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From http://www.toqonline.com/blog/free-to-lose/
Editor's Note:
The essay below, from the Fall 2011 issue of The Occidental Quarterly, is one that every High School and College student should read. It is short, concise, scholarly and has exceptional explanatory value!
Therefore, I invite you to copy the essay below and send it to a student you know. Block copy the text to your word processor, save it and attach it to an email! Or, if you wish, send a link.
The political philosophy of Libertarianism has recently attracted a wave of support in the United States among the mainly White Tea Party movement, and the supporters of Ron and Rand Paul. The catalyst has been the perceived failings of the Obama administration's response to the global financial crisis and subsequent recession: a response characterized by an ideologically-driven expansion of government ownership, spending, and regulation of the US economy, with a corresponding decline in individual liberty. To espouse free market libertarianism in this context seems a rational corrective to Obama's neo-Marxist agenda, given the libertarian commitment to the maximization of individual liberty and minimization of the state – at a time when a bloated dysfunctional state seems to lie at the heart of the problems facing White people.
While there is a spectrum of libertarianism that straddles the left-right binary of contemporary politics, in today's world, libertarianism is primarily associated with the commitment to market liberalism that was the hallmark of the Austrian and Chicago Schools of economics. A watershed moment in the history of post-war libertarianism was the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Economics to the libertarian theorist Friedrich von Hayek in 1974. For the preceding thirty years the economic theories of the British economist John Maynard Keynes held sway throughout the West. Keynesianism, involving state intervention in the economy through deficit spending to stimulate output and employment, is based on the idea that governments can and should act to eliminate the worst vicissitudes of the business cycle. Through manipulation of the federal budget a government can, theoretically, engineer economic outcomes.
Keynesianism emerged as a midway position between free-market libertarianism and socialist state-planning. However, the stagflation crisis that emerged with the OPEC oil crisis of the early seventies threw the post-war Keynesian consensus into turmoil. It set the scene for the re-emergence of political support for free-market libertarianism, and ultimately for the election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Regan in the US — and, subsequently, their legions of political imitators throughout the world. At the forefront of this renaissance of libertarian thought, alongside Hayek, was a group of Jewish intellectuals whose ideas and advocacy were key to this achievement, and to libertarianism's subsequent and enduring appeal. The most prominent and influential of these figures were Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand.
It is one of the seeming paradoxes of political history in the past century that Jews have been prominent as theorists and activists for ostensibly opposing ideological forces: socialist collectivism on the one hand, and free-market libertarianism (and neo-conservatism) on the other. However, this paradox begins to fade when viewed through the lens of Professor Kevin MacDonald's theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. According to this theory, Judaism emerged historically as a strategy to promote the economic welfare and reproductive success of Jews as a genetically distinct population. In The Culture of Critique MacDonald examines a range of twentieth-century intellectual movements that had a decisive Jewish involvement and concludes that they share a common tacit agenda in promoting the group evolutionary interests of Jews — often at the expense of non-Jews. Accordingly, they can be accurately regarded as Jewish intellectual movements that are, in reality, post-Enlightenment manifestations of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. A major focus in Culture of Critique is on the role of Jews in the formulation and advocacy of Marxist and cultural-Marxist ideologies [ see Cultural Marxism ], such as the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School.
My purpose here is not to determine whether libertarianism is, like the Frankfurt School, a Jewish intellectual movement. This requires more extensive treatment than can be given here. Here I will examine, firstly, why free-market libertarian ideas have held a strong attraction to a prominent subset of Jewish intellectuals; and secondly, I will discuss the practical effect of libertarian economic and social policies on European-derived populations.
In a speech to the Mont Pelerin Society in 1972 entitled Capitalism and the Jews, Milton Friedman, perhaps the pivotal figure in the history of modern libertarianism after Hayek, explored the seeming paradox that, despite the Jews having thrived under capitalism, they had played a central role in the formulation and advocacy of leftist political ideologies. He observed that, despite the Jews as a people having done very well under capitalist societies,
"for the past century, the Jews have been a stronghold of anti-capitalist sentiment. From Karl Marx through Leon Trotsky to Herbert Marcuse, a sizable fraction of the revolutionary anti-capitalist literature has been authored by Jews. Communist parties in all countries, including the party that achieved revolution in Russia but also present-day Communist parties in Western countries, and especially in the U.S., have been run and manned to a disproportionate extent by Jews—though I hasten to add that only a tiny fraction of Jews have ever been members of the Communist party. Jews have been equally active in the less revolutionary socialist movements in all countries, as intellectuals generating socialist literature, as active participants in leadership, and as members."
Friedman finds this somewhat difficult to reconcile with the fact that "the Jews owe an enormous debt to capitalism." It is obvious that, as an intelligent and capable people, the Jews are always likely to thrive in the competitive context of the unfettered market. Accordingly, it seems apparent to Friedman that the real enemy to Jewish interests (and the interests of other able minority groups) are the barriers to entry and anti-competitive practices that, in various historical instances, have restricted their full participation in the economic affairs of a nation. For Friedman, it is axiomatic that
"the feature of capitalism that has benefited the Jews has, of course, been competition. Wherever there is a monopoly, whether it be private or governmental, there is room for the application of arbitrary criteria in the selection of the beneficiaries of the monopoly—whether these criteria be color of skin, religion, national origin or what not. Where there is free competition, only performance counts. The market is color blind. No one who goes to the market to buy bread knows or cares whether the wheat was grown by a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or atheist; by Whites or blacks. Any miller who wishes to express his personal prejudices by buying only from preferred groups is at a competitive disadvantage, since he is keeping himself from buying from the cheapest source. He can express his prejudice, but he will have to do so at his own expense, accepting a lower monetary income than he could otherwise earn."
Friedman was influenced by Ludwig von Mises, who expressed a similar view in 1944. Identifying why free market capitalism is good for Jews and other minorities he writes:
"In an unhampered market society there is no legal discrimination against anybody. Everyone has the right to obtain the place within the social system in which he can successfully work and make a living. The consumer is free to discriminate, provided that he is ready to pay the cost. A Czech or a Pole may prefer to buy at higher cost in a shop owned by a Slav instead of buying cheaper and better in a shop owned by a German. An anti-Semite may forego being cured of an ugly disease by the employment of the 'Jewish' drug Salvarsan and have recourse to a less efficacious remedy. In this arbitrary power consists what economists call consumer's sovereignty."
Another celebrated Jewish libertarian, who nevertheless rejected the label, was Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum). While Rand and her theory of Objectivism have never been widely respected in academia she has exerted an enormous popular influence through her writings. In her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) she also made the link between the extent of free markets and the relative absence of discrimination against minorities in a society. She writes that
"no political system can establish universal rationality by law (or by force). But capitalism is the only system that functions in a way which rewards rationality and penalizes all forms of irrationality, including racism. A fully free, capitalist system has not yet existed anywhere. But what is enormously significant is the correlation of racism and political controls in the semi-free economies of the 19th century. Racial and/or religious persecutions of minorities stood in inverse ratio to the degree of a country's freedom. Racism was strongest in the more controlled economies, such as Russia and Germany — and weakest in England, the then freest country of Europe.
The foregoing statements, each framed in the language of ethical universalism, clearly disclose the chief attraction of free-market libertarianism to Jews like Friedman, von Mises and Rand. Free markets, they affirm, advance the interests of Jews through imposing an impersonal economic discipline on non-Jews through which their ethnocentricity and anti-Semitic prejudice can be circumvented. That this proposition contains a great deal of truth is confirmed, I would contend, by the historical record: Jews have indeed prospered under the conditions of free market capitalism among often hostile majority European-derived populations.
It may have occurred to the reader, however, that while Friedman, von Mises and Rand opposed the existence of monopolies that provided "room for the application of arbitrary criteria in the selection of the beneficiaries of the monopoly," the reality is that Jews, even in the freest of markets, are notorious for developing and using ethnic monopolies in precisely this fashion. Indeed this is a major theme of MacDonald's A People That Shall Dwell Alone where he observes that from "the standpoint of the group, it was always more important to maximize the resource flow from the non-Jewish community to the Jewish community, rather than to allow individual Jews to maximize their interests at the expense of the Jewish community."
The massive extent of Jewish nepotism in their business dealings is so exhaustively documented (very frequently by Jews themselves) as to be beyond dispute. Such is the rarity of instances where Jews use other Jews in a purely instrumental manner that they are cause for great shock and trauma within the Jewish community (witness the Madoff affair). Given this, it seems to me that while, as Friedman, von Mises and Rand assert, the free market may work efficiently to hinder ethnocentric discrimination among Whites (a group that MacDonald characterizes as, owing to their evolutionary history, strongly predisposed to individualism), the hyper-ethnocentrism of the Jews (and the Chinese) predispose them to transcend this "rational" discipline imposed by the free market. MacDonald makes the point that the propensity of these groups to engage in "tribal economics" involving high levels of within-group economic cooperation and patronage confers on these groups "an extraordinarily powerful competitive advantage against individual strategies."
Accordingly, the free-market libertarian agenda, when promoted in the context of a society that is multi-racial, and where some racial groups exceed Whites in the degree of their ethnocentricity, may not promote the group evolutionary interests of Whites in enhancing their access to resources and reproductive success. The truth of this proposition is confirmed, I would submit, by the tendency of European governments through history to impose laws barring Jews from many industries and professions. That such laws were so widespread, and deemed so necessary, is surely indicative of an awareness, borne of experience, of the tendency of Jews to adopt a racial collectivist strategy in competition to the individualistic strategies of the majority Europeans — and that this would invariably result in Jewish market dominance, and concomitant outbreaks of anti-Semitism. That such restrictions were rendered less effective by their inconsistent application across the political patchwork of European jurisdictions through history was regarded by Friedman as a saving grace for Jewish populations. He noted that
"Throughout the nearly two thousand years of the Diaspora, Jews were repeatedly discriminated against, restricted in the activities they could undertake, on occasion expelled en masse, as in 1492 from Spain, and often the object of the extreme hostility of the peoples among whom they lived. They were able nonetheless to exist because of the absence of a totalitarian state, so that there were always some market elements, some activities open to them to enter. In particular, the fragmented political structure and the numerous separate sovereignties meant that international trade and finance in particular escaped close control, which is why Jews were so prominent in this area.
It is no accident that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the two most totalitarian societies in the past two thousand years (modern China perhaps excepted), also offer the most extreme examples of official and effective anti-Semitism…If we come to more recent time, Jews have flourished most in those countries in which competitive capitalism had the greatest scope: Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Britain and the U.S. in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century — a case that is particularly pertinent when that period is compared with the Hitler period."
Agreeing with the thesis that free markets have been good for Jews, Jerry Muller, in his recently published Capitalism and the Jews (2010) observes that when Jews have been allowed to compete with Non-Jews on equal terms, they have always done disproportionately well. Nevertheless, this economic success has been cause for both pride and embarrassment to Jews. It has prompted some anti-Semites to (erroneously) condemn capitalism as inherently Jewish. For the left, meanwhile, the reality of differential group achievement under conditions of legal (and assumed biological) equality is an embarrassment and a disgrace. The left have learned to hide their embarrassment under the intellectual fig leaf of "White racism."
It seems evident from the foregoing that, the only time that Whites will be acting in their own evolutionary self-interest in embracing the free-market libertarian agenda will be when they either live in a racially homogeneous society where their group interests are not imperilled by the utility-maximizing behavior of individuals; or in a multi-racial society where competing racial groups do not exceed Whites in their ethnocentrism, or exceed Whites in their ethnocentrism but lack the native endowment of intellect to capitalize on this by effectively employing altruistic group strategies in competition with individualistic Whites.
The consequence of this, I would argue, is that the realization of the free-market libertarian agenda is likely to disadvantage Whites in a society with significant Ashkenazi Jewish and East-Asian populations. Such societies certainly include the contemporary United States and most other Western nations. In contrast, experience has shown that other racial groups, with their relatively lower mean IQs, despite their comparatively higher levels of ethnocentrism, are unlikely to out-compete Whites in the context of a free market economy. These groups, however, present an evolutionary threat to Whites of an entirely different order: with their comparatively high birth rates, crime rates, and levels of welfare-dependency involving the large-scale transfer of resources away from White communities.
If White ethnocentrism could be enhanced sufficiently to prompt Whites to adopt cohesive group strategies on a large scale (i.e., strategies that involve some controls on individual behavior—a form of altruism), then the economic playing field could be leveled sufficiently to allow more effective competition with Jews. However, given that Ashkenazi Jews have significantly higher mean IQs than Whites (particularly with regard to verbal IQ, which is a strong predictor of commercial aptitude); they are probably still likely to generally out-compete Whites in such a hypothetical conflict of racial group altruistic strategies. Nevertheless, the large-scale adoption of altruistic group strategies, even if offering only a partial improvement in the relative economic welfare of Whites compared to other racial groups, would be worthwhile.
However, a major barrier to Whites adopting altruistic group strategies are the ideologies that dominate the climate of opinion (especially in education) in Western nations today, some of which are explored by MacDonald in Culture of Critique, and which are calculated to thwart the emergence of manifestations of White ethnocentrism. MacDonald observes that a century ago the social sciences were effectively divorced from the biological sciences. While a reconciliation of sorts began in the 1970s, the humanities and large sections of anthropology continue to remain virtual intellectual closed shops, estranged from the contradictory findings of the biological sciences. Indeed given the leftist monopolization of these fields, resulting in the doctrinaire rejection of inconvenient scholarship and biology, it is hardly surprising that utopian socialism of the most naive variety routinely emanates from the academy.
It has undoubtedly been one of the chief attractions of leftist collectivism for Jews that free-market libertarianism — through the theoretical removal of the possibility of state coercion of individuals — effectively protects non-Jews in the expression of their anti-Semitism in their personal behaviour. Friedman concedes the point, noting that
"competitive capitalism has permitted Jews to flourish economically and culturally because it has prevented anti-Semites from imposing their values on others, and from discriminating against Jews at other people's expense. But the other side of that coin is that it protects anti-Semites from having other people's values imposed on them. It protects them in the expression of their anti-Semitism in their personal behavior so long as they do it at their own expense. Competitive capitalism has therefore not eliminated social anti-Semitism. The free competition of ideas that is the natural companion of competitive capitalism might in time lead to a change in tastes and values that would eliminate social anti-Semitism but there is no assurance that it will. As the New Testament put it, 'In my Father's house are many mansions.'"
Implied in the above is that anti-Semitism is essentially irrational, and that Jews, while able to avoid economic manifestations of anti-Semitism through the operation of the free market, will have to wait for non-Jews to become more enlightened for social anti-Semitism to disappear. Likewise, for von Mises: "the truth is that while the Jews are the objects of anti-Semitism, their conduct and qualities did not play a decisive role in inciting and spreading its modern version." Therefore, consistent with Jewish intellectual movements like Freudian psychoanalysis and the Frankfurt School, anti-Semitism is characterized by these leading theorists of free-market libertarianism as being symptomatic of delusion or of the psychopathology of non-Jews, rather than a mostly rational and predictable response to a threat to the group evolutionary interests of non-Jews.
It would seem that libertarian ideas are particularly hazardous to the collective interests of White people because we are naturally attracted to them. As MacDonald notes, our evolutionary history makes us prone to individualism in the first place. You then get a negative feedback loop where libertarian ideology intensifies this innate individualism to encourage ever greater individualism among Whites, and an ever greater aversion to manifestations of White ethnocentrism. Thus, where the spirit of free market libertarian individualism reigns, Whites willingly maximize their individual self-interest at the expense of the group evolutionary interests of the White community — with disastrous long-term consequences.
It is clear that many of the political stances adopted by White libertarian individualists neatly dovetail with many of the doctrines of the anti-White left — multiculturalism being the prime example. The pro-market individualism of Western nations has, as a by-product, led to the embrace of a profoundly shallow concept of culture. Many Westerners now see cultural differences as if they were merely differences in consumer tastes and preferences. In a consumerist society, diversity is celebrated — as diversity is the basis for consumer choice. The consumer is king, and he demands that his own personal and individual preferences be satisfied.
Multiculturalism is, therefore, the natural anthropology of a consumer-friendly economy. Because our own lives are filled with personalized choices, each made according to our unique tastes, we have come to approach culture in the same spirit. For many Whites, a culture is like an individual choice of a consumer product. Accordingly, the naive White multiculturalist treats differences in human cultures as if they were analogous to a preference for Coca-Cola over Pepsi — that is, mainly a difference in consumer tastes — consumer sovereignty at work. This view, however, is radically different from the view implicit in less tolerant traditions like Judaism and Islam that regard cultures as weapons in the struggle for survival and supremacy of those who carry on those traditions. It is not surprising that, in an intellectual climate of almost limitless White libertarian tolerance for cultural diversity, non-White immigrant communities feel free to openly express disdain for European-derived peoples, disparaging their culture and their central place in the historical development of the world.
A large majority of Jews have historically been strongly in favor of a libertarian immigration policy for the White-majority countries in which they choose to reside. That this attitude is generally not extended to the state of Israel is, naturally enough, a source of consternation and ridicule among White nationalists. MacDonald has examined this phenomenon extensively, regarding it as a foundational tenet of almost all Jewish intellectual movements that have historically emerged from Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. Interestingly, this rampant hypocrisy extends to the likes of Friedman and Rand. For instance Friedman's position with regard to immigration to the US was that, providing that immigrants (from whatever racial or cultural source) are entering the nation to take up employment, as opposed to state welfare, there is no rational reason to oppose that immigration. With reference to the large scale immigration into the US in the late nineteenth century he opined that:
"You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. 'But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?' 'Oh, no,' they'll say, 'We couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a bare subsistence level.' What's the difference? How can people be so in- consistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today?
Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There's a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not? Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing."
So if there is a job waiting for an individual — regardless of their race — then it would be irrational to exclude that person. However, the apparent attraction of non-discriminatory immigration for Friedman did not extend to the state of Israel. While Friedman frequently railed against the socialist tendencies of various Israeli governments, he was a strong supporter of the ethno-state of Israel, and there is no record of him ever noticing Israel's racially-restrictive immigration policy — much less decrying it. This surely demonstrates that in such matters the in-group moral criterion of whether it was "good for the Jews" surpassed his universal libertarian commitment to the supposed benefits of a free and open immigration policy.
Ayn Rand demonstrated an even greater capacity for hypocrisy with her attitude toward respective manifestations of White and Jewish ethnocentrism. She declared that "there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement" and espoused the moral superiority of her type of individualism which "regards man — every man — as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being." For Rand, however, "every man" ostensibly did not include the Arabs in their conflict with Israel. Instead she regarded the fight between Israel and the Arabs as fight between civilized men and savages. Appearing on Donahue in 1979 she declared that: "If you mean whose side should you be on — Israel or the Arabs? I would certainly say Israel because it's the advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages who have not changed for years and who are racist and who resent Israel because it's bringing industry and intelligence and modern technology into their stagnation."
So to what extent does the libertarian immigration agenda, advocated with such patent inconsistency by the like of Friedman and Rand, serve the interests of Whites in terms of immigration policy? White racial nationalists generally do not have a problem with immigration per se, but rather with non-White immigration that shifts the demographic balance of power away from European-derived populations. Because of their strict individualism, libertarians dismiss the importance of race in human affairs. This is reflected in the fact that many of the most prominent libertarian theorists, endorse a policy of non-discrimination with regard to immigration — although this principal is rarely extended by Jewish libertarians to the state of Israel.
The anthropological reality is, as Frank Salter observes, the precise opposite of the individualist fantasy propagated by libertarianism: that, until recent decades, almost all human societies have sought, like Israel, to prevent permanent mass migration in their own group evolutionary interests. Western societies since about 1965 have been the rare exceptions. Salter observes that:
"Hunter-gatherers and primitive agriculturalists, farmers and herders have all laid claim to a territory and fiercely defended it. Marriage partners have been found almost exclusively within the ethnic group, encompassing the local dialect. The psychological motivations for this are well established in such predispositions as social identity mechanisms, collectivism, assortment by similarity, innate cognition of human kinds, and rational choice. Evolutionary origins of territoriality and ethnocentrism are indicated by their being human universals as well as being found in apes. And from the evolutionary perspective, which acknowledges the limited carrying capacity of all territories and of the world itself, it is maladaptive to allow one's lineage — family, clan or ethnic group — to be replaced by others.
The vital interest all societies have in controlling a territory also falsified the assertion that national security consists solely of defending individual citizens from attack, for example by vetting immigrants for terrorist connections, as is already the practice with tourists. Unlike tourists, immigrants affect the receiving country's numbers, identity and cohesion. Societies thus have a corporate interest in retaining national sovereignty, which entails control of a territory. This helps to explain the historical pattern of corporate liberty being put before citizens' rights. Inviting the world to a country as prosperous as Australia would result in the displacement of the Australian people inside their historical homeland. This is an outcome even more maladaptive than enslavement because it would be permanent."
The question then arises as to why European-derived people in Western nations would, through accepting large-scale non-White immigration, act in a way that is entirely contrary to their group evolutionary interests. Part of the problem, discussed at length by MacDonald, is that Northern Europeans are, as a product of their evolutionary development, inherently more individualistic and less ethnocentric than other racial groups. This makes them predisposed to the type of individualism that has been at the core of Western market capitalism for centuries — an individualism that originally was a source of strength, and that has only become problematic in the context of the establishment of large non-White communities within formerly homogenous White nations.
While individual Whites may benefit from non-White immigration (such as a business proprietor or a leftist political candidate), in terms of their evolutionary interests as a distinct genetic community, non-White immigration is a huge negative. MacDonald has pointed out that more ethnocentric and less individualistic groups (most prominently Jews) have exploited this tendency of Europeans to lobby for changes to immigration policies to serve their own group interests. I think it is quite clear that the libertarianism of Friedman, von Mises and Rand, whether intentionally or not, has aided and abetted the cultural Marxists in serving Jewish group interests with regard to its influence on immigration policies in Western nations.
Thus, it is this very libertarian individualist agenda favoring the free global movement of people, in conjunction with the openly anti-White and anti-Western agendas of the cultural Marxists that have facilitated the demographic transformation of Western nations in the past few decades. Because of their denial of the significance of race, libertarians are never going to be allies in the fight to save White populations from demographic and political eclipse. The growth in popularity of libertarian ideas among Whites is as likely to undermine White racial solidarity as effectively as any of the more openly anti-White nostrums of the left. As White racial nationalists and activists we urgently need to convey to patriotic White libertarians that racial collectivism is the only effective means to promote our group interests now and into the future. It is lesson that was learned many centuries ago by those that have worked tirelessly to promote their own group evolutionary interests at our expense — with Judaism being the classic example.
The tone of many of these posts illustrates exactly your point: that individualism has advanced the white race in the past but is now destroying it in the face of less individualist ethnic groups.
Fascinating. Though libertarianism does not lead to multi-culturalism. Even though politics can be considered apart from culture, inevitably culture and group identity are involved because liberty derives from a philosophical justification.
Natural rights provides that justification, and while a creation of Greco-Roman fusionism, espouses a universalism both cultural and political that will prevail throughout the world (or the world will sink into a new Dark Age). Because there are competing universalisms.
Communism has been defeated, but is making a comeback through a Red-Green alliance. Islamism posits a type of universalism, and like communism, opposes western civilization.
Humanism is cultural universalism that would have defeated Christianity and Islam before they became established, and has already succeeded in transforming Judaism (to a large extent). Western culture came into existence before the printing press was used in Europe. This left the large mass of pagans vulnerable to Christian conversion. Yet Christianity partially assimilated to humanism, while Islam has not.
Israel tolerates a large Arab population and welcomes skilled immigrants, even non-Jewish. That is because their strong economy needs labor. Jews have a slight advantage with immigration to Israel, but that is necessitated by the extreme dangers they face elsewhere. Europe had a similar strategy, but unlike Israel, attracts the wrong sort through it's exceptionally generous welfare system.
European solidarity is a bad strategy, due to it's subsidy to the wrong sort of whites, and the alienation of the right sort of non-whites. Humanism provides a sufficient cultural base for political libertarianism. Of course this assumes that the west abandons it's embrace of Athenian democracy, and re-embraces natural law. The synthesis of Jus Gentium (common law) and Stoicism (holistic, both cultural and political) results in Jus Naturale (natural law theory).
"Kevin Bjornsson" here pretends that Whites would benefit from supporting the most intelligent, no matter which people they belong to. His purpose is of course to promote Jews.
"Israel tolerates a large Arab population and welcomes skilled immigrants, even non-Jewish. That is because their strong economy needs labor. Jews have a slight advantage with immigration to Israel, but that is necessitated by the extreme dangers they face elsewhere. Europe had a similar strategy, but unlike Israel, attracts the wrong sort through it's exceptionally generous welfare system.
European solidarity is a bad strategy, due to it's subsidy to the wrong sort of whites, and the alienation of the right sort of non-whites."
Ah, the falsehoods. First, Israel "tolerates" Arabs living within its borders? They are the ORIGINAL people. They were the ones who submitted to the Zionist invasion, armed by the U.S. and Britain, while the other Arabs were driven out and killed in the thousands. To say that Israel "tolerates" them is like saying Jews and their non-White allies in the West "tolerates" Whites living here, and that we should be grateful to them for this.
Most Israelis would like to get rid of all the Arabs, but even they can't be completely racialist, or their support among the "goyim" would be weakened. So they keep these Arabs. But treat them as second-class citizens. The Arabs are discriminated against. Their politicians are beaten. The media lie about their politicians. The Arabs are treated in exactly the same way as racialist Whites are treated in the West because of Jew-controlled media.
Kevin Bjornsson says Jews have a SLIGHT immigration advantage. Another lie. Jews have a COMPLETE advantage – in that Jews from anywhere in the world are allowed to migrate to Israel, because they are of the superior Jewish blood. Palestinians, on the other hand, are not even allowed to move back to the last 22 percent of Palestinian land, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, if they have fled elsewhere.
And Christians are forbidden to marry Jews in Israel. Something Bjornsson "forgets" to mention. Because that destroys his talk about how the poor, persecuted Jews must have their "slight" advantage. The ban against Christian-Jewish marriage, and the open hatred against Christians in Israel, shows that Israel is not based on escaping "persecution", but on their wish for racial supremacy.
When Greek Orthodox priests march down Golgotha carrying a large wooden cross, Jews line up on both sides to shout hateful slurs at them and spit at them. And they especially spit on the cross. This is something the Jew-controlled media never mention. Jews in general hate Whites and Christianity.
And these are the people Kevin Bjornsson claims it is oh-so-fine to live with in the West? Anyone who has actually read Kevin MacDonald's work, or other work documenting how Jews have pushed mass immigration and race-mixing for Whites, knows that this is false.
Kevin Bjornsson claims that European solidarity is wrong because it promotes the worst Whites. We should instead allow Jews among us, who are better. But Jews also promote the worst among themselves. And they promote Black and Arab immigration to Europe and America (which Bjornsson pretends he doesn't know), peoples with a much lower IQ than Jews or Whites, because they aid the Jewish agenda of preventing a White defense against their influence.
Whites are far better off promoting our whole race, including the worst – because we need all the numbers we can get in this fight. Otherwise we will soon be a minority in all Western nations, with a state of constant murder and rape like in Rhodesia and South Africa (where half of all women have been raped). Hundreds of millions of Blacks, Arabs, Turks and others will be let in, to give their votes to the Jew-approved leftist parties. (At least 80 percent of Jews vote for the Left. Because anti-White collectivism is good for them.)
Kevin Bjornsson here will of course be on the anti-White side. He will declare other Whites to be "suckers" and "losers", and he will have many excuses for siding with the "winners". All in his own self-interest in a crumbling West. He is either a Jew himself or one of the greedy little cowards who like to get a piece of the pie.
This is a fantastically accurate piece. The only thing I would add is that Koreans, more so than Chinese, very much demonstrate this sort of behavior. One can see how Korean immigrants in countries more productive than their own (primarily the U.S. and Japan) ironically achieve an average living standard well above the native populations by maximizing resource inflow into the Korean community (patronizing and promoting other Korean businesses whenever possible, banding together to keep non-Koreans out of business fields they are in, etc.) and minimizing outflow.


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A recent study by the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP found that 44.4 million Americans age 18 or older are providing unpaid care to an adult. Nearly 90% of these caregivers are helping relatives.
Which, from a Catholic standpoint, is a good thing — or can be. Caregivers usually fulfill multiple roles. Well over half are married. Close to three-quarters work. This juggling can lead to stress and conflicts.
One woman told me she felt neglected by her husband, who spent much of his time caring for his elderly parents. He had to balance his sacramental commitment to his wife with his respect for his parents, who also deserved his time.
"Respect for parents (filial piety)," the Catechism reminds us, "derives from gratitude toward those who, by the gift of life, their love and their work, have brought their children into the world and enabled them to grow in stature, wisdom and grace" (No. 2215).
"With all your heart honor your father, and do not forget the birth pangs of your mother," adds the Book of Sirach (7:27-28). "Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you?"
It is not surprising that caregivers say that their most pressing unmet needs are finding time for themselves, managing emotional and physical stress, and balancing work and family responsibilities. The study found that one-third of caregivers feel they need help keeping the person they care for safe. And around 20% need help talking with doctors and other healthcare professionals.
In short, burnout is a real risk for familial (and other volunteer) caregivers. Oftentimes, a little help around the house or a break from caregiving is all that's needed to keep stress at manageable levels.
Sometimes family members, friends or neighbors are able to help. If you know of someone in this situation, consider lending a hand. Many caregivers do most or all of the caregiving alone. If you are one of them, you might do well to look into the Eldercare Locator (eldercare.gov, or call 800-677-1116) or your local Catholic Charities office (catholiccharitiesusa.org). Know that help is available.
When you're dealing with elderly parents, things can get complicated. I remember one elderly woman telling me she stayed in her room all day at her son's house because she didn't want to "get in the way." On the other hand, some elderly parents can't resist the opportunities to "parent" their grown children, their grandchildren — or whomever else spends time in their physical space. Naturally, in such situations, tensions often arise.
Then there is the struggle for the elderly parent to maintain some modicum of independence, not to mention the loneliness and isolation that an elder parent can feel when left alone for long periods of time.
Surely it wasn't an arbitrary afterthought when Jesus, near death, thought about — and saw to — his mother's future.
"When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son.' Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother.' And from that hour the disciple took her into his home" (John 19:25-27).
Perhaps caregivers should turn to St. John the Apostle, asking for his intercession as they strive to do their best in this most important act of duty and love.
Brother John Raymond is co-founder of the Community of the Monks of Adoration in Venice, Florida.

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In his first extensive interview since leaving a New Zealand prison on bail , Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (read our in-depth profile ) describes himself as a family man with a "big kid inside me" who is looking for "happiness and nature and peace" for his family. Sure, he used to drive in crazy road races and style himself "Dr. Evil" and hire lavish yachts, but those days are a decade behind him now. It's a far cry from the way he has been depicted by US law enforcement . They charged the "Mega conspiracy" in January with some of the most heinous criminal copyright violations on the planet. The sit-down interview with New Zealand journalist John Campbell gave Dotcom a chance to dispel this image and make the case his company really is just like YouTube. It's not a hard-hitting interview—featuring questions like "Are you as bad as possible, Kim? Are you a very naughty man…?"—but hearing directly from Dotcom at last is fascinating. Read the comments on this post
Archive for March 1st, 2012
Oh My God There Are Real, Functioning Smartphones That Can Make You Think You're Touching Grass and Rocks [Guts]
There has been talk of the years of haptics technologies which would allow us to move our hand over a glass touchscreen and be tricked into thinking we were touching a fuzzy material, or some rough surface. But that was all R&D talk. At Mobile World Congress this year, however, AllThingsD found a pair of companies who have put that haptic feedback tech into functioning prototype devices. More »
Full disclosure: I fell asleep about a half hour into my first attempt to play Journey , the latest experience from Flower creators thatgamecompany. I'm not entirely sure this wasn't the intended effect of the endless stretches of lonely desert sands and dirge-like music that characterize the beginning of the game. Whatever the intention, there was something about the main character's relentless plodding towards far off ruins that relaxed me to the point of unconsciousness. Read the comments on this post
Zynga today reveals its very own social game platform, Zynga.com, which was previously called Z-Live and Zynga Direct. The service launches today with five of Zynga's best-performing games: CastleVille, CityVille, Words with Friends, Hidden Chronicles and Zynga Poker. Here's what Zynga.com is: a platform on which social games can run synchronously and relatively seamlessly between it and Facebook. A CityVille player logging into Zynga.com today will find their city exactly as it appears on the Facebook canvas, with the same amount of virtual goods in their inventory and same amount of virtual currency in their e-wallet. Thanks to a deeper-than-anything-we've-seen integration with Facebook Connect, all in-game activity that takes place on one platform happens on the other. That CityVille player can buy a new park decoration on Zynga.com and it will appear in Facebook if they player were to jump back to the social network and play CityVille there. A Facebook player can used Credits to buy 20 Crowns in CastleVille and those 20 Crowns will be in the virtual bank if the player jumps to Zynga.com. Here's what Zynga.com is not: an alternative to Facebook. The service is focused on the games experience to the exclusion of almost all other social networking tools. Players can't post pictures, can't create events and can only group themselves by Facebook friends and players that play the same games. The only social network features Zynga.com cribbed from Facebook are the chat function, social discovery of new friend connections and a live app ticker for games activity (which is something Facebook recently disabled on canvas apps). Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Social Games .
Anyone hoping for a truly unlimited "unlimited" data plan is still out of luck, but AT&T has announced some changes (or a clarification, as it puts it) to its throttling procedures today that will at least give you a bit more room to work with. For customers on an unlimited plan with a 3G or "4G" phone (i.e. HSPA+), you'll now be able to enjoy full data speeds up to 3GB, after which you'll then see your speeds decrease until the start of the next billing cycle. If you have a 4G LTE phone, however, you'll have a full 5GB to play with before the throttling kicks in. That's as opposed to the roughly 2GB of full data speeds that was available in both cases before — and, as with the throttling that was imposed originally, these changes only apply to those still on an unlimited data plan, not those on AT&T's tiered data plans. AT&T announces throttling changes, now kicks in at 3GB or 5GB for LTE originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | AT&T | Email this | Comments
Netflix now provides content with captions or subtitles for more than 80 percent of the hours streamed in the U.S. To be clear, this doesn't mean that 80+ percent of Netflix's streaming content has captions, but that of all the hours of streaming content watched in the U.S., over 80 percent of it was captioned in some way. This is a significant improvement, considering that captions were only present on 40 percent of hours streamed in June, and 60 percent in November. Netflix is also pushing content providers to offer up already-captioned content, while authoring subtitles for content that doesn't already have them, according to this blog post . But the company warns, that final 20 percent won't be completed as quickly as the rest. This is because it's mostly content that is rarely watched, so even if Netflix adds captions at a crazy rate, the metric itself will take some time to catch up. Back in June, Netflix was sued by the National Association of the Deaf for not providing captions for most of its streaming content. If you'll notice, that's around the same time that Netflix picked up the pace to now double the number of hours streamed with captions. If you're like me and watch almost all of your Netflix streaming TV/movies on a laptop, captioning isn't just helpful, it's necessary. Those little speakers don't help much at all when I need to pick up every little detail in Battlestar Galactica and Lost , so we're glad to see Netflix keep up the pace.
xyzzy123 sez, "Want to make a freedom-of-information request to the FBI or other three-letter agencies for any information they might have about you? This post links to a website that lets you enter personal information (or not, if you prefer), and then automatically print form letters to the correct government offices." The incident that precipitated the article is pretty bizarre: a woman with a history of protest asked the FBI for her file and discovered that she'd been closely followed. What's more, she learned that despite all that close surveillance, the FBI got her political allegiances completely wrong, describing bitter rivals as fellow travelers and generally getting it all messed up. Life Get Your FBI File! ( Thanks, xyzzy123! )
MrSeb writes "Japanese researchers have created a hand-held gun that can jam the words of speakers who are more than 30 meters (100ft) away. The gun has two purposes, according to the researchers: At its most basic, this gun could be used in libraries and other quiet spaces to stop people from speaking — but its second application is a lot more chilling. The researchers were looking for a way to stop 'louder, stronger' voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: 'We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.' In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce 'proper' conversations." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
First time accepted submitter ausrob writes "Domain seizures are nothing new, but this particular case is interesting. The Department of Homeland Security has seized a domain name registered outside of the U.S., by individuals who are not American citizens, and who registered with a Canadian registrar. From the article: 'The ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of US federal and state lawmakers (not exactly known their cluefulness nor even-handedness, especially with regard to matters of the internet).'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Scanning Biotech Equities -- Research on ACADIA Pharma, Acorda Therapeutics, Alnylam Pharma, and BioCryst Pharma
Editor Note: For more information about this release, please scroll to bottom.
Jun 13, 2014, 08:20 ET from Investor-Edge
LONDON, June 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
On Thursday, June 12, 2014, the NASDAQ Composite ended at 4,297.63, down 0.79%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day 0.65% lower at 16,734.19, and the S&P 500 closed at 1,930.11, down 0.71%. The losses were broad based as eight out of ten sectors ended the session in negative. The S&P 500 Health Care Sector Index ended the day at 688.58, down 0.56%, while the index has advanced 1.97% in the last one month. Investor-Edge has initiated coverage on the following equities: ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ACAD), Acorda Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ALNY) and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX). Free technical research on ACAD, ACOR, ALNY and BCRX can be downloaded upon signing up at: http://www.investor-edge.com/3750-register On Thursday, ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s stock recorded a trading volume of 1.12 million shares, lower than its three months average volume of 1.93 million shares. The stock finished the day at $23.03, up 1.01%, and registered an intraday range of $22.40 and $23.89. ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s shares have advanced 0.44% in the past three trading sessions and 18.59% in the last one month. However, the stock has declined 7.84% on YTD basis. Furthermore, the company's stock is trading above its 50-day moving average. The stock's 200-day moving average of $23.22 is above its 50-day moving average of $20.33. Additionally, Shares of the company have a Relative Strength Index (RSI) of 64.54. Sign up today to read free research on ACAD at: http://www.investor-edge.com/3750-ACAD-13Jun2014.pdf Acorda Therapeutics Inc.'s stock gained 1.87%, to close Thursday's session at $35.46, after oscillating between $34.40 and $35.50. The stock recorded a trading volume of 0.24 million shares, below its three months average volume of 0.49 million shares. Over the last one month and from the beginning of 2014, Acorda Therapeutics Inc.'s shares have rallied 15.62% and 21.44%, respectively. However, over the past three months, the company's stock has gone down by 6.36%. The stock is trading above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. The company stock's 50-day moving average of $33.90 is above its 200-day moving average of $33.57. Further, the company's stock traded at a PE ratio of 78.13 and has an RSI of 58.35. Sign up today to read free research on ACOR at: http://www.investor-edge.com/3750-ACOR-13Jun2014.pdf On Thursday, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s stock finished the session 0.04% higher at $67.74. A total of 0.62 million shares were traded, which was below its three months average volume of 0.92 million shares. The stock moved between $66.56 and $68.80 during the session. Over the past three trading sessions and last one month, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s shares have advanced 2.70% and 17.79%, respectively. Also, the stock has gained 5.35% since the start of this year. The company's shares are trading above their 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Moreover, the stock's 200-day moving average of $64.16 is greater than its 50-day moving average of $57.39. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s stock has an RSI of 66.32. Sign up today to read free research on ALNY at: http://www.investor-edge.com/3750-ALNY-13Jun2014.pdf Shares in BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. fluctuated between $11.27 and $11.88 before ending Thursday's session down 3.12%, at $11.35. The company's stock reported a trading volume of 1.04 million shares, close to its three months average volume of 1.02 million shares. Further, shares of BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. have surged 47.15% over the last one month and 2.12% over the past three months. Also, the stock has gained 49.28% on YTD basis. The stock is trading above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. The stock's 50-day moving average of $9.15 is greater than its 200-day moving average of $8.40. Moreover, shares of the company have an RSI of 72.79. Sign up today to read free research on BCRX at: http://www.investor-edge.com/3750-BCRX-13Jun2014.pdf =============== EDITOR'S NOTES: =============== 1. This is not company news. We are an independent source and our views do not reflect the companies mentioned. 2. Information in this release is produced on a best efforts basis by Rohit Tuli, a CFA charterholder. The content is then further fact checked and reviewed by an outsourced research provider. However, we are only human and are prone to make mistakes. If you notice any errors or omissions, please notify us below. 3. This information is submitted as a net-positive to companies mentioned, to increase awareness for mentioned companies to our subscriber base and the investing public. 4. If you wish to have your company covered in more detail by our team, or wish to learn more about our services, please contact us at pubco [at] http://www.investor-edge.com. 5. For any urgent concerns or inquiries, please contact us at compliance [at] http://www.investor-edge.com. 6. Are you a public company? Would you like to see similar coverage on your company? Send us a full investors' package to research [at] http://www.investor-edge.com for consideration. COMPLIANCE PROCEDURE Content is researched, written and reviewed on a best-effort basis. This document, article or report is prepared and authored by Investor-Edge, represented by Rohit Tuli, CFA. An outsourced research services provider has only reviewed the information provided by Investor-Edge in this article or report according to the procedures outlined by Investor-Edge. 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Currently, three dramas are battling it out for ratings. With KBS' Cinderella Sister reigning at the top thus far, it appears as if MBC's Personal Taste has some catching up to do. Maybe this will do the trick as the latest episode contains a shower scene. Even if it doesn't help in the ratings department, you know you're dying to get the details behind actor Lee Minho's behind. In the third episode, Park Gae In (played by Son Ye Jin) got a glimpse of Jeon Jin Ho's (played by Lee Minho) naked body as she burst through the bathroom door. However, as she assumed that he was gay, she didn't cause too much of a scene. Likewise, Gae In also had a shower scene later on in the episode. Jin Ho also saw Gae In (though covered in a towel) and again Gae In didn't go ballistic as she reinforced that he was gay. Only if Gae In really knew! Check out the clip! Starts around 2:45 (embedding disabled) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRIrcRZqxY
7 stars who are the top role models to rookie idols
19 hours ago 245,140 3,894 478


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Scottsdale (Ariz.) Chaparral tight end Trevor Wood is out for the season with a torn labrum, but that hasn't stopped his recruitment from rolling along as normal. The 2014 prospect now holds four o...
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NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Cemex (CX) closed up 3.6% to $12.90 on Friday following Longbow Research's upgrade of the Mexican cement producer. Longbow upgraded Cemex to a "buy" rating from "neutral". This rating comes on the heels of news that the construction industry recovery that blossomed in 2013 will continue to pick up the pace in 2014.
STOCKS TO BUY: TheStreet Quant Ratings has identified a handful of stocks that can potentially TRIPLE in the next 12 months. Learn more.
The rating increase helped propel Cemex closer to its 52 week high of $13.51.
There are also brightening prospects for the industry as a whole. A survey conducted by Engineering News-Record revealed this, "The ENR Construction Industry Confidence Index (CICI) for the first quarter of 2014 shows a dramatic leap in expectations about the current and near term by construction and design firm executives," said Janice L. Tuchman, editor-in-chief of Engineering News-Record. "Survey respondents believe the private-sector markets are the healthiest, led by petroleum, power, hotels & hospitality, and multi-unit residential. All sectors measured by the survey were on the upswing."
TheStreet Ratings team rates CEMEX SAB DE CV as a Hold with a ratings score of C. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:
"We rate CEMEX SAB DE CV (CX) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed ? some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its growth in earnings per share, increase in net income and revenue growth. However, as a counter to these strengths, we find that the company's profit margins have been poor overall."


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Nov. 14, 2008
It's difficult for anyone to go more than an hour without hearing something about the state of the American economy today. From the politicians in Washington, to the talking heads in the media, Wall Street's roller-coaster ride has everyone wondering what the future will hold financially.
Experts also have differing opinions on how to weather the crisis. Some offer the "wait-and-see" approach, electing to ride out the current situation and maintain the status quo in hopes that things will work themselves out. Then, there are others who subscribe to the notion that now is the perfect time to invest in the future and get going while you can before the market skyrockets back to its customary heights.
The latter theory could very well hold true when it comes to the Notre Dame women's basketball team. Not to say that the Irish are in any sort of a "bear market" -- in fact, far from it. Notre Dame is coming off a 25-9 season that saw the Irish advance to the NCAA Sweet 16 for the seventh time in program history (all in the past 12 seasons), place in the top four in the nation's toughest conference, the BIG EAST, for the 10th time in their 13-year league membership, and be ranked in the Top 20 of both major national polls all season long, now reaching the Top 10 in the Associated Press poll during eight of the past 12 years.
The future for Notre Dame would appear to be even more bullish, with seven returning monogram winners, including three starters from last year's club. The Irish also welcome a four-player incoming freshman class that has been ranked as high as ninth in the nation. What's more, Notre Dame will enjoy the prospect of playing host to the first two rounds of the 2009 NCAA Tournament at the Joyce Center before one of the country's largest and most rabid fan bases. Yet, with all of these harbingers of promise, there are two simple words that may be most telling when it comes to the long-term success of the Irish:
No. Seniors.
For the first time in head coach Muffet McGraw's 22 years at Notre Dame, the Irish anticipate not losing a single player off this season's roster. Guard Lindsay Schrader is listed as a senior by academic standing, but she fully intends to seek a fifth year of eligibility, made possible when she missed the 2006-07 season (her sophomore campaign) after suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her right knee during a preseason scrimmage.
Thus, the Irish will have a tightly-knit core group of 11 players together for the next two seasons, united in the common goal of advancing further along the road of success and ultimately bringing another national championship back to Notre Dame. It's this confluence of possibilities that has McGraw so enthused about the future of Irish women's basketball.
"We're definitely on an upward trend with this program right now," McGraw said. "Beginning two years ago when we took North Carolina to the wire in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, and then continuing with last year's run to the Sweet 16, we're building up the confidence to think that now we can take it even further this year.
"This is still a young team that's gaining confidence and maturing," McGraw added. "We've really accomplished a lot in a short time with them. Now is the time where we're not going to surprise people, and the expectations are understandably going to be greater. We overachieved in that underdog role the past couple of years, so it will be interesting to see how we handle these new expectations now that we're no longer in that position."
One of the hallmarks of last year's Notre Dame squad was its extraordinary balance on offense. The Irish ranked eighth in the country in scoring offense (76.2 points per game), 10th in scoring margin (+14.6 ppg.) and 22nd in both field goal percentage (.447) and free throw percentage (.758), all while fielding nine players who averaged at least five points per game, and three who would up in double figures. Despite an up-tempo, transition-based offense, McGraw developed a reliable nine-player rotation that kept fresh legs on the floor almost constantly from the opening tip to the final horn, with only one player averaging 30 minutes per game.
Notre Dame's increased productivity on offense was due in no small part to its aggressive defense. The Irish led the BIG EAST in steals for the second consecutive year and ranked 13th in the country in that category with 11.7 thefts per night. Notre Dame's overall total of 397 steals also tied the school record, while the Irish set another program high-water mark by forcing opponents into a whopping 737 turnovers (21.7 per game). That figure helped Notre Dame finish 18th nationally with a 1.04 assist-to-turnover ratio, marking the second time in school history (after the 2000-01 national championship season) that the Irish posted a positive A/TO ratio for an entire year.
All told, Notre Dame was one of only 12 programs in the land to rank in the Top 25 in six of the year-end NCAA statistical categories (excluding won-loss percentage). Heading into the 2008-09 campaign, the Irish will retain two-thirds of that high-powered scoring offense from a year ago, while also bringing back three-quarters of their rebounding total and nearly 70 percent of their steals and blocked shots (ranking third in the conference in the latter category last season).
Here's a position-by-position breakdown of the 2008-09 Fighting Irish:
Coming into this season, one of the unknown quantities may be how Notre Dame adjusts to a new point guard. Tulyah Gaines held the reins of the Irish offense for the past two seasons, expertly guiding Notre Dame's frenetic "catch-me-if-you-can" style with her speed and athleticism. However, if outside observers are expecting any sort of drop off in play with Gaines' graduation, they're likely to be disappointed.
Due partially to the secondary role she played early in her career, Lechlitner has not yet been called upon to be an integral part of Notre Dame's scoring offense, something that could change in 2008-09. The 5-foot-7 point boasts a smooth outside shot with range to the three-point line, along with a pull-up jumper that rivals the best in the BIG EAST. What's more, her confident, attacking style and ability to push the pace against any opponent's style of play should allow her to make a seamless transition to the starting lineup.
"I'm just thrilled to have Melissa out there leading us," McGraw said. "She's such a great floor leader and is somebody who can really make us go. She's a spark defensively, she's relentless and if the saying holds true that a team takes on the personality of its captain, we're going to be in great shape."
Lechlitner is expected to see the majority of minutes at the Irish helm this year. Junior Ashley Barlow, sophomore Brittany Mallory and freshman Natalie Novosel also may see time at the point during the course of the season.
It's no surprise that one of the cornerstones of Notre Dame's resurgent offense in recent years has been its play on the wings. Last season, the top three scorers on the Irish roster came from the perimeter, with Barlow, Schrader and Charel Allen all thriving in Notre Dame's transition game and motion-based offense.
Of course, with Allen's graduation and subsequent elevation to the WNBA with the playoff-qualifying Sacramento Monarchs, there's room for a new crop of wings to add their stamp on the Irish offense. Allen departed as one of the top scorers in school history, ranking eighth all-time with 1,566 points, and she became the first Irish player ever to amass 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 200 assists and 200 steals in her career. A two-time honorable mention All-American and all-BIG EAST selection, Allen capped her four-year tenure in grand fashion during the 2008 NCAA Tournament, pouring in a career-high 35 points in the second-round win over Oklahoma.
Yet, just as the case is with the point guard spot, if the so-called experts think losing Allen will signal the start of a "bear market" for Irish fortunes, they're going to be waiting for a long time. In fact, while Notre Dame loses one all-conference selection, they bring back two others in '08 honorable mention all-BIG EAST picks Barlow and Schrader, who ranked second and third on the team in scoring, respectively.
Barlow, who also made the BIG EAST All-Freshman Team in 2006-07, has posted double-digit scoring averages in each of her first two seasons at Notre Dame, logging 12.1 points per game and scoring in double figures 21 times while starting 32 of 34 contests a year ago. The Indianapolis native and team tri-captain is a package of dynamite on the floor, whether fearlessly driving to the basket and finishing with contact, or stepping away from the rim to dial up a long three-pointer. Her .469 field goal percentage is third among returning players, and she also was second on last year's squad with 27 three-pointers.
"Ashley seems to come back every year as our most improved player," McGraw said with a smile. "She works so hard on her game over the summer, and has expanded her repertoire to be deadly from the three-point line. She's always been a battler and a great competitor and will be someone we'll count on to be a scoring threat for us this year."
Schrader made a successful return to action in 2007-08 after missing the previous year with the aforementioned knee injury. It didn't take long for the Bartlett, Ill., product to get back in the groove, as she scored 20 points (on 10-of-12 shooting) in only 17 minutes during Notre Dame's season-opening 98-50 win over eventual Mid-American Conference champion Miami (Ohio) in the first round of the Preseason WNIT. Schrader finished the season averaging 10.3 points and a team-high 6.2 rebounds per game with a steady .460 field goal percentage while starting all but one of her team's 34 games.
The team's other tri-captain, Schrader builds her game around a dangerous blend of power and athleticism that constantly makes her an enigma for opposing coaches. She has the strength to back a smaller defender down on the blocks and work one-on-one in the paint, and the agility to either step outside for the long jumper or slash into the lane and create off the dribble. Schrader also brings the most starting experience of anyone on this year's Irish roster, with 60 starts in her 64-game college career.
"Lindsay has really worked hard on her shot during the offseason and it looks great," McGraw noted. "She's another one of those players with the winning mentality, the winning attitude, and she's a fierce competitor who hates to lose. Her intangibles, along with her skill, are what make her such an important part of our team."
Mallory adapted well to Notre Dame's offensive style, with her primary role being the team's three-point specialist. The Baltimore native connected on a team-high 34 treys during her rookie season, averaging 6.3 points in 33 games while earning BIG EAST All-Freshman Team honors. She scored in double figures six times last season, including a personal-high 15 points in a mid-January win at Georgetown.
A very cerebral player, Mallory quickly learned how to read opposing defenses and does the little things well, reacting without the ball and showing little hesitation when getting to the rim and drawing contact. What's more, she understands defensive angles and rotations and has used that to her advantage, rolling up 42 steals (1.27 per game) last season.
"Brittany really came on during the BIG EAST part of our schedule last year," McGraw observed. "She's someone who really understands her role as a three-point weapon, but she's also someone who's not afraid to mix it up inside."
Lining up behind the three Irish veterans is a trio of talented freshmen with unique complementary skill sets that should expand Notre Dame's arsenal even more in the coming years.
Novosel is a versatile 5-foot-11 wing who blends a creative playmaking flair with a scorer's mentality. Whether driving the lane or firing from the perimeter, Novosel displays exceptional court awareness and a winner's mentality, and her gritty, feisty style is likely to endear her to Irish fans from the moment she first puts on the Notre Dame uniform.
During her four-year prep career at Lexington Catholic High School in Lexington, Ky., Novosel averaged 14.0 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.7 steals per game and is one of only five players in school history to register 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in her career (2,103 points, 1,021 rebounds). Ranked as high as 32nd in the nation according to some national recruiting services, Novosel was a three-time all-state selection and two-time preseason All-America choice, in addition to being one of the top three vote-getters for the 2008 Kentucky Miss Basketball award. She also helped lead her school to consecutive USA Today Super 25 rankings, back-to-back state championships and an outstanding 130-11 record during her tenure.
"We're expecting big things from Natalie," McGraw said. "She's someone who can come in and contribute right away because she has a great skill set. Natalie's also got that intangible `refuse-to-lose' drive and that relentless attitude is going to be something we'll be seeing a lot of during her four years."
Kellie Watson joins this year's squad as one of the tallest wings ever to play for the Irish. At 6-foot-2, the Ionia, Mich., resident is sure to give opponents fits with her height and strength, not to mention her ability to stretch the defense with impressive perimeter shooting skills. She's also expected to be an added contributor on the boards for Notre Dame, and her length will be valuable on the defensive end of the floor as well.
Watson enjoyed a highly successful prep career at Ionia High School, averaging 19.1 points and 8.1 rebounds per game while playing virtually every possible position on the floor. She logged better than 21 points per game over her final two seasons, including a career-high 24.0 points per game as a junior on the way to owning the school's career scoring record (boys or girls) with 1,529 points. In addition, she led the state in three-point percentage as a freshman (.452).
A four-time all-state selection, Watson was ranked as high as 35th nationally among this year's incoming class, despite the fact that girls' basketball was a fall sport in Michigan until her senior year of 2007-08 and not many recruiting services got a chance to see her play. Nevertheless, the folks in Michigan knew exactly how good she was, naming her the 2008 Michigan Miss Basketball, Gatorade State Player of the Year and the Associated Press Class B Co-Player of the Year.
"Kellie is an outstanding three-point shooter, but what sometimes gets overlooked is the fact that she's also a great passer," McGraw pointed out. "She knows how to find the open man and uses her size very well. I think she's someone that this team is really going to enjoy playing with because of all the skills she brings to the table."
While Notre Dame lost some of its quickness quotient when Gaines graduated, it may have filled that gap (and then some) with the addition of Fraderica Miller to the fold. A late signee out of Ellenwood, Ga., Miller has speed to burn, and with her long arms and aggressive style, she could be an early impact player for the Irish on defense.
Like Novosel and Watson, Miller comes from a winning tradition at The Marist School in suburban Atlanta. On a team filled with high-caliber future college players, Miller more than did her part, averaging 10.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.5 steals per game in her prep career. As a senior in '07-08, Miller tallied team highs of 11.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.5 steals per game with a .494 field goal percentage and four double-doubles for Georgia's second-best Class AAAA team, which averaged more than 25 wins per season during her career.
"Fraderica is probably the best athlete on the team," McGraw said. "She's really help us in the presses or if we need someone to come in and shut people down. I expect she'll be one of our best, if not our best defensive players this year."
In its post players, Notre Dame values strength, agility, versatility and solid passing skills. The Irish should have those qualities and more in the quartet of players who will hold down the paint in 2008-09.
Junior Erica Williamson split time as Notre Dame's everyday center last season, starting 21 times while averaging a career-high 6.4 points and 4.4 rebounds per game. She also has been a consistent inside threat at both ends, posting a .468 career field goal percentage and rolling up 77 blocked shots in her first two years, putting her in position to crack the school's career top 10 in that category by season's end. Standing 6-foot-4, the Charlotte, N.C., native is strong with both hands and also has revealed a mid-range jumper that should only help to further diversify her game. At the other end of the floor, she has been more than willing to sacrifice her body in the name of team defense and always relishes the chance to match up with some of the nation's other top post players.
"I'm really pleased with the progress Erica has made in the past two years," McGraw commented. "She is somebody that wants to do a little bit more each time out. She's unselfish, she sets great screens, she runs the offense well, and basically does whatever she can to help the team win. We're counting on her to take up space and be that presence in the lane for us, and we're counting on her to have a big year for us."
Sophomore Devereaux Peters will be one of the other interesting developments for Notre Dame in 2008-09. The lanky 6-foot-2 forward was enjoying a very productive rookie campaign before it ended after 23 games due to a torn ACL in her left knee. At the time of her injury, Peters ranked fourth on the team in scoring (9.0 ppg.), second in rebounding (5.6 rpg.) and led the BIG EAST in blocked shots (2.0 bpg.). Despite her setback, the Chicago native joined Mallory as Notre Dame's two selections to the BIG EAST All-Freshman Team.
Following successful knee surgery and the subsequent rehabilitation, Peters remains an imposing defensive threat in both the press and as a shot blocker. She also has shown an efficient offensive touch with a handful of moves on the block to go with a reliable mid-range game. In addition, Peters runs the floor well in transition and will be a key component of the Irish attack for years to come.
"By January, I think Devereaux will be back in the groove after her surgery and feeling like her old self," McGraw observed. "Talent-wise, she's definitely a first-team all-league performer. She is somebody that does more for us at both ends of the floor than anyone else on our team. If she can stay out of foul trouble, which was a bit of a problem last year, you can expect big, big things from her this year."
Peters' classmate, Becca Bruszewski, showed immense promise at the end of last season, capping her first year with a pair of season-high 16-point performances in the NCAA Tournament against SMU (first round) and Tennessee (Sweet 16). For the season, the 6-foot-1 frontliner averaged 5.0 points per game with a team-best .558 field goal percentage. She also turned in some of her best results against other elite-level teams, chalking up a season-high seven rebounds in her third career game at Maryland, and adding six rebounds in the season-ending contest against Tennessee.
During the offseason, Bruszewski dedicated herself to further expanding her offensive potential and versatility. As a result, she has evolved into a threat on the blocks and beyond the arc, adding a reliable three-point shot to her arsenal. With an uncanny toughness and willingness to do the dirty work in the paint, the Valparaiso, Ind., product also remains an important defensive asset.
"Becca really played well down the stretch last year," McGraw said. "She built off those games, came back from the offseason in great shape and really worked hard on her perimeter game. She brings that physicality to the post and is someone who will never back down to anyone."
Freshman Erica Solomon gives Notre Dame even more depth and options in the post. Standing 6-foot-2 and hailing from suburban Detroit, Solomon was the AP Class B Co-Player of the Year last season (along with Watson) after helping leading Detroit Country Day School to the Class B state championship. Individually, she averaged 12.0 points, 9.0 rebounds and 4.0 blocks per game during last year's title-winning run and earned the last of her four consecutive all-state honors.
Despite missing a good portion of her junior season with a knee injury, and like Watson, going largely unseen due to Michigan's unorthodox playing schedule, Solomon still was ranked as high as 18th in the country by some recruiting services. An intense rebounder and shot blocker, she will be most valuable on defense early in her career, although she does bring a strong set of post moves to the table.
"Erica is a little bit of an unsung player who didn't come in with as much hype as the other players because of her injury," McGraw said. "She's a really strong addition to what we've already got inside with her bigger presence, aggressive rebounding and shot-blocking abilities. I'm really looking forward to seeing her out there because I think she can do some damage, particularly at the defensive end."
The 2008-09 schedule could be one of the most difficult slates in Notre Dame's 32-year history. The Irish are penciled in to play 20 of their 28 regular-season games against teams that advanced to the postseason a year ago, including six contests against other '08 NCAA Sweet 16 participants.
Among the featured games on this year's schedule are visits to 2008 NCAA Women's Final Four participants LSU (Nov. 16) and Connecticut (Feb. 22), and NCAA Sweet 16 qualifiers Vanderbilt (Dec. 30) and Pittsburgh (Feb. 3), as well as home contests with '08 NCAA Elite Eight participant Rutgers (Jan. 27) and NCAA Sweet 16 combatant Louisville (Feb. 11). The latter two matchups highlight Notre Dame's 13-game regular-season schedule at the Joyce Center, with the Irish also playing host to first- and second-round games in the 2009 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship (March 22 and 24).
"This may be one of the toughest schedules we've ever put together," McGraw said. "You start with the conference schedule. The BIG EAST is already coming off probably its best across-the-board season ever, and now you're adding in some young up-and-coming teams that are going to make it even tougher. Then, you look outside of the conference and we're going to face a difficult test right off the bat with LSU at their place, not to mention trips to Vanderbilt and Boston College along with Purdue and Michigan State coming in here.
"We always try to build our schedule so that we use the non-conference season to help prepare us for the BIG EAST, and then play the BIG EAST schedule to get us ready for the NCAA Tournament," she continued. "I think this kind of schedule helps us and probably explains why we've had such a tradition of success in the NCAAs. We get a chance to play just about every different kind of team, with every different style of play, during the regular season. We also learn a lot about ourselves and what our weaknesses are, so that when the NCAA Tournament rolls around, we're ready and we haven't built up a false sense of confidence from beating up on teams that aren't very good. We believe it's important to challenge our players, and I think they like that and get excited about playing good teams."
Notre Dame's 2008-09 schedule opens with its first-ever appearance in the State Farm Tip-Off Classic on Nov. 16 at LSU (ESPN2 live broadcast). The Irish then return home for four of their next six games, opening the '08-'09 Joyce Center slate with a matchup against Missouri Valley Conference regular-season co-champion Evansville (Nov. 19), before Georgia Southern (Nov. 25), Michigan State (Nov. 29) and Purdue (Dec. 7) all come to South Bend.
Sprinkled within that early spate of home games are a pair of trips to Eagles' nests -- Boston College (Nov. 23) and Eastern Michigan (Dec. 2). The Irish making their first visit to BC since the Eagles' final season in the BIG EAST (2004-05), while Notre Dame's journey to EMU also will be noteworthy, as it's the first time the Irish will take on the Eagles since Nov. 30, 1984 (a 70-59 victory in Ypsilanti).
A month-long stretch from mid-December to mid-January will bring on perhaps the most grueling span of games Notre Dame has seen in many years, with six out of seven contests on the road. A Dec. 10 junket to Michigan starts the run, with the always-dangerous trip down the Indiana Toll Road to Valparaiso looming three days later. After a brief return home to face former Midwestern Collegiate Conference sister Loyola-Chicago (Dec. 20), the Irish will return from the Christmas holiday with a rare two-game in-season road swing, starting in Charlotte (Dec. 28) before moving on to Vanderbilt (Dec. 30). The first stop will be a homecoming for Williamson, while the latter game will mark Notre Dame's first matchup with the Commodores since the 2001 NCAA Midwest Regional final in Denver (won by the Irish, 72-64, en route to their first national championship).
The BIG EAST sent eight teams to the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive season in 2007-08, with a conference-record five squads (including Notre Dame) advancing to the NCAA Sweet 16. The conference road could be even more arduous for the Irish in '08-'09, as they open the league slate with trips to Seton Hall (Jan. 3) and DePaul (Jan. 6). A stopover at the Joyce Center to take on Georgetown (Jan. 10) sets the table for three consecutive games against '08 WNIT qualifiers -- tournament champion Marquette (road, Jan. 13), quarterfinalist St. John's (home, Jan. 17) and third-round participant Villanova (road, Jan. 24).
The heart of the conference schedule brings Notre Dame home for four out of five games, spotlighted by four games against NCAA Tournament qualifiers (three of which advanced to the Sweet 16 or beyond). Returning NCAA Elite Eight squad Rutgers (Jan. 27) and Cincinnati (Jan. 31) open that stretch, before a trip to Sweet 16 participant Pittsburgh (Feb. 3). The Irish then come back to the Joyce Center for the second of two meetings with DePaul (Feb. 8) and a Feb. 11 tussle with another Sweet 16 team, Louisville.
After trips to South Florida (Feb. 17) and Connecticut (Feb. 22 at the XL Center in Hartford), Notre Dame plays two of its final three games at home, welcoming Syracuse (Feb. 24) to town, heading off to face Providence (Feb. 28) and then returning for its regular-season finale on March 2, an unusual midweek matinee against West Virginia.
The 2009 BIG EAST Championship is scheduled for March 6-10 back at Hartford's XL Center, marking the sixth consecutive season the conference tournament will be held at a neutral site. This year's tournament will have a new feel, as all 16 BIG EAST teams will participate in the event, with the top eight teams earning a first-round bye, and the top four seeds garnering a second-round bye.
In the economic world, the people who are can identify the emerging companies and get in on them early are likely to be the ones who will benefit the most in the long run. A similar axiom holds true in the college basketball universe, where the ability to spot those programs on the rise will pay off with an extended pattern of success.
Notre Dame has built a strong and stable platform of prosperity through the years, and last season's run to the Sweet 16 is just the latest rung in that ladder of opportunity. With this foundation firmly in place, the Irish have not only gone beyond "emerging" status to arrive as one of the truly elite programs in college basketball and one likely to continue being an annual force on the national scene for seasons to come.
"It's taken a couple of years, but we've been able to create a team that is really of one mindset in that they all absolutely hate to lose," McGraw said. "These guys all want to win and they're all winners. When you have that mentality and it runs through the entire team from the veterans down to the freshmen, it breeds even more success.
"We're in a unique position with no seniors on this year's team," she added. "We have tremendous leaders in our juniors and I'm confident that as they set the tone, we have the chance to do some great things in the next couple of years. It's an exciting time for our program and we're all looking forward to what lies ahead."


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With Peaceful Parenting you will learn 7 new tools that will help you manage your family schedule and block in quality time. Peaceful Parenting will help you grow the solid roots that will become the foundation of your family
Have you struggled with being the mother you wanted to be or fear the mother you have become? As life passes by we all forget to check-in with life's simple moments. We forget to take the time to play or reflect on the lessons our family has taught us.


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Metrobus driver caught driving with newspaper
A D.C. Metrobus driver was caught driving with a newspaper in hand. It happened during a Monday morning rush hour on a bus headed westbound from Dupont Circle.
The video was posted Thursday on the blog Unsuck DC Metro. WMATA issued this statement.
"The incident is under investigation We cannot comment on an ongoing investigation."
A WMATA representative added that typically, drivers under investigation are taken off the road until the issue has been resolved.
Lindsay Katz, a Metro rider, was shocked when she saw the footage.
"Probably not the safest method for transportation," she says.
It all comes after dozens of reports of Metro drivers running red lights, flying through intersections, slamming into cars and even hitting pedestrians while riders are being asked to pay more.
Yet a new report released by Metro shows 84 percent of riders are highly satisfied with the bus service. It also stated that 73 percent say the bus service is reliable and 79 percent say they'd recommend it.
Even the person who posted the video was satisfied with Metro's quick response.
A separate report out this week shows that Metro ridership and revenue since July has been significantly less than WMATA anticipated.
They blame changes in the federal transit benefit program and fare hikes for the drop.


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Lambda Legal
Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work. You can also find Lambda Legal on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Started 1 petition
Tell Gov. Abbott to Stop Prison Rape! The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is a federal law designed to eliminate sexual abuse of people in custody. PREA was created after years of study by a bipartisan, federal commission, passed unanimously by Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Although Texas prisons have the highest rates of sexual violence in the country, both former Texas Governor Rick Perry and his successor, Governor Greg Abbott, have refused to fully implement PREA, calling the law an "unnecessarily cumbersome and costly regulatory mess for the states." People housed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) have reported to Lambda Legal that, in one Texas prison, officers from the TDCJ ignored an assault that happened right in front of them. In another, they refused to let an inmate report sexual assault, calling them a liar. People incarcerated in Texas deserve protection from sexual abuse without qualifications or exceptions. Governor Abbott can change the lives of thousands of Texans by acting to reduce sexual assault in Texas prisons. Lambda Legal, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to achieving full recognition of civil rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and those with HIV through impact litigation, education, and public policy work, and community partners are demanding that Governor Greg Abbott and PREA Ombudsman Lynne Sharp fully implement and abide by the Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Join us in telling them to stop prison rape by adding your name to this petition and sharing it with your network. Demand Justice for the Incarcerated in Texas: "Somebody, somehow, needs to shed light on what is taking place here in Texas prisons. TDCJ officials get away with so much and disregard so many legitimate threats to people's safety... I fight for my life every day in here. Safety from rape and assault is not a privilege; it's a right." – Passion Star In October 2014, Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Passion Star, a transgender woman currently incarcerated in a men's prison in Texas. Ms. Star has been repeatedly raped, beaten, and threatened with murder since entering TDCJ custody in 2002 at the age of 19. In November 2013, after reporting the sexual threats against her, her face was slashed multiple times by a man who told her that he "owned" her. Instead of protecting her, TDCJ officers have told her to "fight," or to stop "acting gay". Prison officials have forced her to endure long periods of isolation - in one case, over 100 days. Only last year, after months of litigation by Lambda Legal, did TDCJ officials agree to place her in safekeeping. Passion's case does not exist in isolation. A full implementation of PREA standards would help protect the incarcerated from the maltreatment that Passion received and, ultimately, would ensure that rape is not part of anyone's sentence. Statistics on TX Prison Rape: • According to a 2013 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, there are more facilities in Texas with the highest levels of sexual assault than in any other state. • Of the 10 prisons with the highest rates of reported rapes in the nation, half are in Texas. • Experts across the nation recognize that sexual violence in custody disproportionately affects LGBT people. LGBT people in Texas prisons face a high risk that sexual assault and exploitation will become a part of their prison sentence. "Safety from rape and assault is not a privilege; it's a right." Instead of callously denying Passion and other incarcerated people their right to protection, the governor of Texas needs to take action to end sexual violence in Texas' prisons and jails. Governor Abbott and PREA Ombudsman Sharp can ensure that rape is not part of anyone's sentence in Texas prisons simply by joining the majority of the nation in enacting the PREA standards. Tell Governor Abbott and PREA Ombudsman Sharp to implement PREA standards by signing and sharing Lambda Legal's petition today.


text: +1. Versace ALMOST succeeded in setting a "lifestyle" brand early on, but (as I said earlier in the thread) the aesthetic simply couldn't connect with the audience RL did, nor be at a pricepoint where it could work. But, even in the 1980's, Versace was another brand that you can almost think of an idea or "theme" before you think of an actual item: sun drenched beaches, tanned chiseled men and beautiful women on a yacht, exquisitely died silks flowing in the breeze, etc. This aesthetic became something of a gimmick in the mid-late 1990's (due largely to the shift to minimalism AND Gianni's untimely death) and never really recovered, with the "lifestyle" brand shifting from very luxe upscale to "aging footballers with too much suntan lotion and Russian mobsters with too much gold jewelry." edit; by the way, if we're going to add brands like Sulka or others that influenced color, tone, or pattern, then brands like Etro or Byblos would be equally valid, the former for introducing a wide range of patterns into classic menswear and the latter for the shift toward subtle uses of bright solids. Not, I'm not arguing for their inclusion, but only to say that I think a case could be made why they (esp. Etro) would be a better fit than several of the others mentioned.


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|Boulder, 10'
|Hueco: V4 Font: 6B [details]
|Page Views:
|Submitted By:
|SAL on Feb 4, 2009
|2017 Seasonal Closures - Partial Closure Lifting MORE INFO >>>
|Comments on Unknown V4
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|Show which comments —
By Patrick Manitou
From: Atlanta, GAAAAA
Feb 5, 2009
|Is this the same problem that's also posted as "Mongoose Block West Overhang"? Check out the description I posted over on that problem. They start in the same place for sure. I've never been sure about the grade on that one, I put it up here as a V2, but it could be harder. I only chose V2, because that's what I remember from when I first started climbing at the pit more than a decade ago... my memory sucks though, and part of the problem is that I can't figure out how to rate the problem since I've been climbing it for so long.
By Jared LaVacque
From: Anchorage/Grand Junction
Dec 16, 2013
rating: V4 6B
There are many eliminates for these problems. I have been climbing on this since the early '90s, and just like the Black Hole in Morrison, there are many ways to contrive. Versions up to V8 from the same start pinches have been done.
An example of a standard V4 is as follows:
Start on both vertical pinches, bump left to smaller pinch sidepull, move right to a gaston, up and right, hit left hand in the cluster of pockets, fire up left to a crimp, right to jug and finish straight on edges or move right and finish into the prow.