Open Thread 49: Final Football Thread

This is hopefully the last football thread for the next two years. Please try to keep all footballing talk to this thread in the next few days.

I suspect that Belgium will beat England to take third place during the penalties, while France will beat Croatia by 2-1 or something like that.

At this point, I’m no longer invested in the results one way or the other.

My predictions: That Russia would beat Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and lose to Uruguay, all panned out; that it would lose to Spain – wrong (though mitigated by it being on penalties); that it would lose to Croatia – correct (though mitigated by it being on penalties). I also predicted that England would beat Croatia, which didn’t happen, and in a reasonably decisive manner (the Croats dominated from the second half). So that’s 4/6 – not impressive, but hardly catastrophic, even if I do say so myself.

Most powerful takes:

BTW, just a customary reminder that BBG, RFERL’s parent organization, gets close to a billion dollars of American taxpayer money every year. This is the sort of content they produce with your money.

Comments zaqan to Hendler’s piece:

Well this article didn’t age too well. The white Russian team whupped several mixed teams. In fact many mixed teams fell out quickly. Ultimately, Russia was dropped in the last 8 by an even whiter team, which went on to defeat the half African English team and will face the barely French, mostly Arab and African team in the finals. While all this cheering about Europe being darkened and diversity working in futbol, what would’ve been great squads from Ivory coast, Cameroon, Nigeria, Congo, Ghana, etc, have been cannibalized and may never see the Knockouts again. If Didier Drogba were starting today, he’d be on the French team instead of leading Ivory coast to glory. Sad! Maybe the Africans should take a lesson and import some rejected European players. And then what will the world cup even be?

See also Bryan MacDonald (RT): Too white to win? Russia boasts one of World Cup’s most ethnically diverse squads

On this note, commenter Hail has done prodigious work to quantify the racial ancestry of the European teams at World Cup 2018.

Belgium: 70% White, 22% Black, 17% Muslim
Croatia: 100% White, no Muslims
— Denmark: 90% White, 10% Black
England: 63% White, 37% Black, No Muslims
France: 33% White, 52% Black, 33% Muslim
— Germany: 83% White, <7% Black, 11% Muslim
— Iceland: 100% White, 98% Icelandic
— Poland: 100% White, disproportionately from western Poland
— Portugal: 77% White, heavy African-colonial presence with 20% Black
Russia: 84% White, 16% from Soviet periphery (Central Asia, Caucuses)
— Serbia: 94% White, 4% Muslim, 4% Gypsy[?]
— Spain: 92% White, <6% Black, No Muslims
— Switzerland: 70% White, but only 44% White-Christian
— Sweden: 91% White, <5% Black, No Muslims

He further comments:

Of note:

France has more Muslims than full-White-Christians on their ‘national’ team. By one method of calculation, the White-French ancestral component of the team is 16%.

– A majority of England ‘national’ players have at least some Subsaharan African ancestry. (This contra the concept of England is the Islamic Republic of England, even as a joke — Black numbers may approach non-Black Muslim numbers in UK already today and long-term Blacks are much bigger difficulty).

One question he asks in his blog post: Will support for less-White teams gradually wane in Europe? Presumably, beyond decidedly non-normie venues, such as this one.

Incidentally, both Britain and Portugal have substantial numbers of both Blacks and Indian subcontinentals. The first group accounts for ~20% of both teams, the second for 0%. I wonder why.

EDIT: Polish Perspective also posts an image table showing the average phenotype of each football team.

football-phenotype-2018

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. — Serbia: 94% White, 4% Muslim, 4% Gypsy[?]

    As is true in Bosnia, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Serbia are White Slavic Muslims.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serb_Muslims

  2. Polish Perspective says

    Here’s the average phenotype for every team.

    https://i.imgur.com/uqIqc8T.jpg

    Given that Sweden’s team is very Nordic, it makes the comparison to, say, Denmark quite interesting. Would people be able to tell the difference if they didn’t know which was which? Perhaps more interestingly, would they with the Polish team? The Russian one is noticeably darker, but then again the team has ~16% non-white ancestry on average. The Portuguese is darker still.

    I was surprised how Germanic the German face still looks, then again I was also intrigued at Hail’s numbers for Germany. Whenever I watched Germany’s matches the squad looked quite mixed. Not England or (god forbid) “France”-tier, but considerably more so than 2014. Seems Mr. Löw frontloaded the nogs in the starting XI.

    Serbia was also a surprise to me, basically looks quite a bit like the Russian face. I expected them to look darker/turkish, basically like greeks. While far from perfect, I think football squads do give a hint at the very least to the under-30 demographics of nations. The correlation is far from perfect, of course, since some countries(Sweden) outperform their demographics and others (England) underperform them in terms of whiteness. Nevertheless, many phenotype maps are no longer accurate for many Western European countries given how mixed they are. Only some outliers like Iceland, arguably Denmark and Finland still provide some coherence in this regard. Sweden only did because the coach is secretly based, but based coaches can’t hide the warts forever.

  3. Thulean Friend says

    On demographics & the World Cup. Here’s the average facial phenotype for every team.

    https://i.imgur.com/zRQlyvP.jpg

  4. “Diversity” is just a front for Anglo imperialism, they want to impose their social dynamics on everyone else, hence Russia (185 ethnicities) is not up snuff since, most belong to the same macro race (the only criterion to braindead Anglos) . To be consistent, Anglo liberals would have to say that places like India and Congo, with their thousands of languages, aren’t diverse, since their race-masochistic worldview (white, as proxy for Anglo, at the center of everything) hinges on the same conceit as that of the Anglo race imperialists of the last two centuries.

  5. Spisarevski says

    As is true in Bosnia, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Serbia are White Slavic Muslims.

    White muslims are honorary arabs/turks. They are traitors to their blood and those on the Balkans are Turkey’s fifth column (see for example Erdogan’s recent election rally in Sarajevo).

    I have nothing but contempt for them. If their ancestors were forcefully converted to Islam, they should certainly be able to convert voluntarily back to the religion of their people. But they don’t, because they are spiritual turks of the lowest sort (and the few who aren’t do convert back to Orthodoxy).

  6. Ali Choudhury says

    The Indian sub-continentals prefer cricket. Football is too much hard work.

  7. As soon as Germany and Italy added their first non white into the team meant I stopped supporting them.

  8. For a bunch of weak guys, the Indians sure showed a good account of themselves at Imphal right?

  9. for-the-record says

    Some absolutely priceless quotes from the RFE/Radio Liberty piece:

    And besides naturalized Brazilian Mario Fernandes and a few players whose parents came from Ukraine and Belarus when they belonged to the Soviet Union, the Russian team is bereft of non-Russian players.

    “Many Russians tend to view diversity of European squads such as France, Germany, England, and Switzerland as a sign of the corresponding nations’ weakness and the erosion of traditional cultures,” Malamud said.

    He said there’s a common perception in Russia: “Europe is dying under the hordes of invading barbarians.”

    “It’s basically a part of the country’s official ideology,” he said.

    Likewise, the national teams from former Yugoslav republics — Serbia and Croatia in this World Cup — are virtually entirely made up of Serbs and Croats, respectively.

    Meanwhile, two of the Swiss squad’s best players are also from the former Yugoslavia: Xherdan Shaqiri, who was born in Kosovo, and Granit Xhaka — whose parents are ethnic Albanian — each scored a goal to defeat Serbia 2-1 on June 22.

    Both also celebrated their strikes by making a “double-eagle” hand gesture, a tribute to the two-headed eagle on the Albanian flag.

  10. Daniel Chieh says

    Isn’t air supremacy nice?

  11. I hope AK’s lousy prediction record holds and Croatia wins. It would change the world, and we could use some change. (There are a few small towns around Bratislava that are mostly settled by the descendants of Croats who escaped the Ottoman onslaught in 16th century; good people, great duck pate, let them win this one.)

    The colour obsessions of our culture overlords have triggered an eclectic backlash: at this point it has to be Croatia all the way and even I am a bit uncomfortable with all the ‘whiteness’ talk. Robust mating requires variety, and we have been down this identity hole before, it was a cul-de-sac, as it always is. But that can wait.

  12. Their ancestors were mostly Bogomils who were forcefully converted to Christianity, and thus easily betrayed their Christian faith when the Turks took over.

  13. If only the racist Anglo supremacists could grasp that diversity is Russia’s greatest strength

  14. Most of the British soldiers were British or Gurkha

  15. Alexander would beg to disagree?

  16. What about the Sikhs, Rajputs, and Pathans? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_race

  17. I have a really hard time believing that the Olympics can continue to have more and more Africans representing European countries and a lot of white people will continue to tune in. Even others. I’m sure the Chinese don’t want to see that either. It is enough of a boring, monomaniac mutant contest to begin with, without stripping it of real nationalities and identity. Maybe, someone could come up with an authentic alternative. I know which one I’d watch.

    I’m not sure about soccer though, because it is a little different. There are leagues and people watch them, so it is not just like a once every four years thing. It appeals to soccer fans in addition to the casuals. In a multicult society, people like the outlet of being allowed to be tribalistic, even if it means rooting for laundry.

    The NBA seems to have remained relatively popular with whites even though they’ve nearly gone full African.

  18. So are whites rooting for black NBA players the key psychological reason why so many whites are into being cuckolded.?

  19. Hyperborean says

    I’m sure the Chinese don’t want to see that either.

    I am not sure. Basketball and the NBA is a big thing in China and while that seems to produce negrophilia in some young people I also hear things similar to this article:

    https://m.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2148023/chinas-gaming-world-lucky-europeans-and-unlucky

    E.g one of my classmates (a fair-skinned girl) was talking about happy she was that she had ‘European skin’ and not ‘African skin’.

    Human emotions are complicated things.

  20. Daniel Chieh says
  21. what would’ve been great squads from Ivory coast, Cameroon, Nigeria, Congo, Ghana, etc, have been cannibalized

    “Africa wins again.”

  22. And just how did you become an expert in porn hub stats and have such an intimate familiarity with that site? I am more disturbed by how popular hentai is, I mean imagine Donald Duck having anal sex with Minnie Mouse :/

  23. Daniel Chieh says

    Google is great. I wanted to check if there are truth to the meme, and was checking for some metrics. Infographics are fun.

    Maybe ebony means something else, but “cuck” isn’t hitting top searches ATM.

  24. anonymous coward says

    After the (((usual suspects))) successfully normalized degeneracy in the form of ‘blowjobs’ and ‘anal sex’, cuckoldry was next in line. For a short while swingers and cuckolds and ‘polyamory’ were all over serious media. But then internet trolls and shitlords suddenly (and unexpectedly!) ruined this plan and made ‘cuck’ into a dirty four letter word. Maybe (((they))) will try again in a decade or too.

  25. Here’s the average phenotype for every team.

    I don’t think the Russian composite accurately reflects a team with only 15% Caucasian and Central Asian ancestry. It looks more like 25% to 50% Asian.

  26. Fortunately US/UK are retreating to their own shores, the rest of the world won’t have to deal with you wankers playing hegemon much longer.

  27. Hyperborean says

    American ‘Interracial’ usually (though not always) means African men with European or Asian women. ‘Ebony’ means dark African women (i.e usually not light-skinned mulattas) with usually European or African men.

    I am surprised that ‘Ebony’ ranks so high.
    If ‘Ebony’ women are searched so much, why does it seem like they are at the bottom of the American sexual social hierarchy?

    Also, ‘femdom’ and ‘trans’ up 152% and 124%? And they say people don’t listen to the media.

  28. This theory has been debunked so many times. IRL they were the former landed classes who wanted to retain their position under Turkish rule.

  29. Daniel Chieh says

    Yeah, trans is kinda creepy. Also the very random huge burst for “cheerleader” is weird, was there a cheerleader related movie or something?

    Also epic lol: fidget spinner.

  30. Hyperborean says

    Also epic lol: fidget spinner.

    Since I didn’t know that was the English word for it, I interpreted it in a different way. Actual fidget spinners sound a lot more peculiar.

  31. Once the Anglo racists have retreated, finally the noble Russian will be free to enjoy the vibrant and diverse Chechnen and Mordvin cultures in peace

  32. And the Anglos will enjoy the Jamaicans, Somalis, Latinx, and Pakis. One Love!

  33. Surprising that the third most popular ‘actress’ is an Arab

  34. I’m confused; are Anglos bad because they are racists or bad because they are not racist?

  35. There is an undeniable weirdness to it. I think a certain subset of black sportstars’ fame comes from leftism. Some people are really looking or hoping for black accomplishments to vaunt, but there are not many outside of sports, as Nixon once noted when he was in the White House.

    I think still others get caught in a routine. I know some Boston Celtics fans. In the ’80s they had a championship team whose star players were mostly white. It happened in their youth. This undoubtedly creates some form of nostalgia.

    Finally, sports is mostly a PC thing that allows one to make small talk with strangers, which is a bit more eclectic and less insipid than the weather. In an atomized society, there’s a social aspect to it, which is hard to replace. Any all-white league would be non-PC.

    In conclusion, I’d say it is more a symptom than a disease.

  36. siberiancat says

    Karlin is too harsh on the Russian team. Only one of the players, Samedov, might be considered nonwhite, and even that would be questionable: he’s half Azeri and half Russian.

    Dagoev and Gabulov are Ossetian, Kuzyaev is Kazan Tartar. They are all white. See for yourself:

    https://www.rfs.ru/national/players

  37. Hyperborean says

    Why is it surprising?

  38. They’re bad because they are arrogant and clueless enough to want to impose their values on the rest of the world.

  39. But they don’t. The British Empire did very little to impose its values on anyone else, especially other Europeans; contrast with the post-Revolutionary French or the Soviet Union (obviously Jews are to blame for lots of that, but not all of it). Also diversity is not an Anglo value, since (as you so admirably pointed out in your original comment), Anglos have a long history of racism, unlike vibrant states like Russia.

  40. Arab women aren’t very attractive.

  41. Can Tartars be considered white?

  42. Read the article before posting something so clueless you hack.

  43. If there is a turnaround in a player’s fortune they are described as “stealing into Europe from Africa”.

    I’m regularly impressed by instances of non-political correctness by the Chinese. I honestly find it quite charming, like the ability of someone newly arrived to the city from the countryside to stare at black tourists. I hope at least some of it is innate, but I’m not so sure.

    In the past, I’ve wondered if it would be possible to make mainstream movies or TV shows in China that had strong racial themes – like a team of Chinese soldiers visiting a post-apocalyptic Europe, and searching in the ruins for actual Europeans, among hordes of savage blacks and Arabs. Something that could be dubbed and exported or maybe pirated (control of the media in the West being what it is.) But the official written rules and political considerations about African relations would not seem to allow it. I wonder if it would be possible in Japan, but, then again, they have a smaller market.

  44. Felix Keverich says

    ‘Deep State’ is trying to blow up Helsinki summit.

    https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1017803960923705346

  45. Here’s another archetypical Anglobitch take, from a few years back:
    https://t.co/aWO5g8tqpt

  46. Hyperborean says

    A lot of them are unattractive but there also some Arab women who have beautiful European-type looks.

    Although the mentioned AV actress looks a lot more southern than the women I am thinking about.

  47. Daniel Chieh says

    Aren’t all of the show names fake, so wouldn’t the individuals in question just pick something exotic if it adds to her popularity?

  48. Since this is an open thread, I’ll comment on a previous thread having to do with the WQ that somehow escaped my notice.

    Who women underachieve relative to their proportional representation in the cognitive elite.
    As I have mentioned a couple of times now, women are less ambitious than men as a general rule. Moreover, an abundance of potential mates seems to reduce women’s ambition even more, or perhaps it would be better to say that limited opportunities for marriage tend to maximize women’s ambition,while greater opportunities minimize it.

    https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2372-man-shortage-men-drives-women-careers.html

    Now, if you consider the fact that women are already underrepresented in the upper ranks of the cognitive elite, they would be expected to enjoy very favorable odds in the marriage market. The higher a woman’s IQ, in other words, the less likely she is to be particularly interested in achieving career success.

    I realize that educational attainment is negatively correlated with early marriage and family size, but IQ may be less predictive of educational attainment for women than it is for men. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it is an interesting possibility.

    I’m not saying that some of the other suggested explanations don’t play a role. I’m simply suggesting that opportunity cost, and simple lack of interest, may also play a role.

  49. Hyperborean says

    But the official written rules and political considerations about African relations would not seem to allow it.

    I think currently Chinese films and shows tend to depict Africans as people who China and the Chinese people need to uplift and protect in a East Asian version of the traditional European ‘civilising mission’.

    Somewhat recently, there was a sequel to a action film which took place in Africa and involved a Chinese team doing some rescue operation against an ambiguously Western corporation doing something shady. To be honest, the plot seemed very copycat American-style to me.

    And during the last Lunar New Year celebrations, there was an uproar by foreign media about a skit on the annual show which CCTV hosts.

    I didn’t watch it but this article sums up the baizuo objections: https://m.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2133558/racist-chinese-spring-festival-gala-tv-show-causes-consternation

    From the article:

    But others questioned how the segment could pass content screening as it promoted colonialism and displayed Chinese arrogance about Africa.

  50. Daniel Chieh says

    Most of it is just shitlordry imo, and a lot of the ‘worst offenses” come from a certain degree of innocence in East Asia. I was vaguely amused that by the end of, for example, Darling in the Franxx, that there are no dark-skinned people at all in the resurrected Earth that I saw. Presumably, the only humans saved by the professor were white and Japanese. I guess there aren’t any “sensitivity checkers” in Japan.

    But explicit ethnonationalism is not a thing in East Asia outside of Japan that I know of, and in fact, would be difficult given the past of struggle with the West when the same arguments were levied against Asians. China also has had univeralist philosophies for a long time, such as tianxia, and a lot of the structure is designed so that some form of universalism can work(examinations to grade people, Legalism to control people through punishment and incentives, etc.). Its probably necessary in order to be an empire.

    Its more of a general sense of heuristics than any coherent philosophy. As with most things in East Asia, its usually contextual rather than explicit.

  51. Daniel Chieh says

    Yup, paternalism is pretty much the norm. You see that in Empire of Dust too, where there’s a strange mix of “noble savage”, “these people can be uplifted” and “I’m so frustrated” in the Chinese foreman and his African employee(who I think he believes is his friend, but I’m not sure if vice versa is true).

  52. Hyperborean says

    She is Lebanese-American. Apparently a few years ago some Islamists got really enraged and sent her death threats (honestly, how tacky).

    American show names tend to be quite lame and/or generic, e.g ‘Stormy’ or ‘Candy’ or ‘Venus’, even when the AV actresses themselves have exotic ethnicities.

  53. Anglos: impose their values on Russia by writing silly articles
    Russians: imposed their values on Hungarians and Czechs with tanks

  54. Wasn’t it both? There were also Bosniak peasants, and the Bogomil heresy overlapped Bosniak areas. And the Bosnians did have their own Church that was repressed by outsiders:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Church

    It makes sense that people whose ancestors were forced into Christianity would be casual about letting it go when it became convenient to do so. I think this may also explain high levels of atheism in Czechia after the Commies invaded (you know, failed Hussite rebellion).

    But I could be wrong here.

  55. She is in fact a very average (and distinctively Arab) looking woman.

    http://beta.ems.ladbiblegroup.com/s3/content/b318e5855a95904f7114dd12d8b8c374.png

    But then the other women on the list are hardly beautiful either. I suppose that being only a little above average makes the women seem more attainable and is thus more appealing.

  56. So French nationalist commenters: are French nationalists rooting for their “national” team in the finals?

  57. BTW, if I am correct in my surmise about high IQ women, I suspect greater awareness of the heritability of intelligence to magnify the effect. You cannot have smart sons with a dumb wife. Intelligent men pass on more (if not all) of their genetic endowments for intelligence to their daughters than their sons. All known genes contributing to intelligence are located on the X chromosome, and men pass their X only to their daughters.

    Of course, this can be expected to drive feminists to distraction, possibly leading to ever more hysterical attacks on accomplished men in male-dominated fields.

  58. reiner Tor says

    That’s actually not a bad comment.

  59. Mitleser says
  60. Hyperborean says

    I don’t find her especially beautiful either, but I think the people who do do so specifically due to her Arab (and thus foreign and exotic) looks.

  61. That’s actually not a bad comment.

    Um, thanks I guess. Lol.

  62. for-the-record says

    Two coincidental events 3 days before the Trump-Putin summit:

    1. 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted for hacking DNC computers and election meddling

    2. “novichok” bottle found in Salisbury

  63. Thorfinnsson says

    All known genes contributing to intelligence are located on the X chromosome, and men pass their X only to their daughters.

    All known genes.

    Anecdotally, a friend of mine was born to a white trash single mother. His father apparently a travelling, philandering corporate executive.

    He grew up smart.

  64. reiner Tor says

    All known genes contributing to intelligence are located on the X chromosome, and men pass their X only to their daughters.

    It’s easier to locate those genes on the X chromosome, I guess. It helps that it doesn’t always get recombined.

  65. reiner Tor says

    I think the majority of our genes get expressed in the central nervous system.

  66. Mitleser says
  67. Anglos: impose their values on Russia by writing silly articles

    And applying financial pressure, NGOs, etc.

    Russians: imposed their values on Hungarians and Czechs with tanks

    Which paled in comparison to the Bolsheviks’ imposing their values on Russia. Hungary and Czechia suffered relatively little, and they are doing quite well now. The worst instance of communism was in Roman in the late stages of American-backed Ceausescu’s regime.

  68. Beginning in the mid-19th century, many historians argued that the Bosnian church had adopted the extreme dualist heresy of the Bulgarian Bogomils…

    However, later scholarship suggested that the authors of those denunciations had little or no knowledge of the situation inside Bosnia and that confusion may have been caused by the existence of genuine dualist heretics on the Dalmatian coast. Furthermore, the surviving evidence of the religious practices of the Bosnian church shows that its members accepted many things that Bogomils fiercely rejected, such as the sign of the cross, the Old Testament, the mass, the use of church buildings, and the drinking of wine. The Bosnian church should thus be considered an essentially nonheretical branch of the Roman Catholic Church, based in monastic houses in which some Eastern Orthodox practices also were observed.

    https://www.britannica.com/place/Bosnia-and-Herzegovina/Cultural-life
    So they were isolated from both Catholicism and larger Orthodox hierarchies, but not heretics to the extent the Bogomils were.

  69. And applying financial pressure, NGOs, etc.

    You’re thinking of Jews, not Anglos

    Which paled in comparison to the Bolsheviks’ imposing their values on Russia. Hungary and Czechia suffered relatively little, and they are doing quite well now. The worst instance of communism was in Roman in the late stages of American-backed Ceausescu’s regime.

    None of this changes the fact that Russians imposed their values on others much more forcefully than Anglos did in the last two centuries.

  70. reiner Tor says

    Did you read the strange thing about the boy whose clothes were burned but who apparently met the Skripals at a different location (not where they were found unconscious half an hour later), coincidentally, at the same place where this hapless couple apparently picked up the bottle (or syringe or whatever it was) with the novichok. Interestingly, that other park was never closed and decontaminated, yet the boy’s parents were told to burn all of his clothes etc.

    All this could be the result of some details being incompetently reported by the press, or the press being fed the wrong information, or whatever, but it’s quite weird.

    Also, the boy was identified using CCTV cameras, yet we’ve seen no CCTV cameras of anyone. Wouldn’t it be in the interests of the investigation to try to show a picture (facial composite and/or CCTV camera image, however bad quality it might be) of the suspected perpetrator, so that further eyewitnesses could be found?

    The weirdest thing is that there’s not even a story here, apart from the usual hysterical accusations against Russia and Putin. There’s no evidence whatsoever.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-11/its-wrong-park-how-ducks-raise-some-serious-questions-salisbury-poisonings

  71. interesting that the average French player has a darker complexion than the average player from Morocco or Tunisia

  72. You’re thinking of Jews, not Anglos

    Lol! Yes, it’s all the fault of two percent of the population that Anglos are so liberal. Small wonder that Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, etc. which had huge Jewish populations are well to the left of the average Brit, right?? Just to give one example, first wave feminism in the US and the empire involved basically no Jews other than maybe Emma Goldman.

    None of this changes the fact that Russians imposed their values on others much more forcefully than Anglos did in the last two centuries.

    Yeah those soft touch Anglos were so beloved that colonized peoples were begging them to stay!
    https://www.britannica.com/event/Indian-Mutiny
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4850592/Photos-reveal-plight-Afrikaners-concentration-camps.html

  73. Watching group stages football, I was thinking that the Iranian team was almost the same colouration and light brown appearance as team Spain, so you would imagine they were neighbouring countries.

    Of course, it is trivial when you recall that a Northern Iranian city like Tabriz has the same latitude (and therefore exposure to solar radiation) as middle-latitude Spanish cities like Ciudad Real.

  74. Bardon Kaldian says

    Er…situation was more complicated (btw, I wrote aeons ago a big chunk of that wiki text & some of my ancestors are from Bosnia & Herzegovina).

    Bogomil hypothesis was promulgated by influential 19th C Croatian historian Franjo Rački (himself a priest). It was a bold idea & it seemed to explain some murky details from older history of Bosnian kingdom, but it was eventually discarded somewhere during 1960s & later. Bosnian Church was, of course, very influential, but it was not heretic; nor was it the majority religion of Bosnian kingdom. Old Bosnia & Hum (future Herzegovina) had three “denominations”: Catholics (the most numerous “faith”), Orthodox (along eastern part of what is now Bosnia & Herzegovina) & Bosnian Church members, a regional Catholic-Orthodox mixture localized in central Bosnia & northern Hum. Bosnian kingdom fell in 1463. and Ottoman official data in 1527/8 show the following denominational composition of greater part of what is now Bosnia: Muslims 34%, Catholics 57% & Orthodox 9%; in 1624 census gave the following picture: Muslims 67%, Catholics 22% & Orthodox 11%.

    Krstjani or members of the Bosnian Church never constituted the majority- they were, in all likelihood, never more than 10% of the population (although they were influential among aristocracy, which nevertheless, with some exceptions, was mostly Catholic, as were all Bosnian kings except, perhaps, one).

  75. It’s easier to locate those genes on the X chromosome, I guess. It helps that it doesn’t always get recombined.

    Lol I hit a nerve! All those smart genes on the miniscule Y chromosome will start turning up real soon now, I’m sure! 😉

    If they don’t, you shouldn’t feel bad. I figure the fact that we have more in common with our children of the opposite sex promotes familial, and ultimately societal, solidarity and stability.

  76. songbird says

    Saudi Arabia is kind of curious because they obviously have some direct African admixture, but also some African players – and you can see how they are layered on top.

    You wouldn’t expect that sort of thing in a place where cousin marriage is really a societal problem. You would think that they’d be more tribal, despite the supposed universalism of Islam. It’s an interesting question, but I suppose there is a pretty huge foreign population in Saudi Arabia and many are likely black Africans.

    I’d consider Saudi Arabia to be a kind of hell-hole – at least climatically. I suppose they have money that draws. But I wonder if the blacks are ringers who were recruited or African laborers who came to Saudi Arabia for menial work. Of course, many are going into Yemen, which means no place is safe.

  77. Yes, it’s all the fault of two percent of the population that Anglos are so liberal

    ‘liberal’ in what sense? In an economic and democratic sense, no. In terms of the sexual revolution, homosexuality, ‘diversity’ and so on, these resulted from Jewish led movements. The current American foreign policy establishment is obviously dominated by Jews.

    Small wonder that Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, etc. which had huge Jewish populations are well to the left of the average Brit, right?

    They were when they were ruled by Jews like Bela Kun or the Stalinist-Jewish regime in Poland that was imposed by the USSR after the war.

    Yeah those soft touch Anglos were so beloved that colonized peoples were begging them to stay!

    Since you mention it, many blacks wish that the British had stayed ruling their country.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009487/We-stayed-Britain-Shock-poll-reveals-60-Jamaicans-think-theyd-better-colony.html

    There was very little interference with Indian society apart from banning the most objectionable practises like Sati and a limited number of Indian graduates. A third of the country was ruled by Indian princes. Missions were stopped after the mutiny. The number of British in India was miniscule.

    The Boer war was undertaken for resources and not to impose a British ideology on the Boers; before resources were discovered, the British had not stopped the Boers forming their own republics. . British liberals were in fact the strongest opponents of the war. The Union of South Africa was always Boer-dominated.

  78. reiner Tor says

    I found (okay, it was shared in a Facebook group I’m member of) an interesting article about the Soviet army group in Hungary. It’s in Hungarian, I merely put it here for those of you willing to learn the language for the sake of this article.

    Interestingly, the Soviet troops were totally incapable of crushing a second Hungarian revolution (and they were mostly inadequate already in 1956, they had to send reinforcements and caused way more destruction than would have been necessary for a police force against lightly armed rebels).

    Instead, they were equipped to fight WW3. Their numbers kept dwindling, but they became ever better trained and equipped, with quality weapons against quality opponents. They were also mostly preparing for large scale offensive operations.

    Apparently by the 1980s the Soviet Army didn’t have enough troops to keep Warsaw Pact countries under its thumb, except of course it was capable of destroying these countries or any of the cities in them, but not the type of policing operations needed to keep large local riots in check.

    So basically the locals believed that the purpose of the Soviet forces’ presence was to crush any further revolutions, when in fact it was not really capable of that.

    It must inform our understanding of what happened in 1989-91: Gorbachev was unable to do anything about democratization in his satellites (once their political leaders lost their nerves), due to a lack of troops, except he could have destroyed Budapest or Warsaw, but that’s not really an option when trying to keep them as satellites (and also trying to reach detente with the rival superpower and its European allies). Once democratization started in some countries, it was difficult to prevent it from spreading to others. Moreover, the process was difficult to stop at the Soviet borders. The ineffectual Soviet military actions in Vilnius in January 1991 shows that reigning in determined rioters was not a trivial task for a Soviet force trained and equipped to fight against the American and West German troops.

    Anyway, some of it is my addition, the article is mostly just about the troops in Hungary.

    http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/megszallok-homalyban

  79. reiner Tor says

    This wasn’t nearly as good as the previous one.

  80. reiner Tor says

    All those smart genes on the miniscule Y chromosome

    The Y chromosome only has one bit of information: to start the male instead of the default female program, both encoded in the other chromosomes. (That’s a slight exaggeration, since the Y chromosome does have a few inconsequential pieces of genetic information, like I think the degree of hairiness of the ear, and similar, but basically it contains no important information, except its very presence, which means “male.”)

  81. songbird says

    DNA works in weird ways. The gene for hairy ears isn’t on the Y-Chromosome, but one doesn’t see a lot of hairy-eared women.

  82. reiner Tor says

    This debate about the evilness of the British Empire sounds retarded.

  83. reiner Tor says

    I actually remember reading somewhere that ear hairiness is one of the few things which are on the Y chromosome. So a large part of the difference between two guys in that one parameter could be coming from the difference between their respective Y chromosomes.

    Maybe I’m just misremembering something.

  84. His original anti-Anglo comment was retarded

  85. I really doubt it.

    The troops needed to contain an insurgency range from 2,000 troops per million if the population is compliant, to 20,000 if the population is highly hostile. These are the ratios typically cited.

    Hungary’s population is 10 million – that’s 200,000 troops. (For comparison, US troops in Iraq never went above 200,000. Well, let’s say 250,000, accounting for all the uncounted Blackwaters and so forth).

    The Soviet Armed Forces consistently numbered more than 3 million. Not including all the paramilitary formations.

  86. Mitleser says

    Interestingly, the Soviet troops were totally incapable of crushing a second Hungarian revolution (and they were mostly inadequate already in 1956, they had to send reinforcements and caused way more destruction than would have been necessary for a police force against lightly armed rebels).

    Instead, they were equipped to fight WW3. Their numbers kept dwindling, but they became ever better trained and equipped, with quality weapons against quality opponents. They were also mostly preparing for large scale offensive operations.

    It was a job of the satellites to maintain order, see martial law in Poland in the 1980s or the involvement of non-Soviet forces from Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary in the Soviet intervention in the CSSR in 1968.

  87. songbird says

    The way I understand it, that was the original theory, but they had to modify it based on observation of generations of men in the same family.

    I can’t really make sense of it. Anecdotally, all the men in my family have hairy ears, none of the women. (Try to dox me on that!) Maybe, multiple genes on different chromosomes influence it.

    I was actually a little sad, when I heard that it wasn’t a simple trait on the Y-Chromosome. I like the idea that my forefathers for a 1,000 years had hairy ears, and that it goes with an old name that I have.

  88. I’d consider Saudi Arabia to be a kind of hell-hole – at least climatically. I suppose they have money that draws.

    Economy is not bad in Saudi Arabia (for obvious reasons).

    I imagine the boredom, is from cultural nihilism, and religious domination of the society.

    I knew for a couple of weeks a few Saudi guys (like a lot of different fucking nationalities) – studying with them on a course for IELTS exam.

    My memories were of nice people, who are rednecks, and all somehow scared of the Saudi embassy (they have to report regularly to the Saudi embassy when they are outside their country for some reason, and it’s something they are scared about).

    The only thing they are talking about, is subjects like Cristiano Ronaldo and when the new iPhone is coming, (it was just before release of iPhone 5), and about the Saudi embassy.

    Also Saudi guys were very slow and distracting, so the whole class is going slowly. All were in love with a beautiful pale girl from Chile who has freckles (who was not friendly with anyone).

    After two weeks all Saudis left, and our class has some different nationalities coming (including intellectual people), and suddenly we were all studying much more seriously .

  89. Daniel Chieh says

    They’ve been found? Basically.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854822/

    Besides recombination influence, Sry on the Y-chromosome is found in the brain: hypothalamus, frontal and temporal cortex. Since it affects dopamine production, it probably has a significant influence on personality and going from that, intelligence.

    The original study was of pretty poor quality, incidentally(1996). The senior author himself indicated that it might need to be reconsidered in 2013, and of course, it was of mice, not humans.

    At any rate, I wouldn’t make any sweeping conclusions one way or another. I’ve been pretty obsessed with neuroscience for the last…8? 10 years? Science, or at least pop science(but even medical schools, these days) make conclusions which turn out to be completely hollow later on. Its quite a bit worse than “we don’t know”; there’s a lot of “we totally know what’s going on…oh…it turns out we were wrong. Oops.” The brain’s lymph network and adult neurogenesis being two of those, etc.

  90. Thank you for the clarification.

    Would it be fair to conclude that in Bosnia there was some sectarian confusion and/or repression of local religious organizations (even if unfounded) and that this may have contributed to Bosnians being more likely to abandon the Christian Churches? It looks like in Bosnia, the losses to Islam came from Catholics. Was the Catholic Church the one that had contained most of the the Bosnian Church members?

  91. It’s funny Croatia play football in this kind of refined, Latin style.

    Where do they learn this?

    In 1998, they defeated Germany 3-0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QUaNIRm9OU

  92. reiner Tor says

    You cannot count the navy, the air force, nuclear forces, armored troops, artillery, air defense forces, etc. So basically only infantry type troops. However, even they were equipped with armored vehicles and all kinds of weapons against the NATO enemy, but nothing against unarmed or lightly armed rioters, not to mention guerrillas.

    Iraq was a constant drain on American resources, it was not something Gorbachev or any other Soviet leader would be willing to undertake. It’d have been a second Afghanistan, or a third one if Poland joined the fun. Stalin had a much larger infantry (and huge NKVD/MVD gendarmerie type interior forces), Gorbachev had a fraction of what Stalin had. So it was way easier for Stalin to disregard what the populations of the satellites wanted.

    Another point is that the Americans – besides spending a fortune on the pointless occupation – reorganized their troops in accordance with the principles of COIN warfare. This is a large reason why their warfighting capabilities against near peer opponents atrophied in Europe and elsewhere. Now from a Soviet point of view the whole point of keeping the satellites was as springboards to launch the offensive in case of a war against NATO. So reducing warfighing capabilities against NATO just to keep the satellites made little sense to them, and they clearly had no money to keep both the warfighting capabilities and the police forces to keep the satellites.

    if the population is highly hostile

    The argument is that the population was docile, and was kept docile by a combination of the local police and the understanding that the Soviet troops in the country would crush any revolution. When in fact they were incapable of that, they were already incapable of handling the situation in 1956, which is why reinforcements from elite formations were needed already back then.

    When the local political leadership lost its will to use force, the population got emboldened. This was the point when reinforcements would have been needed both in Poland and in Hungary (and soon in Czechoslovakia and East Germany), when the troops capable of such actions were needed in Afghanistan and increasingly inside the USSR.

    Look, given enough willpower, anything is possible. But it would’ve required violence on a scale not seen since the war, leading to increased hostilities with the West, and the warfighting capabilities would’ve gone down, while the Russian population itself was getting restive.

    The situation was not easy, and there were no obvious solutions. We heard that a naval cadet (the later famous Admiral Martyanov) was used in a police action in the Caucasus. Given the severe shortages of manpower the Americans faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, is it a stretch to believe that the USSR simply didn’t have the manpower to keep the empire together? (It had plenty of soldiers trained and equipped for other roles.) Or at least that’s how it must’ve appeared to Gorbachev. It was probably a more difficult situation than I thought.

  93. reiner Tor says

    It was a job of the satellites to maintain order

    Yes, but in 1989 communist power quickly collapsed in Poland and Hungary, and became unstable in Czechoslovakia and soon East Germany. Who would send troops to each of these? While the Soviets just withdrew from Afghanistan, and were having problems in the Baltic republics, the Caucasus, and had to keep troops available for a few others like Central Asia or Ukraine.

    It was not a trivial problem. Just remember that a few years later Yeltsin couldn’t easily reconquer Chechnya, or the American difficulties in Iraq. Modern armies cannot easily subdue populations, they can only destroy them.

    It was trivial to Stalin, who had several millions of infantry and ruined countries where destroying an already ruined city center would’ve been no big deal. People were also tired and exhausted after the war. Whereas in 1989 many people thought that just by getting rid of the commies we could join the rich West and become rich ourselves.

  94. Look, given enough willpower, anything is possible. But it would’ve required violence on a scale not seen since the war, leading to increased hostilities with the West, and the warfighting capabilities would’ve gone down, while the Russian population itself was getting restive.

    Well, this is the key consideration IMO, since the very late USSR had become critically dependent on Western (esp. FRG) loans. No loans – no American grain imports, when the domestic Soviet food distribution system had already begun to creak at the seams.

    I still think considerations about troop availability would have be secondary. The Soviet Army was 4.5 million strong in 1956. 3.5 million in the late 1980s. Not a cardinal difference. And frankly, I doubt any of the satellites would have been in a position to wage an Afghanistan-style resistance struggle anyway.

    PS. Incidentally, the size of the Soviet Armed Forces during the late 1940s was quite modest – around 3 million. To some extent, I think this might even be true for paramilitary forces; in a discussion with aforementioned Martyanov, I recall citing figures showing, for example, that the late Stalinist USSR had considerably fewer border guards than the modern RF (going from memory, 100,000 to 200,000 today). A serious second buildup only truly begun with the Korean War.

  95. reiner Tor says

    So ww2 militaries could easily subdue large populations. More modern militaries couldn’t. It’s even more true of 21st century militaries, and the 1980s Soviet military was already closer to the modern militaries. (Except it was bigger, so many more battle tanks, missiles, warheads, warships, artillery pieces, etc. But structurally it had very few grunts already, especially relative to its size, or relative to the size of the restive parts of the empire.)

  96. for-the-record says

    Yes, I did see it.

    There’s no evidence whatsoever.

    Well, there may be now with the “novichok” bottle that miraculously appeared out of nowhere (apparently it was in the house of one of the victims for 9 days before it was “discovered”).

  97. reiner Tor says

    The Soviet Army was 4.5 million strong in 1956. 3.5 million in the late 1980s.

    The million soldiers missing were all grunts. When already in 1956 they needed to bring in grunts to Hungary from elsewhere. The local police etc. collapsed or, worse, took the side of the rebels, so the Soviets had to patrol the streets. Even after they organized the local collaborationist police, it was understood that those guys would quickly disappear the moment the Soviets withdrew, and so the Soviets kept patrolling the streets for months.

    I doubt any of the satellites would have been in a position to wage an Afghanistan-style resistance struggle anyway.

    No, just striking, rioting, and meanwhile there were satellite armies whose loyalties would’ve been doubtful. (In 1956 the Hungarian People’s Army did nothing, except a few units joined the rebels. Most of them received no orders and so stayed in their barracks until the Soviets disarmed them.) A large police force could easily subdue them, but Gorbachev only had rocket artillery and battle tanks. So he could destroy the city center, but couldn’t patrol the streets.

  98. songbird says

    they have to report regularly to the Saudi embassy when they are outside their country for some reason, and it’s something they are scared about

    That is interesting: 9/11 was obviously a massive PR disaster for Saudi Arabia. I wonder if they had sign in back then. But, I bet rather that it is a policy concerned with internal politics. Either the possibility of embezzlement, or a coup.

    Long-time rumor from people in the arms industry is that Saudi Arabia has a natural lack of pilots. I don’t know if that is from low IQ, or something to do more specifically with the visual cortex, but I think the extreme heat of the Arabian Peninsula might be a selective force on brain size. Probably not a lot of good Nilotic pilots either.

  99. reiner Tor says

    In 1956 the Soviets first sent tanks to Budapest like in East Berlin or Poland. But in both East Germany and Poland, it was the local police which subdued the rioters. In Hungary the local police disintegrated, and the rioters acquired some weapons and resisted, even attacking the Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails. The Soviets had initially no infantry (!) in the city, so had to withdraw. It took them over a week to send in suitable reinforcements and to organize a collaborationist government.

    In 1989 they had way fewer grunts, so they could again send tanks to the city, but their infantry was only suitable to capture cities which had already been turned to nuclear ashes. A fully intact city was too big, it’d have required a lot of grunts. It’d only have been successful if it was only Hungary where the regime was about to collapse. But it was almost everywhere.

  100. for-the-record says

    Maybe I’m just misremembering something

    Here is what seems to be a recent review of the state of the art:

    Inheritance of Hypertrichosis Pinnae Auris — A Review of Literature

    ABSTRACT
    Hypertrichosis is an excessive growth of hair on a particular area of the body which is abnormal for the age, sex or race of an individual. The presence of the excessive coarse black hair on the auricle of the human ear is referred to as hypertrichosis pinnae auris or hairy ears. The condition is primarily restricted to older men and occasionally observed in females. According to the available literature, hypertrichosis pinnae auris is a Y-linked character. A number of studies have shown that the inheritance of the trait is from father to the son, any exceptions can be attributed to the lack of penetrance of the gene or crossing over from Y to X chromosome. A few researchers have suggested the probability of it being inherited in an autosomal manner. The mode of inheritance of the trait thus, remains controversial as to whether it is Y-linked or autosomal or perhaps both.

    The present article reviews various available studies on hypertrichosis pinnae auris in different populations of the world. It further deliberates on different aspects of the modes of inheritance of hypertrichosis pinnae auris and discusses the contradictions in its inheritance. The understanding of this area of research is significant for studying morphological variations and their genetic basis, sex differences among individuals and populations together with intergroup differences involving anthropology, anatomy, comparative morphology, personal identification and human genetics.

  101. Since it affects dopamine production, it probably has a significant influence on personality and going from that, intelligence.

    I don’t follow your logic, but then I didn’t read the article, either. I’ll assume the Sry contributes to genotypic intelligence. How would that disprove that inherited intelligence is overwhelmingly determined by the X?

    It’s not that important either way. The point is that more public honesty about innate intelligence will probably lead to more eugenic mating choices, and that’s good for high-IQ women’s marriage prospects, but bad for their careers. IOW, I’m not expecting gender gaps in high-paying careers to go away any time soon. If anything, they may get “worse,” as a result of women’s own free choices.

  102. Saudi embassy I think also calls them on the phone, if they don’t go to classes. If they don’t go to all classes, then they have to go home or something like this (lol maybe they torture them in a prison).

    So their government is scary for them, even when they are studying in other countries thousands of kilometers away from home.

    My impression of Saudi guys was very nice and friendly people, although a bit rednecks.

    None of the Saudi people I met are anything like Talha on this forum though (i.e. Islamist or political). All they want to do is punch you on the shoulder, talk about Ronaldo and the girls in the class.

    I’ve been on another class where there was a Kuwaiti girl (she going to go to American university a year later) – and she was like a completely secular European personality (reminds me of Italian girls or something, with very nice clothes).

  103. songbird says

    The mode of inheritance of the trait thus, remains controversial as to whether it is Y-linked or autosomal or perhaps both.

    Darn it! It’s a wash! I’m am hoping for a Y-linked triumph in the end, at least on a personal level. I know my heroic and legendary ancestors must have had hairy ears, like me, my brothers, father, and grandpa!

  104. Daniel Chieh says

    How would that disprove that inherited intelligence is overwhelmingly determined by the X?

    There’s no real evidence that intelligence is “overwhelmingly determined” by the X chromosome at the moment; it was never “proven” and thus doesn’t need to be disproven. In the 1996 study, the researcher found that double-parental mice cells tended to be excluded from the developing cortex, but double maternal cells were not. In 2013 this was reevaluated with a better understanding of the genomic process(“Importance of Genomic Imprinting in the Evolution and Development of the Maternal Brain”, Barry E. Keverne, 2013).

    There are more genes on the X chromosome, but it doesn’t actually mean that it determines intelligence; chimpanzees, for example, share 96% of human genes, but the 4% differences determine massive expressed differences. The Y chromosome certainly doesn’t contain, for example, the coding for the SDN(sexually dimorphic nucleus), but it almost certainly “throws a switch” to makes it grow develop differently.

    I’m mostly interested in the mechanism of how intelligence works, or even the concept of it as an emergent mechanism of the brain. For example, there’s been a gene found that increases expression of BDNF, a hormone that appears to stimulate neural growth. This probably boosts intelligence in some form, at least insofar as tasks involving learning and neural interconnectivity(to the best of our knowledge). But BDNF can also be increased in other ways, and almost certainly interacts with blood flow in the brain, which seems to be stimulated independently(can’t have more blood flow without adequate capillaries to support). Would increasingly BDNF in isolation cause harm? Genes code for serotonin expression, a neurochemical essential for emotion, but overexpression might be the cause of schizophrenia. Existence of a chemical is only a part of the equation, its use involves binding to receptors which can be promoted through other chemicals known as agonists or inhibited by antagonists, both necessary in order for proper functioning. Perhaps most weirdly, spectral redshift has been observed in neural tissue, lending evidence to Penrose’s quantum brain theory that exotic particles may be involved.

    At this moment, I think that we’re basically at just a little beyond “folk science” level of understanding of intelligence, and that’s fine. We use the knowledge we have. But I doubt that we should make sweeping policies until we understand it better. Ultimately, optimizing biological intelligence will probably involve technological editing anyway.

  105. Daniel Chieh says

    Have you seen Datong?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIRcpBEzO9o

    Its a pity that it seems to have gotten semi-censored in China because, I suppose, the government didn’t want to show so much chaos and opposition. I thought it was an impressive example of one man trying to do the most good he could within the day to day frustrations of the system.

  106. ‘liberal’ in what sense? In an economic and democratic sense, no. In terms of the sexual revolution, homosexuality, ‘diversity’ and so on, these resulted from Jewish led movements. The current American foreign policy establishment is obviously dominated by Jews.

    If true (it’s not), Anglos gave up control of their societies and governments to 2% of their population without a shot being fired. Sad!

    They were when they were ruled by Jews like Bela Kun or the Stalinist-Jewish regime in Poland that was imposed by the USSR after the war.

    None of the Warsaw Pact countries were more liberal than the Anglosphere, and only an Anglo would be clueless enough to call Stalinism liberal jfc.

    There was very little interference with Indian society apart from banning the most objectionable practises like Sati and a limited number of Indian graduates. A third of the country was ruled by Indian princes. Missions were stopped after the mutiny. The number of British in India was miniscule.

    Utterly clueless. India is still using the pensl code the British imposed on them in 1860. The British fundamentally altered society in a variety of ways through their divide and rule strategems. Most notably, they solidified caste divisions.

    The Boer war was undertaken for resources and not to impose a British ideology on the Boers; before resources were discovered, the British had not stopped the Boers forming their own republics. . British liberals were in fact the strongest opponents of the war. The Union of South Africa was always Boer-dominated.

    In typical Anglo fashion, they cloaked their intentions with rhetoric about the Boers’ mistreatment of the blacks (whom the Brits also interned). Now Anglos bitch about LGBTQIA to justify their schemes. httpsww.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/white-washing-the-boer-war/

  107. I’m hesitant to deploy “evil” in temporal affairs, but the unctuousness of the rhetoric of the British and American empires and their apologists deserves all the contempt in the world.

  108. The Bosnian Muslims of the Sandzak are a bit different though: those in the south of the Sandzak (along the border with Montenegro and Kosovo) are descended from Albanians who were forcibly resettled there by the Turks in the early 18th century. They were at the time just a bit to the south, were Catholic and constantly rebelled against the Ottomans. Forcibly Islamized, they eventually lost their Albanian tongue and became Slavicized Muslims, now adopting the “Bosniak” identity. The most famous of these are Rasim Ljajic, the Serbian politician and minister, and Muhamed Zukorlic, the fiery Imam.

    Another group of Albanian Kelmendi Catholics made their way up to Srijem/Srem in Vojvodina and settled in Hrtkovci, staying Catholic but also becoming Slavicized and adopting a Croatian consciousness. They were cleansed from Hrtkovci by Seselj’s men in 1995.

  109. A large amount of the credit goes to the many tekkes established by the various Sufi Orders in the area; the Naqshbandi, Khalwati and Qadiri did a lot of the legwork. There were others too, but they have grown less in influence. Though when I traveled through that area (early 2000s), the Rifa’i were still active.

    Prof. Hamid Algar, who I had the pleasure to meet once at UCLA, is probably one of the best academic experts on the subject of the Naqshbandi Order and wrote a great article about its role in the Balkans:
    http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/public/articles/some_notes_on_the_naqshbandi_tariqat_in_bosnia-by_hamid_algar.aspx

    Peace.

  110. reiner Tor says

    I recall citing figures showing, for example, that the late Stalinist USSR had considerably fewer border guards than the modern RF (going from memory, 100,000 to 200,000 today). A serious second buildup only truly begun with the Korean War.

    The exact numbers didn’t truly matter as long as

    A) there were enough local police and paramilitary formations to deal with the local population,

    B) under a political leadership willing to do what it takes to keep the countries in the Eastern Bloc, and

    C) the Soviet leadership had the means and

    D) the will to raise the number of troops needed in a heartbeat should the need arise.

    None of the above was true in 1989. I usually thought that it was a failure of willpower (i.e. D), but instead it was more complex and to various extent it became impossible.

    And once they realized that they were not in a position to keep the satellites (or at least not without getting involved in a number of civil wars, some within the USSR; while also losing military near parity with the USA), they were reduced to haggling about the price they should extract from the West for that, and accepting empty promises in return. The situation was somewhat similar to that of Germany in 1918, their situation was to deteriorate anyway, and accepting even partial defeat led to further disintegration, while unrest was spreading among the population who were unwilling to sacrifice further and no longer subscribed to the official ideology, so they were eventually forced to accept total defeat.

    Even the reaction of the large parts of the population are the same: we made unilateral concessions while still strong, as a result we became weaker and were forced to accept defeat, so the political leaders making the initial concessions (or the people leading unrest at home) must’ve been backstabbing traitors! This is basically a Soviet Dolchstoßlegende all the way.

  111. reiner Tor says

    Essentially, it’s also possible that Stalin would’ve been unable to handle the simultaneous disintegration of all of his satellites. The population in each of those countries just assumed that they were strong enough to crush any opposition, but it’s far from clear if it was true.

    One thing he had it easier was that Stalin didn’t yet have to deal with the results of decades of economic mismanagement in these countries. Both Hungary and Poland were burdened with tens of billions of dollars in debt (Poland was already unable to service it), keeping them going wasn’t going to be an easy undertaking.

  112. Bardon Kaldian says

    There had been repressions aimed at Bosnian Church members in past few decades of Bosnian kingdom’s existence, but that was mostly confined to limited areas or populations. Most of older Bosnia and Hum’s inhabitants were, actually, rather tolerant (better- indifferent) with regard to conventional religious matters; it was from the west (RCC) & East (OC) that various unsubstantiated accusations came, one of them that BC members were essentially Cathars & Manicheans (which was not true). Motivation for a few half-hearted Crusades had been political & economic ambitions of Hungarian kings which popes usually condoned, but without much enthusiasm. Anyway, Crusades did not achieve any aim & were no more than a temporary nuisance, while in Bosnia & Hum religious attitudes remained the same- indifference. Only during the reign of the last king Franciscan zeal succeeded in converting sizable portion of krstjani, while others either defected to the Orthodox Church (some 400 people) or remained faithful to their traditions. Turkish defters had inscribed, in a few decades after the conquest, a category kristian & it can be concluded that Bosnian Church adherents probably remained even more loyal to their religion than Catholics & Orthodox.

    As for Islamization, it was a process that took some 300 years & was even more successful in Albania where there had been no religious dissent before Ottomans; also, in Croatian province of Slavonia where most locals, Catholics, converted during Ottoman rule (which ended in early 1700s) & then many- not all- re-converted to Christianity/Catholicism after “Reconquista”. Also, there was also a significant ethnic element in all this: Ottoman armies were followed by Vlach populations of herders who were mostly Orthodox & some Catholic; Vlachs (Wallach, Vlasi, similar to Welsh) were a paleo-Balkanic people, first Romanized & then Slavicized, without significant roots in pre-existing social order. Vlachs were later mostly Serbianized, but they contributed significantly to Bosnian Muslim & Croat ethnogenesis, too. Catholics were the most vulnerable group because they were seen by Ottoman authorities as the fifth column of their chief adversaries: pope, Austria (after the defeat of Hungary), Spain. Forcible mass conversions were especially significant during early 1600s, due to first Ottoman defeats at the end of 16th C. While, with some exceptions, Orthodox population was mainly protected by recognized dimmi status in Istanbul, Catholic masses were either fleeing to Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Austria.., or were decimated in the fighting that was especially fierce in 150-200 years after the initial conquest, or were under constant pressure to convert because there was not a recognized Catholic hierarchy to protect them- only Franciscan order which had received Sultan’s legal permission to represent Catholics, but this was in practice frequently invalid. Yet, in the end, Franciscans were more successful than not- they preserved the core Bosnian “people”, Catholics who later identified as Croats. Krstjani, on the other hand, disappeared from history. Ethnic-religious differentiation in Bosnia & Herzegovina was completed in 19th & 20th C, when virtually all Orthodox identified as Serbs, all Catholics as Croats & all Muslims as Turks, then ethnic Muslims & from 1990s as Bosniaks.

  113. The Big Red Scary says

    At any rate, I wouldn’t make any sweeping conclusions one way or another.

    Sure, but Rosie’s two hypotheses– that smart sons tend to come from smart mothers, and that fathers make a bigger contribution to the intelligence of the their daughters than to the their sons– are concrete, interesting, and easy to test. You don’t even need genetics. Just a large sample of triples (mother,father,daughter) and (mother,father,son) to which you can given IQ tests.

  114. reiner Tor says

    smart sons tend to come from smart mothers, and that fathers make a bigger contribution to the intelligence of the their daughters than to the their sons

    I would actually agree with both of these statements as tendencies, with the caveat that it’s still close to 50% in both cases. Maybe something like 55-45 (mother-father) in the case of sons and 50-50 in the case of daughters.

  115. The Big Red Scary says

    It’s hard for me to even form a prior, since I don’t know many examples of (mother,father) with significant differences in intelligence. You seem to find that more often in the older generations than in the present. Both my grandfathers are obviously more intelligent than my grandmothers, though one grandmother is clearly above average.

    Anyway, for match-making purposes, I am skeptical of comparing men and women on intelligence. I think a more telling comparison of the intelligence of a husband and wife is to compare the husband to the wife’s father and grandfathers and a wife to the husband’s mother and grandmothers.

    But such as it is, my prior is not that of Rosie, since I suspect that I’ve inherited intelligence from both my grandfathers, and if I had to choose one over the other as the source, it would be my paternal grandfather.

    Anyhow, I would guess there is already sufficient data available to test Rosie’s hypotheses. One shouldn’t even have to do a new study.

  116. Guillaume Tell says

    Very good comment, thank you.

    The nostalgia aspect I notice in my wife’s father, an otherwise healthily racist guy in his 70s, but who is nonetheless enthusiastically rooting for a bunch of black dudes running around kicking a football. I believe the key explanation of that strange phenomenon is that he was a decent regional soccer player himself in a 1960s, when the country was almost all-white and was highly functional and nice. I am convinced that watching football (European football) evokes good memories of those great times past. Sad.

  117. Guillaume Tell says

    Marcus if I may interject here: this

    They’re

    is quite an over-generalization.

    Your comments would gain in credibility, in my view, if they were to be more nuanced and avoid unwarranted essentialism.

    Also a simple question: why do you even accept to submit to the linguistic domination of the “Anglos” you claim to despise, by using their language? That’s quite an act of submission IMHO.

  118. Guillaume Tell says

    Russians: imposed their values on Hungarians and Czechs with tanks

    Agreed here — but note that there is nothing wrong with stronger peoples imposing their will on the weaker.

    At its apex Britannia did the same, and it was not a bad thing. It civilized large parts of the world and as a result culled undesireable genetic traits (not enough in my view however).

  119. Guillaume Tell says

    Incredibly big schnotz! The Semitic component blares through the screen.

  120. Guillaume Tell says

    Caveat emptor: albeit a resident of a partly francophone area I am not a French nationalist. But several of my friends are.

    I would say that very few of them are rooting for the team of Northern Mali, which is really a normie/BoBo/boomer marker. My teenagers (who have French citizenship through my wife) are supporting Croatia, although we don’t have any personal connection to it.

  121. Guillaume Tell says

    Interesting.

    Who is (or was) this Admiral Martyanov? A quick internet search did not yield any result (although Martyanov appears to be a common last name).

  122. Rattus Norwegius says

    Should Bosnians have higher iq and socio-economic status if they are descended from the landed class compared to Serbs and Croats, who as opposed to Bosnians(according to your text line) descend from all corners of Serbo-Croat society?

  123. reiner Tor says

    We don’t really need studies to come up with an educated guess for the proportion of the genetic component for intelligence inherited from the father vs. the mother.

    All we need to realize is that roughly 10% of the genetic material is on the X chromosome, while the Y chromosome basically contains just one bit of information. So the daughter receives 50% of her genes from the father, while the son only 45% (because of the emptiness of the Y chromosome).

    The exact proportions might be somewhat different due to the possibly uneven distribution of genes responsible for intelligence among the chromosomes.

  124. Mitleser says

    Andrei Martyanov, former Soviet navy officer: http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com

  125. How much exactly relative to GDP was the USSR spending on defence during the early to late 80s? Was it closer to 10 percent of GDP or 20 percent? What is a maximum that a country could spending on peace time over a period of several decades without ruining the economy? 5 percent of GDP?

  126. Perhaps more interestingly, would they with the Polish team? The Russian one is noticeably darker

    Not surprising. Russians look about the same as poles, but 15% of the non-Russian population of Russia is noticeably more “dark”. According to this, the average citizen of Russia will be darker than the average citizen of Poland. At the same time, the average ethnic Russian will probably be slightly “lighter” than the average pole (because of the very ultra-blonde “Northern Russians”).

  127. Hyperborean says

    Admiral Martyanov is our nickname for the commenter Andrei Martyanov, who writes military analysis articles, who was educated in a Soviet Baku naval military school (though he now lives in the US).

  128. Rattus Norwegius says

    I liked your post too.

  129. The Big Red Scary says

    I think you are making a good point, but need some clarification.

    All we need to realize is that roughly 10% of the genetic material is on the X chromosome

    If you mean that supposing the proportion of the genotypic intelligence accounted for by the X chromosome is 1/10 and essentially none is due to the Y chromosome, then the father’s contribution to the genotypic intelligence of a girl is 1/2 and of a boy is 9/20, then I agree.

    More generally, if p is the proportion accounted for by X and Y contributes nothing, then a father’s contribution to a boy would be (1-p)/2.

    Is this what you mean?

    I’m suggesting that we don’t even need to do genetic tests to estimate p. All we need is a large sample of triples on which to test IQ, and this is probably already published somewhere in behavioral genetics literature. In fact, I would be surprised if someone hasn’t already made an estimate of p.

    We should do an adversarial collaboration. You can play Hungarian nationalist. I can play rootless cosmopolitan. What’s Rosie want to play?

  130. Daniel Chieh says

    Except that it hasn’t been tested and there are methodological, historical and mechanical issues with the theory.

    The methodological issues come from the one study which is used to support it, an University of Glasgow study on the effects of breastfeeding on infants. It found that maternal IQ was highly predictive of IQ:

    The mother’s IQ was more highly predictive of breastfeeding status than were her race, education, age, poverty status, smoking, the home environment, or the child’s birth weight or birth order

    Notice, however, it does not indicate parental IQ. Jon Brooks later contacted the senior research fellow(Geoff Der) at the unit for more information and found that he did not include it because the data was not available and indeed, disagreed with the conclusion that his study was used for:

    But Der says the study didn’t measure paternal intelligence as a factor, because that data wasn’t available. So for all we know, there could be an even greater correlation between the IQs of children and fathers. Der said the post’s assertion that kids’ IQs correlated to mothers’ IQs within 15 points could not have come from his study.

    Historically this seems doubtful by the existence of “mathematician families” such as the Bernoulli family and other 23 families from which the majority of mathematicians keep coming from. Since they are tracked by last name, they are tracked by patrilineal descent, so it suggests substantial parental contribution to intelligence used for mathematicians, at the least.

    Mechanically, there’s no evidence that indicates that intelligence genes are more determining on X rather than karotype 6 or 17, etc. ATXN1 and TRIM31 impact intelligence at least from an AHDH perspective, ATXN1 and TRIM31 are both on karotype 6. Since 22 karotypes are provided equally between father and mother, it would suggest substantial contribution by the father to intelligence.

  131. The Big Red Scary says

    Thanks for the references. You clearly know more about this than I do. As you see in my reply above, which was supposed to be to reiner Tor, my priors are that paternal contribution to the intelligence of sons is important.

    But regardless, do you not agree that we should be able to estimate the contribution quite easily? Are you really saying that there is not some well-known database with data for IQs of triples (mother,father,child)!? This would seem exceedingly strange.

    By the way, in the link about the 23 “families”, the other 23 are in the academic sense rather than the natural sense. However, there are indeed some natural scientific families of which I am aware.

  132. reiner Tor says

    substantial contribution by the father to intelligence

    Is 45 and 50% for sons and daughters, respectively, not substantial?

    I doubt the final number will be much different.

    Since they are tracked by last name, they are tracked by patrilineal descent, so it suggests substantial parental contribution to intelligence used for mathematicians, at the least.

    Assortative mating muddies the picture. But yes, the numbers cannot be much lower than the 45 and 50% a priori guess.

  133. The Big Red Scary says

    reiner Tor, my reply above Daniel Chieh’s was meant to be to you. If I understand where you get 45%, then I wouldn’t call this “a priori” but rather “random guess” at the value of p. Maybe I misunderstand you.

  134. Daniel Chieh says

    Thanks for the catch on the Nature article; natural scientific families off the top of my head would be the Bernoulli, Chandrasekhar and Leakey families. The academic families seem interesting to explore from an environmental perspective, though. I’ll have to check more into it later.

    AFAIK most IQ studies are done with draft/conscription tests and women are generally not conscripted, so there isn’t a database for that(and certainly not one that controls significantly for environment). It should be possible to do something with rats at the least, though, so while it won’t be an immediate analogue(rats don’t really have much of a neocortex, and there are portions of human brain unique to humans), you should get something interesting to consider. Know any biology graduate students? 😉

  135. It is warranted, America is the great Satan, Britain the lesser Satan. English is a global lingua franca, as well as the default language on this site, so unless I’m missing something you’re an utter buffoon trying to score a cheap ad hominem

  136. German_reader says

    Since Admiral Martyanov has been mentioned, I’d like to ask something. He recently made some interesting comments about Putin’s background (supposedly different to what has been believed) here:
    http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/07/thoughts-on-trump-11-july-2018.html#disqus_thread

    Evidently he was SVR all along his earlier career, that is until he got his civilian job in Leningrad in 1990. Considering his admission on camera, that would involve him being trained in KI (Krasnoznamennyi Institut imeni Andropova) at least. As it turned out he was a residentura Nelegaly handler and this is a completely different line of work. It is extremely dangerous and it is a very narrow field of elite professionals. That changes the angle on Putin as merely run-of-the-mill FSB field officer completely. Considering where he is today and who are behind him, it is not only irresistible but is highly warranted to start asking questions, or, for that matter, reassess his skills level which is on the order of magnitude more impressive than it was thought originally.

    Any thoughts on that?

  137. I’ve come across a number of Bosniaks (I worked in a hospital not far from a refugee community), and many of the ones I’d seen are very uneducated peasants. Some of the older ones in their sixties were barely literate in their own language, with 4th grade educations. Scored in the mid 70s on nonverbal IQ tests, but they had raised children and functioned normally in their village environment. Very poor ability to think abstractly. Flynn had mentioned Siberian peasants scoring very low on intelligence tests 100 years ago – this is probably a similar phenomenon.

    One doesn’t see people like that nowadays even in the deep rural area where I have family in Ukraine – rather amazing. They seemed like decent folk, though.

  138. Very interesting, thank you.

  139. “The worst instance of communism was in Roman in the late stages of American-backed Ceausescu’s regime.” That’s just silly.

    When I was a child, around 1980, Ceausescu went into conflict with Romania’s creditors, the larger US banks such as Citibank, who indeed financed his industrial development program, but now seemed keen on ripping off the country with interest. He went on to redirect all that could be exported to exports, while keeping the un-exportable staples in limited supply, so that the population wouldn’t spend that much. He also limited imports to whatever could be exchnaged for Romania’s exports, thus saving US dollars for repaying the debt. This way he lowered the deficit, both on government accounts and on prvate citizens accounts. (Yeah, so much for “Romanian Communism”. We all had money, private money. Most of the nation lived in private accommodation. Half of the country were working in co-ooperatives owned by the employees, dutifully sold by the said employees in 1990. Private money and current account deficit were a thing.)

    By 1986, Ceausescu finished paying all the debt, but still had an axe to grind with the Americans, and so he publicly denounced the WTO (well, GATT) rules in trade relationships with US. That evening, he blathered for an hour about how he doesn’t need and he gives up the “most favored nation” status guaranteed until then by Americans. I had no clue what it meant.

    He was no friend to either Soviets or Americans. In the seventies, he was an useful idiot, just like Tito. In the eighties, he was a plain moron, thinking any person actually cares about government deficit. Americans stopped liking him when he finished paying the debt. Through the eighties, American propaganda was yelling mad about “deprived Romanians” – precisely when you think Ceausescu had US support. In the nineties, when there was near-starvation, when life expectancy dropped by 5 years, and when privatization started, Americans weren’t that concerned with “deprived Romanians”.

  140. France only won when it was played in France. Croatia have a significant advantage with it being played in Russia. Croatia were good enough to just steal it from Russia which had a huge advantage in the location. Croatia beat Spain, and so they are good enough (in Russia) to beat France. Morsi doesn’t score much at his club but he has maneged to in Russia when it really matters. The French will benefit from the loosening of mandatory red cards, and no referee is going to send anyone off in a World Cup Final. I expect Morsi a small slightly built player will be targeted for a battering by the dense boned negros of France, but if Croatia wins Morsi will stay out of jail. Croatia to win.

  141. for-the-record says

    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/onesport/cps/624/cpsprodpb/14294/production/_102508528_england1.jpg

    London-born poet and writer Musa Okwonga, the son of Ugandan immigrants, looks at how England’s multicultural team captured the imagination of a nation and became role models for young people.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44818211

  142. I didn’t know this guy played for Croatia:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Mohamed_Morsi-05-2013.jpg/330px-Mohamed_Morsi-05-2013.jpg

    So much for Croatia being “white”. It seems they have some “Africans” there after all…

  143. The silenced IGF 2 is from the mother so the majority of physical size and some aspects of intelligence modulated by igf2 would be expected from the father ( and most people look like their father).

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201002/identical-genetically-different-and-why-you-can-thank-your-mother-yo
    A recent study found that compared to male, female identical twins vary more on measures of social behaviour and verbal ability thanks to differential X-inactivation. This has a number of important implications. One is that as medical geneticists have long suspected, you get your intelligence predominantly from your mother, not your father—especially if you are male. It has been pointed out, for example, that Charles Darwin inherited X chromosome genes from his maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgewood, which probably explain his gifts better than the Y chromosome he got from his paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. (However, as the diagram suggests, Erasmus Darwin may indeed have been the origin of the remarkable intelligence of Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton

  144. They say the same about the NHS, but the reason is the doctors trade union the BMA try to keep doctors pay high by restricting the supply doctors by restricting the number who get trained so the government just goes abroad to keep costs down. It

    The flooding of English football by foreign players is related to the high pay of professionals but immigration has not improved the national team going by its oerformance in Russia against less Africanised peoples’ teams. To claim otherwise is a very peculiar argument to make for anyone considering themselves an antiracist.

    Employer want to have access to unlimited labour, because in a closed system wages will keep rising. So they brought in nonEuropeans, but productive capacity in Britain went down the toilet starting when the barriers to foreign competition were brought down by accession to the EEC in the early seventies.

  145. Of note:

    – France has more Muslims than full-White-Christians on their ‘national’ team. By one method of calculation, the White-French ancestral component of the team is 16%.

    Eric Zemmour noted that the “white proletariat” is “helpless before the ‘ostentatious virility of their black and Arab competitors seducing numerous young white women.”

    – A majority of England ‘national’ players have at least some Subsaharan African ancestry. (This contra the concept of England is the Islamic Republic of England, even as a joke — Black numbers may approach non-Black Muslim numbers in UK already today and long-term Blacks are much bigger difficulty).

    White mother/ black father is the default assumption for the biracial people who are beginning to dominate sports as much as they already do advertising and entertainment.

  146. RadicalCenter says

    There is ample genetic and cultural variety among the white European peoples of the world. We already had “robustness” and hybrid vigor before letting in tens of millions of mestizo colonists and other aliens.

  147. Overrepresentation of blacks (proportional to population) in team England is no mystery.

    Blacks are only 3% of the UK population, but in England tea the proportion is much higher. Does it mean blacks have an advantage? No.

    Football, particularly for Englishmen, is a sport of poor youths, and blacks are the poorest demographic of England.

    All you need for football, is a ball, and some grass, and some neighbour kids. (Also it would help if you have dysfunctional family which does not require you to come home for dinner or to do homework, so you can play all evening).

    By comparison, sports like tennis require usually paying for tennis classes, or joining tennis club.

    (Other sports like racing driving, or polo – are only available for smaller demographics which pay for their children to do these sports).

    Unlike 100 meter run, ethnic origin itself provides no advantage in football.

    Messi plays like Maradona. Does Messi have Maradona genes? Messi is from a completely different ethnic origin than Maradona.

    The best player of recent years – Zidane- was an Arab from Algeria, but his inspiration was Platini (French of Italian origin).

    To make a good player, let alone good teams, is dependent on many different factors, mainly mental (and the skill aspect is based mainly on how they were trained as children).

  148. other 23 families

    These are families in terms of teacher-pupil relationship.

    Gauss did not want his sons to be mathematician because he thought they were not smart enough and they would diminish the reputation of Gauss name.

  149. Guillaume Tell says

    You are, sir, obviously missing something — in both meanings of the verb. Psychological balance for starters.

  150. The Big Red Scary says

    As was once said of Napoleon, so was true of Gauss:

    https://youtu.be/al9Brz5frSU

  151. Toronto Russian says

    The mother’s IQ was more highly predictive of breastfeeding status than were her race, education, age, poverty status, smoking, the home environment, or the child’s birth weight or birth order

    There is a US breastfeeding map made by CDC.
    https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/images/data/fact-map-breastfeeding.jpg
    Massachusetts, the only dark blue in the East, is also the smartest state by test results (https://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/06/50_states_ranked_by_intelligen.html).
    Colorado and Nebraska are 10th and 12th. Other dark blues are in the middle of the list. I guess among hipsters and Mormons it’s just a cultural norm, regardless of individual intelligence? The dumbest states are reliably green with Hawaii being an outlier.
    Interesting that US Asians are usually at the top of positive social indicators (wealth, low crime, low obesity etc), but on breastfeeding rate they are behind whites and Hispanics: about 81, 86 and 85% respectively. Any thoughts?

  152. The best player of recent years – Zidane

    Darn right. I showed my son a clip of some of his moves and he was amazed…the man’s feet were like hands.

    Peace.

  153. The best player of recent years – Zidane- was an Arab from Algeria, but his inspiration was Platini (French of Italian origin).

    Zidane is of Kabyle origins. There has been a lot of mixing with Arabs and many Kabyles have been Arabised but they are still a distinct ethnic group.

  154. Aside from some periods like 2006 World Cup (when he was dominating matches ), Zidane did not always have so much strong impact on matches (when he was playing for Juventus, he was viewed as a brilliantly talented, but also not always consistently playing). He was famous for playing at his best only in the most important matches.

    Zidane was never close to level of being a “one man team” like Maradona was supposedly while at Napoli. So, he is probably the second-level in football history of great players, with guys like Platini (at the same time, the best player in people of our generation’s memory).

    From the pure football (as opposed to hosting) viewpoint, this World Cup has been a little disappointing, with no new football geniuses emerging.

    I wonder if we could say football is declining (with its best era being in 1970s to 1980s, when players like Zico, Cruyff and Maradona).

  155. Cool story, but I think it’s still safe to say it was worse than anything other eastern bloc countries went through before the collapse
    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdyexm/everyday-life-in-communist-romania-0000001-v18n9

  156. Bosnian Mohammedans are overrepresented in insurance fraud claims from my experience, so are several other immigrant groups. Fraud is often how fobs “get started,” so keep that in mind when you hear how great immigrants are

  157. at the same time, the best player in people of our generation’s memory

    Agree. Every generation has its number ones.

    I can be fairly impressed by men like Ovechkin, but it’s tough when you grew up watching Lemeiux, Gretzky and Hull & Oates.

    Peace.

  158. Mitleser says

    Have you seen Datong?

    Not yet.

    Can’t find it on Netflix. 🙁

  159. Daniel Chieh says

    Since 2010, the publication of the article, the Y-linked SRY gene was found to be expressed in central areas of the brain(frontal cortex, ventral tegmental area, temporal lobe, hypothalamus, etc) and influences hormone and dopamine production. This is mostly considered in a pathological context(mental illness inherited from fathers) but it almost certainly impacts what we’d consider as intelligence, if only through secondary expression by hormonal regulation. More on that later.

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joohyung_Lee3/publication/277602478/figure/fig2/AS:294284017324036@1447174185483/SRY-is-expressed-in-brain-regions-associated-with-male-biased-neurological-disorders.png

    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/SRY-is-expressed-in-brain-regions-associated-with-male-biased-neurological-disorders_fig2_277602478

    Analyzing this, hormone regulation is noted as possibly the one of the primary methosd by which Y-linked variation would regulation and impact cognition, though it appears to also play another role directly in motor function:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854822/

    Sry may influence brain and behaviour either indirectly, via effects on testis development and subsequent hormone secretion, or directly via its expression in neural tissue….specifically, the effects of artificially downregulating Sry expression at key brain sites in order to ascertain the effects on previously identified Sry-dependent phenotypes could be examined. If Sry downregulation has no effect on the phenotype of interest, it may be concluded that the phenotype is likely to be gonadal hormone-dependent; conversely, if the downregulation is effective, one might conclude that the phenotype is dependent upon the action of brain-expressed Sry. Recently, Dewing et al. used antisense oligonucleotides to knock down Sry expression in the rat substantia nigra…[this resulted in decreased activity in the brain and coordination problems, authors speculate connection to Parkinston’s]

    Going on to the end, the researchers mention that there are several other Y-linked genes that escape deactivation and are expressed in the brain. They suspect a cognitive role in them, and note that there’s a human variation that’s not found in mice(PCDH11X/Y) that appears to preferentially prefer neural substrate, which is very suggestive that it does something meaningful there.

    One last thing to consider is that mtDNA is inherited only from the mother, so that’s a direct female influence with no parent correspondence so yes, in general, there’s always slightly more maternal influence than parental influence. Parental genes, however, overwhelmingly dominate the placental environment during fetal development and this appears to have significant influence on the phenotype of the resulting descendants.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3696791/

  160. Daniel Chieh says

    No real idea. Usually higher IQ mothers will be particularly attentive and will therefore be more likely to want to breastfeed their children. Perhaps Asian mothers are less attentive, or more materialistic(breastfeeding impacts one’s career function).

    I remember reading a lot of stuff on breast milk at one point and its potential impact on cognition; it naturally has phosphatidylserine, which does seem to be positive for cognition(though the Glasgow study indicates otherwise, other studies contradict it. So who knows). Anyway, phosphatidylserine is positive only from animal sources from what I can see, and I don’t think formula has it(and to get the active form of it, they probably would need bovine brains, unlikely after mad cow disease and a potential PR nightmare. IIRC the vegetarian versions of it have has disappointing results.)

    But really, who knows. It can feel like a mess, I’m sure that its been tainted by formula companies funding for positive results, etc.

  161. There has to be a reason breasts are so attractive (and fake breasts such an evil fuck up).

    I was going to add now to the comment a video clip of Alexandra Daddario, but too distracting.

  162. It appears you are confusing unfashionable clothing with Communism, which AFAIK is abolition of private property. For the most part, the people in those pictures were having it better than my family, who didn’t own a car, didn’t play tennis, and didn’t queue for football tickets. So yes, it was hard. But that is life in a poor country, regardless of politics. Again, the nineties, with democracy and free market, were much harsher than the eighties, with planned economy.

    Even now, every year, one child dies by falling in the school’s shitter, which in remote villages is still a hole in the backyard. Those childrens’ families lack private property to the extent that they are probably the first Romanian Communists.

    We have been extraordinarily lucky to squeeze past Eurosceptic dickheads, and gain our freedom of work in EU. Without workers moving to the West, we would be still playing tennis while wearing speedos. That has nothing to do with Communism.

  163. Anonymous says

    Gerad 2 here. 100 per cent agree with everything in your post here, Dmitry. Very good knowledge.

  164. Anonymous says

    Gérard 2 here. The England team is different to others though,Dmitry, because most of them are mixed-race, than black….and don’t necessarily classify themselves as black.

    Hagi was not ethnic Romanian, you have already given the Platini example,Eusebio from Mozambique, C Ronaldo from 1000s miles off Portuguese mainland

  165. Anonymous says

    All those talking about the French team essentially being the “Africa” team should look at the US Mathematics Olympiad team…….essentially just an India and China team ( plus their pushy parents locking them in their room and possibly doing the Olympiad with them )

    They came first, but Russia got the most medals and finished second…and are of course made up of Russians….and represent a very strong mathematics education in Russia. ….whereas Americans are mostly useless at it. Gerad2

  166. OT, or not. Croations don’t just play football.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nheif2BuFz0. Enjoy! Thanks for everything Mr. Unz.

  167. LondonBob says

    Croatia definitely doping, another 120 minutes and yet they have more energy than their opponents.

  168. LondonBob says

    France become the first African nation to win the World Cup.

  169. ElitistSettler says

    Well, that was a shocking outcome…not!

    This is exactly what happens when a homogenous world class team goes up against a diverse world class team. France played well, irrespective of the stupid mistake Lloris made and cost them a goal. Two whites scored, two blacks scored and suddenly France was up 4-1. France just had the right mix of attributes and Croatia did not.

    I don’t think we’ll ever see an all-white or all-black or all-anything team ever win the World Cup again.

  170. Hyperborean says

    Better to lose with honour than to win with disgrace.

  171. LondonBob says

    The left in the Anglosphere is Jewish and Irish.

  172. I suspect that Belgium will beat England to take third place during the penalties, while France will beat Croatia by 2-1 or something like that.

    Incidentally, correct on both results.

    This means I was 75% (6/8) accurate in my football predictions. Don’t know where or how I got my lousy reputation.

  173. Hyperborean says

    Lol, even the weather spirits are unhappy Croatia lost to France.

  174. ElitistSettler says

    The Russian Meteorological Union is reporting that the rain over Moscow today was 20% condensed water and 80% white nationalist tears.

  175. The big winners of this best of all World Cups:

    1. Russia
    2. Croatia
    3. France
    4. Europe

    So much genuine love and respect at the end.

  176. Anonymous says

    Also zidane’s inspiration was enzo francescoli, that’s why he named one of his sons enzo.

  177. A truly terrible result with that African team winning, if you want to know what the future will be like imagine all the European countries having African mercenaries playing for them.

  178. Hyperborean says

    Africans should also cry for the fact that they were unable to accomplish this deed under native African management.

  179. German_reader says

    The guy is a stupid troll (just read his comments history), don’t waste your time with him.

  180. ElitistSettler says

    Africans didn’t accomplish anything. The French did. Frenchmen who sang the French anthem before the match and flew the tricolor after it.

  181. ElitistSettler says

    If trolling = any deviation from white nationalist orthodoxy, then sure! and proudly.

  182. Thorfinnsson says

    I don’t know whether or not he’s stupid, but trolling should never be described as a negative thing. It is a good and wonderful thing–the very best thing about the internet.

    Rather he is a wrongist. Someone who genuinely loves being wrong because it comforts him emotionally.

  183. Thorfinnsson says

    https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42803471

    Right, and this Limousin cow is in fact a buffalo.

    France has never won the World Cup. “France”, however, just notched its second victory.

    Congratulations to Africa!

  184. He is a third world invader, consider him the enemy to be forcibly expelled if you value Western civilization, nothing more. He serves as a good example that to those that still want to hold out to their cuck fantasies how the average brown mind really works.

  185. Hyperborean says

    (just read his comments history)

    I see what you mean, I will ignore him from now on.

    While the commenters who pop up here from Sailer’s section from time to time are at times contributive and at times interesting oddballs, there are also some simply plain low-quality bugs that get dragged in.

  186. Thorfinnsson says

    I reviewed his comment history briefly, and he doesn’t strike me as stupid or someone who should be categorically ignored.

    He may be trolling, but if so he’s trolling in the way I troll. That is to say his sentiments are sincere but he enjoys getting a rise out of people. Nothing wrong with that.

    We can’t be so fragile that we refuse to parry with our antagonists.

    That said I won’t accept statements that are contrary to reality (which mostly stem from the Afro-triumphalists moon cricket thicket represented by Bliss and the Igbo fellow).

  187. Hyperborean says

    I actually prefer Bliss and Okechukwuyusha, they are wrong but at least they converse in a serious tone and when they are trolling, it is quite obvious. We can hone our arguments against them, whereas ElitistSettler is just ‘nyah, nyah, nyah’ (ex. his comment about immigration to Russia shows that he is completely ignorant about the matter and just wants to provoke people).

  188. Swedish Family says

    Very happy to see France win. First-class team and all-around gentlemen (unlike their competition — ugh).

  189. Thorfinnsson says

    France didn’t win. “France” (Africa) won. Definitions matter–don’t traffick in lies.

  190. German_reader says

    unlike their competition

    I didn’t watch the match, did the Croatians do anything unfair? Or do you just hate Croatia for some unfathomable reason?
    From what I’ve read, the Croatians had really bad luck, due to some questionable decisions by the referee, but still showed commendable fighting spirit even after the 4:1.

    At least Macron got wet when it rained. Putin should have offered to share his umbrella with the Croatian president though.

  191. Hyperborean says

    Very happy to see France win.

    Why? Even if the Croats were doping as some commenters suggested it is a lot more innocent than hiring foreigners for almost the whole team.

  192. Thorfinnsson says

    It’s also worth noting that doping is alpha.

    People opposed to doping are cowards.

  193. ElitistSettler says

    Any seasoned football fan could discern Croatia’s dirty and violent approach to the game. They received more yellow cards (15) and committed more fouls (114) than any other team over the course of the competition. No other team even committed 100 fouls. I suspect the alt-right types were too enamored with skin tones to appreciate these objective and statistically-grounded realities.

    I’m not going to use these statistics or the behavior of 11 Croatians to generalize about how this might reinforce stereotypes about “brutish” Eastern Europeans but I’m sure you would be making that very point about Middle eastern or African innate violence if those statistics had belonged to Belgium or France or any other team with a large non-white component.

  194. Thorfinnsson says

    Soccer would be less boring if it had more violence. Take notes from ice hockey, rugby, Aussie rules, American football, etc.

    Though the main problem is the lack of scoring (admittedly this has an upside as well–more underdog victories). The World Cup final was at least not lacking in that.

    And yes, we wanted a white team to win. Problem?

    No different than how the multicultists desired the victory of “France”, “Belgium”, or “England”.

  195. Thorfinnsson says

    I can’t entertain such we wuz kangz nonsense for even a second.

    One of the major deficiencies of ‘groids is ego. Thus nearly all intelligent blacks suffer from what I term “smart black man brain disease” in which they endlessly attempt to disprove observable reality because they can’t handle the fact that their race is, in general, dumber than dogshit and barely fit to be called human.

    Bliss even seriously continues to maintain that the ancient Egyptians were negroids. Even Dmitri’s Russian-Egyptian troll theory is more credible.

    Then there’s the fact that when you get right down to it they are motivated by some bizarre hatred of white people–not a deficiency which, say, Daniel Chieh suffers from (though he naturally and quite rightly stands up for the rights of Chinese in the West).

    Igbos a possible exception–perhaps owing to their archaic ghost DNA from a mysterious extinct hominid?

    Exceptions like Thomas Sowell and Gentle Ben are few and far in between.

  196. Hyperborean says

    I don’t really care about regular doping since everyone does it and anyone who cries foul is a hypocrite. But I would prefer the health of my compatriots over DDR levels of doping just to win a few more medals.

  197. ElitistSettler says

    Football is not hockey or rugby and you know that. The whole point is to use finesse and passing to overcome defenders – not shoves and fouls. The Croatians were playing rugby the whole competition.

    I preferred a French or Belgian or English victory only because I thought the alt-right would misuse a Croatian victory for political ends.

    Moreover, the difference here is that I doubt I would support a French team that had committed 114 fouls and received 15 yellows. I am not a strict partisan and have my limits. You, on the other hand, would support such a team seemingly without question or qualification and that itself is a danger. Would you support a Croatian team that committed 200 fouls? how about one that intentionally tried to injure key players on the opposing team? where does partisanship end?

  198. reiner Tor says

    all-around gentlemen (unlike their competition — ugh

    What was wrong with the Croats? The first two “French” goals resulted from two wrong decisions by the referee. The Croats should’ve been awarded a penalty after a foul against Mandzukic inside the penalty box. The French scored two of their goals after having the psychological and tactical advantage of being ahead one and then two goals. Despite them being the fresher side, they didn’t seem to be better at all. I don’t think they deserved to win.

  199. reiner Tor says

    the main problem is the lack of scoring (admittedly this has an upside as well–more underdog victories)

    Also more emotions when you do score. It’s probably better as a sport for most humans for these two reasons. You also don’t need much of an equipment or any other investment to play.

  200. Thorfinnsson says

    Football is not hockey or rugby and you know that.

    According to your comment history you reside in the United States and even attended high school here quite a long time ago. Thus the proper term is soccer.

    If you prefer to be a foreigner I suggest you surrender your American passport.

    Skin in the game.

    The whole point is to use finesse and passing to overcome defenders – not shoves and fouls. The Croatians were playing rugby the whole competition.

    Why is that “the whole point”?

    I thought the whole point was victory.

    I preferred a French or Belgian or English victory only because I thought the alt-right would misuse a Croatian victory for political ends.

    Misuse? Why would it be misuse?

    Is it misuse when the multicultists use victories of diverse teams to promote immigrationism and miscegenation?

    Moreover, the difference here is that I doubt I would support a French team that had committed 114 fouls and received 15 yellows. I am not a strict partisan and have my limits. You, on the other hand, would support such a team seemingly without question or qualification and that itself is a danger. Would you support a Croatian team that committed 200 fouls? how about one that intentionally tried to injure key players on the opposing team? where does partisanship end?

    This is such a sissy attitude. The whole point is winning. It’s the job of the referees to uphold the rules. It’s up to the players to win.

    Why would I or anyone else even give a shit about fouls? I’m a hockey fan!

    Where does the partisanship end?

    In these times, I suppose I’d draw the line at criminal violence against the opposing side or threats against their families.

  201. Thorfinnsson says

    As an American I have parochial interest in denigrating soccer. Nothing personal.

    The best thing about the sport compared to ours is the lack of endless interruptions. Though ice hockey isn’t too bad on this front.

  202. Thorfinnsson says

    The greatest athletes in the world choosing a short life of glory and victory seems great to me as a fan.

    Should also be noted that if these ridiculous school marm rules against PEDs were dropped then professional athletes could take their PEDs under medical supervision and thus suffer less harm.

  203. ElitistSettler says

    I spent a year after college studying in the UK and consider it part of my prerogative to call the game by its proper and form-fits-function name, “Football”. I also own a tiny amount of Juventus stock and am on their mailing list – I feel contractually obligated to call the sport by its correct name. I get little pushback from my coastal social circle.

    Sport is the modern incarnation of warfare. The point is to win but the whole exercise is a ritual and part of that ritual is the re-living of virtues that once played out on the battlefield – honor, virtue, bravery, camaraderie, etc. There is no fundamental “point” to sport so, stripped of these ritualistic elements, there is no point engaging in it in the first place. I give a shit about fouls because they are evidence that the bounds of acceptable play are being breached. They also slow the flow of the game and are an annoyance on screen.

  204. for-the-record says

    They received more yellow cards (15) and committed more fouls (114) than any other team over the course of the competition

    This is a rather misleading argument (some might say intentionally dishonest) since they were one of only 4 teams to play 7 matches. Compare their 15 yellow cards over 7 games to:

    Panama — 11 in 3 games
    South Korea — 1o in 3 games
    Serbia — 9 in 3 games
    Morocco — 8 in 3 games
    Argentina — 11 in 4 games
    Australia — 7 in 3 games
    Iran — 7 in 3 games
    Colombia — 9 + 1 red card in 4 games
    Switzerland — 9 + 1 red card in 4 games

    All of these teams had a higher average of yellow cards per game than Croatia.

  205. Thorfinnsson says

    Spending a year in the UK makes you a foreigner?

    What are you, an upper middle class white millennial female?

    Stop being ridiculous.

    I have an EU passport (by birth) and use the correct American term for the sport.

  206. ElitistSettler says

    That’s why I only directly mentioned Belgium, England and France as counter-examples. Teams that played as many games.

    Fouls and yellow cards are usually the recourse of losing and/or desperate teams. It’s an impressive mix for a team to get this far into the competition (ie. win as many games) while committing quite this many fouls.

    In any case, like I said, the Croatian proclivity toward rough and illegal play was obvious to anyone watching their games even casually. I only had to look up the hard numbers to confirm what I was clearly observing during each and every one of their games.

  207. for-the-record says

    I doubt I would support a French team that had committed 114 fouls and received 15 yellow

    What rubbish.

    Let’s compare France to Croatia, taking into account that Croatia played 3 extra periods of 30 minutes each, so effectively 8 games compared to France’s 7.

    France yellow cards — 12 (equivalent to 13,7 over 8 games)
    France fouls — 93 (equivalent to 106 over 8 games)

    Not a whole lot of difference between the 2 teams, wouldn’t you say?

  208. ElitistSettler says

    I’ll start calling it “soccer” when we start regularly qualifying for the World Cup. Deal?

  209. ElitistSettler says

    I suspect you weren’t watching the actual games. The Croats seemed to think they were still in the Balkans. They deserved at least two red cards during their game with England. Refs are understandably hesitant t0 issue any given player two yellow cards (a send off) and this reluctance definitely saved them many additional cards.

    The Turkish referee during the Croatia-England came down heavy in favor of his nation’s former subjects. Part of me thinks he may have overcompensated in an attempt to avoid accusations of a bias against the former dhimmis.

  210. Thorfinnsson says

    Didn’t we qualify in 94, 98, 02, 06, 10, and 14?

    In a sport we don’t even take seriously?

  211. Swedish Family says

    France didn’t win. “France” (Africa) won. Definitions matter–don’t traffick in lies.

    Modern, multicultural France won, yes, but that’s nothing to get worked up over. We immigration skeptics shouldn’t be goaded into mirroring the extremism of the open-borders crowd: clearly there are both upsides and downsides to immigration, and one upside is that immigration tends to grow the pool of talented sportsmen.

  212. ElitistSettler says

    Our confederation (CONCACAF) is an absolute joke. Failure to qualify from this pool is nothing short of a catastrophe for a country that can’t seem to find 11 competent players among a population of over 150 million men.

    We last failed to qualify under Reagan. And of course, I completely blame Trump.

  213. Hyperborean says

    England has a ‘multicultural’ team, the French one is just a bunch of foreigners.

  214. Swedish Family says

    I didn’t watch the match, did the Croatians do anything unfair? Or do you just hate Croatia for some unfathomable reason?

    I’m still cross about the Vida thing. The only acceptable response to such an affront was to take him off the team. That they chose not to betrays enormous disrespect toward their hosts and their fellow Slavs.

  215. Thorfinnsson says

    The entire point of international sporting competitions like the World Cup and the Olympics is to pit our boys against their boys.

    Mass immigration undermines the fundamental premise of this and turns into just another commercial, mercenary activity.

    And sure, blacks are good at (certain) sports. Other than the dweebs at Caste Football I don’t think anyone denies that.

    “France” won. France hasn’t competed in the World Cup for decades.

  216. German_reader says

    and one upside is that immigration tends to grow the pool of talented sportsmen.

    Yeah sure, because having some overpaid cretins win in a ball game (something that is completely irrelevant to the well-being of the country) is worth all the negatives of mass immigration.
    Nothing more pathetic than sports cucks who think their childish enthusiasm for something as trivial as sports competitions should count as a political argument.

  217. Thorfinnsson says

    I’m sure Trump would find a way to pin the blame on Obama. 😉

    It’s hardly a catastrophe that we’re not good at a sport we don’t care about.

    The real catastrophe is the NHL deciding to ruin Olympic hockey.

  218. Thorfinnsson says

    Immigrationists gushing over ethnic food might be even more embarrassing.

    If Guillaume Tell is reading, does this even happen in France?

    The French of course are notoriously lacking in great indigenous cuisine…

  219. Swedish Family says

    Though the main problem is the lack of scoring (admittedly this has an upside as well–more underdog victories). The World Cup final was at least not lacking in that.

    As you very nearly write yourself, and as Steven Sailer commented some days ago, the lack of scoring, far from being a negative, is perhaps football’s greatest asset in that it evens out the odds quite a bit. By contrast, how often does the “worse” (or even “marginally worse”) team win a game of basketball? Not often, I would guess.

  220. Bardon Kaldian says

    I may have a skewed perception of this match & although I’m-reasonably-sorry that we lost, I, nor my countrymen, do not feel defeated. These were two different teams playing different strategies & it turned out better for Afro-French. After clumsy goals, we did not lose spirits and had been pressing until the very end (with your shield or on it).

    Our players are coming to our Fatherland as glorified heroes, and French….I leave it to them. If we’d been clearly dominated, the general climate would have been different, our spirit would have been broken, at least temporarily.

    Not even remotely. Among two more or less equal teams, luckier & more faster & precise won fairly & that’s it. While not ecstatic with the result, I’m simultaneously sad & optimistic.

    And don’t exaggerate: blacks and Muslims can always be moved from Europe when (not if) locals finally come to their senses. As FDR had said- We have nothing to fear except fear itself.

  221. Thorfinnsson says

    Are underdog victories more important than exciting gameplay?

    American sports generally prosper when scoring goes up.

    The modern deadball era of baseball for instance (enacted in response to outrage over Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth’s single season home run record) was disastrous for the sport and resulted in its eclipse by American football.

    The steroids era, particularly the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, revived the sport.

    American football is a lot more fun to watch since the “West Coast offense” and better greens-keeping oriented the game away from running to passing.

    I realize foreigners all love soccer, but to us it’s like watching the paint dry. The endless pretend diving in particular has really sullied the sport.

    Basketball isn’t interesting to me anymore since it’s just a bunch of niggers hooting and hollering, though I’ll admit they’re very talented at what they do.

  222. A few years I had a discussion with some people on how to improve football.
    Ideas:
    * Active replay (finally introduced by FIFA this year, with very positive effects).
    * Shorten rounds to 30 minutes. Or have 3 rounds of 20 minutes each, as in hockey.
    * Stop the timer whenever play gets stopped.
    * Limitless substitutions, but make the new player wait 30 secs – 1 minute after the retired player comes off (exceptions if due to injury).

  223. reiner Tor says

    I didn’t get this impression during the tournament, but I didn’t see each match.

    Regarding the match against France, the French seemed at least as bad if not worse than the Croats, and the statistics confirms this, with 13-13 fouls and 2 French yellow cards against one for Croatia.

    The first French goal was from a free kick, which was awarded after a spectacular diving by French actress Griezmann. Diving is apparently not against your refined ethical sense.

    Then there’s the penalty awarded for the handball, which was a controversial decision, to say the least. So the French lead 2-1 was basically the result of a combination of luck, dishonesty, and a controversial decision by the referee.

    All this forced the Croats (already tired anyway) to open up and this paved the way for the two further French goals. I wouldn’t boast about this result.

  224. reiner Tor says

    Are underdog victories more important than exciting gameplay?

    What you call “exciting gameplay” is not very exciting, since you know in advance which side will win, so what is exciting about it? To me it’s only exciting if you don’t know what the result will be. Otherwise it’s a very boring thing to watch.

    Soccer is like a war, you can be worse on paper yet still win.

  225. reiner Tor says

    Even Anatoly accepted the explanation and doesn’t care about it, don’t be more catholic than the pope.

  226. ElitistSettler says

    I have to agree with you regarding the Final. The French were the rougher team today. I think it was a conscious decision on the part of the French coach to encourage his half-backs to rough up the Croatian midfield. It’s a reasonable response to the game the Croats played against the English.

  227. reiner Tor says

    Active replay often leads to worse decisions, like this time with the controversial decision to award a penalty for the ball accidentally hitting a hand. I think it’d be nice to have them made by people actually trained to make decisions based on the video, because right now it’s referees who are unaccustomed to make decisions based on what they saw on a screen.

    Then they should’ve checked the diving of Griezmann before the first goal.

    I think a reasonable idea would be to give each side two or three chances to have results re-checked. Only important decisions (free kick close to the goal, penalty, scoring) should be contested. If the decision is in favor, then you can keep your two or three chances, so basically you can only disrupt the game twice unreasonably. In a tournament this could be used in a somewhat cumulative fashion, and unreasonable use in extra time might be punished more severely.

    Regarding your other, more sweeping ideas, I think there’s an understandable conservatism regarding this. It ain’t broken, why fix it? It’s not like viewership is plummeting.

  228. France even although not playing consistently yet, had far higher quality players on this game, and it revealed with the most probable scenario in the second half.

    There are some very talented players with this team.

    Pogba was €134 million two years ago when he rejoined Manchester United. Griezmann has a minimum €100 million transfer clause at Atletico .

    Mbappe sold for almost €180 million last year for Paris Saint-Germain. And his price will only increase.

  229. reiner Tor says

    Apparently your refined ethical sense contains a lot of special pleading for the sides you like.

    Quite obviously rough play is very often a conscious decision (probably it was so for the Croats as well), but from an ethical viewpoint, if your theory of “Balkan foul play” was true, then the Croats just couldn’t help, whereas the French would perhaps be judged more harshly for consciously deciding for playing foul in a premeditated manner, wouldn’t they?

    Of course it’s rubbish, both of us know it has nothing to do with your support for France.

    Teams sometimes play rough, and usually it’s not enough. The more multicultural Dutch played quite rough against the all white Spaniards in 2010, so what? It was probably also a conscious decision. (I still remember a brutal kick by diverse Nigel de Jong in that match, with the ball nowhere near, it should have been a red card.) Mind you, they still lost the match. But the Croats in this tournament were nowhere near that level.

  230. reiner Tor says

    What I don’t understand is that what you call football is often played with the hands, and the ball is not even a ball. Something like handegg would be a more descriptive name for it.

  231. It was the best hosted World Cup ever, surely.

    In terms of football quality, it was not even near the best World Cups, even of my early football memories (I can remember watching already 2002 and 2006).

    (The most generous we can say – team Belgium played some beautiful football in moments, and France had very talented players, who were not quite working fluidly together as a team).

    But World Cup at its best, is things like:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5HbmeNKino

  232. reiner Tor says

    Would you allow Pistorius to compete against normal athletes? If yes, what would be the point to watch such a race? If no, how is it different from using PEDs?

    Doctors are helping them anyway.

  233. reiner Tor says

    I wonder if we could say football is declining (with its best era being in 1970s to 1980s, when players like Zico, Cruyff and Maradona).

    Declining, in what sense? Cruyff and Maradona were chain-smokers, I don’t think it would be possible for Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Today’s teams would probably consistently beat any former great team.

    Puskás in Hungary is still considered a national hero (in terms of name recognition he is probably the most famous Hungarian ever), but he was overweight and ran less than 5 kilometers per match. The Golden Team of the Magical Magyars would be beaten by today’s shitty Hungarian national team.

    I don’t know about popularity (though apparently now women are watching it, too), but the game itself is probably better now than it ever was.

  234. Perhaps in 1950s.

    In 1970s and 1980s, the fitness levels were on a similar level as today (there’s not that much you can improve running from around for 90 minutes), and the tactics had reached maturity.

    In some areas, tactical level has fallen. E.g. the best Serie A defenses of 1980s and 1990s – it’s now often discussed about Serie A that the standards of teams’ defenses are falling heavily.

    You can see a fall in this area this World Cup. The champion team in 2006 (Italy), only suffered 2 goals against them, in the complete tournament (the second place team, France, had 3 goals against them in 2006). The champion team (France) in 2018 have 6 goals against them (the second place team Croatia have 9 goals against them).

  235. In 1970s and 1980s, the fitness levels were on a similar level as today (there’s not that much you can improve running from around for 90 minutes), and the tactics had reached maturity.

    Perhaps not across complete season. But e.g. playing harder across the length of 1986 World Cup final, than they were in yesterday’s lazy final.

    Maradona doing ceaseless runs, and playing freely in all areas of the field.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLKgDLFdCNo

  236. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Wedgwood

    Maternal grandfather. and thus the relevant one for Darwin’s X

  237. He did enough to stay out of gaol. I put my finger on their calculatedly brutal play and the reason behind it. It was worse than I expected.

  238. reiner Tor says

    It’s not a “fall in the level of defense,” but simply that what is thought optimal is shifting towards more offensive styles, which inevitably results in more goals conceded.

    Cruyff and Maradona were chain-smoking in the 1970s and 1980s. I don’t spend much time watching old football matches, but I have a hard time believing that they were on today’s level.

  239. Mitleser says

    How Parisians celebrate and show the Israeli who is the boss.

    https://twitter.com/FrDesouche/status/1018807705337761793

  240. for-the-record says

    I think a reasonable idea would be to give each side two or three chances to have results re-checked

    Yes, like tennis instant replay, and challenges that are upheld don’t reduce your total of remaining challenges.

  241. Thorfinnsson says

    Our sports usually have many good teams, and the organizing bodies make efforts to create parity throughout the league to ensure competitive matches. Thus most games are not boring to watch.

    Outside of American football we also have seven-game playoff series which are quite interesting. The Boston Red Sox upsetting the New York Yankees in the 2003 American League Championship Series after losing three games is still the best thing I’ve ever seen in sports.

    Of course in international play you can’t create parity and there soccer’s low scoring may be a benefit.

    In Olympic ice hockey nobody ever wins besides Russia, Canada, America, Sweden, or Finland. Not that seeing only those nations compete upsets me. 🙂

    And now it will just be Russia every time since the NHL decided to ruin it.

  242. Thorfinnsson says

    I think it stems from the fact that football was once a general term for our boys vs. your boys games played by Anglo-American schools which didn’t have rigid rules like we now do. Soccer was originally called “association football” or “soccer football”.

    It’s true that calling Amerian football football doesn’t actually make sense, though there is some kicking in the game (and there was more in the early days).

    But that’s what we call it.

  243. Thorfinnsson says

    No.

    Cyborgs ruin the aesthetics of humans at our finest.

  244. Daniel Chieh says

    I preferred a French or Belgian or English victory only because I thought the alt-right would misuse a Croatian victory for political ends.

    And you aren’t?

  245. There’s an amusing article in the Russian press listing eight funny stories from the World Cup. My favorite is the Swiss fans who rented a bus and decided to drive to their team’s event in Rostov. Following their navigator, and somehow making it through several armed checkpoints, they unwittingly found themselves right in the middle of the deconfliction zone in the Donbass. A Ukrainian journalist explained to them it probably wasn’t the best place to spend the night and they proceeded on to the Russian border with haste.

    https://www.gazeta.ru/sport/2018/07/16/a_11854399.shtml

  246. Okechukwu says

    I preferred a French or Belgian or English victory only because I thought the alt-right would misuse a Croatian victory for political ends.

    They tried to propagandize Tom Brady. Turns out Brady has a black brother-in-law and dotes on his black niece.

    For the foreigners, Brady plays the other football.

  247. Okechukwu says

    That said I won’t accept statements that are contrary to reality (which mostly stem the Afro-triumphalists moon cricket thicket represented by Bliss and the Igbo fellow).

    So you prefer a cocoon of unreality? Well you’re in the right place. The fake Russian Anatoly Karlin will contort any subject (even a soccer tournament) into a racist polemic. Sports should be the one refuge from the day to day cares of the world.

    Then again, Karlin is merely throwing red meat to the knuckle-draggers here, who constitute his audience. Give him a real job for real money at HuffPost and he’ll start churning out anti-racist and SJW articles.