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Mon Nov 12 21:36:17 GMT 2007
Why is the Powerful Jewish Lobby So Powerful?
(You know:  powerful Jewish lobby - like in powerful Black lobby.)

Jews are only 3-4% of the population [of the US] so why is the Jewish lobby so strong? Asked the interviewer on Hard Talk on BBC News 24 last night.  [In fact it's 2.1%, I think.]  He asked this bloke who has just written a book that says the influence of the lobby damages both the US and Israel.

And the man replies that American farmers are only 2% and yet they are given $Billions, and the National Rifle Association, NRA, has only a couple of hundred thousand members, and so on.  We must conclude, he feels, that the size of the lobby does not matter.

But this is highly unsatisfactory.  There must be some reason.

How about:  The farmers are given so much because it indirectly impoverishes Third World countries.  Desperately poor, these countries then pose no threat to the US - or give your own explanation; but we must have an explanation.  Or the war-zone promoted by the NRA promotes social control, with the man in the street convinced his sister will soon be shot by a Jew (sorry pedophile, sorry I mean criminal), and he must concentrate on this and not the doings of his masters.

The Powerful Jewish Lobby

So it is not the farmers who are powerful it is something which is using them, something which gives their lobby, ordinarily a puny thing, great, unmerited weight.  Something that uses the lobby seemingly to  benefit farmers but really to its own ends.  It must be the same thing with the Jewish lobby.

Israel is a superannuated battle ship plonked down in the middle of all those oil fields.  Its job is to police the fields for America.  What does not come across in the Western media, is that Israel has attacked just those Arab states the US would wish attacked, again and again.  [See Professor Stephen Zunes.]

Is this in Israel's interests?

Why does the US need to control oil fields and pipelines?

The primary, not the only, reason is because the US then has a handle on all those countries that need the oil.

On the BBC World Service an Ox-bridge academic recently said that Russia controlled its Soviet block empire by controlling the oil and gas supplies to its allies.

So the Israeli man-in-the-street, betrayed by his political class, who are little more than US placemen, exists to serve America; perhaps to get himself mangled in the army (they are the fourth largest military power on earth.  In a fight would Britain stand a prayer?)

Run Away Sexual Selection
RUN-AWAY SEXUAL SELECTION
(A technical term intended to get round the problems with classical sexual selection)

Darwinism:

Asked to 'explain' the large ears, say, of some animal, Darwinism gives us a choice of three (not a packet of three - that's something else) explanation categories:
  1. The size of the ears is a consequence of natural selection.
  2. The size of the ears is a consequence of sexual selection.
  3. The size of the ears is a consequence of descent.  The animal is descended from something with large ears.  This is the reason given for a bat's wing being a distorted hand, for example.  It cannot be the best way to make a wing from a 'let us design the most efficient possible wing' natural selection point of view.
We are given no clue as to which - 1, 2, or 3 - we should use.

Maud is looking particularly attractive this morning, so use sexual selection:

Sexual Selection:

Darwin asked us to imagine visiting a farmyard and seeing a particularly attractive, and spectacular turkey cock.  We are impressed by this creature, remarking among ourselves upon its beauty.

Might not a turkey hen take the same attitude, share our inner lives, regarding the cock, asked Darwin, might she not choose to mate preferentially with him, forsaking the others?   If so, he would leave more offspring (other hens have no dislike for him) and future populations would bare his weighted resemblance.

Again, Darwin gave the example of an African tribe who line their women up in a rank and then squint along the rank in order to decide which woman sticks out the furthest behind (he put this last bit in Latin to serve Victorian sensibility).  This accounts for women's [calipygousness].

As to the animal's ears, perhaps females like big ears or perhaps the ears are a 'visual rank-dominance symbol' (advanced  typically in the context of antlers) occasioning deference among other males.

Some of the Problems With Sexual Selection:

We must count this proposition true:  'Liking something implies mating preferentially with it.'  (Sporus's take on this is not to deny, or to affirm, its truth but to claim it is not 'scientific'.  This is because no 'algebra' has been specified, no 'logic', which supplies the implies.  This is frequently a feature of [Social Scientific] theories.)  Many evolutionists feel this and related aspects of sexual selection, such as an apparent capacity for reading the mind of a Brussels sprout, require the re-jigging suplied by run away sexual selection.

Run-Away Sexual Selection:

  1. By chance a turkey hen is born which mates preferentially with males having extravagant plumage.
  2. Future populations bare a weighted resemblance to him.
  3. Their female offspring probably share their mother's appetite.  So the process is reinforced.
  4. Their male offspring have extravagant plumage.  So they get mated preferentially - since the female component of the population resembles the mother.
In short the process runs-away with itself and the population comes to consist in decorated males and in females lusting after decoration.

Sporus's halfpenny:

The simplest line to take is that the process can go in either direction.  You could equally get [Puritan] males with short feathers and naked areas.

With the large ears example, the process could give large ears - bigger than optimum hearing would require, natural selection would wish - or it could give undesirably, from a natural selection point of view, small ears.

If we look at the population at random times we will see large ears half, say, of the times and small ears the other half of the times.  Neither condition is optimal for natural selection.  The same will prevail for most of the animals' other attributes.

If run-away selection is real we are living in a world where almost all the characters of life show random deviations from what natural selection would lead us to expect.  These deviations may well be large with a 'size' presumably in inverse proportion to the [selective pressure] acting on the attribute.  This is not the world we are normally told we inhabit.
Peacocks' Tails and Horn-Like Structures Without Sexual Selection.
Peacocks' Tails and Horn-Like Structures Without Sexual Selection.

([Erasmus Darwin|Darwin], believing his concept of [Sexual Selection] failed with peacocks' tails, said he left the problem to future generations.  So here we are....)

Basic Strategy:

  1. Darwinism has a [fundament]al problem; it provides three categories of explanation.  So the explanation of peacocks' tails could be natural selection, sexual selection, or decent.  We are not told which category to use (see [Selection]).  It would be an improvement to get rid of sexual selection altogether.  So let us use natural selection as the explanation [mode] here.
  2. Horn-like structures, like [antlers], are easier.  So develop the argument for them, then extend it to tails.

Aren't Antlers [Weird]; What're They For?

The usual arguments:
  1. Antlers help the animal fight; the bigger they are, within reason, the better the male is at fighting, and he may acquire a larger harem; much as a king may acquire more territory through battle.

    Problems with this:

  2. Antlers are 'visual rank-dominance symbols'.  Similar to 1.

     Problems with this:
  3. There is the [hypothesis] that such burdensome expense [prove]s to the female that the male must be [healthy] and likely to give her healthy [offspring]:

    Problems with this:

Interesting and Suggestive Properties of Horn Like Structures:

  1. They show inter- and intra-specific positive allometry.  That is:  if a deer is twice the size of another its antlers are more than twice the size.  (Risible matter:-  Q:  Why do women have such feet?  A:  So they can stand closer to the sink.)
  2. Apart from the genus Rangifer (reindeer and caribou) only the male has antlers.
  3. Rangifer live in cold places.
  4. Colder places give more massive antlers:
  5. The only thing that sheds its horns annually is the Prong Horn Antelope.  Its horns have a tine - as do deer.
  6. A species of buck has males belonging to two castes:  short-horned males which ignore the females and long-horned ones, obscenely attentive to the females.  How come there are still short horned ones?  It is because they live for four years and so leave offspring despite rarely approaching mates.  The long horned ones live only one year.