Monthly Archives: November 2015

France’s Muslims: 7-8% of population, 70% of inmates

Today, France has one of the largest Muslim minorities in Europe. French Muslims are also predominantly a social underclass, a legacy of France’s colonial past and indifference to its aftermath. For example, although just 7 to 8 percent of France’s population is Muslim, as much as 70 percent of the prison population is Muslim, a situation that has left a very large number of young French Muslims vulnerable to absorbing radical ideas in prison and out. Within this social landscape, ISIS finds success. France has contributed more foreign fighters to ISIS than any other Western country.

www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attacks-isis-strategy-chaos/

Author and anti-Islamist activist Maajid Nawaz — on Tolerating bad behavior

www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/videos/10153253073258527/

It’s going to come to something like this because it has to. Behavioral norms must be defended as property.

In the words of one of my intellectual heroes, Thomas Sowell: “You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.”

Of course, all this will be thrown out by the left because the left seeks political power through problems and messianic, impossible-to-achieve solutions. This is a real solution. Defend behavioral norms with violence.

It will take a long time to recognize this because from within, we don’t recognize the work that culture is doing. Culture is resolving conflict without litigation and without inappropriate levels of violence. (I say “inappropriate”, because in most of Eastern Europe, you can punch someone in the face under certain circumstances without worrying about lethal escalation.)

Anyway, only when culture is lost must we substitute something — like litigation. And only slowly will we realize the importance of behavioral norms.

This is the path for success for multi-cultural societies. Having said all this, there is nothing wrong with voluntary segregation around culture or ethnicity. All people should have a homeland. There should be homogenous places and multicultural places. I’ve heard this idea referred to as “pan nationalism”.

(thanks, Faisal Goussous​. FYI: Curt Doolittle​)

1% not 0.1% — differences in human DNA

“Instead of 99.9% identical, maybe we’re only 99% (alike),” said J. Craig Venter, an author of the study — and the person whose DNA was analyzed for it.

Several previous studies have argued for lowering the 99.9% estimate. Venter says this new analysis “proves the point.”

The new work, in the latest issue of PLoS Biology, marks the first time a scientific journal has presented the entire DNA makeup, or human genome, of an individual. However, James D. Watson — co-discoverer of DNA’s molecular structure — received his own personal DNA map from scientists a few months ago. And the genomes for both him and Venter are already posted on scientific websites.

Venter is president of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., which does genetics research. He and scientists at his institute and elsewhere collaborated on the work that produced his genetic map.

The order of building blocks along a strand of DNA encodes genetic information, somewhat like the way a sequence of letters creates a sentence. Particular sequences form genes. Landmark studies published in 2001 indicated that the DNA of any two people is about 99.9% alike. The new paper suggests estimates of 99.5% to just 99%, Venter said.

The Venter paper joins several others published over the past three to four years that indicate an estimate of around 99%, said Richard Gibbs, a DNA expert at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston who didn’t participate in Venter’s study.

The studies produce the lower figure because they uncovered chunks of DNA that differ among people, whereas previous studies focused on differences in individual building blocks.

The 99% figure is close to what scientists have often estimated for the similarity between humans and chimps. But the human-chimp similarity drops to more like 95% when the more recently discovered kinds of DNA variation are considered, Venter said.

usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-09-03-dna-differences_N.htm

Columbia Protesters say they’re being intimidated into protesting (Communist Tactics!)

Communist tactics.

But some students worried they would be “ostracized” if they did not participate or dress in sync, one college parent said.

“There’s been a campaign of intimidation, where students are going dorm to dorm, floor to floor and asking students to go back to their dorms and put on black if they’re not wearing black,” the parent said.

“My daughter told me people are uneasy and fearful,” she added. “Her personal politics are left-wing and she shares their sympathies, but she doesn’t like to feel that she can’t wear blue if she wants to wear blue.”

nypost.com/2015/11/15/columbia-students-say-theyre-being-intimidated-to-protest/

The Paris attackers hit the city’s young, progressive core

This is the land of hipster socialists. These neighborhoods recently elected a female socialist mayor, as well as a slew of Green Party candidates, even as the rest of the country voted for the more conservative and anti-immigration parties on the Right.

fusion.net/story/233036/paris-attack-young-progressive-core/

So (as my friend cynically commented) it may not be accurate to describe all 129 victims as innocent.