₦airaland Forum

pleep: Honestly I fail to see the apocaliptic threat in attacking Iran. It would be a horribly unjust war, but i don't think it would be as bad as you are predicting.

It would be a financial and political disaster - the cost of funding that war would reverse all the gains made by the Obama administration in handling the U.S. recession and the military cost in human lives before real victory (successful occupation or complete surrender) could be attained would be enormous. And the U.S. would have a permanent enemy that could not be subdued, co-opted or bought off. Even after conquest, attempts to build up a nuclear arsenal might resume or a policy of permanent hostility to the U.S. and Israel and support for anti-U.S. and anti-Israel terrorism would probably be pursued by Iran.

First off, Irans military is good but the military gap between the U.S and the rest of the world is so big that it hardly makes a difference. The United states Abosolutly mowed down the Iraqi army in the Iraq war...the coalition was able to litterally bomb w/e target they wanted for days on end with no resistance.

Iran is a more technologically capable country than Iraq was when the U.S. invaded Iraq and it has much more foreign political and military support. What they have hidden up their sleeves to resist an attack by Israel and the U.S. is anyone's guess. I doubt they would allow information about the extent of their full arsenal to leak out given the degree of their government's (justified) paranoia about the U.S. and the West in general. Basically, I expect them to give off the impression to their enemies that invading and defeating them in war would be much easier than it actually would be. Not that I think that their military leaders have been reading Sun Tzu or anything, but I just think they're clever enough to realize that they stand a better chance of making an invasion too costly (in terms of human lives, time, money, etc.) to succeed in toppling the current regime there if they hide the full extent of their military capability before the fighting begins. When the fight becomes too difficult for the U.S. to continue and there is no end to hostilities in sight, it would just become Vietnam part 2, with the U.S. forces withdrawing.

With stealth bombers they can do the same to Iran...

Iran has a whole slew of anti-aircraft weapons though. But going back to what I said above about Iran probably hiding the full extent of its arsenal due to paranoia, consider the following information:

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3307

(An article about how Israel possibly screwed over the republic of Georgia to get codes from Russia that would allow Israelis to hack into the anti aircraft defense systems that Russia sold to Iran.)

Iran focuses heavily on producing their own weapons and I suspect that they would have their own (non-Russian) defense systems in place by the time any real conflict ensues out of paranoia of infiltration or possible subversion (like the above), and they probably wouldn't let the full extent of their capabilities in this area leak out.

What the Israeli government wants to do is to weaken Iran to the point where they are no longer a threat. This can be done without ever putting boots on the ground.

Economic sanctions? Those can only do so much, and they won't necessarily stop Iran from obtaining or developing nuclear weapons.

Secondly, i see no reason why China would enter the war... they little vested interest seeing as their economy is so interwined with America's that war would probably damage them more than us.

China would only possibly sell them some weapons in secret, but I agree that China wouldn't enter the war directly.

Thirdly, i see no reason why Russia would join the war. People need to remember that the soviet union is gone, Russia is not such an important player on the world stage anymore, they are a paper tiger. The only thing that makes them relevant is their nukes and why would they use them over Iran?

Russia still has advanced weaponry other than nuclear weapons that they might still sell to Iran when things get critical even despite the UN resolutions against selling arms to Iran. Russia doesn't need to directly join the war by putting soldiers on the ground. They could also send in a few military advisers and military technology specialists to give the Iranians some extra help without putting any significant amount of Russian soldiers on the ground in Iran.

If Israel and the U.S decide to attack Iran, the only thing the brick nations be able to do is Veto it in the U.N. aka nothing

Given the unpopularity among the British people of the decision of Tony Blair's government to follow the U.S.'s lead in invading Iraq, it's extremely unlikely that the British will be a significant ally of the U.S. in any war on Iran. France is definitely ruled out because of the anti-American sentiment that is just naturally pervasive there. The same can probably be said for much (if not most) of Europe not being behind any war on Iran. The war would basically be Israel and the U.S. with no other major allies vs. Iran + Syria + Lebanon (possibly) + Russian arms shipments + Chinese arms shipments. Also, given how nationalistic they are, if the legitimate Iranian military forces are defeated, Iranian guerrilla fighters would probably hold out for as long as possible and create an insurgency there that would make the Iraqi insurgency look small and brief by comparison.

It's true that the kingdom of Kongo is underrated, but I think that this is mainly by those who haven't bothered to read about it. I also think that the modern awful situation of countries in that area of west central Africa and modern brainwashing and stereotyping about what levels of organization/development Africans in general had achieved in the past is partly responsible for the misconceptions as well, not just a lack of reading.

For more on the kingdom of Kongo, the work of the historian John Thornton - who has published several articles and two books on specific historical periods of that kingdom - is probably a good source. The articles of his on the Kongo that I have read are excellent so the books are probably of similar quality.

Thornton's article in the book Africa's Urban Past (a very good book, by the way), "Mbanza Kongo/Sao Salvador: Kongo's Holy City" is pretty informative:

http://books.google.com/books?id=0IwMwBVfr0sC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67

I do have to say one other thing though. On a less positive note, Kongo would probably be rated more highly as a historic kingdom today and get the perception that its early history deserves if it were not also rightly seen as a kingdom that was a bit too willing to adopt European ways and let itself be co-opted by (and ultimately ruined by) Europeans.

That was a very good episode. The part where Michonne was tied to that post and looked like the walkers might get her had some tension and was very well done, even though I knew she would survive anyway. But the ending was what was really great. The governor deciding to shoot Merle somewhere other than his head so that he would come back as a walker and then Darryl seeing him like that and having to put him down - that's really great writing and the actors did a great job as well.

The short previews I've seen for the final episode of this season make it seem like the group has fled the prison instead of fighting the governor's forces, which I like a lot. The show will probably be more interesting next season since the prison was getting too familiar and repetitive anyway. They'll start off season 4 on the run from the governor's militia and probably end up somewhere completely new and different, and the journey to that new hideout will probably be the most interesting part of the season.

pleep: Earnest Oppenhimer, the jewish man who created Debeers also created Anglo American PLC a few years earlier...... Now isnt that scary.

Right, but is Anglo American PLC still owned and run by Jews today? I couldn't find any evidence that it is.

As for the sight-holders all being Jewish...probably not, but knowing that Jews have litterally dominated the gem stone industry for the last century (to the extent that is is common to hear Yiddish at trade fairs) I don't think the assumption that it is disproportionitly Jewish is not too far off.

This is the Antwerp diamond house... see how many clearly Jewish ppl there are here (fedoras indoors a/o yamchas)

Well, if Jews have been and still are dominating the gem stone industry that's not an inherently bad thing or evidence of them putting it exclusively under the control of their ethnic group. It just suggests that that is one of the areas of commerce they tend to venture into and do extremely well in.


I'll watch the other videos you posted a bit later.

pleep: I don’t actually believe the IQ test is a real measure of intelligence, as I said in the thread that figure was put in the title as an attention grabber… neither do I believe black people are less intelligent than other races, eugenics could simply be a way to help us overcome the geographical and situational impediments to our development.

I had to simplify the title post, cuz If it wasn’t dumbed down a bit the thread would never have made it to the front page.

Ok.

Well, here you are suggesting that the development of a writing system was dependent on intelligence, and I’m sure we both know that is not the case.

I'm suggesting that there is a connection between the ability to visually represent human thought and creativity. Intelligence isn't the only component of "genius" or intellectual brilliance - creativity is a huge factor, whether we're talking about science, literature, art, music, etc. Now I know that the development of a writing system among any group probably has more to do with utility (which would depend on whether the society was at a stage where it needed writing yet) and/or with religion than with intelligence or anything else, but I think that if Jews were "intellectually superior" to all other peoples, then we would see some evidence of their besting every group in every area of human creativity, including writing. I think the Jews are creative and maybe uniquely gifted as far as religion, mysticism, moral laws, moral fables, etc. and in commerce, finance, economics, etc. but I don't accept the idea that they're an "intellectually superior" group when there's no evidence that they're really better than every group in all creative and intellectual pursuits.

That last episode was very good. The tension when the governor was basically "hunting" Andrea was great and it was even better when she outsmarted him and got away. But I think they should have made it clear how the governor was able to survive all those walkers - did he kill them all or did he just run? I think it's obvious how he got to the prison before she did (he had a car, she was tired and on foot), but it's not obvious what he did to get out of that abandoned building. They made it look like he was determined to fight them all off just for the thrill of it, which would have been a waste of time.

Also, the fact that Andrea found herself strapped in that chair at the end instead of Michonne, just because she hesitated about killing the governor (for the second time now), is very ironic and something which I did not expect at all. I wonder if the writers are going to have the governor use Andrea as a bargaining chip or hostage against Michonne once he encounters Michonne again. He may threaten to harm her badly if Michonne doesn't surrender. Other than that, I can't really see why he would keep her alive.

MsDarkSkin: DID YOU JUST CALL FIDEL CASTRO A JEW?

It's entirely possible that Castro is of Jewish descent and therefore technically a Jew, even though he doesn't follow Judaism. Some descendants of conversos and marranos in the Spanish speaking world could definitely have moved to Spanish colonies or Spanish speaking independent republics in the western hemisphere. I looked up this claim a while back the first time that I came across it, and it seems that there really is no hard evidence proving he's a Jew, although it is in no way impossible. I think the reason some people suspect he is a Jew - apart from some comments that Castro himself has made that were interpreted as being pro-Jewish - is the tendency observed in the past (the late 19th century and the 20th century to be specific) for Jews to have disproportionately high representation among left wing political revolutionaries and "radicals" in countries where Jews could be found.


But the idea that Castro killed Chavez is really silly.

Hey Pleep, on the issue of intelligence and eugenics, I have a new comment on this thread of yours from last year:

https://www.nairaland.com/1094411/eugenics-selective-breeding-purify-black/3#14806152

MsDarkSkin: damn!

#epicSLAYING!

It would be an "epic slaying" except that he isn't actually Edo. The person who posted that comment ('baby_123') is not Edo and just doesn't know what she's talking about. Anybody bearing that name Obafaiye is either an Okun Yoruba from Kogi state or a Yoruba living elsewhere but with ancestors from Kogi state or (and this is another possibility which I just found out after looking at the picture above) he could be from the Ogori ethnic group in Kogi that occasionally have Yoruba names due to some past interaction with their neighbors but seem to not really be Yoruba.

Anyway, he didn't make that big of a gaffe. It's being way overblown.

Just search for the man's name, "Obafaiye", leaving out "Shem," the probably Biblical name his forefathers adopted, and add the word "Okun" to your search, and you will quickly find that there have been other people from the Okun area of Kogi state that bore that name. I don't know if its exclusive to that particular Yoruba group or not, but I can't find any other group to which the name is connected.

omonnakoda: It is important to have a good definition of "sanctions" whether in a lay sense or a legal sense. Withdrawing aid that is essentially unilateral is not a sanction in my book though some may call it so.Quite often aid is conditional anyway and so the giver can withdraw it at any time for any reason or no reason. I think sanction" would mean something more active against a country with whom one has or does not have ANY relationship whatsoever or as the US has done recently penalizing its partners into or otherwise coopting/coercing them into some orchestrated punishment against a sanctioned nation. This is quite different from e.g withdrawing aid because we criminalize homosexuality

I agree with this part in bold, and honestly I didn't read the original post well enough like I should have and just skimmed through it. The article shows that the U.S. neither threatened Nigeria with sanctions nor said they would withdraw aid, rather someone asked if it was a possibility that aid would be withdrawn and an ambiguous answer was given. But yeah actually the U.S. can withdraw the aid that is currently being given, since its a small fraction of Nigeria's wealth and Nigeria can fund its development at basically the same pace without that aid (in fact, I wonder why the aid is being given in the first place. It seems that the purpose may be to boost the U.S.'s status as the top donor). It just strikes me as a bit hypocritical that the reason they are giving for their disappointment would be their disapproval of the pardoning of a thief like Alams when Bill Clinton pardoned criminals like Marc Rich and thieves like Dan Rostenkowski. That was only about a decade ago, and Clinton is still revered among most people in Obama's political party, with few people in his political camp (Democrats) bothering to criticize him about those choices today.

As much as I dislike the pardon of Alamieyeiseigha, I have to point out that if former U.S. president Bill Clinton could pardon a criminal like Marc Rich (look him up) on his last day in office due to pressure from Israelis (Rich helped out Mossad, hence their support of him), then I don't see what business the U.S. has threatening sanctions over GEJ deciding to pardon his mentor (Alams) due to pressure from some Ijaws. After multiple controversial pardons from Clinton, this just looks hypocritical.

baby_123: He's edo.

From where? Obafaiye seems to be an Okun name (look it up), so that means he is a Yoruba man with direct or ancestral origins in Kogi state.

Anyway, I don't see why anyone is so embarrassed by this guy or thinks he embarrassed himself that badly. A way bigger deal is being made out of this situation than would make sense, all because he used one funny phrase.

Also, the title of the thread is somewhat misleading, although I'm sure it wasn't intentional. Upon reading it, one might think for a second that "Diasporans contribute more (through remittances) in a year to the entire country financially than 34 states put together do in a year", which is not really what the article is stating at all. Anyway, the article explains what is really meant so it's no big deal.

I don't even know how you guys managed to make this thread an ethnic battleground. Ridiculous.

Anyway @ the OP (Bucephalus), I thought that remittances from the diaspora were only counted in calculating a country's GNP, but not included in its GDP. I don't see how remittances can be relevant to calculating GDP. I think the statistics that you're interpreting are really saying that the monetary value of the remittances is equivalent to a certain percentage of Nigeria's GDP, not that the remittances actually factor in the GDP calculations, which should, by definition, exclude remittances.

slimyem: Is it a useless and worthless therapy?

Yes.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkzYud_xWm0

You can't be serious.

Pleep, on Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence:

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2006_06_17_thenewrepublic.html

^
This is an article by Steven Pinker in which he covers most of the same ground as he did in the talk you posted a video link to, basically summarizing and analyzing Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending's theory about the cause of Jewish intelligence.

http://www.economist.com/node/4032638

^
This is an article in the economist that summarizes the same idea (the Cochran-Hardy-Harpending theory), and presents it as plausible.

But there is something else that may be relevant or even more significant to causing their high intelligence - the possibility that Jews were (knowingly or unknowingly) practicing eugenics. Eugenics could be the main factor, or the most significant cause, rather than the higher reproduction and survival rate of the smartest middleman-occupation Jews in the European middle ages as the Cochran-Hardy-Harpending theory suggests.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/05/review-of-john-glads-jewish-eugenics/

^
This is that anti-Jew website I mentioned earlier. The review is by the founder of the site, and he is reviewing a book by a Jewish academic that argues that Ashkenazi Jews have been practicing forms of eugenics over the centuries (I haven't read the book, and don't intend to - I have only a passing interest in this kind of stuff). Try and ignore the "white people are the victims of the Jews" mentality that the reviewer and all of the comments display, and weed through the self-pity for whites, hatred of others, and delusions about others, and consider the relevant information there about the Jews and intelligence. If European Jews had been knowingly or unknowingly practicing eugenics for centuries - presumably to intentionally produce more intelligent offspring (as the review suggests) - it would probably explain their (intelligence/creativity based) prominence in so many areas of American life soon after immigrating to America much better than the religious idea that they're the "chosen people" of God or even the idea of Cochran, Hardy and Harpendig that selection pressures during the European middle ages resulted in smarter "middleman minority" Jews with traits that could result in higher intelligence reproducing and surviving at higher rates than Jews without such traits. But of course, even if the eugenics explanation is correct or more significant as a cause, it doesn't exactly resolve the issue, as it fails to answer the question of why Jews would come up with a rationale for eugenic practices or implement such practices before others in the first place.

On a related note, I remember from our discussion of eugenics and the black race months earlier, that you're a fan of eugenics, especially as a means of improving the intelligence of black people worldwide (which you think is represented by an IQ that is near 70 (based on the work of Richard Lynn and co.), although I doubt that that figure is accurate). While I still haven't changed my negative opinion of eugenics as it pertains to black people or as it pertains to humanity more generally, I think that deliberately encouraging subliminally eugenic practices, if kept within reasonable (not extreme) limits, could be beneficial in the short term for a group/race trying to develop their countries within a short period of time, and then afterward such practices could be somehow phased out so that nature can take its course. As for why I still oppose eugenics even after our discussion, I don't want to derail the topic too much, but consider, as just one possible objection, the higher incidence of certain terrible genetic diseases that Ashkenazi Jews have to deal with, and the possible connection between these diseases and their (possibly eugenics based) high intelligence. The possible connection between Jewish diseases and their high intelligence has been discussed seriously in scholarly articles that try to figure out the causes of Jewish intelligence (such as the theory by Cochran et al discussed above), but I don't know if anyone has ever considered the possibility that, if there is a connection between Jewish intelligence and intentional/unintentional practicing of eugenics by Jews in past centuries, then this means that any or some kinds of eugenics based practices - even if unintentional - could have unintended consequences such as creating a higher incidence of certain genetic diseases within a population. I just have an intuitive suspicion about there being a possible connection between eugenics and unintentionally creating higher incidences of certain genetic diseases, although of course I can't prove it and the whole issue is in an area of science (genetics) in which my knowledge is sparse.


I'll comment on Iran and the U.S. a bit later. I have a different perspective on that.

pleep: Well i always try to be unbaised in everything i write here, and in all honesty it is possible the Jews actually are an intellectually superior group of people. The raw data this guy puts out is staggering, even though his explanation for it is very weak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a_Ju8WCeHk

The Ashkenazi Jews may be intellectually superior to any group in a few specific but very important areas, but I don't exactly think of Jews as having bested every other group on the planet in every area of intellectual and creative endeavor. As just one example of an intellectual area in which they were not at the forefront, consider the area of graphical/visual representation of human thought for the purpose of communication, i.e. writing. The symbols of the Hebrew script were not invented by Hebrews - they came from Phoenicians/Canaanites, who got their Phoenician script from the Proto-Sinaitic script which had its origin in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Maybe the Jews or the parent group that they came from (the larger proto-Semitic group) were too small a group or maybe their patterns of social organization or social activity at that point were not ideal to have come up with a writing system of their own at the time that the Egyptians came up with theirs. Regardless of what the explanations are, what is clear is that the two early and influential systems of writing in the ancient Near East - Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics - were not produced by Semitic groups (Egyptians were/are an Afroasiatic group, but not Semitic), and not invented by Jews or their direct ancestors.

Even without the luxury that many other groups closer to the Near East (including groups like the Greeks, Persians, and ancient Indians, not just Semitic groups) had of being able to borrow the writing system (or modified versions of such a writing system) of a more advanced civilization like that of the Egyptians or the Sumerians, at least one group of isolated black Africans created their own system of communication using visual symbols:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsibidi
http://www.naijablog.co.uk/2010/09/5th-century-nsibidi.html
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Early+ceramics+from+Calabar,+Nigeria:+towards+a+history+of+nsibidi-a0160331983
http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/mit-press/early-ceramics-from-calabar-nigeria-towards-a-history-of-nsibidi-lGgpn9y0wc


And I agree that the explanation given in the talk is not particularly convincing. Nobody seems to have really figured out the cause or causes of high Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, even after all the theories that have been put forward.

By the way, I don't follow Steven Pinker's professional research work, but I've read one of his popular books, The Blank Slate, and it was a very good read. I would definitely recommend it.

PAPA AFRICA: did they clear out the Forrest or was there no forest in the area the city was built to begin with?

The Edo cleared out much of the forest in the areas that were settled in and lived in. But of course the areas that were not lived in and were not forested were not cleared out.

Patrick Darling (an archaeologist) suggests in his article "A Legacy in Earth - Ancient Benin and Ishan, Southern Nigeria" that the ancestors of the "Edoid" (Bini, Ishan, Owan, etc.) groups moved into the present areas they occupy thousands of years ago from a northeastern direction, coming from a more savannah-like area near the Niger-Benue confluence, down to the more forested areas, which they cleared out when settling. He specifically suggests a savannah area somewhat north of the Akoko-Edo part of Edo state as where the Edoid groups migrated south from (although where they were at even before being in that northern savannah area, he doesn't comment on). The article suggests that after moving into the forested areas from the north, they cleared out some of the forest areas for farmland, and built earthworks first to demarcate the territory of communities, and then built larger earthworks later on for defensive purposes.

pleep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4c1p_DMkIw This documentary talks about Debeers in general without going into the ethnic aspect of it. As you will see in this film they only license raw diamonds to select dealers, you have to read behind the lines or do outside research to find out they are all jewish.

It just goes to show the aura of political correctness that surrounds this ethnic group.

So, are these "sightholders" all Jewish owned?:

https://www.dtcsightholder.com/en/Sightholder-directory11/

http://www.dtcsightholder.com/


Also, De Beers is basically owned by Anglo American plc. Is Anglo American plc also owned by Jews?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo_American_plc