Norwegian Tragedy: Violent Outbreak of Simmering Culture War?

Explanatory Note: As a population gets progressively squeezed and harried by destructive political policies and top-down cultural dictates, it is inevitable that some weak links will break. Some unstable minds will come completely undone and commit unforgiveable acts such as what was done in Norway last week. The cause and the blame rest on multiple shoulders, indluding those of the authors of the dysfunctional and counter-productive policies and cultural dictates which helps push the unstable ones over the brink.

The growing polarisation of societies sometimes referred to as "The Culture War" is becoming more difficult to deny, in the wake of the tragic outbreak of violence and mayhem in Norway last week.

Norway has long prided herself on her tolerance to Islamic immigration and global jihad, and has gone out of her way to protect Muslim terrorists such as mullah Krekar. Despite the fact that all the rapes in Oslo over the past 5 years have been committed by outsiders -- non-westerners -- the leaders of Norway have papered over any problems that violence-prone outsiders may have been causing. The leaders of Norway considered themselves safe from Islamic violence, for that reason. But these same national leaders -- appeasers of violent men -- had failed to calculate the potential for a violent blowback from more traditional Norwegians, members of the core Norwegian population who prefer the country to go back to the way it was before the influx of non-assimilable outsiders.

Rank	Country of origin[14]	Population (2001)[15]	Population (2011)[16]
1.	Poland	6,432	60,610
2.	Sweden	23,010	34,108
3.	Pakistan	23,581	31,884
4.	Iraq	12,357	27,827
5.	Somalia	10,107	27,523
6.	Germany	9,448	24,394
7.	Vietnam	15,880	20,452
8.	Denmark	19,049	19,522
9.	Iran	11,016	16,957
10.	Turkey	10,990	16,430
11.	Lithuania	378	16,309
12.	Bosnia-Herzegovina	12,944	16,125
13.	Russia	3,749	15,879
14.	Philippines	5,885	14,797
15.	Sri Lanka	10,335	14,017
16.	United Kingdom	10,925	13,395
17.	Kosovo	0 [17]	13,303
18.	Thailand	3,738	13,293
19.	Afghanistan	1,346	12,043
20.	India	6,140	10,096
21.	Morocco	5,719	8,305
22.	China, People's Republic of	3,654	7,895
23.	United States	7,253	7,853
24.	Eritrea	813	7,728
25.	Chile	6,491	7,708
26.	Netherlands	3,848	7,251
27.	Finland	6,776	6,626
28.	Iceland	3,756	6,022
29.	Ethiopia	2,803	5,805
30.	Romania	1,054	5,670
31.	Latvia	385	4,979
32.	France	2,350	4,289
33.	Burma	63	3,350
34.	Palestinian Territory	64	3,340
35.	Croatia	1,863	3,327
36.	Macedonia, Republic of	789	3,244
37.	Brazil	824	3,017
38.	Serbia	0 [17]	2,987
39.	Ukraine	399	2,918
40.	Estonia	342	2,871
41.	Bulgaria	842	2,693
42.	Hungary	1,666	2,599
43.	Spain	1,382	2,577
44.	Slovakia	207	2,498
45.	Lebanon	1,613	2,476
46.	Italy	1,265	2,230
47.	Congo, Democratic Republic of	276	2,183
48.	Syria	860	2,163
49.	Ghana	1,355	2,116
50.	Canada	1,120	1,680
-1		-1	-1

Wikipedia Immigration to Norway
Norway is a very small country, and relatively homogeneous when compared to the US. Outsiders have a large impact, particularly when unassimilable culturally, and when present in large numbers. Norway's politicians and media can sweep outsider rape of Norwegians and other violence and crime under the rug for so long before blowback occurs.

Politicians such as the leaders of Norway and Sweden often believe that their own people have become too civilised to lash out violently against what their leaders are doing to their societies. Such politicians feel that the power of the laws, the courts, and a general culture of obedience to authority and political correctness will be enough to keep their people submissive to whatever societal changes the leaders may choose to inflict upon them.

The recent bloody tragedy in Norway suggests that there may be a bit of the berserker Viking left in Scandinavian populations, despite the long effort of regressive progressives to tame the spirit of individualism and independence among their core peoples. Regressive progressives of the western left have been generally successful over the past few decades, in using the weapons at their command -- including general control over popular media and news media -- to control their populations in the face of a wide range of provocations. But just as the female domestic partner may use her mastery of language to dominate her male partner for a long period of time, in some cases the other party may resort to his particular skills and competencies to fight back. That is just one example of when domestic violence can occur -- sometimes in a decisive way -- at the end of a long and somewhat lop-sided exchange.

Norway's sad example of bloody domestic violence appears to fit into the above mold. Norwegian citizens who object to a large scale re-arrangement of their country, have been brow-beaten and forced into submission by laws, courts, and politically correct society. They have had essentially no recourse to the course their leaders have set for their nation. But historically, humans have used violence to settle disputes far more frequently than they have used laws, courts, and the use of societal disapproval.

Governments which forget the lessons of history -- that they govern at the consent of their citizens or they do not govern for long -- will be reminded of those harsh lessons sooner or later.

Inside the continental United States, the borders of the "culture war" can be seen by looking at a national election map at county-level resolution.  The red counties lean away from the regressive progressive agenda.  The blue counties lean toward the agenda of government dependency, and shifting the balance of power away from citizens and toward central government.

Civilisations rise and fall based upon the ability of its citizens and organsations to work together toward a common stability, lingua franca, culture, security, and markets.  If the forces of dissolution and neo-tribalisation become stronger than the forces of cohesion, the civilisation will tear itself apart.

What happened in Norway is the sign of a society in the process of tearing itself apart.  The government of Norway, and other leftist European governments, will attempt to double down on the use of laws, courts, media, and popular culture and political correctness, to take advantage of the rare violent episode from the Norwegian nationalist side.   Taking that path will drive their country even deeper into the maelstrom of polarisation, and closer to large scale bloody confrontations.

Marginalising Norwegian traditionalists will result in a hardening of both sides of the culture war.  It will push the crimes of non-western immigrants even further under the media carpet.  It will make it easier for violent jihadists to plan and execute acts of intimidation and murder.  But it is what the dysfunctional Norwegian government -- and the governments of other dysfunctional European nations -- are likely to do.

Despite all the denials, the culture war is very active.  But until now, it had not been particularly violent, except on the part of government agencies enforcing political correctness.

In the US, after the violent Oklahoma City reaction to the government's Ruby Ridge and Waco adventures, came 9/11. After the US Clinton administration had declared "right wing terrorism" as the true enemy, and let down their guard against dangers from global jihadist supremacism, the jihad stepped into the breech and took advantage of the regressive progressive self-blinding. Let us hope that a similar catastrophe does not befall Europe, in its headlong rush to blame its own traditionalists for all of Europe's growing problems of immigration-spawned violence.

More: The perpetrator of the bloody Norwegian massacre also intended to attack oil and gas platforms and a BP oil company base. The man has written a 1500 page manifesto detailing his grievances and his terror plans of vengeance. Fortunately there are not many persons at this extreme in Norway or any other modern nation.

Some persons who have committed mass murders in the past were later found to be suffering from brain tumours or other serious diseases affecting their mental states.

Despite the outlier nature of this event and this perpetrator, the tragedy should be seen as a warning call to the Norwegian government and other European governments who are pressing the politically correct multicultural agenda against the best interests of their native populations. It is often the outliers -- the canaries in the coal mines -- that tell us that something is going wrong. If European governments cannot interpret the meaning of this event appropriately, they are in for a world of pain.

Applying Science of Biological Inequality to Criminal Justice

Along any axis that we use to measure human beings, we discover a wide-ranging distribution, whether in empathy, intelligence, impulse control, or aggression. People are not created equal. Although this variability is often imagined to be best swept under the rug, it is in fact the engine of evolution. In each generation, nature tries out as many varieties as it can produce, along all available dimensions.

Variation gives rise to lushly diverse societies—but it serves as a source of trouble for the legal system, which is largely built on the premise that humans are all equal before the law. This myth of human equality suggests that people are equally capable of controlling impulses, making decisions, and comprehending consequences. While admirable in spirit, the notion of neural equality is simply not true. _Atlantic_Brain_on_Trial_David_Eagleman_via_EvolvingEconomics

SPIE
Under the modern regime of political correctness, it is forbidden to point out that we are all genetically different from each other. Each of us has different aptitudes and limitations. The criminal justice system is particularly resistant to the science of human biodiversity (HBD), for many reasons. But as science learns more about how biological and psychological differences between people inspire and drive criminal behaviours, we may eventually see more scientific and technological tools at every stage of the criminal justice system -- from crime investigation to trial to imprisonment and parole.

If you think genes don’t affect how people behave, consider this fact: if you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, the probability that you will commit a violent crime is four times as high as it would be if you lacked those genes. You’re three times as likely to commit robbery, five times as likely to commit aggravated assault, eight times as likely to be arrested for murder, and 13 times as likely to be arrested for a sexual offense. The overwhelming majority of prisoners carry these genes; 98.1 percent of death-row inmates do. These statistics alone indicate that we cannot presume that everyone is coming to the table equally equipped in terms of drives and behaviors. _Atlantic_BrainonTrial

Those statistics do not tell the entire story. A large number of perfectly law-abiding individuals are walking around with those "criminal genes" as part of their lawful genome. Most will never commit a serious crime. And likewise, there are a lot of "criminal genes" which have not yet been discovered, for good reason. Genes by themselves do not commit crimes. Instead it is particular combinations of genes (and gene control mechanisms) which when combined with particular individuals in particular environments, conspire to lead to criminal behaviours. Until scientists become sophisticated enough to understand the mind-boggling combinations of gene interaction and the myriad mechanisms of control of gene expression, it will be difficult to bring genomics and epigenomics to courtrooms.

When it comes to nature and nurture, the important point is that we choose neither one. We are each constructed from a genetic blueprint, and then born into a world of circumstances that we cannot control in our most-formative years. The complex interactions of genes and environment mean that all citizens—equal before the law—possess different perspectives, dissimilar personalities, and varied capacities for decision-making. The unique patterns of neurobiology inside each of our heads cannot qualify as choices; these are the cards we’re dealt. _Atlantic

But science is learning more about why our brains cause us to behave within particular patterns, and technology is providing ever more sophisticated tools to allow science to learn even more. At some point, even the bureaucracies of government and criminal justice will have to accept some of the more sophisticated ideas of human biodiversity coming from cognitive science and gene expression.

The study of brains and behaviors is in the midst of a conceptual shift. Historically, clinicians and lawyers have agreed on an intuitive distinction between neurological disorders (“brain problems”) and psychiatric disorders (“mind problems”). As recently as a century ago, a common approach was to get psychiatric patients to “toughen up,” through deprivation, pleading, or torture. Not surprisingly, this approach was medically fruitless. After all, while psychiatric disorders tend to be the product of more-subtle forms of brain pathology, they, too, are based in the biological details of the brain.

What accounts for the shift from blame to biology? Perhaps the largest driving force is the effectiveness of pharmaceutical treatments. No amount of threatening will chase away depression, but a little pill called fluoxetine often does the trick. Schizophrenic symptoms cannot be overcome by exorcism, but they can be controlled by risperidone. Mania responds not to talk or to ostracism, but to lithium. These successes, most of them introduced in the past 60 years, have underscored the idea that calling some disorders “brain problems” while consigning others to the ineffable realm of “the psychic” does not make sense. Instead, we have begun to approach mental problems in the same way we might approach a broken leg. _Atlantic

Does this mean that criminals should be treated more leniently, or that they are relieved from any responsibility for their crimes? Impossible to say, without specific data for each particular case.

The potential for a full-blown data explosion is lurking just over the horizon, and current day lawyers, judges, law enforcement officers, prison officials, parole departments, and so on... are totally unprepared for the changes that are likely to come along.

Prisons are filling up with violent criminals. With the importation into the developed world of persons from high crime regions -- such as Latin America, Africa, Central and South Asia -- the nations of Europe, North America, and to some extent Oceania, will find it increasingly difficult to pay for needed correctional facilities. Particularly with the ongoing demographic implosion among high value taxpayers in those countries.

Which of these countries -- increasingly in the throes of unmanageable debt and demographic decline -- will be able to shift to a biologically-informed approach to criminology? Come back in 20 years and find out.

Living in the Age of Pre-Revolutionary China, Amazing Times

China today is in a pre-revolutionary state. The political system, try as the central authorities may (and many of them are extremely good at their jobs), simply cannot forever keep juggling the growing number of balls on its hands. As China industrializes and develops, the interests and aspirations of its people become more complex and conflicted. _WalterRussellMead

The ongoing unrest in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, etc. may presage a wider age of unrest across Africa, Asia, and extending into Europe. New powers are rising and old powers are in preparation for a great fall. The turbulence is likely to grow severe before the storm settles into another uncertain period of relative peace and neo-hegemony.

The Arab Spring, which has shaken regimes the establishment once assumed were eternal and which took our intelligence analysts as much as our pundits by surprise, is the kind of event we are going to see more of. History is shifting into hyperdrive and things are going to get weird.

...Not since the 1930s has the incompetence, incapacity and selfish shortsightedness of Europe’s governing class been so shockingly on display...While their fecklessness endangers the global economy, the Europeans are simultaneously knocking down what little is left of their defense establishments...None of this stops European leaders from erecting one fantasy on top of another in a bewildering series of cloud-palaces: global carbon treaties, anti-death penalty campaigns, regional associations across the Mediterranean. Every species of quackery and flapdoodle finds a home and a subsidy in Brussels. _WRM

But back to China...Should we truly expect the subdued and docile Chinese people to revolt against their CCP masters of the iron hand?

The pressure on China’s fragile environment grows exponentially. The balance between regional autonomy (often corrupt) and central power (often rigid and unaware of local realities) has been a source of trouble for thousands of years in China; today that balance is more urgently needed and more difficult to find than ever. The Chinese financial system, partly controlled by the center, partly controlled by wildly optimistic and often profoundly corrupt local governments, and partly private, becomes more complex, more unbalanced and more unsustainable with every passing day.
I wish the Chinese well with their juggling, and I hope that any revolutions will be peaceful and slow, but if history teaches us anything at all, big changes are headed China’s way. A billion people are undergoing wrenching and rapid transformations of everything they have known. _WRM

What about India? Will the subcontinent enjoy a peaceful transition to superpowerdom? Not likely, says Mead.

The inevitable stresses of accelerating economic development and the accompanying social change are going to test India and its neighbors as they have never been tested before. With a decaying, strategically addled but nuclear armed neighbor in Pakistan, and a dangerously explosive rivalry with China that is likely to escalate over time, India’s external environment is as challenging as its internal issues. On the other hand, geography and demography seem to be conspiring to make India a major force in East Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Nobody knows where this is going, but the emergence of India on the world stage could be even more challenging and transformative than the rise of China. _WRM

Is this the coming anarchy that Robert D. Kaplan foresaw, or something even more violent and catastrophic?

It is as if a small portion of humanity is working hard to achieve a higher level, while most everyone else is helplessly, zombie-like, waddling deeper downward toward the Idiocracy, with the two disparate groups passing each other on opposite sides of the highway.

The US election of a sado-masochistic Congress in 2006 and 2008, and a narcissistic sociopathic executive in 2008, was apparently the ceremonial rolling out of the red carpet for the coming global weirding, if not something even worse.

When Good Kids Go Mau-Mau

On June 20 of this year in South Carolina, a young man named Carter Strange was jogging home from visiting his girlfriend, when he was surrounded by eight adolescent males, robbed, and beaten to within a millimeter of his life.

The assailants / muggers were apprehended and face trial. Court transcripts indicate that defense attorneys are referring to the assault gang as "good kids" who used poor judgment in this case. Good kids who act like mau-maus from time to time -- every blue moon, or just when they see a lone white kid jogging down the street? Yes, of course the assailants were young black males.

White and Asian Americans are becoming accustomed to hearing stories of black gang violence, black flash mob violence, and the spontaneous violent expression of black resentment on an almost daily basis.

Respected writer Walter Russell Mead believes that pressure is building inside black communities to the point that America may experience another explosion of black riots and bloody mayhem such as occurred in the middle and late 1960s, and in 1992 Los Angeles....

Leaders in the black community appear to draw power and clout from such outbursts of violent blood-letting, and continue to pump up the resentment at every opportunity. US President Obama's recent attempt to create mass hysteria among American senior citizens over the reliability of their social security payments is just a mild foretaste of Obama's apparent ability and willingness to use the rampant resentment and instability in American black communities to threaten -- and even foment -- outbreaks of violence, in order to get his way on political issues.

70% of the black children born in America are born out of wedlock. Over the generations, this leads to a chain reaction of illegitimacy and a population explosion of unguided minds inhabiting the bodies of most of the US black population. Resentment builds inside individuals with low impulse control, below average intelligence, high rates of poverty, and a community that tells you that you can never get anywhere because outsiders are holding you down. Your music tells you to fight back, and cap some asses. Kill the cops, kill the man -- whoever you think the man may be at any point in time.

This situation is getting worse under Obama, who appears to encourage this ongoing hellish descent of the black community as a means of leverage and political power -- and a fund-raising tool.

The implosion-explosion threat is far worse than can be described in writing. A picture of everyday black violence could easily paint a thousand words. A visit to a maximum security prison would paint more volumes than could be contained in the largest library.

Mainstream journalism in the US refuses to face this explosive issue. Politicians will not admit the problem of pandemic black violence exists, much less the larger threat of wide-scale riots and destruction spreading out from black communities, should the call go out. Popular culture and celebrity culture will not touch the deadly tripwire with a 100 foot pole.

All that is left is for the informal media to spread the information as it becomes available, to anyone whose eyes remain open to see the world around them. It is up to individuals and informal associations to make whatever preparations they feel advisable.

In the meantime, US borders remain porous to outsiders -- both friendly (but untrainable and unassimilable) and malignant -- under the Obama regime. The US economy remains frozen in a state of uncertainty under the Obama regime of debt, debt, debt. Obama's war against the private sector continues unabated. Everyone suffers in this climate of opportunity destruction.

More and more "good kids" will go mau-mau the longer the Obama regime and its bitter aftertaste remains in place. Expect it. Plan for it.

Equality at All Costs: Obama's Long March Downward

Politicians, pundits, academics, and journalists speak about "equality" as if it were something to be proud of, something good! Well, it is possible to achieve equality. Writer Kurt Vonnegut showed the way back in 1961:

In that brave, new world, the government forced each individual to wear “handicaps” to offset any advantage they had, so that everyone could be truly and fully equal. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks to hide their good looks. The strong had to wear compensating weights to slow them down. Graceful dancers were burdened with bags of birdshot. Those with above average intelligence had to wear government transmitters in their ears that would emit sharp noises every 20 seconds, shattering their thoughts “to keep them… from taking unfair advantage of their brains.” _Forbes

This is not so very different from the approach that Obama's regime has been taking toward achieving an American equality.

...in all those societies that have tried to enforce the more extreme vision of mandatory equality, totalitarian governments have emerged, trying to enforce that vision on all. A thoroughgoing government structure must develop to impose and enforce social control on the most productive, or on any potential outbreak of “excess” productivity.

We can see as well that this vision of equality is not actually fair. It is not fair to the beautiful to force them to wear ugly masks. It is not fair to the productive to deprive them of what they have produced, merely to make them equal to others who have produced less. As Vonnegut’s story shows, putting social limits on the success that people are allowed to achieve with their own talents and abilities makes for an ugly society, harshly restrictive on its best lights who have the most actually to give to the benefit of all.

Finally, this vision of equality as a social goal, with equal incomes and wealth for all, is severely counterproductive economically, and so makes for a poor society as well. Pursuing such a vision would require very high marginal tax rates on anyone with above average production, income and wealth, which experience as well as theory shows us leads to less production.

If income and wealth is going to be equalized, why would anyone save or invest? Savings and investment just adds to wealth, and wealth is anti-social under a social justice regime of equal wealth for all. Indeed, the only rational strategy for everyone under such a regime is to consume all income and not save or invest anything. For anyone who saves and invests more than others will see that savings and investment expropriated, and anyone who saves and invests less than others will be rewarded with a grant from the government to make their savings equal to all others.

The only difference between the prosperity of modern industrial society and the subsistence living of cavemen is savings and investment. All the tools and equipment that enable us to produce more than what was enjoyed during caveman days come from investment, made possible by savings.

Under a social justice regime of equal income and wealth for all, there would be no reason for anyone even to work. If you work more than others, and earn more income as a result, the above average results of all that work would be expropriated. If you don’t work at all, then you would receive a grant from whatever government might possibly be functioning so that you still consumed the same average amount of goods and services as everyone else. _Forbes

Many modern-day US government policies are almost identical to Kurt Vonnegut's depictions of forced equality in "Harrison Bergeron." Under a regime such as Obama's, such policies only tend to grow more draconian and vampirish -- sucking a society's underlying strengths dry, until it is incapable of propelling itself without the dictates of its government overlords.

Mr. Obama has been most friendly toward the governments of China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. He has been most unfriendly toward the UK, Israel, Europe in general, Australia, Canada, and the private sector of the US.

You can tell a lot about where a leader wants to take his country from those he admires (and wishes to imitate) and those he openly despises.

US Inner Cities: Dark Zones of Impulse and Violence

One of the lasting legacies of the US 1960s era of big-government expansion of social programs, is the hellish environment of US inner cities. De facto "no-go zones" for many police forces, these hopeless neighborhoods create themselves, with the proper mix of ingredients -- including over ample government funding of dependency-inducing community programs. Another destructive legacy of the 60s is massive entitlement programs.

...entitlement programs are the biggest single financial problem we face. They dwarf all the Bush-Obama wars; they make TARP look like small change. They...cost money we don’t have — and are scheduled to cost inexorably more until they literally ruin the nation...

...Since the Great Society era of Lyndon Johnson, the country has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into poor urban neighborhoods. The violence and crime generated in these neighborhoods costs hundreds of billions more. And after all this time, all this money and all this energy, the inner city populations are worse off than before. There is more drug addiction and more social and family breakdown among this population than when the Great Society was launched. Incarceration rates have risen to levels that shock the world (though they make for safer streets);

...The state of the American inner city is an unacceptable human tragedy, and the costs in money spent and prosperity forfeited create an unsustainable drag on the national economy at a time when we need all the help we can get.

There is more. Those neighborhoods — and the prisons in which so many young urban men spend large chunks of their lives — threaten the peace and security of the country as a whole. Extremist cults, some domestically based and others relying on foreign money and enthusiasm, fish in these troubled waters for souls, and sometimes they catch a few. This could turn ugly. _WRMead_theAmericanInterest

What Walter Russel Mead dances around -- and eventually denies entirely -- is the elephant in the room: differences in underlying drive, impulse control, intelligence, and executive function.

Until analysts and decision makers can bring themselves to break with a counter-productive political correctness, and to accept the well established and easily demonstrated facts of hbd (human biodiversity), governments-academics-journalists-pundits etc will continue banging their heads against the wall. And the nation as a whole sinks into a deeper quagmire and a more critical state of risk.

From a Distance, the Hockey Stick Looks Unimpressive

Prolific and innovative thinker and scientist J Storrs Hall takes a look at where the climate has been, compares current climate with similar climate curves in the past, and slyly invites readers to guess where the climate is likely to be heading.

First -- Where the climate has been over the past 10,000 years or so... :

Images from WUWT
Next -- Comparing our current climate curve with similar climate curves from the past, to get an idea of a possible trajectory... :

Here I’ve plotted the 400 years following each minimum in the record that leads to a sustained sharp rise. There were 10 of them; the first five are plotted in cyan and the more recent 5 in blue. You can see that in the latter part of the Holocene the traces settle down from the wilder swings of the earlier period. Even so, every curve, even the early ones, seems to have an inflection — at least a change in slope — somewhere between 200 and 250 years after the minimum.

The hatched black line is the average of the 5 recent (blue) spikes. The red dots are the uptick at the end of GISP2 and HadSST, spliced at 1850. Note that ALL the minima dates are from GISP2. _WUWT

Then Josh invites readers to guess what will happen next, if history is any guide.

For some parts of the northern hemisphere, it may be time to get out the summer parkas.

Climate simpletons who believe that the global climate is controlled by one trace gas which constitutes less than 0.04% of the planetary atmosphere, have controlled the microphones, printing presses, funding agencies, and public stage for far too long. It is time for science to displace the politically convenient (and economically lucrative) climate hysteria, so that ordinary people can make rational plans.

Previously published at Al Fin Potpourri

China: Links and Threads

As the world's second largest economic system and an expanding regional military power, China plays an important role as an East Asian would-be hegemon and as an international power broker. It is not easy to keep up with where China is attempting to go, but it is worth an attempt.

China's Hidden Debt

Could China be the next Greece?

How China's regional banks hide loans and transactions

China's Demographic Transition to Senescence

Economics of an aging population

China's Internal Discord

How much longer can the Chinese Communist Party last?


Frustrated Chinese migrant workers rise up

Many Chinese workers unhappy with conditions

Autocratic CCP Rule Kills Creativity and Innovation

How China Kills Creativity

China needs more former British colonies like Hong Kong

More Foreign Companies Abandon China

Surging China Costs Driving Companies Away

China Bumps Up Against Resistance from Neighbors

Beijing's Territorial Claims Being Challenged

China's government has published very impressive economic growth numbers for many years running -- even in the midst of a global financial collapse. It is well to give the Chinese government the benefit of the doubt, given its massive cash reserves and impressive and shiny new buildings in Shanghai etc.

On the other hand, it is easy for outside observers to be fooled by superficial appearances. If westerners learned anything from the great collapse and fall of the USSR and Eastern European Communism, it should have been to never blindly trust facades.

Cycle of Civilisations

First of all, everybody can see that the economist class that owns banks and governments....feel that by virtue of their privileged birth and education they can steal from the public at will. The second is that this whole sovereign debt charade is just a continuation of that mentality in the pockets of every last citizen for the remaining drachmas pesos dollars and pounds that are slowly but surely accruing at the top of that putrid food chain. And the third emerging reality is that the game will continue until governments are toppled by the people from whom they are stealing. _Source

James West, author of the paragraph re-posted above, provides an intriguing snapshot of the world's economic state in the 28 June 2011 edition of his MidasLetter, titled "United States of Denial." He looks at Europe, Asia, the US, and Canada, at this moment in time -- a cross-sectional view that is worth a look.

One cannot see an entire cycle of civilisational rise and fall from one mere cross-section, but if you place enough cross-sectional views together, one can see the essentials.

Financial writers and analysts focus on economic and financial happenings to the exclusion of everything else, but most of the societal repercussions of the rise and fall of a global economy can be inferred with just a little knowledge of human nature.

Wars, famines, pestilences, poverty, and massive hardship all hinge on mundane matters such as interest rates and fiduciary responsibility. When most advanced nations are in a state of massive debt, where fractions of a point in lending rates can mean the difference between a fall in governments or continued good times, western civilisation has come to a precarious point.

When civilisations rise and fall, people's lives are affected by the turbulence in many ways. How well they weather the storminess is largely up to them and their immediate support structures. If government infrastructure is collapsing, one can not count government as one of his immediate support structures.

Getting to the Bottom of IQ Differences

The old IQ comparison studies that looked merely at skull size or head circumference as proxies for brain size, have been superceded by more advanced brain imaging capable of precise measurements of whole brain, total grey matter, total white matter, specific brain centers, and specific brain pathways and networks. These volumes are, to a large extent, under genetic control. A new era in comparing group IQs is dawning, thanks to advanced brain imaging and matching analysis of brain genetics. And a new era in improving gene expression relating to cognition is near to dawning -- as long as the key research is carried out and not obstructed out of a misguided sense of "political correctness."

Brain size as measured by MRI correlates highly with IQ. Specific brain networks and brain centers are even more highly correlated to IQ than gross brain size. In fact, a particular type of MRI analysis -- diffusion tensor imaging -- may supersede traditional IQ tests as the most objective means of testing IQ.

Anyone who truly wants to get to the bottom of the question of IQ differences between population groupings, will want to see the best designed, executed, and analysed research possible done on the subject. Anyone who is afraid of having such research done, does not truly want the question answered, and is lying to himself and everyone else when he claims that "there are no IQ differences, and even if there were it wouldn't matter!" Such persons' voices should be ignored as mere noise by all of those committed to finding the best answers to important questions.

A recent UK study at UCL Institute of Child Health, finds that teens who were delivered premature at birth have significantly lower brain white matter and IQ. (Abstract Annals of Neurology) For this study, it would be helpful to match by ethnicity, sex, and SES.

Between species, a longer gestation and breast feeding, correlate with larger brains, higher cognition, and longer lifespan.

And on and on. As brain genetic expression is correlated with advanced brain imaging with greater precision, and further correlated with IQ (and executive function), the larger global picture of human brain development should become clearer. At that point it will be impossible to deny the glaringly obvious group differences in brain function, and how these differences manifest themselves on a societal and economic level.

Being an HBD (human biodiversity) denier is growing more untenable every day.

Previously posted at Al Fin blog.