WAR BY IQ

Wall Street Journal, Chinese and Russian Engineering Talent, Risks of Missile Defense

2012-05-26T02:28:35Z

I'm back. Tax returns all filed. You and I can work on our continuing project of "Saving the Human Race."

That is not excessive. David Krieger, President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, in a 12/27/11 letter to the Wall Street Journal says: "The world is far from perfect, and humanity must strive to make peace and encourage democratic practices as we strive to eliminate nuclear weapons, the only weapons that have the potential to eliminate us."

That last phrase is exactly right: Nuclear weapons stand alone at the head of the class; the only weapons that can evaporate 14,000 year of human civilization in a good afternoon's work. Unfortunately, he is wrong in the rest of it.

To China and Russia, Nuclear Weapons mean that Chinese and Russians can consolidate their control on non-majority ethnic populations inside Russia and China. They are free of the Tall White People interfering with events inside their country. They get to do now what the Tall White People did in the counties now controlled by the Tall White People- a hundred years ago. They get to kill their Indians.

Think Wampanoag, Abenaki, Cherokee, etc. etc. Accordingly, no one alive today will see the end of nuclear weapons.

Change the word "democrat" in your head for the word "white race" and you see how long the Russians and the Chinese will cling to nuclear weapons. A long long time.

Now, how should the U.S., or the white race generally, deal with that Nuclear Monster standing at the head of the class on terrorism? The neoconservative position is that the nuclear threat is no different than a long chain of military threats since the founding of the country. Enough determination and enough wealth can defeat the threat.

Well, maybe. But- maybe not.

There are major themes that what sees consistently presented in the writings of neocon enthusiasts. These themes are important. If the facts the neocons position is based on are as they assume; they are a long way toward carrying the argument that they have to carry. Conversely, if the facts are very very different, the neocon position is as dangerous a position as has ever been articulated.

The Wall Street Journal is as intelligent and fair defender of a capitalistic system as one could find. It is also relentlessly interventionist and aggressive. It assumes American exceptionalism means American soldiers everywhere; now and forever. It is neoconservative.

Let's start with 10 articles which, taken as a package, demonstrate what the intelligent neocon establishment believes about nuclear missiles.

1. The first is Warren Kozak, "The 'Dayton' Lesson for America's Shrinking Military."

2. The second is "The Bogus Iran Intelligence Debate" by Bret Stephens which appeared March 20, 2012.

3. The third is "Where's an Open Mic When We Really Need It?" by Martin Peretz which was published March 30, 2012.

4. The fourth, "What's at Stake in the Missile-Defense Debate?" was written by Senator John Kyl and appeared April 3, 2012.

5. The fifth was a April 5, 2012 Editorial: "Intercepting Kim's Rocket."

6. The sixth, by John Lehman, "The Seas Are Great but the Navy is Small," appeared April 27, 2012.

7. The seventh appeared May 1, 2012, was written by Bret Stephen and has a nice directness about it: "Anyone But Condi."

8. The eighth contribution to the feast is Daniel Henninger's, "The Great Human-Rights Reversal" which appeared May 10.

9. The ninth appeared May 11, 2012; "Awaiting the Next Revolution" by David Satter.

10. The tenth "NATO's First Step on Missile Defense" by Anders Fogh Rasmussen appeared May 14, 2012.

Let's start with the eighth. Daniel Henninger has written the most complete, insightful and important piece of the lot. He says what everyone thinks, but wants to avoid: There is a political movement in this country that wants to pick fights with other countries if those countries do bad things; whether or not they affect the security of America.

Henninger labels that impulse "idealism" and correctly, I think, provides a historical and political framework for that impulse in the past few decades:

"Liberals and  Democrats who work on human-rights issues won't like to hear this, but with the Obama presidency, human rights has completed its passage away from the political left, across the center and into its home mainly on the right-among neoconservatives and evangelical Christian activists."

    Now, I think that ethnic identities here in the United States are more important in the transformation that the Henninger piece acknowledges; but let's takes the column as it sits.

Henninger provides a mini-history of the modern human-rights movement in America and suggests that something new appeared with the Protestant Evangelical Jimmy Carter. He points to the elevation of the human-rights office inside the State Department as an important initial impulse.

The Christian Evangelical groups continued to support victims of government persecution outside official governmental aegis. They are the primary supporters of Chinese and North Korean dissidents.

According to him, the left abandoned the human rights struggle once it was articulated by President Bush as a rational for attacking Iraq. Neoconservatives and religious human-rights groups supported Bush; the left loathed the invasion.

Interestingly, Henninger thinks that the real reason that Obama wants to cut the Pentagon down to size is that it is an endless money pit that devours funds that could be better spent helping America's poor; not that it is inevitably an ethnic instrument of violence that interferes in other peoples' ethnic struggles.

It is the Pentagon, Henninger tells us, that is the heart of America's ability to argue on behalf of Chinese dissidents, give voice to anti-authoritarian movements, and prevent rogues such as Iran and North Korea from becoming nuclear powers. But it is expensive, that money does take resources away from social programs; thus what he labels "the left's 'ambivalence'" to military expenditures.

I think that it is fair to see that Henninger's theme; the need for more money in military expenditures as the most common theme in all the neocon literature; and is a basis for the arguments in a number of the listed articles. By way of example: Kozak says, "The next time some unforseen event threatens the mainland as the U.S. is slashing its military budget, this country won't have the luxury of time to rebuild..." John Lehman piece is largely about the Obama's adminstration' attempt to cut the size of the Navy.

The second theme is that America has not been aggressive enough on the nuclear issues everywhere, but particularly in the Middle East. "Anyone But Condi" takes Ms. Rice to task. "She opposed a U.S. attack on the nuclear reactor North Korea had built in Syria, leaving Israel to do the job."

"The Bogus Iran Intelligence Debate" concludes "For real intelligence, merely consider that a regime that can take a rock in its right hand to stone a woman to death should not have a nuclear bomb within reach of its left."

The third theme is the need for the United States, along with a allies whose military moves are obviously controlled by the U.S., to develop a defense against nuclear missiles. Russia, as the country which was the first country to develop the capability to destroy has a special place here. The editorial, "Intercepting Kim's Rocket" would welcome a chance to demonstrate how advanced American missile defense is by shooting down a North Korean missile. "It would also be a real-world test of missile-defense technology, and if it succeeds would be a useful demonstration to the world's rogues that the U.S. and its allies aren't helpless against their missile attacks."

On the same theme, Peretz attacks Obama for suggesting to Medvedev that he would be more conciliatory to Russian objections to American attempts to build a European missile defense system after he is reelected. Satter underlines America's differences with Russia: "Mr. Putin accused the West of meddling in Russian affairs, saying 'The Battle for Russia continues and we will win.'"

Rasmussen presents a cheery explanation of how the NATO countries are playing well together for a common goal, and he outlines how various countries are contributing to the big missile defense pot. Senator Kyl concludes his piece: "Supporting a robust nuclear deterrent and an effective missile defense is a moral obligation for all those who are entrusted with ensuring our nation's security."

This blog is largely about exploding those neocon three themes and calling attention to the dangers in failing to appreciate the basic fact about the nuclear weapons game, whether the game is labeled offense or defense. The nuclear weapons game is a game about national IQ.

The American Right; particularly that portion of the Right that is taken up by neoconservatism; will be forced in the next half century, to deal with a very unpleasant reality: Military expenditures in the nuclear field, whether they are labeled "offense" or "defense" cannot make America more secure.

Something has been established in the first 50 years of the nuclear weapons age. The Chinese and Russian engineer is simply too smart to ever again accept the world as it was in 1956: America infinitely safe and China and Russia infinitely vulnerable. Stay tuned.

WSJ Neocons and Iran; The Coming Divide in the Republican Party

2012-03-13T00:38:30Z

The Wall Street Journal presents as intelligent, consistent and articulate presentation of the neoconservative position as one can find in the United States. Roughly 100 years ago Luce expressed the ambition as well as it could be expressed: The American Century. The descriptive term today is American Exceptionalism. The ambition is consistent. At the end of WW II the men who created the basic template for American foreign policy saw themselves as the heirs of a 1,000 year history of Northern Europeans expanding their influence; and were without serious reservation about continuing that expansion.

In a nutshell, if establishment figures like Richard Lynn are right about the intersection of IQ and economic and military dominance; the heirs of those Northern Europeans can continue the path they have been on for millennia and can claim "The American Century" forever. If I am right about how IQ plays out once a peasantry becomes an industrial workforce, those Northern Europeans are on a suicide march.

Now to be clear, everyone else is also on the same suicide march; because the blonds have great engineering talent, in addition to a whole schedule of advantages that can honestly justify the racism the blonds undoubtedly feel, and have demonstrated in those millennia.

But it is one or the other. If the establishment is right, the world will look the same 50 years from now and the blonds will have an instrument that can deal with nuclear weapons. If I am right, and everyone stays on the same nuclear path that they are on now, in 50 years the platform for nuclear weapons will be in space; and the blonds, like everyone else, will be seconds away from an oven.

  Anyone who has spent time on this blog knows that I think that we are inside the Interesting 50 years of Nuclear Weapons. We have recently concluded the Important 50 Years of Nuclear Weapons. The world has learned something important in the last 50 years. The blonds in the British Isle and in the US, are living with what was established in the first 50 years of nuclear weapons. People now know what they did not know in 1956. The Slavs and the Chinese have been able to match the American nuclear engineer in the terror contest; equation by equation. In the next 50 years people will be able to see who else can do that. That will be interesting.

And there will be no more interesting place in the next 50 years, and no more interesting people than the Middle East. Because the Middle East has the long term potential to be the Vietnam that the blonds cannot just give up.

Consider 5 recent pieces in the WSJ: The President Has Been Given a False Choice on Iran by Edward N. Luttwak, February 18-19, 2012; America's Iranian Self-Deception by Frederick W. Kagan and Maseh Zarif, February 27, 2012; Why Israel Has Doubts About Obama by Dan Senor, March 5, 2012; The Editorial, Obama's Hawkish Iran Turn, March 5,2012; and Iran Can't Be Allowed Nuclear 'Capability' by Senators Casey, Graham and Lieberman.

The pieces make for interesting reading, They are clearly pieces with an agenda. All take Obama to task for being insufficiently sensitive to the needs of Israel; all make the point that what is at stake is the future of the United States. I wonder if there is any other subject where the WSJ would express such contempt for the judgment- not of a Democratic President; but senior defense, intelligence and security officers. The pieces appear to believe that the paper's readership is a militia; paranoid about what the establishment.

The Joint Chiefs (Luttwak), former ambassador and administration officials (Kagan and Zarif), Defense Secretary Panetta (Senor), Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (the editorial), are all assumed to be wrong and the leaders of Israel are assumed to be right. Is there any other subject the Wall Street Journal, for any other country, where the Wall Street Journal would present such an anti-establishment view?

The most interesting column, in this, the most interesting subject in the most interesting place; is the one by Senator Casey et al. One sees the issue where the debate has to lead if I am right and nuclear weapons are an IQ test. The senators want war over the issue of "capability." One can tell; they are not interested in the argument that countries are allowed to have nuclear power for civilian use.

One of the most nutritious variables now is small, but may grow large in the next decade or so. We have all heard or read that Iran's computer capabilities were degraded by outside forces. But that seems to have been handled by the Iranian engineer.

This will get interesting.

WSJ- 04/20/07, The Chinese Peasantry

2012-03-07T22:29:11Z

Another, quite long, advantaged (page A 15) piece on China in the WSJ that forces a class analysis on a behavioral change, and, thereby, misses what is likely to happen.

Mr. Guy Sorman tells us what he sees, having spent all of 2005 and part of 2006, traveling throughout China. The generally favorable Western press misses: Overwhelming corruption, poverty, isolation, and disaffection of the 1 billion strong peasantry. Villages where at least 80% of the families are affected by AIDS, and are without proper medical care. Teachers who can read and write, but not much more. Two hundred million peasants from the villages looking for work in the growing urban slums. A one child policy that has enraged the peasant. Unemployment closer to 20% than the official 3.5%. A class of "parvenus," newly established workers for enterprises owned and directed by the Communist Party. He tells us that there is no guarantee that the 1 billion he finds will ever integrate with the parvenus in a modern China. It is just as likely that the peasant will remain forever out of modernity. Lacking political rights the peasantry cannot force the ruling bureaucracy to an accounting.

He introduces us to an official who criticizes Mr. Sorman for a lack of confidence in the Party's ability to solve problems. Mr. German agrees; he has no such confidence.

Now, a behavioral analysis must begin with the billion peasants, not on the consumption side as Mr. Sorman teats the issue, but the production side. Obviously a population that large cannot rely on a few hundred thousand bureaucrats to give them an adequate standard of living, adequate medical care, or a productive educational system. The peasantry has to do it itself. There is only one starting point to begin the transformation: a school system. The "West" has been reading for 500 years, the Chinese peasantry has been in a school system for less than 70 years. Whether the annual growth rate is 8% or 10%, in truth except for Japan and Korea, no one has seen such a rapid change for such an enormous population. This change is a tribute to the intelligence of the Chinese once they are in a school system, no matter how impoverished. A behavioral analysis would predict the amazing growth rate given just two data points: information that a school system has been instituted, and Chinese IQ scores.

The difference between Mr. Sorman's skepticism, and my position about the trajectory of the Chinese economy, and the Chinese nuclear weapons program, revolve around Chinese IQ scores.

Nuclear weapons are, fundamentally, talent, IQ scores made visible. Mr. Sorman's division of the Chinese population into two categories: the parvenus and the peasantry, invites an analysis that would place the toiling villagers into the categories "Invisible" and "Impotent." But the teacher in that poverty stricken isolated village knows when An Wang shows up. They have tests, and the boy that can help the Chinese keep pace with the blonds in the death business begins to become visible, like his Slavic 15 year old counterpart, two generations ago. The blond problem is not the best algebra student selected out two hundred million, but the best algebra students out of over a thousand million people, one-fifth of the human race. The blonds cannot force the Chinese to be infinitely vulnerable, while the blonds remain infinitely safe.

r peppe

Arms Control & Prioliferation Challenges; Russia China: The Heavyweight Division

2012-03-03T02:43:54Z

A century and a half ago, in a whiter, more rural, pre-Internet-television-radio-automobile America; one of America's greatest thinkers, David Henry Thoreau, said "Simplify, simplify." He said it in fact in Massachusetts; a modest piece of geography that had as much or more to do with the technological marvels that would be created in the next 150 years as any similar sized piece of geography anywhere on the planet. Because I can not but help be impressed and grateful for a 70 year lifespan, dentistry that isn't painless; but clearly doesn't hurt as much, and the innovations in tansportation, medicine, communication that we all could list; I am pleased that, 150 years ago, his advice wasn't taken.

  But for the topic that this blog is obsessed with, nuclear weapons; Thoreau's advice is spot on. Nuclear weapons are about two items: Big time engineering talent and ethnicity. It is crucial to see that. It is crucial to see that given their 1000 year dance with the Germanic peoples, the Russians, who have long seen themselves as "The Elder Brother of the Slavs" will never see nuclear weapons as a scourge. Given their identity as Slavs; the only question worth asking is "How much engineering talent can the Russians put into that channel of reality? Two items: just two, ethnicity and big time talent.

"Arms Control and Proliferation Challenges to the Reset Policy" by Stephen J. Blank has too wide a lens; a lens that takes in too many items; and as it loses focus on the two that matter, it becomes another dangerous book in that long line of dangerous books for America and nuclear weaponry.

The book however is informative, well presented and most valuable for the information that it presents on Russia's nuclear weapons program and the serious commitment that the Russian leadership has for that program. The Russian engineering is getting better: more lethal, more potent, more dangerous. That is not a surprise to those of you who visit this blog.

Nuclear weapons are an IQ test; the best engineers in the Russian nuclear weapons program are intelligent people (like the American nuclear engineers, the Chinese nuclear engineers, the French nuclear engineers, the Pakistani nuclear engineers, etc., etc., and intelligent nuclear engineers given time and capital are bound to make the product more lethal, more potent, more dangerous.

So the book is a sobering, and from my perspective, a welcome entry into the real world. There is so much blather, mostly from Conservatives, about how safe the world is now that President Reagan demolished the Soviet Union and tore the Wall down; that a small dose of reality now is helpful. It may help avoid the inevitable feeling of enhanced terror a generation from now.

  Consider what the book tells us about the actual status of the Russian nuclear weapons program:
   -"Kokoshin [Deputy Defense Minister] has said that nuclear deterrence will remain the keystone of Russian defense for the future, . ." p.31
- "[T]here are also other reasons for suspecting that, despite the effort to complete a huge conventional upgrading of the Russian military, Russia in 2015-20 will continue relying much more on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence." p. 30.
- "[T]he General Staff commissioned research institutes to determine how many nuclear warheads are needed for a guaranteed retaliatory strike against a potential enemy, presumably to confirm the General Staff's earlier insistence on 1,500 warheads as an irreducible minimum . . . These studies and building programs obviously have a great deal of bureaucratic muscle and financing behind them, so in practical terms it will be very difficult to win Russian assent to large reductions in strategic forces . . ." p. 29.
- "Russia's nuclear program, although work has started on the liquid-propellant system, is in the throes of a debate, so its final outcome and prognosis remains somewhat unclear at this time. . . .[T]he current expectation is that the ultimate design will copy that of the Satan (SS-18) ICBM and be insensitive to the effect of an electromagnetic (EMP) impulse, launchable from a silo even after a missile has hit it, and capable of carrying a large complex of defense penetration aids so that it can evade missile defenses and deliver a 10-ton combat payload to any point in the world." pp. 27-28.
- "The State Armament Program submitted to Medvedev and the Duma for 2011-20 now totals 20.7 trillion rubles ($646 billion), of which 19.4 trillion rubles goes to the needs of the Ministry of Defense. Of that total, 79 percent will go to the acquisition and purchase of high-tech armaments (including nuclear weapons, which remain a priority)." pp-27.
- "[Deputy Foreign Minister] Ryabkov talked first about turning to the control of conventional arms in Europe. . . He said shaping the military relationships on the ground, where Russia has vastly fewer troops and less equipment, would relate to the future of nuclear disarmament. " p. 34.
-"China's military program has continued apace. Consequently, new Chinese developments like the conventional Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) DF-16, the new ASBM, etc. threaten not just the United States and its allies but also a whole range of Russian military targets deep into Russia." p. 26

There is good information that confirms Professor Blank's description of the Russians as determined to improve their nuclear threat; to make it faster, of greater reach, more lethal:
"On Saturday, Medvedev also observed military exercises of the Northern Fleet in the Barents Sea, including a full-range test of the Sineva ballistic missile that traveled a record 7170 miles.
"For the first time in Navy history, the launch was not to the Kura test range in . . the Russian Far East, but to the area of an equatorial part of the Pacific."
"Russia's Medvedev observes test launch of Topol ICBM," RIANOVOSTI


My comment: Perfect. This demonstrates the point that I have made repeatedly on this blog. Nuclear weapons reflect engineering talent in a population of young men selected out of very large populations. If you are relatively poorer or even considerably poorer than the U.S., but you have that handful of gifted engineers, nuclear weapons are your guarantee that the West does not invade you. The Russian leadership is making the point precisely. They view their nuclear arsenal as a response to America's economic advantage: They will not let go of that arsenal.


Professor Blank has a different perspective; he sees the Russians determination to throw more and more assets into the nuclear terror game as somewhat odd; and more a reflection of the Russian (traditional?) failure to create a democratic political culture, and a resulting obsession with America, which is somewhat humorous.
"Thus the reasons for this fragility and the consequences for this fragility and the consequences for arms control and future cooperation on nonproliferation issues must be clarified.... Russian governmental figures like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov now say that the test of Russian relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and of NATO's "sincerity" is progress towards creating a joint missile defense system on Russia's terms. . . Some may believe that these positions are merely negotiating tactics. . . They also suggest Moscow's continuing obsession with being able to intimidate Europe with the unimpeded threat of nuclear strikes against key European targets and its linked belief in the possibility of using nuclear weapons in a warfighting role . . ." pp. 2-3.
   "What drives these state-to state, or NATO-Russia, and intrastate domestic struggles are deep-rooted fears of each other, as well as continuing regional rivalries." p. 3.
"Russia remains unwilling to accept the bottom line of U.S. national security policy, i.e., American leadership and (the intermittent) promotion if a global democratic order (which Russia regards as efforts at a unilateralist hegemony). p. 4.
" [I]n Russia (if not the Unites States) issues connected to nuclear weapons make for major manifestations of political theater . . . In the Russian case, this appears not just in overt and covert domestic political struggles, but also in the widespread, ingrained, and wholly unsubstantiated conclusion that the United States is essentially Russia's enemy and trying to suppress it, if not beak it up, and that U.S. politics, like Russian politics, is essentially a matter of dictating to smaller powers and endless conspiracies . . . After all, that is the elite's own experience of Russian politics. And this habit of Russian projection of domestic phenomena and values onto the "other," the main enemy, the Unites States, dates back to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. This projection process institutionalizes what can only be called political or nuclear paranoia. . ." p. 6.

Putting the Russian on the psychoanalytical couch will not solve what is to be done with nuclear weapons. One has to see the Germanic world from their perspective, or the next step is that everyone will live with the platform for nuclear weapons in space; the oven moved from 43 minutes to less than 5 minutes away; and the red phone in the White House of no help.

The Russian ethnic identity is all important to the Russians. In the Russian head there is no question on the planet more serious that, "What makes Russians safe?" The answer that Russians have to give to that question is, "The ability to kill every blond between Latvia and Australia in 43 minutes." Of Course.

Consider the German-Russian game from the Russian perspective. A thousand years ago Charlemagne decreed that knowledge of how the Germanic sword was engineered and produced was not to be disseminated to the Slavs. There is no question that the one constant one could make of the relationship between Germans and Slavs for the ensuing thousand years was that the whiter, taller, better looking Germans had a racial objection to the Slavs; they called them names, made jokes about them and did not mate with them. "Mein Kampf" was not just about the Jews; it announced to the Germans a series of conclusions about the Slavs that had been a commonsense staple to the Germans for a thousand years.

A big sophisticated nuclear arsenal in Russian hands fixes that. Nuclear Weapons must be controlled.

The fulcrum of the 21st century: Israel and the Mid East or China and the Far East; The Wall Street Journal

2012-01-13T19:27:04Z

The Wall Street Journal editorial on January 13, 2012 "The Intriques of Persia" says in its concluding paragraph, "Much of the world wants to believe that force won't be necessary to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions . . ." It is clear from that editorial, as well as numerous other editorials that the editorial writer does not share that belief. The Journal wants a war. OK, a lot of conservatives, particularly Evangelicals, I assume, feel the same way.

The first interesting issue is, "Why is such a dramatic step required?" The editorial answer is, "Nothing else has worked." The piece recounts some of the prior steps:
              -The assassination of at least 5 senior nuclear scientists presumably by the U.S. or Israel.
              -Diplomacy has allowed the Iranians to play for time.
              -Sanctions have not been severe enough (although the editorial has some hope for more recent sanctions).
              -Covert actions to include sophisticated computer worms and an explosion at a missile factory.

Despite every effort imaginable; despite the most capable military engineering in the world today, despite the resources of the biggest economy in the world today and despite a very large intelligent population which the American leadership can count on to support aggressive "robust" action the conclusion the editorial reaches is:

"Tehran is closer than ever to a bomb."

Now, readers of this blog will not be surprised to read this. Nuclear weapons are an IQ test. The best algebra 15 year old algebra student among 60 or 70 million Iranians is very good in algebra class.

He has to be in algebra class, and that was accomplished in the last two generations. What has been accomplished was predictable.

Well, what should be done? So America has yet another war in the same general area: What is the downside?

The downside as the Mid East takes up more and more space is that what is developing in China is inevitably put on the back burner. The Important 50 years of the Nuclear Age is behind us. Something has been established: Nuclear weapons are scores on an IQ test, the U.S. does not have engineers that are so much smarter than engineers in China and Russia (and maybe North Korea and Iran?) that the U.S. will be infinitely safe while leaving Russia and China infinitely vulnerable.

If the long term vulnerability of the U.S. moves to labs in China it is a mistake to lose that focus. The fulcrum of the nuclear weapons story will inevitably move to China: THE STORY of the twenty-first century.

Ron Paul;the Jews and Israel; the Chinese in algebra class

2011-12-28T23:34:26Z

Ron Paul in Derry, NH on December 15.

Full house. Enthusiastic Supporters.  Impressive background- Duke Medical School. I took one of his brochures when I left. Three generations of M.D.'s. Smart smart family. They are not doing it with mirrors.

When I saw him I kind of felt like I felt when I saw Bob Dole kick off his campaign in New Hampshire about 15 years ago. He is just too old. Even if what he said resonated with enough people to win the primary, a lot of voters would have second thoughts about electing a first term president in his mid-70's. But the issues that his candidacy raises will resonate well after the time he, and all the rest of us over 70, have left these mortal coils behind.

We, the people over 65, have lived through what I have called THE IMPORTANT 50 YEARS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Something has been established since we were in high school: America is not the only place that can produce enough gifted engineers to destroy 14,000 years of civilization in one afternoon. Because IQ data is with the human race for the next 500 years; that will not change. No generation has witnessed as important an event as what we, the generation over 65 witnessed with nuclear weapons.

We ole timers, and Ron Paul among us, will miss most of which what is inevitably on its way: THE INTERESTING 50 YEARS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. How will the American people handle the enormous threat of nuclear weaponry? I suspect if there is a single term today that will form the pivot of American behavior on the issue; it is "American Exceptionalism."

  What was interesting about the day of the rally was that as I getting ready to leave the office, I heard Sean Hannity with a guest who focused on a series of newsletters from Paul's office which were labeled racist and anti-semitic. Now, if you believe what I believe; that the issue of nuclear weapons will not go away, Paul will not be the last Republican who wants to put some space between America and Israel. And, fair or not, he will not be the last Republican politician taken to task by Jewish publishers and pundits for the ambition.

I think Jews, and publishers and pundits who are attuned to Jewish interests, understand the Paul threat. See specifically two columns in the Wall Street Journal: one on December 16, 2011 by Kimberley A. Strassel "Why Ron Paul Can't Win," and the second on December 22, 2011 by Dorothy Rabinowitz "What Ron Paul Thinks of America."

The Strassel column tells us that he has been quite consistent for a long time, as political lives go, on a number of key social and economic issues. It is interesting that she uses the exact adjective that I thought of after about 15 minutes of his speech. I swear; I looked at my phone.  It was 15 past the hour. I am not sure if the speech started around 7 PM, or 8 PM. I think that it was 7. Nevertheless, I did look at the phone, and 15 minutes were gone. And he had spent virtually every minute on one subject: the Federal Reserve.

And what was the word that I thought; and Ms. Strassel wrote? "Crank."

The Strassel column also tells us that Dr. Paul has started to soften some of his views now that he, and his supporters, think that he can actually win. He has made attempts to appear less extreme on taxes, drugs, Social Security, Medicare, etc.

But he has not been willing to deviate on his foreign policy views. Ms. Strassel characterizes Paul's position: "fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland."

Predictably, the column focuses on American policies in the Middle East, and she gives us data to believe that Dr. Paul just cannot carry the Republican base. She recites his condemnation of the war in Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden and his claim that US policies against Iran have been unduly aggressive.

"For foreign-policy hawks, this is a disqualifier. It explains why a Washington Post-ABC poll in late September showed that Mr. Paul drew some of his weakest numbers from his own base. . . . Among self-identified 'conservative Republicans,' only 8% gave him a 'strongly favorable' rating."

I think most of us would guess that.

The Rabinowitz column is less generous. It nods to his libertarian standards, but claims that Dr. Paul foreign policy stance actually assigns blame for evil to the U.S. It bristles at Paul's attempt to deflect the blame for the bitter relationship between the U.S. and Iran to American actions.

Ms. Rabinowitz ties him to that school that educated Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "It's the voice of that ideological school whose central doctrine is the proposition that the U.S. is the main cause of misery and terror in the world."

I think it is fair to say that she sees the success that the Paul candidacy in having in Iowa as depressing. "It seemed improbable that the best-known of American propagandists for our enemies could be near the top of the pack in the Iowa contest, but there it is."

Now, my focus here is Nuclear Weapons, and I link claims of American exceptionalism to IQ scores. I contend that American exceptionalists will sooner or later have to accept the fact that Americans are just not exceptional enough.

American engineers are not so much better than Russian or Chinese engineers that they can make America secure; while trying to make China and Russia infinitely vulnerable. It will never be 1956 again.

If I am right about the fundamental nature of nuclear weapons, the introduction of school systems into the Arab Middle East means the fear that is now focused on Iran, will come to have a more general application. A bigger nightmare scenario featuring nuclear technology a generation from now is practically inevitable.

What now? What is most interesting to me in this phase of the INTERESTING 50 YEARS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS that I am favored to watch?

The first thing involves the Russian nuclear weapons program. The fact is that the Soviet Union collapse has not materially affect the scope, the mass or the danger of the Russian nuclear threat. The Russians know it, they boast about it.  The December 19, 2011 issue of Barron's quotes Putin's comments in a national broadcast to Russians:

"America doesn't need allies, it only needs vassals . . . They still fear our nuclear potential. We also carry an independent foreign policy."

Those people, mostly conservative Republicans, who toast Reagan and a tough foreign policy assume that America won a Cold War and closed out the Russian nuclear threat. Nothing could be further from the truth. Watch this blog far a more correct analysis of what is the truth with Russia and the nuclear threat to America.

Fair or not, it seems that anti-Israeli hatreds have become the common currency of all the otherwise disparate radical movements. And to be fair I have no idea whether whether different Israeli policies could drain some of the hatreds from the swamp.

But we do know that young Jews both in the U.S. and Israel, are smart, have been in school for generations, and are committed to the State of Israel. Arabs boys have been in school for a couple of generations, and many appear committed to a Middle East free of Israel. The question: How smart are they? Can they produce a nuclear threat?

Why do I include the Chinese in algebra class in my heading? Because that is the reality which will intersect with every important American military move as far as the eye can see. If the Chinese see an advantage in helping a country with its nuclear program, it knows that it can follow its advantage without being subject to a nuclear attack by the U.S. There is a reason China maintains enough nuclear weapons to destroy the U.S.

Ron Paul provides a different avenue for thinking about nuclear war. Predictably the pro-Israel, and pro-interventionist wing of the Republican Party will use the label "Isolationist." Compare the laudatory article about Mitt Romney in the December 24-25 Wall Street Journal and the piece on Ron Paul which is directly under it.

It is interesting that the article on Romney quotes his favorable comment on the foreign policy of the U.S. up to the present president. Romney said "America was able to define a foreign policy that has guided us well . . ."

In 1956 the U.S. could have destroyed both Russia and China with a bomber fleet. Today the U.S. can destroy both Russia and China with missiles and nuclear bombs in less than an hour. BUT, Russia and China could similarly destroy the U.S.

"Anti-Italianism:Essays on a Prejudice"; GUIDO AND IQ

2011-11-28T23:02:07Z

Anti-Italianism: Essays on a Prejudice edited by William J. Connell and Fred Gardaphe includes a number of very interesting and informative pieces. I focus on just two: but the entire volume merits reading.

Anyone who has spent time here will be aware that I think that the Italian-American experience delineates the behavioral realities that also create nuclear weapons: As a population shifts from a peasant economy to an industrial economy a school system differentiates students by IQ. That differentiation was necessary for Italians to match the Native Born White of Native Born Parents category in terms of broad occupational categories and income. That differentiation is also the behavioral backbone of every country which succeeds in moving a portion of its population into the nuclear holocaust game. Where the best student is very very good; nuclear weaponry can get very very good; very, very fast. Think China.

So while the differentiation by IQ inside a relentlessly efficient school system was part of the story, the other part of the story is a developing awareness of commonness. Southern Italians, particularly those who look the part, learn to sing a similar aria in public.

The essay that underlines commonality, "Narrating Guido" is a particularly informative and, unusual for a work in a collection directed at prejudice; humorous. It describes its purpose and paints a picture of young people in an urban setting developing an ethnic narrative, and a posture. It is a little different. It sees strengths that are utilized in an urban environment; the big city, to navigate a relentlessly ethnic universe.

Part of the  story is external; part of the story is internal. There is a conscious awareness of sharing a style-based identification with other youth that places them in a 'youth category.' Shared style implies an established difference in relation to youth others.

We have different youth, made different by ethnicity.

The background is part of what makes this specific essay particularly interesting: New York City. A really big city. But a city where, from the perspective where I live, New Hampshire; practically no one is actually an American.

Well, that's an exaggeration: the Irish are Americans. But, besides Italians and Irish, the city is also filled with Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Mexicans, Jews and Asians.  In New York City, it would be incorrect to paint the canvas with an imposing blond nativist assaulting the sensibilities of a poor short Italian. In the stigmatization narrative, Italians cannot justify a claim for primacy. From the perspective of White America the city is a mess in which Italians are part of the mess; but generally not the worst part.

This general ethnic mess opens opportunities for ethnic cohesiveness, and even display, which would not be available in, say, Northern New England. I do not know where defiance meets irrational denial; or rational assertion, but there is an assertion in New York as befits the young:

- The essay is based on "the point of view of young Italian Americans who call themselves 'Guido.' "

- "The larger significance of this story may be found in a 'struggle for recognition and respect' that shapes the assimilation of subordinate ethnic groups in American society."

- "Youth subculture can be a 'construction site' for ethnicity."

- "[I]t is a matter of intellectual integrity to own the story of Guido within the Italian American experience . . ."

- "Meanings originate in the popular culture, especially in the mass media, but are translated and rearranged to suit a youth agenda."

- "Instead of wearing baggy and oversized clothes, Guidos make sure their clothes are tight. Straight legs are very common. They go perfect with their Sketcher boots. Shirts have to be tight to show off their muscles and tattoos. You still need a gold chain to go with your outfit."

- -"We wear pretty much the same type of jewelry; things like gold crosses, pretty rings, and bracelets our boyfriends gave to us. Before I started hanging out with this group all I listened to was rap and reggae. Now all I listen to is freestyle and club music. . . . Most people say that freestyle is all Italians listen to. I have to say that for the most part, that is true."

- "The emergence of contemporary style-based youth subcultures is predicated on requisite discretionary income and consumption; sufficient leisure is also a factor, a development bound up with delayed marriage and employment. . . Italian American youth culture in the West End of Boston in the late 1950's was truncated by the onset of adulthood in the late teens."

- "Guido also presupposes diminished familial and community traditions, leading to an erosion of 'adult surveillance' necessary for more autonomous 'youth formations.' "

- "When it (WKTU) returned to the air in 1996 . . . with a publicity stunt in Times Square that invoked the mythic energy of Saturday Night Fever, it was anointed as the 'Guido station.' "

- However, the realities of city life, commercial life, demands a certain amalgamation with other ethnicities. The "fit" between Italians and certain Hispanic groups cannot be missed. On the station, "Latin and Italian American personalities display a fraternization that mocks serious ethnic identity."

- Moreover, on the issue confronting any outsider in a blond society Latins and Italians carry a common vulnerability: "An egregiously biased comment was attributed to WAXQ FM . . . on June 26, 2002: 'Italians are niggers that have lost their memories. ' "

- "Although a youth subculture, Guido does emerge out of social conditions that are general for an Italian American experience that has unfolded in New York City (and throughout much of the urban Northeast.)"

- "The identity transactions that comprise Guido point to the ongoing 'dialectical' construction of Italian American ethnicity. Guido is more a narrative of about 'routes' than 'roots.' "

One sees in Guido, a common ethnic assertion. A unifying theme.

One sees in school, a disaggregation. A population that represented the behavioral monotone of the peasant differentiated into an industrial work force.

Readers of my paper on nuclear weapons know that I see the American school system confronting immigrant populations from peasant backgrounds as a specifically non-unifying force. The school makes visible IQ differences within that peasantry; which differences had never been visible before. That difference basically accounts for what I say happened between the Italian immigrant population and the offspring of that group between 1950 and 1970.

  Perversions of Knowledge: Confronting Racist Ideologies behind Intelligence Testing" by Dr. Elizabeth G. Messina essentially tells the story of stigmatization.   Her article is almost entirely an assault; but one is not sure if the assault is on IQ tests or the reports about the tests.

-"Nearly a century ago, race psychologists stigmatized Italian Americans as a genetically inferior identity group. The success of Italian Americans today is complicated by the persistence of negative stereotypes of Italian Americans in the media . . ."

-"No other European ancestry group in America who migrated at the turn of the century continues to be so blatantly defamed and stigmatized."

- "[T]he impact of psychology's early intelligence testing research on the intergenerational educational experiences of Italian Americans will also be explored."

-"Eugenicists believed that all men are not born equal, and that white Americans and northern and western Europeans, in particular, were superior to all other racial groups."

-"The Army's Alpha and Beta tests were designed to determine innate differences in intelligence between American-born citizens and foreign-born draftees."

-"Yerkes, along with several other eugenicist psychologists, drew broad conclusions from the low scores earned by these foreign draftees and used data to confirm the innate inferiority of foreign races and to argue for new laws restricting immigration by national origin."

- "The superior intelligence of the 'American Nordic race' permitted America to eternally pursue progress. Culturally entrenched racial prejudices supported by dehumanizing stereotypes of Italian immigrants permitted Americans to exclude them from benefitting from the nations's prosperity on equal terms."

-"The findings of Dr. Arthur Sweeney's 1922 journal article, 'Mental Tests for Immigrants,' were incorporated in the appendix to the Hearings of the House Committee on Immigration. . . Sweeney proffered that Italian immigrants belonged to a 'degenerate horde so depraved they hardly belong to our species.' "

- "He (Sweeney) writes, 'The economic exploitation of cheap, unintelligent labor from abroad has fastened a serious racial as well as social-economic problem upon us,' "

OK, all familiar enough. But Messina's piece gets interesting when she addresses certain facts around IQ issues.

-"Throughout the 1920's, group-administered tests of intelligence (instruments that could be given to a group of participants in a single setting) were systematically used by racist psychologists to accrue evidence for a genetic-evolutionary explanation of inherent racial differences in intelligence. From a eugenicist perspective, gathering empirical evidence to document the innate intellectual inferiority of the immigrant's child would leave no doubt that intelligence is heritable."
           Commentary: Why does Dr. Messina throw in the gratuitous "racist psychologists" to characterize social scientists who in many cases may have been simply curious and emotionally neutral about what the tests might reveal?

- "In 1920, Columbia University instructor, Katherine Murdoch, conducted a comparative study of the intelligence of the 'brightest' immigrant children . . .Based on the mean score of each racial group, the study showed that Italian children scored considerably below the mean scores of American-born and "Hebrew and Negro" children in intelligence. . . . The Italians maintain their position at the foot of the four races."
            Commentary: After this  Dr. Messina writes, "Murdoch's conclusions about the children of Italian immigrants were unequivocally racist." What justifies the label racist? Presumably Ms. Murdoch is reporting what the test scores told her.

- "Maud A. Merrill analyzed 'mental differences,' as measured by the Stanford Binet, between American and foreign-born children . . . Merrill found that the majority of IQ scores of the foreign-born children were in the below average or mentally retarded range. She also found that 8 percent of their IQ scores fell into the average or above average range . . .Guided by Terman's eugenicist ideology, Merrill concluded that foreign-born students in general, and Italian students in particular, 'have been pushed beyond their mental capacity.' To acknowledge;edge that social class differences affect IQ is to suggest that environmental differences, and not heredity alone, accounted for racial differences in intelligence. Similarly, to acknowledge that 8 percent of the 'foreign group' scored in the average range is to suggest that genes or race alone were not controlling intelligence. Clearly, Merrill's selective interpretation of the study results demonstrate that eugenicist orthodoxy, and not scientific objectivity, guided her conclusions."
Commentary: Not fair.  The IQ argument has always implied the bell curve. It is not inconsistent to argue that Italian immigrants suffer from a handicap that is reflected in a statistical analysis; while also holding that not every Italian has a handicap as measured against a standard set by the American majority.

-"The participants in V.T. Graham's study of 1926 were American-born Jewish and Italian children who resided in Boston and its environs. She compared racial differences in intelligence, as measured by the Revised Stanford-Binet and the Pinter and Patterson Performance Tests, between three 'racial' groups: Jewish children ranked highest (IQ=105), American children ranked second (IQ=99) and Italian children ranked lowest (IQ=85). Because both the the verbal and nonverbal versions of the intelligence tests were used, Graham concluded, 'While Italians made a poor showing in every respect . . . all possible language factors were ruled out, so that the consistent inferiority of the Italians to the Jews cannot be explained away as a function of language.'
The Jewish and American children scored in the average range (90-100), and the Italians in the low average range (80-90). In graham's study, small differences were found between Italian, American, and Jewish children, yet Graham's conclusions exaggerated the significance of these differences. Moreover, the performance of foreign-born children on the Stanford-Binet was compared to a 'normative sample' of one thousand white, middle-class, and English-speaking children. Foreign-born children were not represented in the standardization group of the Stanford-Binet. Consequently their performance was unfairly compared to native-born children."
Commentary: Three points. First, to call a deficit of 15 IQ points from the average a "small difference" is to miss the point of the IQ argument. It is exactly because the difference is so big, that we know it cannot be correct after we measure Italian economic and educational achievement against the Native Born White of Native Born Parents norms. Second, American academicians have been using Jews as a sort of template for white America, in examining Italian immigration experience, for generations. (See my discussion on Professor Thernstrom in Nuclear Weapons and the Blue-eyed People.)  In fact, by the second generation, Italians virtually mirror the American white majority in education, income and occupation: It is the Jews who are very, very different. Third, following the quoted material, Dr. Messina again labels the researchers as "racist psychologists." Unfair. Maybe they were not prejudiced against Italians. They were just reporting their findings.

It is interesting to contrast Dr. Messina's observation that Italian Americans have had success, a comment I find congenial, with her observation about the impact of intelligence testing on the opportunities that they were given. One would think that the findings of the psychology experts did not have much of an impact on the way the economic and educational realities played out.

-     Dr. Messina's treatment of what she terms "Antiracist Intelligence Testing" is right on point. We now know most children who speak a foreign language at home, do better on so-called performance tests, which use a minimum of language in the test, than they do on language tests. Further, Margaret Mead's study that showed language based IQ scores increased with the amount of English language spoken in the home, shows the importance of having facility with the language of the specific IQ test under consideration.

By 1968, when AFQT scores in Rhode Island were above the national average, Italian Americans who made up about one-fifth of the total population, had grown up speaking English.  Once Italians were comfortable in the dominant language, second generation Italian-Americans would inevitably be distributed by the American school system along the economic-educational dimension of the larger society, if their IQ matched the IQ of Native Born Whites of Native Born Parents.

I think that the Italian-American experience demonstrates the power of IQ tests, but that the Rhode Island experience on the AFQT demonstrates the need for fluency in English.

Properly seen, IQ and a school system disaggregated an Italian-American work force. A peasantry confronted a school system that separated them by IQ: By 1970 Italians who had been a uniform peasantry separated into different occupational trajectories that matched the larger categories for native born whites.

Israel: The Arab Spring, Nuclear Weapons and Pan-Arabism

2011-11-28T22:58:50Z

What does this blog say about Israel and The Arab Spring? Why spend time here? Those of you who have spent some time here will have picked up central themes that you probably will not read elsewhere.

First, there is a biological basis to IQ scores that is made visible by the process of industrial development. Second, the advantage that Northern Europeans had over much of the world for 5 centuries partly reflected the fact that Northern Europeans have been educating their children for centuries. It did not reflect an innate IQ advantage that was so dramatic that it would protect Northern Europeans from a nuclear threat once most of the peasantry began educating their children. For my demonstration of points #1 and #2, read my long paper on Italian Americans.

Third, the development of a school system inevitably advantages certain ethnic interests at the expense of other interests. For example, when the Chinese economy outside the urban areas was limited to an endless series of separated isolated family based illiterate villages practicing a subsistence peasant agriculture, it is possible to imagine a Tibetan village a mile or so from a Han village with very little interaction and no need to choose which language would be used in the school system.

The introduction of a school system and the beginnings of industrialization changes that. One cannot avoid a brutal, and inevitably racist, choice. Someone's language will be privileged, other languages will be crowded into corners.

We can say with confidence that Chinese will be one of the great world's scientific languages in a hundred years. The Chinese are simply too smart to admit of any other possibility. Chinese  parents will see this. They will not allow their child's progress to be truncated by a UN decree that they have to use Tibetan in their school system.  Chinese parents will not be dissuaded by appeals to universal values. American pioneers would not have been dissuaded by universalist appeals to use Cherokee in the classroom.

Now, take these three insights and drive them into the Middle East: 1. The development of a school system makes visible IQ realities.  2. Most of the students in the new Arab school systems will be undistinguished. Some of the students will be very very good. 3. The Arab school system will present Arab students with a certain history. What is interesting; crucial even, is whether the history will be nationalistic; Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, etc., ethnic; Arab, or religious, Islam..

Fifty years ago most observers who were seriously concerned with Israel's security would have identified Gamal Abdel Nasser and what he represented, as the chief threat. Because Nasser led Egypt he held a very special position. Pan-Arabism without Egypt is a manageable problem for both the U.S and Israel.

Pan-Arabism led by Egypt is a threat which could blossom into a full blown Mid-East war should Egypt develop a nuclear capability. When he negotiated a settlement between Israel and Sadat, Kissinger reportedly said about the rest of the Arab world: "They may not make peace, but they can't make war."

One wonders how Egypt will develop. Sad Qutb, who has been called the most influential ideologue of the S Islamic Movement in the contemporary Arab world," ( Social Justice in Islam, Introduction, p.1.) represents the analytic which would be most likely to be successful for a pan-Arabic political reality, which is also dominated by a serious commitment to islam. He obtained a master's degree in education at the University of Northern Colorado, so he was acquainted with the ideas which Americans see as essential to modernization. Apparently he saw these ideas as anathema to a modern, just and emphatically Islamic Arab civilization.

  The kind of serious commitment to Islam that Sayyid Qutb reflects in Social Justice  would require a specific religious authority and a bureaucracy ready and financially able to do its bidding. A post Khomeini Iran may be an example.

However, there is another obvious alternative to the religious bureaucracy as a modernizing force that forces education into the village. That would be the same engine that operated in Fascist South America: the military. The military in Islamic countries like Pakistan or Turkey, shares a similarity with the military in South America. The officers which would direct the country toward education, urbanization and the industrialization which inevitably follows, are all members of the same religious structure as the larger population. Certainly, the generals in Argentina or Chile did not wish to pick a fight with the Catholic Church than the military in the Mid East wish to provoke the religious tradition that they themselves reflect.

   Initially in Egypt, the Muslim Brethren and the military were allies in the struggle to evict Britain. But over time, the demands of the military as a secular modernizing force were not compatible with the specific Islamic goals of the Muslim brotherhood. As the military succeeded, the Brethren were marginalized, and in 1954 the Egyptian government ordered the Moslem Brethren dissolved. On August 29, 1966 Sayyid Qutb was hanged. To his followers he was a martyr.

I believe that it is inevitable that the military throughout the Arab world will be a force against pan-Arabism. There are two reasons for this: First, the ability of America and Europe to pay salaries is obvious. Second the military's push toward a more secular mode of development than favored by Islamists is reinforced by the general trend line operating in the society engaged in change. It is inevitable that an urbanized, educated, industrialized population will have more problems hewing to religious norms that were established in the peasant village.

What cannot be missed when one reads Sayyid Qutb is the man's absolute commitment to the notion that there is an answer to the economic and social upheavals that inevitably accompany the trip of the peasantry to the industrialized city in a book, and an authoritative tradition that interpret that book. From the perspective of an outsider, which is of course anathema, to the tradition, what seems obvious is the improbable nature of it.

South America is developing. This is heresy in Protestant Anglo-America, but to the extent Argentina and Brazil are developing economically, reflects, in part, the generals commitment to a school system and an order that did not brook interference from religious authorities; although they were careful to treat the authority with respect.

I suppose that it is clear that to confront Israel and the U.S the Arabs would have to jettison the one factor that propels them together which could make them a formidable pan-ethnic force: their religious tradition. Moreover, the ethnic split between Iran and the Arabs would also be exploited by outsiders, either on straight ethnic grounds or on partly religious derivatives: Shia and Sunni.

But a confrontation in a military sense is out of the question. A "set-piece" battle of the sort that Americans prayed for in Vietnam is out of the question for the Arabs: The Arabs would be slaughtered.

Here one sees again how Nuclear Weapons as IQ scores operate against the interest of America, and in favor of its poor, still partly peasant, opponent. I believe that the specific religious burdens of Islam will operate against the development of an efficient economy. But if the Islamic authority develops a nuclear weapon and the ability to deliver it to New York, the specifics of the economic debate will not be of much importance.