Big-headed babies are brightest

The size of babies’ heads at birth is strongly linked to their future success, with larger head circumferences and brain volume associated with higher intelligence, scientists have found.

The finding is among the first to emerge from data gathered by UK Biobank, in which 500,000 Britons are being studied over the long term to discover the links between their genes, their physical and mental health and their path through life.

A key target for the research is unravelling the complex links between brain function and DNA — one of neuroscience’s great challenges because so many genes are involved.

The finding, however, suggests something relatively simple: that brain size matters — a lot. “Highly significant associations were observed between the cognitive test scores in the UK Biobank sample and many polygenic profile scores, including . . . intracranial volume, infant head circumference and childhood cognitive ability,” said the researchers in a paper published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The finding is likely to be one of many insights resulting from the Biobank data. The researchers, led by Professor Ian Deary, of Edinburgh University, said they had also found gene variants that were strongly associated with intelligence.

Analysis of verbal–numerical reasoning identified 17 significant genes, some that could even predict how likely it was that someone would go on to secure a place at university.


CHURCH WAKING UP TO MUESLI MENACE

   The Archbishop of Vienna added his name to the growing list of prelates who were publicly recognizing that the ultimate aim of many Muslims was the conquest of Europe.

    In a homily at a Sunday Mass, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn warned that “Europe is on the verge of forfeiting its Christian heritage,” noting that this loss, which was already being felt, was “not only economic, but above all human and religious.” The Viennese Cardinal asked the large congregation gathered in Saint Stephen’s cathedral church: “Will there be an Islamic conquest of Europe?” “Many Muslims want that and say: ‘Europe is finished,’” he warned.

    The Mass, celebrated on 9/11, commemorated the Catholic feast of the “Holy Name of Mary,” which was instituted 332 years ago in gratitude for the liberation of Vienna from the Ottoman Turks. The Battle of Vienna, between the allied Christian forces and 90,000 Islamic invaders, was waged on September 11th and 12th, 1683, and marked the turning point in Europe’s 300-year struggle against Islam.

    Against this serious backdrop man must first rely on the mercy of God, the Cardinal said. “God have mercy on Europe and on thy people, who are in danger of forfeiting our Christian heritage,” he prayed.


PEECEE SLAMMED  

As mad Mueslis mounted (mercifully amateurish) terror bomb attacks on Americans in New York, Minnesota and New Jersey, polls showed The Donald drawing level in polls with Crooked Hillary. Trump supporters liked the thought of a strongman in the White House. Chris Christie, the powerful New Jersey (pop. 9M ) governor who had endorsed the Republican, said: “People are sick of political correctness. They want somebody who speaks his mind {about mediaeval Muesli mayhem}.” Even fatty fall-prone pneumonic Clinton herself said America should and would “defeat the bitter, twisted ideology of the terrorists.”

{Muesli ideology was that Islam should be spread not by reasoning, faith, hope, love and good works, but by the sword. Western peecee ideology of c.2000 was that no differences between people in intelligence and psychoticism should be acknowledged, let alone mentioned.}


RUSSIAN-AMERICAN CO-OPERATION NEEDED

As the presidential days of America’s Black-, Muesli-fathered and Brit-hating Barry Hussein Obarmy drew to a merciful close with the ‘accidental’ Western killing of 62 Syrian soldiers and apparent Russian retaliation against a convoy of aid to Syria’s 2M rebels in Aleppo, a Times correspondent wisely summed up (21 ix) the need for a united front against the Solunni-backed savages of ISICK.

Try to remember that Russia was our most effective ally in WW2; the US only dragging itself reluctantly in after Pearl Harbour – otherwise America would have left us and the whole of Europe to our fate.

    It’s really important to get Russia back on-side again and part of a "greater Europe".  Putin may not be everyone's cup of tea, but he took over Russia when it was in complete meltdown and has restored order. He has created a Russian middle class of millions and this middle class shares much the same values, culture and norms that we do.

    Putin’s Russia has also been the most effective nation to take on ISIS, putting to shame the US, the UK and all the other so-called coalition that were often arming the wrong groups in the region.

    I think Trump is clever enough to see this and try to make Russia a working partner in this increasingly uncertain world. Europe must follow suit.


NEW ANSWER TO ‘ROMA’ PROBLEM  

Fulfilling The Donald’s wildest dreams, eastern Europe’s gypsies – a race distinguished by their dyslexia as much as by their skills at dancing, knife-grinding, fighting, thieving and begging (though no such average group differences could be mentioned by the righteous) – found that an airline ticket to Mexico would give them a reasonable chance of crossing the border into dreamland USA.

In the first half of 2016, almost 1,800 ‘Romanians’ were apprehended at the southern US border, up from fewer than 400 in all of 2015 and just a few dozen in 2008, according to US government statistics. They were propelled by an anti-immigrant wave sweeping Europe and pushing the Roma across the Atlantic (Bloomberg, 19 ix).

    The traditionally itinerant group, ‘persecuted’ for centuries for its boisterous psychopathy, was facing less-tolerant governments as more than a million migrants and refugees from Syria and other countries threatened to overwhelm central Europe, egged on by Germany’s Multiculticrazy Mutti Merkel. A resurgence of neo-Nazism from Romania to Italy had seen the gypsies’ camps demolished, businesses fire-bombed, neighbourhoods walled off and children beaten for pickpocketing.

    The gypsies saw opportunity in the US, despite its own rising populism and calls for stricter immigration laws. Border Patrol agents said they showed up in groups that sometimes numbered more than 20, and most arrived with the help of smugglers. “Every one of them claims to be Roma,” said Daniel Parks, a US Customs and Border Protection agent in the San Diego region. “They claim they are part of that class that is persecuted by the government of Romania.”

    Since Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, ’Roma’ moving west to access labor markets had been met with mounting resistance. In Sweden, politicians debated whether to ban begging, a tactic critics said targeted Roma. In France, police demolished Roma camps outside Paris. The Canadian government passed a law in 2012 cracking down on “bogus” asylum claimants after thousands of Hungarian Roma sought refuge there.

Now, the Roma were taking their chances in the US. Many ended up in suburban Los Angeles. Some found housing in common apartments, while others simply pitched tents in a public park until they could secure a roof over their heads. They sometimes found work as night-time janitors or in restaurants, while others resorted to begging on the street or receiving assistance from the two Roma churches in the area.


FRIEND OF g REMEMBERED  

The charming and scholarly Professor Derek Forrest, long of glorious Trinity College Dublin, and a robust opponent of paedohysteria, died a year ago and was given the following obituary by his Birkenhead School.

Obituary sent by Derek's daughter, Mrs Tansy Forrest-Takano:

Derek William Forrest died on 22 September 2015, aged 89. The following obituary was written by his former colleague, Howard Smith of Trinity College Dublin.

Derek Forrest was born in Liverpool, the son of a cotton salesman. He attended Birkenhead School, where he became head boy. He went from school up to Cambridge University, where he started a degree in German, but he was called up for National Service before it was complete. In the Royal Navy he spent time on HMS Implacable, and worked in radar.

Following his naval service, Derek returned to his academic studies, taking a degree in Psychology, Philosophy, and Physiology (PPP) at Keble College, Oxford. Always a good athlete, he represented Oxford University in both swimming and athletics.

After graduating from Oxford he worked at the Aircraft Research Laboratory in Farnborough for a year, before being appointed lecturer at Bedford College, London, where he subsequently obtained his PhD, before being appointed as Reader in Psychology at Trinity College Dublin in 1962. Within a short time he was given responsibility for developing a Psychology Department of his own and in 1968 was appointed as the first Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin.

    His academic interests were broad and eclectic; he had a detailed knowledge of psychoanalysis and an abiding interest in important figures and events in the history of psychology. He is probably best known for his books Francis Galton: The Life and Work of a Victorian Genius (1974), and The Evolution of Hypnotism (1999), though he also wrote Defy your Age (2008) for a more general audience.

Regrettably he was unable to complete his book on the Tichborne affair (the longest running court case in Victorian England) before he died. He was a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, the Psychological Society of Ireland, the British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

    Derek presided over a department that was happy and stimulating for both staff and students. He was in some ways quite a shy person, but to those whom he knew well he was the most charming and engaging companion, and fellow members of staff delighted in his company. He encouraged his colleagues to follow their own interests and was also inspirational in his questioning and the generation of provocative ideas. His public talks and demonstrations of hypnosis were hugely popular.

    He was a charismatic figure who cannot possibly be adequately described in a few short paragraphs. Although he retired in 1996, he is still remembered with great affection by those who were members of his department.

    He suffered from Parkinson’s disease in the last few years of his life, and died following a stroke. He is survived by his wife, Pam, and daughter, Tansy.


TOP LEFTIST SKEWERS PEECEE  

As Britain’s Labour Party re-elected the elderly ungraduated Marxist ‘Jezza’ Corbyn as leader and thus doomed itself continue its three-way civil war between indebted youthful no-hopers of pro-Muslim and anti-Jewish sympathies, elderly working-class Northern nationalists who took the trouble to vote (increasingly for anti-EU Ukip....), and centrist Blairites who had backed the bankers and kept the party in power for thirteen years (1997-2010), star Observer columnist Nick Cohen put his finger on the central problem of the modern left’s intellectuals (25 ix):

....the authoritarianism, which has turned left-liberalism into a movement for sneaks and prudes, was always going to play into the hands of the right. Free citizens have stopped listening to those who respond to the challenge of argument by screaming for the police to arrest the politically incorrect or for universities to ban speakers who depart from leftish orthodoxy.  

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(A FEW) ACADEMICS ADVOCATE FREE SPEECH

Demands from students for “safe spaces” and for campus bans on ‘controversial‘ speakers were inhibiting intellectual debate among academics and prompting scholars to shun risks, a new book argued (Times, 12 ix). "Why academic freedom matters"

It accused many luniversity lecturers and professors of “a cowardly abdication of responsibility” in failing to encourage intellectual robustness among students, challenging rather than suppressing opinions they found unpleasant. Too many academics were perpetuating a notion among a generation of students that they should be protected from ideas they found distasteful, instead of upholding universities as places to discuss, question and challenge, it said.

    The book of essays, Why Academic Freedom Matters, by British and US academics and researchers, published by the think tank Civitas, sought to promote academic freedom after a succession of bans by student unions on speakers, sombrero hats and tabloid newspapers, among others, and a culture of “safe spaces” that banned dissenting views.

There had also been demands at universities in the US for “trigger warnings” on course materials, and even on classic works of literature dealing with themes that students might find ‘upsetting’ — and a fixation on “micro-aggressions” that ‘insulted’ some people due to unconscious prejudice.

    One writer, Kathryn Ecclestone, professor of education at the University of Sheffield, said universities should stop encouraging some students to seek help for ‘anxiety,’ saying counselling must be for those with a clearly assessed mental illness.

A Times correspondent pondered:

"Perhaps those students at university who want to be able to discuss controversial subjects in an open environment without fear of redress from those who might take offense at grown-up debate, should be given a safe space in which to do this?... Oh, wait a minute, isn't that called a university? Please help, I'm confused and I think I need counselling - or at least a fluffy toy to cuddle!

    And the UK’s new PM took the opportunity of questioning in the House of Commons to counsel against the ‘safe space’ movement. “We want our universities not just to be places of learning but places where there is open debate which is challenged and people can get involved in that,” the Prime Ministress averred (Independent, 15 ix).

Though not exemplifying what luniversity staff and students should be free to discuss or mention – race & IQ, LGBTQs, the pain, pleasure and profit to be had from paedophilia, the achievements of Cecil Rhodes, secret female two-timing, etc, -- Theresa May said: “I think everybody is finding this concept of safe spaces quite extraordinary, frankly. We want to see innovation of thought taking place in our universities -- that is how we develop as a country, as a society and as an economy.”


BALLIOL BORIS BACKS BARRICADE

 Confronting the low-IQ, Muesli, Merkel-invited invasion of Europe, the UK’s new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (Eton, Balliol, Speccie and London beds) called for putative migrants sailing across the Mediterranean from Africa to be “turned back” by a European Union naval operation that included two Royal Navy vessels which previous PM Daft Dave had required to provide a congenial ferry service for pumigrants (Times, 16 ix).

Ships involved in ‘Operation Sophia,’ which was instigated by EUSSR goons in 2015, were charged with picking up pumigrants they found on the ‘high seas’ of the Mediterranean and ferrying them kindly – all expenses paid -- to Italy. The fleet had never been involved in so-called push-backs, a practice that had been outlawed by the European Court of Human Rights in 2012 after it was briefly introduced by Italy in 2009.

Mr Johnson, however, appeared to back the measure during a joint press conference he held in Florence with his Italian counterpart, Paolo Gentiloni. Describing the hundreds of migrant vessels sailing in 2016 from Libyan beaches, and scheduled to bring a further .3M A/As to European heaven if weather continued clement in 2016, the British Foreign Secretary said: “I think personally they should be turned back as close to the [African] shore as possible so they don’t reach the Italian mainland and there’s more of a deterrent effect {on the hordes wanting to escape from the ‘independent’ countries which they had demanded for themselves in preference to being run by Britain, France or Italy}.”


MURDEROUS MUESLIS MAKE FOR MAYHEM

 The ethno-religious civil war between Mueslis (which the multiculti West had declined to recognize) reached new heights of state-backed bellicosity. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, claimed that Saudi officials had “murdered” injured Iranian pilgrims at the whirling-dervish ‘haj’ of 2015 through their negligence; and the Supreme Shitite accused the “cursed, evil” Solunni royal family of being “puny Satans” in thrall to America’s “great Satan”.

He called on other Muslim powers to “punish” Sunni Saudi Arabia over the accident, in which 464 Shitites had been trampled to death. Grand Mufti Abdul Fartaz Aziz al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia’s most senior Solunni cleric, responded by claiming that Iranians were “not Muslims”. {The two sides in the 1,400-year inter-Muesli hostilities were already busily engaged in reducing Yemen to the same rubble as eastern Syria.}


g STILL GOING STRONG

 Funding-blessed researchers in London, New Zealand and North Carolina reported independently, from vast follow-ups of children, that particular collections of genetic variations (e.g. ‘M1’ and ‘M3’) predicted reading ability, school achievement and early success in socio-economic life – with some 10% of variation being explained by the grant-winners and their scores of state-funded assistants (Daily Mail, 16 ix).

Just when the boffins would get round to explaining the 70% of human variation in success identified as due to intelligence by Burt and Eysenck remained unclear; but the pious postmodern psychowallahs could reasonably expect achievement so long as they did not mention the g factor and kept the lolly rolling in.


MASSIVE EUROPEAN CIVIL WAR EXPECTED BY PARISIAN PROF

 An Islam expert warned of a civil war across Europe as more young Muslims were being increasingly radicalised (Sun, 13 ix). Professor Gilles Kepel, from the Sciences Po[litiques] university in Paris, claimed a growing number of Muslims with poor job prospects were forming a “Jihad Generation” to continue to commit acts of terror across Europe. {Only 1% of Germany’s 1.2M ‘Syrian’ invaders of 2015 had found work.}

According to the German newspaper Die Welt, Kepel said the terror group’s aim was to incite hatred towards Muslims from the rest of the society which would eventually radicalise others to the point that Europe could enter into full-blown civil war.

Kepel, a specialist on Islamic and contemporary Arab world, added these ISIS fanatics not only wanted to destroy Europe, but to eliminate more moderate Islamic opposition. {Muesli-on-Muesli murders in Britain were increasingly notable – most lately of a 71-yr-old imam accused by young jihadists in Rochdale of practising black magic [the wearing of amulets bearing verses of the Koran – an innocent-seeming practice but apparently a cause for murder by Salafic of Sufic Mueslis].}

    “This terrorism is above all an expression of a war within Islam,” Kepel explained. “The long-term goal of the Jihad Generation is to destroy Europe through civil war and then build an Islamic society from the ashes.” He believed their strategy was similar to the expansion of ‘Islamic State’ {ISICK} in Syria, Iraq and Libya where the terrorist organisation was able to use the chaos of civil war to slowly build its forces, grow in power, and soon seize territory. His comments came after French Prime Minister Manuel Valls revealed that 15,000 radicalised Muesli goons were on police watchlists in France.


TRUMP SHAFTS HILLARY  

As pudgy, puffy and forever-mock-gleefully-pointing ‘Crooked Hillary’ Clinton, 69, returned to the US campaign trail after ‘recovering’ from pneumonia and a fall in just four days, her putatively Presidential opponent ‘The Donald’ put the boot in by challenging her to disarm her bodyguards (Classic FM, 17 ix, 13:00) – for the officially stated aim of Hillary’s ‘Democrats’ was, after all, to get guns out of private hands so Blacks could rampage freely across America to the delight – however short-lived – of pious ‘liberal’ Whites in leafy suburbs (their jacuzzis fenced with the razor wire which they proposed to forbid at their country’s border with drug-crazed rapist Mexico which itself annually expelled 300K Central and South Americans fleeing the awfulness of their own Catholic-Communist countries).


LABOUR LOSERS LASH OUT  

Having chosen to avoid the issue of immigration (a proxy for the Black & Muesli takeover of London and the Midlands of England), and thus lost bigtime electorally in 2015-6, the ‘moderate’ [Blairite] and Marxist [Corbynite] wings of British Labour – having already lost Scotland through lack of nationalism and of concern for low taxation – brought their internal squabbles to a high point on BBC TV’s flagship ‘Question Time.’

September 17 2016, 12:01am, The Times:

A televised row over the future of Labour between Alastair Campbell, the party’s former press secretary, and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, escalated into a heated confrontation off air, it has emerged.

Tempers were so fraught that onlookers feared the pair would trade blows. Before appearing on BBC One’s Question Time on Thursday night they had made a tentative agreement to steer clear of personal attacks.

The pact swiftly broke down as Mr McDonnell accused Mr Campbell of destroying trust in politics. The former spin doctor [for Tony Blair] hit back, claiming that Mr McDonnell and his hard-left allies were destroying the Labour Party.

With tensions running high a week before the results of the Labour leadership contest are announced, the pair continued their spat backstage. Mr Campbell attacked Mr McDonnell for breaking his commitment not to engage in personal attacks. He told him his supporters were killing the party.

Witnesses said the row ended with Mr Campbell storming off after being called a “f***ing a***hole” by the shadow chancellor....


WORLD WAR III FORESEEN  

That Europe was being “invaded” was stated frankly by the former Oz Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The Queensman told a group of European conservatives the migrant crisis afflicting the continent had the "look of a peaceful invasion" as he urged European leaders to adopt Australia's strict turn-back policy.

In an address to the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in Prague, Mr Abbott said it was "more important than ever to be brave" and a post-Brexit Britain and Europe needed to consider immigration changes.

In pointed reference to the problems of European countries under Germany’s Fourth Reich, Mr Abbott said a country that could not control who entered its territory "will eventually lose control of its future".

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MULTICULTI MP EXPOSED  

Prominent Labourite and Privy Councillor Keith Vaz, Britain’s longest-standing ‘Asian’ (in fact Indian [Goan-parented]) parliamentarian, stood down as Chairman of the prestigious Home Office Select Committee of the Commons when the Sunday Mirror (4 ix) front-paged its ‘sting’ proof of his using rent boys and hard drugs – no doubt to the embarrassment of his wife and children.

Cambridge-graduated lawyer Vaz, 60, had said he was a washing machine salesman called Jim. The unctuous though probably hardworking expense-claimer had first come to wide attention for his censorious support of book-burning Mueslis. Wikipedia:

Shortly after being elected in 1989, Vaz led a march of several thousands of Muslims in Leicester calling for Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses to be banned. According to Rushdie's autobiography Joseph Anton, as quoted by Douglas Murray in The Spectator, Vaz had earlier promised his support against the fatwa. Vaz said, in that phone conversation, that what had happened was ‘appalling, absolutely appalling,’ and promised his ‘full support’.

A few weeks later, however, he was one of the main speakers at a demonstration against The Satanic Verses attended by over three thousand Muslims, and described that event as ‘one of the great days in the history of Islam and Great Britain.’

The [left but robustly low-class] Mirror’s exposé had been triggered by Vaz saying he would advocate decriminalization of brothels and their ‘sex workers.’ {A modern ‘liberal’ in thought and deed! – Rushdie needed to spend three years hiding in Oxford colleges from the likes of Vaz before MI5 estimated that the mad-Muesli threat to his life had abated.

Needless to say, MSM quickly forgot/suppressed Britain’s first intimation of Muesli invasion; but ordinary mortals remembered, so in 1996 I received the occasional phone call of support for The g Factor from ‘Salman Rushdie’....}


CHINESE ADVISE RACE REALISM

Text from an inflight Air China magazine posted on social media prompted outrage among the righteous after it was noticed to warn passengers to London that “precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people” (Guardian, 7 ix).

The text, tweeted by Beijing-based producer Haze Fan of US news channel CNBC, added: “We advise tourists not to go out alone at night, and females always to be accompanied by another person when travelling.”

Srindopakeshi MPs in London were promptly forthcoming to insist their own ‘Asian’ areas were safe {since proclivities for forced marriages, honour killings, female ‘cutting’, and drug-fuelled paedophilic prostitution did not target Chinese visitors....}.
   
The airline was China’s flag carrier and had two flights a day from Beijing to Heathrow. It operated a total of 98 international routes. Figures from VisitBritain showed the number of trips to the UK from China rose by 46% last year to 270,000. Total expenditure from these visits was estimated at £586m and the average length of stay was 15 nights.

    The resulting British outcry elicited an apology and withdrawal of the advert by Wings of China; but the rest of the Chinese media blamed Britain’s “hypocrisy” in trying to defend its bizarre immigration policies (Daily Telegraph, 9 ix).


GRAMMARS GET GO-AHEAD

 In a symbolic victory for realistic educational elitism, Yukay’s new PM Mendacious May – who had done nothing in her first two months of office except buy a few large pearl necklaces – let it be known she would graciously consider thinking about allowing the creation of a few new so-called grammar schools in England.

 Rejoicing among ‘Conservatives’ was unconstrained at this possible deviation from fifty years of lib-left educational dogma – though it was noteworthy that resultant frenetic discussion in MSM involved virtually no mention of IQ, let alone the g factor or The g Factor, and that the new acknowledgment of the need for educational selection by something other than house prices and religious pretensions (‘On your knees to skip the fees,’ parents joked) had to be cloaked in blarney saying the possible change – if allowed by Britain’s gormless parliamentarians (chiefly concerned to overthrow ophalmologist Basher Assad, to avoid confronting Muesli mediaevalism, to destroy the UK’s energy supplies and to turn every back garden into a rat- and badger-infested rubbish heap of unemptied bins) – would “focus” on providing “inclusive” grammar schools for all (and especially for children from poor ooops disadvantaged backgrounds).

A bright spot was that England’s elderly egalitarian ‘chief inspector of schools’ felt obliged to warn that MM’S plans “threatened up to 20 years of progress in the education system” (Times, 9 ix) – “progress” that had seen Britain’s position in international school league tables slide to a dismal 40th.


NATIONALISTS GET APOLOGY FROM CLINTON

 As Donald Trump’s statesmanlike visit with the President of Mexico paid off in improved poll ratings, a tired Hillary Clinton -- downed by a poor TV quizzing and by coughing fits -- resorted to insulting Trump supporters as ‘racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes and Islamophobes’ – a “basket of deplorables”*. “Some of those folks,” she added in a talk to LGBTQs, “they are irredeemable.”

She soon apologized as advisers warned against thus alienating millions of Americans with her predictable political correctness; but her increasingly notable lameness and staleness were remarked by star US rightist Pat Buchanan (9 ix):

"....Donald Trump's message has begun to come through — loud, clear and consistent.  He will secure the border. He will renegotiate the trade deals that have been killing U.S. manufacturing and costing American jobs. He will be a law-and-order president who will put America first. He will keep us out of wars like Iraq. He will talk to Vladimir Putin, smash ISIS, back the cops and the vets, and rebuild the military

    Other than being the first woman president, what is the great change that Hillary Clinton offers America?  The Clinton campaign has a big, big problem.

* ‘Old Deplorables’ could prove a good title for The Donald’s supporters. -- Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany (‘Kaiser Bill’), who was famously dismissive of British soldiery, allegedly issued an order on 19 August 1914 to "exterminate ... the treacherous English and walk over General French's contemptible little army". Hence, in later years, the proud survivors of the victorious regular army dubbed themselves ‘The Old Contemptibles.’

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TOP UNI BLASTS PEECEE

The University of Chicago sent new students a blunt statement opposing some of the hallmarks of campus political correctness (New York Times, 27 viii). “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” John Ellison, dean of students, wrote to incoming undergrads.

It was a not-so-veiled rebuke to the protests calling for limits on what kinds of speech should be condoned on campus, and who should be allowed to speak, that had rocked Yale, Wesleyan, Oberlin and many other universities.

Some alumni, dismayed by the trend, had withheld donations from their alma maters. The Chicago letter echoed policies that were already in place there and at a number of other universities calling for “the freedom to espouse and explore a wide range of ideas.” But its stark wording, coming from one of the nation’s leading universities, and in a routine correspondence that usually contained nothing more contentious than a dining hall schedule, felt to people on all sides like a statement.

    Kevin Gannon, a history professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, dismissed the letter on his website as “a manifesto looking for an audience,” one that “relies on caricature and bogeymen rather than reason and nuance.”

But the Heritage Foundation wrote on Facebook that the letter “will make you stand up and cheer”; and the New York Magazine reckoned ([/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/the-university-of-chicagos-anti-safe-space-letter-matters.html]26 viii) “The U.Chicago letter could be a useful nudge to help get other, more timorous university administrators to stand up and do their jobs.”


MAD MULTICULTI MERKEL MEETS MAYHEM

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was obliged to postpone announcement of her candidacy for her country’s 2017 elections amid serious disquiet among her ruling coalition partners at her “welcome policy” towards refugees (Sunday Times, 28 viii). Der Spiegel, the influential German news magazine, claimed that the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), ‘junior’ partners of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), had still to endorse Merkel as their joint candidate. The Reichskanzlerin had hoped to be confirmed at her own party’s conference in December, but this might have to be postponed. The German general election was expected in September 2017. Merkel, chancellor since 2005, was expected by cognoscenti metrowallahs to seek a fourth term at the helm of German Empire IV.

    Merkel’s latest woes came at the end of a week in which she heard first hand of the impact of her policy on her neighbours. The German leader met 15 EU leaders in Berlin and in Italy, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Her “grand tour” was ostensibly to prepare for a summit in Slovakia on September 16th at which the 27 remaining EU members would agree a joint stance on Brexit. Britain was not invited.

    Instead, the pious but powerful Merkel was forced to listen to a tirade of complaints from central European countries resisting attempts to take in more A/A migrants. Even the defence minister of Austria, Germany’s closest ally, voiced direct criticism of Merkel’s stance on immigration. “Germany must say clearly: the borders are closed,” said Hans Peter Doskozil.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s fervently anti-migration prime minister, vowed to turn the fence that he had erected along the border with Serbia in an effort to stop asylum seekers into a “robust defence system.” “The borders cannot be protected with flowers and cuddly toys, but need policemen, soldiers and weapons,” he said.

 
PARISIANS PROTEST PEECEE  


50K signatures of north-Parisian property owners were quickly forthcoming in protest against a socialist scheme to house A/A migrants in wooden shacks near apartment blocks where flats often cost £3M (Daily Mail, 1 ix). Evidently the joys of diversity and multiculti integration were not on the agenda of the good republicans, who said they were apprehensive of the noise, filth and crime that would be involved – not to mention the likely reduction in the value of their bijou homes.

“There will be two migrant camps, one for men only, and one for women and children,” said Ms Hidalgo, the socialist mayorette who was a close ally of President Francois Hollande and had to deal with the 100 new A/A’s who arrived daily in Paris demanding food and shelter. The French capital was already inundated with migrants who slept rough among their discarded rubbish in city parks, or under flyovers or railway bridges.


PEECEE FINISHING?

  As Mad Multiculti Mutti Merkel found herself in only third place in north German elections (behind both Social Democrats and the anti-A/A-immigrant Alternative for Germany), historian Tim Stanley went probably further than any other major Western columnist in identifying and delineating the widespread rise of nationalism and the decline of out-of-control ‘liberalism’ which had done so much to generate the tyrannous anti-racism under which the world cowered (Daily Telegraph, 3 ix). A sample, on PeeCee:

"....in recent decades liberals have used the state to promote political correctness. At best it’s a new code of manners for a multicultural society. At worst, it is thought-policing, attempting to make people say things they don’t really think. Prejudices have not been so much confronted as suppressed.

....The communists made the mistake of believing they could make everyone equal by declaring them to be so. Liberals thought society was more tolerant because they banned vile words from the public sphere. Only now are liberals learning that this is not how human beings work. The revival of nationalism might indicate that people do still define themselves by ethnicity.

    Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s also possible that voters are reacting rationally – rather than emotionally – to policy failure. Which brings us to Brexit. Since the June 23 referendum, liberals have hit us with academic papers, speeches, TV documentaries etc analysing why the British people voted Leave, and the answer seems to be everything from racism to class to love of imperial weights and measures.

    Few liberals have yet to concede that it might have had something to do with the EU being rubbish. The EU, the greatest liberal project of them all, simply doesn’t work. There’s nothing inherently liberal about trying to make 28 countries operate as one, but liberals chose to make it their crusade. The British see its flaws and voted out.

    It’s possible that the same cold calculation lies behind the success of Donald Trump. Polls suggest that a significant proportion of his voters don’t actually like him. But they’re angry at disappearing jobs, ceaseless wars and illegal immigration. They look at Hillary Clinton, one of the West’s last true liberals left standing, and they see someone responsible for a lot of their problems. On balance, they sigh, better him than her.

    For me, I would prefer to praise liberalism than see it buried. It has done a lot of good for civilisation; many of its tenets are civilisation. But political traditions have to adapt to survive. Liberals, alas, have refused to accept their mistakes. They prefer to cast them as moral necessities and question the decency of those who challenge them. Their opponents are not all animals. Their ex-voters are not all monstrous fools. And liberals must learn that you’ll never win a voter over if you keep calling them stupid"


MULTICULTI MP EXPOSED

 Prominent Labourite and Privy Councillor Keith Vaz, Britain’s longest-standing ‘Asian’ (in fact Indian [Goan-parented]) parliamentarian, stood down as Chairman of the Home Office Select Committee of the Commons when the Sunday Mirror (4 ix) front-paged its ‘sting’ proof of his using rent boys and hard drugs – no doubt to the embarrassment of his wife and children. Cambridge-graduated lawyer Vaz, 60, had said he was a washing machine salesman called Jim. The unctuous though probably hardworking expense-claimer had first come to wide attention for his censorious support of book-burning Mueslis. Wikipedia:

"Shortly after being elected in 1989, Vaz led a march of several thousands of Muslims in Leicester calling for Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses to be banned. According to Rushdie's autobiography Joseph Anton, as quoted by Douglas Murray in The Spectator, Vaz had earlier promised his support against the fatwa. Vaz said, in that phone conversation, that what had happened was ‘appalling, absolutely appalling,’ and promised his ‘full support’.

A few weeks later, however, he was one of the main speakers at a demonstration against The Satanic Verses attended by over three thousand Muslims, and described that event as ‘one of the great days in the history of Islam and Great Britain.’

The [left but robustly low-class] Mirror’s exposé had been triggered by Vaz saying he would advocate decriminalization of brothels and their ‘sex workers.’ {A modern ‘liberal’ in thought and deed! – Rushdie needed to spend three years hiding in Oxford colleges from the likes of Vaz before MI5 estimated that the mad-Muesli threat to his life had abated. Needless to say, MSM quickly forgot/suppressed Britain’s first intimation of Muesli invasion; but ordinary mortals remembered, so in 1996 I received the occasional phone call of support for The g Factor from ‘Salman Rushdie’....}

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Comments? Email Chris Brand. -- CV for Chris Brand. -- Some history.

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