Charles Murray was widely lambasted a few weeks back for this Tweet: Doesn't it make a difference to @davidafrench's argument that two of the core problems typically ascribed to centuries of American racism–elevated black violent crime and depressed mean cognitive ability–are found wherever sub-Saharan African populations live? https://t.co/ZSkSDF4BXW — Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) July 30, 2021 […]

Matt Yglesias might want a billion Americans. But there would have been 500 million Russians in the absence of the Bolshevik Revolution, as was predicted by Dmitry Mendeleev in a 1907 book. Putin, who it is now very clear reads my blog and Twitter, recently said as much himself in a meeting with schoolchildren in […]

I was at the Army-2011 expo this week. Very cool, sort of like a military-themed Geek Picnic. POWERFUL COMMENT. Thorfinnsson on the Japanese economy. Adam Tooze: Chartbook #35: It’s not the fall that kills you …. Afghanistan’s looming triple crisis. “Afghanistan as a country where the costs of central governance exceed local capabilities, and is only […]

Politics is tribal. “Conservatism” is situational. And so you can get some “unlikely comic book crossovers” if looking at the world through country-specific ideological prisms. According to one recent poll, the most pro-vax Russians are United Russia (i.e. the most pro-Putin) voters, presumably reflecting the official state position which is and has always been pro-vaxx. […]

*** AFGHANISTAN The terrorist attacks today. The Taliban did free all those Islamist militants, not all of them would have been strictly suborned to the Taliban themselves. What’s so surprising? Notable foreign relations developments. Tajikistan has adopted a cold tone to the Taliban, accusing them of gong and has reportedly supplied the NRF holed up […]

MUSTREAD. @pseudoerasmus thread on the history of the Taliban. Steve Sailer on Pashtun proverbs. * Erik D’Amato: 20 Hungarian Lessons the West Is Still Missing Noah Carl: Observations on Afghanistan Lyman Key thread on Chinese TFR. We still don’t really know what’s going on there. MUSTREAD. Philip Lemoine: Why COVID-19 Is Here to Stay, and Why You Shouldn’t Worry […]

The past is the best guide to the future, so there’s no surprise that there is already a rebellion breaking out against the Taliban. Finding its core in the natural fastness of the Panjshir Valley, which foiled repeated Soviet attacks during the 1980s, the Northern Alliance is reconstituting itself under Ahmad Massoud (the son of […]

It is true that Afghans probably have the highest “Islamism Quotient” in the world. Support for sharia, as Steve Sailer reminds us, is basically universal. He refers to a 2013 PEW poll, which Razib Khan and I had covered a few years back. Furthermore, 79% of Afghans who support sharia also support the death penalty […]

First thought is that the US spent 20 years and $2 trillion trying to build a democracy in a half-literate country of goatherders that disintegrated within 20 days. Think what you could have done with that (dependent on your preferences). “Green New Deal”. Free college. 335 ship Navy. Mars base. This adventure must have set […]