We recently got back from the Trump Hotel in Ayrshire; friendliest staff I’ve seen in the UK and to quote one reviewer “love him or hate him, Trump really knows his golf.”

The Drumpfs do not hail from Saxony (just checked somewhere around Stuttgart) so to be fair WASP should stand for “Anglo-Scottish” since the Scots really outdid the Sassenach.

Won’t somebody think of the chickens!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/03/02/feature/the-silicon-valley-elites-latest-status-symbol-chickens/?utm_term=.0813e30cbe09

I could have sworn I read this article on Steve sailer but I guess my memory’s playing tricks on me since I couldn’t find it..

The smartest global migration system is as follows. The world should be divided into 3 or 5 income groups (A to E).

A starred countries should be those with high per capita income and a relatively low Gini score (it must not be too unequal) so on so forth until you reach E.

Any country should be open to migrants from any country at its income band or higher. So an A country would only accept unlimited immigration from another A country (60 million Brits won’t want to move to America under an open borders regime) while a B country would only accept unlimited immigrants from B & above (so Mexico would accept unlimited immigration from US – A- & Costa Rican -B- citizens but not from Guatemalans etc).

There could be some caveats; citizenship could only be after 10 years of residency and welfare denied to non-citizens.

At a stroke it would abolish economic migration but encourage true “vibrancy.” The future Beatles may want to be in LA rather than London.

It would also encourage countries in lower categories to up their game to encourage more freedom of mobility for their citizens.

Finally it would encourage expats from higher bands settling in lower bands rather than immigrants from lower bands coming into the higher bands.

Of course higher band countries could also tweak their immigration quotas so that gifted and high achieving individuals from lower band countries can still study, work & live in the West as in the 60’s rather than the 90’s diaspora model.

None of this will actually happen as it’s far too common-sensical. The EU instead of reaching out to Eastern Europe (at best a Band C) should have caught up with the Anglosphere & Japan (Band A countries). Britain wouldn’t have left as the white working class just got fed up with a Eastern Europeans directly competing with them (they had just gotten over Indians & pakistanis doing that the precious generation).

“The future will be a liberaltarian dystopia where it’s legal for billionaires to throw people they don’t like out of helicopters, but only if the billionaires employ a staff of genderqueer of color PR professionals to explain why Intersectionality proves that the dead guys had it coming.“

Make that dead white guys..

I had googled Margaret Thatcher since I remembered her maiden name was Roberts (Welsh patrynomic & all that). I was curious to see if she had any recent Welsh forbears but instead shockingly enough her father’s grandmother was Irish Catholic (Sullivan no less). This is of course the Iron Lady we are speaking of who survived the IRA and it was a fact I had never known about.

It prompts me to reflect that despite the Famine & pogroms (which were horrific historical experiences) one of the main gripes of Irish Catholic & Jewish communities is that to socially advance they had to assimilate into WASP society in the 19th & 20th centuries.

In those cases assimilation meant giving up a particularly tenaciously held religious-cultural identity that had survived so much and to somehow let it go for societal advancement seemed churlish, almost cowardly. It’s interesting that all discrimination simply melted away when these two groups gave up the Pope & the Synagogue so it wasn’t really founded on race (an Anglo-Irish was simply a Protestant Irishman).

Finally Jews in Britain & the Irish in America seem much more culturally quiescient than their trans-Atlantic counterparts. That may be because of the preponderance of White identity in the US (which Irish Americans are comfortable with) and English-British in the UK (which British Jews but not the Irish partake in; a historical insult has been “West British”).

Excessive TV watching is an epidemic in the third world. I guess as they are stuck between the classic “low public space” environment that characterises much of the East and the dissolving joint family structures (the size of the home is reducing).

It will probably/hopefully level off as prosperity comes about; the only exception for TV I make is for Pakistani dramas (which are astonishingly good and I say this as someone who partook very heavily in the London theatre until I moved to Cambridge). Also Pakistani dramas safe renowned for the lyricism of their language, melancholy and hyper-realism tradition (very similar to Iranian films). Indian serials are far more outlandish and saccharine even though Bollywood is in a class of its own (there are some spectacular movies out there like Dangal released last year starring Amir Khan).

Turkish serials are renowned for their high quality, my in-laws were watching Hindi-dubbed “Feriha”, which was set in istanbul. Usually Pakistani drama serials (especially since the PAK cultural Renaissance in 2010) are very popular in India but since Indo-Pak are so high Turkish serials have filled the gap (I’ve heard that three famous soap opera producing countries in the third world are Brazil, Turkey & the Philipines; in Uganda English dubbed Brazilian & Filipino shows were on all the time). I don’t know about Mexico but it is certainly possible after all Mexico is always (unfairly) compared to its Northern neighbour but compared to the Rest of the Third & emerging world it’s almost a first world nation!

I spent a lot of time in Istanbul & Turkey in 2015/16 and Turkish TV is very exciting and glamorous. I remember sitting with my friend in a cafe and being mesmerised by their version of the “Voice” (a show I never bother to watch in the UK”, even though I couldn’t understand the language, the energy and electricity of the participants was simply magnetic!

Reminds me of the Labour party in the UK that can rightly be called the “Muslim Party.”

2015 election

British Jewry went 57.9 for Tory + UKIP
British Muslims went 73% for Labour

the rest are a range in between (I have seen stats that Hindus & Sikhs are more Tory than what’s being shown here)..

http://www.brin.ac.uk/2014/the-british-election-study-2015-religious-affiliation-and-attitudes/

This is a non-regional English accent (from the British Isles/Home Counties)..

It threw me off as I thought he was Canadian..

Mexico sort of reminds me of India/Pakistan; it needs a half-century of enlightened dictatorship to really get its act together.

My friend is doing a series of articles on Mexico’s reforms for her think-thank and I thought I would share her latest one on what the State of Mexico City (the federal not national one) is doing with its infrastructure programs:

https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/building-better-mexico/amp/

Mr Zachary Kelly has let down all Zacharys with his shameful anti-caninism. Here is a pic of my pup to show that Zach’s can be very good dog-dads – https://instagram.com/p/BRmJrAdDONo/.

I can’t imagine cruelty to anything or anyone helpless.

Advtanges of a shrinking population: https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/a-shrinking-population-not-all-bad-news?comment-order=oldest

The cultural norms of our society should be that vast majority of the world’s population should aim for “one and done”; one healthy and fertile grandchild to continue their line.

Only the very motivated/endangered/talented/stable should be encouraged to have more. Having children is a privilege.. I’m not a eugenicist but a humanist!

Is young Ziad 2017’s Clockboy?

Btw Abedin is not a common surname whatsoever in Pakistan; I can’t think of an Abedin other than Huma. It’s a Bengali (possibly Indian) rendering of the 4th Shi’ite Imam.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/abedin

I think it might be a patrynomic in Huma’s case rather than a family surname; she might be using part of her father’s first name (which was Syed Zayn-Ul Abedin) as her surname so her 54 first cousins may not share the same name.

If there was a family connection one can be sure young Ziad would have mentioned it.

The article below is much funnier

http://www.clickhole.com/article/diversity-win-every-male-employee-tech-company-hir-5804

Diversity Win! For Every Male Employee This Tech Company Hires, It Interviews 3 Women

The Bon mot about Hillary voters is very very British. That is high praise considering that the Brits are the unrivalled masters in their art of p!ss-taking.

Slightly off-topic but I wonder if the cultural concept of “taking the mickey” is a Commonwealth, ex-Canada, speciality?

Same rule applies to the theatre. The best America play I’ve seen in Britain has been the Glass Menagerie because the lead, Cherry Jones, is an American.

I’ve noticed in theatreland that whenever Americans play their own roles they really stand out. Whereas the British actors, albeit classically trained, have to split their efforts in the “accent switch.”

Incidentally I think it’s generally easier for theatre actors (don’t know if the same applies on the small & silver screen) to put on posh British accents because of Shakespeare’s influence. Whereas with the American accent it can be quite hard to get the nuances right.

The Indians are back in uganda in full force btw..

Lisa’s ultimate regret is the logical extent of oikophobia..

“Poke around behind Britain’s currently rigid surface of chauvinism and a composite picture emerges — of Romans, Vikings, Celts, Normans, Jews, Indians, Chinese, Africans and more.”

Silly me I thought the Romans, Vikings & Normans were technically conquerors as opposed to immigrants but I guess these days they amount to pretty much the same thing.

To be fair to her, the article does focus on the post-Huguenot arrivals but balanced by the millions and millions of Briton that went on to seed & settle on the rest of the New World & Commonwealth; the British & Irish saga, like Germany, is certainly one of emigration (I think the case for France as one of immigration may be more compelling even prior to WW2 France was talking in Catholic immigrants from Italy, Spain & Poland).

Whatever a nation’s past may have been it doesn’t need to dictate it’s future. The British Asian population, which is rooted in immigration, isn’t necessarily pro-immigration or Bremain; the island is crowded!

Finally I thought of a refugee policy that really worked. When I lived in Uganda there were tonnes and tonnes of Congoloese refugees living there. Though there were cultural differences (Francophones etc) these refugees seemed to have settled reasonably well in Uganda.

The rub was that as soon as Congo would stabilise even slightly they would try to “return home.” These were genuine political refugees harbouring in a culturally compatible neighbouring country (like Afghans in Pakistan). What “enlightened” liberal Westerners need to understand that refugees should be entitled to security and stability but that their “refugee obligations” can be outsourced to poorer countries.

If as an example the EU has an UN obligation to house X number of Syrians refugees every year why doesn’t it pay Turkey/Lebanon/Jordan a stipend to house that allotment. They could even send EU citizens down to supervise the whole process so that it could be fair. Everyone wins! But the maybe the goal is to effect the goal of population replacement in the West..

As Arnoldo Kramer demonstrates Anglos can do very well in a Hispanified North America; so long as they slightly tweak their first names and stick to SWPL causes.

Some interesting passages from the article:

“Richards eked out a slim victory among a coalition that included white suburban voters — but lost her reelection bid to the younger George Bush in 1994, ushering in an age of darkness for Texas Democrats.

That pall has spread across the country at an accelerating rate, as more and more statehouses and governors’ mansions fall under Republican occupation. Yet Texas, after leading the country in a slide to the right, might now be showing us the way out.

Amid the happy lawyers, journalists, and other movers and shakers at the victory parties, one group of seventy-five men and women, who had arrived on a chartered bus, stood out. Most of them were Latinos, like Petra Vargas, a Mexican-born hotel worker who had spent the day walking her fellow immigrants to the polls. Others were African Americans, such as Rosie McCutcheon, who had campaigned relentlessly for the ticket while raising six grandchildren on a tiny income. All of them wore turquoise T-shirts bearing the logo top. Not only had they made a key contribution to the day’s results — they represented a new and entirely promising way of doing politics in Texas.”

This reminds of what a Waspy Harvard educated chap told me in (the English) Cambridge that even though he was democrat, he didn’t see a role for himself in the party in a decade. Some slight ethnic politics may have been prevalent in America in the 50’s-70’s etc (ethnic whites like the Irish, Italian & Jews voting for Dems) but the Lebanonisation (my word of the week) of the vote, where race becomes the single most important factor isn’t far off now.

Democracy by demography is a dangerous strategy to embark on.

Interesting comment about how China leads the way. Paradoxically the best way for America to lead in “value led leadership” is by limiting emigration of the developing world.

Another point though that immigration weakens source countries too. The brain drain and social pressures ameliorated by emigration doesn’t do the developing world any favours.

Skilled labour that migrate to the West drain their home countries of valuable cultural, economic and social input (literally the educated classes as in the case of IndoPak where most graduates just try to go abroad as soon as possible).

If unskilled labour emigrates, it release the pressure valve on their home countries and prevent the emergence of social pressure and reform. The Arab Spring (whatever its merits/demerits) was a pressure cooker precisely because there was an angry and restive youth population. Once they disappear/emigrate so does the will for political reformation.

One of the biggest takeaways I took last year from my trips to Iran was simply how open to reform and transformation the society actually was to what we read about. The isolation of the last 4 decades since the Iranian Revolution had actually made the Islamic government far more “sovereign” and conscious of the Iranian people’s wishes than the Shah did.

I am all for “eventual” open borders but it has to be done in a graduated and eventual fashion (Japan & the West can have open borders as an example but would be a good idea to wait for the Rest maybe until Asia & Africa get a whole lot richer).

As this tweet shows ( https://twitter.com/hankgreelylsju/status/836989643589468160 ) there are 3 different Europes. The European Union was humming along just fine when it was a Western European construct, slight grumbling when it expanded to Central Europe but is now at breaking point when it has extended all the way to Eastern Europe (and Eastern European immigrants are a big source of tension in Britain since they compete with the skilled labour classes like electricians, plumbers and contractors; they’ve killed the market essentially).

Or as my Swedish friend liked to put it; he likes to see the EU as the recreation of the Hanseatic League. Except in this iteration it marched down South far too soon and morphed into more dysfunction version of the Roman Empire!

Speaking of race as a social construct but slightly off-topic; the wife made me watch Patriot Day, which I ended up really enjoying in the end (Mark Wahlberg playing a humbler version of himself). Same as with the movie Split, which she made me watch and again tremendously enjoyed myself (Shymalan seems to do better with smaller budgets).

Anyway I digress; Patriot Day takes a very realistic portrayal of the Boston Marathon bombings. However throughout it all there was the subtle implication (especially by the Kevin Bacon character) about the repeated Caucasian (as in white gentile as opposed to Caucasus) appearance of the Boston bombers, which is fair enough.

What was particularly interesting is that in the frantic 911 call made by the Chinese student, who was carjacked by the brothers, there was only one omission in an otherwise startlingly realistic account (even the way he ran in the movie was identical).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2993221/Terrifying-video-Chinese-student-carjacked-Boston-bombers-running-life-dropping-knees-pray-help-gas-station-clerk.html

The Chinese student was clearly able to identify the brothers as Middle Eastern (Iran/Iraq was a phrase he repeated multiple times). If a Chinese student, with notoriously difficult to understand English, was able to identify them as “Middle Asian” why did the film literally try to whitewash the characters?

It’s very subtle but it was an extremely important part of the 911 exchange; a recently immigrated Chinese student for whom all white Caucasians must be alike was able to correctly identify their ethnic leanings (admittedly Chechens aren’t Iranians/Iraqis) whereas throughout the movie the emphasis was made on how non-traditionally Jihadi the brothers looked (which is again true but the unabridged 911 call should have included for balance).

Patriot Day to its credit didn’t try to make any political statement per se except about the strength and story of a terrible Boston tragedy, so the only “pc” bit of the film is above.

Sorry for the long post..

no comment on the Lebanonisation of the Oscars; at least one main Oscar and about 5 nominations must go to a POC?

It’s interesting how all consciously multi-ethnic Empires go down the same way. The Brits of course avoided it by giving it all up so they wouldn’t have to share but Empire had a way of chasing them all the way back to the Islands..

Intriguingly I was also looking at the demographics of Iceland a couple of days ago.

The most interesting part is the fertility rate of 2.1; at replacement and almost certainly fuelled by Icelandic mothers.

Does that mean in low/no immigration environments low fertility rates ultimately resolve themselves? Japan and Korea will prove instructive in this regard.

It’s interesting that low fertility rates would be better offset by encouraging 2 children 2 parent families to have another child. I have many ultra-liberal white friends and among the women I can literally count those who have children.

Ultra- Feminism ultimately has made it a crime (for a woman but ironically not men) to be feminine. This is why immigrants and liberal arts colleges are required to reproduce an ideology that cannot persist on its own.

We don’t have to go back to a kinder, kuche and kitchen but some of variant of it for married couples is necessary for survival..

If white America is “dying” then so is Korea, Japan and most of the developing world.

The best analogy is that my tribe is the richest and my tribe isn’t having as many kids as the neighbouring tribes for some reason. Then I’m told by the neighbouring tribe to adopt their surfeit children since my clan is “dying”.

To extend the analogy even further I’m not allowed to impose my tribal ways or identity on the newly adopted kids since that would be offensive to their heritage.

After a while it simply won’t be my tribe anymore one way or the other.

So better to go back to basics and find out why my tribe isn’t having as many children and what I can do to help them instead of mocking them for “dying.” Kind of like what the Israelis did..

I’ve never been to Bournemouth but one of my best friends is from there.

I think it has the best climate in the UK but also is renowned for its English language schools (that’s what I remember it for). I could be very wrong but it seems to have a holiday town-island vibe sort of culture (Bournemouth is the straight version of Brighton?)

This very different to Cambridge where the weather is notoriously bad (since East Anglia is so flat we get hit with freezing Siberian winds or that’s what I was told) but is domestically being propped up by a lot of fleeing Londoners. White flight to Cambridge is definitely a thing (the area around the train station, which is quite far from city centre, is a commuter belt) and even thought Cambridge has English schools (two universities) and a lot of foreign money coming in, the local council seems very keen on preserving the character (as an example Cambridge city centre is simply not accessible to cars etc).

Finally like SF we have a huge homeless population but incidentally the homeless here are very much English (unlike in London where foreigners have taken over). Cambridge like Edinburgh is definitely becoming a “whitopia” with corresponding liberal policies etc..

I just finished the Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris.

Roman genealogies are hideously complicated especially that of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The later Republic (I imagine it’s because we know best about it compared with earlier periods) was basically a long exercise in intermarriage between the Senate classes.

Re the comment about Gauls adopting Western Civ; well it seems that Julius Caesar perpetrated acts of genocide in Gaul for it’s pacification. I guess the Germans are a bitter example (they first had to overrun Rome before radically altering what it meant to be Western). Kingship in Europe seems to be predominantly German in origin (since the Latins had given up Kings etc, I imagine the term Emperor isn’t what we understand it to be).

I haven’t watched Rome but the Crown by Netflix (100mn GBP) is spectacular and no orgies there!

Basically that is the situation in South East England (Greater London & Home Counties); burgeoning population coupled with strict planning.

I genuinely thought the title of your post was a spoof..

Speaking of “counting” here is a Guardian Article bemoaning the “death of curry houses” in Britain.

Who killed the great British curry house? – the guardian
https://apple.news/A7YVHdrw_Siy0Aqjqr77fgw

Personally as a Desi-irani I find curry houses to be difficult to digest (the food is far too bland and inauthentic for me) but at any rate last I checked at 3-5% of the population there seem to be more than enough South Asians in the UK to fulfill any potential need for curry house staff.

How weird (or serendipitous) is this; just before I turned on the website I was thinking about dog-training.

I’ve spent much of the past week running after my 2month old chow chow. It’s amazing to see the cognitive rewriting that’s happened within the last few days; the obsession with my dog.

I actually wanted a cat but in the end I gave into my wife. My personal theory (as a first time dog-owner with about four days experience under my belt) is that the bond with the dog is so much stronger because the owner needs to clean up after them.

Finally considering Chaser’s intelligence look to the parent; the owner is a professor emeritus. So a very distinguished fellow, who’s retired and has plenty of time (and patience), working with the smartest breed. Bound to have some results.

By Brahmins of Boston do you mean the Forbes or the Mukherjees?

My Swedish friend always talks about the Hanseatic League as his vision for the EU (basically the North Sea & Baltic states) whereas of course the initial vision for Europe was sort of Lotharingia.

The EU is a victim of its own success; North-Western Europe is a fairly cohesive entity (I would include northern regions of Italy & Spain in that too)..

Good luck

If Monica & Iraq hadn’t blown away theirs careers & legacies; Bill & Blair would have gone down as one of the most transformative centre-left leaders of the late 20th centuries..

Looks clever and well-made..

America is black or white (the native Americans were constantly assimilating on the spectrum).

Just as ethnic whites (German, Irish & Italian) eventually just became white; a Trump administration needs to try and do the same thing with Hispanics & Asians, to integrate towards a Euro-American cultural matrix.

It’d be interesting to see how many Irish-Americans care about the old country anymore?

Trump can be a mix of Teddy Roosevelt (patriotism, national identity, foreign policy) and Franklin (infrastructure, New Deal type etc)..

More to the point what about the West Bank (historic Israel) and Gaza (historic Philistine).

When they all compute together Jewish and Arab populations seem at par.

It seems increasingly difficult to avoid a binational federation as the evolution of the current status quo; since it seems Palestinian sovereignty is a no-no.

I don’t own a tv and I don’t drink alcohol; those two activities “take up” a lot of time..

I have made an exception for the “Crown”; the netflix show on the Royals.

Other than that my London sci-fi/Fantasy & post-apocalyptic book clubs keep me on 2/3 books a month (upper limit).

I also tend to buy a paperback as a companion read; no surprise historical fiction, the “Cicero trilogy” by Robert Harris..

Finally my handyman’s ancestor founded one of the chapels in the Cambridge colleges in the 17th century. So as we were discussing evensong (I attend the Sunday one at one of the older colleges and the other at my fiancee’s college) he asked if I too was an Anglican? I’m not and have no plans to be (I remain true to my own faith) but I tend to be drawn to the High Culture of any place I’m in (be it Hindu, Anglican, Shi’ite or Sunni)..

Three Body problem is sort of the literary equivalent to the Arrival; very oblique.

Sci-fi/fantasy is definitely having a boom time; it might that the baby boomers directors who grew up reading Heinlein etc now want to realise their visions on screen.

Finally a good sci-fi film focuses more on the science (like the Martian) than the fiction (like Interstellar). The silver screen can’t do justice to world-building (which is so fundamental to sci-fi, which is why sci-fi novels have to be at least 150k words) as much as the small screen can.

A very promising Fantasy writer is N.K Jemisin: just finished her book Fifth Season..

In Cambridge (England) I pay $16 to watch world class opera at the local picturehouse. So I see the Met, ROH & Glydebourne almost weekly; the last one was a very evocative ballet on Anastasia, the last Romanov..

Incidentally I’m usually the only dark-haired person in the audience both in being the only coloured and young person.

Should I be offended that more of my kind don’t go to see the best of what the West has to offer?

There can be space made for Black America without having to encroach into a white America. Fwiw I think it’s a fantastic decision to name one after B. Franklin and the other after P. Murray; she does seem like a trailblazer.

This Wikipedia on Murray seems to be going haywire with the grammar:

“Murray graduated first in their class, but was denied the chance to do post-graduate work at Harvard University because of her gender.”

The key question is will Hispanics become Aframs in their voting patterns or white ethnic (Ellis island lot).

I’m curious as to how Italian-Americans and the other Eastern European (Deer Hunter crowd) and Med-Americans vote?

My two cents theory is such:

The West is in the advanced stages of senescence because it can no longer conquer the world actively (there are of course subtler forms of domination).

With that emerges this huge battle for status within the English speaking nations and more particularly in the Anglo-Americsn dynamic. Since political correctness is such a stilted form of being (you essentially have to suspend all observational activity that helps one navigate the real world), it’s the mental equivalent of the tightest corset around. The more you can actively disbelieve and stay successful, like said comedian, the more impressive it is.

O/T https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengefühl – a German term about “finger tip feeling”, understanding the zeitgeist before it emerges how the Tory & Republican parties (which are the oldest parties in the world) have managed to stay alive and strong all these years. Alt-right is only a manifestation of this..

A successful president (or politician for that matter) must have fingerspitzengeful..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengefühl

Trump seems to have it in droves, difficult to explain his dizzying ascension otherwise (I would agree Bill Clinton had it too).. A two-term president usually has it!

Hello from Delhi – Shah Jahan was 3/4 Rajput, I think that makes him pretty “native?”

As I was roaming Delhi earlier today the contract between British rule (a quasi-apartheid) and Mughal (which while having its divisions was certainly a softer divide).

To somehow claim Mughal-Muslim legacy as alien and foreign to India is ridiculous.. Both Sai Baba & Guru Nanak have some Muslim provenance, if in nurture if not in nature..

Having grown up between East & West; my “personal” observations are that the best things parents can leave a child are capital & common sense.

The best values they can instill in a child are respect and reciprocity.

I think I read double star on iSteve’s recommendation but I certainly read the Moon is a Harsh Mistress because of this site (in a single sitting to boot).

Heinlein, with his libertarian-lite approach and Americana politics, is a good ideological fount for the alt-right (until they of course become the “right”)..

Well it usually goes (well among my American relatives anyway) that the kids will speak to their parents in the native language (let’s say Farsi) until they go to school/nursery upon when they’ll immediately switch to the host language (English).

The pattern will then be that the parents will speak to their children in the Farsi and the kids will reply back English. The kids will speak American but have full comprehension of Farsi. They’ll also be able to speak it with about a week’s prodding (heavy accent nonetheless)..

My Italian friend sort of confirmed the same thing with his kids in London (they switched to speaking English as soon as they started school/nursery but when they holiday in Italy they go back to Italian)..

Wasps should be written as WASP

Wasp Baby Boom Alters Black-White Dynamic
The jump has calmed the fears of many American Wasps of being outnumbered, writes Eric McNeil

Completely o/t but the meaning of the authoress’s name, in Farsi, can actually mean “Divine Divine”.

The megaphone seems to be trying to enlist the good Lord on their side.

What I’ve learnt since moving to Cambridge (UK) from the Big Smoke is Urban Safety!

Cambridge is one of the safest places in the UK, has extremely tough urban & traffic policies and coincidentally the highest longevity in the country (the lowest is in parts of Glasgow). Observation ally in a country that has a huge black & brown minority, the largest visible minority in Cam are the diligent and hard-working Chinese (mostly students)..

It is ironically a hugely liberal city that overwhelming voted for Bremain (but then again so did Manchester!) A very classic case of do as I say not as as I do.. With the fastest growing house prices in the country outside of Central London (think Oxford is a close second), it seems that the petty bourgeois (of whichever race) are crafting their islands of prosperity regardless of the prevailing winds of pc-Dom or multi-culti

CHAI – Clinton Health Access Initiative – has a very reputable presence across much of Africa like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Criticise the Clintons all you like but I think one must give credit where credit is due; at least they’ve created a legacy say unlike Tony Blair who just blew up post his PM career (at least the Bushes, Snr & Jnr, have maintained a Waspy post-presidential dignity).

I was reading about this and it seems the British athlete, Ms. Sharp, who made the comments about Caster came in at #6.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/21/lynsey-sharp-caster-semenya-rio-2016-olympics?CMP=fb_gu

It could also have a racial dimension because she did mention that the other athletes who agreed with her were Canada and Poland (who I assume were white).

I’m inclined to be sympathetic to Caster simply because I think *naturally* intersex individuals already have it quite difficult so why shouldn’t they partake.

A solution could be do what boxing does and instead of segregating by weight class do so by testosterone levels?

I like spice but I remember being horrified in Iran when they would just took a bite of green chilli and happily continue with the meal.

I like my chilli sauce based within the meal; I can’t handle dry chillie without lots of yogurt to take the edge off.

I’m somebody who can happily empty a Tabasco in a single sitting but I don’t really consider that to be spicy..

I remember seeing this excellent play earlier this year, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/07/ma-raineys-black-bottom-lyttelton-review-august-wilson-dominic-cooke)

In it Ma Rainey, the eponymous jazz singer, actively colludes with the white manages to surprises the talented black blues player.

A very powerful play but one that highlights the ongoing sexual tensions / gender divide within the Afram community.

I loved Tigana by GGK.

Just watched the show (episode 1); very powerful, I particularly enjoyed the Chris Tucker narrative toward the end. A funny moment is when at 47:30, Henry Gates Louis Jr. & Chris Tucker are trying to estimate the value of $600 in 1921 in present day monies; a bit of specificity and research would have helped there!

Slightly O/T: I just got back from Jesus Christ Superstar. Judas Iscariot (played by a black actor) was simply a standout performer whereas the actor playing Christ (who looked very much like the traditional depiction of JC) couldn’t project (to be fair it was raining in an Open Air Theatre).

Even in multi-culti London I think the idea of a Black Christ is still a step too far even though they should have swapped the roles (to be fair JCS is very Judas-centric, I saw the musical a few years ago and all I could remember to the modern-day is a pained Judas).

And considering that ancestry is pretty much patrilineal, “slaveowners”, that means that 40% of the male ancestors of the Afram community are slaveowners (it’s a pretty accurate statement when u come to think of it).

It just shows how barbaric one drop rule actually was; a slave-owner had no qualms about their biological child being born into slavery. I’m not certain but I think in the Islamic world, the child of a slave-owner would be manumitted.

One drop rule has been the greatest curse on the American polity because it defies the law of nature; your child is your child regarded of the co-parent.

I haven’t been to West Africa but in Uganda the East (which is Nilotic) is substantially darker than the Bantu West (they are more admixed; brown-black).

It’s worth bear repeating about my super-Wasp friend (who’s now dating a German girl) who used to go on and on about how attractive he found black women. When he visited me in Uganda and I asked him how found the “local fare” he confessed to me that when he meant black, he meant Beyoncé.

One thing about the Oriental eye is that it’s extraordinarily nuanced; I’ve guessed when a Chinese person had Korean ancestry (he was from the Korean province in China) and when another had Manchu ancestry (a 1/4).

Black & White are such broad distinctions so as to be meaningful only in the broad continental sense; after a while one could pick out the various tribal phenotype in Uganda without much difficulty whatsoever.

If only he’d been a Zachary rather than a Zakaria, this would have never happened!

Sad news but I’m surprised that they haven’t found predictors for terrorism/terrorist attacks..

On a serious note if a kid is going online defending Gitmo convicts, that should warrant some sort of flagging/tracking.

Also I do think that Muslims in the West should give their children the Western version of the Muslim name. It would ease integration almost instantly (Joe-Yusuf, Jake-Yaqub, Abe-Ibrahim, Ike-Ishaq, Moe-Musa, Mary-Mariam, Dave-David). I’m spelt as Zachary but a lot of people call me Zakria since that’s how it’s pronounced back East..

If there ever came a time (heaven forfend) to dissemble my ancestral heritage I guess I could always tweak Latif to Lafite (like a fine Semitic wine). But then I’ve always been one for integration rather than assimilation per se and I see surname changes as a step too far into the melting pot..

Sad to hear of this attack, that’s why London needs to undergo painful gentrification. In the meantime Londoners are fleeing to the Home Counties and beyond (Oxbridge have been the fastest growing property market in the last decade).

I had no idea that Bertrand Russell was from an aristocratic family (a good reason why House of Lords was such an important issue, noblesse oblige and all that) but the irony is the top 24 universities in the UK have banded together to call themselves the Russell Group – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group

To be fair though there are times when one would rather be anonymous when expressing more controversial viewpoints..

Actually I read Saylor’s book Roma (about a fertility symbol in a Patrician family) and I must say that was a classic!

Didn’t have gay detectives, from what I remember, but a hugely compelling fictional read about the history of Rome from founding to Christianity..

My grandmother’s name is Humayun, which is a masculine name in India (where she was born) but a feminine one among the Zoroastrians (her ethnic heritage).

She has the advantage though of having a powerful masculine name (name of the second Mughal King), which contracts into a very charming female name (Huma, Huma Abedin, Weiner’s wife & Hilary’s chief aide & second daughter so to speak).

So her given (masculine) name, Humayun means Imperial/Auspicious but her (feminine) nickname Huma means the bird Phoenix. It’s a nice dichotomy..

It’s interesting among the growing ethnics in the West, what sort of names will be common. Zachary sort of straddles both especially when it becomes Zakria in the East..

It’s interesting how the white man (in the loud coup) is the obvious “mother” of Clyde.

It ties in with the previous Updike article (where at least he won’t be cursing his half-Kenyan children with his unadulterated genome but instead giving them an Obamesque makeover) where stale pale male is some sort of anathema (until they demographically wither away into obscurity).

It’s amazing to see the dysgenic qualities of the modern global order where the Hi-Low classes breed so much faster and effectively than the white bread (and white rice) middle masses. An end to the post War middle class order of the world, which technically was fatally undermined by the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act by President Clinton in 1999.

Why we need another President Clinton in 2016 – http://www.wvgazettemail.com/gazette-op-ed-commentaries/20160724/paula-dwyer-republicans-scary-plan-to-restore-glass-steagall

How Droll (I heard that too and “it’s not a difficult concept). One has to love Banter!

The Mother Nest of the Wasp World is reeling from political correctness.

Furthemore there’s a reason why Cambridge, UK is now burgeoning as a mini hyper-gentrified London..

Very off-topic but I must say that I much prefer the quotation on the poster, “these United States.”

“The United States” sounds so blah and ordinary but then again I’m a liberal-libertarian confederalism (I’m all about the Imperial Commonwealth in the wake of Brexit).

I guess the “new nations” are always blunter. The older the people the more reserved and discreet they become I imagine because civilisation & “society” have tempered their instincts..

Wow!

Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the 'Star of David' also?
Dishonest media! #Frozen pic.twitter.com/4LJBpSm8xa

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2016

I know of at least 2 distinct cases where the husband took on (one fully – the other hyphenated) the wife’s hugely prestigious surname.

I dislike the word nationalism but I prefer the word patriotism.

As an example was the unification of Germany & Italy really a good thing.

A further corollary is the Subcontinent where Raj gave way to India and Pakistan; wouldn’t an Imperial Confederation been better for all. Also in Iran, the Shah’s to create the nation-state really mixed and moved around tribal entities/ethnicities early last century.

At any rate what’s done is done.

My fiancée and I watched Precious last night; suffice to say we were both quasi-traumatised (amazing movie though).

Gentile is the right word to use for a Westerner, both secular & Christian, who is traditional heritage as opposed to Semitic (Jewish or Muslim).

Cathy has lost all my respect when she tries to deny Steve’s role in the Rolling Stone story (private discussion is not public).

When I grew up in the East, Persians had a specific look olive skinned (sabz) with dark hair and dark eyes (prominent nose) with a minority on the lighter side.

Then around early-mid naughties there came a huge wave of well-to-do Persians studying in London from directly from Iran. I was shocked to see that a vast proportion (plurality) had a new “Northern” (Caspian-Azeri) look of much lighter colours.

I thought nothjng of yet but then a friend from Kerman (sort of central-south Iran, the heartland of the Persian people) once randomly exclaimed to me “is it just me or are the new generation of Iranians much whiter?”

Post-revolution the country became much more integrated and the different regions started mixing; the old olive skinned Persian look (which even the Zoroastrians of Yazd sported) became increasingly diluted with mixture of the north (and the Azeri/Caspians of North Iran are particularly fair though ironically the Azeris of Azerbaijan are said to have a more Olive look).

This could be sexual selection on a mass scale in a generation or so. This of course happens in Latin American and especially Pakistan (as you scale up you marry light) but also in Iran the same general principles are operating (rich southerners marrying pale northerners in Tehran).

My first time to Turkey was last August – since then I visited multiple times (and even stayed in Ist) as we were planning to get married in Istanbul. In that period (August-April) Turkey went from bad to worse – in the end we switched the wedding venue to a far more sensible location. To broadly generalise the Turks are arrogant, attractive and aggressive; ironically it’s the same reputation they have in Iran (Persian believe that among the local Iranian Turks).

It was such a contrast going back to Iran last month after 25years, Persians are an order of magnitude more polite and forthcoming than the Turks. Well it does make sense since the last millennia of the core Muslim world has only had Turks, Kurds (Safavids/Saladin) & Berber dynasties; the Perso-Arabs sort of faded into the cultural sphere.

To get back on point Turkey is painfully returning back to the Ottoman model and to its Anatolian roots. I have to say it’s so disconcerting hearing the Turkish language (which was shorn of its Perso-Arabic veneer by Ataturk) still retain the core Islamic vocabulary (even though they are radically different languages, knowing Persian or Arabic lets you figure out alot of basic Turkish words – Mehraba, Tashkoglu) but written in the Latin Alphabet.

Finally I have to say that Iran really exceeded my expectation whereas Turkey in the last year will trampled on my expectations (and the sad thing is that Istanbul/Anatolia is a land like no other). In the sense that also mirrors the geopolitical ascendancy of Iran over Turkey in the past decade.

I guess the big question is who will be Trump’s VP? I suspect it’ll be a woman to “balance” the ticket (in the old days it’d be a Southerner but now times have changed).

Will be an interesting election for sure, Trump vs. Clinton.

I saw a video today about 5 famous refugees – Einstein, Albright, Brin & Freud. I can’t remember the other one but I’m certain they were also Jewish. Somehow the example of these refugees was given as proof as to why Europe should take in more refugees.

Zac has run a bad campaign (and I say this as a Zac) as Boris-lite. Ironically Zac G’s two nephews (Jemima & Imran Khan’s sons) are super-devout Muslims.

The Labour Party is purging the anti-Semitic elements and Ed Miliband was the last leader. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad for the Jews but maybe for Israel (as the old aphorism goes, the left loves the Jews the right Israel).

Apart from naming bikes after himself I have no idea what Boris actually did as mayor and I say this as a Londoner.. He seemed to have simply been sulking that DC’s been PM all this while (the opposition sits on that side of the house but the enemy sits on ours).

I’d like Zac to win (I saw Sadiq voted for a fully elected HoL and I’m a deep believe in the hereditary peerage and their rights to sit in the upper House) but I don’t really care – if anything Zac’s ex-bro-in-law Imran Khan is a far bigger fanatic than Sadiq (who seems a super-moderate sort of chap).

Also it was pretty low of Zac to dredge up those mainly false allegations about Sadiq – race baiting at its worst.

As I quipped on Facebook I’m very torn between my base Tory instincts (Zac G-Brexit-Trump) and my “enlightened” liberal outlook (Sadiq-Bremain-Clinton).

The latter is more of the same whereas the former is something new.

I have to say though that if gun control and immigration are the most pressing issues of the American polity (the world’s hyper-power) then that’s a bit disappointing.

I thought Clinton was the pragmatic choice but to be fair I’m increasingly seeing Trump as more and more presidential (even if he’s prone to ridiculous quotes). What could he do with a Republican Congress and SC (without neocon hacks – I read this ridiculous piece by Stratfor justifying the ME forays)?

Jesus, the House of Representatives has a final say on who gets to be President? The article reads like “how to stage a coup & subvert the Constitution” banana republic style.

I’m looking forward to a bracing Hillary-Trump electoral battle. He’ll make her up her game, the election should never be a Coronation.

Today at lunch in Cambridge (the old one) I met this hyper-active Ivy League grad (currently centrist Democrat) from a solid-blue state. Even he was telling me, that as a white man, he couldn’t see a future for himself in the Democratic Party; in 20yrs if he wanted to go into politics he’d have to join the Republican Party. He was also pretty ambivalent about the pc culture in the States and peeved off about how some of the Ivy Leagues no longer uses the term “Master” for the residential dormitories (here Oxbridge is pretty unabashed about it).

The “Sailerisation” of politics is now hitting the mainstream with the Republican vs. Democrats mirroring the core vs. fringe (how disaffected one is from the cultural mainstream correlates to their voting Dem).

Finally this chap and I had a very interesting parallel thought as we were discussing the US political landscape. That it would have been much better for the Dems if Hillary had been president 8yrs ago and Obama contesting the election now. He’d have more experience and she’d have been in her Prime.

Very clever about the Bergd.

O/T but if there’s an “iSteve” play it has to be Clynbourne Park – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clybourne_Park

It’s about race & real estate and it’s probably one of the most topic plays I’ve seen, doesn’t pontificate or moralise. It’s written about an American and through the first act I was remember Steve’s articles about Oak Park etc.

Just finished watching the Documentary; thanks for sharing (I usually don’t do online videos).

SAPE is now evolving on the right lines, stop buying expensive European products and focus on creating indigenous African ones that follow the same principles.

How odd is that; when I used to live in Uganda whenever I used to drive I used to listen to country music on the radio.

It never occurred to me as to why Uganda would have a country music station, the U.K. certainly doesn’t have one (I switched to Classical when I moved back).

I was overhearing this conversation between a posh elderly English grandee and a young Indian American academic.

I almost fell off my chair when the posh lady said “oh I love football, I watch all the games.” English eccentrics really are one of a kind!

At any rate the Indian American academic made a strong point that she referred the US to the UK because while the former had some issues with racism (especially vis a vis Afram minority), Americans were much more likely to accept immigrants as one of their own.

Whereas in Britain where racism is very subtle and benign (if it exists) she was constantly asked where she was from. Even if she said the States they would then follow up with “where are you actually from?”

For Europeans in general (perhaps with the exception of France) the blood and soil nature of the identity is far too hard to shake off. The EU essentially is a club for Gentiles (Christendom) and the question whether Christian minorities in the Levantine or Caucasus qualify is always a question about borders. Where do the borders of Christendom lie is for Brussels to determine but Constantinople is no more and is forever lost to it.

Finally I also notice that American Gentiles are significantly more philo-Semitic than European Gentiles. White America certainly has had its issues vis a vis its Black and Native population but immigrants on the whole have been absorbed fairly well (exception being internment of Japanese Americans during WW2)..

For some reason “Zachary” is a very quintessentially American name. It has it’s roots in the New Testament (father of John the Baptist & JC’s Uncle) but I wouldn’t think of it as a quintessentially Biblical name (at any rate I think by what think of as “Biblical” names are usually OT).

Every time I meet Americans and tell them my name, it’s something they immediately remember and clock on to since I think Zachary is a very “American” name (especially the spelling).

Somebody in Oxbridge or the Ivy Leagues should do a paper on the parallel evolution of British vs. American names.

Rest in Peace Fred Rabbit; he seemed to have picked up the Sailer knack for industriousness and resourcefulness..

I just completed a Istanbul-Dubai-Tehran trip. I must say that Erdogan has really lost out to the Ayatollahs in the ME itself; so makes sense he would try to claw gains out of Merkel..

Don’t get involved in the Near East/Balkans is a pretty good rule of thumb I think..

Hello from Tehran – no surprise about the prevalence of the Iranic ethnicities, Iran itself has an especially strong STEM culture (until the Qajars lost it to the Ruskies in two infamous treaties, the trans-Caucasus was an Iranian).

Ironically though I’d like to think it had something to do with “Iranianess” it’s instructive to see the relative absence of the most famous of the Iranic ethnicities in the list, the Tajiks. There seems to be something about the Caucasus and the Baltics (perhaps being borderlands between the Russian heartland and relatively cosmpolitan world regions) that account for their disproportionate influence (but then a population like the Buryats disprove that).

Finally I wonder if the relatively lower number for Ukranians (& Belorussians) have anything to do with their relatively fluid identities with the Russian mainstream..

Hamlet is supposed to be set in the late middle ages, so somewhat feasible, since from what I remember the Plantagets were marrying off their children in their tweens..

But I never felt the theme of inheritance to be especially strong in the stagings I’ve seen in Hamlet, if anything his Uncle seemed to take a paternal interest in him before Hamlet goes off the rails..

I was about to make a comment and I noticed that pic with the Asian girl on top!

A snarky reference to Tiger Mums perhaps?

Finally I do think that’s fair to give a slight advantage to children disadvantaged by nurture, the question of course remains how much of an impact does nurture have on IQ?

Incidentally if a blood quantum was used for descendants of slaves as they are used for that of Native Americans then all of a sudden black identity would be the preserve of a previous few (Native Americans seem to have zero interested in their Hispanic kinfolk, who admittedly have significant traces of indigenous ancestry)..

I guess it’s the only way for the “Diverse” to reconcile with the fact that the Founding Fathers were Wasps or in modern parlance, stale, pale males.

Israelis are the plucky sort of people who don’t blanche at making Faustian bargains.

Also I don’t think that the English are an underrated people, in any sense, in the modern world (as De Gaulle always hectored on about the triumphalism of the Anglo-Saxons) but I do sympathise with the Germans who are far and away have the most disproportionate metrics between achievements & recognition. I also think the Russians, post Cold War, & Persians, post Revolution, have had the same issues but now it seems that the balance is tipping; Germany controls the EU, Russian is rising again & Iran straddles the Middle East. History has way of making itself go full-circle!

I wish this book was updated for a 2016 edition – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World