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  28. 'An Israeli won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the single most Germanic thing imaginable, a couple of years ago...'

    Which one? Four Israelis have won Chemistry Nobels since 2004. Before that no Israeli won a single brain-oriented Nobel. Increased Orientalism does not appear to have degraded Israeli brains.

    Current Israeli culture also emphasizes having children, even among secular people (show me any other place that's true). This makes for more high IQ people under 40, the age, pace Watson, when everyone's intellect falters.

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  29. It's not shedding neuroses that makes Israel successful, but manipulating the world's most powerful and prosperous nation (the U.S.) and exploiting it for money and for lives to fight wars on Israel's behalf that give Israel its cushy position.

    We must acknowledge that as quite a feat.

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  30. Oh, and Israel's prosperity is easy -- it comes at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

    Filching the U.S. taxpayer can in no measure be described as "easy."

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  31. Re the Nobel Prize, as science begins to wind down in our modern period these become easier to win, and are awarded for ever more trivial accomplishments. Even the Japanese, who have won few Nobels back when the big ideas were being produced, managed to win quite a few in the past decade or so. Have the Japanese mysteriously become more creative, or are Nobels being awarded for smaller-scale accomplishments?

    Big Talent across the West is in serious decline, and Israel is not special in this regard. Israel can do quite well in the kinds of trivial, incremental technological progress that seems to dominate science all over the world these days.

    And as Asians come more and more to dominate Western universities, as smart whites opt more and more for a life of relaxed hedonism, the intellectual atmosphere of the coming decades will become even less competitive, and will be characterized by the kind of small-scale technological progress that Israelis seem to do quite well at.

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  32. This statement is not comprehensible:

    "Israelis are shedding their heritage of Teutonic high culture with all its idealism and neuroses and going back to the old ways."

    It is not "Teutonic high culture" that has destroyed Western civilization, but Cultural Marxism and all of its offshoots (feminism, ''anti-racism,'' gay supremacism, etc.) that has done this -- philosophies of resentment which were created by Jewish thinkers, especially the Frankfurt School and their adherents.

    In Israel, it is not Jews that are freeing themselves from Teutonic neuroses, but rather, they are remembering not to apply to themselves the propaganda that they devised for the goyim.

    That is, they are even more emphatically continuing the practice of telling the rest of the world to adopt suicidal policies (that were inflicted on them by Jewish thinkers) while avoiding implementing those policies within their own borders.

    In fact, Teutonic high culture was the West's last defense AGAINST Cultural Marxism. It was the destruction of Teutonic high culture in two world wars that left it vulnerable to the weaponized philosophies by which Jews triumphed and gentiles flagellated themselves.

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  33. Hahaha! So they can blithely stick their heads in the sand and play ignorant to the threats of people who really desire to wipe them off the face of the Earth but simultaneously won't stop propagating the memory of those who tried in the past. That's their psychologically "healthy"?

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  34. Anonymous 5/26/13, 5:51 PM -

    Did you bother to read the article you linked? The "Silent Holocaust" view of intermarriage is one of three the author describes and is not universally accepted. Among Reform Jews, anti-intermarriage sentiment has waned considerably since the 1960's, and 40-50% of the marriages are intermarriages. However, if you go looking for Jewish anti-intermarriage sentiment you will always be able to find it because The Orthodox are implacably hostile to it.

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  35. "Filching the U.S. taxpayer can in no measure be described as 'easy.'"

    It doesn't seem to be too great a feat for vast numbers of blacks and Hispanics. And anything you can do, Jew can do better.

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  36. David Pinsen:"Maybe rather than receding into mediocrity, it is transforming into more of a commercial/industrial culture, as it has in Germany since World War II?"

    Perhaps so...but one possible problem involves issues of scale.Israel is a low-trust society. Typically, Israeli businessmen rely on relatives and on friendships forged in military service (the next best thing to a brother is the guy who took one for you in Lebanon back in the 80s). They tend not to place confidence in the kind of impersonal business relationships that thrive in high trust places like Germany, and that kind of attitude can pose problems when companies reach a certain size.

    syon

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  37. Anonymous:"It is not "Teutonic high culture" that has destroyed Western civilization, but Cultural Marxism and all of its offshoots (feminism, ''anti-racism,'' gay supremacism, etc.) that has done this -- philosophies of resentment which were created by Jewish thinkers, especially the Frankfurt School and their adherents."


    Sadly, this thesis ignores the fact that "Cultural Marxism" is itself a product of German High Culture. Just try to imagine the Frankfurt School arising in a purely Anglo environment like Oxford."Cultural Marxism" is as German as Goethe.

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  38. Once more, this comment thread has jumped on its horse and charged off madly in all directions.

    The cool thing about Israel is that Benjamin Netanyahu really, really cares about the state of Israel, and the people of Israel (and when I say "the people of Israel" you know I mean "the Jewish people of Israel" and not the Arabs). His cares about everyone else are secondary at best, and to the extent that he does care about the rest of the world, it's in the context of (sorry to drag this one out) "is it good for the Jews?"

    That's a cool thing, right there. That's something that---to my mind---every country should aspire to have: a leader who cares about the country and the citizenry.

    Isn't that what national leaders are for, after all? To lead, to the best of their ability, the nation? To preserve, protect, and promote the best interests of the nation?

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  39. To rewrite what you wrote:

    [South Korea] is becoming a secure, wealthy, happy, hedonistic, successful, unintellectual, nationalistic, ethnocentric [Far] Eastern country.

    No one in South Korea talks about the North unless a missile goes off; it's as though they don't exist.

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  40. Hunsdon:"The cool thing about Israel is that Benjamin Netanyahu really, really cares about the state of Israel, and the people of Israel (and when I say "the people of Israel" you know I mean "the Jewish people of Israel" and not the Arabs). His cares about everyone else are secondary at best, and to the extent that he does care about the rest of the world, it's in the context of (sorry to drag this one out) "is it good for the Jews?""

    Of course, one advantage that Netanyahu has vis-a-vis a purely ethnocentric policy lies in the fact that he knows precisely who his co-ethnics are:Jews. And Jewishness is determined either via birth to a Jewish mother or by formal conversion (a process that is considerably more rigorous than what is found in either Christianity or Islam, two faiths that are universal in their claims). Hence, it is pretty damn easy for Bibi to know which individuals that he has to care about and which ones can go hang. I'm not quite sure how well that kind of policy would translate to the USA....

    White nationalism sounds good in theory, but it tends to break down in practice.For example, I seem to recall an Irish guy on Steve's blog some time back who said that Muslim bombings in the West had no effect on his undying hatred of England...Ethnic particularity seems to erode White racial solidarity...

    syon

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  41. White nationalism sounds good in theory, but it tends to break down in practice.For example, I seem to recall an Irish guy on Steve's blog some time back who said that Muslim bombings in the West had no effect on his undying hatred of England...Ethnic particularity seems to erode White racial solidarity...

    It is difficult to see how alleged White ethnic particularity accounts for the lack White racial solidarity when it comes to pursuing American interests such as halting the foreign influx to our lands and ending our complicity with Israel.

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  42. Regarding the Sepharic/Ashkenazi thing...Sephardim left Spain around 1500 and mostly settled in Turkey. Some went to Holland. Some wound up in Germany. Some went to the Middle East.

    Jews who emigrated to Latin America in the 1800s and 1900s are not Sephardic Jew, they are Ashkenazim like most American Jews.

    One funny thing I have noticed is that American Latinos love touting a supposed Sephardic ancestry. I have heard this from Mexicans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. I am pretty convinced that this is a way of asserting Euro ancestry as opposed to Indian/African lineage.

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  43. Who? Whom?

    The U.S. has this deal with the rest of the world. The U.S. gets to have the reserve currency and thus can print trillions without causing inflation. In return, the U.S. has to be the global cop and allow its market to be the dumping ground for the world's exports.

    Who benefits from this deal? Who suffers?

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  44. Perhaps now Jews can now lead Europeans back to sanity and health as well - be a true "light unto the nations", as it were, as they always wished to be but never were.

    Why don't you Jews do yourselves a favor and stop trying to interfere in the affairs of gentiles?

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  45. None of the above mentions the orthodox. They are breeding more than the smarter kind, and demography wins in long run.

    In 30 years perhaps Israel will get along better with its neighbors as its people will look similar to them. Less wealthy and less smart, but more fun.

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  46. "Even the Japanese, who have won few Nobels back when the big ideas were being produced, managed to win quite a few in the past decade or so. Have the Japanese mysteriously become more creative, or are Nobels being awarded for smaller-scale accomplishments?"

    Mike, you're so silly it's adorable.

    Didn't the West mysteriously become more creative and prolific around the time of the Renaissance following a largely fallow millenium since the fall of the Rome?

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  47. "Mike said...

    Peter Watson argues that American intellectual life has become thoroughly Germanized."

    Yeah, that's the problem with Alan Dershowitz, Cass Sunnstein, and the editorial staffs of Slate and the New York Times - too Germanic.

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  48. This is what I have about race-realism. The puffery of nobodies.

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  49. Oh, and Israel's prosperity is easy -- it comes at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

    No, Mr. Anonymous. American aid to Israel amounts to about 1.2% of their gross domestic income. Were it withdrawn, the country would face a recession of modest dimensions and a fiscal deficit that could be dealt with over the course of a business cycle.

    Israel has a level of affluence similar to that of Mediterranean Europe. Unlike Spain, its labor markets are in passable condition, so the unemployment rate therein is 8% and not 27%. The rate at which its standard of living has improved vis a vis other countries in the Occident suggest it should arrive in the front rank of the world's affluent economies in another 25 years or so.

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  50. US has given Israel $233.7 billion in aid (in NPV 2013 dollars).

    http://www.haaretz.com/business/u-s-aid-to-israel-totals-233-7b-over-six-decades.premium-1.510592

    That's approximately $30,000 per inhabitant of Israel.

    If you were given $30,000 by the US govt, you'd be rich and happy too.

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  51. Israel ain't such a great place for the majority if they want to buy an apartment.

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  52. Headline: "Bye, the beloved country - why almost 40 percent of Israelis are thinking of emigrating"

    http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/bye-the-beloved-country-why-almost-40-percent-of-israelis-are-thinking-of-emigrating.premium-1.484945

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  53. My ancestors came from Poland and they didn't assimilate that well and Jewish achievement wasn't high in Poland either(the people there were mostly ghettoized Jews much like the Hasidim in New York today).

    I did have an ancestor who came from Germany, from my mother's side, and the level of achievement and high culture that the Germanic Jews achieved was amazing.

    Hertz, the father of eletricity, Einstein, the Warburgs and many others. Simply amazing.

    It's too bad the Germans went nuts for a few years, and essentially decided to make Germany a no-go for Jews(oh wait, what am I saying? In 1990 there were 20,000 Jews in Germany. Today there are 200,000 and rapidly rising. Most of these are highly educated Ashkenazi from Israel who want to get back to their European roots and quite a few from the FSU too).

    But yes, my Ashkenazi brethren in Israel can't say they weren't warned!

    Kalman Katzenelson, who wrote one of the few banned books written by a Jew, wrote to warn them. And even though his book was banned, the banning itself made people more aware of his arguments.

    He made precisely the point that the Ashkenazi would be demographically overwhelmed by people who have lower IQs than them(Middle Eastern Jews, who are Arab in their origin and not European).

    He never states it outright but he heavily implies it. Sort of like Richwine never actually spells out that there are permanent differences, but he too heavily implies it.

    There was a thoughtful blogpost by an older Ashkenazi in Jpost who sort of mused in an 'end-de-siécle' manner when he looked at how he was being portrated in Israel.

    Basically, as an old, staid white old man unable to keep up with the 'diverse' young 'youths'. He noted the dominance of Mizrahi culture - you can draw a parellel to hip-hop culture in America - and he imples a correlation in the culture decline of Israel.

    Now Israel has had a lot of fortune. The Ashkenazi boost from the FSU (and let's not forget that according to a recent study, 55% of the 'Jews' from the Soviet Union are actually high-performing white gentiles. That's up from an earlier estimate of about 35% because the government back then was scared of this issue) in many ways paved the way for the Israeli high tech miracle. But now that demographic is turning older. And the re-supply among the youths are less than ideal, plus the fact that many young, educated Ashkenazi increasingly look towards Europe, Canada and America to live in.

    Israel's high birth rate will give it an edge to economic growth. A high populaton increase per annum tend to do that. But Nigeria also have a high birth rate and it has gotten nowhere. I'm worred about the quality of the country in the long run.

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  54. Anonymous 5/26/13, 6:15 PM -

    Nihilism has been floating through German thought since at least the late 18th or early 19th century. The term itself was coined by Jacobi (a Christian of Jewish ancestry) to describe what he considered the main problem with the works of philosophers ranging from Spinoza to Kant and Fichte. Clearly this one corrosive aspect of culture is a heck of a lot older than the Frankfurt School, and its origins cannot be ascribed solely to Jews.

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  55. "Israel ain't such a great place for the majority if they want to buy an apartment."

    Fair point. In Israel it takes about 3 times longer to buy an apartment based on disposable income than it does in a place like Germany, Canada, Australia or the United States.

    Also, according to the OECD, Israel has an enormous amount of inequality in the system. Higher than the United States has by a significant factor.

    I've seen some right-wing Jews in the Jewosphere trying to rationalize this by saying, well, but we have the ultra-Orthodox!

    But they are at about 10% of the population. You have to add in 20% of the Arabs too, which many of them pretend don't exist but even beyond that, look among Jews.

    You have white Jews at the top and then the black Jews at the bottom with poor Mizrahi Jews not far behind.

    Tel Aviv is a microcosm in this sense. The Northern sections of the city is all about wealthy white Jews, many of them liberals. The Southern side is poor, brown Jews who have lower IQ and don't nearly do as well and they also have plenty of black people, some of them Jewish, some of them not among them. Both groups are prone to criminal and prole behaviour but if you have nothing you only have your race left. So the poor Mizrahi Jews are the biggest opponents of these black people and there's a constant struggle there while the white liberal establishment in the Northern suburbs can't understand why those brown jews are so racist!

    Come to think of it, the snobbish white liberal establishment in Israel is eerily familliar to the one we know in Western countries. Except that the white working class, pathologies and warts and all, is still a lot less violent than their non-white neighbours. The difference between the blacks and the Mizrahi in Southern Tel Aviv is less than many of those Mizrahi would like to believe, which the Likud has exploited to good effect.

    But yes, Israel is amazingly(in a bad way) unequal and very expensive to live in.

    Fun fact: there are 3000 people emigrating from Israel to Canada each year. Canada makes a distinction between what they call 'Palestinian territories' and Israel, so most of those immigrating from Israel, probably just about everyone, is Jewish.

    3000 a year. From a country with 6 million Jews.

    There's about 3000 Jews emigrating from the U.S. to Israel each year. Again, 6 million Jews but in a country with 315 million inhabitants. Canada has about 34 million.

    So on a per-capita basis, there's a 10x bigger immigration of Jews to Canada than Jews emigrating to the United States.

    Now, the Jewish populations in size are roughly the same between Israel and the United States but not so when it comes to Canada. This actually shocked me when I read about it, looked it up, and found it was true. If you count immigration of Jews to the U.S. and Europe and Australia from Israel, then Israel has a net migration rate that is zero and in some definitons negative.

    So much for the Zionist dream.

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  56. Relevant:

    "Where are the Ashkenazim?"

    http://blogs.jpost.com/content/where-are-ashkenazim

    Angry Mizrahi woman is angry.

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  57. Dr Van Nostrand5/26/13, 10:24 PM

    As others have pointed out Oriental Israelis really didnt have that much of a negative impact on Israelis as Steve imagines.

    Despite increased Sephardization, the structures and elites are still Ashkenazim.
    Bernard Lewis made the comparision to U.S where even WASPs are a numerical minority they are culturally and politically dominant.

    Israel despite Sephardim being a majority, didnt have a single Sephardic PM or a major cabinet member so far.

    Also,cut the Sephardim some slack. They may be Jersey shore types now but at one point they contributed heavily to the Arab golden age in Spain. No reason why they cant do it for Israel.

    OTOH, the Sephardim may have contributed to the deteriorating reputation of Israel as a cruel triumphalist.
    Arabs actually preferred the Ashkenazim who would treat them fairly and with some respect.
    But the new Sephardim had scores to settle, more often than not they are the ones who revel in degrading and humiliating Palestinians.

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  58. Dr Van Nostrand5/26/13, 10:27 PM

    One funny thing I have noticed is that American Latinos love touting a supposed Sephardic ancestry. I have heard this from Mexicans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. I am pretty convinced that this is a way of asserting Euro ancestry as opposed to Indian/African lineage."

    Thats actually foolish and funny!
    Jews and Muslims were strictly forbidden from settling in the New World by the Spanish crown.

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  59. Why don't the Palestinians take over the Sinai? It's a big empty piece of land, and if Phoenix and Las Vegas are viable metropolises, I don't see why the Sinai wouldn't work. And with cheaper solar and desalinization technology, it should be perfectly viable.

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  60. You guys are idolizing the Israeli political class too much, without taking into consideration the demographic differences between us and them.

    Israel is much more homogenous than America. The core of Israel is made up highly cohesive ethnocentric Jews. America is made up a mix bag of every ethnicity/religious denomination found on the planet.

    Israelis obsess over their survival as a race, while a big portion of America obsess over who wins the super bowl.

    What works in Israel will never work here. The rise of a Netanyahu type guy in America would quickly trigger a civil war.

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  61. Peter Wong, thank you.

    And no, the appearance of creativity in the West around the time of the Renaissance was not mysterious. It came after a large-scale genetic shift (of the kind described in a Farewell to Alms) spanning centuries (similar in kind to how European Jews became super-smart), combined with the super-catalyst of coming in contact with Greek ideas.

    Japan hasn't really had centuries to fundamentally change its gene pool in the direction of creativity since it became industrialized (around the same time as Germany), and its first contact with Greek ideas did not result in a creative Renaissance, as it did in Europe, but rather in successful imitation, suggesting the gene pool in Japan has a different talent profile than that Northern Europeans (post-Renaissance).

    Creativity isn't really all that. Lower levels of creativity and diminished capacity for deep insight among East Asians has led to societies that are fundamentally healthier, more sane, balanced, and stable than in the West, and that will endure, unlike the West, which will apparently be a mere bubble on the surface of history.

    East Asian societies also produce happier people who are more satisfied and content with life than the perpetually restless West. Trust me, you should be thankful you have been spared the curse of "genius". I have lived in Asia, and life there is more satisfying and genuinely productive of happiness than what we have in the West (or at least most of it), which is why so many Westerners are self-haters and seek the destruction of their own cultures. And arguably the single most important duty of any civilization is to produce happiness in its people, or else it is useless - and in this most important task the West can be said to have been a dismal failure.

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  62. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/attenborough-endless-growth-lunacy-20130525-2n3pg.html

    ReplyDelete
  63. Steve, Israel has many problems, not the least of which is an ongoing revolt with mass protests and rallies against the Oligarchs who run the economy. And make life miserable economically for the average Israeli.

    This "happy-party" stuff reminds me of the 1980s. Many were convinced nuclear war with the USSR was inevitable given Reagan's
    "War Mongering" so partied like it was ... 1999. [Sorry!]

    Israel faces a fairly inevitable nuclear war with Iran. Given that Obama has given them the "talk to the hand" treatment and that no one trusts Obama (or Dems) to keep their word on military force/protection. Iran wants to make an example of Israel, to force Israel's unspoken but real military partner the Saudis to keep oil production low so the Iranian regime can recover (and their elites make even MORE money).

    I would not call it happy-times. But at least Israelis have the gift of clarity. Their enemies will ALWAYS hate them, no matter what they do, will ALWAYS try to kill them, so best not to concern yourself too much with them.

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  64. Mike -- Teutonic "high culture" is NOT poisonous. Konrad Adenauer was miles from the idiot hate of Adolf or the neuroticism of Nietchze. Adenauer, the architect of modern Germany as Greater Switzerland, did not want to "change the world" but endorsed early on a Rhenish, Catholic separatism that focused on a Christian Democrat / Catholic reformist utilitarianism and good governance.

    Most people would be happy to have their nation live peaceful, middle class lives without the "White Man's Burden" in Kipling or PC/Multiculti form. Adenauer is the guy, who created Greater Switzerland in Germany. There are far worse things to be. For the most part, Germany is one of the healthier countries in Europe. That may being the world's tallest midget, but its still something.

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  65. Dr Van Nostrand5/26/13, 11:51 PM


    Why don't the Palestinians take over the Sinai? It's a big empty piece of land, and if Phoenix and Las Vegas are viable metropolises, I don't see why the Sinai wouldn't work. And with cheaper solar and desalinization technology, it should be perfectly viable."

    By asking this you are implying that non Palestinian Arabs are genuinely concerned about the Palestinians and are invested in their welfare....poor child

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  66. Dr Van Nostrand5/26/13, 11:57 PM


    US has given Israel $233.7 billion in aid (in NPV 2013 dollars).

    http://www.haaretz.com/business/u-s-aid-to-israel-totals-233-7b-over-six-decades.premium-1.510592

    That's approximately $30,000 per inhabitant of Israel.

    If you were given $30,000 by the US govt, you'd be rich and happy too.

    ..over 6 decades?
    Actually this aid is a total sham. It should be stopped as should aid to Egypt and Jordan.
    Trade not aid but too many vested interests in all countries(including U.S) want this continued...no good comes out of it

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  67. I salute you, Mr.Sailer for eventually acknowledging the greatness of Israel.

    That its Six Million (we like this number) strong community has spawned no less than 16, yes sixteen billionaires is a testament to our spirit of enterprise - and our stratospheric IQ -

    Meanwhile, the Jewish-american community, equally numbering Six Million, is kept down among a population brimming with subtle and latent anti-Semitism; it could only dream of reaching such stellar results and is condemned
    to be a mere footnote in the Forbes List.

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  68. "East Asian societies also produce happier people who are more satisfied and content with life than the perpetually restless West"

    This is actually pretty embarrasing.

    A simple Google search should settle this question. Look at depression rates. Look at suicide rates(twice as high as in Western countries).

    Life in South Korea is just one giant grind. Life in the West is more balanced.

    I'm continually amazed at the level of idiocy and ignorance displayed by people at this blog. I mean, again, a simple goddamn Google search should suffice.

    Why is it so hard for some people to even get the basic facts right?

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  69. "You guys are idolizing the Israeli political class too much, without taking into consideration the demographic differences between us and them.

    Israel is much more homogenous than America. The core of Israel is made up highly cohesive ethnocentric Jews. America is made up a mix bag of every ethnicity/religious denomination found on the planet."

    Untrue. In America, you have four major groups. Whites, blacks, hispanics and Asians. Among hispanics, about 25 to 50% identify as white(depends on the survey you're looking at. The U.S. Census says 50%, the Pew polls say 25%).

    In Israel, you have white, black, arab(mizrahi), and Sephardi(which is sort of Latino in a sense).

    Beyond that, you have a lot more conflict over religion, between the secular and the ultra-Orthodox.

    There's a lot of evangelical Christians in America, but they have little influence. In Israel, not so. The Haredim(ultra-Orthodox) basically control not just all religious life but even a lot of non-religious life, like your marriage or your funeral. This creates an enormous chasm in Israeli society which just isn't the case in America.

    Second, in America there's a lot of assimilation going on. Sure, ethnic segretationism (in the mental/intellectual sense) is on the rise, but look at any 2nd generation Chinese kid and you'll find most of them have poor or in some cases even non-existent Chinese. This is the same process that European-Americans underwent when they came in a large 2nd wave in the early 1900s and many lost their native tongues in the 2nd and especially the third generation.



    "Israelis obsess over their survival as a race, while a big portion of America obsess over who wins the super bowl."

    True, but that can change.

    "What works in Israel will never work here. The rise of a Netanyahu type guy in America would quickly trigger a civil war."

    Pure conjecture.

    It's all about signalling. The whites in America are very weak and do not have any confidence. Weakness is pounced upon. Strength and self-confidence would quickly reverse that.

    Also, who controls the military, the major business, the vast majority of Senate seats, governorships and in just a few years, the white house(most likely Hillary will win)?

    If whites wanted to, it wouldn't be a problem. But the problem is that whites don't want to.

    Whites have it far better in America than most Jews do in, say, Israel(since most Jews in Israel are of Arab origin).

    Whites are also controlling the vast majority of institutions in America.
    Or just look at Silicon Valley.

    It's just very hard to say to whites in America, who are essentially non-threatned in the immediate sense "you're under danger". Israel have all these external enemies and the Holocaust as backdrop. What do American whites have as hardship? Of yeah, we pwned the Indians and beat Hitler.

    I'm sure that gets tons of white folks depressed.

    But I re-affirm; if whites wanted to, it'd be over before it even started. The problem is that you can't easily convince a people who have never had it so good in the history of the world that they can have it even better. It's just a very hard sell.

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  70. For some reason, my editor forgot the pictures gracing my article; here they are:

    Yemeni Jew with wife and daughters .

    Incredibly diverse Jewish wedding.

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  71. Whiskey, there are, of course, very positive and healthy strands in German culture. Goethe, for instance, who was a pillar of health and strove after sanity and balance. But ultimately German culture especially, but to some degree European culture as a whole, chose to develop its restless neurotic impulses and not its healthy balanced ones. In France, healthy, sane Montaigne began to exert less influence than civilization-hating, Romantic, excess-loving Rousseau. And so on and so forth across Europe. After WW2, some of the healthier strands in German culture might have come to the fore, but European culture as a whole is still more influenced by its neurotic thinkers than by its sane ones - the Romantic culture of lack of balance is still very much the dominant one, and Nietzsche is still more popular than Goethe - and remains fundamentally sick, as evidenced by the unique capacity of the West to produce a self-hating intellectual elite, something not replicated anywhere else in the world. If the modern West were able to provide happiness and satisfaction, it's intellectual elite would not be self-hating, but self-loving, as it is in Asia and any civilization that knows how to create the conditions for happiness.

    You say people merely want peace and prosperity, but the record of WWI clearly shows that the ordinary people were eager for bloodshed and carnage, which merely reflects the sense that everyone had about that time that life in Western countries was profoundly unsatisfying. The literary record of the immediate pre-war and post-war period contains countless mentions of the uniqely unsatisfying quality of life Western civilization had to offer. And all this amidst great physical prosperity, too.

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  72. steve sailer wrote:
    "Israel is one of the few countries in the semi-Western world where the government is explicitly devoted to the welfare of the majority, even at the expense of minorities. Not surprisingly, the majority is doing well."
    ================


    I agree that the israeli govt works and works well for the majority, but there are reasons why that is so. Why not explore these reasons? No?

    OK, then I will:
    1) small
    2) relatively homogeneous
    3) the structure of the govt is designed to carry out the will of the majority.


    Why and how do the above listed items help the majority obtain a gov't that works for them?

    Well, the above listed items work to decrease factions among the populace. More factions mean less unity. Less unity means less control over the govt by the majority because there are fewer shared interests. Therefore, elected representatives cannot be elected and held accountable to represent common interests.

    Small means fewer factions. Large means more factions. Israel is small. The USA is large. Note the difference.
    Therefore Israel is more united than the USA, a priori, because it is smaller and thus contains fewer factions.

    Homogeneous means fewer factions. Heterogeneous means more factions. Israel is more homogeneous than the USA. Note the difference. Fewer factions means more unity and therefore more control of the govt by the people.

    Israel has a parliamentarian democracy. The USA has a strong checks and balances, separation of powers pseudo-democracy designed to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," to quote the designer of the federal american constitution.

    Parliamentarian democracies are designed to carry out the will of the people.

    On the other hand, strong checks and balances, separation of powers pseudo-democracies are designed to prevent the majority from using the gov't to do the will of the people. What's the will of the people? Oh, for one, stopping mass immigration. I see that you reference this aspect of governance in your post above.

    So, to recap, having a gov't devoted to carrying out the will of the people does not just happen by happenstance or because the politicians decided one day to start doing so. A gov't devoted to the majority does so because of the innate structural characteristics of the nation (small and demographically homogeneous) and because of the innate structural characteristics of the gov't (parliamentarian democracy).

    A car cannot fly. A bird cannot fry potatoes. A fat old man like me cannot win an Olympic gold medal. And the american federal gov't cannot be devoted to the will of the majority. It was specifically designed to NOT represent the will of the majority and instead to represent the will of the rich. So saith the designer of the federal constitution.

    Now, if the federal union were dissolved, then many of the states would almost certainly become more like Israel than the USA entire is now. Smaller, more homogeneous, with a chance to install a parliamentarian form of govt.

    I say all this because your quoted paragraph above implies that the American federal govt could, if it so choose, represent the will of the majority. No, afraid not. A plane cannot fly, etc.

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  73. "Perhaps so...but one possible problem involves issues of scale.Israel is a low-trust society. Typically, Israeli businessmen rely on relatives and on friendships forged in military service (the next best thing to a brother is the guy who took one for you in Lebanon back in the 80s). They tend not to place confidence in the kind of impersonal business relationships that thrive in high trust places like Germany, and that kind of attitude can pose problems when companies reach a certain size."

    I'm not sure that Israel is a low-trust society, but scale might be a challenge for other reasons, such as the small size of the local market due to Israel's small domestic market and hostile local countries. In any case, I think the arrow of causation between scale and personal versus impersonal business relationships probably points in the other direction. Siemens is probably going to have more corporate, impersonal relationships with vendors and clients than a small German manufacturing firm would. A family friend imports and sells specialized German medical equipment and when he goes to visit the small manufacturer in Germany, he gets a warm, personal welcome, with his name up on the wall, etc.

    Similarly, due to the relatively small work forces of Internet startups and the tendency of successful founders to become angel investors or venture capitalists, personal relationships tend to be key in that industry. Do a search for "PayPal Mafia" to get a sense of how some well-known entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are connected. I suspect you would find similar dynamics among startups in Tel Aviv and Berlin.

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  74. "For some reason, my editor forgot the pictures gracing my article; here they are:"

    The one thing that always kind of unnerves me about seeing photos like this is, there are no apparent class or occupation markers I am familiar with. Everyone is wearing a fairly similar suit. Some are more well fed than others, but other than that I don't know. I always wonder what sort of occupations they have. Who is the richest? Most powerful? Most respected? What do they do?

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  75. syon said: White nationalism sounds good in theory, but it tends to break down in practice.

    Hunsdon said: I'm sorry, I don't think I said word one about white nationalism. Pretty much like our host, I favor citizenism, the radical notion that a nation should be run for the benefit of its . . . citizens.

    It's true, I would prefer an America that resembles, in its demographics, that America into which I was born, which was roughly 85 percent white, twelve percent black, and three percent 'everything else.' Yes, we had some Hispanics/Latinos lumped into that 85 percent, but they were a) fewer in number than today, and b) more European than today.

    But that ain't white nationalism.

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  76. Whiskey said: Most people would be happy to have their nation live peaceful, middle class lives without the "White Man's Burden" in Kipling or PC/Multiculti form.

    Hunsdon said: O Lord! It must be the End Times, as I find myself in agreement with Whiskey, an event as rare as flying formations of pigs, or ice skating in Hell.

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  77. "Yeah, that's the problem with Alan Dershowitz, Cass Sunnstein, and the editorial staffs of Slate and the New York Times - too Germanic."

    You know, people tend to assume Nazi=German and vice versa. Usually you hear this in the context of Germans complaining about being mistaken for Nazis, but here of course it's complaining the Germans aren't Nazis anymore.

    However, there were strong liberal and socialist traditions coming out of Germany, both Cultural Marxist and otherwise. The belief that all liberalism must arise from Marx is quite mistaken.

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  78. Van Nortstron / Anonymous:

    The ratio of grants to Israel by the United States Government to Israel's nominal gross domestic product have been as follows:

    1960 : 0.0045
    1961 : 0.0051
    1962 : 0.0027
    1963 : 0.0020
    1964 : 0.0014
    1965 : 0.0013
    1966 : 0.0002
    1967 : 0.0004
    1968 : 0.0016
    1969 : 0.0001
    1970 : 0.0023
    1971 : 0.0004
    1972 : 0.0077
    1973 : 0.0113
    1974 : 0.1274
    1975 : 0.0412
    1976 : 0.0996
    1977 : 0.0730
    1978 : 0.0764
    1979 : 0.1049
    1980 : 0.0445
    1981 : 0.0512
    1982 : 0.0507
    1983 : 0.0513
    1984 : 0.0617
    1985 : 0.1254
    1986 : 0.1095
    1987 : 0.0760
    1988 : 0.0612
    1989 : 0.0603
    1990 : 0.0514
    1991 : 0.0558
    1992 : 0.0421
    1993 : 0.0423
    1994 : 0.0374
    1995 : 0.0306
    1996 : 0.0285
    1997 : 0.0288
    1998 : 0.0280
    1999 : 0.0271
    2000 : 0.0330
    2001 : 0.0233
    2002 : 0.0252
    2003 : 0.0315
    2004 : 0.0212
    2005 : 0.0194
    2006 : 0.0174
    2007 : 0.0149
    2008 : 0.0120
    2009 : 0.0132
    2010 : 0.0128
    2011 : 0.0124

    There was a burst of grants during the Korean War summing each year to around 3% or 4% of the country's domestic product. Then it settled into the pattern you see above, not much exceeding 1% through 1973. The U.S. Government was doling out large sums each year during the period running from 1973 through 1985, with particular spikes co-incident with lubricating armistices. From that point, the significance of aid went into a monotonic decline that you see there, now reverting to the levels of 1973. There were at one time loan programs through the Export-Import Bank and other agencies, but these were discontinued in 1987.

    1. Israel's affluence has not been and is not a function of American aid.

    2. The aid is not a 'fraud', it is merely a policy decision with which you disagree.

    3. The contextual significance of it has declined by 90% over the last 28 years. Complaints are not exactly topical.

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  79. So in this great big Jewish wedding, we have the groom from Yemen -- dusky, lower IQ -- and the bride from Eastern Europe -- white, higher IQ.

    Can we infer from this that in Israel, like the rest of the West, it's the women and their vajayjay tingles that are the primary drivers of dysgenics?

    Women ruin everything.

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  80. @Simcha

    There are nowhere near as many Jews living in Germany than you assert. Before the fall of the iron curtain the number of Jews living in Germany was estimated at around 60000 with an average age of well above 50 years. Today the total number of Jews living in Germany might be six figures. On top of that there is no significant immigration from Israel to Germany. The number of people with Israeli citizenship living in Germany has practically not increased in the past ten years. Regarding postwar cultural or scientific achievement of Jews living in Germany , well there is little to none. And the only Jewish billionaire i can think of was the infamous Josef "Jossele" Buchmann who literally owned the entire red light district of Frankfurt. He was tried many times for several white collar crimes but was never convicted.

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  81. Ah, well, at least my Riga-born Syon "but communism was the Russian soul made manifest"

    Nah... The Jewish "soul made manifest" fits so much better:

    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2C7340%2CL-3342999%2C00.html

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OkKJmPsV4Tc



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  82. Israel felt very Middle Eastern as early as the 90s - both in cuisine and also in popular music. The population also looked more Middle Eastern or South Asian (and only partially because of the Indian Jews in Haifa) than European - the Oriental and Sephardic women being much more attractive, on average, than the Azkhenzai, though I suspect this changed somewhat after the Russian influx.

    Another example of how post-industrial modernity can be attained without all the white/western nonsense, and another pointer to the increasing insignificance of the "West" globally.

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  83. "choosing not to solve their most difficult challenge" - They chose a one state solution, minus Gaza.

    One benefit of having a pro-majority government was exiting the losing Bush war on terror early(2006 Lebanon War).

    Amusing that the New York Times can't get the Jewish lingo right.

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  84. Whether this has been achieved with the help of US aid or not, Israel now has a per capita income that is higher than most EU countries. Contrast that with Greece which has received some $300 billion in loaned money from GERMAN banks just in the last decade, swallowed it and now has 75 per cent youth unemployment and a screwed up economy. I am convinced that it is probably easier to find a job in Israel today than in Greece.

    The Israelis have moved away from the economic socialism of their founders and this has helped recently. There are some very aggressive entrepreneurs in Israel and they have played a part. It is funny to see many Israelis resent their success so much. Human nature crosses cultural and ethnic barriers.

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  85. I'm going to state the obvious truth and all right thinking people will condemn me.

    We know how to bring about peace. We know how to do 'nation building'. The secret is to just kill enough people. Killing an insufficient number may do more harm than good.

    Germany in the thirties was a very bad neighbor in Europe. Japan was similarly intent on being troublesome in the East. Today Germany is a liberal, democratic and prosperous nation that its neighbors trust and rely on. Japan too.

    We made Germany and Japan the excellent modern nations they are. We had to kill twenty million Germans and we had to drop nuclear warheads on Japan but it was worth it. This is the incontrovertible evidence of history. There are no examples of milder interventions having such salubrious effects.

    Our record in Iraq was one of compromise and restraint. After the Battle of Medina Ridge we could have proceeded to decimate the retreating Republican Guard. We could have flattened Bagdad with carpet bombing. We could have rounded up all the Shiites (or Sunnis or whomever) and have shipped them out. We could have occupied the nation and imposed our brand of governance. That's roughly what Truman and MacArthur did and look how well Japan turned out.

    We did nothing like that in Iraq and the nation is back to the status quo ante. We might have not bothered.

    We can solve the centuries long problem of Islam. We can win this longest of all US wars. But we will have to kill a lot of Muslims to achieve this highly desirable outcome.

    There are more Muslims than there were Nazis. I estimate that we will need to kill perhaps a 100 million Muslims. Fortunately we have nukes, chemicals, and biologics.

    See, you think I'm bad.

    Albertosaurus

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  86. "Thats actually foolish and funny!
    Jews and Muslims were strictly forbidden from settling in the New World by the Spanish crown."

    Brazil for a start. It's quite important historically as they started the sugar plantation model and the Atlantic slave trade.

    Also Conversos in the Spanish parts.

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  87. One huge advantage Israel has is that it's not ruled by PC. This could give it a head start in genetics based technologies which can't be researched in the West.

    For example there's a potentially huge market in medicines tailored to populations based on their specific ancestry due to that populations unique adaptations to their ancestral local diet, local climate etc.

    For example

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isosorbide_dinitrate/hydralazine

    "demonstrated that isosorbide dinitrate with hydralazine reduced mortality by 43%, reduced hospitalizations by 39%, and improved quality of life markers in African-American patients with CHF."

    Whoever gets the head start on genetic technolgy will reap the rewards.

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  88. I'm sorry Mike, although you profess to have spent considerable time in Eastern Asia as an expat, your opinions about the region and its history appear to be the product of a blithe, unthinking acceptance of the most hackeneyed and erroneous of misconceptions.

    >East Asian societies also produce happier people who are more satisfied and content with life than the perpetually restless West.

    Risible nonsense. Do you believe careeriest and venal Singaporeans, Japanese, or Hong Kong'ers are happier and more content than their first world peers in the West? If you do then I'm afraid you haven't fraternized with members of these societies in sufficient quantity.

    >Lower levels of creativity and diminished capacity for deep insight among East Asians has led to societies that are fundamentally healthier, more sane, balanced, and stable than in the West, and

    I'm sorry Mike - a remark as clueless as this just makes a spectacle of your ignorance.

    Wasn't China one of the most prolific and fecund civilizations for most of recorded history, in terms of the arts, letters, speculative thought, and practical technology?

    Do you also believe that pre-Qin Daoism, the myriad schools of Mahyana Buddhism which proliferated in China following its introductiosn from Central Asia, as well as the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Mign dynasties, evince a want of deeper insight in the Sinitic civilization sphere?

    Just out of curiosity, since you presume sufficient expertise in Eastern Asian history and culture to opine such confidence - can you speak or read Classical Chinese, Japanese or Mandarin?

    >its first contact with Greek ideas did not result in a creative Renaissance, as it did in Europe, but rather in successful imitation, suggesting the gene pool in Japan has a different talent profile than that Northern Europeans (post-Renaissance).

    What Greek ideas in particular, I am curious to know? And do you have a peer reviewed source with respect to disparities between the Japanese and European talent profile?

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  89. >If the modern West were able to provide happiness and satisfaction, it's intellectual elite would not be self-hating, but self-loving, as it is in Asia and any civilization that knows how to create the conditions for happiness.

    Mike, with all due respect, you really don't know the first thing about the character or mentality of the intellectual classes of Eastern Asia.

    Chinese intellectuals have long felt a profound ambivalence about their own culture and history, starting from the end of the Qing Dynasty and the humiliations the country suffered at the hands if industrialized Western nations.

    Or do you perhap consider the efforts by Mao's Red Guards to annihilate the vestiges of the past to be a prime example of cultural self adoration?

    >In France, healthy, sane Montaigne began to exert less influence than civilization-hating, Romantic, excess-loving Rousseau.

    Source for this? Specific quotes from leading men of letters or policymakers in the 19th and 20th century which would substantiate this assertion?

    Or are you just content to intuit broader historical trends and paradigm shifts in the history of the West without any substantive knowledge or evidence? As you have proven so inclined to do when attempting, or should I say failing, to fathom other civilizational spheres.

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  90. Mike said:

    "The literary record of the immediate pre-war and post-war period contains countless mentions of the uniqely unsatisfying quality of life Western civilization had to offer. And all this amidst great physical prosperity, too."

    I recommend you try reading Jack London, George Orwell or Somerset Maugham to learn more about the "physical prosperity" enjoyed by the average denizens of major urban centres during the periods immediately preceding and following the First World War.

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  91. 1. Israel's affluence has not been and is not a function of American aid.M

    Your numbers are misleading. "Aid" should include hush money paid to Egypt and surrounding Arab nations and a significant portion of the U.S. military budget--the U.S. military having been put at the service of Zionist jews.

    That brings "aid" to about 400 billion per annum.

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  92. It's rather patently annoying when people who obviously have no idea what they're talking about write lengthy analytical comments with a confidence God Himself wished he possessed. This is most greatly offending when people write about things I'm not too clear on myself and trying to learn about but it's most noticeable when people write about subjects I'm eminently familiar with.

    Jews are an exemplar of the latter category and the amount of cocksure confidence that I see from many of the commentators on that subject can't help but repeatedly demonstrate to me how much idiocy and inaccuracy there must be in threads about subjects where my own relative ignorance forces me to rely on the good sense of those I'm reading and on their own self evaluations of their certitude.

    To spell it out more clearly for the less literate, please make fewer Absolute pronouncements from on high about subjects you *must know* that you know very little about.

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  93. One other thing.

    Since 1973, typically about 60% of grants to Israel in any given year have been allocated to that country's military. In the last six or seven years, the share has been on the order of 98%. Again, little of the prosperity of Israeli households can be attributed to American aid.

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  94. Your numbers are misleading. "Aid" should include hush money paid to Egypt and surrounding Arab nations and a significant portion of the U.S. military budget--the U.S. military having been put at the service of Zionist jews.

    That brings "aid" to about 400 billion per annum.


    No it shouldn't. In any case, American grants to Egypt are on the order of $2 bn per annum, not $400 bn. At least get your facts straight to within two orders of magnitude.

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  95. Your numbers are misleading. "Aid" should include hush money paid to Egypt and surrounding Arab nations and a significant portion of the U.S. military budget--the U.S. military having been put at the service of Zionist jews.

    That brings "aid" to about 400 billion per annum.


    No it shouldn't. In any case, American grants to Egypt are on the order of $2 bn per annum, not $400 bn. At least get your facts straight to within two orders of magnitude.

    You are omitting facts. The above ground U.S. military budget is about $700 billion per annum. Most of U.S. military activity is focused on suppressing Muslim resistance to Zionist. Add to that the expenditures on diplomacy, intelligence, and covert operations and a conservative estimate of U.S. wealth given away to Israel is $400 billion a year.

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  96. Since 1973, typically about 60% of grants to Israel in any given year have been allocated to that country's military. In the last six or seven years, the share has been on the order of 98%. Again, little of the prosperity of Israeli households can be attributed to American aid.

    Do Israelis not benefit from military protection? Are you telling me that all our money in direct transfers and in direct wars for Israel (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan) has been wasted??

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  97. Since 1973, typically about 60% of grants to Israel in any given year have been allocated to that country's military. In the last six or seven years, the share has been on the order of 98%. Again, little of the prosperity of Israeli households can be attributed to American aid.

    When U.S. taxpayers finance Jewish Israeli land "acquisitions," Jewish Israeli households don't have to, and that allows them more disposable income ("prosperity" if you will).

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  98. . Most of U.S. military activity is focused on suppressing Muslim resistance to Zionist. Add to that the expenditures on diplomacy, intelligence, and covert operations and a conservative estimate of U.S. wealth given away to Israel is $400 billion a year.

    No, it is not. "Overseas contingency operations" - i.e. activity in Afghanistan against forces which attacked us - amounts to about $97 bn as we speak, and Israel does not bear any responsiblity or blame for that or for your malicious lunacy. The military budget is over $750 bn and over 80% of American forces are billetted in the continental United States. Billets in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia outside of Afghanistan are inconsequentially small. The largest contingent of American soldiers billeted abroad are in Germany and Japan.



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  99. Money to any sector - military, settlements, housing, whatever you like - helps all sectors. Because it's less necessary to milk those other sectors then.

    Imagine you have a car payment and someone decides to pay it for you but says, "This money ISN'T for your savings budget - this is ONLY for your car budget."

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  100. When U.S. taxpayers finance Jewish Israeli land "acquisitions," Jewish Israeli households don't have to, and that allows them more disposable income ("prosperity" if you will).

    Again, 98% of American aid is allocated to the military, not to resettlement projects.

    About 9% of the Jewish population of the former mandatory Palestine is located in predominantly Arab zones (in sections of the Galilee or on the other side of the 1949 armistice lines).

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  101. Do Israelis not benefit from military protection? Are you telling me that all our money in direct transfers and in direct wars for Israel (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan) has been wasted??

    None of these were 'direct wars for Israel'. That's your foetid imagination talking.

    In 2010, about 14% of American military manpower was deployed to the Near East, North Africa, or Central Asia. Of these, 51% were deployed in Iraq and have been withdrawn.

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  102. "Art Deco said...

    Since 1973, typically about 60% of grants to Israel in any given year have been allocated to that country's military. In the last six or seven years, the share has been on the order of 98%. Again, little of the prosperity of Israeli households can be attributed to American aid."

    That is deceitful bullshit. Do you think we're stupid? Israel has a military. The military costs money. Every dollar that US taxpayers pony up for the IDF is one dollar that Israeli citizens don't have to spend. So that money stays in their pockets. On the scale of government expenditures, it may not be much money. But why should US citizens give anything at all to a country that is quite capable of paying for its own defence?

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  103. "Hunsdon said...

    Hunsdon said: I'm sorry, I don't think I said word one about white nationalism. Pretty much like our host, I favor citizenism, the radical notion that a nation should be run for the benefit of its . . . citizens.

    It's true, I would prefer an America that resembles, in its demographics, that America into which I was born, which was roughly 85 percent white, twelve percent black, and three percent 'everything else.' Yes, we had some Hispanics/Latinos lumped into that 85 percent, but they were a) fewer in number than today, and b) more European than today.

    But that ain't white nationalism."

    Well said. My beliefs exactly. All I want is for America to be more like it was in 1973. For this belief I am considered a hopelessly retrograde reactionary.

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  104. "SFG said...

    "Yeah, that's the problem with Alan Dershowitz, Cass Sunnstein, and the editorial staffs of Slate and the New York Times - too Germanic."

    You know, people tend to assume Nazi=German and vice versa. Usually you hear this in the context of Germans complaining about being mistaken for Nazis, but here of course it's complaining the Germans aren't Nazis anymore.

    However, there were strong liberal and socialist traditions coming out of Germany, both Cultural Marxist and otherwise. The belief that all liberalism must arise from Marx is quite mistaken."

    I don't know what point you are making. The point I was making (in reply to "Mike", I belive) was this: There is nothing fundmentally anglo-saxon (and certainly nothing teutonic) about the dominant intellectual discourse in the United States today. It is much more heavily influenced slong distinctly semitic lines. Alan Dershowitz and Cass Sunnstein do not think like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison did, nor do they even argue like them.

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  105. "Art Deco said...

    Van Nortstron / Anonymous:

    The ratio of grants to Israel by the United States Government to Israel's nominal gross domestic product have been as follows:

    1960 : 0.0045
    1961 : 0.0051
    1962 : 0.0027
    ............."

    The point is this: why shouldn't that number be identically zero?

    Listed on my phone bill every month is a tax that was instituted to pay for the Spanish American war. It's not an especially large sum, and it is not a great financial burden to pay it. But why should I pay it at all? The fact that I can easily afford to lose a few dollars now and again, does not mean that I should thrown money away.

    And if this subsidy is so small, why do people like you argue so forcefully for its continuation, by way of waving it aside with a haughty "don't pay any attention to that - it's of no matter"?

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  106. Most of U.S. military activity is focused on suppressing Muslim resistance to Zionist.

    Look, it would be intelligent of me to prefer that all my antisemites came in your particular flavor rather than in the svigster's more intelligent kind because your kind doesn't seem like too much of a threat but, pointy headed hebe that I am, I'd really prefer to interlocute with a hater I can relate to than one pounding his keyboard while wearing a tinfoil hat.

    Give Whiskey a ring, I'm sure he'll be more happy than myself to convive with you in your mutual hallucinatory world.

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  107. Nothing more clever than Israelis milking the US taxpayer. Latest case in point: The American manufactured, Israeli designed Tavor assault rifle that recently appeared on the cover of American Rifleman and Shotgun News.

    While US workers have to toil to pay for a semi-auto M4 assault rifle, Israel set up IWI US so they could make the gun a US-made proposition.

    This means the Israel can equip itself with a rifle designed to their own specifications but obtained FREE courtesy of US taxpayers. A rifle that retails for $2,599! I guess I would be happy if someone GAVE me a TWO GRAND AR.

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  108. "Israel ain't such a great place for the majority if they want to buy an apartment."

    Generally, great places to live have expensive apartments, because lots of people want to live there and bid up the prices. More specifically to Israel, I believe they eschew NINJA and low-downpayment mortgages there, so they didn't have a real estate bubble and burst there.

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  109. mutatis mutundi5/27/13, 5:22 PM

    "Hacienda said...
    This is what I have about race-realism. The puffery of nobodies."

    We can't have "nobodies" taking credit for the accomplishments of members of their race? And yet the same nobodies are made to suffer all kinds of guilt for the bad things other members of their race have done.

    Therein lies the paradox. You can't go around blaming the white man for ancestral evils without praising him for the good done. And don't tell Hacienda doesn't like playing with his computer, driving his car, and expecting to live into his 70s or 80s with Social Security and electricity.

    If it is logical to feel guilty about the bad things of the past, it is only logical to feel pride about the good things.

    So be glad we gave you your computer, in spite of oppressing you terribly.

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  110. "We did nothing like that in Iraq and the nation is back to the status quo ante. We might have not bothered"

    This is a pretty sick planet. We really are in the Kali Yuga--the dark age in the vast cycle of humankind. I never paid much attention to that Vedandist gibberish, but lately, I get it. The worse you behave the better the results.


    Germany and Japan were industrialized nations, possessing mostly literate and focused (and homogeneous) populations. They were destroyed but they at least had the blueprints and know-how to rebuild, with the help of the Marshall Plan. They were also feeling guilty. Japan's deeds in China and elsewhere were, in some ways, even worse than that Nazis. Millions survived the Nazi camps. Of the millions who entered the Japanese camp 731 (I think it was called) only 6 people survived. See the movie, Men Behind the Sun. Yet today the Japanese would rank among the most ethical and kindest of people in a general way. So would the Germans. Well-maybe not kind exactly, but just and ethical.

    Applying the Marshall Plan to 3rd world countries has not worked because it was a square peg for round holes.
    Iraq is not Japan or Germany. What would the U.S. have "flattened" in Iraq? The pointless sky scrapers Sadaam built with American loans and aid? They would never have gotten rid of Islam. Persecution only strengthens religion. Russian Orthodoxy is more alive today than it was in 1920. Catholicism in Poland deepened during Communist rule. China has more Christians today than it did before Communisim, even though it has not been part of the "Judeo-Christian" culture.
    So no. Perpetrating ultimate (how ultimate?) murder and destruction would not have gotten rid of Islam and would have created even more enemies.

    I was never fan of the arty pornographer, Henry Miller, but there's one thought in the "Air Conditioned Nightmare" (about American in the 1940s.) I'll never forget. Someone asked why Miller admired the "easterners" so much. He replied it was the "holiness" that infused every moment with something larger than life.
    Anyone who has been around Persians, or any other "easterner", knows perfectly well they are not all "holy" and are, in fact, quite materialistic. But I know what Miller meant. Europeans had it too, until the modern age. It's what I felt sometimes in certain churches or looking at certain art.

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  111. "
    Thats actually foolish and funny!
    Jews and Muslims were strictly forbidden from settling in the New World by the Spanish crown"

    There were a lot of "conversos." Outwardly converted, privately still Jewish, was a phenomenon perculiar to the Iberian peninsula, or at least more common there than elsewhere. Also, many immigrated there in later centuries, when such laws were not adhered to. I have known Brazilian Jews whose familes had been in Brazil for a couple hundred years.wa

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  112. "Nothing more clever than Israelis milking the US taxpayer. Latest case in point: The American manufactured, Israeli designed Tavor assault rifle that recently appeared on the cover of American Rifleman and Shotgun News."

    Isn't that more the case of an American arms manufacturer milking the US taxpayer? Israel has its own armaments industry and is perfectly capable of manufacturing its own small arms. Given that, all else equal, wouldn't Israel want to make the rifle in-house, so it benefits from the jobs (and can sell additional weapons for export, if it chooses)? It seems more likely that the assault rifle you mention is made in America because making it here creates American jobs. And it's priced so high because it's payed for with US government money.

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  113. "Israel ain't such a great place for the majority if they want to buy an apartment."

    I'm pretty sure the Israeli government subsidizes the apartments of Jewish colonists in Eastern Israel.

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  114. Most of U.S. military activity is focused on suppressing Muslim resistance to Zionism.

    Look, it would be intelligent of me to prefer that all my antisemites came in your particular flavor but, pointy headed hebe that I am, I'd really prefer to interlocute with a hater I can relate to than one pounding his keyboard while wearing a tinfoil hat... in your mutual hallucinatory world.

    The invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003 were hallucinations? Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon mere hallucinations? Hostility to Iran a hallucination? Funding the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Gentiles from their ancestral homeland a hallucination?

    Yes? I feel so much better now.

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  115. And if this subsidy is so small, why do people like you argue so forcefully for its continuation, by way of waving it aside with a haughty "don't pay any attention to that - it's of no matter"?

    Yep. We should expect our Zionist brethren to campaign against this subsidy in favor of redirecting our resources toward, for example, our faltering community college system. They do place such a high value on education.

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  116. Look, it would be intelligent of me to prefer that all my antisemites came in your particular flavor...

    You know you're onto something when you get the old "antisemite" comebacker.

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  117. I'm pretty sure the Israeli government subsidizes the apartments of Jewish colonists in Eastern Israel.

    Probably more accurate to say that the subsidies come from the U.S. government.

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  118. Isn't that more the case of an American arms manufacturer milking the US taxpayer?

    No. The arms manufacturer makes a small profit (paid for by the U.S. taxpayer) but the Jewish Israeli receives the full value (not just the profit margin) of the armament.

    There is net outflow of resources from the United States to Israel.

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  119. Do Israelis not benefit from military protection? Are you telling me that all our money in direct transfers and in direct wars for Israel (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan) has been wasted??

    None of these were 'direct wars for Israel'. That's your foetid imagination talking.

    All were wars for Israel. The are spinoff wars of the jews' War on Palestine. New York and Washington September 2001 were also sites of spinoff wars, or battles. Those bombings were retaliation for U.S. involvement with Israeli brutality against women and children in Palestine.

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  120. For example, I seem to recall an Irish guy on Steve's blog some time back who said that Muslim bombings in the West had no effect on his undying hatred of England...Ethnic particularity seems to erode White racial solidarity...

    I remember that but I also remember people at the same time saying that support for the IRA (in Boston or wherever) had declined after 9/11. ie Irish ethnocentrism regarding the English had been tempered somewhat by 9/11.

    Who to believe?

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  121. No, it is not. "Overseas contingency operations" - i.e. activity in Afghanistan against forces which attacked us - amounts to about $97 bn as we speak, and Israel does not bear any responsiblity or blame for that or for your malicious lunacy.

    Israel bears full responsibility for that. We wouldn't have been attacked in 2001 (or 1996, or 1993, etc.) if it weren't for Israel.

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  122. When U.S. taxpayers finance Jewish Israeli land "acquisitions," Jewish Israeli households don't have to, and that allows them more disposable income ("prosperity" if you will).

    Again, 98% of American aid is allocated to the military, not to resettlement projects.

    Let me be a little more direct: When U.S. taxpayers finance Jewish Israeli land theft, by providing their military, diplomats, and intelligence services to suppress the inevitable resistance...

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  123. We wouldn't have been attacked in 2001 (or 1996, or 1993, etc.) if it weren't for Israel.

    Um, did you forget OBL's complaint about the presence of American troops in the Arabian peninsula?

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  124. "No. The arms manufacturer makes a small profit (paid for by the U.S. taxpayer) but the Jewish Israeli receives the full value (not just the profit margin) of the armament."

    According to your first comment, Israel designed the rifle, and it is priced at close to $2600, which you consider (and I would agree) to be wildly overpriced. Considering that the US government pays Colt about $1,000 per M-4 for the US military, the manufacturing cost of this Israeli-designed rifle is probably less than that, meaning the bulk of the price represents profits for the US manufacturer.

    Now, does Israel gain from getting a free rifle? Sure. But the bigger gain appears to go to the American manufacturer. Which is not unusual, as the bulk of US military aid gets spent in the US. If it were up to me, that aid would be phased out, but if it were, some of the loudest howls of protest would come from Congressmen with defense contractors in their districts that profit from our aid to Israel.

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  125. We wouldn't have been attacked in 2001 (or 1996, or 1993, etc.) if it weren't for Israel.

    Um, did you forget OBL's complaint about the presence of American troops in the Arabian peninsula?

    No. But Palestine has always been the primary grievance so there is a legitimate question whether the occupation of Saudi Arabia would have been sufficient to catalyze such an operation as 9/11. OBL called Palestine the mother of all grievances. For 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad it was main complaint.

    Even if the occupation of Saudi Arabia were a significant contributing factor, it, too, can be traced back to Palestine, as it was derivative of our hostility toward Iraq (being one of the few countries in the region with the resources and relative independence to stand up to Israel).

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  126. Which is not unusual, as the bulk of US military aid gets spent in the US.

    It does? Are you saying that U.S. military aid to Israel actually never leaves the United States? That woudl surpise me.

    By the way, it is stretch to refer to 60 percent of value "the bulk of" value.

    if it were, some of the loudest howls of protest would come from Congressmen with defense contractors in their districts that profit from our aid to Israel.

    The issue of cutting foreign aid came up last year, so we can probably do better than to speculate about where the pressure is coming from. I recall Eric Cantor being at the forefront of a move to reclassify aid to Israel in particular as military or somesuch to leave it immune from foreign aid cuts. I don't recall any squealing from defense firms, but that doesn't rule it out. The point though is that we can probably get a better handle on this than mere hypothesizing.

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  127. " For 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad it was main complaint...[I]t, too, can be traced back to Palestine, as it was derivative of our hostility toward Iraq..."

    You can't really be blamed for your stupidity but you can be blamed for repeatedly (and repeatedly and repeatedly) making the sort of basic errors in English that demonstrate that you weren't born here while referring to yourself as one of "us" (or "our" in the quoted example).

    I was born in the US while you are an interloper who has no business being here but is bringing his foreign tribalism to the local game while claiming to be doing so on as one of us. My fellow Americans can be just as wrong or as stupid as you are with absolutist statements claiming that were it not for the poor poor Palis all would be sweet with the world and America would turn its swords into plowshears and know war never more and that therefore we ought to completely disavow any empathy with Israel but you are not one of us and are obviously agitating on behalf of foreign powers while wrapping yourself in a flag that doesn't fit. Screw the hell off Foreigner.

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  128. "It does? Are you saying that U.S. military aid to Israel actually never leaves the United States? That woudl surpise me."

    Do you not understand the meaning of the word "spent"?

    "By the way, it is stretch to refer to 60 percent of value "the bulk of" value."

    I'm not sure what 60% refers to in this context, but since one of the definitions of "bulk" is "larger part", 60% of something is the bulk of something. What seems a bigger stretch is to claim a ~$1600 profit on a ~$2600 rifle as "small".

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  129. For example, I seem to recall an Irish guy on Steve's blog some time back who said that Muslim bombings in the West had no effect on his undying hatred of England...Ethnic particularity seems to erode White racial solidarity...

    I don't think I'm the Irishman in question but frankly I agree with my co-ethnic's sentiments. I think the killing is cosmic justice and I don't mourne it at all. The type of country England is led it to conquer and oppress Ireland and much of the rest of the world is now destroying them. Solidarity is a two way street and the English have never shown any to us.

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  130. Wasn't China one of the most prolific and fecund civilizations for most of recorded history, in terms of the arts, letters, speculative thought, and practical technology?

    Put into the proper context, no, not really. Comparing China to, say, France or Germany is kind of insulting to the Chinese, when you think about it. China is much more comparable to Europe as a whole than to any one European country. The problem is, when you start doing this and comparing China to Europe, China starts looking much worse. Then you correct for the higher mean IQ of east Asians, and China really starts looking bad.

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  131. We can't have "nobodies" taking credit for the accomplishments of members of their race? And yet the same nobodies are made to suffer all kinds of guilt for the bad things other members of their race have done.

    Hacienda is disturbed. I don't mean that as an attack on him; I kinda feel badly for him now that I know.

    Just figured you might want to know who you're arguing with. Your response was perfectly appropriate, btw, just figured you might want to know.

    There were a lot of "conversos." Outwardly converted, privately still Jewish, was a phenomenon perculiar to the Iberian peninsula, or at least more common there than elsewhere. Also, many immigrated there in later centuries, when such laws were not adhered to. I have known Brazilian Jews whose familes had been in Brazil for a couple hundred years.

    Yeah, I just got an interesting link recently via TANSTAAFL's blog, to a page by a Crypto-Jewish organization that estimates huge numbers of Latin Americans are Jews:

    A Brief History of Crypto Jews of Spanish and Portuguese Descent

    It has been approximately fifteen-hundred years since the emergence of Crypto Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, and five-hundred years since Crypto Judaism moved to the Americas. Today we find a large Crypto Jewish presence throughout the Western Hemisphere. No one knows for sure how many there really are, however in Brazil alone an estimated 10 to 25% of the total population are Crypto Jews, which translates to 15 to 40 million people.

    If that's accurate, then the Spanish crown might as well have forbidden birds from flying while they were at it.

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  132. I don't think I'm the Irishman in question but frankly I agree with my co-ethnic's sentiments. I think the killing is cosmic justice and I don't mourne it at all. The type of country England is led it to conquer and oppress Ireland and much of the rest of the world is now destroying them. Solidarity is a two way street and the English have never shown any to us.

    Which, to answer Syon's comment way above, is why I'm not a WN. Like I want such paddies in my tent...

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  133. "Given that, all else equal, wouldn't Israel want to make the rifle in-house, so it benefits from the jobs (and can sell additional weapons for export, if it chooses)?"

    Israel made the exact same decision previous to the adoption of the Tavor rifle. They ceased production of the Galil assault rifle in favor of FREE US taxpayer provided M16/M4 rifles.

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  134. And if this subsidy is so small, why do people like you argue so forcefully for its continuation, by way of waving it aside with a haughty "don't pay any attention to that - it's of no matter"?

    I do not have any opinion one way or the other, Van Nordstrand; foreign aid per se does not bother me, so I would be concerned with granular details of what the purveyors of aid were hoping to accomplish with it, and that is not a question I have studied. I've lots of opinions on how the federal executive allocates revenue, but not on foreign aid.

    The contention was made that Israel's prosperity was a consequence of "the American taxpayer". This is nonsense.
    Israel's prosperity is a consequence of contextually large quanta of goods and services being produced in Israel. Israel has received large subsidies in selected years. Those subventions were of insufficient size or duration to account for more than ninety years of brisk economic development. That is what the data indicate. As the data conflict with the voices inside his head, Mr. Anonymous is upset. That's life.

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  135. "Art Deco said...

    ""And if this subsidy is so small, why do people like you argue so forcefully for its continuation, by way of waving it aside with a haughty "don't pay any attention to that - it's of no matter"?"

    I do not have any opinion one way or the other,...."

    Clearly you do have an opinion on the matter. You're for it.

    "The contention was made that Israel's prosperity was a consequence of "the American taxpayer". This is nonsense."

    By some. Not by me. However, this completely ignores the question: why should the U.S. subsidize the defense of a nation that is quite capable of fending for itself. You obviously want this to continue. Else you would not expend so much vapor on the subject. Why?

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  136. If the Trojans beat the Fighting Irish, they don't get to demolish the Golden Dome and rape all the coeds

    This is why you're not a sitcom writer, Steve. The ND:Arabs parallel sort of works (barely, on dome grounds) but obviously it's the USC coeds who need to fear maiden-minded marauders. Tommy Trojan would probably be content raiding the Irish's liquor cabinet though.

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