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A kneecap and two teeth found in Germany have been identified as belonging to a new species of ape from 11.6 million years ago, thought to have weighed as little as 10 kilograms

SpaceX successfully launched its Starship rocket on the same day that Boeing’s Starliner craft made its first crewed flight, a sign that the space industry is hotting up

Mexico and the southern US have seen extreme temperatures due to a heat dome, a weather phenomenon that will become more intense with climate change

Many of us feel that the world is going mad.  What used to be called “political correctness” is sweeping the country from the Left, and authoritarianism sweeping in from the right. On one hand we have the encampments and Ilhan Omar, on the other, Donald Trump.  Names like Audubon, Fisher, and Jefferson are being policed, as I pointed out in the last post, people are self-silencing on and off campus, students are celebrating the Houthis and even Hamas, DEI initiatives are promoting racial divisiveness and the instillation of guilt, people are calling for the defunding and even the elimination of the police, young people are cheering for the intifada all over the world, and so on.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a theory (or rather, borrows a theory) to explain all this, one that she lays out in a provocative article in the Free Press. No, it doesn’t mention religion, though she has suggested that Christianity is a way to fight what she sees as the dissolution of the West. Rather, here he describes what is happening in the West, suggests that it’s part of a deliberate four-stage plan (we’re at the end of stage 1), what those stages involve, and how we can stop it.

The article is surely worth reading, as her “stages” do fit nearly into a plan suggested by the journalist Yuri Bezmenov (1939-1993), who spied for Russia, defected to the West, and then described how the Soviet system took over Russia. It is the stages of that takeover (Bezmenov’s “Soviet subversion model”) into which Hirsi shoehorns the West’s own transformation.

You can read her take below, which is also archived archived here.  It sounds plausible enough, but I can’t quite buy it. Surely there are people who do seem to be calling for the dissolution of the West, but I can’t quite see the plotting she envisions, nor can I believe that the West is malleable enough to fall for it. Hirsi Ali seems to have been quite taken by Bezmenov and eager to apply his model to the West. You be the judge. Click to read

Hirsi Ali first limns the Western values that are endangered (quotes from hjer article are indented):

The West’s inheritance springs from a peculiar confluence of habits and customs that had been practiced for centuries before anyone branded them as “ideas.” But they are principles—radical ones—that have given us the most tolerant, free, and flourishing societies in all of human history.

Among these principles are the rule of law, a tradition of liberty, personal responsibility, a system of representative government, a toleration of difference, and a commitment to pluralism. Each of these ideas might have been extinguished in their infancy but for the grace of God and the force of their appeal.

. . . Right now, so many Western nations are under grave threat from the twin forces of cultural Marxism and an expansionist political Islam familiar to me from my youth.

Of course Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, which became authoritarian and didn’t adhere to these values, so she’s particularly sensitive to their erosion.

Here are the four stages of Western dissolution as outlined by Bezmenov; indented quotes are from Hirsi Ali:

Bezmenov described the subversion process as a complex model with four successive stages, a diagram of which I have provided. These are, in order: demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and finally, normalization.

Hirsi Ali provides a handy chart (made by Bezmenov) of what will be affected by this process, but to me it looks a little like a Unabomber letter, and I’ll reproduce it below. Here are the stages and their expected duration, as well as the signs of the first stage that we’re in now (and nearing its end).

Demoralization

Demoralization is the first stage and requires the subverters’ greatest investment of time and resources. Bezmenov claims the process of demoralization can take between 10 to 30 years, because that is the amount of time it takes to educate a new generation.

The demoralization process targets three areas of society: its ideas, its structures, and its social institutions. The targeted institutions include religion, education, media, and culture. In each realm the old ways of thinking, the old heroes, are discredited. Those who believed in them come to doubt themselves and their ability to discern reality itself.

Think of the cynicism and selective truth-telling young Americans encounter in most classrooms. You know Jefferson owned slaves, right? You know Columbus killed millions? Again, never mind that Jefferson set us on the path to emancipation, or that Columbus knew nothing about epidemiology. A little learning, as the saying goes, is a dangerous thing.

. . .What else can explain the daily displays of moral panic attacks masquerading as righteous activism, from the destruction of artwork to self-immolation? As human life ceases to look inviolable, we might also expect measures like euthanasia to gain steam, not just to help end terminal anguish but to end all manner of non-debilitating hardship. It’s no surprise, then, that we are seeing movements speeding ahead for “assisted dying” in the U.S., UK, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Ireland, and the rest of the West.

Next, the fundamental structures of society—like the rule of law and social relations—are targeted. For example, demoralization in the rule of law would entail undermining our trust in legal institutions and eroding the basis for legal authority. This could be accomplished by presenting the justice system as corrupt or illegitimate and by sowing distrust in the mechanisms of law enforcement. Think of the movements to “defund the police” because of “systemic racism.” Or the conviction last week of the front-runner presidential candidate on 34 counts of obvious political charges.

This stage also includes, says Hirsi Ali, both euthanasia (assisted dying) the breakup of the traditional nuclear family, something she sees as a bulwark of Western values, and “the retrograde practice of polygamy” (now “polyamory”). DEI statements begin to curb academic freedom, and college students begin to feel that “resistance is justified”. This is usually couched as resistance to Israel, but Hirsi Ali says it’s also resistance to Western values. She’s not far wrong here, given that student protestors, in their authoritarian sureness, say that they’re out to “globalize the intifada”. This can be seen as the Islamist takeover of the West (“Turtle Island” as they call it.)

Destabilization

Destabilization is the next phase. This process is considerably shorter, taking anywhere between five months to two years. With demoralization now reaching its full maturity, society is increasingly paralyzed by harsh domestic turmoil across all sectors. Democratic politics take on the character of a vicious struggle for power. Factionalism takes hold. Economic relations degrade and collapse, obliterating the basis for bargaining. The social fabric frays, leading to mob rule. Society turns inward, leading to fear, isolationism, and the decline of the nation-state itself, leading to crisis.

It is important to understand that, at this stage, the process of subversion is largely self-propelled. What once required active involvement on the part of a subverter has now taken root and grows organically. Then, society ruptures all at once in a rolling series of crises as the full extent of the cancer manifests.

I’m not sure that we’re not at the beginning of this, but of course one could couch Trump’s campaign as part of the struggle for power. I’m not sure, however, if you can see this happening, or beginning to happen, in the rest of the West.

Finally, we have the two final stages:

Crisis and normalization

Bezemov says the “crisis” phase is supposed to last 2-6 months, and Hirsi Ali doesn’t mention it. That leads to “normalization”—presumably the Western acceptance of a new authoritarian set of values, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four. This stage is supposed to be indefinite:

Finally, says Bezmenov, a subverted society enters the normalization stage, which is when the subversive regime takes over, installing its ideology as the law of the land. By then, the enemy has totally conquered the target society—without ever firing a shot.

WHO IS DOING THIS?

Hirsi Ali says she can “discern at least three forces” producing this dissolution.

The first: American Marxists. This category includes old card-carrying communists, red-diaper baby socialists, antifa anarchists, and many of whom we now call woke. Though the Soviet Union collapsed decades ago, the Soviet worldview has found familiar proponents: young Americans and their professors. They are no longer advancing their cause merely through class struggle, but through the fusion of racial, class, and anticolonial struggles. Theirs is now a cultural communism; they lead subversion through the institutions with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the West.

The thundering socialists of the past (think of poor Bernie) seemed to earnestly care about the working class. Perhaps they did so naively, but at least they loved the poor. Does AOC? Rashida Tlaib? My former countrywoman, Ilhan Omar?

So this is largely the extreme Western Left.  And they will be allied with members of the next group, as indeed they have, at least on campus:

The second force is the radical Islamists, who are riding the coattails of the communists to power. A good example is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many tentacles. Of these tentacles, some are openly religious, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Students Association, each with chapters in nearly every American university. Other organizations don a secular mask, like the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine. These groups have become increasingly confident over the past months. Anti-Israel Muslim candidates recently won elected seats in countries like England, where imams talk openly about reestablishing the caliphate in Europe.

The question at hand is whether Marxists and Islamists can produce some kind of coherent society, for Islamism aims to convert the entire West to tenets of Islam, tenets that are very different from those of Marxists. If both groups are trying to destroy the West, they may succeed, but ultimately they’re working at cross purposes.

 Things become even weirder when you add in the third “subversive” force:

The third force is the Chinese Communist Party. The most obvious avenues through which the CCP has spread subversion in America is through its numerous Confucius Institutes. These organizations have been vehicles for Chinese espionage within major American academic institutions. Then there is TikTok, an addictive social media app controlled by the CCP, which presents Chinese children wholesome, educational content while wreaking havoc on American kids—polarizing them and feeding them anti-American propaganda.

In the end, then, and not necessarily consciously, the phases are being propelled by a mixture of American Marxists/Socialists, radical Islamists, and Chinese Communists.  In Hirsi Ali’s view, this combination will destroy Western values, but what kind of society will it produce? Does each group envision the same kind of endpoint?  Maybe that doesn’t matter; perhaps the groups just hate Western values and will fight it out for power after they’re gone.  Here’s the chart Hirsi Ali produces to show the process. She doesn’t mention it, nor that it was created not by her but by “Tomas Schuman”, a pseudonym for Bezemov himself.

How do we stop this? First, says Hirsi Ali, we need to “recognize the good activism from the bad”, and she says that “there is no easy way” to do this ave “pay attention to your gut and avoid being recruited by people for subversive causes. Even if we’re undergoing this dissolution, that doesn’t seem as hard as Hirsi Ali makes out.  Don’t support Hamas, Rashida Tlaib or DEI, don’t become an encamper, and, I guess, avoid all the pejorative forms of wokeness. I would add that you should speak up if you see Western (or “liberal”) values attacked.

What is happening? Speaking for myself, it’s not absolutely clear what Hirsi Ali is saying. Is she just describing only how Russia became communistic, or describing what’s really going on in the West? Are we going through these four stages in order?  I’m not sure. Is there collusion among the groups to destroy Western values? No, surely not, even if they have the same aim, for the society that each group aims for is very different.

In the end, all I can say is that Hirsi Ali correctly points out that many groups and many protesters are, in the end, bent on the destruction of Western values. But this has been said by many others; to name two, Hirsi Ali herself in her earlier works and Douglas Murray. And you’ll have encountered this idea before. To me the serious point of the article is nothing new (though recognizing the aims is important), and the new point—that we may be going through a Soviet-style transition to dictatorship and authoritarianism—is not very convincing.  The more I think about her article (it’s also on audio, but I haven’t listened to it, and the audio may be a bit different from the Free Press article.

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My two criteria for whether someone’s name should be removed from a society or building, or whether a statue should be taken down are, first, that the naming was done to honor the positive achievements of what the person did, and second, that the person’s life, as a whole, created a positive rather than a negative net effect on the world. If you can answer “yes” to the first one and “positive” to the second, the name should stay. It’s when these answers conflict that you have a problem and have to make a judgment call. And so it is with artist and naturalist John Jams Audubon.

There’s no doubt that the National Audubon Society, named after John James Audubon, the “father of American birding”, has been a positive force in conservation and getting people interested in our feathered friends. On the other hand, Audubon owned at least nine slaves and was a white supremacist.  This affects the second part of my judgment, and it’s hard to weigh the negative effects of owning slaves, which are substantial, against the net good of someone’s life, which in Audubon’s case includes the Society named after him.

The same conundrum applies to people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who owned many more slaves than did Audubon. Do we rename Washington, D.C. and the Jefferson memorial, and always qualify both of them when writing about them?  In general, my view is that the institutions and legacies of all of these men, recognizing their role as slave-holders, should remain, but of course any account of their accomplishments should be qualified, as slavery cannot be excused as “a practice of the times.” (There were abolitionists, who recognized its immorality from the get-go.)

The National Audubon Society has decided to keep its name, though some branches have renamed themselves. To me the renaming is more a performative than social-justice-improving action, since I doubt that the name Audubon has kept minorities out of birding. Yes, they are relatively few, but I attribute that to cultural differences or lack of access to the environment, not to Audubon’s name.  And I haven’t heard anyone assert that they’d gladly go into birding or join the Society if only it were renamed.

In the announcement from The Tucson Audubon Society sent in by reader Debi (below), it says that they are changing their name to become a “more inclusive and welcoming organization” and that the new name (not yet chosen) will “carry immense weight and signal our larger commitment to diversity, equity and access.”   They also think that the old name turned off minorities interested in birding: “We now recognize that this is a clear barrier for people who might otherwise become involved in or support or work.”  Really? How many such people do they know of?

Finally, though, they admit that few people outside the society really know about Audubon’s bad aspects; that outside their bubble the name Audubon has “little or no recognition.”

These two claims are mutually exclusive. You can’t say the name is keeping people out of birding because of Audubon’s legacy, while at the same time assert that few people outside the birding/conservation bubble know about Audubon’s life. (I’ve underline the claims in red below.)

At any rate, readers can weigh in here, but I think I agree with Debi when she added that this announcement, which she was sent, was “basically just more of the SOS (same old shit) that is driving us all batty.”  Yes, Audubon was a slaveholder, as were many people, some of them “fathers of our country,” but he left behind a legacy that was positive. I’d vote to keep the name on those grounds and on the grounds of historical continuity, and, like Debi, I’m tired of the constant drive to rename things under the misapprehension that this will substantially improve society. Yes, you can take the name “Hitler” off of stuff, but it’s no longer there anyway, and it seems time to stop trolling the lives of famous people, finding bits sufficiently bad to demonize them.  (The geneticist Ronald Fisher is one example of someone who has been unfairly canceled.)

Anyway, judge for yourself. Here’s the announcement that Debi sent.

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Today we have some UK bird photos by reader Mal Morrison. His IDs and narrative are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

A few bird photos for a rainy day. I can’t match the exotic tropical birds that some of your readers have sent in so I thought I would see what I could photograph, commonplace or less so, while walking around a couple of sites in Plymouth in Devon over the last 3 weeks. I went to ‘Jennycliff’, a clifftop overlooking Plymouth Sound and in sight of the Hoe and to ‘Roborough Down,’ a stretch of moorland just outside Plymouth and which is part of Dartmoor.

To start with a couple of very common birds:

This is male Eurasian chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs). The female is a more subdued brown-green colour with a light breast:

A common blackbird (Turdus merula) in a field of buttercups. This is a male again and again the female is not as distinct. Incidentally, this is the type of blackbird in Paul McCartney’s song, or at least this species’ song is on the record:

A European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis). In this case I don’t know what sex, as the species is monomorphic. This one was so intent on feeding from the ground that it let me approach much closer than I normally could:

This is a Dunnock (Prunella modularis). Wikipedia says that the name comes from the English ‘Dun’ meaning ‘dingy brown, dark coloured’. Both sexes are equally dingy however, despite the bird’s drab appearance, its sex life seems quite exciting. Again according to WP, Dunnock females ‘are often polyandrous’ and ‘DNA fingerprinting has shown that chicks within a brood often have different fathers’ and that ‘Males provide parental care in proportion to their mating success, so two males and a female can commonly be seen provisioning nestlings at one nest.’ I wonder how a male can recognise its own progeny. Wikipedia does provide references for all these facts including that ‘Dunnocks take less than 1/10 of a second to copulate and can mate more than 100 times a day.’:

This is a European Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) This is a male; the female is less brightly coloured. Readers will be pleased to hear that it is perching on 1 leg by choice rather than necessity:

A Greater Whitethroat (Curruca communis). This was perched on the bushes close to the cliff edge and there were several birds singing vigorously, presumably proclaiming their territory, along this stretch of coast:

The rest of the birds below were photoed at Roborough.

A European Robin (Erithacus rubecula), a very common bird which is quite famous in Britain, having become one of the symbols of Christmas, along with holly and snowmen. It seems to have a shorter disturbance distance than many birds but I can’t find any literature that backs this up, however, my brother swears that one follows him around the garden when he’s digging:

A Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus):

And I think this is a Common Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita). This was how the bird looked, but its yellowness was exaggerated by the early light (it was 06:30). The problem with this identification is the bird’s similarity to the Willow Warbler. The Willow Warbler is slightly longer in body and wing and has lighter legs (Wikipedia says that it has a more elegant shape, whatever that means) but the primary means of identifying the birds is their calls. I did identify the Willow Warbler from its song but unfortunately the other bird has what appears to be a dragonfly in its mouth! I do have some other photos which I think show this bird to be slightly shorter in body and with darker legs, but I’m open to being corrected:

A Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus). A strange looking bird with a tiny beak (and a tiny body it’s only 5-6 inches long including its tail:

This is a Common Linnet (Linaria cannabina), a type of finch. This is a male which, in Summer, has a red breast—bright red in some cases. The females lack the red and have white underparts:

JAC: I’d never seen a linnet before though one is mentioned in one of my favorite poems, Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree“, to wit:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

And finally this was a snapshot of a Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo). There were a pair flying very low and both were only in sight for seconds. I had been told there was a nest around where I was but this was the first time I saw them. It’s a very common bird throughout Europe:

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As we are in an election year in the US, there seems to be only one thing on which there is broad agreement – this upcoming election will be consequential. So allow me to share some of my musings about the process of electing our political representatives.

Let me start by laying out what I see as the major considerations for what makes an ideal representative. This is basic stuff, but it’s worth framing the discussion. We tend to evaluate candidates on three major criteria – their overall morality and character, their experience and competence, and their ideological alignment. At least, we profess to evaluate them on these criteria, and to some extent we do. But we also use some heuristic proxies – how charismatic are they, and how good a speaker/debater are they? Sometimes we even use superficial proxies, like height – the taller candidate has won 58 percent of U.S. presidential elections between 1789 and 2008. This is obviously not a huge factor, but may tip the scales in a close election.

One question is, how do we balance the three main factors above, character, experience, and ideology? The conventional wisdom these days, which matches my experience and I think is correct, is that in the past character was not a determinative factor but a minimum bar. In other words, we generally would not necessarily vote for the person with the better character, but lack of character could be disqualifying. Many a candidate has been sunk by a “scandal” involving their moral character (ala “Monkey Business”). Although some politicians have been able to use their charisma and oratory skills to minimize the impact (think Jennifer Flowers). And again we often use dubious proxies – are they “church-going”.

How valid is character as a criterion? I think very. We are to some extent trusting individuals with a tremendous amount of power, in positions that involve lots of temptations towards corruption and self-dealing. Character matters. But to clarify, I am not defending the old standard, which was too tabloid scandal-based. It motivated the opposition to find any “dirt” on their opponent and run smear campaigns. This is where good journalism is critical to democracy – finding hard examples in the records of candidates to indicate their dedication to public service and resistance to corruption. Regardless of how we determine character, it is reasonable to expect and even demand a minimum threshold to qualify for public office.

It does seem that over time, and massively accelerated by Trump, character has ceased to be a criterion at all. This, in my opinion, is very dangerous. Trump has made shamelessness a superpower, making himself virtually invulnerable to scandal. At least, that’s the popular narrative. I think that overcalls it – it does affect voters on the margins, and that may determine election outcomes. But what is true is that a large number of voters seem unbothered by a fatal lack of character, in a way that I do not think was possible in decades past.

What about ability and experience? I do think this continues to be a valued trait, but again, not determinative unto itself. I think it should be more of a criterion. In fact, I would argue this is the most important of the three. I would rather have a competent, experienced, and morale leader with whom I disagree ideologically, than one ideologically aligned with my politics but immoral and incompetent. Of course – we all want all three, the triple threat perfect candidate. But we can’t always get what we want and we have to figure out how to make the best compromise. I do think experience is generally undervalued, and we would be better off collectively if we demanded more of our representatives.

What about ideology? To me, this is the least important. This may be partly due to the fact that I don’t align strongly with either major political party, but tend to have individual topic views that range across the ideological spectrum. I tend to prefer centrists and pragmatists to extremists of either party. (I tend to be overall anti-ideology.) But you know – so do many people. When you ask them about individual topics, stripped of partisan labels, there tends to be a 60% or so consensus on centrist common sense positions and solutions. But that’s not, unfortunately, how politics works. We have tribes, and those tribes have packages of positions.

There is another variable here, and that is – how much ideological purity is generally required within political parties. A party can be a broad coalition, with room for a range of opinions, or very narrow, policing its own members for ideological purity. Right now the two major political parties in the US differ considerably on this score. Democrats are a pretty broad coalition, from progressives to centrists. While especially in the last decade Republicans have been “Rino hunting” (their own words – Republican in name only) and strangely narrowing their ideological coalition. With Trump that ideology is no longer even conservative – it’s one thing, loyalty to Trump.

The worst case scenario for many people is to face a candidate who fails when it comes to morality and competence, but promises to champion our ideological agenda. Do we make a “deal with the devil?” I think the answer should be no. This is a fools bargain that is highly likely to blow up in our faces. This should be obvious – but there are some problems here. One is the insulated information ecosystems that the media, algorithms, and our own behavior have created. But also there is motivated reasoning. We are good at making up reasons to do what we emotionally want even when we intellectually know it’s wrong. So we convince ourselves of whatever version of reality allows us to have our cake and eat it too. The media ecosystems make this easy – they do all the heavy lifting for us. All we have to do is sit back, soak it in, and not question anything.

But we owe each other, as responsible citizens, not to lazily fall for motivated reasoning, and not to blindly follow the ideological narratives that have been crafted for us. We need to each do our due diligence, and be willing to compromise on ideology to make sure that we hold our elected officials to high standards of ethics and competence. This is partly what the next election is about, and I think it eclipses any other considerations.

The post Choosing our Representatives first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

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The post Pertussis Cases are Rising Sharply in 2024 first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.