Comment by Riaz Haq on February 12, 2017 at 9:30pm

Flynn Effect, named after researcher James Flynn, says that IQ depends on both nature and nurture. 

Better education, nutrition and health are known to increase IQ. 

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/27/james-flynn-race-...

Study in post war Germany where both white and black American GIs left many children born to white German girls. 

Here's what Flynn said about it: “when American troops occupied Germany at the end of the second world war, black soldiers left behind half-black children and white soldiers left behind all-white. By 11, the two groups had identical average IQ"

It's also known that high disease burdens force children in poor nations to use up all of their resources in fighting disease. This impairs their cognitive development. 

It's also known that lack of iodine in diet causes mental retardation. Similarly, exposure to lead and other toxins also causes lower IQ. 

Infections cause low IQ University of New Mexico

http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/07/infections-cause-low-iq-in-south-asi...

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 13, 2017 at 10:42am

Hinduism and Terror

Paul Marshall


In the past decade, extremist Hindus have increased their attacks on Christians, until there are now several hundred per year. But this did not make news in the U.S. until a foreigner was attacked. In 1999, Graham Staines, an Australian missionary who had worked with leprosy patients for three decades, was burned alive in Orissa along with his two young sons. The brutal violence visited on Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002 also brought the dangers of Hindu extremism to world attention. Between one and two thousand Muslims were massacred after Muslims reportedly set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing several dozen people.

These attacks were not inchoate mob violence, triggered by real or rumored insult; rather, they involved careful planning by organized Hindu extremists with an explicit program and a developed religious-nationalist ideology. Like the ideology of al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists, this ideology began to take shape in the 1920s as a response to European colonialism. It rejected the usually secular outlook of other independence movements; in place of secularism, it synthesized a reactionary form of religion with elements of European millenarian political thought, especially fascism.

---

Twentieth-century agitation against the British led to the rise not only of the secular and socialist Congress movement but also of the rival Hindu nationalist movement collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (“family of organizations”). The Parivar proclaims an ideology of “Hindutva,” aimed at ensuring the predominance of Hinduism in Indian society, politics, and culture, which it promotes through tactics that include violence and terror. Its agenda includes subjugating or driving out Muslims and Christians, who total some 17 percent of the population. It castigates them as foreign faiths, imposed by foreign conquerors—even though Christians trace their origins in India to the Apostle Thomas in the first century and Islam came to India in the seventh and eighth centuries.

The Sangh Parivar’s central organization is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded by Keshav Hedgewar in 1925. Hedgewar was influenced by V. D. Savarkar, who believed that Hindus were the descendants of the ancient Aryans and properly formed a nation with a unified geography, race, and culture. Savarkar’s 1923 book Hindutva—Who is a Hindu? declared that those who did not consider India as both fatherland and holy land were not true Indians—and that the love of Indian Christians and Muslims for India was “divided” because each group had its own holy land in the Middle East.

M. S. Golwalkar, the RSS’s sarsangchalak (supreme director) from 1940 to 1973, sharpened these themes. In 1938, commenting on the Nuremberg racial laws, he declared: “Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us … to learn and profit by.” In an address to RSS members the same year, he also asserted: “If we Hindus grow stronger, in time Muslim friends … will have to play the part of German Jews.” He insisted that “the non-Hindu … must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion… Or [they] may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges.” On March 25, 1939, the Hindu nationalist Mahasabha Party, an RSS ally, likewise proclaimed: “Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning, and the ardent championship of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope.”


https://hudson.org/research/4575-hinduism-and-terror

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 14, 2017 at 1:41pm

Excerpt of Immigration Law Blog: 

http://blogs.ilw.com/entry.php?9613-Will%20White%20Nationalist%20Ja...


In a chilling interview with a progressive site known as alternet.org, which has nothing to do with the white supremacist "Alt-Right" movement, one of the Alt-Right's leaders, Jared Taylor (a former Harvard Summer School Japanese language instructor) outlined his vision for a whites-only US immigration policy for up to the next 50 years.

Taylor's proposals might not have sounded out of place 100 years ago, when laws excluding Chinese and other Asian immigrants were still very much in force; when non-white immigrants were barred from becoming naturalized Us citizens; when the notorious "Nordics"-only Johnson-Reed immigration act of 1924 was only a few years away from becoming law, and shortly before Adolf Hitler was to write in Mein Kampf that he had been favorably influenced by America's racial restrictions on immigration. See, The Guardian (February 5, 2004): 


https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/06/race.usa

But Taylor's whites-only immigration views, as quoted below, might initially seem to be so wildly extreme in the diverse, multiracial America of the New Year 2017 that we are now entering as not even to be worth serious discussion.

At first glance, the idea that America could ever return to the whites-only immigration policies of a century ago would seem totally absurd. But would this really so impossible in the new administration? 

As shown in a recent article published by Bannon's own news outlet (see below) not only Jared Taylor, who supported Donald Trump for president but was never part of his campaign, but Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, Trump's campaign manager and Trump's pick for senior presidential policy adviser, are very much opposed to the 1965 Hart-Celler immigration reform law which abolished the Nordics-only "national origin" immigration quoted of the 1924 law.

Breitbart News, in a September 3, 2016 article authored by former Republican Congressman and long time immigration opponent Tom Tancredo, has in effect advocated bringing back the 1924 racial immigration restrictions. 

The following are Jared Taylor's proposals in his own words, according to his interview with alternet.org.

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/w...a-progressives


1) "Put a hold on all immigration for the next 5, 10, maybe 50 years...Let the country re-establish itself as a nation, and, at the same time, we could give a preference to Europeans."

2) "There are about 200,000 people who leave the country every year, if they were replaced by 200,000 people, some from South Africa, for example, south African whites, that would help us reach a new equilibrium in terms of what the nation should be about."

3) "Diversity is a terrible weakness for the United States...Diversity means that we still have race riots. Diversity means that every attempt to distribute resources is a shoving game.

Have the Hispanics got enough? Have the blacks got enough have the Asians got enough? Whether it's from the Harvard entering class to the nominations for the Oscars."

4) "In 1945, the United States had 125 million people. Nobody thought the country was overpopulated. Now we have 325 [million]. Where do we stop?"

5) "Until 1965, the United States had an immigration policy that was clearly designed to keep the country majority white. There was nothing wrong with that.

[If someone had told the signers of that law that in 70 years, white Americans would become the minority] "no one would have voted for that law." 

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/white-nationalist-leader-unloads...

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 14, 2017 at 3:51pm

Vast majority of Muslim refugees are in Muslim countries....very few are coming to the West. And the West, like other signatories to UN Conventions, are obligated to accept them. The refugee debate creates the impression of unprecedented mass migration. That image is completely incorrect. The real question, when we look at migration globally, is why there is so little of it. It;s lowest it's been in human history. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/why-global-migration-stat... 

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 14, 2017 at 6:59pm

“Technology is too important and too embedded in our lives—from classrooms and cars to homes and hospitals—to leave so many behind when it comes to doing the stimulating work that makes all things digital possible,” states the Breaking the Mold report, which is targeted at investors.

And the divide, according to the report, is concerning. A few highlights:

A representation problem: The report found that blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans were underrepresented in the tech sector by 16 to 18 percentage points below their percentages in the workforce as a whole.

A promotion problem: While Asians are well-represented in the tech sector, they’re less likely to reach an executive rank than their white coworkers.

A day-to-day problem: People of color tend to leave their tech jobs at 3.5 times the rate of white men—and a big reason for that, according to the report, is that the work environments often aren’t friendly for minorities, who report isolation and discrimination on the job.

These figures are made more problematic by the fact that tech companies have struggled to properly address racial diversity issues, despite investing $1.2 billion to deal with the problem over the past five years.

According to an analysis of corporate filings with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, just one major tech company, Amazon, counts more than 10 percent of its employees as black, and just two, Amazon and Apple, have percentages of Latino employees that top 10 percent. In both cases, though, the story is complicated—Amazon’s numbers are pulled up by a significant warehouse business, which is noted for its low wages, while Apple’s retail business accounts for many of the company’s minority employees. In both cases, diversity is lacking among the firm’s high-skilled tech workers.

The report, which takes the stance that “less social inequality leads to a stronger economy for all,” suggests that investors should prioritize diversity in their funding decisions, that more detailed data on workplace demographics be released, that goals be set, and that executive compensation be tied to these goals.

The report also encourages white employees, particularly executives, to take a step forward and speak up on issues of diversity.

“Without real commitment to change from white executives who currently hold disproportionate power in tech companies, diversity and inclusion efforts can fall short,” the report says.

http://associationsnow.com/2017/02/report-racial-diversity-remains-...

http://breakingthemold.openmic.org/

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 15, 2017 at 7:33pm

#German police say #Bild newspaper’s story about a #Arab ‘sex mob’ was wrong The Washington Post #Islamophobia #rape


Frankfurt police were taken aback by the article — they had not heard of any large-scale assaults taking place in the area on New Year's Eve — but a number of news outlets published aggregated versions of the story, spreading it further.

When local newspapers tried to report more on the story, local business owners said they had never seen any kind of “sex mob” or mass sexual assault on New Year's Eve. “It was absolutely peaceful,” one staff member at a Fressgass bar not far from Mai's establishment told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

On Tuesday, police released a damning statement on the incident that suggested the reports published in Bild were without foundation. “The interrogations of the witnesses, guests, and staff have created considerable doubts about the portrayal of events,” the statement read, adding that “a person allegedly affected by the actions was not in the city at all when the crime occurred.”

The Frankfurter Rundschau reports that since-deleted social media posts from Irina seemed to suggest she was abroad during the New Year's period. Meanwhile, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Mai had published a number of posts on Facebook expressing support for far-right parties and criticizing Merkel on his Facebook pages. Prosecutors are now investigating the witnesses themselves.

Reporting on alleged sexual assaults by refugees and migrants is a fraught subject in Germany. Shortly after New Year's Eve 2015, rumors of alleged sexual assaults by large groups of men began to circulate on social media but attracted little attention in the German press and from officials. It was only half a year later that the full extent of the situation became known, with a leaked police report suggesting that there were over 1,200 women assaulted by more than 2,000 men in a number of cities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/14/german... 

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 15, 2017 at 7:57pm

Here's the truth about alleged rapes by refugees in Sweden: "According to official statistics on file with The Swedish Crime Survey, the sexual violence rate in Sweden has remained about the same between 2005 and 2014. In fact, it actually decreased by .3 percent between 2013 and 2014" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/11/are-migrants-reall... 

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 16, 2017 at 6:35pm

#Hate groups 'rose massively with #Trump's success' says new report. #Islamophobia #antisemitism http://dailym.ai/2kL7OEU via @MailOnline

New map shows the booming number of hate groups that have sprung up since Trump ran for president after his candidacy 'energized the radical right' 
The Southern Poverty Law Center says there are now 917 hate groups in the US - up from 892 in 2015
And anti-Muslim groups went from 34 to 101 during the year that Donald Trump campaigned for president
That's not a coincidence says they group: They believe 'Trump's run for office electrified the radical right'
White nationalist and neo-Nazi groups are on the rise, as are black separatist groups, likely in response 
Many black supremacy, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT groups are in cities; white nationalists mostly in country 

Hate groups in the US have proliferated over the past year as Donald Trump's successful bid for the presidency energized the far right, a new report claims.
Anti-Muslim groups nearly tripled from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said, while the total number of hate groups increased from 892 to 917.
'Trump's run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man's country,' the nonprofit said. 
The group counted 867 bias-related incidents in the first ten days after Trump's election, including more than 300 that targeted immigrants or Muslims. 

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. 
The figures, contained in the site's 2017 Intelligence Report said the number of hate groups in the United States in 2016 was high by historic standards.
The organization classifies 'hate groups' as those who vilify entire communities based on unchangeable characteristics like race or ethnicity. 
And researchers for the Alabama-based organization said the number of crimes against Muslims had risen with the number of hate groups. 
For example, they said, a Texas mosque was torched after the Trump administration issued an executive order suspending travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 17, 2017 at 11:03am

Pew Poll: 49% of white #Americans approve of #Trump but young, well-educated whites have little confidence in him

http://www.people-press.org/2017/02/16/1-early-public-attitudes-abo...

Young people and highly educated adults express particularly low confidence that Trump is keeping his business interests separate from his decision making as president. Overall, 51% of those ages 18-29 say they are not at all confident that he is doing this, compared with 45% of those 30-49, 40% of those 50-64 and 36% 0f those 65 and older.

A majority of postgraduates (57%) and college graduates (55%) express no confidence that Trump is preventing his business interests from influencing his decisions as president. Smaller shares of those with some college experience (42%) and no more than a high school diploma (35%) express no confidence in Trump on this measure.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 18, 2017 at 10:46am

A Jewish Reporter Got to Ask Trump a Question. It Didn’t Go Well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/us/politics/trump-press-conferen...

-----

The exchange began with Mr. Turx standing up from his third-row seat and gesturing slightly toward his fellow reporters:

“Despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren. You are their zayde,” which is Yiddish for “grandfather” and often a word of great affection.

At that Mr. Trump nodded slightly, and said, “thank you.”

“However,” Mr. Turx continued, “what we are concerned about and what we haven’t really heard being addressed is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it. There’s been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to——”

At that, Mr. Trump interrupted, saying it was “not a fair question.”

“Sit down,” the president commanded. “I understand the rest of your question.”

------

Jake Turx is a newly minted White House correspondent for a publication that has never before had a seat in the White House press corps: Ami Magazine, an Orthodox Jewish weekly based in Brooklyn. He is a singular presence in the briefing room: a young Hasidic Jew with side curls tucked behind his ears and a skullcap embroidered with his Twitter handle.

When President Trump called on him at a news conference on Thursday, saying he was looking for a “friendly reporter,” Mr. Turx was prepared. He had spent an hour crafting a question about a recent surge of anti-Semitism, with a preamble that he hoped would convey his supportive disposition toward Mr. Trump.

But the exchange did not go the way he expected. A few hours later, with the clip replaying on social media and Jewish groups issuing news releases, Mr. Turx, 30, was still reeling. He said in a telephone interview, “Regretfully, today was a day I wish we could have done over.”

His editor, Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter, watched aghast from the magazine’s offices as his young correspondent received a tongue-lashing from the president: “It was a very disheartening moment for us, to watch him being berated.”

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