Reposting this from May 11, 2013 about the junk science of IQ & intelligence which is racist, misogynist, elitist, & profoundly stupid. If you promote it in any of its genres, you don’t impugn your intelligence so much as expose your social hatreds.

It has also created a culture where ridiculing those with learning disabilities is allowable–like adding the suffix “–tard” to an epithet. As a result of that social hatred, those with learning problems are isolated, ridiculed, tormented, humiliated, denied full lives–the whole range of social oppression.

Intelligence is complex. When I was active as a mentor in the self advocacy movement for those with learning difficulties, I observed those labeled “retarded” who were theoreticians, the intellectuals who thought out strategy, & observed activists working out political problems as cogently as any discussions I’d been part of in other social movements.

“Retardation” is a prejudice, not a scientific designation. Stupid is another matter altogether.

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In the past year, an abstract of a study not available to read has repeatedly swept Facebook like wildfire. The Canadian study claims to link low IQ to right-wing & racist politics. People who claim to be progressives are the ones spreading this rubbish so as to stroke their own egos at the expense of those with learning difficulties. It takes so little to make some feel superior–just an assertion with no documentation. One needn’t be informed about the idiocy of so-called IQ science to challenge this crap. The assertion flies in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence. Kissinger, the Clintons, Obama, Albright, Cameron, Thatcher, Blair & an entire army of others may all be despicable & criminal but no one would challenge their intelligence. (The US Congress is exempted from that judgement. They truly are stupid.)

This kind of low-brow science has a regrettable pedigree going back to ideology manufactured by German professors to justify slavery & to social Darwinism which link IQ to race. IQ & race–the twin idiocies of crap science! This rubbish has had many resurrections & many professorial advocates like Louis Agassiz from Harvard & the hucksters, Shockley & Jensen. Its contemporary incarnation is evolutionary psychology–better known as evo psycho–which has managed the extraordinary feat of bringing this crap science to new lows.

So many powerful refutations & polemics have been written against this stuff by so many scientists & thinkers that it’s a marvel it still dares show its repugnant face. But prejudice & elitism are stubborn things especially when they are bankrolled & promoted by the status quo to justify the inequities & barbarisms of capitalism. That’s why it’s peddled by smart guys in the most prestigious universities–another empirical & compelling refutation of that Canadian study!

Ashley Montague & Stephen J. Gould are among the leading scientists & thinkers making chopped liver out of this racist rubbish but there are many others. Gould’s writings also expose the falsity of IQ science & how it is used so viciously against those with learning problems. Susan Faludi (in “Backlash”), Carol Tavris, & other feminists & scientists have done the same for studies attempting to prove women inferior. Progressives should stop stroking their egos with invidious comparisons & inform themselves of this important science. Those who want to make this world a better place cannot do so peddling prejudice, elitism, & stupidity.

Prejudice, which is a form of social hatred, is a powerful force that must be exposed & defied & politically challenged–& not with kid gloves. They have required the power of social movements like the civil rights, feminist, & disability rights movements. You cannot rebuild these movements with a head stuffed full of prejudice toward others. The mismeasure of human beings is the science of inequality. The mantra for a better world remains “Liberty & Equality!”

There must be quite a damning load in the Trump-Russia connections which may threaten to take out broader forces than Trump, Flynn, & those other creeps. Not sexual peccadillos or even intervention in US elections but money laundering, business deals, plunder & that kind of crap. The usual stuff of capitalism.

But the more important associations that need to be investigated & exposed are the counter-revolutionary alliance between Russia, the US, & other regimes with Syria to destroy the Syrian revolution & portray it as “jihadi head-choppers.”

VP Pence, defending the firing of Comey, told media “The American people have to have confidence in the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” dismissive & clueless about how the firing has compromised that.

As one of the thousands of Americans with an FBI dossier & not a single incident of criminal misconduct, the exposure of the FBI is something we should maximize. Good luck to its criminal investigations but its spying operations involving undercover agents, surveillance of phone calls, emails, social media, malicious meddling in social movements, assassinations of Black activists, involvement in criminal activities need to be exposed & shut down.

Unlike Trump & his associates, most activists, including myself, don’t have a secret life the FBI can use for blackmail or shaming. I like to keep my mortal sins & felonious offenses to a minimum because staying out of court & jail seems to be a wise life strategy.

In the 1970s, class action COINTELPRO lawsuits were initiated against the FBI for spying on activists & disrupting social movements with undercover agents. Their activities involved break & enter jobs to obtain files, egging activists into violent activities or confrontations with police, gathering dirt on people to blackmail them into acting as informants, disrupting meetings or taking notes for their dossiers. But even worse, undercover FBI agents in the KKK incited the group in 1963 to bomb the Birmingham, Alabama Black church which killed four little girls. By the 1970s, FBI agents openly engaged in assassination programs of Black activists like Fred Hampton.

George Lavan Weissman, a longtime socialist of the 1930s generation & a mentor of mine, got his FBI dossier released under the Freedom of Information Act as part of COINTELPRO. He was active in civil rights defense cases in the 1940s & 50s & frequently collaborated with Black activists in the South. Dissension would break out with no apparent cause & they would sever association with him. He told me he never understood why or what happened until he saw letters in his dossier from undercover FBI agents to Black activists making inflammatory & false accusations against him to destroy their collaboration.

Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who flagged my criminal record in 2001 for using a WMD, explained to me, after her metamorphosis into a libertarian do-gooder, that somewhere along the line the FBI became misdirected & needs to get back to the good old days. What good old days were those? The ones where J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI like a gestapo? Where FBI agents could torch churches, kill activists, disrupt movements, destroy reputations with impunity? Where she could flag my criminal record for a crime I did not commit, was never accused of, charged with, interrogated about, & wasn’t even informed about till I was refused employment?

The women’s, antiwar, & socialist movements were always riddled with undercover operatives on wrecking operations. Some organizations were paranoid about it. But wiser activists do not engage in witch hunts looking for agents. It’s divisive & pointless because it will not stop them from intervening. It’s what they do & they’re pros at it. Wiser activists focus on the work, keep their nose clean, work collaboratively with others as much as possible, & don’t play stupid but leave witch hunting to the trouble-makers.

Little Lukey did come home to die. He seemed to be doing so well, still struggling with jumping into the car but finally adept at jumping out with only one good eye. He just wasn’t putting on weight, remained skeletal & was so bereft in spirit. Such a sad little guy. How did he come to this? Was he abandoned, lost, did his caretaker die, where did he come from?

He wouldn’t play outside or eat today & I thought maybe deworming meds upset his stomach. Not wanting to panic, I decided to take him to the vet tomorrow if he wasn’t better. So I’ve been holding him all day whispering to him “Find something to live for, Lukey. You have a family now. You’re safe, you’re home.” Then in a moment he stretched, yawned, & his little spirit passed away.

Sometimes those who suffer many sorrows wonder what they did to deserve such fate. Nothing. It’s just the way life is for now. Little Lukas is a tiny three or four pound miniature Pinscher. He did nothing to bring this on himself but was born in a world that doesn’t understand that animals are “persons” too.

May the little fellow Rest In Peace.

Family member protesting forcible disappearance of Kashmiris in the custody of the Indian occupying army:

According to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), an estimated 10,000 mostly men & boys have been disappeared since 1989. It is staggering that nearly 360 are disappeared every year which is about one man or boy every day in a relatively small country.

It is a monstrous crime for which grief remains unresolved. These photo montages are a feature of every protest against forcible disappearance around the world.

Parveena Ahangar, the founder & chair of APDP & Khurram Parvez, the program director of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) & chair of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) are playing a leading role in exposing this human rights crime used in at least 40 countries. Hundreds of thousands have been disappeared.

(Photo by Saqib Majeed)