Colin Flaherty Gives a Round-Up of Recent Black Mob Violence

"Panic in Pittsburgh: Media Struggling to Ignore Black Mob Violence" at The American Thinker. Although most of the article focuses on the history of black mob violence in Pittsburgh, he links to articles and video from numerous other cities further in.

(H/t The Woodpile Report)

"Reveal Where Short Links Really Go To With These URL Expanders"

A list of tools for figuring out those tiny URLs without clicking the link.

"Make Your Own Urban Root Cellar"

This is a "root cellar" designed for an apartment or suburban home. Obviously, it is not an actual root cellar, but is a shelf unit hung on a wall that uses a couple buckets: one filled with damp sand (for storing root vegetables, such as carrots) and the other with water to provide humidity. Anyway, full plans and instructions are at the link.

ALG Defense 6 Second Mount

A couple reviews about the mount:

• "Review: ALG Defense 6 Second Mount," at Jerking The Trigger.
• "ALG Defense 6 Second Mount: Initial Thoughts" at The New Rifleman.

Iran Has Captured Iraq

This should be reported by every media outlet, but they are too busy with a previously unknown lion in Africa.  Jonathan Spyer reports at PJ Media about Iran's stealth take-over of Iraq.

In late June, I traveled to Iraq with the purpose of investigating the role being played by the Iranian-supported Shia militias in that country.

Close observation of the militias, their activities, and their links to Tehran is invaluable in understanding what is likely to happen in the Middle East following the conclusion of the nuclear agreement between the P5 + 1 powers and Tehran.

An Iranian stealth takeover of Iraq is currently under way. Tehran’s actions in Iraq lay bare the nature of Iranian regional strategy. They show that Iran has no peers at present in the promotion of a very 21st century way of war, which combines the recruitment and manipulation of sectarian loyalties; the establishment and patient sponsoring of political and paramilitary front groups; and the engagement of these groups in irregular and clandestine warfare, all in tune with an Iran-led agenda. With the conclusion of the nuclear deal, and thanks to the cash about to flow into Iranian coffers, the stage is now set for an exponential increase in the scale and effect of these activities across the region. So what is going on in Iraq, and what may be learned from it?

Power in Baghdad today is effectively held by a gathering of Shia militias known as the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization). ...

These militias, the author describes, are sole effective force standing between ISIS and Baghdad. And being the only effective military force, they also hold the political power of the country. Spyer reports:

In all areas, I observed close cooperation between the militias, the army, and the federal police.

The latter are essentially under the control of the militias. Mohammed Ghabban, of Badr, is the interior minister. The Interior Ministry controls the police. Badr’s leader, Hadi al-Ameri, serves as the transport minister.

* * * 

The real decision-making structure for the militias’ alliance goes through Abu Mahdi al Muhandis and Hadi al-Ameri, to Qassem Suleimani, and directly on to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Spyer concludes that Iran's formula for success is via indirect warfare; that is:

... The possession of a powerful state body (the IRGC’s Quds Force) whose sole raison d’etre is the creation and sponsorship of local political-military organizations to serve the Iranian interest. The existence of a population in a given country available for indoctrination and mobilization. The creation of proxy bodies and the subsequent shepherding of them to both political and military influence, with each element complementing the other. And finally, the reaping of the benefit of all this in terms of power and influence.

This formula has at the present time brought Iran domination of Lebanon and large parts of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Current events in Iraq form a perfect study of the application of this method, and the results it can bring. Is Iran likely to change this winning formula as a result of the sudden provision of increased monies resulting from the nuclear deal? This is certainly the hope of the authors of the agreement. It is hard to see on what it is based.

The deal itself proves that Iran can continue to push down this road while paying only a minor price, so why change? Expect further manifestations of the Tehran formula in the Middle East in the period ahead.

The Religions of the Left

So I've written about how Christians are being driven from the public square, and forced to choose between participating in commerce or upholding our beliefs as to marriage and sexual relations. So what is supposed to replace Christianity? Various forms of cultural Marxism, at least at the moment.

In 2010, Paul Rubin published widely cited op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Environmentalism as Religion." He wrote, in part:

Many observers have made the point that environmentalism is eerily close to a religious belief system, since it includes creation stories and ideas of original sin. But there is another sense in which environmentalism is becoming more and more like a religion: It provides its adherents with an identity.

... [S]cientists, particularly evolutionary psychologists, have identified another function of religion in addition to its function of explaining the world. Religion often supplements or replaces the tribalism that is an innate part of our evolved nature.

... It is this identity-creating function that environmentalism provides. As the world becomes less religious, people can define themselves as being Green rather than being Christian or Jewish.

Consider some of the ways in which environmental behaviors echo religious behaviors and thus provide meaningful rituals for Greens:

• There is a holy day—Earth Day.

• There are food taboos. Instead of eating fish on Friday, or avoiding pork, Greens now eat organic foods and many are moving towards eating only locally grown foods.

• There is no prayer, but there are self-sacrificing rituals that are not particularly useful, such as recycling. Recycling paper to save trees, for example, makes no sense since the effect will be to reduce the number of trees planted in the long run.

• Belief systems are embraced with no logical basis. For example, environmentalists almost universally believe in the dangers of global warming but also reject the best solution to the problem, which is nuclear power. These two beliefs co-exist based on faith, not reason.

• There are no temples, but there are sacred structures. As I walk around the Emory campus, I am continually confronted with recycling bins, and instead of one trash can I am faced with several for different sorts of trash. Universities are centers of the environmental religion, and such structures are increasingly common. While people have worshipped many things, we may be the first to build shrines to garbage.

• Environmentalism is a proselytizing religion. Skeptics are not merely people unconvinced by the evidence: They are treated as evil sinners. I probably would not write this article if I did not have tenure.

 Michael Crichton had previously penned an essay entitled "Environmentalism as Religion Run Amok," in which he observes:

[More below the fold]

"Increase Your Defensive Accuracy with These Sighting Methods"

An article at American Concealed with some advice on different sighting methods for up-close-and-personal encounters to increase your speed.

"Iran's rulers urge a baby boom to double population by 2050"

The Telegraph reports:

Iran's divorce and fertility rates have settled at Western levels. In a country that claims to be a model Islamic society, about a third of all marriages in Tehran end in divorce. Meanwhile, the number of births per woman of child-bearing age has fallen from 7 in 1980 to 1.8 last year - below Britain's fertility rate of 1.9. 

In the first decade after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran experienced a baby boom and the population became larger and younger. 

But the plummeting fertility rate has reversed that trend. Today, Iran remains a youthful country by Western standards, yet the average age of the populace is starting to creep upwards. Meanwhile, annual population growth - which approached 4 per cent in the 1980s - now hovers around one per cent, not much higher than Britain's 0.7 per cent.

David P. Goldman must be feeling a "told you so" moment. However, this merely makes Iran's situation more desperate as the number of military age men declines, and the number of elderly increases.

Migrants Attempt to Storm Chunnel

The Daily Mail reports:

Around 4,000 people have stormed fences and desperately tried to clamber on trains bound for Kent in the past three days - a deadly gamble that has allowed at least 150 to get to Britain but also claimed the lives of nine people. 

Migrants have said that watching their friends die will not stop them trying to get to the UK with one saying: 'It's England or death'. 

Today French police said an Egyptian man is in a critical condition after being electrocuted when he tried to climb on to the roof of a Eurostar train in Paris, suggesting migrants may be now trying to get through the tunnel away from Calais.

Last night migrants were still easily breaching the 15 mile fence surrounding the Channel Tunnel as senior MPs, backed by hauliers, demanded the British Army should be sent in to restore order because the French authorities had 'lost control'.

"It's England or death." England must have really good welfare benefits.

Submerged Town Revealed For First Time In 80 Years

Water levels in Lake Mead have fallen so far that the ruins of St. Thomas, which was abandoned to rising water in 1938. The article indicates that the reservoir has lost 60% of its water. 

America's Latest Upgrade To Its Nuclear Arsenal--The B61-12

From the Grand Junction Free Press:

Standing next to a 12-foot nuclear bomb that looks more like a trim missile than a weapon of mass destruction, engineer Phil Hoover exudes pride. “I feel a real sense of accomplishment,” he said.

He and fellow engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have spent the past few years designing, building and testing the top-secret electronic and mechanical innards of the sophisticated B61-12.

* * *

The new bomb’s name, B61-12, reflects its position as the 12th model of what the government calls a family of bombs. It is descended from the first U.S. hydrogen bomb tested in the Marshall Islands in 1952, which used a plutonium bomb to detonate a thermonuclear explosion 520 times more powerful than the plutonium bomb tested seven years earlier – the nation’s first – at the remote Trinity Site south of Albuquerque.

The current stockpile contains five B61 models, three of which – along with one other strategic bomb – will be supplanted by the B61-12.

But unlike the free-fall gravity bombs it will replace, the B61-12 will be a guided nuclear bomb. Its new Boeing Co. tail kit assembly enables the bomb to hit targets precisely. Using dial-a-yield technology, the bomb’s explosive force can be adjusted before flight from an estimated high of 50,000 tons of TNT equivalent force to a low of 300 tons.

* * *

High on the list of aircraft that could carry the bomb is Lockheed’s new F-35 fighter jet. This stealth plane, designed to evade radar, is a $400 billion weapon delivery system that has been plagued by technical problems and cost overruns.

Ol' Remus's Posts and Thoughts on the Backlash

Even though Ol' Remus is no longer publishing the Wood Pile Report, he does continue to post links to articles that he finds of interest. I don't know how often, but it is worthwhile to continue to stop by his site.

A couple of the articles he posted to today were from a site entitled The Iron Legion. While it appears similar in tone to some of the political/social blogs I follow, it is clearly not libertarian or classical liberal (i.e., how I generally classify myself), but comes across as more purely conservative (perhaps what would be termed "classical conservative") than the lukewarm conservatives with which I am generally familiar. From the site's own description:

The Iron Legion is a movement that encompasses the men and women who wish to see a return to traditional values and preserve the identity of the European people. We are united by our blood, traditions and values.

Some will be laymen who follow and support us. Others will be militant reactionaries and traditionalists who believe in the reshaping of themselves and our world. ...

There is something very wrong with the modern world. A lot of people can feel it, a troubling sensation that something isn’t quite right. It might come to them when they are enduring the commute to work, packed into train carriages like cattle, or tapping their fingers on the steering wheel while they’re staring at the rows of glowing red brake lights in front of them. It comes to them while they are sat at their desk doing the same old things they did yesterday, for eight hours straight, desperately trying to pay off their degree or their mortgage or the credit card debt that they were promised would make them happy. It comes to them when they’re dozing in a room lit up by the television screen, when they are falling asleep in bed with their laptop. They know something is wrong but they don’t know what it is, but they know it is getting worse.

* * * 

Many people at this stage become trivially angry and frustrated with the modern world. Trivially angry people shout, but get no further. We are the men who have become deeply, profoundly angry. Instead of vainly shouting into the wind, we are plotting. We are organising and preparing. We are getting stronger and growing in number.

We are leading men away from the system they built but which has since turned on them in spite. We are building better men. We are building heroes who will shepherd our people through the current dark age and into the dawn of the new golden age. We seek to preserve our people, our communities and the wider Europa.

* * *

We are not a movement based on hatred. We are only concerned for the survival of our own people. We reject the modernist miracle of equality but we do not seek racial animosity or conflict. It is however becoming increasingly apparent that the elites, either by neglect or design, are inflicting this upon us against our wishes. The Iron Legion will be ready to defend and lead our people when this happens.

The Iron Legion has some basic tenets.

We do not believe in democracy. At best it is an unwieldy mob rule that runs contrary to natural law. At its worst it is an easily subverted and well disguised form of slavery and with the changing demographics of the West it will only get worse. Instead we believe in separating from a hostile and failing system. We believe in a hierarchy based on natural law. The Iron Legion refuses to be ruled by foreigners, plebeians and weaklings. We protect the weak in our community, but we will not be subjected to the bullying and implicit violence of minority activists and those who wish to drag our society into the gutters.

We believe that communities have a right to defend themselves just as individuals do. This right is based in natural law and supersedes the laws of men. Natural laws and rights belong only to those who have the strength and will to protect and uphold them. We are the strong.

We will root out leftism, cultural Marxism and other pernicious influences wherever we find it. The Iron Legion does not debate with the left. We destroy it.

However, the group obviously has an attraction to the erstwhile classical liberal, as evidenced from this letter in the Deringer Files explaining the author's advocacy of the group:

I only want a simple uncomplicated life… a little farm near the sea… some sheep… a few dogs… a fine family… that’s all really… I do not ask for much from the world… let me keep what I worked hard for and don’t force me to pay for things I neither want, need or believe in – even better. Don’t take away my beliefs – don’t criminalize me or label me an extremist or a terrorist for not wanting to give up my beliefs and my lifestyle and don’t force me to accept a perverted ideal… and we’ll get along great…

* * *

I am not a NAZI like those who want to take away my beliefs. I am not a fascist like those that want to force their perversions on me. I am not an extremist because I want to live a simple uncomplicated life… and neither are the rest of the men joining our cause. All the men I have spoken to feel the same as I do and are all pretty much as the men Simon has described that he has spoken to… we want the simple things… to live our life on our terms with the morals and values we have chosen to anchor our lives by… to preserve the traditions of our faith and our cultures… to have a family and to create and build something better… the thunder you hear is the sound of men gathering… it is the sound of civilization crumbling… it is the sound of us tearing it down… and building it back up… it is the sound of our Legion.

 Following the pieces, it seems clear why Ol' Remus referenced The Iron Legion site and the article from The Deringer Files, and others (including this one, "greece invented tragedy .... and, probably comedy, too .... the euro union money lenders ...."). The explanation seems to be in another article to which he cited, entitled "America at an Ominous Crossroads," which is a review of the book Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order by James Piereson. From the review:

James Piereson, one of America’s leading public intellectuals, introduces yet another interesting theory of history in his new book, Shattered Consensus. He divides American history into three periods of political consensus in which certain principles were widely agreed upon by the electorate. The first, in his view, was the long period of anti-federalism that began with Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and extended through the presidency of Andrew Jackson. It was shattered when the southern states extended the idea of states rights to an unacceptable limit by claiming a right to secede from the union. A bridge too far.

The second, he argues, was the capitalist-industrial era running from the end of the Civil War to 1930, “when the regime collapsed in the midst of the Great Depression.” The third was the postwar [World War II] welfare state that took shape in the 1930s and 1940s and extends to the present, “but is now in the process of breaking up.”

In the Piereson view, these regimes lasting approximately a lifetime, each accomplished something important and was organized by a dominant political party, the Democrats in the pre-Civil War era, the Republicans in the industrial era, and the Democrats again in the post-World War II era.

The crises that brought down the first two regimes were vastly different. The secession that brought on the Civil War was a constitutional crisis, whereas, in Mr. Piereson’s analysis, “the Great Depression was a crisis of capitalism.” [Actually a very specific form of capitalism--financial capitalism--which has again struck this fair country, but in spades].

His book draws its title from the author’s belief that we are on the cusp of another shift in American opinion equivalent in magnitude to those that occurred in 1800, 1865, and 1930. The consensus that is being shattered, he avers, is the climate of approval for the welfare state and internationalism that has swayed politics since World War II.

I doubt that the reaction will be limited to only the welfare state and internationalism. The cultural Marxists have gone several bridges too far, and the pendulum is beginning to swing back. If the Iron Legion is indicative of attitudes in Europe, the backlash may be even more severe there than here.

"The Shower Cap Solar Still"

The Neo-Survivalist provides instructions on how to use a cheap plastic shower-cap, bucket or trash can, and a small receptacle (it looks like he uses the bottom of a plastic soda bottle) to make a solar still for producing drinkable water from non-potable water sources. Check it out.

"Knife Blade Steels – A Comprehensive Guide"

Thomas Xavier's article at More Than Just Surviving is a comprehensive overview of knife steels, and a must read for those that collect knives, or are shopping for a knife.

"Earth Will Only Have 12 Hours to Prepare for Massive Solar Storm"

Or so reads the headline from an article at Yahoo News:

Trains will be disrupted, power will go out, satellite signals will go wonky - that’s what we have to look forward to when the sun next has a melt down, and we’re unlikely to get more than 12 hours warning.

In a new government document, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has laid out its Space Weather Preparedness Strategy, outlining the risks of unsettled space weather as well as what it plans to do about them.

The document explains that the worst case scenario is a ‘coronal mass ejection’ - huge eruptions on the sun which cause parts of its corona to detach. The corona is the pearly glow around the sun that you can only usually see during a total solar eclipse, made up of plasma and rarefied gases.

The worst case scenario is based on the Carrington event of 1859, which caused solar-flare related x-rays and radiation storms. In 2015, a similar event could cause the national grid to fail, satellite operations to shut down, increased radiation on flights and upset to electronic systems.

The report suggests that there are three things the country needs to do to prepare for such an event: improve alerts and warnings, update power and communication infrastructure with failsafe backups and have a plan in place to deal with the effects should they come to pass.

As for you: the advice from the government is to prepare yourself for a solar event just as you would for any other natural hazards like floods and storms.

 The agency is part of the British government. The report is available here. In quickly glancing through the report, it doesn't appear to have any information on what individuals can do to prepare--in fact, the lowest level of preparation seems to be local government and emergency services.

Bullies Have High Self-Esteem

There are certain advantages to reading a book which lays out the "big picture" over magazine or journal articles that of necessity are generally limited in scope. Case in point are a couple of articles on violence that I've come across in the past two days, as compared to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature that provides an analysis of violence, and its motivators, across many different fields of study. 

The first article is what prompted the title of this post. CBS News reports:

Bullying behaviors are linked to higher self-esteem, social status, and a lower rate of depression, according to a new provocative study. 

Researchers at Simon Fraser University observed a group of high school students finding that bullies had the highest self esteem, greatest social status, and were less likely to be depressed, as reported by National Post. 

“Humans tend to try to establish a rank hierarchy,” Jennifer Wong, a criminology professor who led the study, told the Post. “When you’re in high school, it’s a very limited arena in which you can establish your rank, and climbing the social ladder to be on top is one of the main ways … Bullying is a tool you can use to get there.” 

Wong notes that many anti-bullying initiatives try to change the behavior of bullies, but often don’t work. This is likely because behavior is hard-wired and not learned, she says. Experts suggest that schools might expand competitive, supervised activities as an alternative outlet to channel dominating behavior.

(As a side note, I would point out that the cure for bullying--"competitive, supervised activities," i.e., sports--have generally been gutted because of enforcement of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which has been held to require that equal sports opportunities be given to girls as to boys, which has resulted in the reduction of sports programs for boys).

This confirms certain of the conclusions in Pinker's work, wherein he wrote that dominance is also related to mating success, and can lead to aggression. He also noted that dominance is related to self-esteem, reporting that psychopaths, street toughs, bullies, abusive husbands, serial rapists, and other violent criminals generally score extraordinarily high self-esteem, even narcissim. In other words, "[v]iolence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned."

The second article is from Aeon magazine. It first sets out to repudiate two historically popular theories on why people can become violent:

At present, there are two dominant approaches to understanding violence. Both fall short. The first is what I’ll call the disinhibition theory. Maybe, the story goes, even ordinary people have violent impulses that are usually held in check. When their moral sense breaks down or is somehow blocked, they give in to their dark side. Picture the man who knows that beating his wife is wrong but who, after a long day at work, loses his temper and takes it out on her. Is he our typical culprit?

In 2007, the psychologist C Nathan DeWall at the University of Kentucky and colleagues published the results of an ingenious experiment to test this idea. First, they drained their test subjects of self-control. They wore down college students by making them resist a tempting dessert or avert their eyes from part of a computer screen. And? The students became more aggressive in their subsequent judgments and behaviours. For example, they were more likely to deliberately blast loud noise into the earphones of another person.

So far, so promising for the disinhibition theory. Yet the experiments detected a pattern in these aggressive tendencies: they arose only in response to a previous provocation. In the sound-blasting experiment, the aggression was directed towards a person whom the participant believed had given them an unfair review on a previous task. When no provocation was present, there was no statistical difference in conduct between participants who had been depleted and those who had not. In other words, the aggression wasn’t a random overflow. On the contrary, it looked like the test subjects were trying to get even.

Now, such experiments might well indicate that some violence is enabled by loss of self-control. But the disinhibition theory sidesteps the question of why we are motivated to be violent in the first place. The impulse has to come from somewhere, and the theory is silent about where that might be.

It might be worth pausing to ask ourselves what kind of answer we expect to find here. Does our propensity for aggression simply come down to a mishmash of various provocations and triggers? Or is there some universal, underlying pattern, a single key that captures the majority of violence in every culture throughout history? The latter option sounds like an ambitious goal for a sociological theory. But the second general approach to violence, which I’ll call the rational theory, is certainly ambitious.

On this view, violence is just a way to achieve instrumental goals. For example, killing rival heirs is sometimes a good idea if you want to be king. Whether it’s fighting among brothers or between nations, these rational-choice models predict that the likelihood of violence increases when its benefits go up or its costs go down.

The theory can boast some empirical successes. Richard Felson, Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Pennsylvania State University, found that the likelihood of fighting among siblings goes up when parents are present, because younger siblings are more likely to fight when they know their parents might intervene, thus reducing the potential costs to themselves. At the level of states, Vincenzo Bove, Associate Professor in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK, and colleagues recently found that foreign nations are much more likely to intervene in a civil war when the country at war with itself also has valuable oil reserves.

But once again, we find ourselves with a puzzle. People frequently resort to violence when, by any measure of practical utility, non-violent means would be more effective. As Baumeister and colleagues noted in the paper ‘Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression’ (1996):

Wars harm both sides, most crimes yield little financial gain, terrorism and assassination almost never bring about the desired political changes, most rapes fail to bring sexual pleasure, torture rarely elicits accurate or useful information…

In 2007, the anthropologists Jeremy Ginges at the New School for Social Research in New York and Scott Atran of the French National Centre for Scientific Research surveyed Israelis and Palestinians on the subject of the Middle East conflict. During these interviews, the researchers presented their participants with a series of hypothetical peace deals; some deals included material incentives for giving up disputed land. A peculiar inconsistency emerged. A subset of the respondents saw the disputed land as just another resource: they were therefore willing to trade it for financial compensation and sign the peace deal, just as the rational model predicted.

Other participants, however, saw the land as sacred, tied to their communal identity. For these participants, adding financial compensation reduced support for the deal. They showed elevated levels of anger and disgust, as well as increased enthusiasm for violence. The rational model cannot handle this kind of data. Adding material incentives should never make the deal worse, unless the relevant utilities that people care about are non-material in nature.

The author's conclusion is that people are violent because their morality demands it. From the article:

For me, the burning question was always about why people disagree about when and whether violence is called for. Why was beating children for disobedience more acceptable 50 years ago than today, and why is it more acceptable in the American south than in the American north? Why do Westerners respond with horror to the killing of women for sexual infidelity, while other parts of the world not only condone but encourage the practice?

To understand how attitudes could be so vastly different across cultures, I started working with the anthropologist Alan Fiske at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Together, we analysed violent practices across cultures and history. We examined records of war, torture, genocide, honour killing, animal and human sacrifice, homicide, suicide, intimate-partner violence, rape, corporal punishment, execution, trial by combat, police brutality, hazing, castration, duelling, feuding, contact sports, and the violence immortalised by gods and heroes, and more. We combed through first-person accounts, ethnographic observations, historical analyses, demographic data, and experimental investigations of violence.

The work was, frankly, depressing. No one wants to read about all the terrible atrocities that people commit. But it was also fruitful. We did in fact find a pattern in all the violence. There was a unifying theme, with all the predictive and explanatory power one could wish for.

Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should. Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations.

 Of course, this result is also inconclusive. For instance, it doesn't explain the mugger (which falls within the purview of the rational model) or the opportunistic rapist (which may be in the rational model and/or the uninhibited model). Moreover, it doesn't seem to explain the actions of sociopaths, which seem to act without reference to cultural mores.

While I had some criticisms of Pinker's work, overall it seems to do a better job of explaining violence by realizing that there are many different forces and drivers both encouraging and discouraging violence in a person or society, than trying to find a single motivating factor.

ISIS Attack in Florida Thwarted

The Daily Mail reports:

A Florida man has been arrested after allegedly planning to use a weapon of mass destruction at a Key West beach. 

Harlem Suarez, 23, of Key West, was arrested and appeared in court Tuesday after taking possession of an inert 'backpack bomb' on Monday, the Department of Justice said. 

* * * 

Suarez, a restaurant worker who never actually made a bomb, received the inert device from an FBI informant after giving him supplies to make an explosive with galvanized nails. 

'If one day...I get a day off... I can go to the beach at the night time, put the thing in the sand, cover it up, so the next day I just call and the thing is gonna, is gonna make, a real hard noise from nowhere,' Suarez allegedly told the informant. 

Venezuela--Prepare for Revolution

The Smithsonian magazine reports that Venezuela is about to run out of beer because breweries don't have enough U.S. dollars to buy barley and malt.

Trust But Don't Bother to Verify

The Washington Post reveals:

President Obama promised that his nuclear deal with Iran would not be “based on trust” but rather “unprecedented verification.” Now it turns out Obama’s verification regime is based on trust after all — trust in two secret side agreements negotiated exclusively between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that apparently no one (including the Obama administration) has seen.

Worse, Obama didn’t even reveal the existence of these secret side deals to Congress when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill. The agreements were uncovered, completely by chance, by two members of Congress — Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) — who were in Vienna meeting with the U.N.-releated [sic] agency.

And the IAEA is refusing to disclose the contents of the agreement, stating: "No American is ever going to get to see them."

(H/t Instapundit)

A Quick Run Around the Web--July 27, 2015

Running off the rails on the crazy train ... and some sci/tech news:

• "Debt conundrum to keep Greek banks in months-long freeze."

Greek banks are set to keep broad cash controls in place for months, until fresh money arrives from Europe and with it a sweeping restructuring, officials believe.

Rehabilitating the country's banks poses a difficult question. Should the euro zone take a stake in the lenders, first requiring bondholders and even big depositors to shoulder a loss, or should the bill for fixing the banks instead be added to Greece's debt mountain?

Answering this could hold up agreement on a third bailout deal for Greece that negotiators want to conclude within weeks.

•  "Turkey, U.S. aim for safe zone cleared of Islamic State in northern Syria." 

Turkey and the United States are working on plans to provide air cover for Syrian rebels and jointly sweep Islamic State fighters from a strip of land along the Turkish border, bolstering the NATO member's security and providing a safe haven for civilians.

Long a reluctant member of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, Turkey last week made a dramatic turnaround by granting the alliance access to its air bases and bombarding targets in Syria linked to the jihadist movement.

Struggling with more than 1.8 million Syrian refugees, Turkey has long campaigned for a "no-fly zone" in northern Syria to keep Islamic State and Kurdish militants from its border and help stem the tide of displaced civilians trying to cross.

While no such formal arrangement has been struck with Washington, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the two allies saw eye to eye on the need to provide air cover for moderate Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State.

My interpretation: We are seeing the results of one of the private agreements or assurances given in exchange for support of the Iranian nuclear deal.

• From Bloomberg: "China Has Biggest One-Day Stock Crash Since 2007."
• From the AP: "Shanghai share index suffers biggest daily drop since 2007."
• From Reuters: "Chinese securities regulator says to continue to buy stocks." "China's top securities regulator, China Securities Regulatory Commission, said on Monday that China Securities Finance Corp Ltd would continue to buy shares to stabilize the stock market." My interpretation: Not wanting to waste a good crises, the China Securities Finance Corp. will get controlling interests in many companies at fire sale prices, then later sell the shares to government insiders.
• "Gallery: from nets to lasers, there’s a lot of new ways to take down drones."
• "Stretchable Conducting Fiber Provides Super Hero Capabilities."

The fiber, made from sheets of carbon nanotubes wrapped around a rubber core, can be stretched to 14 times its original length and actually increase its electrical conductivity while being stretched, without losing any of its resistance.

An international research team based at the University of Texas at Dallas  initially targeted the new super fiber for artificial muscles and for capacitors whose storage capacity increases tenfold when the fiber is stretched. However, the researchers believe that the material could be used as interconnects in flexible electronics and a host of other related applications.

•  "Metal Foam can allow lighter radiation shielding that is twice as effective as Aluminum."

Mormon Missionaries Visit Black Church--Panic Ensues

Watch out for the scary missionaries (Source)

From WISTV in North Carolina:

The Rowan Sheriff's Office is investigating after a member of a Salisbury church reported a troubling incident that he said took place during a revival service on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, church deacon James Greene told deputies that during the service at St. Luke Baptist Church on Hawkinstown Road, three white men [oh no!] entered the African-American church carrying "black nylon shoulder bags."

The men were said to have entered the church just after 9:00 pm, which church members thought was unusual.

Greene said that two of the men remained at the back of the church, while the third "got into the pulpit with the pastor while he was preaching." As this was happening, Greene said that one of the other men took pictures on his phone.

Once the service ended, Greene said that he approached the men and told them that they were welcome to attend services, but that "they may want to consider leaving their shoulder bags in their vehicle."

Greene said that one of the men was from Texas, one from Idaho, and the third did not say where he was from. The men showed Greene badges [i.e., name tags] identifying themselves as Mormons, and they said that they were working from a Mormon Church on Julian Road.

No one called 911 or took any pictures, according to investigators. They say the men were only described as white, and in their 20's, and were wearing white shirts, dark ties, and dark pants. There was no vehicle description. [Because they were on bicycles?] 

Investigators told Greene that they would follow up and would have a deputy check on the church as revival services continued.

Note: The copyright to the story is 2014, but it indicates it was published only a couple days ago. (H/t Weasel Zippers).

Hacking the Shower Head

One of the most irritating things of living in a nanny-state is the extent that the government interferes with the most picayune matters. Case in point is the requirement that shower heads restrict the flow of water.

Since I had the opportunity to replace an old shower head, I thought I would describe how to eliminate this small annoyance without resorting to "black market" shower heads as in the Seinfeld episode above.

Ball Joint -- Side View

The shower head I installed is one of those that is attached to a hose. The water flow reducer is in the part pictured above, which I will refer to as the ball joint. The grey portion on the right screws onto the water pipe projecting from the wall, while the rest of the shower head unit (a connector, hose, and shower head) screw into the chrome portion on the left.

Ball Joint -- Back View

In this view, you can see what appears to be a white plastic tab, and rubber washer. The "white tab" is actually part of a filter that strains the water going through the shower. It simply screws out. I used the needle-nose pliers to grip the "tab" and unscrew the filter.

Filter Removed

After removing the filter, if you look down into the ball joint, you should see another filter or aerator with a black rubber ring around it. This rubber ring is what is responsible for most of the reduction of water flow.

Looking inside at the rubber ring.

You need to remove the rubber ring. It may be possible to remove it simply by blowing through the other end. On this one, I had to push a wire (a paper-clip I had straightened) through one of the flow holes to loosen the ring, then blew through the other end to completely remove it.

Rubber ring removed

At this point, it is simply a matter of re-installing the filter and rubber washer, and finish the assembly of the shower assembly per the manufacturer's instructions.

Quote of the Day: What Women Know

It is worth noting that women have little understanding of men.  They may say, resignedly or ruefully, “Boys will be boys.” They have no idea of why boys are boys. They know how to manipulate men, yes: Flash a leg, stick their chests out, cry, or act helpless. They don’t understand men any more than a bear trap understands bears.

--from "Done Been Girled: The Price of Matriarchy" by Fred Reed.

"To Defeat China in Battle, America Should Study World War II"

An article at War is Boring, suggesting that the same strategy that was effective against Japan--a geographically isolated country relying on energy imports--would also be effective against China which, despite being landlocked, is still very much geographically isolated.

The Coming Surplus Population Boom

From an article at The Washington Post entitled: "We need a new version of capitalism for the jobless future," by Vivek Wadhwa.

I am optimistic about the future and know that technology will provide society with many benefits. I also realize that millions will face permanent unemployment. I worry that if we keep brushing this issue under the rug, social upheaval will result. We must make the transition easier by providing for those worst affected. In the short term, we will create many new jobs in the United States to build robots and factories and program new computer systems. But the employment boom won’t last long.

Within 10 years, we will see Uber laying off most of its drivers as it switches to self-driving cars; manufacturers will start replacing workers with robots; fast-food restaurants will install fully automated food-preparation systems; artificial intelligence–based systems will start doing the jobs of most office workers in accounting, finance and administration. The same will go for professionals such as paralegals, pharmacists, and customer-support representatives. All of this will occur simultaneously, and the pace will accelerate in the late 2020s.

* * * 

The impact of advancing technologies will be different in every country. China will be the biggest global loser because of the rapid disappearance of its manufacturing jobs. It has not created a safety net, and income disparity is already too great, so we can expect greater turmoil there.

But developing economies will be big winners.

In his office in Mexico City last month, I had a lengthy discussion about the global impact with Mexican industrialist Carlos Slim Domit. He had a surprisingly good understanding of the advances in technologies such as computing, sensors, networks, robotics, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing. He spoke of the uplift of society in the developing world through broader access to information, education, health care, and entertainment — and the need to share and spread the prosperity that advancing technologies will create. He predicted the emergence of tens of millions of new service jobs in Mexico through meeting the Mexican people’s basic needs and enabling them to spend time on leisure and learning. He sees tremendous opportunities to build infrastructure where there is none, and to improve the lives of billions of people who presently spend their lives trying to earn enough on which to subsist.

Countries such as India and Peru and all of Africa will see the same benefits — for at least two or three decades, until the infrastructure has been built and necessities of the populations have been met.

Then there will not be enough work even there to employ the masses.

Read the whole thing. The wealthy and the elites are already thinking about this, and I would be willing to bet that a whole lot of their thinking will be around how to get rid of the surplus.

We seem to be headed toward a society similar to that envisioned in Asimov's novel, The Naked Sun, where robots perform all menial tasks, technology has replaced human contact to such an extent that personal interaction is repulsive to the majority of people, and the society rides the thin edge of extinction due to the lack of a desire to reproduce.

Don't Tamper with Evidence

A video discussing why, if you are involved in a shooting, you don't want to tamper with the evidence. (H/t Recoil Magazine).

Global Warming Hurt Early Civilizations?

The Daily Mail reports on findings that suggest that early civilizations were negatively impacted by sudden global warming approximately 5,000 years ago. From the article:

A research team, led by the University of Miami (UM), discovered that during the first half of the Holocene, the region most likely experienced wet conditions. 

This period was followed by relatively drier and dustier conditions during middle to late Holocene, which is consistent with historical records.

* * *

'We see that transitions in several major civilisations across this region,' said Arash Sharifi, Ph.D. candidate at the department of marine geosciences and lead author of the study. 

'[This is] evidenced by the available historical and archaeological records, coincided with episodes of high atmospheric dust. 

'Higher fluxes of dust are attributed to drier conditions across the region over the last 5,000 years.'

* * *

Researchers at Cornell University said was just enough change in the climate to upset food resources and other infrastructure. 

The said this is likely what led to the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and affected the Old Kingdom of Egypt and a number of other civilisations.

 Related Posts:  Book Review: 1177 B.C.--The Year Civilization Collapsed.

Argentina and Greece: Compare and Contrast

Fer Fal has posted an article with more observations on the Greek crises and noting some differences between the two. Then he lists 12 things in common. Read it.

"Why A Handgun Should Be Your First SHTF Weapon Purchase For Self Defense"

An article by M.D. Creekmore at The Survivalist Blog.

It would seem many survivalist have been influenced by Hollywood or writers of fiction and can’t separate reality from fantasy. Leave make-believe to the armchair commandos and teenage boys.

Points to consider

• You won’t be engaging constant combat after a disaster.
• Those wanting to do you harm will not announce the fact.
• Anyone wanting to rob or steal from you will attack when you’re most vulnerable.
• If you’re attacked it will be up close, quick and violent.

After a collapse, violent crime will increase to levels never thought possible, theft, robbery, kidnappings and home invasion will be the norm. You’ll need to be armed at all times. Not following this rule will almost guarantee that you will be abused, robbed, raped, tortured and killed at some point.

Keeping a rifle or shotgun on your person at all times is impossible. Working the garden, feeding the chickens, cutting firewood, setting traps etc. And don’t forget barter markets where going armed will likely be forbidden. Criminals will know this and will wait to attack when you leave the market area.

It’s been said before; the first rule of winning a fight is to have a gun, in this regard a handgun makes the most sense. I know many of you look to be attacked from a distance, you see yourself returning fire from 300 or more yards away.

It could happen – but it’s not likely. In war yes; but not in a SHTF situation – most survivalist confuse the two. You’re more likely to need to defend yourself at arm’s length than from a distance of several hundred yards, if you’re attacked it will be fast, brutal and in your face close-up.

Something I've said before. The point isn't that you should not invest in rifles and shotguns, but that the handgun should be your priority.

To Carry A Back-Up Gun Or Not. That is the Question.

Having slaughtered Shakespeare in my title, I want to throw in my two cents on whether or not to carry a back-up gun. I had noted the other day a couple articles on the subject: "3 Arguments In Favor of Back-up Guns" by Gil Horman at The American Rifleman, and "Guns for Beginners: Three Reasons Not to Carry A Back-Up Gun" by Robert Farago at The Truth About Guns.

Horman's three arguments are: (1) in the event of weapon or ammunition malfunctions, especially something that cannot be cleared; (2) the primary carry gun is not accessible; and (3) arming another responsible adult. Farago's counterarguments are: (i) it is impractical given what other EDC items you must carry; (ii) it is unnecessary given the realities that most gunfights follow the 3-3-3 rule--3 shots, within 3 seconds, at 3 yards or less--and that a spare magazine cures the biggest source of mechanical malfunction--the magazine; and (iii) it is dangerous, in that you now have 2 firearms to handle and retain.

I think Horman and Farago are approaching this from two different points of view: Horman from the point of view of law-enforcement, and Farago from the point of view of civilian concealed carry. Each one's points are valid from their respective points of view.

However, they miss the basic point of having a back-up gun which is to have a fall back in the event that your primary arm is taken away from you, e.g., as what happened in the events of The Onion Field where two LAPD officers were disarmed, kidnapped, and one killed (the other was able to escape). Neither of the officers had back-up guns, and, it is my understanding (which may be incorrect) that the LAPD did not permit back-up guns at the time of the incident.

If you open carry, a perpetrator will probably know you are armed before initiating an attack, and may take steps to disarm you. Thus, if you open carry, it behooves you to train in weapons retention and to carry a back-up gun. As I have noted before, though, the whole point of concealed carry is to hide the firearm so you won't be disarmed prior to using the handgun.* (If you are being searched for a firearm, it doesn't matter if you have one or two firearms). Consequently, with proper concealment, the primary reason for carrying a back-up weapon doesn't exist. (Besides, don't you carry a knife?).

*Note: I'm not suggesting that concealed carriers should not train in weapon retention, but that people who want to open-carry most definitely should take such training.

Venezuela Orders Farmers to Turn Over Produce to State

From The Telegraph:

Venezuela's embattled government has taken the drastic step of forcing food producers to sell their produce to the state, in a bid to counter the ever-worsening shortages. 

Farmers and manufacturers who produce milk, pasta, oil, rice, sugar and flour have been told to supply between 30 per cent and 100 per cent of their products to the state stores. Shortages, rationing and queues outside supermarkets have become a way of life for Venezuelans, as their isolated country battles against rigid currency controls and a shortage of US dollars – making it difficult for Venezuelans to find imported goods.
Pablo Baraybar, president of the Venezuelan Food Industry Chamber, said that the order was illogical, and damaging to Venezuelan consumers. 

"Taking products from the supermarkets and shops to hand them over to the state network doesn't help in any way," he said. "And problems like speculating will only get worse, because the foods will be concentrated precisely in the areas where the resellers go. 

He pointed to statistics showing that two thirds of hoarders – or "bachaqueros", giant ants, as they are nicknamed in Venezuela – buy their goods from the three state-owned chains, to resell at a profit. 

"Consumers will be forced to spend more time in queues, given that the goods will be available in fewer stores." 

The state owns 7,245 stores, compared to more than 113,000 in private hands. Mr Baraybar said that many of the private shops were in densely-populated areas, meaning that people will now be forced to make longer journeys to the state stores.

How long until they turn the farms into collectives?

DSA Sale on FAL Upper Receivers

DSA emailed out notice of sale prices on some of its FAL upper receivers, in case anyone is interested.

Mystery of 130 Year Old Rifle Found in the Desert

A video news report from Fox News.

About Vitamin Expiration Dates

From The New York Times:

Vitamins and dietary supplements are not required to carry expiration dates on their labels. ....

If companies want to print a “use by” or “best by” date on their supplement labels, they can do so voluntarily. But they are then required to honor those claims, said Tod Cooperman, the president of ConsumerLab.com, a popular independent testing company.

* * *

The vast majority of ingredients in supplements decompose gradually over time, which makes them less potent, but not necessarily unsafe — unless, for example, they happen to grow mold. ....

If stored away from heat, light and humidity, supplements generally last about two years after the date of manufacture before the concentrations fall below 100 percent of the amounts listed on the label. But the window is only about a year for probiotics, liquids and oils, which are more fragile.

“If a probiotic label suggests refrigeration, do so,” Dr. Cooperman said. “Then return the bottle quickly back to the refrigerator before moisture gets in, as this will activate the organisms, causing them to briefly live and then die.”

Book Review: "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker

In his book, The Better Angels Our Nature (Penguin Books, NY: 2011), Steven Pinker sets out to document that people generally, and those of Western European descent specifically, have become substantially less violent (in orders of magnitude) over time; and offers some explanations of the reason for the decline. Since many types of violence are difficult to discover from the archaeological or historic record, or may vary from one time to another, Pinker has focused on violent deaths (murders and deaths caused by war) as a proxy for violence in general. By that measure, there is no question but that violence had declined. Lawrence Keely's War Before Civilization (on which Pinker draws) documented that in almost all primitive cultures, more than 25% of deaths were due to violence; and in many cultures, violence accounted for more than 50% of deaths; whereas, today, we measure homicide rates in a ratio of a number (generally in the single digits in Western nations and cities) per 100,000! As Pinker notes near the end of his book, "nostalgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all."

Pinker's Thesis

The bulk of Pinker's work discusses 6 major trends (associated with certain developments or time periods in history) that Pinker suggests have reduced violence: (1) the rise of states and state control which he terms the Pacification Process; (2) the spread of social mores and etiquette forcing people to control and curb their behavior, which Pinker terms the Civilizing Process; (3) the Humanitarian Revolution; (4) the Long Peace; (5) what Pinker calls the New Peace; and (6) what Pinker terms the Rights Revolution.  Pinker then explores psychological and sociological drivers or types of violence (which he terms the five demons): (i) predatory or instrumental violence; (ii) dominance; (iii) revenge; (iv) sadism; and (v) ideology. This is followed by an analysis of psychological and sociological drivers of non-violence (the four angels): empathy; self-control; moral sense; and reason/intelligence. Finally, Pinker attempts to join the psychological and historical analysis to identify five historical forces which have driven down violence: (a) the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes; (b) commerce; (c) feminization; (d) cosmopolitanism; and (e) what he calls "the escalator of reason."Pinker concludes from his study of violence, "[l]eft to their own devices, humans will not fall into a state of peaceful cooperation, but nor do they have a thirst for blood that must regularly be slaked. ... Human nature accommodates motives that impel us to violence, like predation, dominance, and vengeance, but also motives that--under the right circumstances--impel us toward peace, like compassion, fairness, self-control, and reason."

It is important to recognize that not all of these trends will appear simultaneously in a culture (or all cultures). Some regions will experience these stages later, or in a different order, than other regions; and some may never fully experience all stages or drivers. Unfortunately, the "five demons" appear to be nearly universal to all cultures and peoples. In fact, a tendency toward using violence peaks in most people at the tender age of 2, declining thereafter. We don't need to learn violence; we, instead, learn to not be violent.

Pinker first examined the statistical evidence for declines in violence first, then looked at drivers both for and against violence. Although the bulk of his book describes the 6 major trends in reducing violence, I plan on only lightly touching on each:

• The rise of states and state control which he terms Pacification. Essentially, in pre-state societies, life is brutal and short. The formation of states is accompanied by state power that encourages trade and cooperation, and discourages conflict between the members of the state. Pinker viewed this trend as being one of the longest processes, culminating in the Peace of Westphalia which ensconced the modern notion of a nation state, with its monopoly on violence (i.e., removing the rights of cities, districts or princes to raise their own armies). Pacification not only extends to those directly under the control of the state, but those tribes in which it comes in contact. Thus, one of the reasons for the persistence of the myth of the peaceful savage is that ethnographers and anthropologists generally encountered tribes after they had already been pacified by a colonial power.
• While the Pacification Process represented government forcing "self-control" on individuals when it came to violence, the Civilizing Process required persons to develop true self-control through rules of etiquette that developed among the upper classes, and were adopted by the middle and working classes.
• The Humanitarian Revolution was another significant event in Western Civilization where concepts of human rights and dignity were developed. These philosophies appeared relatively abruptly, and lead to the decline and virtual elimination of the acceptance of torture and other inhumane punishments, rules as to the handling of prisoners of war and treatment of civilians by enemy troops. 
• The Long Peace describes the extraordinary long period of peace between the major powers following World War II, which saw per capita deaths by war plummet to lows never seen before. 
• The New Peace is Pinker's description of the decline in low-intensity conflicts, mass killings of ethnic and political groups, and terrorism.
• The Rights Revolution seems to be an extension of the Humanitarian Revolution into new areas of increased rights and protections for minorities, children, women, etc.

After discussing the history and statistics of the decline of violence--both deaths from warfare as well as homicides--Pinker then moves into describing the types of violence.

The first category of violence is termed by Pinker as practical, instrumental, exploitative or predatory, and is summarized as "the simplest kind of violence: the use of force as a means to an end." It also includes defensive or preemptive violence, as well as violence committed out of boredom, lust or sport. He also notes that persons driven by predatory violence "have no destructive motive like hate or anger. They simply take the shortest path to something they want, and a living thing happens to be in the way. At best it is a category by exclusion: the absence of any inhibiting factor like sympathy or moral concern." In its purist form--hunting food--hunters not only may lack hate or anger, but actually valorize and empathize with the prey. However, Pinker notes that while hate or anger may play no role in the initiation of violence, as soon as the prey takes protective measures, emotions are likely to run high, and the predator's state of mind may shift from a dispassionate means-ends analysis to anger, hate, disgust, or wrath. On an individual level, once the emotions appear, a simple mugging or property crime can turn vicious; on a larger scale, a small conflict can morph into a genocide. Those that epitomize of this type of violence are the 1 to 3% of the population that are psychopaths. As Pinker writes, "[p]sychopaths are liars and bullies from the time they are children, show no capacity for sympathy or remorse, make up 20 to 30 percent of violent criminals, and commit half the serious crimes."

The second category or driver for violence is dominance (or egotism)--the drive for supremacy over one's rivals. Pinker notes that both individuals and groups may engage in violence to achieve dominance. He also observes that "[e]ven though nothing tangible is at stake in contests for dominance, they are among the deadliest forms of human quarrel." Pinker observes that "the single largest motive for homicide is 'altercations of relatively trivial origin; insult, curse, jostling, etc.'," and Pinker writes:

Studies of American street violence have found that the young men who endorse a code of honor are the ones most likely to commit an act of serious violence in the following year. They also have found that the presence of an audience doubles the likelihood that an argument between two men will escalate to violence.

On the other end of the scale, Pinker lumps World War I into the category of war driven by dominance, to-wit, dominance of Europe and the European colonies.

Dominance is also related to mating success, so that "[i]n nonstate societies, dominant men have more wives, more girlfriends, and more affairs with other men's wives." (Although this seems to be the case in nation-states, as well). Dominance is related to self-esteem. Pinker reports that psychopaths, street toughs, bullies, abusive husbands, serial rapists, and other violent criminals generally score extraordinarily high self-esteem, even narcissim. In other words, "[v]iolence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned." The consequence of this is not limited to just encounters between a couple of men. Not only can national leaders seek dominance through war or genocide, but it can infect nations:

... [N]ationalism can get virulent when it is comorbid with the group equivalent of narcissim in the psychiatric sense, namely a big but fragile ego with an unearned claim to preeminence. Recall that narcissism can trigger violence when the narcissist is enraged by an insolent signal from reality. Combine narcissism with nationalism, and you get a deadly phenomenon that political scientists call ressentiment (French for resentment): the conviction that one's nation or civilization has a historical right to greatness despite its lowly status, which can only be explained by the malevolence of an internal or external foe.

The third driver of violence is revenge: "the drive to pay back a harm in kind." Revenge is basic to human psychology, has been extolled in most cultures, and is one of the major motives of tribal warfare. It is the motive in 10 to 20 percent of homicides worldwide. And, of course, a major factor in nations declaring war. It can be short-circuited through apologies or reconciliation, particularly where the persons involved share some common bond or interest, or where the state offers an alternative method of redress through a justice or court system. Thus, people in countries where rule-of-law is weak are more likely to engage in revenge.

The fourth driver is sadism, or the joy of hurting another. While generally associated with serial killers and torture, Pinker notes that there are plenty of anecdotal evidence that persons caught up in violence may find themselves enjoying it.

Finally, there is violence driven by ideology. Pinker writes:

Individual people have no shortage of selfish motives for violence. But the really big body counts in history pile up when a large number of people carry out a motive that transcends any one of them: an ideology. Like predatory or instrumental violence, ideological violence is a means to an end. But with an ideology, the end is idealistic: a conception of the greater good.

And, I would add, an end that can never be realized, meaning that the desire for violence will never be satiated.

Opposing these drives for violence are drivers for peace (the four angels): empathy (sympathy); self-control; moral sense; and reason/intelligence.

Obviously empathy or sympathy, when combined with altruism, a sense of fairness ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), or guilt, can short circuit a desire or motivation for violence. However, there are limits. Pinker notes that our circle of empathy can only be stretched so far; generally it is limited by kinship, friendship, similarity, and cuteness. Moreover, when divorced from altruism, fairness or guilt, it can lead to increased violence. For instance, Pinker notes that serial killers or torturers resort to empathy in order to more effectively torment their victims. On a larger societal level, he observes:

Great harm has befallen societies whose political leaders and government employees act out of empathy by warmly doling out perquisites to kin and cronies rather than heartlessly given them away to perfect strangers. Not only does this nepotism sap the competence of police, government, and business, but it sets up a zero-sum competition for the necessities of life among clans and ethnic groups, which can quickly turn violent. The institutions of modernity depend on carrying out abstract fiduciary duties that cut across bonds of empathy.

Self-control is one of the more significant factors in reducing violence. Pinker writes:

Self-control has been credited with one of the greatest reductions of violence in history, the thirtyfold drop in homicide between medieval and modern Europe. Recall that according to Norbert Elias's theory of the Civilizing Process, the consolidation of states and the growth of commerce did more than just tilt the incentive structure away from plunder. It also inculcated an ethic of self-control that made continence and propriety second nature. People refrained from stabbing each other at the dinner table and amputating each other's noses at the same time as they refrained from urinating in closets, copulating in public, passing gas at the dinner table, and gnawing on bones and returning them to the serving dish. A culture of honor, in which men were respected for lashing out against insults, became a culture of dignity, in which men were respected for controlling their impulses. Reversals in the decline of violence, such as in the developed world in the 1960s and the developing world following decolonization were accompanied by reversals in the valuation of self-control, from the discipline of elders to the impetuousness of youth.

Not only that, but self-control is associated with better physical and mental health, higher intelligence, better marriages and friendships, and greater economic well being. Conversely, people with lower self-control are more likely to perpetrate acts of violence.

The description and analysis of moral sense is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that Pinker analyzes and employs several moral models which, in various forms, describes three basic categories of morality: Autonomy (the purpose of morality is to allow individuals to exercise their choices, which can be subdivided into Fairness/Reciprocity--the morality behind reciprocal altruism--and Harm/Care--the cultivation of kindness and compassion, and the inhibition of cruelty and aggression); Community (which equates morality with duty, respect, loyalty and interdependence to a community or group, and can be subdivided into In-Group Loyalty, and Respect for Authority);  and Divinity (or Purity/Sanctity). Morality is useful in reducing violence because it creates a universal or community norm as to what behavior is acceptable and what is not; and, moreover, violation of a moral norm (or taboo) will motivate the community to punish the transgression.

Finally, is the role of reason and intelligence in reducing violence. As Pinker summarizes, a smart society is also a less violent one. This is because reason allows us to move beyond the close circle drawn by empathy, and intellectualize the need to treat others with fairness and altruism. Greater intelligence is also associated with greater self-control. Finally, reason allows us to dispel false notions and moral positions, and apply morality in a more abstract means. Fortunately, as Pinker documents, intelligence (at least in the area of abstract reasoning) has been measurably increasing in industrialized nations during the past century as evidenced by the need to constantly revise upward what score on an intelligence test constitutes an average intelligence (i.e., I.Q. of 100)--known by the shorthand of the Flynn Effect. Pinker states that "[a]n average teenager today, if he or she could time-travel back to 1950, would have had an IQ of 118. If the teenager wen back to 1910, he or she would have had an IQ of 130, besting 98 percent of his or her contemporaries." And, because intelligence is inheritable, it suggests that this is a permanent rather than transitory development. Interestingly, higher intelligence generally correlates to holding values consistent with classical liberalism--individual autonomy and economic freedom; and to oppose left leaning "liberalism" such as socialism and communism, and "right wing" populism and nationalism. Similarly, nations that invest in education have lower chances of becoming embroiled in civil war.

However, the forces driving a decline in violence need not always move in the same direction. Pinker notes that "[d]eclines of violence are a product of social, cultural, and material conditions. If the conditions persist, violence will remain low or decline even further; if they don't, it won't." In attempting to identify the general forces at work, Pinker begins by eliminating certain theories which have proved untenable. One of these was technological determinism: that the development of weapons results in the use of the weapons. As Pinker points out, "[h]uman behavior is goal-directed, not stimulus-driven, and what matters most to the incidence of violence is whether one person wants another one dead." Thus, the saying "guns don't kill people; people kill people" is literally true whether one is discussing firearms or nuclear weapons. "Weaponry, in other words, appears to be largely endogenous to the historical dynamics that result in large declines in violence."

Another theory of violence which appears to be untrue is resource determinism: that conflicts over land and resources are inevitable and the principle drivers of violence. However, as Pinker notes, "[t]he most destructive eruptions of the past half millennium were fueled not by resources but by ideologies, such as religion, revolution, nationalism, fascism, and communism." Pinker also discounts any correlation between affluence and nonviolence; "[n]or does violent crime closely track the economic indicators. The careenings of the American homicide rate in the 20th century were largely uncorrelated with measures of prosperity: the murder rate plunged in the midst of the Great Depression, soared during the boom years of the 1960s, and hugged new lows during the Great Recession that began in 2007." The exception to this seems to be the risk of civil unrest, which starts to soar when its annual per capita domestic product falls below $1,000. "And since war is development in reverse, we cannot even know the degree to which poverty causes war or war causes poverty."

Pinker also dismisses religion as a general force for or against violence. He writes: "Religion plays no single role in the history of violence because religion has not been a single force in the history of anything. The vast set of movements we call religions have little in common but their disctinctness from the secular institutions that are recent appearances on the human stage."

After discounting common shibboleths about violence, Pinker sets out the five forces he views as behind the decline in violence.

First up is the Leviathan, responsible for a 5 fold decrease in violence just in the formation of nation states, and a further 30 fold decrease after law enforcement was consolidated in the state. Thus, "[a] state that uses a monopoly on force to protect its citizens from one another may be the most consistent violence-reducer that we have encountered in this book. ... If a government imposes a cost on an aggressor that is large enough to cancel out his gains ... it flips the appeal of the two choices of the potential aggressor [to pursue violence or pursue peace], making peace more attractive than war." He continues: "In addition to changing the rational-actor arithmetic, a Leviathan ... is a disinterested third party whose penalties are not inflated by the self-serving biases of the participants, and who is not a deserving target of revenge. A referee hovering over the game gives one's opponent less of an incentive to strike preemptively or self-defensively, reducing one's own desire to maintain an aggressive stance, putting the adversary at ease, and so on, and thus can ramp down the cycle of belligerence. And thanks to the generalized effects of self-control ..., refraining from aggression can become a habit, so the civilized parties will inhibit their temptation to aggress even when Leviathan's back is turned." Conversely, according to Pinker, "[i]nept governance turns out to be among the biggest risk factors for civil war, and is perhaps the principal asset that distinguishes the violence-torn developing world from the more peaceful developed world."

Next is commerce, because it rewards cooperation over antagonism. It depends not on just a willingness to trade, but also "on whether each one specializes in producing something the other one wants, and on the presence of an infrastructure that lubricates their exchange, such as transportation, finance, record-keeping, and the enforcement of contracts. And once people are enticed into voluntary exchange, they are encouraged to take each other's perspectives to clinch the best deal...."

The third force is what Pinker describes as feminization, by which he means a retreat from the "culture of manly honor, with its approval of violent retaliation for insults, toughening of boys through physical punishment, and veneration of martial glory," as well as social and sexual arrangements (such as marriage) that favor the interests of women while reducing competition between men for sexual opportunities. Pinker's thesis for this force rests on the observation that violence is mostly committed by men, and that "[s]ocieties in which women get a better deal, both traditional and modern, tend to be societies that have less organized violence." For instance, he points out the low levels of political and judicial violence in Western Europe versus the high levels "in the genital-cutting, adulteress-stoning, burqa-cladding Shria states of Islamic Africa and Asia." Nevertheless, he also notes that "feminization" may itself be the fruit of society that is already secure from outside physical threats.

The fourth force is the expansion of the circle of sympathy. Cosmopolitanism--the exposure to other peoples and societies, even if only through literature or entertainment--invites us to take other's point-of-view.

Pinker labels the final force the "escalator of reason": the ability to abstractly think about or imagine another's vantage point, and consider that person's interests as equivalent to your own. The application of reason can not only explode erroneous moral positions or arguments, but also force a movement away from tribalism, authority, and purity in moral systems and toward humanism, classical liberalism, autonomy, and human rights. "A humanistic value system, which privileges human flourishing as the ultimate good, is a product of reason because it can be justified: it can be mutually agreed upon by any community of thinkers who value their own interests and are engaged in reasoned negotiation, whereas communal and authoritarian values are parochial to a tribe or hierarchy."

It is important to note that Pinker's work is not intended to urge universal pacifism. In fact, he points out that "[u]nilateral pacifism is a losing strategy, and joint peace is out of everyone's reach." But his message is one of hope. He concludes: "For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and in impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible."

Criticisms

I have three basic criticisms of Pinker's book. First, and foremost, is the absolute reliance on homicides as a proxy for violence. I understand the need to do so when records are incomplete; my criticism has to do with his failure to verify from modern records whether it is an accurate reflection of overall violence. And, in fact, it does not appear to do so. Where this shows up most spectacularly is in the United Kingdom. According to statistics reported in this 2009 article from The Daily Mail, even though the UK had a homicide rate of just 1.49 per 100,000--making it among the lowest in the world--its overall violent crime rate was 2,034 per 100,000. By comparison, the same story indicated the the overall violent crime rate in the United States was 466 per 100,000--a number not only well below the UK's rate, but far less than other European nations. (For additional comparison, the FBI reported that the homicide rate in the U.S. was 5.0 per 100,000 in 2009). Thus, there does not appear to be a direct correlation or relationship between violence generally, and homicide in particular.

The second criticism is somewhat related. One of the forces that Pinker names is what he called the "feminization" of a culture. This theory, as well as other portions of Pinker's book, implicitly or otherwise rests on the assumption that women are inherently less violent than men. Of course, it is impossible to tell the gender of an attacker from the nick left in bones, an arrow head embedded in wood, or a fragment of a spear head. Instead, the assumption is that if women commit fewer murders today, they must have committed fewer murders in the distant past. To me, accepting this assumption is as foolish as accepting the myth of the noble savage. Moreover, while women may be responsible for fewer homicides, the difference shrinks when considering other types of violence. For instance, in the United States, women initiate the majority of incidents of domestic violence, although men are more likely to seriously injure or kill a women.  (See also here for additional links to the CDC study; and here for studies revealing that the high incidents of domestic violence among lesbian couples). It is also clear that women are the aggressors/attackers in nearly half of sexual assaults.  (See also this article at Time magazine and this article at The Pacific Standard; and this article on female-on-female rape in the Congo). And women are more than capable of committing murder: 1 in 6 known serial killers were female. (I suspect the number is actually higher, but that they simply weren't discovered or prosecuted). If abortion and infanticide were to be included, women clearly kill more than men. In reality, what Pinker describes as "feminization" was an enforcement of moral standards that, prior to the Victorian period, had been honored in word only, and not some victory of "female qualities" over "male qualities."

And this leads me to my third criticism, which is the general antagonism toward religion. As even the book cover demonstrates, Pinker likes to pick on religious stories (especially from the Bible) to show how "bad" is religion; at best, as noted above, Pinker takes the position that it played merely a neutral role. Unfortunately, Pinker's personal viewpoint on religion (he describes himself as an atheist at one point in the book) blind him to how Judeo-Christian beliefs have helped drive down violence. For instance, the cover of Pinker's book illustrates the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. To Pinker, the incident only serves to illustrate the barbarity of the time. Yet, even if the symbolism of the event escapes him (i.e., that Abraham tells Isaac that God will provide a lamb; and that the incident occurred on the same hill where Christ would later be crucified), he should have been aware of the fact that Abraham had been forbidden from human sacrifice at a time when it was common among surrounding cultures. Similarly, Pinker seems to overlook the fact that the Humanitarian Revolution was largely the result of wide-spread printing and distribution of the Bible; while obviously Christian mores underlie much of the recognition of human rights.

Application

Of course, for purposes of this blog, the real value of Pinker's book is attempting to understand what could happen in a decline of civilization. Unfortunately, as Pinker notes in his book, reduced violence is not guaranteed. Pinker notes, for instance, that when the Civilizing Process (i.e., following etiquette and manners) was reversed in the 1960's counter-culture, violence increased. He also notes that in areas where the Leviathan does not reach or where an honor culture persists (e.g., ghettos), rates of violence remain high. 

The historical forces that shaped our peaceful society are in retreat. Reviewing them in reverse order:

1. The Rights Revolution. Although it may seem that the rights revolution may be progressing due to the devotion to political correctness, it is not. Instead, we see the "social justice warriors" emboldened to persecute anyone that does not believe as they do; and, in many countries, they are backed by the full force of the law. Meanwhile, civil rights laws increasingly exist solely for the purposes of shaking down cities and businesses. The Rights Revolution was the fruit of the victory of reason. But, as Pinker observes, reason is the friend of classical liberalism, and the alien to collective philosophies. We are, however, increasingly subject to socialism and Islamic ideologies, both of which are anti-intellectual.
2. The New Peace has largely ended: the last several years has seen Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen largely collapse into civil war; Iraq is fracturing; Islamic armies such as Boko Haram and ISIS kill and torture. China is facing increasing unrest among the Uyghers.
3. The Long Peace is at risk as Russia and China increase their military provocations and the Middle East is on the eve of a nuclear arms race and outright war.
4. The Humanitarian Revolution seems secure, but it must be remembered that the Humanitarian Revolution was uniquely European; the only reason it spread to the rest of the world was due to European colonialism. As European and American power recedes, practices such as slavery, rape and torture as tools of war, and so on, are returning to many parts of the world.
5. The Civilizing Process, as Pinker has already noted, began to reverse in the 1960's. Etiquette and manners seem quaint today.
6. As the Leviathan retreats, so does the Pacification Process. While rule of law still exists in most countries, as I noted above, the collapse of the New Peace demonstrates that we have entered a period where the international order and historical Nation States are falling away. Rule of law may still be strong at the core of Western Civilization and other great powers, but the periphery of the modern world has frayed.

The West could be secure in avoiding barbarism even if the rest of the world burned except for the fact that the West is importing millions of immigrants which do not come from societies with the history and traditions that led to the low rates of violence in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. Worse, the West is doing so while at the same time pursuing unilateral pacifism which, as Pinker warned, is a losing strategy.