James Watson won the Nobel Prize in 1962 along with Francis Crick for discovering the double helix structure of DNA.

New York Times, 1 Jan 2019:

      “James Watson Won’t Stop Talking About Race”

The Nobel-winning biologist has drawn global criticism with unfounded pronouncements on genetics, race and intelligence. He still thinks he’s right, a new documentary finds.

“Decoding Watson,” a new film about Dr. James D. Watson explores the gulf between his scientific brilliance and his views on race.

It has been more than a decade since James D. Watson, a founder of modern genetics, landed in a kind of professional exile by suggesting that black people are intrinsically less intelligent than whites.

In 2007, Dr. Watson, who shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, told a British journalist that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really.”

Moreover, he added, although he wished everyone were equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Dr. Watson’s comments reverberated around the world, and he was forced to retire from his job as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, although he retains an office there.

He apologized publicly and “unreservedly,’’ and in later interviews he sometimes suggested that he had been playing the provocateur — his trademark role — or had not understood that his comments would be made public.

Ever since, Dr. Watson, 90, has been largely absent from the public eye. His speaking invitations evaporated. In 2014, he became the first living Nobelist to sell his medal, citing a depleted income from having been designated a “nonperson.’’

But his remarks have lingered. They have been invoked to support white supremacist views, and scientists routinely excoriate Dr. Watson when his name surfaces on social media.

Eric Lander, the director of the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, elicited an outcry last spring with a toast he made to Dr. Watson’s involvement in the early days of the Human Genome Project. Dr. Lander quickly apologized.

“I reject his views as despicable,” Dr. Lander wrote to Broad scientists. “They have no place in science, which must welcome everyone. I was wrong to toast, and I’m sorry.’’

And yet, offered the chance recently to recast a tarnished legacy, Dr. Watson has chosen to reaffirm it, this time on camera. In a new documentary, “American Masters: Decoding Watson,’’ to be broadcast on P.B.S. on Wednesday night, he is asked whether his views about the relationship between race and intelligence have changed.

“No,’’ Dr. Watson said. “Not at all. I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature. But I haven’t seen any knowledge. And there’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on I.Q. tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic.’’

Dr. Watson adds that he takes no pleasure in “the difference between blacks and whites’’ and wishes it didn’t exist. “It’s awful, just like it’s awful for schizophrenics,’’ he says. (His son Rufus was diagnosed in his teens with schizophrenia.) Dr. Watson continues: “If the difference exists, we have to ask ourselves, how can we try and make it better?”

[...]

“There are powerful methods for studying the genetic and environmental origins of individual differences, but not for studying the causes of average differences between groups,” Dr. Plomin he writes in an afterword to be published this spring in the paperback edition of his book, “Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are.”

Whether Dr. Watson was aware of any of this science is unclear. In the film, he appears to have grown increasingly isolated. He mentions missing Francis Crick, his collaborator in the race to decipher the structure of DNA.

“We liked each other,’’ Dr. Watson says of Dr. Crick. “I couldn’t get enough of him.’’

As history now knows, the duo was able to solve the puzzle in 1953, with their hallmark models of cardboard and metal only with the help of another scientist, Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray photograph of the DNA molecule was shown to Dr. Watson without her permission.

The tools of molecular biology unlocked by their discovery have since been used to trace humanity’s prehistory, devise lifesaving therapies, and develop Crispr, a gene-editing technology that was used recently, and unethically, to alter the DNA of twin human embryos.

And Dr. Watson became perhaps the most influential biologist of the second half of the 20th century. His textbook, “Molecular Biology of the Gene,’’ helped define the new field. First in a laboratory at Harvard and then at Cold Spring Harbor, he trained a new generation of molecular biologists and used his star power to champion such projects as the first sequencing of the human genome.

“You knew when you heard him that you were at the start of a revolution in understanding,’’ Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied with Dr. Watson in the 1960s, says in “Decoding Watson.’’

“You felt as if you were part of this tiny group of people who had seen the light.’’

Complete story at New York Times

Related at Majorityrights: James Watson Doesn’t Exist.

Minutes into the new year, 2019 on Poznan’s Old Market Square

The minutes leading up to and moment of the change to the New Year in Poznan’s Old Market…

I don’t know why I stopped the video there (Part1), shouldn’t have ...but I did resume a second part a minute or two later…

Poznan’s Old Market Square is the best place for New Years that I’ve ever been. It’s actually not “the place to go” for New Years and consequently, it turns out to be optimal: not too crowded and yet more than festive enough to enjoy locals on an interpersonal scale, in their merriment:

Never a fan of Brexit, Bill Ballie looks upon its failure as an opportunity to reconsider the reality and priority of national interrelations….

Nation Revisited # 147 January 2019:

Books and Authors.

Oswald Mosley’s 1961 book ‘Mosley: Right or Wrong’ covered almost everything but he couldn’t know that the Soviet Union would collapse, or that the Whites would desert Africa so quickly.

All movements have their books. We had Mosley’s many works, the National Front had John Tyndall’s ‘Six Principles of British Nationalism’, and the National Socialist Movement had ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elder of Zion’, which first appeared in Russia in 1903. It’s supposed to be the minutes of a meeting held by the Jews to plan their conquest of the world. Henry Ford was so impressed by it that he had thousands of copies distributed, but most historians dismiss it as a Tsarist forgery.

Many books and authors are misunderstood. Oswald Spengler’s gloomy forecasts are based on culture. This put him at odds with the Nazis who were obsessed with ‘racial purity’. In fact, he was in the same camp as Nietzsche, Evola, Mosley, Yockey and Dugin, who all rejected strictly biological racism.

Those who dream of a Golden Age with knights in shining armour defended fair damsels, often gravitate to Tolkien with his dwarves and Hobbits. Tolkien once subscribed to ‘Candour’ but that doesn’t prove anything. His strange world of fantasy has got nothing to do with the economic forces driving the modern world. Those who are opposed to plutocracy cannot seek refuge in fantasy.

The ‘Wizard of Oz’ was a landmark film released in 1939, based on the book by Lyman Frank Baum published in 1900. It tells the story of Dorothy and her friends, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man. They follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City in search of the Wizard of Oz. On their way, they encounter the terrible Witch of the West. At first sight, this is just a children’s story, but Dorothy and her friends were really pilgrims in search of the truth, the Yellow Brick Road was life itself, the Wizard represented Good and the wicked witch Evil. In the end, they discovered: “There’s No Place Like Home”.

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Voice of Europe, “Flag of shame: Video of French protesters tearing down EU flag goes viral”, 30 Dec 2018:

During the seventh consecutive weekend of yellow vest protests in Paris, a group of protesters can be seen taking down the EU flag.

             

The sources of the video, which surfaced yesterday, say it took place during Act VII (the seventh protest weekend).

When the flag is taken down people cheer and a French account that posted the video calls it “the flag of shame”.

Yellow vest protests took place all over France and one of the targets of the protesters was the mainstream media as it “spread fake news” about the size of the movement.

video

Voice of Europe@V_of_Europe
French yellow vest protesters tear down EU flag in move against globalism.

TruthDig.org, 27 Dec 2018:

Universal Basic Income Is Easier Than It Looks

Calls for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have been increasing, most recently as part of the “Green New Deal” introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress. A UBI is a monthly payment to all adults with no strings attached, similar to Social Security. Critics say the Green New Deal asks too much of the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it, but taxing the rich is not what the resolution proposes. It says funding would primarily come from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks,” among other vehicles.

The Federal Reserve alone could do the job. It could buy “Green” federal bonds with money created on its balance sheet, just as the Fed funded the purchase of $3.7 trillion in bonds in its “quantitative easing” program to save the banks. The Treasury could also do it. The Treasury has the constitutional power to issue coins in any denomination, even trillion dollar coins. What prevents legislators from pursuing those options is the fear of hyperinflation from excess “demand” (spendable income) driving prices up. But in fact the consumer economy is chronically short of spendable income, due to the way money enters the consumer economy. We actually need regular injections of money to avoid a “balance sheet recession” and allow for growth, and a UBI is one way to do it.

The pros and cons of a UBI are hotly debated and have been discussed elsewhere. The point here is to show that it could actually be funded year after year without driving up taxes or prices. New money is continually being added to the money supply, but it is added as debt created privately by banks. (How banks, rather than the government, create most of the money supply today is explained on the Bank of England website here.) A UBI would replace money-created-as-debt with debt-free money—a “debt jubilee” for consumers—while leaving the money supply for the most part unchanged; and to the extent that new money is added, it could create demand needed to fill the gap between actual and potential productivity.

The Debt Overhang Crippling Economies

The “bank money” composing most of the money in circulation is created only when someone borrows, and today businesses and consumers are burdened with debts that are higher than ever before. In 2018, credit card debt alone exceeded $1 trillion, student debt exceeded $1.5 trillion, auto loan debt exceeded $1.1 trillion, and non-financial corporate debt hit $5.7 trillion. When businesses and individuals pay down old loans rather than taking out new loans, the money supply shrinks, causing a “balance sheet recession.” In that situation, the central bank, rather than removing money from the economy (as the Fed is doing now), needs to add money to fill the gap between debt and the spendable income available to repay it.

Debt always grows faster than the money available to repay it. One problem is the interest, which is not created along with the principal, so more money is always owed back than was created in the original loan. Beyond that, some of the money created as debt is held off the consumer market by “savers” and investors who place it elsewhere, making it unavailable to companies selling their wares and the wage-earners they employ. The result is a debt bubble that continues to grow until it is not sustainable and the system collapses, in the familiar death spiral euphemistically called the “business cycle.” As economist Michael Hudson shows in his 2018 book, “… and Forgive Them Their Debts,” this inevitable debt overhang was corrected historically with periodic “debt jubilees”—debt forgiveness—something he argues we need to do again today.

For governments, a debt jubilee could be effected by allowing the central bank to buy government securities and hold them on its books. For individuals, one way to do it fairly across the board would be with a UBI.

Why a UBI Need Not Be Inflationary

In a 2018 book called “The Road to Debt Bondage: How Banks Create Unpayable Debt,” political economist Derryl Hermanutz proposes a central-bank-issued UBI of $1,000 per month, credited directly to people’s bank accounts. Assuming this payment went to all U.S. residents over 18, or about 250 million people, the outlay would be about $2.5 trillion annually. For people with overdue debt, Hermanutz proposes that it automatically go to pay down those debts. Since money is created as loans and extinguished when they are repaid, that portion of a UBI disbursement would be extinguished along with the debt.

People who were current on their debts could choose whether or not to pay them down, but many would also no doubt go for that option. Hermanutz estimates that roughly half of a UBI payout could be extinguished in this way through mandatory and voluntary loan repayments. That money would not increase the money supply or demand. It would just allow debtors to spend on necessities with debt-free money rather than hocking their futures with unrepayable debt.

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Not doing this for free.

Trad News, “FRENCH POLICE THREATEN TO JOIN THE YELLOW VEST PROTESTS”, 25 Dec 2018:

Nobody has suffered more from the Yellow Vest protests that have been rocking France than the French police themselves. Since the demonstrations and riots began several weeks ago, they have been working overtime to contain the chaos and bearing the brunt of the public’s anger.

But now it looks like they have reached breaking point, as the three main police unions have now threatened to join the protests in order to force the government to pay overtime and reverse cuts to the police budget.

As reported by Newsweek:

On Wednesday, French officials met with police trade union leaders to work out a deal to soothe anger in law enforcement ranks regarding overwork, unpaid overtime and difficult working conditions, Le Monde reported.

But some activists are calling on police to walk out on government negotiations, close down police stations and join the “gilets jaunes”—or yellow vest—protesters with whom they have been facing off since November 17.

Negotiations between three unions—Alliance, UNSA-Police and Unity-SGP-FO—and Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Tuesday failed to reach a settlement. As talks resumed on Wednesday, France 24 reported that activists were calling on forces across the country to commit to a “slowdown” and only respond to emergencies until the dispute had been settled.

Police have accumulated some 23 million hours of overtime that is yet to be paid. According to The Local France, police union leader Frédéric Lagache explained, “Faced with this irresponsibility [of the government], we are forced to be irresponsible in our actions.”

Two of the unions have called for Yellow-Vest-style demonstrations by police officers on Wednesday (Dec 26th), referring to “Act 1,” “Act II” and “Act III,” the same language used by the Yellow Vest demonstrators to refer to their protests. In addition to unpaid overtime, the police unions are also opposed to cuts to the national police budget of around $70.8 million.

I am not going to watch the video. I’ve already seen enough Islamic beheading videos to have the idea. But “Western Voices” advice may be what some of you need:

Western Voices World News, Dec 2018:

Why I Watched the Infamous Murder Video and Why You Should Too

       

Two young blonde Scandinavian girls thought it would be a good idea to go hiking in Morocco, North Africa. Question: Who or what compelled them to think this was a good idea? This link will give you directions on how to find this horrible, multicultural event. Be warned.

For the last two days, a terrifying and gruesome video has gone viral on the internet. The short clip was recorded by two of the Islamists guilty of raping and murdering two Scandinavian tourists in their twenties.

I was browsing 4chan when a thread caught my attention, the discussion was about the recent murder of two Scandinavian girls in the Moroccan Atlas mountains. There I found the link containing the infamous video, which I decided to watch from start to finish.

Many people won’t be able to watch it and I do not blame them, it was tough to watch it until the end and it left me trembling with anger, but it’s deeply important to see certain terrible facts with our own eyes.

Here is a description of what happens in the video:

- outside, nighttime, phone/flashlight is on, rocky area

- she is laying down on her stomach, pants pulled down

- two Arabs standing over her speaking Arabic

- one begins sawing the back of her neck with a long knife

- she exclaims “ow! ow!” before yelling “MOOOOR!” (Danish for “mother”, she is calling for her mom)

- she tried to roll over which only results in the guy sawing the front of her throat

- blood everywhere now

- the guy filming puts his foot on her face to hold her there

- she meekly reaches up to try and repel the knife wielder sawing through her throat

- moments later her arms go limp as she loses consciousness

- guy continues cutting until her head is off

- carries it over to the tent and throws it on the ground

- one of them spits on the decapitated head

These girls could have been your daughters, sisters, friends.

Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away, this is what “Diversity” will bring to our homelands, fight back. This video must be watched and shared, the murder recorded shows the brutality and hatred these people feel towards us Europeans, their deaths must not be forgotten and must be avenged.

PC culture and Neoliberalism brainwashed people into believing the world is some kind of rainbow heaven where nothing bad ever happens, these two girls believed that lie and DIED for this.

Related at Majorityrights:

Vigilant not to assimilate Israeli war, nor that of any son of Abraham

Mattis resigns in disagreement with Trump, citing need to maintain unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.

CNBC, “Defense Secretary James Mattis is quitting because he doesn’t agree with Trump”, 20 December 2018:

- Defense Secretary James Mattis will be stepping down at the end of February, telling President Donald Trump in a letter that he has “a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

- Mattis served as Trump’s secretary of defense since the start of the Trump administration.

- “General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations,” Trump says.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary James Mattis will be stepping down at the end of February, telling President Donald Trump in a letter Thursday that he has “a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

In his extraordinary letter to Trump, Mattis said that a long-held “core belief” of his “is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.”

Without maintaining those alliances, he wrote, “we cannot protect our interests or serve” the role of an “indispensable nation in the free world.”

The president has frequently lashed out at America’s allies in France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, while at times appearing to side with U.S. adversaries over his own officials.

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors,” Mattis said, “are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.”

Mattis’ resignation letter, which a Pentagon spokeswoman said was hand-delivered to the president Thursday afternoon, comes on the heels of Trump’s controversial plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

That announcement on Wednesday will reportedly take more than 2,000 U.S. service members out of the country, ending the ground strategy against the Islamic State. Trump said in a tweet Wednesday morning that “we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

The move was met with heated criticism from a number of Trump’s usual allies in Congress. But Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Trump made the “correct” move, because the U.S. troops had no legal right to be in Syria.

On Thursday evening, defense officials told NBC News that the White House has ordered the Pentagon to look into plans for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, as well.

CNBC, “Read James Mattis’ resignation letter to Trump: ‘We must be resolute’ against Russia and China”, 20 Dec 2018:

In a letter addressed to Trump, Mattis said that “because you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” on a number of subjects, “I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

In his letter, Mattis cited the importance of US alliances, particularly NATO, and said the US must stand ‘resolute and unambiguous’ in the face of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia.

Mattis’ resignation comes on the heels of Trump’s controversial plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

That announcement on Wednesday will reportedly take more than 2,000 U.S. servicemembers out of the country, ending the ground strategy against the Islamic State. Trump said in a tweet Wednesday morning that “we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

Neither the White House nor The Pentagon immediately responded to CNBC’s requests for comment on the president’s announcement.

Read Mattis’ full letter to the president below:

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