December 2005
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol. 16, No. 12 | December 2005 |
| CONTENTS |
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Race in Scandanavia — An Update
How the Swedes Saw Katrina
Katrina and the US Media
A Curious Madness
Race Realism Takes a Step Forward
Betrayals of Office
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
| COVER STORY |
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Race in Scandinavia — an Update
The Nordic pot continues to boil.
Since my first article on race and immigration in Scandinavia in the December 2003 issue, the overall picture has not changed significantly: Sweden bad, Norway mixed, Denmark good. Sweden’s restrictionists have yet to achieve a breakthrough. In Norway, the Progress Party recently won a record 22.1 percent of the vote, but real influence and real immigration reform will have to wait. In Denmark, the major parties are still committed to immigration control, but the lefties are hard at work. Nevertheless, there have been many interesting developments in all three countries.
Sweden
Public debate in Sweden has recently focused on unemployment. The official unemployment rate isn’t particularly high at 5-6 percent, but if you include everyone who is paid by the government not to work (job-training courses, subsidized trainee jobs, people on sick leave, etc.) the real unemployment rate is 20-25 percent. Needless to say, unemployment is particularly high among immigrants, with non-whites having an official unemployment rate of 15 percent and a real unemployment rate of over 50 percent.
There have been the typical right-left arguments over the problem, but there is an obvious solution: stop immigration and repatriate the foreigners who are here. Any country with unemployment is only making things worse by importing unskilled foreigners, but this elementary insight is completely absent from the mainstream public debate.
Still, the politics of immigration bubble beneath the surface — and with potentially interesting lessons for Americans. The left is learning that what appeals to their current darlings, the immigrants, does not appeal to their traditional base. The governing Social Democrats, for example, have discovered that working-class whites do not like immigration. They have noticed that in Norway and Denmark, tough immigration control finds it strongest support in the white working class — the very people the Social Democrats have always counted on.
There are hints of the same thing in Sweden. In Malmö, where there are many immigrants, small anti-immigration parties like the Sweden Democrats and the Skanepartiet enjoy their strongest support, largely at the expense of the Social Democrats. In Malmö, the immigration-control parties won nearly eight percent of the vote versus 1.5 percent in Sweden as a whole. In the white, working-class areas in Malmö closest to the infamous Rosengard immigrant ghetto, the total support for the Sweden Democrats and Skanepartiet was around 20 percent, once again, mostly at the expense of the Social Democrats. The closer they live to immigrants, the more likely Swedes are to vote for immigration control.
Social Democratic strategists are very afraid of a breakthrough by the Sweden Democrats. They therefore want to seem somewhat “xenophobic” so as to please the base, but not too “xenophobic,” lest they lose leftist white intellectual voters. To make sure immigrants stay loyal to the Social Democrats even as they edge towards a more restrictive immigration policy than the other established parties, they make sure to give immigrants lots of money from the welfare state. To most immigrants, this is more attractive than the “conservative” opposition idea of letting in more immigrants but limiting benefits. Thus, despite a more restrictive immigration policy than other established parties, the Social Democrats enjoy overwhelming support among immigrant voters. While the Social Democrats got less than 40 percent of the votes in the latest election, they got more than 60 percent of the votes of non-white immigrants. Together with the Communists and the Green Party, they got more than 85 percent.
The message here is an important one, and Americans should take notice. The main reason immigrants are loyal to the left is not because they are afraid of immigration restrictions from the right, but because the left is better at taking money from whitey and giving it to them. In the US, the Democrats could play the same game: hold on to immigrant voters despite being more restrictive than the Republicans. Even if she continues to talk tough on illegal immigration, Hillary Clinton could keep the Hispanic vote, even if the Republicans choose an open-borders fanatic like John McCain or Rudy Giuliani. The only way Republicans can win the Hispanic vote is by out-pandering the Democrats on the issue of shifting money from whites.
Further underlining this lesson is the example of the Liberal Party, which takes a libertarian stance. It is the most consistently pro-open-borders party in Sweden, favoring both asylum-seekers and job-seekers. At the same time, it wants to get tough on immigrants who commit crime or are on welfare. The Liberal Party has therefore proposed that every immigrant on the dole be forced to work, and that all criminal immigrants be expelled. Immigrants don’t like the idea of getting tough on welfare sponges and criminals, despite the call for more immigration.
In this context, there was an interesting example of poetic justice in local elections in Stockholm. The leader of the city’s Conservative Party, Kristina Axén-Olin is one of the most vocal and zealous supporters of open borders within the party. And while the Conservative Party, together with their two center-right coalition partners, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats, got a comfortable majority of ethnic Swedish votes, they still lost because the leftist parties got some 85 percent of the immigrant vote. Again, it is clear that once they are in the country and can vote, immigrants want a comfortable berth, not open borders.
There now appears to be something of a split within the Social Democratic leadership between those who want to keep catering to immigrants and those who don’t want to lose the white working-class. In this context, the Social Democrats have been under pressure from the Mayors of Gothenburg and Malmö — Göran Johansson and Illmar Reepalu — whose cities are flooded with immigrants. The government sends asylum seekers to rural counties, but they usually move to the big cities, where they can find co-ethnics and meat prepared according to the Muslim halal ritual. The result has been such a large inflow that Gothenburg and Malmö cannot keep up with housing, schools, jobs and welfare. The mayors have not called for less immigration; only that immigrants who refuse to stay in rural areas be cut off from welfare. They are merely calling for the joys of diversity to be more evenly spread around the country, but they have, of course, been condemned by immigration enthusiasts; one called Göran Johansson “the Le Pen of Gothenburg.”
Needless to say, ordinary Swedes want big-city officials to be much tougher, and some have cracked under the strain. Recently, a police commander in Malmö, Bengt Lindström, was furious to learn the authorities had denied a 98-year old man a place in a retirement home in Malmö because it would cost too much. In a letter to Mayor Reepalu and the Social Democrats he was admittedly intemperate: “Withdraw your gigantic support for all those goddamn towel-heads in Malmö (i.e. Rosengard) and let Swedes who have worked hard their entire lives to build Sweden take part of our wealth . . . God how I hate you and your f***ing Social Democratic Party. . . . I demand that you take part of the money that you and your f***ing Social Democratic colleagues give to criminal Mohammed in Rosengard and give it to our Swedish retirees instead.”
The officer was immediately suspended, and tried for “incitement of ethnic hatred.” In October, to the surprise of most observers, he was acquitted on the ground that his message was not intended for a wider audience. He will not, however, get his job back.
Meanwhile, net immigration of non-whites continues at about 20,000 per year, but there has been an interesting shift in the people we are getting. While the Iraq war has been bad for America, it has been good for us. Before the war, Sweden let in almost all asylum seekers from the parts of Iraq Saddam Hussein controlled (the Kurdish north was considered de facto independent), and Iraqis quickly became the single largest immigrant group, at roughly 7,000 a year. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis could no longer claim to be persecuted. In 2004, net immigration fell to 2,600, mostly through marriage to Iraqis already here rather than asylum.
However, increases from other countries have made up for the drop in Iraqis. Probably because they are tired of Swedish feminists, more and more men marry mail-order brides — some whites from Russia and Ukraine, but many non-whites from Thailand and the Philippines. Most immigrant groups have a fairly even distribution of men and women or a slight preponderance of men, but more than 75 percent of the Thais and Filipinos are women. Of last year’s 2,000 immigrants from Thailand, no fewer than 90 percent were women. Meanwhile, mostly due to adoptions, immigration from China increased from 800 in 2001 to 1,100 in 2004.
The genuinely nationalist anti-immigration groups have made no real progress during the past two years. The most important is the Sweden Democrats, but their vote tallies are below two percent — under half the four percent necessary for representation in parliament. Although there is certainly more than enough support to get them into parliament, until they manage a better showing, potential supporters will hesitate to “waste their vote.” The Democrats have wisely chosen to replace their dull leader Mikael Jansson with the younger, more dynamic Jimmie Akesson, but this so far hasn’t done them much good, since he has practically no access to the media (see the next story for an assessment of how the Swedish media covered Hurricane Katrina).
Denmark
Denmark, the great success story in Scandinavia, is now more or less the mirror image of Sweden: Restrictionists of varying degrees of rigor have a firm grip on power. Immigration laws have been so successful that net non-white immigration may have fallen below zero — more are leaving than coming.
Like the Swedes, the Danes have stopped letting in asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq. For a while, the question was what to do with a few thousand Iraqi and Afghan refugees from the old regimes who had temporary but not permanent residency. The center-right coalition government was willing to let them stay, but the Danish People’s Party (DPP) — always solid on immigration — demanded that they be deported. The DPP even threatened to leave the coalition and bring down the government on this issue, and in the end, every last Iraqi and Afghan without permanent residency was deported.
The DPP supported the Iraq war mainly because it would stop the flow of Iraqis and justify deporting the ones who had already come. They didn’t care much about “weapons of mass destruction” or “links to al-Qaeda.” They wanted Saddam Hussein gone because he was an excuse for asylum.
An increasing number of immigrants are leaving Denmark on their own, citing a hostile political atmosphere. This is particularly true of Somalis, which no doubt pleases most Danes, since Somalis have the highest birth rates, crime rates, and welfare dependency rates of any immigrant group, and are least likely to be employed. They are also the most racially and culturally alien, practicing a strict form of Islam that includes female genital mutilation.
One Somali leader explained that people were leaving because they feel insulted by blunt public discussion about how troublesome they are. The Jyllands-Posten had one editorial in particular about “the Somali problem” that pointed out things would only get worse because their birth rate is three times the Danish level and that their median age of 18 is about half that of Danes. Unfortunately, few of the Somalis go back to Somalia; most go to England, and a good number to Sweden and Norway.
Despite this generally rosy picture for the Danes, they face three threats: Turkey, Sweden and domestic immigration enthusiasts. First, Turkey. At more than one percent, Turks are a larger share of the population than in any other European country except Germany, Austria and Holland. Thanks to the new laws, net immigration of Turks has fallen to near zero, but if Turkey joins the European Union that would change dramatically. Denmark would get a disproportionate share of Turks because it already has a sizeable Turkish population and is one of the richest countries in Europe. The multiple of gross domestic product per capita (adjusted for differences in purchasing power) for Denmark and Turkey is even greater than for the United States and Mexico: 4.5 as opposed to 4.0. Moving from Turkey to Denmark therefore represents an even greater leap in living standards than moving from Mexico to the US.
Needless to say, the DPP is completely opposed to admitting Turkey, arguing that the European Union must be Christian, and that there would be mass immigration of poor Turks. Somewhat surprisingly, the supposedly restrictionist government is enthusiastic about admitting Turkey. After having all but halted immigration from Turkey, they now propose opening the door to millions of Turks. Their stated reasons are the typical foolishness that passes for modern political analysis: that Europe must support moderate Islam, and that admitting Turkey will show that the West can cooperate with the East for the benefit of both, blah, blah, etc.
Realistically, though, the Turkish threat is probably low. There is strong popular opposition to admitting Turkey, and France and Austria have both promised referenda on the issue. Austria is not likely to undo the results of the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when the Turkish invasion of Europe was finally stopped.
A more realistic but less serious threat are the relatively open borders of neighboring Sweden. Denmark does not let citizens bring in spouses from outside the EU, but Sweden offers a solution. A liberal Danish organization called “Love Without Borders” settles Danish citizens in Sweden, where they can bring in non-EU partners under the far more liberal Swedish rules. After two years in Sweden, the couple can become Swedish citizens, which under current EU law means Denmark can’t keep them out. Swedish authorities estimate that more than 1,000 “Danes” use this dodge every year, and the number seems to be growing. However, it is unclear just how many will return to “racist” Denmark.
The indefatigable DPP says that unless Sweden closes this loophole, Denmark should leave the EU and close down the Oresund bridge that links the two countries. The ruling coalition agrees, saying Sweden is fostering forced marriages, but the DPP’s partners would never dream of leaving the EU. The Swedish government says the Danes want to pass “laws against love.”
Despite the generally healthy climate, domestic immigration enthusiasts constitute a third threat. A typical unholy alliance of big business, libertarian/liberal/socialist intellectuals, and non-white activists has licked its wounds after the defeat in the 2001 elections and gone on the offensive. Within the two governing center-right parties — the Conservative People’s Party and the Venstre Party — there are a lot of people who are appalled by the restrictionist policy they put together with the DPP, and the youth groups of both parties are run by libertarian intellectuals who want open borders. So far, party leaders have held out against this pressure because they know that if they give in, they not only risk losing seats in future elections, but their government would be immediately brought down by the DPP. Once again, we see how even a single party that is rock solid on immigration — even if it got only 13.3 percent of the vote in the last election — can keep the entire country on a sensible course.
On the left, the Social Democrats face the same problem as their Swedish counterparts: the working class supports restriction while the lefty intellectuals and non-white activists want more immigration. On the far left — the Radicals as well as the Socialist People’s Party and the communist Unity List — immigration enthusiasts are in charge.
The Radicals have been particularly vociferous. In the election earlier this year they campaigned hard against laws against marriage-related immigration. They circulated sob stories about people who fell in love with non-EU citizens, but they chose completely unrealistic examples: Danes who married white, non-EU citizens from places like the United States or Russia. Of course, before the new restrictions went in, most marriage immigrants were Muslims.
The immigration minister, Bertel Haarder (among Scandinavian immigration restrictionists the saying is: “Think you can’t stop immigration? Just try a little Haarder!”) pointed out this deception. The DPP added that the law should be changed specifically to keep out Muslims but let in Westerners. The government refused, saying this would violate international treaties against racial discrimination. The DPP, staunch as ever, replied that if treaties keep the country from passing the laws it needs, Denmark should opt out of them, but their coalition partners are anxious to appear respectable in international circles.
With the pro-immigration parties getting less than 20 percent of the vote, and with the large mainstream parties fearful of the DPP, it would seem there is little risk that immigration controls will be repealed. Still, the enemies of a sensible policy are hard at work and must be watched.
Norway
In Norway, the restrictionist Progress Party is stronger than ever, but has still failed to get a significant tightening of the law. For some time, the Progress Party has had even greater electoral support than its closest Danish equivalent, the DPP. Unfortunately for Norway, the Progress Party faces a much tougher environment. While immigration restrictionists aren’t considered as much of a pariah as in Sweden, they are not considered mainstream as they are in Denmark, and the respectable right keeps Progress out of government. And unlike Denmark, where the main parties have tried to reduce losses to the DPP by adopting a moderate version of their immigration platform, the main Norwegian parties have agreed only to symbolic restrictions.
The Progress Party therefore hasn’t been able to pressure the centre-right government coalition into restricting immigration. Instead, the three centre-right parties — the Conservatives, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals — have told Progress it should feel lucky they are talking to it at all, and that its exclusion from any influence on immigration policy is non-negotiable. The Christian Democrats are particularly adamant about the pariah treatment. They and the Liberal Party have made it clear they would rather cooperate with the left than give in to “xenophobia.”
The Norwegian Christian Democrats are just like the Swedish Christian Democrats: typical guilt-ridden leftist Christians who think it is their religious duty to share Norway’s wealth with the world’s poor. This means both letting in a lot of Third-Worlders and giving away as much foreign aid as possible.
There was a dramatic development just before last September’s elections. Progress Party leader Carl Hagen said it was unreasonable for him to be kept out of government when his party gets 20 percent of the vote, while the Christian Democrats get only 12 percent. He said that if the right won, and Progress got 20 percent or more, he would insist on joining the government. Otherwise, he would withdraw his support and bring down the government. The Christian Democrats emphatically rejected this demand, saying they would have nothing to do with Progress, and that there would be parliamentary chaos if the right won.
The dominant issue of the election campaign was what to do with Norway’s growing oil wealth, which has created a budget surplus of 15 percent of GDP (the equivalent of a $1.8 trillion annual surplus in the US!), but Progress insisted on making immigration an issue as well.
The party had a choice point on which to campaign. When the US tried to justify its invasion of Iraq, it pointed to a shady Kurdish Islamic terror organization called Ansar-al-Islam, which the Americans claimed had friendly ties with both Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda; this was supposed to prove Iraq was an ally of al-Qaeda. As it turned out, Ansar-al-Islam’s leader, Mulla Krekar, did not live in Kurdistan or Baghdad or Afghanistan or some other Muslim country. He lived in an apartment in Oslo! In 1991 he came to Norway as an asylum seeker from Iraq, and was running Ansar al-Islam from the safety of Oslo. As Progress spokesmen repeatedly pointed out, if you bring in Muslims, some will be terrorists.
When the election results came in, the left-wing bloc had squeaked by with a razor-thin margin, but Progress polled 22.1 percent of the vote, a new record, and up 7.4 points from 2001. The Christian Democrats plummeted from 12.7 percent to 6.8 percent. It may be that the prospect of parliamentary chaos in the wake of a victory by the right was enough to give the left a win. Some people therefore say Progress lost in this election despite its record share of the vote. They argue that the left-wing victory means Progress has no influence at all, since the new government snubs the entire party.
That is a short-term view. First, even with a right-wing government, Progress had no influence on the most important issue: immigration. At the same time, its arch-nemesis on the non-socialist side, the Christian Democrats, suffered a spectalular loss, effectively neutralizing them. This means Progress, along with the Conservatives, leads the opposition.
The typical pattern in Norwegian politics is that parties tend to lose support while they are in power. If this pattern holds, Progress could advance to 30 percent or more by the next election. And if it gains a majority together with the Conservatives — who, unlike the Christian Democrats, would be willing to share power with them — there could be a pure, right-wing government that would finally pass serious immigration restrictions. While the Conservatives are not really in favor of this, they would probably agree to at least a watered-down version of the immigration restrictions Progress wants, as long as they get their pet cause, which is large tax cuts.
This rosy scenario faces one big threat: Progress leader Carl I. Hagen has announced that after an astonishing 28 years as party leader he will resign in 2006. His incredible skills as a leader, organizer, and agitator have been a vital part of the success of his party. The likely successor is a 36-year-old woman named Siv Jensen who has worked herself up to become the leader of the parliamentary group. Pia Kjaersgaard in Denmark has proven conclusively that a woman can lead a successful nationalist party, but whether Miss Jensen will be as good as her Danish counterpart remains to be seen.
Mikael Widmark is the pen name of an economist who lives in northern Sweden.
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How the Swedes Saw Katrina
The coverage in the Swedish media of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina held important lessons, both regarding how biased and anti-white the Swedish media are, and how the taboo on racial differences disarms the right and plays into the hands of leftists.
Initially, reporting from New Orleans was surprisingly good (i.e. surprisingly honest). While the media of course did not explicitly say “blacks looted, raped and shot at rescue helicopters” they did report on the disorder. It was clear from the video sequences — which often looked as though they were shot in Africa — that it was blacks who committed these barbaric acts. At some point, however, media bosses must have decided this was likely to reinforce “prejudice,” and they shifted the focus to “white racism.”
The media started to report as fact the claim that the Bush administration delayed rescue operations for “racist” reasons, or at least offered it as a highly plausible theory. This was used as further evidence of how oppressed blacks are by racist, white America, and this in turn justified the looting.
Left-wing pundits quickly added that New Orleans has a high poverty rate, and since it goes without saying that the races are equal, this was obviously caused by brutal American capitalism and evil white racism. Because blacks have been condemned to poverty by whites, and since the racist white government was now trying to kill them by delaying rescue operations, it was perfectly understandable that blacks would react as they did. Many left-wing pundits used the worst black behavior as clear evidence of how oppressed they are. Since no civilized persons do what they did, and since the races are equal, blacks are clearly traumatized by racist-capitalist oppression.
It is worth pointing out that in Sweden, as in many other European countries, America is a symbol of naked, unbridled capitalism, where the poor have no social safety net. Of course, America has a welfare state and many other forms of government intervention, but that is what people think: America is the free market gone wild. Left-wingers therefore hate America and everything about it, while right-wing pundits love America. On the right, this includes love for multiracialism, since “conservatives” tend to favor open borders. The left therefore constantly tries to portray America as hell on earth, while the mainstream right insists it is heaven on earth.
The pictures from New Orleans were of course a great triumph for the left: Capitalism and limited government create the poverty and desperation that explained black behavior. Social Democratic Prime Minister Göran Persson even used this argument in a debate with the center-right opposition, saying that any reduction in welfare benefits would create the kind of problems plaguing New Orleans.
Right-wing pundits were obviously troubled by how the left used Katrina to argue for a bigger welfare state, so they stupidly began to deny that American blacks were poor. Capitalism, they said, had been great for blacks, who were now better off than Swedes. Needless to say, this strategy was doomed to fail. One right-wing blogger named Roland Poirier Martinsson wrote an op-ed article in Sweden’s second biggest newspaper, Expressen, in which he said the Swedish media were “anti-American,” and that the American poverty threshold of $39,000 is higher than the average Swedish household income. The American poor, both black and white, therefore have it as good as the average Swede. This article quickly became celebrated in the right-wing Swedish blogosphere, and nearly every right-wing blogger linked to it. The claim that American capitalism creates poverty appeared to have been soundly defeated.
A left-wing journalist named Anders Holmberg struck back with a reply in the same newspaper two days later. He checked the facts and found that, first of all, average Swedish household income is nearly 400,000 Swedish Kronor, which is more than $50,000. Second, he found that the $39,000 threshold is for a household of nine or more. For a family of four, the poverty threshold is $19,157, dramatically lower than average Swedish income levels.
The right was silenced, and the left got away with blaming American poverty and the New Orleans mayhem on capitalism and limited government. The problem, of course, was that the right has adopted the same view of race as the left. It was therefore unable to argue that the problem was not government — large or small — but black racial characteristics.
Japan’s welfare state is even smaller than America’s, yet Japan doesn’t have the same kind of poverty. When a powerful earthquake hit Kobe in 1995, there was only minimal looting and no rapes or attacks on rescue teams. Many people pointed out that poor white areas in Louisiana were also severely hit by Katrina but did not descend into chaos. However, since the mainstream right in both Sweden and America refuses to recognize racial reality, it cannot point to the real causes of black misbehavior. Americans are no doubt surprised to learn that at least in Sweden the aftermath of Katrina became an argument for even more welfare!
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Katrina and the US Media
The cover story of the October issue of AR was a lengthy account of the chaos into which New Orleans descended in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It now appears that some of the reports of mayhem in the Convention Center and at the Superdome were exaggerated. Although the totals may still be subject to change, state officials say 10 people died at the Superdome, and 24 in and around the Convention Center. The autopsy reports have not all been released, but so far one person at each location is known to have been shot. Police cannot confirm many accounts of rape.
What accounts for what now appears to have been considerable exaggeration? The first factor is human nature. In any emergency or catastrophe, rumors become facts and facts multiply into myth. People love to claim to have seen extraordinary things or to have endured great hardship.
What is more important is that virtually everyone — even reporters from the most liberal papers — passed on gruesome accounts as entirely plausible. Would they have done this if disaster had struck New Hampshire or Iowa? No. They did so in New Orleans because everyone knew the Superdome and the Convention Center were filled with blacks. Even writers for the New York Times believe crowds of blacks can easily run amok.
Blacks — and they should know best — believe it, too. On Sept. 6, Police Chief Eddie Compass told the Oprah Winfrey program that “some of the little babies (are) getting raped” in the Superdome. Mayor Ray Nagin told the same program about “hundreds of armed gang members” killing and raping inside the Superdome, and said the crowd had reverted to an “almost animalistic state.” The two blacks who presumably know the city best — the mayor and the police chief — found these accounts entirely believable.
It is good news if the people at the Convention Center and the Superdome were not as badly behaved as everyone thought, but that does not change the lessons to be learned from Katrina. The Center and the Dome were stripped clean by looters. There were robberies and intimidation. The small number of whites in these places were subject to terrifying abuse. There was widespread looting in the city. Two hundred police officers — mostly black — deserted. The Louisiana attorney general is investigating the department on looting charges. Would conditions have been different if the city were white rather than black? Yes, and by accepting reports about backs they would have rejected about whites, the press implicitly agrees.
We will never know the complete truth about attacks on rescue boats, shots fired at helicopters, hijacked ambulances, and looted hospitals. Some of this — maybe most of it — probably happened as it was originally reported. But whatever took place in New Orleans, both the events themselves and the country’s willingness to believe the worst, make a mockery of the official view that race does not matter, and that all groups are equal.
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A Curious Madness
‘Gilded honour shamefully misplaced.’
A curious state of madness descended on the country on October 24, and began to dissipate only by the first week of November. Americans lavished the praise and honor reserved only for supreme heroes on a woman whose sole achievement was to refuse to give up her seat on a bus.
Rosa Parks with Bill Clinton
From the moment Rosa Parks died at the age of 92, until she was buried nine days later, virtually every politician and organ of the media competed to see who could heap the most praise on a woman invariably referred to as a “civil rights icon.” She became only the 30th person — and the first woman — to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda, where President George W. Bush laid a wreath. Her casket was accompanied by a military honor guard for memorial services in Washington, before she was buried on November 2 in a seven-hour funeral in Detroit. The President ordered that all flags over federal buildings and bases fly at half mast. It was an astonishing tribute to a woman whose lifetime of achievement began and ended in one afternoon.
The myth that has grown up around Rosa Parks is of an exhausted Birmingham seamstress who, in 1955, was too tired to give up her seat and move to the colored section so a white man could sit down. According to the myth, this spontaneous act sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and launched the civil rights movement. In the miles of column inches that greeted the news of her death, there were only hints of what really happened.
In fact, Parks’s decision to keep her seat was carefully planned by the NAACP, for which she had worked for 10 years as a secretary. Her arrest did help start the bus boycott, but she played no role in organizing it. And though the boycott has gone down in folklore as a great blow for freedom, it did not even succeed; it was a court order that integrated Birmingham’s buses.
Several black women had already done exactly what Parks later did. They were arrested and charged with minor infractions. Parks’s best known predecessor was Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old high school student who refused to give up her seat on March 2, 1955. She was arrested and taken off the bus kicking and screaming. Police say she was screaming obscenities; she later claimed she was screaming that her constitutional rights were being violated. Not even Miss Colvin’s case was the spontaneous act for which Parks is now generally remembered. The girl had been active in the NAACP Youth Council, and had even discussed strategy with Rosa Parks herself.
The NAACP considered basing a desegregation case on the basis of Miss Colvin’s arrest but soon decided she was not an attractive plaintiff. She was dark, and many blacks wanted a lighter-skinned spokesman. The NAACP also learned she was several months pregnant by a married man, and discovered her habit of breaking out in volleys of curses. This was not a girl conservative black church-goers would support.
As E.D. Nixon, then a leader of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, explained years later, “I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with.” Rosa Parks was far more promising: “morally clean, reliable, nobody had nothing on her.”
The NAACP had been planning a bus boycott for years, and was waiting only for the right person to act as figurehead. Far from being an accidental hero, Parks was carefully groomed for her role. A white integrationist, Virginia Durr, had paid for Parks to attend civil rights strategy seminars at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. The school, known to be rife with Communist sympathizers, was under FBI surveillance.
Moreover, Parks’s role was strictly limited: keep her seat and hold her tongue. Others swung into action immediately to organize the boycott. The very day she was arrested — it was a Thursday — an English professor at all-black Alabama State College named Jo Ann Robinson stayed up all night mimeographing 35,000 leaflets calling for a one-day bus boycott the following Monday. On Friday, she and her students secretly leafleted elementary and high schools. As part of a coordinated effort, Montgomery’s black preachers met and agreed to endorse the Monday boycott from their pulpits, and to hold a mass meeting Monday night at Holt Street Baptist Church to assess the results. That evening, after a surprisingly successful boycott, thousands of blacks crowded into and around the church to hear 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. give his first public speech. The boycott lasted for more than a year, with both the blacks and the bus company more stubborn than anyone had expected. Blacks organized carpools that even the Citizens Council had to admit operated with “military precision.” Parks played no role in any of this.
It was not the boycott that eventually brought integration, but a court case — and one in which Rosa Parks was not even a plaintiff. In Browder v. Gayle — one of the four plaintiffs was foul-mouthed Claudette Colvin — a three-panel district court in Birmingham ruled on June 5, 1956 that segregated buses were as much a violation of the 14th Amendment as segregated schools. The Supreme Court upheld the decision in December. Then, and only then, did Montgomery agree to integrate its buses.
It can be argued, therefore, that the boycott was both a failure and unnecessary. Rosa Parks was a catalyst in organizing what turned into an impressive demonstration of black solidarity, but virtually anyone presentable would have served equally well. Rosa Parks did not risk death. She did not face fire hoses or police dogs. She did not even face humiliation. She knew very well that if she was polite and cooperated with the police she would be treated courteously. She also knew that the NAACP and her white friends would immediately bail her out of jail.
It is impossible, even by the most sympathetic reading, to see Rosa Parks as anything but an unimportant actor in a drama that was not even necessary. Not once, in the intervening 50 years, did she do anything of the slightest importance. Black congressman John Conyers gave her a job in his Detroit office, apparently more out of courtesy than because of her abilities. As she grew older, she mismanaged her finances, and depended on a local church to pay her rent. Eventually, her landlord simply stopped charging.
Rosa Parks has dined out — and become a hero of American history — on the basis of a single half hour of immobility. Surely, never in the history of the world, has so small an act won such praise.
The last few years have been building up to the extraordinary excesses we have just witnessed. In 1996, President William Clinton presented Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1999, Congress voted her its Gold Medal. These, too, are exalted honors.
Blacks are not likely to complain if whites make a demigod of an unimportant woman, but why do whites bow their heads before such transparent fraud? There is no satisfactory answer. Americans are never happier than when glorifying non-whites who have denounced the alleged sins of whites. The adulation of Rosa Parks is just another chapter in the lemming-like rush to destruction whites everywhere appear to have joined. If a still-majority-white Congress and Senate can vote by acclamation to make Rosa Parks the first woman to lie in state in the rotunda, any act of racial self-mortification is possible.
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Race Realism Takes a Step Forward
More strong evidence for the genetics of intelligence.
The moment the anti-racists and egalitarians have dreaded has now arrived. In September, University of Chicago geneticists published data in the prestigious journal Science that links two sets of genetic variations (alleles) to brain size, race, and spurts in human evolution. In particular, these genetic variations — arguably responsible for greater intelligence — were relatively common in Europe and Asia, but markedly less common in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, the same researchers had shown these variations to be much more frequent in man than in other mammals, though our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, showed levels that suggest some evolution in the direction of humans.
This excellent new Chicago work has been carried out under the direction of a young Chinese, Dr. Bruce Lahn. His team had studied the prevalence of variants of two genes that are disabled or damaged in human cases of severe microcephaly, in which the brain develops to only 30 percent its normal size. The fact that they are damaged in microcephalics suggests they are necessary for normal brain growth.
Dr. Lahn’s researchers examined the DNA of 1,184 people around the world — though not in racially mixed areas like North America, Russia and Australia. They estimated that one undamaged variation, microcephalin haplogroup D (let us call it variation one, or V1) first appeared around 40,000 BC and has since spread to some 70 percent of humans. It is more common in Europe, Asia, South America and Latin America than in black Africa. At three percent, it is especially infrequent in Congo pygmies, whom black Africans commonly regard as inferior.
A second variant of the gene, abnormal spindle-like microcephaly-associatedhaplogroup D (let us call it V2), arrived more recently, around 6,000 BC, and has since spread to 30 percent of humans. It is most common in Europe and the Middle East, somewhat less common in Asia, and distinctly rare in black Africa.
Dr. Lahn and colleagues noted that the arrival of V1 coincided roughly with the first signs of human habitation and agriculture; V2 appeared about the time of the first cities and the development of written language. The Chicago team believes these new alleles gave rise to these important developments, and that their possessors reproduced quickly by occupying the new niches offered by agriculture and written language.
Geneticists can estimate the age of an allele by observing the number of mutations found in it and calculating back to when the allele first appeared in the most recent common ancestor. Mutations arise at predictable rates, and are considered to be a reasonably accurate measure of relatively short periods of evolution. It is by this method that scientists estimate it has been five to six million years since humans and chimpanzee had a common ancestor.
Needless to say, the Chicago scientists went to great pains not to pose too great a challenge to modern sensitivities about race and genes. At their press conference, they insisted there was “not necessarily” a connection between these gene variations and brain size. However, they found that sub-Saharan blacks were the most distinct of the racial groups they studied, in that they had a markedly lower frequency of both variants. This is consistent with the distinct black African profile of smaller brains and lower IQ.
The Chicago results are exactly what we would expect from the work of Professor Phil Rushton of University of Western Ontario, who has used modern brain scanning methods to establish a correlation as high as .40 between brain size and IQ. Needless to say, the Chicago researchers could not mention Prof. Rushton’s name for fear of jeopardizing further funding. Some suspect they already have data in the pipeline linking these genetic variations directly to IQ, and that when they hold another press conference to announce these findings they want someone to attend.
Naturally, the authors wrote only of “geographical” and not of racial differences in the frequency of these alleles, but no one is fooled by this piety. They assured the press that their V work does not mean black Africans have a low IQ or any other disadvantage. At the same time, Dr. Lahn implied the opposite when he volunteered that Africans could well turn out to be blessed with still other variations that might be shown one day to give them advantages of their own. In other words, it may have been purely by accident that the advantage in Europeans and Asians had come to light first.
The findings came hard on the heels of work in Brisbane by Professor Nick Martin, who has found sizeable IQ differences within families associated with variations in the DNA on chromosomes 2 and 6. His work did not look for race differences in the distribution of these variations, but that would be an obvious area of research. At the same time, the October 24 issue of New York Magazine devoted eight pages to Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending’s theory that high rates of sphingolipid genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews may be associated with a substantial advantage in IQ (their work originally appeared in the June issue of the British Journal of Biosocial Science).
The media and even the scientists themselves can hedge and fudge all they like, but their favorite “post-modern” pretense that there is no such thing as race is looking sillier all the time. The West’s anti-racists have succeeded in suppressing most references to the g (general intelligence) factor and the London School that discovered and developed the concept, but they now face an assault from an unexpected quarter. Dr. Bruce Lahn may be more the diplomat than one normally finds in nature vs. nurture debates, but he got his first taste of dissent as a student rebel in his home town of Peking during the Tianenmen Square demonstrations. This suggests he has a strong dislike for Communism’s tyrannical and useless environmentalism, and that he may have principles that will soon see him linked to his natural allies in the London School.
Chris Brand, formerly of Edinburgh University, is the author of The g Factor (reviewed in “Whys and Wherefores of Intelligence,” AR, July, 1996).
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Betrayals of Office
Third-World habits drift north.
One of the reasons for lawlessness in Latin America is that many po-lice are on the side of the criminals. In some jurisdictions, police corruption is more the norm than the exception. In June, for example, Mexican federal authorities arrested 700 of the 1,200 officers in Nuevo Laredo for suspected involvement with drug cartels. [Federal Agents Arrest Hundreds of Police in Corrupt Border City, KHOU (Houston), June 13, 2005.]
Hispanics do not seem to change when they come to the United States, and government employees often break the laws they have sworn to enforce. In the past few years, dozens of Hispanic officials have been arrested for drug smuggling, migrant smuggling, and creating false IDs for illegal entrants.
Operation “Lively Green,” an FBI sting designed to uncover drug smuggling by government employees, has so far led to 33 guilty pleas, with 24 from Hispanics. The smuggling ring included soldiers, prison guards, port inspectors, and police officers. FBI agents posing as drug traffickers persuaded officials to wave by shipments of cocaine through ports, transport cocaine across state lines, and sell fake citizenship documents. Crooked government officials used the power of their offices to prevent stops and seizures by the Border Patrol and police.
In one incident in 2002, several government workers drove three official vehicles, including two Humvees belonging to the Arizona National Guard, to a secret airstrip in Arizona where they met an airplane flown by undercover agents. Then they drove 160 lbs. of cocaine to a hotel in Phoenix, where another undercover agent paid them. Altogether, they took $300,000 in payments for 1,474 lbs. of cocaine. A newspaper described the 33 criminals as “mostly black and Hispanic.” [Michael Marizco, 3 1/2 Year FBI Coke Sting Catches 21 in Uniform, Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), May 13, 2005. Current, Former US Soldiers and Law Enforcement Agree to Plead Guilty to Participating in Bribery and Extortion Conspiracy, Department of Justice, May 12, 2005. FBI Snares 16 in Drug Sting, Tucson Citizen, Sept. 1, 2005.]
Border Patrol agent Oscar Antonio Ortiz was indicted in August for smuggling aliens into the US from the area of Tecate, a Mexican town across the border from California. Wiretapped calls recorded him discussing logistics and payments. He and two confederates smuggled 30 to 50 immigrants at a time at $2,000 per head.
Mr. Ortiz proved to be an illegal himself. The Border Patrol hired him on the strength of a fake birth certificate that claimed he was born in Chicago. According to T. J. Bonner, president of the union representing Border Patrol employees, it is “mind-boggling” that an illegal alien could be hired. “I would think that would be the very first thing they check,” he says. [Onell R. Soto and Leslie Berestein, Border Agent Said to Also be Smuggler, San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 5, 2005. Onell R. Soto, No Bail for Ex-Border Agent in Conspiracy, San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 6, 2005. Former Border Patrol Agent Indicted on Fraud, Smuggling Charges, San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 18, 2005.]
US soldiers Daniel Rosas, Victor Portales, and Kevin G. Irizarry-Melendez, who were sent to Colombia to fight drug smugglers became smugglers themselves. They put cocaine in coffee boxes and loaded them along with the rest of their equipment onto military aircraft back to Texas. In all, they smuggled 169 pounds of cocaine, which they sold for about $300,000. According to Mr. Rosas, the Army “never suspected that any military or civilian personnel would bring back contraband,” and never checked their gear. [Kim Housego, How Greed and Opportunity Turned US Soldiers into Drug Traffickers, AP, Sept. 3, 2005.]
Juan L. Sanchez, who worked as a Border Patrol agent in Nogales, Arizona, was indicted in June for smuggling two tons of marijuana into the US. He made at least six trips, at one time stuffing 920 lbs. into his Border Patrol vehicle. He received $30,000 for the marijuana and $45,000 in bribes. [Susan Carroll, Border Agent Indicted in Drugs, Weapons, Bribery Case, Arizona Republic (Phoenix), June 2, 2005. Michael Marizco, Border Agent Charged as Smuggler, Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), June 2, 2005.]
Another Border Patrol agent, Luis Higareda, who worked near Calexico, California, pled guilty to marijuana smuggling charges in April. In January, he met smugglers in the border region and loaded his patrol vehicle with 750 lbs. of marijuana with a street value of $600,000. Federal authorities arrested him as he was driving the shipment inland. [News Release, Office of the US Attorney, Southern District of California, Feb. 3, 2005. Onell R. Soto, Man Enters Plea on Smuggling Charge, San-Diego Union-Tribune, Apr. 15, 2005.]
Customs and Border Protection official Fabian Solis pled guilty in April to abetting a human smuggling operation. Mr. Solis was in charge of monitoring traffic at the port of entry at Rio Grande, Texas. Smugglers paid him $300 per illegal to allow trucks filled with aliens through the border. [Customs and Border Protection Official Arrested for Role in Alien Smuggling Conspiracy, US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas, Dec. 9, 2004. Official Admits Letting Illegal Immigrants into Texas, AP, Apr. 5, 2005.]
In October 2004, two customs officers in Chicago named Jaime Garcia and Alma Teran were charged with giving confidential law enforcement information to Hispanic drug dealers and smugglers. Criminals paid the two officers at least $330,000 to look through government databases and see whether the dealers were under investigation. [Natasha Korecki, Customs Cops Tipped Drug Ring: U.S., Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 20, 2004.]
In October 2005, Lizandro Martinez, a senior customs inspector, pleaded guilty to helping a Hispanic smuggling ring get shipments of marijuana past the Texas border. The leader of the ring, Roberto Dominguez of Hidalgo, Texas, bribed the inspector to let smugglers drive cargoes through the inspection lane he manned. The payoffs began in 2002 and lasted 21/2 years. Mr. Martinez and Mr. Dominguez face 10 years to life in prison, and fines of up to $4 million. Former customs inspector Martinez has also forfeited real estate and vehicles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. [Inspector Convicted of Money Laundering, AP, Oct. 5, 2005.]
Also in October, Border Patrol agent Robert Espino was sentenced to eight years for taking a $5,000 bribe to let a shipment of cocaine pass through a Texas checkpoint. Three more Border Patrol agents, David Garcia, Jesus Delgado, and Aldo Erives, have been charged in this case as well. Mr. Espino also let smugglers sneak 750 illegals through his checkpoint. [Inspector Convicted of Letting Drugs Cross from Mexico, AP, Oct. 4, 2005. Former Border Patrol Agent Sentenced, KFOX-TV.com (El Paso), Sept. 30, 2005.]
Hispanic officials sometimes violate the law for reasons of pure ethnic solidarity. In March 2004, the government deported a number of illegal aliens to Mexico. This upset Lizabeth Ramon, a “Latina activist” who worked for the Phoenix Police Department and was the girlfriend of Assistant Police Chief Silverio Ontiveros. In June, she tried to smuggle two of the deported aliens back into the US in the trunk of her car. She was caught and fired from her job, but avoided jail time through a plea bargain. The Phoenix police found Mr. Ontiveros was not involved in the smuggling attempt, but later transferred him out of the department for failing to cooperate fully in the investigation of his girlfriend. [Yvonne Wingett, Police Advisory Board Ousting Latina Activist, Arizona Republic (Phoenix), June 18, 2004. Judi Villa and Yvonne Wingett, Phoenix’s Assistant Police Chief Will Get Reassignment, Arizona Republic, Nov. 25, 2004.]
In August 2005, El Paso Border Patrol agent Noe Aleman got six months in jail for smuggling three of his teenage nieces from Mexico. Mr. Aleman wanted to adopt the girls, but could not do so legally. He then gave false testimony to an adoption court to enable the girls to enter the country temporarily to attend court hearings, and did not return the girls to Mexico when their time was up. At sentencing, his tearful wife said he was a good man who was trying to give the girls a better life, but the US Attorney said he used fraud and deceit to violate the laws he swore to uphold. [Guillermo Contreras, Border Patrol Agent Convicted on Smuggling Charges, San Antonio Express-News, April 25, 2005. Fmr. Border Patrol Agent Sentenced to Prison for Immigration Fraud, KVIA (El Paso), Aug. 22, 2005.]
In March 2004, the FBI arrested a border inspector in El Paso named Francisco Macias who was letting illegal aliens into the country in exchange for sex. [Daniel Borunda, Agent Allegedly Let Women Into U.S. in Exchange for Sex, El Paso Times, March 30, 2004.]
In July 2005, Border Patrol agent Ephraim Cruz, who worked at the Douglas, Arizona, station, was charged with bringing an illegal immigrant named Maria Terrazas-Orozco into the US and giving her shelter. Mr. Cruz’s motive has not been disclosed, but he had a grudge against the Border Patrol. Mr. Cruz had previously protested the patrol’s treatment of illegals, saying they were crowded into cells and deprived of food for up to 24 hours. Ray Ybarra of the American Civil Liberties Union says Mr. Cruz may have been targeted because he is a whistle-blower. [Claudine LoMonaco, Douglas Border Agent Accused of 5 Charges, Tucson Citizen, July 9, 2005.]
This year, three more Hispanic Border Patrol agents — Pablo Sergio Berry, Ramon Sanchez, Jr., and Jesus de Jose Ruiz — have been caught with illegal aliens in their homes. In all cases, they were the men’s wives or girlfriends. [U.S. Border Agent Indicted, Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 2005. Claudine LoMonaco, Border Agent Accused of Harboring Migrant, Tucson Citizen, June 23, 2005.]
Cases like this are inevitable because our government ignores the power of non-white racial solidarity. No doubt there are responsible Hispanic border control agents, but for many, blood will always be thicker than water.
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O Tempora, O Mores!
France Boils Over
As this issue went to press, Muslim violence in France that began on Oct. 27 had entered its second week, though was showing some signs of abating. French President Jacques Chirac had just declared a state of emergency that would authorize curfews, but had not called up the army to enforce them. Rioters had burned more than 5,000 cars and dozens of buildings — including schools, churches, businesses, police stations and even day care centers — and had injured scores of policemen and firemen. Violence had spread more widely than at any time in French history, to nearly 300 cities and towns, and had brought destruction at levels not seen since the Second World War. There were reports of copycat attacks in Belgium and Germany. Authorities had arrested more than 1,000 suspects (invariably referred to in the media as “disaffected youth”), but had so far refrained from lethal force. [Jamey Keaten, French President Declares State of Emergency, AP, Nov. 8 2005.]
On Nov. 7, the rioters claimed their first life, when a gang of Muslims beat to death a 61-year-old Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec. He had already been badly beaten three days earlier. The uprising gives the lie to France’s claim that non-white minorities — mainly North African Muslims and sub-Saharan blacks — have shed their home cultures and assimilated into French society. [French Riots Hit 274 Towns, Spread Abroad, MSNBC.com, Nov. 7, 2005. French Riots Claim First Fatality, CNN.com, Nov. 7, 2005.]
The violence began in the low-income Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois on the night of Thursday, Oct. 27. Two young Arabs, 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, one Mauritanian and the other Tunisian, were electrocuted at a power sub-station where they tried to hide from police, who they mistakenly thought were chasing them. Rumors quickly spread that police ran the boys into the sub-station and left them to die. Violence broke out that night, with young immigrants torching cars and local businesses. By the weekend, rioting had spread to another immigrant suburb, Aulnay-sous-Bois.
Within three more days the riots had spread to 20 towns around Paris. Rioters fired on police and firemen — unusual in France, where there are few private firearms — and burned at least 315 cars. They also set fire to a Renault automobile dealership, a supermarket, and a gymnasium. Authorities had to stop traffic on a commuter rail line linking Paris to Charles DeGaulle Airport after rioters attacked trains, breaking windows with rocks, and kicking a conductor off his train. In the northern Parisian suburb of Sevran a gang threw Molotov cocktails at a city bus, badly burning a handicapped woman. Rioters severely injured a 13-month-old child when they stoned a bus. [Henry Samuel, Deaths Spark Riots in Paris Suburbs, Telegraph (London), Nov. 1, 2005. Fresh Violence Hits Paris Suburbs, BBC News, Nov. 3, 2005. Jamey Keaten, Violence Intensifies in Suburbs of Paris, AP, Nov. 3, 2005. Woman Attacked as Riots Continue in Paris, AFP, Nov. 4, 2005. Timeline: French Riots, BBC News, Nov. 7, 2005.]
By Nov. 3, as the rioting entered its second week, the violence had spread to 90 communities around Paris, and to Dijon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and Strasbourg. On Nov. 5, rioters reached the center of Paris itself, where they burned 35 cars. The next day, hundreds of rioters clashed with police in the city of Grigny, south of Paris, and for the first time, wounded policemen with gunfire. Ten officers were hit by birdshot and two were injured seriously. Muslims in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the rioting began, were pleased at the news. “This is just the beginning,” said Moussa Diallo, an unemployed 22-year-old French-African, who predicted policemen would die before the rioting ended. [Craig S. Smith, 10 Officers Shot as Riots Worsen in French Cities, New York Times, Nov. 7, 2005.]
By early November, the level of destruction had grown significantly, as rioters moved from burning cars to torching buildings. They were making improvised anti-personnel devices by stuffing gasoline bombs with nails or steel balls. On Nov. 6, police discovered a firebomb factory in suburban Paris with 150 explosives under construction, and 50 ready to use. They arrested six bomb makers, all of them minors.
“Most of these kids are being coached by professional petty criminals and gang leaders in the suburbs,” said Jean-Christophe Carne, president of police union Action Police CFTC. “In the past, when we have cracked down on these criminals in their homes, we found drugs, grenades and heavy weapons such as guns. While they haven’t started using these arms yet, there’s also no reason to think they wouldn’t.” Before the state of emergency was declared, Mr. Carne said police were pessimistic that the violence would stop any time soon. His organization was already calling for strict night-time curfews and army troops to help stop what he said was turning into “civil war.” Australia, Austria, Britain, Germany, Hungary, Russia and the United States advised tourists to be careful in France, and warned them away from violence-hit areas. [Jennifer Joan Lee, Paris Police Fear Rioters’ Heavy Arms, Washington Times, Nov. 7, 2005. Angela Doland, Rioting Spreads to 300 Towns in France, AP, Nov. 7, 2005. French Violence Hits Fresh Peak, BBC News, Nov. 7, 2005.]
The level of destruction can be judged by what the French considered to be signs of improvement. On the night of Nov. 7 to 8, vandals burned only 1,173 cars, down from 1,408 the night before. Arrests were also down from 395 to 330. The curfews, to be imposed under a 1955 law that dates back to the Algerian war, seemed likely to curb the mayhem.
The government was initially bewildered by the uprising, split between the hardline approach of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who called the rioters “scum,” and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who prefers diplomacy. Mr. de Villepin wants to approach so-called community leaders and listen to the young rioters’ grievances. Their defenders, of whom there are many, say young Arabs and blacks are victims of racism and economic oppression. Mr. Villepin agrees. In an address to a special session of the National Assembly called on Nov. 8, he explained that racial discrimination is a “daily and repeated infringement of our national ideals,” and that “the struggle against all discriminations must become a priority for our national community.” [French PM Acknowledges Racial Divide, AP, Nov. 8, 2005.]
Jacques Chirac appears to be of two minds. After a meeting with his national security council on Nov. 6, he said his “absolute priority is to reestablish security and public order. . . . Those people [the rioters] will be apprehended, judged and punished.” At the same time, he talked about addressing the root causes of Muslim disaffection, which he says includes an unemployment rate as high as 50 percent in some neighborhoods.
It may be too late for either approach to have much success. France has been ignoring warning signs about its resentful and growing black and Muslim underclass for years, but has not clamped down on immigration. Perhaps this crisis will finally awaken France to the dangers of multiracialism. At least one French paper, the conservative Le Figaro, has figured out what went wrong: a “policy of immigration without control.” It wrote that the “urgent necessity is to control the influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal” for fear that “in 15 years, it will be the children of those arriving today who will set fire to the suburbs.” Philippe de Villers, a right-wing member of France’s National Assembly who wants to “stop the Islamization of France,” says the riots stem from the “failure of a policy of massive and uncontrolled immigration.” [French Press Searches for Solutions, BBC News, Nov. 4, 2005. Jamey Keaten, Violence Intensifies in Suburbs of Paris, AP, Nov. 3, 2005.]
During the first week of riots, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front refrained from commentary, pointing out that the facts spoke for themselves far more eloquently than he could. On November 9, however, he gave an interview to the Associated Press in which he described the riots as “just the start” of tensions caused by “massive immigration from countries of the Third World that is threatening not just France but the whole continent.”
He urged that rioters be stripped of citizenship and deported to Africa: “Those who got nationality automatically, who don’t consider themselves French and who even say publicly that they consider France their enemy should not be treated as French.” He added the National Front was “submerged” with applications for membership, and that if he were to run again for the presidency “my chances would be increased tenfold.” [John Leicester, Far-Right Leader: Riots Only the Start, AP, Nov. 9, 2005.]
Denmark Getting Close
France is not alone. Young Muslims rioted for three nights in the Danish city of Aarhus in late October, throwing stones and setting fire to restaurants, stores and other businesses. Firemen had to be escorted into the area by police. Although 30 to 40 people took part in the violence each night, police arrested only two, including a 16-year-old Somali immigrant.
During the day, rioters returned to the area to celebrate victory — some openly eating food they looted from restaurants the night before. “Spokesmen” for the rioters made what one Danish newspaper called a “clear declaration of war.” “This land belongs to us,” they said. “The police have to stay away. This is our area. We rule here.”
Many of the Muslim rioters say they were offended by a newspaper printing cartoons they say were disrespectful towards Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, and that they had planned the riots in advance. “We have planned this for three weeks,” says a spokesman. “That is why only two were arrested Saturday night. The police will cordon off it all. But we know the ways out.” [Erik Thomle, Unge indvandrere amok i Århus-byde (Young Immigrants Run Amok in Aarhus), Jyllands-Posten (Viby, Denmark), October 31, 2005.]
Betty Blair, a well-respected and kindly 77-year-old white widow, was an active member of St. Pius V Catholic Church in Pasadena, Texas. When the church’s Social Services Ministry decided to help Katrina refugees, she let three Louisiana women stay in her home for a month. After they left, Mrs. Blair decided to help more refugees. She started paying Jimmy Hoang Le and Stephanie Jacobo, both 18, and 43-year-old Roosevelt Smith for odd jobs on her upscale property. Her neighbors did not like the look of the men, and one planned to speak to Mrs. Blair about them, but never got the chance. On Oct. 28, they robbed and strangled Mrs. Blair, and stole her car. Police arrested them later that night and they were charged with capital murder the next day. [Anne Marie Kilday and Monica Guzman, 3 Hurricane Evacuees Accused of Killing Woman Who Helped Them, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 30, 2005.]
The Sneaky Senate
The Senate has voted to increase immigration by an estimated 350,000 a year, as part of the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Bill Reconciliation Act. The bill passed the Senate on November 3 by a margin of 52 to 47, and raises the cap on H-1B visas, which are given to highly skilled workers, from 65,000 to 95,000. Also, it permits all immigrant workers (including H-1Bs) who come in under the current quota of 140,000 to bring their spouses and children, whereas dependents now count against the quota. Finally, the bill means employment visas not used in the year granted will not expire but remain usable for several years. The Senate did raise the fee employers have to pay for H-1B visas from $1,685 to $2,185.
Senator Robert Byrd led what meager opposition there was to this massive immigration increase. He proposed an amendment that would eliminate the increase but raise fees for existing visas. “These are massive and destabilizing immigration increases,” he said, “and they are hitching a free ride on this reconciliation bill.” Sen. Byrd also expressed amazement that such a momentous change in America’s immigration policy would receive only 20 minutes’ debate. The AFL-CIO and the immigration enforcement groups NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform supported Mr. Byrd’s amendment but the Senate voted it down by a crushing 85 to 14. Only three Republicans voted for it. [Senate Votes Against Byrd Amendment, Numbers USA, Nov. 3, 2005.]
The Senate bill will now have to be reconciled with the House version, which does not contain immigration increases but raises revenue by increasing fees for existing visas, just as the Byrd amendment did. The House, which is much less favorable to mass immigration than the Senate, seems to be ready for a fight. “This is not the time or place for controversial immigration provisions,” says Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas. [Stephen Dinan, Budget Bill Would Boost Green Cards, Washington Times, Oct. 31, 2005. Kenyonna Summers, Immigration Bill Gets Support, Washington Times, Nov. 4, 2005.]
In the United States, there were hardly any stories about this proposed major change in immigration policy. A Google search on the three days after the vote found only three stories in US papers about the immigration provisions. In India, which would be a major beneficiary of the new visas, there were 19 stories in the same period.
The Programmers Guild, an organization of computer programmers, says employers are using the visas to lower costs, rather than remedy a labor shortage. The average wage of a programmer in the US is $67,700, but the average wage of a H1-B visa-holder is $52,000. The report concludes that “abuse [of visas] is far more common than legitimate use.” There are now 450,000 H1-B holders working as programmers. One hundred thousand American programmers are out of work. [Ephraim Schwartz, The H1-B Swindle, Info World, Oct. 25, 2005. High-Tech Worker Visas, NumbersUSA.]
Winston Peters, a white-Maori hybrid who is head of the anti-immigration New Zealand First Party, has been appointed minister for foreign affairs. Mr. Peters raised a ruckus in 2004 when he warned that New Zealand could become an Asian colony, and this year he claimed Muslim extremists were entering the country. The New Zealand First Party received only 5.8 percent of the vote and seven seats in parliament but Mr. Peters got the job because the ruling Labour Party had to put together an awkward coalition of small parties in order to keep power. [Peters is New Zealand’s New Foreign Minister, Australian Associated Press, Oct. 17, 2005.]
Meanwhile, the conservative National Party of New Zealand, the main opposition party, has appointed Wayne Mapp, who holds a PhD in international law, to the new position of “Political Correctness Eradicator” in its shadow cabinet. According to Dr. Mapp, “A person, an institution or a government is politically correct when they [sic] cease to represent the interests of the majority and become focused on the cares and concerns of minority sector groups.” Dr. Mapp has helped defeat a bill to outlaw discrimination against homosexuals and the “transgendered,” and wants to overturn the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. [Mapp’s Plans for Life-Saving Legislation ‘Bizarre’ Says Smokefree Coalition, Smokefree Coalition New Zealand, Oct. 31, 2005. PPTA Targeted by Nats’ PC Eradicator, New Zealand Press Association, Oct. 31, 2005.]
Dr. Mapp also dislikes the “coercive powers” of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, and says its positions are “divorced from the mainstream.” He thinks the Waitangi Tribunal, a body that hears Maori land claims, practices racial advocacy and is trying to rewrite New Zealand’s history. Acting Prime Minister Michael Cullen, who belongs to the Labour Party, says a position with the name of Political Correctness Eradicator is “chillingly fascist sounding.” [Nats’ PC Eradication Triggers Debate, New Zealand Press Association, Oct. 27, 2005.]
Despite its stance against political correctness, the National Party still does not want Mr. Peters in the cabinet. “I think putting him as minister of foreign affairs does huge damage for our international reputation.” [Ainsley Thompson, Brash Appoints Political Correctness Eradicator, New Zealand Herald (Auckland), Oct. 27, 2005.]
Lieutenant Tom Molitor, a police officer for Brown County, Wisconsin, where Green Bay is located, got in trouble for saying that most marijuana drug-runners are Mexican, and most crack drug-runners are black. After non-white organizations complained, Lt. Molitor said not all Mexicans were drug dealers and that diversity was “a good thing.” Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt apologized for the officer’s comments and said he should have been more careful. “It hurts and it embarrasses the city a little bit, but we have to live with that,” he added. One Brown County Supervisor defended Lt. Molitor. “This information needs to be broken out and shown to the public,” said Supervisor Guy Zima, “because all we’re getting out of the local newspaper is, you know, the bright side of diversity, not showing the negative side.” [Kathryn Bracho, Law Enforcer’s Comments Raise Concerns Among Minorities, WBAY-TV (Green Bay), Nov. 3, 2005.]
Air Force Academy football coach Fisher DeBerry explained at an October press conference why his football team lost a recent game: The other team “had a lot more Afro-American players than we did and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to me to be that way. Afro-American kids can run very well.” A week later, he had to apologize — “I have made a mistake and I ask for everyone’s forgiveness” — but didn’t seem sure what he was apologizing for. When a reporter asked him what was wrong with saying blacks run well, he replied, “I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. We have some Caucasian players that run very, very well also. . . . I probably should have said ‘players,’ rather than expressing a particular ethnic group.” The athletic director, who was also at the conference, jumped in and tried to explain: “What we’re talking about is speed. There’s speed that cuts across black, white, gray, blue, whatever. It was just an inappropriate comment and you all know it was an inappropriate comment.” [Eddie Pells, Air Force Coach Reprimanded After Comments About Black Athletes, AP, Oct. 26, 2005.]
Britain has so much racial tension and division that even liberals worry about its effect on national unity. Trevor Phillips, a black man who heads the Commission for Racial Equality, says that “the fragmentation of British society is a catastrophe for us all.” An example would be the high levels of segregation in immigrant areas. A recent Sheffield University study found that in five areas of London, 45 percent of the population was born abroad. [Richard Woods and David Leppard, Are We Sleepwalking Our Way to Apartheid? Times (London), Sept. 18, 2005.]
The British Labour government has decided it must do something to ensure British unity, and has decided to require candidates for naturalization to pass a citizenship test. The 45-minute “Life in the UK” exam costs £34 and includes 24 multiple-choice questions. Exam-takers need to get 75 percent of the questions right, but they can repeat the test as many times as they like.
Some sample questions: the age at which one can buy a lottery card, the type of British court that uses the jury system, and the voltage of the British electricity supply. The test also asks where the Cockney dialect is spoken, what “MPs” are, and what percentage of British children have single parents. Critics say immigrants may end up knowing more about certain aspects of British life than natives.
Many people call this the “Britishness” test, but Immigration Minister Tony McNulty says it “is not a test of someone’s ability to be British . . . It is a test of their preparedness to become citizens.” There are no questions about history. As Mr. McNulty explains, the test “is about looking forward.”
The race and immigration bureaucracies don’t like the test. The chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service says it could be “seen as a way of excluding people from British citizenship.” Trevor Phillips, for all his fear of “fragmentation,” opposes any test candidates could fail. [“Britishness” Test Questions Revealed, Telegraph (London), Oct. 31, 2005. Simon Freeman, Citizenship Test Runs Into Flak for Lack of Perspective, Times (London), Oct. 31, 2005. Mary Jordan, It’s Hard to be British, Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2005.]
Three Sculptors
No genius from the Orient compares
To Europe’s proud interpreters of stone:
Bernini, who brought theater to the squares
Of Italy and cast the Papal throne
In sunlight; Michelangelo, whose bare
Ability with marble stands alone
As “David”; and Rodin, whose chisel spared
One “Thinker” from the mindlessness that drones
Through every rock. No African has matched
The least of their achievements, and until
This changes I, a white man, must dispatch
With sympathy and cultivate the will
Of one who reaches deeper, to embrace
The rare, genetic treasures of his race.
Mr. Papilio is a Baltimore-based poet.
| LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — As I read Jared Taylor’s review of Identifying Race and Transforming Whiteness in the Classroom in the last issue, I found myself wanting to both laugh and cry. Multiculturalism and political correctness always seem to have more ground to break, and this stuff keeps getting more and more stupid every day.
I can remember a friend’s reaction to Dinesh D’Souza’s 1990 book, Illiberal Education: “It is worse than I thought on the college campuses.” What Mr. D’Souza described — affirmative action officers on campus, Jesse Jackson leading choruses of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go,” etc., are mild compared to what Mr. Taylor found in Transforming Whiteness. These women seem to be pushing an American form of Maoism, complete with public self-flagellation. The only difference I can see is that they are not being forced to do it as the Chinese academics were during the Cultural Revolution. They are volunteers, which somehow seems even worse.
I disagree with Mr. Taylor when he writes that this movement “doesn’t do a lick of good for their precious people of color.” In fact, non-whites probably derive considerable emotional satisfaction from being encouraged to humiliate whites who are stuck in the same classrooms.
Jud Jackson, Downers Grove, Ill.
Sir — I believe the story of white slavery during the Ottoman era, as told by Robert C. Davis in Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters and reviewed by Thomas Jackson in the August issue, merits an addendum. Prof. Davis limits his tale to the exploits of the Barbary pirates, but there was also a flourishing overland trade in the same merchandise.
The master white slavers were Crimean Tatars, and their man-catching raids ravaged vast territories. Urban life in the Ukraine and eastern Poland virtually came to a standstill, as desperate people fled into forests and marshes to escape the terrible horsemen. The Tatars herded captives south to slave warehouses at Jaffa, in Palestine. At the height of the Tatar invasions in the 16th and 17th centuries, about 10,000 slaves were brought to Jaffa each year, to be shipped throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Dmitri Cantemir, a Moldavian noble who spent 22 years in Istanbul, in his History of the Turks (published in 1714-16) described the trade through Turkish eyes. Male Russians and Poles made fine galley slaves and lasted several years before wearing out and being tossed overboard. Venetians, Hungarians, and Germans were dismissed contemptuously as “incapable of all drudgery, by reason of the softness of their Bodies, and the women of giving pleasure proper to their Sex by the hardness of theirs.” Because of their graceful figures, Circassians were always in demand. At a slave auction a male Circassian could have sold for a thousand imperial crowns, while a Venetian or German of similar age and size fetched barely a quarter that amount. The Empire’s appetite for white slaves was insatiable, and eventually breeding farms were established in the Caucasus where slaves were raised like cattle.
There was one major difference in the slavery at each end of the Mediterranean. For all of their misery, the slaves of the West were not without hope. Prof. Davis mentions redemption organizations and the possibility of ransom. There was nothing like this in the East, where raids turned the region into a wasteland. Moreover, after 1240, when the Mongols destroyed Kiev, there was no local Ukrainian authority capable of conducting negotiations. Victims of Tatar raids were simply livestock with whom their owners did as they pleased. When Sultan Ibrahim (ruled 1640-48) decided to clean out his harem, he had all the women in it — a thousand or so — sewn alive into sacks and tossed into the Bosphorus. The bundles contained members of practically every race, culture, nationality and religion extant in the Old World, but no one objected to that mad horror. The women were, after all, his property.
For Eastern Europe, the slavery nightmare ended only in the 18th century when Prince Eugene’s Hapsburg troops in a series of victories dispelled forever the myth of Ottoman invincibility, and Russia crushed the Tatar Khanate and seized Crimea. The Tatar raids were finally over, but the ghosts still linger. A major branch of Indo-Europeans still carries in its name the memory: “Slav” is derived from “sclavus” — slave in Medieval Latin.
It is only whites who forget what they have suffered, as we bomb Serbs, protect Muslims in the Balkans, and welcome Turks into the heart of Europe.
Sidney Krupicka, Paris, Tenn.
Sir — Will the French learn their lesson? Will they finally realize that non-whites will not — cannot — assimilate? I note that French commentators and politicians are already saying exactly what Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton would say: that “racism” and “oppression” drive the poor dears to violence. How much damage and how many deaths will it take before the French realize that their Africans hate them and will never be Frenchmen?
The initial impulse of whites everywhere is to take the blame when non-whites are unhappy. Even when there are no whites in sight, as in Haiti or Rwanda/Burundi, whites somehow caused the mayhem and misery from afar. I hate to say this, but I hope France burns until the French finally see the truth. I just hope there is something left for them afterwards.
Susan Anderson, Lexington, Ky.
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