An Open Border Is Open Season On Private Property, Persons Included

IMMIGRATION, Israel, libertarianism, Private Property, Terrorism

This is “scary stuff,” writes BAB contributor Myron Pauli. “I wonder what the Open-Borders crowd thinks about this ‘right’ to travel into Israel to kill and kidnap people.”

Myron was referring to the WaPo’s “How Hamas uses its tunnels to kill and capture Israeli soldiers”:

It was a Monday in October 2013 when residents of a kibbutz called Ein Hashlosha just east of the Gaza border heard strange sounds.

It may have been difficult to pinpoint the source. The sounds weren’t coming from above ground — but beneath it. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soon discovered that the sounds signaled an “extremely advanced and well prepared” tunnel.

Not only was the burrow remarkable in depth and length — 1.5 miles long and 66 feet underground — it was equipped with electricity and contained enough cookies, yogurt and other provisions to last its occupants several months. Israeli forces estimated that Hamas had dumped $10 million and 800 tons of concrete into the two-year project.

Such “terror tunnels,” the Israeli military said in a statement Friday, are “complex and advanced.” And their use, Israel said, is “to carry out attacks such as abductions of Israeli civilians and soldiers alike; infiltrations into Israeli communities, mass murders and hostage-taking scenarios.”

An open border is open season on private property, persons included, Myron. Libertarians, it would appear, are too flaccid to deal with this reality, other than to say, “Under anarchy the issue would be sorted out.” That’s a synonym for intellectual cop-out.

UPDATED: When In Doubt About Dramatic Underachievement In Math—Blame RACISM (Bro Euclid)

Gender, History, Intelligence, Race, Science, Sex

Who does math best? John Derbyshire has analyzed this year’s International Math Olympiad (IMO), just held in Cape Town (bravo my old stomping ground!). Apropos, editor Peter Brimelow has linked to my VDARE column, “The Silly Sex?”

Here’s “Derbyshire On Race And The International Math Olympiad”

Of the 560 participants this year, only 56 were female. That ten percent is, according to Rindermann, historically normal. In this year’s IMO, 58 of the 101 participating countries fielded all-male teams. Among the 58: the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., China, Japan, both Koreas, Russia, and host country South Africa. …
… Of the three participants who got the maximum 42-point score, two are Chinese. Of the 49 gold medal winners, 31 are East Asian and 18 are white European.

Down at the other end, of the 17 participants scoring no points at all, one is West Asian, two are Indios (that is, Latin American aboriginal), and the other 14 are black African.

I am told that because this was the first IMO held in Africa, black African countries tried hard to make a good showing. Yet the highest-ranked black African nation among the 101 nations participating was South Africa at #67, followed by Nigeria at #91.
And the South African team contained no blacks!
… there have been only three black African IMO medalists in recent years: Chigozie Henry Aniobe of Nigeria with a bronze in each of the last four years; Puis Aje Onah of Nigeria with a bronze in 2010 and Isaac Jean Eliel Konan of Ivory Coast with a silver that same year. …

Concludes Derb: “It’s a poor showing for a continent that has had established universities for decades. … We should … be skeptical of explanations involving racism. Most claims to have been disadvantaged by racism in the past fifty years amount to nothing more than rent-seeking on the part of educated blacks.”

MORE.

UPDATE: BRO, WAS Euclid BLACK? So claims mathematician Jonathan Farley. I thought Euclid was a Greek. There is a branch of mythistory (like Holocaust denial) called Afrocentrism, according to which the “venerable Greeks, the founders of Western Civilization, stole their philosophical and scientific know-how from Egypt. Egypt, and not Greece, is the fount of Western tradition.” The Egyptians, by this pseudo-scientific, feel-good fabrication, were actually black Africans. Read about it in “Safari Scholarship Reinvents History.”

Going by this “linage,” perhaps Euclid was black.

Putin’s PR Quagmire

Europe, Foreign Policy, Russia, Terrorism

Opines Tom Piatak of Chronicles magazine:

Most Ukrainians do not want to be part of Russia’s “near abroad.” In this they resemble most Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians. Those who experienced Russian rule, either under the tsars or the commissars, generally do not harbor any nostalgia for it. Instead, they fear its return. A post-Communist Russia does not pose any threat to us, and the United States should stay out of Russia’s dispute with Ukraine for that reason. But Russia does pose a potential threat to its neighbors, and giving support to rebels who shoot down airliners will do nothing to reassure those worried by a revival of Russian power. Putin’s task should be to allay the fears of Russia’s neighbors, not to stoke them.

MORE.

‘Murder In The Skies’

Asia, Technology, Terrorism

Sadly, it would seem as though the Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai spends his days explaining why the national carrier is so careless. He offered this non sequitur, about the downing of Malaysian Airlines Boeing Co. (BA) 777 over a war zone (Ukraine): “The carrier had followed the same journey plan many times. I think since it’s an approved route it is safe and that’s the reason why we have been using this route.” The many AIDS researchers killed on Malaysian Airlines Boeing Co. (BA) 777, shot down over Ukraine, must have been trusting souls to board a Malaysian plane.

According to The Atlantic, “Nearly three months ago, on the ‘Special Rules’ section of its site, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration put out an order prohibiting American pilots, airlines, charter carriers, and everyone else over whom the FAA has direct jurisdiction, from flying over southern parts of Ukraine. … the FAA ‘Special Rules’ section tells U.S. pilots and aircraft not to fly over trouble spots ranging from North Korea to Yemen to Syria to Iraq. And since last April it has told them not to fly over certain parts of Ukraine.”

Garry Moore: “Murder In The Skies”: