I received this in an email from the local LibDems – as a joke, I hasten to add.
It does cause me some difficulty. I had to dig deep to get past the second question and avoid voting UKIP, but then found it almost impossible to skip past the Greens to my home as a Lib Dem!!
Alfred
I have perfectly good sources of information, such as the Times, the BBC, and I can apply my own judgment. The website you refer to appears to be anti-American propaganda and therefore biased. Therefore I am not inclined to look at it.
I look forward to reading David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories, and would recommend that you do likewise, as well as Donald Wood’s books.
I tell you seriously that associating with the BNP will do you no good. If that’s pontificating, I’m glad to plead guilty – it’s for your own good.
Abe,
I should think in your mind anything anti-American would be biased whether it were propaganda or not.
But, yes, Rupert Murdoch’s Timesy is a very reliable source. Have you tried Murdoch’s British pornography channels too?
http://www.newshounds.us/2006/02/12/rupert_murdochs_pornography_profiteering.php
You might find them eye-opening (they used to boast, and perhaps still do, that they offered the “dirtiest” films allowed under British law).
And truly, the BBC, is a totally trustworthy source of the unvarnished truth.
Incidentally, did you know that David Ray Griffin is an American and an Emeritus professor of theology and that his book “The new Pearl Harbor revisited” was chosen as “pick of the week” by “Publisher’s Weekly,” the trade journal of the American publishing industry?
But, yeah, don’t confuse yourself with the facts, such as discussed in this special issue of the American scholarly journal “American Behavioral Scientist”:
http://911.lege.net/ABS53N62010/
The topic is SCADS (state crimes against democracy) — anti-American propaganda, obiously. The authors of the articles, all scholars at American universities, should certainly be fired.
Alfred: Indeed, anything anti-American is biased. Indeed, the Times is a very reliable source. And truly, the BBC, is a totally trustworthy source of the unvarnished truth – your own words there, I couldn’t do better. SCAD is a conspiracy theory, and your time is better spent on Aaronovitch’s book, whose details I have already provided.
On a different subject – fiction, but a special kind, that reveals truth through it – you might enjoy the series West Wing; all seven seasons are available on DVD, and such is its quality that several past presidents agreed to be interviewed in its special features. Aaron Sorkin, the author is clearly a very gifted playwright (he wrote the script for the film The American President and the A Few Good Men).
In fact I might watch some of it myself now, so I turn to my mug of tea, and wish you good night – and take care of yourself!
Abe,
You’re kidding me, right?
Or not? You comments disturb me. They remind of a kid I knew in school who rose to become Minister of Defense in Gordon Brown’s government. We all thought he was nuts, and now we know it.
“Incidentally, did you know that David Ray Griffin is an American and an Emeritus professor of theology and that his book “The new Pearl Harbor revisited” was chosen as “pick of the week” by “Publisher’s Weekly,” the trade journal of the American publishing industry?”
He’s also a crackpot who doesn’t understand the problem of induction.
His empirical analysis of things is “X has never happened before therefor X cannot possibly happen”.
He dresses it up differently but that is the gist and it is cracked.
Abe, InformationClearingHouse is not “anti-Americans”, no more than Mr. Murray is “Anti-British” because he criticises the establishment. If you’re declaring that any criticism of America makes you “anti-American”, you have certainly drank the Kool-Aid, as the saying goes.
Furthermore, ICH does not just make stuff up. It is, rather, a compendium of the relevant bits of news for the day from a large variety of reputable sources. Some of which might even reference articles from The Times, if they appear to be true examples of journalism, rather than puff-pieces for whichever politician is doing the most favours for Murdoch.
The slant from the BBC is such that you must be leaning into a very stiff wind indeed if it looks straight up and down to you.
Angry,
You say,
He’s also a crackpot who doesn’t understand the problem of induction.
His empirical analysis of things is “X has never happened before therefor X cannot possibly happen”.
Well it is a bit unlikely, isn’t it. If no steel frame building has ever collapsed due to fire, then three supposedly do so all on the same day in the same city — one of them not even hit by a plane.
Craig thinks the reason they fell was because the steel girders weren’t properly bolted together. Do you buy that?
Take a look at the thread devoted to the subject, and see how conclusively Angry/Larry got bashed on the issue:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post.html
It’s a bit rich to come out swaggering now, AngrySoba, as if you had that whole argument down. You had your chance on that thread. Your appeals to authority and incredulity wasn’t winning it for you, and so you went your rather tiresome Mr. Angry routine.
The link to the thread is above, if you feel you have further business with it.
Yes, I have just been reminded that our host does not wish discussion of 9/11 to intrude on the discussion of other topics.
But I suppose we can address the problem of induction and, in particular, Professor Griffin’s method of argument.
Griffin’s argument is not that “”X has never happened before therefor X cannot possibly happen”, it is:
Y has never been observed to happen unless proceed by X (detonation of explosives), therefore, when Y happened three times in one day one should consider the possibility that it was caused by X. Weak induction, I believe that is called — a method of reasoning without which life would be impossible.
Hello Alfred,
I too am an atheist brought up in pretty strong Christian teachings. You’d have to get up pretty early to out-Bible me. There are all manner of religions who give the same pretty basic principles to live by, which seem to me to be fairly decent life philosophies, such as:
—start
Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.: Mahabharata 5:1517
Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.: Matthew 7:12
Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother what which he desires for himself. Sunnah
Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.: Udana Varga 5:18
Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.: Talmud, Shabbat 31:a
Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.: Analects 15:23
Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.: T’ai Shag Kan Ying P’ien
Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good: for itself. : Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5
—end
And so forth.
*
I’m with you until your assertion that there are intellectual differences between populations. Physical differences go without saying, but are you suggesting some races are more stupid that others, or are you merely observing (again) that one group of people might be more predisposed to intellectual pursuits than another?
If it’s the latter, I’m pushed to see why you keep making references to something so obvious as to be considered a truism.
“Personal attachment and loyalty” might not go so far as you imagine, even among those considered thoroughbred British. Have you seen the atmosphere at a football match anytime in the last 20 years? Or witnessed how police and strikers or protesters, every bit as British as each other, become opposed?
How about how our very British executive classes outsourced our entire manufacturing base to China, destroying the beating heart of our economy and communities for short term gain.
Our continuation as a British “race” in any form is grim while the ruling class treat us as disposable assets in a race to the bottom for labour costs. Instead of immigration, consider the emigration of our jobs for a while, and realise that is the most corrosive element in our decline.
*
You say that if “they” are British legally, “if they are loyal and if they pay their taxes and otherwise contribute to society, immigrants should have the same rights as any citizen of long British descent”.
Should this principle not be applied by the BNP, when they consider membership applications? Last I heard, they wouldn’t accept a black member. Are you at odds with the BNP on this issue, Alfred?
“Well it is a bit unlikely, isn’t it.”
THIS is an appeal to incredulity.
“If no steel frame building has ever collapsed due to fire”
But it has:
“The 1960 exposition hall was destroyed in a spectacular 1967 fire, despite being thought fireproof by virtue of its steel and concrete construction. At the time of the fire, the building contained highly flammable exhibits, several hydrants were shut off, and the sprinklers proved inadequate suppression. Thus the fire spread quickly and destructively, taking the life of a security guard.[4] ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCormick_Place#History
So, no doubt, Griffin will change the goalposts to “no steel-framed skyscraper” on the presumption that being taller makes it less susceptible to collapse. A clearly absurd stipulation as anyone can agree.
Also, if you are familiar with Bertrand Russell’s “chicken paradox” you will already know that chickens are not wise to think that everyday they will go out be fed grain just because it has always been like that in the past. One day the axe will come out and they’ll all have their heads lopped off and sent to market even though none of them may have seen this happen before.
Glenn,
I am tired. Can’t write straight.
The BNP exist, I have concluded, to make repugnant populist policies, thus leaving the field clear for the main parties to continue pushing wars, outsourcing, submission to EU rule, etc. The BNP don’t want votes. They want to be hated (not the mugs and knuckle-draggers who make up the rank and file, obviously) but the intelligence behind the operation. That may be paranoia. In which case one has to assume that Griffin is the stupidest Cambridge-trained lawyer that ever lived, since anything the party espouses actually becomes less popular when people know it is BNP policy. (The BNP, incidentally, does now accept members of any ethnicity.)
As to intellectual differences among populations, I assert that as a logical necessity following from the fact that populations differ genetically, and therefore, they must differ at least marginally in all aspects of phenotype including the mind. But I have no preconceptions about what those racial differences are, or whether they are what anyone would consider significant.
I regard IQ testing as fairly stupid, since it seems silly to assume that intelligence can be measured on a linear scale by a single number. However, I’m willing to believe that IQ tests measure some mental processing capability. Further, I’m prepared to believe it possible that if you raised a bunch of Chinese and a bunch of Scottish highlanders under identical conditions and tested their IQ’s the Chinese might come out slightly ahead. This is wild speculation, but the Chinese are adapted to a complex society with a high population density, whereas the highlanders are adapted to a much simper social system. Dealing with people requires mental processing power, so the Chinese may have needed more of it than people living in simple tribal communities, i.e., selection would have endowed them with more brains despite the high metabolic and nutritional cost. The Scots, on the other hand, could dispense with some brains, which would give them an advantage over the Chinese in fleetness of foot.
But look, don’t take this too seriously, although you should know that this is more or less how evolutionary biologists think. They never think in terms of racial superiority/inferiority. They think in terms of adaptation. All they are interested in is what pays off in reproductive success. In humans, the brain is the most critical organ when it comes to environmental adaptation. Therefore, one should expect the brain and its properties to vary with the social environment and history. Whether it varies much or only in inconsequentially tiny degrees, I have no real conviction.
If one considers the intellectual history of mankind, I am inclined to accept Jared Diamond’s view that the reason the Trobriand Islanders and other peoples on the periphery of civilization failed to discover the infinitesimal calculus, was that they were in the wrong place, which is to say they simply lacked the experience that would have allowed them to pose the question to which the calculus was the answer.
But one day it might become evident that Finns or some obscure ethnic group in Asia really are, on the whole, better at math, or composing polyphonic music than most other people, just as those Kenyan long-distance runners can out-run everyone, except possibly a highland Scot.
“This is wild speculation, but the Chinese are adapted to a complex society with a high population density, whereas the highlanders are adapted to a much simper social system”
What kind of time period do such evolutionary adaptations take place over ? How many generations before we start seeing them ?
Ach, it just makes no sense. Stick a Chinese baby in a Highland family or vice versa and they’ll grow up adapting to their environment. I know ‘The Jerk’ was Steve Martin when he was funny, but it’s not meant to be a blueprint for racial theories.
Alfred
I kid you not. The Times, the BBC and the West Wing are just fine by me. But I won’t be voting Nulab, unlike that kid at school you mentioned. And I hope you in your turn don’t touch the BNP with a ten-foot pole.h
Anon,
You quote me:
“This is wild speculation, but the Chinese are adapted to a complex society with a high population density, whereas the highlanders are adapted to a much simper social system”
and ask:
“What kind of time period do such evolutionary adaptations take place over ? How many generations before we start seeing them ?”
Genetic variation within human populations can occur in various ways at various rates. Rapid change occurs through changes in the frequency of genes already present in the gene pool. For example, during a plague only those with specific immunity genes survive. The Black Death, for example, caused an abrupt change in the composition of the gene pool of the British population during the fourteenth century.
Such adaptation may be reflected not only in the acquisition of resistance to a particular disease, but in visible morphological traits also. The plague appears to have changed the common skull form in England from round to long (http://forum.stirpes.net/studies/13735-unexplained-changes-skull-type-british-men.html).
Such a correlated change in traits may reflect the action of a pleiotropic gene (i.e., with multiple effects) or to linkage between different genes, perhaps due to the presence within the population of several incompletely miscegenated strains, e.g., Viking versus Celt, differing both in plague resistance and skull form.
Radical changes in many traits, for example body size or coloration (e.g., in fishes) can be achieved in experimental populations within just a few generations through the application of strong selective pressure. Such changes result not from the addition of genes to the gene pool, but through alteration in the frequency of multiple genes pre-existing in the gene pool. Because large human populations such as those of modern nation states possess a great diversity of genes, much of the potential genetic variation of the species exists within each racial or national gene pools.
Rapid genetic change within a population can result from differential breeding rates among genetically distinct population groups, e.g., Islamic immigrants to Britain versus indigenous Brits who may for practical purposes be defined as those with four British born grandparents. As mentioned elsewhere, such differences in reproductive rate can result in the virtual total replacement of one gene pool by another within only a couple of generations. In Europe, the magnitude of such effects is masked in the overall population statistics because of the long post-reproductive life of modern Britons, i.e., there are plenty of indigenous old people, but fewer, proportionately, of reproductive indigenous Britons.
The impact of immigration on the local gene pool depends on whether the immigrants are mainly single and mate with members of the indigenous population, or bring mates from their own homeland. In the first case, the result will be a merging of gene pools. In the second case, the result will be tendency is for replacement of one gene pool with another. The impact of immigration also depends on whether the second and subsequent generations of immigrants “marry out” or breed only within their own community. Thus, cultural traits associated with specific gene pools affect the dispersal and genes within those gene pools.
An additional cause of genetic change within a population such as a nation state, is the merging of local gene pools. For example, until recent times, few people in Britain traveled more than ten miles from their place of birth, so gene flow between, say, Manchester and Birmingham was minimal compared with gene flow within those communities.
Such genetic isolation resulted in multiple unique local gene pools, which are easily recognized in facial types, the preponderance of particular hair and eye colors, etc. The composition of each local gene pool will have been the result of a different history of migration and selection, resulting in a population with unique attributes. How much local adaptation has contributed to the unique achievements of particular local communities, e.g., ancient Athens and Rome, eighteenth century Edinbugh and London, is unknown.
Other processes of genetic change include conquest and genocide, as ongoing in Israel, or conquest and rape, as within the Mongol empire. What role, if any, mutation ?” the emergence of entirely new genes ?” plays, I have no idea.
Abe,
Thanks for your assurance of soundness on NuLab. No I won’t be voting BNP: I don’t have a vote, though if I did, I’d probably shred it.
Re: the BNP designed to fail
This seems to confirm my hypothesis that the BNP are not intended to get any votes:
“BNP in turmoil after online chief Simon Bennett walks out”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7116654.ece
First Griffin is “secretly” filmed saying Africans “walk like monkeys,” then a BNP candidate threatens to kill the Griffin, then the party gets in a stupid argument about Marmite, now everyone’s walking out. Could their message be any clearer, for God’s sake don’t vote for us.
The only question of interest now is who is behind these scumbags. NuLab?, the security services? The NWO folks that Angrysoba shills for?
Angysoba,
Good try about McCormick Place. It’s wasn’t a steel tower, it was a single story building. As for it being destroyed by fire, many steel towers have been “destroyed” by fire, if you mean gutted. But none have collapsed in their own footprint — except of course on 9/11 when it happened three times.
As for Russell’s argument, it proves only that weak induction is weak. So what? Weak induction is all you’ve got in many circumstances, whether you’re a chicken or a man.
That Russell illustrates weak inference with a story about a chicken confirms that weak inference is based on sound evolutionary epistemology — I think thats what Konrad Lorenz calls it.
Incidentally, what does this mean on your Web page:
“AN NWO SHILL AND FOOTSOLDIER FOR THE 9/11 LIES MOVEMENT”
I like the way you correctly use the indefinite article “an” before the letter “N,” as so few people do. But what does it mean? Do you get paid for shilling and lying? If so, what’s the rate and who pays it?
Alfred, there’s a 9/11 thread, specifically dedicated to the subject of 9/11 – just so you know.
Technicolour, methinks you are turning Scottish (“Ach”), if not in genotype or phenotype then at least in meme. How could this be possible? Verily, ’tis a revolt ‘gainst the harmony of the spheres!
Suhayl,
You say, “Alfred, there’s a 9/11 thread”
Yeah, that’s why we’re talking the “problem of induction.” Falling steel frame buildings are being mentioned simply for the sake of illustration. In future we will illustrate the argument with talk of chickens and falling skies.
PS. I give you the Daily Mail, you don’t like it. I give you the same info. from the BBC and you tell me to stand on my head. What do you consider a reliable source? The Gruniard? Oh, yes, everyone forgot to mention the old geezers of over “working age.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/10/foreigners-immigration-jobs-ons
Sure old Brits don’t compete with immigrants because there are very few immigrants in that age group.
Anyhow, your contempt for 20% of the British workforce seems palpable. If they’re all too incompetent to clean hospital floors, it’s time to train them, not replace them with foreigners who only buy things because they have incomes that are not going to British citizens who could be trained to do the work that immigrants do.
Think about it: 20% unemployed or working part time when they need a job. Twenty percent of the population in effect humiliated, marginalized, living in dire poverty and you want to have an uncontrolled influx of people from dollar-a-day economies who consider welfare in Britain, let alone a minimum wage job is a hell of a good deal.
What you are advocating is a program to destroy the British. It is a policy of genocide by marginalization, demoralization, and reproductive failure, associated with replacement by an alien population.
DEST-ROY THE BRITISH. DEST-ROY THE BRITISH.
Whoops! Caught me there too, Alfred!
Suhayl, thanks for your patience. I always find it a bit sad when people end up ranting about ‘uncontrolled influxes’ and talk about people from ‘dollar-a-day’ economies; as though we didn’t have some of the stiffest regulations in Europe and as though the people who come here don’t have to pay the same prices as everyone else.
I guess if they can send back a quid or so to their families some people might object. Why, I’m not sure. They’d do better to focus on corporate tax evasion (hello News International): now that really hurts the economy.
Alfred, you’re directing your ire and fear at the victims of the system; not the perpetrators. Why?
Technicolor,
What you call the victims of the system could avoid being victims of the system if they stayed in their country of origin.
Saying that I am directing ire and fear at the 20% of the British workforce that is unemployed or only partially employed is daft. But what you are unable to see is that there most of what you call the victims of the system are not immigrants.
Alfred, I don’t despise anyone. I’m trying to argue that the reason there are so many long-term unemployed people in the UK is a direct consequence of the global economic system and the chaos and war on which it thrives and is dependent. The reason people migrate here also is to a large extent related to the global economic system and the same dynamics. The problems and solutions reside in the global econonic system and those who run it for their own benefit to the ultimate systemic detriment of the 20% of Britons, immigrants and most other folk on the planet.
We ought to be directing our ire at those who run the global economic system and not at one another (by which I mean at immigrants/ at the 20% of the UK people to whom you refer). Otherwise, we are in danger of being duped by the Lords of Big Capital.
Media organs like The Daily Mail and many others are propaganda leaflets for the Lords of Big Capital. The BBC is a state broadcaster which does many good things but which ultimately is not the arbiter of truth on everything. Think about it’s shameful coverage of the Iraq invasion, and much else.
I do think that the world will need to stand on its head if things are ever to change.
Furthermore, I really do think that it is necessary that we come to see the movements of populations and individuals not as a ‘problem’ per se, but as a ‘situation’, a reality that has always existed in this world and which will continue to exist for as long as the human species continues to exist.
Alfred, you do not seem to have engaged with the points which I made in earlier posts on the ‘Immigration’ thread, which alluded to other countries being by far the main recipients of refugees/ asylum-seekers, many of whom are in suhc situations because of wars in which the UK is a dirct or indirect protagonist.
In Britain, we are encouraged by many organs of the corporate media to become paranoid about ‘incomers’. We need to stand on our heads and take a look at the rest of the world, at history and at ourselves.
Ex-Liberal Party leader, David Steel’s daughter, an example of immigration and syncretism in action, long-term. This is what Britain is, and it’s something good:
http://catrionabhatia.org.uk/
She has four children (and good on her, too!). I guess Alfred might choose to pontificate in some way on that fact.
I hope she wins.
Alfred (whose language gets distinctly less Edwardian under pressure) patently lives on Daily Mail Island, not in Canada. Oh well. It’s hard not to feel sorry for people who feel forced to wear a narrow, hateful set of blinkers, whichever tribe they think they come from. Alfred, I’m sorry.
“Good try about McCormick Place. It’s wasn’t a steel tower, it was a single story building.”
I see. So empirical reasoning only works for steel towers?
Some might consider that a rather arbitrary use of induction. But maybe you can account for how it was possible to turn over the conventional view that a single story building couldn’t be destroyed by fire with an instance of one doing just that but the conventional thinking on steel towers works differently.
Let me guess, it’s something to do with gravity, right?
Perhaps you could also point out why, if a steel building was unsusceptible to fire, then all buildings of such size and even height, are coated with fireproofing? Is fireproofing just an extortion racket or do you suppose it has prevented other buildings from collapsing from fire damage in the past? Just a thought that…
Now, if you’d like to answer that, then you’ll have to do it on the 9/11 thread as the good folk round here have had enough of that talk.
Alfred [05:08] – that’s pretty late, and your writing is just fine for such a time.
Your surmising of the BNP came as something of a surprise – that the BNP is basically a shell organisation to peel off racist morons to delegitimise popular positions. In much the same way, the Teabagging Party in the US has been formed out of the same demographic. This was a view I had not expected from you – particularly, when you go on to say they do not really want or expect general popularity.
But by contrast, the teabaggers have become the tail which is wagging the Republican dogs in the US, even though every last one of their supposedly populist arguments are utterly vacuous. As logical as their often misspelled signs, warning “Government keep your hands off my medicare” and suchlike.
The teabaggers are actually troubling ordinary (albeit rabid) right-wing Republicans for nomination as candidates for many Congressional and even Senatorial seats – “Insane” McCain among the most prominently threatened . And since the media treats each side (republicans/teabaggers) with that good old, independent equivalence notion, whacked out views verses _really_ insane views is considered a valid debate. Most particularly with Fox “News” and the Murdoch media empire pounding out its breathless faux-popularity for the teabaggers wall to wall.
The teabaggers were originally dreamed up by the Republique party to raise money and attempt to generate fake grass-roots popularism against Obama. If they had any real leaders, rather than morons like Palin who are just along for the ride and to make money, they could be much more dangerous.
It’s worth noting recent attempts to associate 911 Truthers with the teabaggers, to undermine the former in much the same way as a lot of BNP views are reasonable, but tainted by the lunatic positions they hold elsewhere.
Your comments on intelligence are fully noted, but there is also a huge variance within any given population. There may be slight tendencies in one direction or another due to environment, but assumptions based on generalising is so hit and miss as to be quite worthless. The Greeks may well have achieved so much intellectually because they had the culture that gave them time to sit around pondering abstract notions. Of course, a lot of that time was granted due to the fact they had slavery. So it goes.
Interesting analysis, glenn. Slightly surprised by the fact that you say Palin is a “moron who is just along for the ride and to make money” – and therefore is not a real leader? Not a good, leader, I agree.
Otherwise, the BNP’s vicious and divisive agenda – blame everything on immigration – has already been taken up, in varying degrees, by the main parties, the media, and other people who wouldn’t know a multi-cultural community from their elbows. So it appears to be working here, too.
Yeah, as I wrote some days ago, it seems to distill down to this sad lowest common denominator, immi-bloomimg-gration, every bloomimg general election since before I can remember.
I think back to 1968… same (largely ahistorical, somewhat decorticate) discussions in the media. But British society itself has moved on light-years since then, light-years – for the better in this specific regard. You wouldn’t know that if you had just arrived from Mars, though, and were plugging-in to our media.
Bring back Orson Welles, I say!
!The Martians are coming!