American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 21, No. 1	January 2010

CONTENTS

Walking on Eggshells (Part I)
Mexico on the Brink
Fort Hood Shooting is Only the Latest
Addendum to “Why the West Dominated”
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters

COVER STORY

Walking on Eggshells (Part I)

How to be white in multicultural America.

Samuel Truaxe

Who has racial power in this country? If you guessed white people, you guessed wrong. Whites still have some political and economic power, but racially and morally they have completely disarmed themselves in the face of non-whites. They did this by elevating “racism” to the status witchcraft had in Old Salem, and making it America’s most unforgivable sin. Any whites guilty of it have no moral standing, so whites must constantly prove a negative: that they are not “racist.”

The result is a demanding — and demeaning — racial etiquette for whites. They must police their speech, behavior, and even thoughts lest they “give offense.” Most have become so practiced in the art of “sensitivity” that it has become second nature to them.

And yet, danger always lurks. The rules keep changing, and what was common practice yesterday could be “racism” tomorrow. Even the most exquisitely sensitive whites cannot always think through every possible negative stereotype a phrase or word may imply — and there is always someone ready to pounce. Even what is obviously harmless or just a slip of the tongue can be a serious infraction. And jokes? Not allowed in grim, multi-cultural America. Needless to say, blacks are not the only people whites have to worry about. All minorities are now equally well trained in how to keep whitey on the hop, and they are not required to play by anything like the same rules.

In 1930, the New York Times announced in an editorial that it would henceforth capitalize the word “Negro.” That was back when whites made accommodation to others out of courtesy. No longer. One of the hallmarks of the decline of whites — in numbers, influence, and especially, integrity — is that what they once did out of consideration they now do out of fear.

Pitfalls Everywhere

Whites must bow and scrape at the slightest misstep. In 2004, the Tennessee Department of Health ran a radio ad that was supposed to promote good diet by encouraging listeners to “try baking your chicken, eating a fresh tossed salad on the side, and scrumptious watermelon for dessert.” Merely to mention watermelon and chicken in the same sentence was a sin. The department apologized and pulled the ad.

When one computer controls the operations of another the two machines are called “master” and “slave.” A black employee in the Los Angeles Probation Department said these terms were offensive, so the department ordered all outside vendors to start using the terms “primary” and “secondary.”

For at least ten years, the Veterans Administration hospital in Indianapolis had a display of Second World War memorabilia, including the front page from the August 14, 1945 Indianapolis Times with a large headline, “Japs Surrender.” In 2009, the hospital took down the newspaper when an employee complained the word “Jap” might give offense.

In 2002, volunteers for the Fort McHenry Military Museum in San Pedro, California, decided to raise money through a December 7 showing of the film Tora Tora Tora about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There were to be ushers in World War II uniforms, Pearl Harbor survivors, and vintage cars at a gala evening at the 1930s-era Warner Grand Theater in Sand Pedro. The Department of Cultural Affairs of Los Angeles, which runs the theater, canceled the program, explaining that having an event on Pearl Harbor Day would insult Japanese-Americans.

It has now become nearly impossible for a theater to show D.W. Griffith’s silent classic, Birth of a Nation, because of its portrayal of blacks. In 2004, the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles got so many threats it cancelled a showing. The owner had lined up a film scholar to explain the movie’s value despite its “racism,” but that wasn’t enough.

Joseph Smith had a corn field in East Lyme, Connecticut, and wanted to scare away geese that were eating his crop. He made scarecrows out of discarded environmental suits farmers use to spray crops. The suits were white and had hoods, and blacks complained that they looked like Ku Klux Klan robes, so Mr. Smith had to take down his scarecrows.

In Chandler, Arizona, when police described a 2007 rape suspect over the radio as “Hispanic,” Mayra Nieves, vice president of programming for KMYL Radio near Phoenix, complained that this was “racial profiling,” and said the police should describe suspects as “dark-skinned.”

These days, whites must never dress up in blackface unless they are Navy Seals on a night mission — and even then, they probably need permission from top brass. Four hockey players at Colorado College were suspended from the team for four weeks after blacking their faces at a dress-up golf outing. Participants were to come as television characters, and they had chosen the program, “Family Matters,” which is about blacks. Syracuse University suspended a student’s entire fraternity after he went to an off-campus costume party in blackface as Tiger Woods. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign launched an investigation of four white students who went to a Halloween party as characters from a movie about Jamaican bobsledders called Cool Running. In not one of these cases did the students mean to insult blacks. They modeled their costumes on people they liked or admired.

Whites need no prompting from non-whites; they bow and scrape all on their own.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, the Society of Professional Journalists issued guidelines on how not to offend Muslims. Writers were to avoid terms such as “Islamic terrorist” or “Muslim extremist,” and to “make an extra effort to include olive-complexioned and darker men and women, Sikhs, Muslims and devout religious people” in articles. They were also to follow the American Muslim Council’s rules in spelling such words as “Quran,” (not Koran) and “Makkah,” (not Mecca).

But whites can never know if they are doing the right thing. In 1953, scientists at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) began giving female names to Atlantic hurricanes. Women’s groups said this was insulting, so in 1979 the WMO added men’s names. Since women were insulted by hurricanes with girls’ names, blacks might have been pleased that no hurricanes had names like Jamal, Keisha, or Latonya. Not so. Black Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) complained that the names were “lily white” and demanded black names.

Out the door

A single breach of diversity etiquette can ruin a career. Dan Issel used to make $2.5 million a year as the coach of the Denver Nuggets basketball team, but in 2001 he got into a shouting match with a fan after a 99-96 loss, and concluded the exchange with: “Go drink another beer you Mexican piece of s**t.” It was “Mexican,” not “s**t,” that got him in trouble, and Hispanics threatened to boycott games. Mr. Issel groveled — publicly and tearfully — but the team suspended him for four games and fined him $112,000. This did not satisfy Hispanics, so the Nuggets fired him.

David Lenihan used to be a talk show host on a Saint Louis radio station, but one word ended his career, too. He was telling his audience how excited he was at rumors that black Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice might become commissioner of the National Football League: “She’s African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that.” Everyone knew he meant to say coup rather than coon, but the station fired him on the spot.

Tom Burlington used to be a weekend anchor for Fox News. In 2007, he was discussing plans for the evening’s news broadcast, which was to include the NAACP youth council’s decision to “bury ‘the N-word’.” Mr. Burlington pronounced the word, saying he thought that in a discussion of that kind refusing to use it gave it even greater power. A black woman who was present was offended. He apologized but was given sensitivity training and later fired.

E.D. Hill was the anchor of the Fox News program, “America’s Pulse,” until she broke the rules. After Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination for president he bumped fists with his wife. On the air, Miss Hill said “a fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” She apologized for using the word “terrorist” but lost her program anyway.

In 2008, Prof. Donald Hindley, who had taught at Brandeis University for 47 years, was censured for explaining to a class that Mexican immigrants are sometimes referred to pejoratively as “wetbacks.” Simply for uttering this word, he was sent to sensitivity training and had a monitor posted to keep an eye on him until the provost was satisfied Prof. Hindley was “able to conduct (himself) appropriately in the classroom.”

In 2005, Governor Ted Kulongoski of Oregon recommended state senator Neil Bryant for a post on the board of Oregon Health & Science University. As part of the vetting process, Mr. Bryant filled out a three-page form on “gender and ethnicity.” For a question about disabilities Mr. Bryant wrote “white/male” as a joke. This was such an outrage that despite an apology, Mr. Bryant was removed from consideration.

Kelly Tilghman was a reporter on the Golf Channel and friends with the black golfer Tiger Woods. During a broadcast, her on-air partner joked that Mr. Woods was so dominant that the only way to stop him would be for young players to “gang up” on him. “Lynch him in a back alley,” replied Miss Tilghman, with a laugh. Al Sharpton demanded that she be fired for what was “an insult to all blacks.” Mr. Woods issued a statement saying it was a “non-issue.” The Golf Channel nevertheless suspended her for two weeks without pay. When Golfweek magazine wrote an article about Miss Tilghman and put a picture of a noose on the cover, editor Dave Seanor was fired immediately because the image was considered insensitive to blacks.

Just talking about nooses is dangerous. Travis Grigsby was a drummer in the marching band at Lee’s Summit High School in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. He was talking about the best knots for tying up drum equipment and a fellow drummer asked if he knew how to tie a hangman’s noose. Mr. Grigsby, an Eagle Scout, said he did. A black who overheard the conversation said he was offended, and this was enough for the school to suspend Mr. Grigsby from the band for two weeks.

When Des Moines Area Community College published its student calendar for 2008/2009 it contained a typo: “Black History Lunch and Learn” was “Linch and Learn.” The college immediately printed stickers to cover up the mistake, and no less a person than the college president, Rob Denson, had to apologize.

There are people watching over us all the time, protecting us from noxious stereotypes. Speedy Gonzales is a cartoon-character mouse who was a Warner Brothers favorite for nearly 50 years. He wore a sombrero, spoke with a heavy Mexican accent, and outwitted foes like Sylvester, “the Greengo Pussygato.” The 1955 animated short “Speedy Gonzales” even won an Academy Award. However, in 1999, when the Cartoon Network got exclusive control of Speedy, it permanently banned him from American television. That was “because of its ethnic stereotypes,” explained spokesman Laurie Goldberg, who conceded that the mouse was “hugely popular” on The Cartoon Network Latin America.

Beware of violations of racial etiquette even if you think you have been promised confidentiality. In 2001, officials at Montachusett Regional Vocational School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, conducted a survey about race relations at the school. They told students the results would be confidential, and they got frank answers. Whites said minority students got special treatment and were starting fights. School administrators identified five white students who gave these answers and suspended them for three days for “behavior causing a dangerous condition” and making “racist comments.”

Putting whites on the defensive gives non-whites such enormous advantages that they are sometimes tempted to take things too far. For example, at a 2008 meeting of Dallas County, Texas, commissioners, Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, complained about the number of traffic tickets that got lost in the central collections office, comparing it to a black hole. “Excuse me!” said black commissioner John Wiley Price very loudly, and insisted that the office was a “white hole.” Another black, Thomas Jones, demanded an apology. There was no apology, but several days later Mr. Price explained there were other expressions whites must not use, such as “angel food cake” and “devil’s food cake.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City got into similar trouble when he said that heads of the transit union had “thuggishly turned their backs on New York City” by calling a strike. A black city council member and other black leaders complained that since the transit unions were majority non-white, the word “thuggish” was “racist.”

In 2003, Grace Fuller and Louise Sawyer, both black, were about to fly out of Las Vegas on Southwest Airlines, when a white flight attendant urged passengers to take their seats, saying, “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; pick a seat, we gotta go.” The second line is usually “catch a tiger by the toe,” but Miss Fuller and Miss Sawyer said the rhyme was directed at them, since an older version is “catch a nigger by the toe.” The flight attendant, who was 22 at the time she recited the lines, said she had never heard the “nigger” version, and that she learned the rhyme from a co-worker who used it to encourage passengers to take seats. The U.S. District Court in Kansas City allowed a suit for damages against Southwest but a jury found the airline not guilty.

Southwest had the gumption to fight this absurd case rather than settle it, and a jury recognized a shakedown when it saw one, but that such a case could even go to court says a lot about the racial balance of power in America. You can always find liberals who agree with the famous British Macpherson Report of 1999 that anything anyone says is “racist” is “racist,” especially if a non-white says so.

This is why whites police their language so ruthlessly. One woman wrote about paying for food at a Wendy’s drive-through and grabbing madly at a dollar bill that a gust of wind blew out of her car. “Oh, boy; that was interesting” she said, when she managed to pin the bill to the side of the car. “I beat myself up as I drove away,” she added. Why? Because the person she handed the bill to was a young black man and she had used the word “boy” in his presence.

This is, of course, crazy, but whites impose rules on themselves because they never know when blacks, in particular, will take offense. Radio host Dennis Prager writes that he learned from a firm that specializes in analyzing how people react to radio talk shows that it uses no blacks in the listening panels in puts together for studies. The company discovered that almost no whites are willing to disagree with a black. As soon as a black voiced an opinion, whites stopped saying what they really thought. When Mr. Prager asked his radio audience about this, whites called in from around the country to say they were afraid to disagree with a black person for fear of being thought racist.

Some non-whites are never satisfied. In 2009, there were complaints from minority staff in the Delaware Department of Transportation about insensitive language, so the department head, Carolann Wicks, distributed a “Diversity Spotlight” newsletter describing behavior and language she considered unacceptable. Minorities were so offended that the newsletter spelled out the words whites were not supposed to use that the department had to recall every copy and destroy them.

A clever laboratory test has demonstrated the lengths to which whites go to avoid breaching racial etiquette — or even mentioning race at all. In experiments at Tufts University and Harvard Business School, a white subject was paired with a partner and each was given 30 photographs of faces that varied by race, sex, and background color. They were then supposed to identify one of the 30 faces by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible. Asking about race was clearly a good way to narrow down the possibilities, but when whites were paired with a black partner, only 10 percent could bring themselves to mention race. If they had a white partner, 95 percent of whites adopted this obvious strategy. Samuel Sommers, an assistant professor at Tufts, explained that whites are “worried that they’ll look bad if they admit they notice it [race] in other people.”

Small children haven’t learned racial etiquette yet, so they mention race in the experiment, but whites start avoiding it by about age 10 or 11. Because they deny themselves an obvious way to identify the correct photograph, older children do worse on the test than younger children. “This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,” said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts who co-authored the study.

During Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency, Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asked the white students in his class to raise their hands if they had a black friend on campus. Every one raised his hand. When Prof. Bonilla-Silva asked the blacks in the class if they had white friends on campus not one raised his hand. At the time, blacks were about 10 percent of the student body, so for every white to have one black friend, every black would have had to have an average of eight or nine white friends.

What’s going on here? Even if, statistically speaking, it was nearly impossible for all whites to have black friends, they were afraid someone would think they were racist if they couldn’t claim to have at least one. There is no pressure on blacks to claim they have white friends. In fact, many blacks pride themselves on keeping away from whites.

Mr. Trueaxe is a Washington, DC-area businessman. “Walking on Eggs” will conclude in the next issue.

BOOK REVIEW

Mexico on the Brink

Is drug violence destroying the country?

George W. Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?, Transaction Publishers, 2010, 339 pp., $34.95.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Is Mexico on the verge of becoming a “failed state” like Somalia? George Grayson, who teaches government at William and Mary, thinks it could be. Mexico was never a model of public spiritedness, and billions in hot money from the drug trade have blasted what little integrity the country ever had. Hair-raising stories occasionally float north, but it takes the full picture Prof. Grayson offers to grasp how bad things really are.

The United States and Mexico are both cursed by having each other as neighbors. We get Mexicans and they get a violent, enormously powerful underworld that exists mainly because of our insatiable demand for drugs. Although many Mexicans have become addicts, the real money is in getting marijuana, heroin, and cocaine into El Norte, and that is why the worst breakdowns in authority are in the six smugglers’-haven Mexican states that border the U.S.

Prof. Grayson reports that Ciudad Juarez, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo, and virtually every other Mexican border town is in a state of terror, overwhelmed by murder, dismemberment, and kidnapping. So many bodies show up without heads — or vice versa — that funeral homes offer special deals to hold the remains until missing parts turn up. Tourists are long gone, and undertaking and casket making are the only growth industries.

In Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, the police chief resigned after multiple cop killings and threats to kill an officer every 48 hours until he quit. In 2005 in Nuevo Laredo, the job of police chief went begging because no one dared take it. A printing company owner said he would give it a try and was dead within six hours. How did Mexico get this way?

A boost from the Americans

We have made the drug business irresistible for Mexicans, who learned the ropes running booze during Prohibition. During the Second World War, when the Japanese occupied the poppy-growing regions of Asia, and Turkey sided with the Axis, we taught Mexicans how to grow the opium poppies we needed for making morphine. The hills of Sinaloa State turned out to be perfect. After the war, we asked the Sinaloans to stop, but poppies were just too profitable to give up. Drug use took off in the United States during the ’60s, and production and smuggling grew to meet demand. Since then, millions of illegal immigrants have sneaked across the border, plowing even deeper channels for illegal trade.

Prof. Grayson writes that while the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was the unchallenged political power, the drug industry was reasonably well behaved. Each cartel stuck to its own territory and sold drugs only in the United States. Hit men didn’t kill innocent people, and kidnapping was rare. Drug lords were deferential to politicians.

Things began to change in the 1990s, when Mexican drug traffickers started buying huge quantities of Colombian cocaine to sell in the United States. This added enormously to their profits and power. The National Action Party (PAN) began winning regional elections, and the oppressive but stable PRI system broke down. At that time, federal authorities were mainly responsible for fighting drug crimes, and as local police came under local control, it became easier for them to ignore the problem completely.

In 2000, the PRI lost a presidential election for the first time in 70 years, and Prof. Grayson says the final coup de grace to the old centralized system made it easier to flout the law and establish parallel power centers. Another big push toward anarchy was the arrival of new cartels such as the Zetas and La Familia, which were more violent than the established gangs and had no respect for cartel boundaries and the old, quiet way of doing business. The stage was set for real threats to state power.

The cartels

How bad have things gotten? It is estimated that only one in five crimes is reported, and that of these, only 13 percent are investigated, and of that number only 5 percent lead to a sentence. This means that about 1.3 crimes in a thousand are actually punished. Kidnapping has been on a sharp and terrifying rise, but only an estimated 10 percent are reported because the public thinks the police were in on the snatch. In the first half of 2008 alone, there were 95 attacks on journalists, and so many newsmen have been killed that press organizations call Mexico one of the world’s most dangerous countries for newsmen.

An equally disturbing picture emerges from the details of the lives of drug kingpins. Take Joaquin Guzman Loera or “El Chapo” (Shorty), as he is known. Born in 1957, he is the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, named for the state in which it is based. Forbes says he is worth $1 billion and rates him the 41st most powerful man in the world. When he was first arrested in 1991, he dropped $50,000 on the desk of a Mexico City police officer who was so startled he let him go. El Chapo was caught and imprisoned in Guatemala, where he lived in a luxurious cell, drank fine wines, chatted by phone with top media personalities, carried on several notorious affairs, and ran his business unimpeded. He was transferred to Mexico’s top-security prison but escaped just a few days before he was to be extradited to the United States. No fewer than 78 people were implicated in the elaborate bribery scheme that led to his escape.

In 2007, he fell for Emma Coronel Aispuro, a 17-year-old contestant for the title of “Queen of the Great Guayaba and Coffee Festival” in Sinaloa. On Jan. 6, 2008, she held a dance in La Angostura in support of her candidacy. Two hundred armed men on motorcycles roared into town and secured the entrances to the city. A popular professional music group, “Los Canelos de Durango” arrived by air to serenade the beauty with her favorite songs, and El Chapo himself and his entourage arrived later in a fleet of six planes. Emma’s beaming parents presented her to her suitor, and the party went on for 12 hours before El Chapo and his pals made a graceful exit. Only the next day did the cops arrive. Emma won the beauty competition, and went on to become El Chapo’s third wife.

Emma’s story, by the way, has a fairy-tale ending in the eyes of many Latinas, who want nothing more than to catch the eye of a drug baron. Sin tetas no hay paraiso (No Paradise Without Tits) is the name of a novel by a Colombian author about mothers who pay for breast augmentation for their daughters so they can become the playthings of men with drug money. The book was made into a wildly popular television series that ran for 23-episodes and was syndicated all over Latin America (the Puerto Rican version was called No Paradise Without Breasts because the FCC forbids use of the word “tits”).

El Chapo likes to cause a stir when he eats out. He and a dozen heavily-armed body guards will sweep into a tony restaurant, introduce themselves, politely take custody of the other patrons’ cell phones, and urge them to stay in their seats and enjoy themselves for the next two hours. After the thugs have eaten their fill and strolled out, the patrons find that El Chapo has picked up their tabs.

The cartel’s business operations are first class. Its 1,500-foot-long drug-running tunnel from Tijuana to Otay Mesa, near San Diego, was made of reinforced concrete and had air conditioning. The Sinaloa boys dug an equally sophisticated tunnel to Douglas, Arizona.

The police may never catch El Chapo, despite a $5 million dollar price on his head. Five million is peanuts to a man who once boasted he splashes out that much every month in bribes. He is a hero in his state, and his neighbors will never turn him in. He has roads paved, hands out cash to the poor, fixes up churches, builds sidewalks, and has created thousands of high-paying jobs in the poppy fields. Some fans attribute his many seemingly-miraculous escapes to the fact that he was born on Christmas. A rival drug gang is more likely than the police to end his career.

El Chapo is celebrated in many narcocorridos, or songs that glorify drug bosses. Professional bands play narcocorridos, and a catchy one can top the charts. It is not well for a band to become too closely associated with a cartel, however; hit men have taken out a dozen or so singers who praised their rivals.

The Gulf Cartel, a long-time syndicate based just south of Texas in Tamaulipas State is the Sinaloans’ main rival. It used to be run by Juan Garcia Abrego, who, in 1994, had the distinction of being the first Mexican and the first drug smuggler to make the FBI’s ten most wanted list. He was caught and extradited to the U.S., where he is serving several consecutive life sentences.

He was succeeded by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico in 2003, but continued to run his empire from his air-conditioned, liquor-stocked cell equipped with television and telephone, where he enjoyed frequent conjugal visits from ladies not his wife. He was a big hit back in Tamaulipas for sponsoring massive Children’s Day celebrations in bull rings and baseball stadiums. As many as 18,000 people came for free food, clowns, wrestlers, and presents for children with signed notes from Mr. Cardenas Guillen that read, “Constancy, Discipline, and Effort are the basis of success.” The fun came to an end in 2007 when he was shipped to the United States, where he languishes still.

Teodoro Garcia Simental runs the Tijuana Cartel. A line in a narcocorrido sums up his relationship to the government: “Listen up, President . . . in Tijuana I rule.” He pays his men $300 for every federal policeman they kill, and he, himself, likes to kill people at parties; he enjoys the sensation it creates. In his gang, status comes from the most creative and cruel killing; his men are said to have dissolved more than 300 people in caustic soda. He split off from an earlier Tijuana Cartel and his war with the original faction has raised the kill rate in Tijuana. Police who operate in his territory cover their license plates with tape and run the other way when they see his procession of Cadillac Escalades.

The Oaxaca Cartel, also named for the state in which it is based, was until recently run by Pedro Diaz Parada. His most famous exploit dates back to a 1985 conviction, when a judge sentenced him to 33 years in prison. He told the judge, “I will go and you will die.” Six days later he escaped, and two years after that his men fired 33 rounds into the judge’s body and left a note, “a bullet for a year.” He was finally captured in 2007 and is in a Mexican prison.

There are several other traditional cartels, but two recently established ones have distinct personalities. The Zetas have their origin in a 1997 decision by the Gulf Cartel to hire Mexican special-forces men for security. The first batch of 30 brought others over to the dark side and they eventually broke away from their masters and went into business for themselves. The Zetas are now the dominant cartel in Nuevo Leon state and most of Tamaulipas. They are in such firm control that these two states are the most peaceful of the six that border the U.S.

The Zetas are the most militarized of the cartels and have set up at least six camps — one across the border in Guatemala — for weapons training. It is said that one must kill to join the Zetas and that the only way out is death. They go to almost insane lengths to free captured comrades and make a fetish of retrieving the bodies of dead Zetas. They also have a system of benefits payments for bereaved spouses and children. The Zetas have broadened their reach by recruiting American Hispanics, and are said to control such American gangs as the Mexican Mafia and the Texas Syndicate.

La Familia (the Family) came to national attention in 2006, when some of its men burst into a night club in Uruapan in Michoacan state, and tossed five decapitated heads onto the dance floor. Attached was the message, “The Family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.”

La Familia is said to have started as a group of armed citizens who wanted to keep kidnappers and methamphetamines out of their Michoacan neighborhoods, and although they deal in every other kind of drug, at least in some areas they do not handle meth. Its members go to church, carry around “Bibles” of their leader’s philosophy, and justify executions as “orders of the Lord.” They are so powerful in Michoacan state that they appoint police chiefs in some towns. They perform the usual local good works: paving streets, building churches, helping the poor. La Familia’s estimated 4,000 members are not supposed to use the drugs they sell.

Although each cartel has its personality, and chiefs cut distinctive figures, drug gangs have a lot in common. Like many criminal groups, they are often run by brothers or other extended families. Members also tend to be both religious and superstitious, and perhaps because they see it so often, have an almost pathological fear of death. They have a patron saint, Jesus Malverde, who is a semi-mythical 19th century bandit who is said to have stolen from the rich to give to the poor. There is a shrine to him in Culiacan, where smugglers come before a trip north to ask for protection. If the trip goes well, they come back and pay the shrine band to serenade Malverde.

Another saint of the drug trade is Santa Muerte (Saint Death), represented as a clothed skeleton holding a scythe. She is an underworld saint, banned by the Catholic Church, but has been greatly popularized by drug runners. She is especially venerated around Nuevo Laredo, where the government has used backhoes to smash more than 30 shrines built to honor her.

Fighting drugs?

Since his election in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has made controlling the drug barons — and thereby the country — one his top priorities, but he doesn’t have much to show for it. Drug-related deaths are climbing: 2,275 in 2007, 5,207 in 2008, and in 2009 were on a trend easily to break records. One apparently unsolvable problem is police corruption. When a plane carrying one of El Chapo’s top lieutenants was forced to ditch because of engine trouble in 1995, he was found to have 33 active members of the Federal Judicial Police in his 40-man bodyguard.

The police, both local and federal, are so rotten that President Calderon has relied on the army to control them and to fight the cartels, but soldiers get a reputation for high-handedness and arrogance wherever they are deployed. The education level in the army is so low that instruction manuals are written as comic books. Although not quite so rotten as the police, the army has been hit by about 150,000 desertions between 2001 to 2008, and many deserters have moved to the cartels, where the pay is better.

In June 2009, President Calderon merged the two federal forces into a new organization called the Federal Police, but it appears to be the same bad apples under a new name. Prof. Grayson says Mexican legislators don’t want an incorruptible force because it might investigate their own crimes, and that the police have such a bad reputation that it is nearly impossible to get honest men to become officers. The army is jealous of the new Federal Police because it is afraid part of the military budget will be used to support it.

The local police are more than likely on the take, and many are obese, physical wrecks. Nearly two-thirds are hired despite having failed background checks that are supposed to weed out criminals, drug-takers, and crazies.

The prison system is a mess, with massive corruption, and special privileges for cartel chiefs who can bribe guards. It has been impossible to keep cell phones out of prisons, so in 2007 expensive jamming equipment was put in at 11 prisons. It has broken down and no longer works, so prisoners can tend to business just as before. Drugs and liquor flow in and prisoners flow out. There were 22 successful escapes during just the first three months of 2009.

Mexico has traditionally been too proud to extradite criminals to the U.S. but President Calderon knows that is the only way to be sure they are permanently out of the way. He has extradited several hundred, whom the American taxpayer will feed, house, clothe, and medicate for the rest of their lives.

In late 2009, the Mexican government had rewards of 30 million pesos (about $2.4 million) on the top 24 drug kingpins, and smaller amounts on smaller fry, but there are few payouts; cartel chiefs have made themselves too popular — and feared — in their own states for anyone to turn them in. In any case, when a big cheese is taken out it can lead to bloody succession battles and border wars with neighboring cartels that think they see an opening.

Failed state?

Prof. Grayson writes of “the decomposition of the state,” and thinks only legalizing drugs will improve things. In 2009, the government listed 233 “zones of impunity” where crime cannot be prevented or punished. Mexico City’s international airport is a den of corruption, where cartels routinely grease palms to run contraband in and out. Many churchmen are in the pockets of the drug lords; they preside over private services in exchange for donations and church repairs. The powerful Mexican Oil Workers Union is a morass of featherbedding, theft, and sweetheart deals. One third of the electricity in the Mexico City area is stolen. The tax collection system is a joke.

“Most Mexicans have become disillusioned by the corruption and inaction of the authorities,” writes Prof. Grayson, “and consequently have little reason to feel any obligation to their community.” It starts at the top. Mexican presidents serve for a single six-year term, and the last year is called the Year of the Hidalgo. It gets its name from Miguel Hidalgo, the historical figure on the ten-peso coin, and means that the outgoing president uses his last year for really serious stealing. Everyone’s hand is out. In 1985, when a huge earthquake centered on Mexico City killed 10,000 people and flattened 6,000 buildings, survivors had to bribe the police to let them through to where family members were pinned under the rubble.

When disloyalty to the community reaches a certain level there is no going back. Societies function only when enough people are capable of acting on motives other than pure selfishness, and Mexico may be nearing the point of no return. Drugs and drug money make things worse, but problems start with the every-man-for-himself mentality that thrives in Latin America.

Mexico may or may not crumble into complete lawlessness as Somalia and parts of Pakistan have, but we will pay the price no matter what happens. The rot is already lapping over the border, taking root in those parts of the United States that are already Mexican in everything but name. Prof. Grayson thinks he wrote a book about Mexico today; it is also about America tomorrow.

SIDEBAR Where the Guns Come From Gun grabbers have been whooping up a rumor that 90 percent of the guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the U.S., and Barack Obama has helped spread the rumor. Prof. Grayson tells us otherwise. During 2007 and 2008, Mexico had an agreement on sending captured guns to the U.S. for identification. During that period, it sent a sample of 11,000 to the ATF for identification. Of that number, the Bureau managed to identify 6,000, and 90 percent of those guns were from the U.S. In any case, the drug cartels have plenty of money and are good at discreet international shipments. They could buy guns anywhere they like. Often, they needn’t bother to look outside Mexico. The police are famous for hawking off the guns they capture.

SIDEBAR Read at Your Own Risk Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? is full of fascinating information but it is one of the worst edited books I have read in a long time. It is full of typos and written in a stream-of-consciousness style that leaves readers wondering how the pieces fit together. The author also insists on a labored, pointless comparison of the organization of drug gangs to Catholic Church hierarchy, which runs irritatingly through the whole book. He is a complete firearms ignoramus, writing about .9 millimeter weapons (such a weapon would fire a round about as thick as pencil lead) and 50 millimeter bullets (the Nazis and the Soviets used 50 millimeter mortars during the Second World War). No proper publisher should let this sort of rubbish into print, and it leaves the reader wondering what else got through.

ARTICLE

Fort Hood Shooting is Only the Latest

Many attacks are downplayed or whitewashed.

by Dave Gibson

The day after Maj. Malik Hasan shouted “Allah Akbar” as he gunned down fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, President Obama told us not to “jump to conclusions” about motives. Since then there has been more than enough evidence to prove that Dr. Hasan was a fanatic who put loyalty to Islam above all else. His statements to colleagues, his Internet postings, and his disturbing behavior have been widely reported elsewhere, but if confirmation were necessary one need only to look at Maj. Hasan’s business card. It included not only his qualifications and contact information but also the line: “SoA (SWT).” Experts tell is that SoA stands for “Soldier of Allah,” and SWT stands for “Subhanahu Wa Ta’all,” or “glory to God” in Arabic.

Taking their cue from the President, the mainstream media downplayed Maj. Hasan’s fanaticism, and offered threadbare excuses about mental instability and harassment from non-Muslim colleagues. Typical was MSNBC’s Hardball anchor Chris Matthews’ explanation as to why the Army and FBI did nothing when Maj. Hasan tried to get in touch with al-Qaeda: “That’s not a crime to contact al-Qaeda is it?”

Perhaps most revolting was the reaction by Army Chief of Staff General George Casey on Meet the Press. He, too, warned against drawing conclusions about Maj. Hasan’s motives, and lamented that “it would be a shame — as great a tragedy as this was — it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” He seemed to imply that “diversity” was more important than practical measures to keep murderous Muslims out of the military.

Despite the government cover-ups and media spinning, there is no doubt that we have Muslim terrorists plotting and attacking inside the United States. If we are to survive, we must open our eyes to the facts and stop worrying about who may be offended if we take measures to protect ourselves.

With 86 percent of Americans identifying themselves as Christians, radical Muslims realize that they will never convert us and some, as directed by the Koran, have now decided to kill us. However, you will never hear that painful truth from the mouths of network anchors or from our spineless politicians.

What follows is a list of known plots and terrorist attacks carried out since September 11, 2001 by Muslim radicals living in the U.S.:

• On July 4, 2002, Egyptian national Hesham Mohamed Hadayet walked into Los Angeles International Airport and shot and killed El Al stewardess Vicky Chen and Los Angeles resident Yaakev Aminov. Mr. Hadayet also stabbed an El Al security guard who shot and killed him. Israeli officials were unanimous in calling the attack terrorism, but Americans disagreed. FBI spokesman Matt McLaughlin told reporters: “There is no indication of any terrorism connection in this matter,” and Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn called it “an isolated incident.”

• In March 2003, while he was stationed in Kuwait with American forces preparing to attack Iraq, Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar tossed a grenade and fired into a tent filled with sleeping soldiers. In an attack clearly aimed at officers, he killed Army Capt. Christopher Seifert and Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, and injured 14 other soldiers. Mr. Akbar, a black who was born Mark Kools, converted to Islam after joining the Army, and identified with Iraqis rather than with his fellow soldiers. “You guys are coming into our countries, and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children,” he said after he was arrested. Sgt. Akbar was sentenced to death and is awaiting execution.
• In October 2005, a 21-year-old white student attending the University of Oklahoma accidentally exploded a backpack bomb outside of a sold-out football game at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. According to eyewitness accounts, Joel Henry Hinrichs was sitting on a park bench about 100 yards from the stadium fidgeting with his backpack, when the bomb went off. He is thought to have been arming the bomb before carrying it into the stadium crowded with 84,500 fans. Mr. Hinrichs had a Pakistani roommate and had marked Muslim leanings. Police searched their apartment and discovered more bomb-making materials as well as anti-Semitic, anti-American Islamic literature. The FBI claimed that Hinrichs was simply a “troubled” young man.
• In March 2006, a young Muslim named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar rented an SUV and drove it into a crowd of students at the University of North Carolina, injuring nine people. The Iranian native told police he was retaliating for “the treatment of Muslims around the world.” At his arraignment, Mr. Taheri-azar told the judge he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah,” and has since pleaded guilty to nine counts of attempted murder.

• In July 2006, Naveed Afzal Haq forced his way into the Seattle Jewish Federation and shot six people, killing one, before surrendering to a SWAT team. He attacked only women, one of whom was pregnant. Jewish Federation employee Marla Meislin Dietrich told reporters that as Mr. Haq walked the halls firing, he shouted: “I’m Muslim-American” and “I’m angry at Israel.” His father is a founder of a Seattle-area mosque. The authorities refused to call this terrorism; Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels insisted it was “a crime of hate.” The city’s police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, added that he was “protecting mosques because there is always concern about retaliatory activity.”
• In August 2008, two weeks before the Democratic National Convention, Somali-born Saleman Abdirahman Dirie was found dead of cyanide poisoning in a room at the Burnsley Hotel in Denver, just a few blocks from the state capital. In his room was more than a pound of sodium cyanide, which is commonly found in rat poison. It can also be mixed with certain acids to produce extremely lethal cyanide gas that could have killed a large number of people. The FBI downplayed any possible connection to terrorism, and the story immediately dropped from sight.
• In October 2008, Shirwa Ahmed exploded a bomb in a suicide attack at a United Nations checkpoint in Northern Somalia, killing 29 people. Ahmed was a naturalized U.S. citizen, living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after immigrating from Somalia, and is thought to be the first American citizen to kill himself in a suicide attack. In 2008, more than a dozen men of Somali descent disappeared from Minneapolis. U.S. law enforcement believes all of them have returned to Somalia to attend terrorist training camps or to join the al-Shabaab terrorist organization, which is closely allied with al Qaeda.
• In December 2008, five Muslims were convicted of a 2007 conspiracy to commit an armed attack at Fort Dix, in New Jersey. Mohamad Shnewer, Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, and Shain Duka, were sentenced to life in prison, and Serdar Tatar got a 33-year sentence. Three of the terrorists were illegal aliens who entered the United States from Mexico.
• In May 2009, the FBI arrested four men who thought they were planting car bombs outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York City. They also planned to shoot down military aircraft with a Stinger missile. All of the bombs were fakes supplied by an informant. Three of the four men are black converts reported to have become radical Muslims in prison, and the fourth is Haitian. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the men “wanted to commit Jihad” because they were angry that American soldiers were killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• In June 2009, a black convert to Islam, 23-year-old Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, drove up to an Army-Navy recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, where two soldiers were taking a cigarette break, and opened fire. Mr. Muhammed, born Carlos Bledsoe, killed Prvt. William Long, 23 and wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18. Police stopped and arrested Mr. Muhammad only 15 minutes after the shooting. The attack took place during the same week in which President Obama traveled to Egypt and made his apologetic speech to the Muslim world. Prosecutor Larry Jegley explained that Mr. Muhammed targeted soldiers because of what he considered to be their mistreatment of Muslims around the world and explained that “if there had been more recruits out there at the time, he would have killed more of them, or tried to.”

• In September 2009, a grand jury indicted Afghan national Najibullah Zazi on a charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. The FBI claims that he was plotting to blow up U.S. targets and was in possession of plans for making hydrogen peroxide-based bombs. Since his arrest, Mr. Zazi has admitted he received training at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
• Also in September 2009, FBI agents arrested 19-year-old Jordanian national Hosam Maher Husein Smadi. The young man, who claims to be an al Qaeda supporter, tried to blow up a high-rise office building in Dallas, Texas with a van filled with what he thought were explosives — duds supplied by FBI agents posing as fellow terrorists. He was arrested as soon as he dialed a cell phone that he thought would explode the fake bomb.

Mr. Smadi came to the attention of the FBI because of postings on the Internet six months earlier. Here are some that the FBI presented at his arraignment:

We shall attack them in their very own homes. Brother, by God, we shall attack them in a manner that hurts, an attack that shakes the world. Oh Brother, let the backsliders know that the time for their destruction has come.

I want to destroy . . . targets . . . everything that helps America in its war on Arabs will be targeted.

By God who created me, there will not be a retreat at all, even if they take me to Guantánamo for the rest of my life. I will never forget Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, or any land where the call of, ‘There is no God but God, Muhammad is God’s Messenger’ is raised.

All of these attacks disappeared from the nation’s newsrooms. Many Americans have either forgotten them or never even heard of many of them. That is no doubt the effect our press and politically correct government want to achieve.

Even during the 2002 Washington, DC sniper attacks, federal officials played down the possibility of terrorism. The snipers turned out to be two black Muslims — one an illegal alien. John Allen Muhammad modeled himself on Osama bin Laded, approved of the September 11 attacks, and reportedly planned to kill six white people a day for 30 days before setting up a camp in Canada where he would train young black boys to carry out mass-murder attacks in the United States. He and his protégé, Lee Boyd Malvo, killed some 20 people but neither was characterized as a terrorist or even charged with a hate crime. Mr. Muhammad was executed on November 10, and Mr. Malvo is serving a life sentence.

Our political leaders either do not understand the threat posed by Muslims here in the United States or they are so committed to the dogma of diversity — the idea that every group is equal in every way and essentially interchangeable — that they refuse to draw even the most obvious conclusions about certain groups.

There are now an estimated six million Muslims living in the United States, with more than 300,000 living in the Dearborn, Michigan, vicinity alone. Some high schools in the area even serve halal meals to accommodate their 90-percent-Muslim student bodies.

There is a large and growing population — estimated at over 350,000 — of converted Muslims inside our prisons. In 2005, The New York State Correctional System reported that 18 percent of its total state prison population was practicing Muslims. Violent, anti-social inmates are excellent potential recruits for terrorist attacks, and some even get radical propaganda from official sources.

In November 2001, while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering, a veteran female Muslim chaplain at New York’s Albion Correctional Facility, Aminah Akbar, told a group of about 120 inmates, “Bin Laden is a warrior for Allah, as all Muslims should be. Bin Laden is a hero to all Muslims.” She also added, “I am not an American, I just live here.” Miss Akbar was fired for remarks likely to stir up tension between Muslim and non-Muslim prisoners, but an arbitrator ruled her firing was unjustified. With chaplains like her it is no wonder that Jose Padilla, who was arrested in 2002 for planning a “dirty bomb” attack, was a convicted felon who converted to Islam in prison.

Steve Emerson, an expert on Islamic terrorism, warns that there is almost no monitoring of what prison imams — full-timers and part-timers — say to inmates. In February 2005, FBI director Robert Mueller told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee that “prisons continue to be fertile ground for extremists who exploit . . . a prisoner’s conversion to Islam.”

Some public schools promote Islam. In 1997, the U.S.-based Council on Islamic Education produced a lesson plan for American children called “Muslim Holidays.” It is full of politically correct propaganda about Islam as well as tips on how to circumvent regulations against teaching religion in public schools. More than 4,000 U.S. teachers are reported to have used the lesson plan in their classrooms. The same education system that has done everything in its power to drive children away from Christianity is now pushing Islam.

We can do very little about the cover-ups taking place inside this nation’s newsrooms. It is apparent that the leftists sitting behind network anchor desks will stop explaining away Muslim murders only when their own heads are sawed from their bodies. However, we can direct our politicians to defend this nation. Let us take to the streets in peaceful, though robust protest, let us fill Congressional offices, and let us cast our votes wisely!

Those of us who have not been intellectually castrated will point out Islamic terrorism every time we see it. If we lack the courage to name our enemy or even recognize its violent acts we can hardly expect to keep our country safe.

Mr. Gibson is a syndicated columnist.

ARTICLE

Addendum to ‘Why the West Dominated’

by Steven Farron

In my article “Why the West Dominated” in the last issue of American Renaissance I proposed an explanation for the one exception to the otherwise universal correlation between a races’s average IQ and its achievements. That exception is that Europeans and people of European origin have achieved much more than North-East Asians, despite North-East Asians’ higher average IQ. My explanation is two characteristics that have been fundamental to Western civilization since its beginning and have distinguished it from all other civilizations: an obsession with self-criticism and a fascination with other civilizations.

Richard Lynn read my article and sent to me an article he wrote on the same subject. Most readers of AR have some familiarity with Prof. Lynn’s work (see, for example, “The Global Bell Curve,” AR, Dec. 2002 and “Survival of the Fittest,” AR, June 2007). He has written by far the most comprehensive studies of the world-wide correlation between the average IQs of races, ethnic groups, and nations and their achievements.

The article he sent me is entitled “Race Differences in Intelligence, Creativity and Creative Achievement.” It was published on pages 157-68 of Mankind Quarterly, 2007 (48, 2). In it, Prof. Lynn points out that Europeans and people of European origin have continued to be preeminent to the present day. Between 1950 and 2006, they won more than twenty times as many Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (the most prestigious award for outstanding achievement in mathematics) than North-East Asians.

Lynn cites eminent scholars, both Western and Oriental, who have ascribed this lack of North-East Asian achievement to the extremely high value Asians place on conformity and group harmony, compared with the individualism and competitiveness that characterize the West. However, until recently, there have been no hard data by which this hypothesis could be tested.

Now we have psychometric tests that measure “openness to experience.” The definition of this trait is “openness to feelings and new ideas, and flexibility of thought.” Robert McCrae reviewed research on this subject and reported in an article on pages 1258-1265 of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1987 (52) that the openness to experience scale is correlated at around 0.4 with a variety of measures of creativity including divergent thinking. He concluded, “these data suggest that creativity is particularly related to the personality domain of openness to experience.”

Tests that measure openness to experience have been given throughout the world. The averages for each country have been calculated in relation to an average set at 50.0 (standard deviation = 10) for the United States. Countries in which the main population is European or of European origin have the highest average score: 50.10. North-East Asian countries have the lowest average score: 44.15. That is 0.6 of a standard deviation lower the than European average, which more than offsets the 0.4 of a standard deviation advantage that North-East Asians have over Europeans in average IQ.

Prof. Lynn also points out that scores on openness to experience are remarkably consistent among the countries tested. All North-East Asian countries score below all other countries, and all European countries score above all other countries. This consistency suggests that these differences are genetic in origin. That conclusion is supported by a study done in Canada that found that Canadians of Chinese origin scored significantly lower in openness to experience than Canadians of European origin, even though they were raised in the same cultural environment.

It is extremely significant that Prof. Lynn arrived at exactly the same conclusion that I did: Greater European “openness to feelings and new ideas, and flexibility of thought” more than offset higher North-East Asian intelligence. Prof. Lynn reached this conclusion from a totally different direction from mine, and he used totally different types of evidence. He deduced it from psychometric tests; I induced it from millennia of history. My article also corroborates — with empirical, historical evidence — how important flexibility of thought and openness to new ideas have been in intellectual and technological progress. In addition, my article shows that racial differences in openness to experience have remained constant over centuries. It thus adds to Prof. Lynn’s evidence that these differences are genetically determined.

Richard Lynn has read and endorsed this article.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Blacks Attack Whites

In November, police in Denver, Colorado arrested 32 gang members they say were responsible for a series of racially motivated assaults and robberies that had gone on for months. The perps are black; their victims are white and sometimes Hispanic. Gang experts say the Denver spree is part of a growing national trend in which gangs of blacks videotape themselves attacking whites in trendy tourist districts (which are supposed to be safe) and then sell the videos on the underground market. “They knock a young white guy out with one blow to see if his knees will wobble and surround them and take their money,” says Rev. Leon Kelly, who runs a Denver gang-prevention program. Rev. Kelly says gang members “crave the notoriety” of having their “one-punch knockouts” recorded and sold on the black market: “They’ll rewind the tapes and watch them over and over.”

Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman says four or five blacks usually approach a victim late at night or early in the morning and taunt him with racial slurs. One of them then sucker punches the victim, hoping for a knock out. The gang then steals his wallet and cell phone. Many victims suffered broken noses and shattered eye sockets.

On the same day that the Denver police announced their arrests, St. Paul police arrested two blacks for a series of attacks on random whites, which they videoed and posted on YouTube. The attacks were in broad daylight in residential neighborhoods. The blacks did not cover their faces, and appear to have identified themselves by name. All appear to be young Somalis. The video, which is set to music, can be seen on the American Renaissance website. It shows eight blacks assaulting white bicyclists and pedestrians, including children and older people. Each says, “Watch this,” before striking the unsuspecting victim and running away, laughing. Similar attacks have occurred in West Palm Beach, Florida. [Kirk Mitchell, Denver Arrests May be Part of Trend of Gangs Videotaping Attacks, Denver Post, Nov. 22, 2009. Abby Simons, 2 on YouTube Assault Video Arrested, Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), Nov. 19, 2009.]

Divided Loyalties

Jose Hernandez, the U.S.-born son of illegal Mexican immigrants, has gone where no Mexican has gone before — into orbit, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Mr. Hernandez served as a mission specialist on board the space shuttle Discovery during its two-week flight last June. He spent much of his time aboard Discovery being interviewed by television crews from Mexico (where he became a media star) and posting messages on social media websites in Spanish (his native tongue) under the nickname, “Astro Jose.”

NASA officials were caught off guard when, during an interview after Discovery landed, he told a Mexican TV crew that he thought the U.S. should legalize illegals because they are important to the American economy. NASA officials said Mr. Hernandez was speaking only for himself.

Mr. Hernandez was surprised by the fuss. “It all became a big scandal,” he says. “Even the lawyers were speaking to me.” But he has not backed down. In September, he told the host of the Televisa network’s popular morning show, about looking down from orbit with joy on a world “without borders” and explained how “impractical” it would be to deport millions of illegals. [Tracy Wilkinson, Mexican American Astronaut Isn’t Changing Course on Immigration Stand, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 17, 2009.]

Mr. Hernandez has since traveled to Mexico City where he hoped to persuade lawmakers there to create a Mexican space program. He says he doesn’t plan to leave NASA, but would like to help the Mexican program “get off the ground.” [Astronaut Says Mexico Needs Its Own Space Program, AP, Nov. 24, 2009.]

False Alarm

When police discovered the body of 51-year-old Census worker William Sparkman Jr. in rural Kentucky in September, the media speculated breathlessly that he was the victim of something that pretty much exists only in the minds of lefty reporters and SPLC donors: the “anti-government Right.” Speculation intensified after reports that Sparkman’s nude body had been found bound and gagged with duct tape, with a noose around his neck, and the word “fed” scrawled on his chest.

Sparkman’s death came at the end of a summer in which mostly white “Tea Party” activists protested President Obama’s medical insurance plans and his runaway spending. The media had spent several weeks pushing the idea that much of the Tea Party anger was really hatred of a black man in the White House, and the Left had the Sparkman killing pegged as yet more hate. The Village Voice warned about “rage against Washington . . . especially in the rural South” and that Sparkman’s death had “all the makings of some anti-government goober taking his half-wit beliefs way too far.” Cable television kept reminding viewers of the August incident in which more than a dozen legally armed protestors showed up at an anti-Obama rally in Phoenix, and hinted at some sinister connection between them and Sparkman’s death.

It was all fantasy. Initial reports that Sparkman had been found hanging in a tree were wrong; police say he was on the ground with the rope tied to a tree. In late November, the Kentucky State Police announced that Bill Sparkman committed suicide. Acquaintances said he talked about suicide, and that he had recently taken out hefty life insurance policies that did not pay benefits on suicides. That was why he wanted to make his death look like a murder. DNA evidence also confirmed that Sparkman took his own life. [Richard Fausset, Census Worker’s Death was Suicide, Not Anti-Government Violence, Police Say, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 25, 2009.]

Vindication

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton ruled that Frank Ricci and the other white and Hispanic firefighters denied promotion by the city of New Haven had not been victims of discrimination, and threw out their lawsuit. An appeals court later upheld Judge Arterton’s ruling, but both were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2009 Ricci v. DeStefano decision (see “Supreme Court Throws Whites a Bone,” AR, Aug. 2009). The Court sent the case back to Judge Arterton, who, on Nov. 24, issued the ruling she should have made in the first place: that the civil rights of white New Haven firefighters were violated when city officials threw out the results of the 2003 promotion exam only because no blacks passed. She ordered immediate promotions. [Judge: White U.S. Firefighters Must be Promoted, AP, Nov. 25, 2009.]

Immigrant Contract

There are 15 million immigrants among Germany’s 82 million residents, and many have lived in Germany for decades without learning the language or trying to assimilate. The German government now wants to draw up assimilation contracts with them. Immigration commissioner Maria Boehmer says long-term residents will have to learn German and show “a readiness to take part in society.” What does that mean? Dr. Boehmer says it includes a commitment to such things as “freedom of speech and sexual equality.” There appear to be no enforcement provisions in the contract. A Turkish immigrant living in Germany agreed that “it’s not a bad idea for immigrants to gain knowledge of the German language, but German people also have to accept that their country has turned into a multi-racial society.” [Germany to Draw Up ‘Values Contract’ for New Immigrants, BBC News, Nov. 23, 2009.]

Post-racial BNP

Last summer the UK’s Human Rights Commission gave the British National Party (BNP) an ultimatum: admit non-whites or face prosecution for violating racial equality laws. Fearing that a legal fight would bankrupt the party, chairman and recently elected Member of the European Parliament Nick Griffin (who will address the American Renaissance Conference in February) decided to adapt and survive. Assuming the membership approves the change in an upcoming vote, the BNP will now accept non-white members. It even has its first applicant, Rajinder Singh, a 78-year-old Sikh immigrant who once served as a character reference for Mr. Griffin during a race-hatred trial.

Mr. Singh, a retired teacher, is a relentless critic of Islam, who blames Muslims for the death of his father during the 1947 partition of India, in which 2 million people died. “Anyone escaping that genocide would pray to God, say never again, and vote for the BNP,” he says. Mr. Singh has been associated with the BNP for years, has written for the party’s newspaper, Freedom, and appeared on its Internet television channel, BNPTV. He says he would be honored to become a card-carrying member. A BNP spokesman says of Mr. Singh, “He is perhaps the kind of immigrant you want if you are going to have them.” Mr. Singh is likely to be followed by another Sikh, an accountant who goes by the name of Ammo Singh and has helped the BNP hand out leaflets critical of Islam.

Sikh groups say they are “appalled.” Indarjit Singh, director of the Network of Sikh Organizations, says, “Sikhism stresses equality for all human beings. Therefore, Sikhs who are true to their faith will have nothing whatsoever to do with any party that favors any one section of the community.” [Ben Quinn and Jerome Taylor, BNP Signs Its First Non-White Member, Independent (London), Nov. 20, 2009.]

Not What They Fought For

Nicholas Pringle is a British author who, after hearing tales of his grandmother’s life during the Second World War, decided to write a book about the experiences of her generation. He placed ads in newspapers asking older people to send him their stories. Nearly 150 replied, and most had very negative responses to two of Mr. Pringle’s questions: “Are you happy with how your country has turned out?” and “What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?” The overwhelming sentiment expressed by surviving veterans and civilians is betrayal: “This isn’t the Britain we fought for,” wrote one. “My patriotism has gone out of the window,” wrote another. “I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,” wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese, “and I wonder why I ever tried.” A commando who participated in the raid on Dieppe told Mr. Pringle, “Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today.”

Immigration and transformation of Britain into a multi-racial society top their list of complaints: “People come here, get everything they ask, for free, laughing at our expense. We old people struggle on pensions, not knowing how to make ends meet. If I had my time again, would we fight as before? Need you ask?” Says another, “Our country has been given away to foreigners while we, the generation who fought for freedom, are having to sell our homes for care and are being refused medical services because incomers come first.” “Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,” wrote a former infantry soldier, “and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.” A veteran of the North African and Mediterranean campaigns wrote, “This is not the country I fought for. Political correctness, lack of discipline, compensation madness, uncontrolled immigration — the ‘do-gooders’ have a lot to answer for. If you see youngsters doing something they shouldn’t and you say anything, you just get a mouthful of foul language.”

Older Britons have near-universal contempt for politicians of all parties, with one exception: Enoch Powell who, in his so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968, warned that mass immigration would cause the ills they are now enduring. Mr. Pringle’s book, The Unknown Warriors, can be purchased at theunknownwarriors.co.uk. [Tony Rennell, ‘This Isn’t the Britain We Fought For,’ Say the ‘Unknown Warriors’ of WWII, Daily Mail (London), Nov. 21, 2009.]

They Learn Quickly

The Florida legislature recently approved a 200 to 400 percent increase in fees on hotels that are listed on state-owned signs near Interstate highway exit ramps. Indian hotel owners, who have learned how things work in America, have complained directly to the governor that the new fees are unfair. As Nash Patel, spokesman of an Indian hotel owners’ association explains, “The vast majority of hotels in the state of Florida are owned by our association, so we feel that it is a direct impact on us.” [Hoteliers Upset Over Fees, WCTV-TV (Tallahassee), Nov. 24, 2009.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I have some comments on the Farron and Trask articles from the Dec. 2009 issue. Steven Farron’s article was quite interesting, and together with Robert Henderson’s Oct. 2009 essay on Asian achievement, represents a refutation of the “Chinese were superior to Europeans” mythology and an effective riposte to arguments supporting “high-IQ” Asian immigration.

One critique is that Dr. Farron could have mentioned a paper by Richard Lynn: “Race Differences in Intelligence, Creativity and Creative Achievement,” Mankind Quarterly, 2007, (48,2) 157-168. (Editor’s note: See Prof. Farron’s reference to this paper on page 13 of this issue.) Also of interest is Richard Nisbett’s: The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . And Why, (Free Press; 2003). Although Mr. Nisbett rejects genetic arguments for IQ and behavior, one could interpret his findings to conclude that the differences between European and Asian thinking are innate and heritable, and that “culture” cannot fully explain the vast gulf between the Occident and the Orient.

Dr. Trask is insufficiently skeptical of Bryan Sykes’ work, which is grossly incomplete. While I do not doubt Prof. Sykes’ data, his conclusions are based on outdated methodology and are weak and unsubstantiated. Single-locus markers like the non-recombining Y chromosome (NRY) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) may have some marginal utility in asking very specific questions on population history; however, the word “marginal” must be stressed. We are now in the age of large-scale autosomal (nuclear) genetic analysis, and conclusions on group ancestry are valid insofar as they are based on a firm foundation of such analyses. Do not misunderstand: I am not saying that Prof. Sykes’ work is absolutely useless and should not be discussed. However, I am saying it must be put in context; that it is only an initial and very incomplete reading of the genetic evidence. Conclusions at this point are premature, and we have to await detailed and multiple autosomal studies before concluding that we know British racial ancestry and identity with reasonable certainly.

Further, even if we accept Prof. Sykes’ methods, he really does not know what the genetics of the ancient Celts, Germans, and Romans were. Brennus, Arminius, and Julius Caesar did not stop by Prof. Sykes’ laboratory to provide DNA samples; instead, Prof. Sykes extrapolates from modern populations to their alleged ancient counterparts, an approach that is fraught with difficulties. Therefore, when Prof. Sykes says that “true Roman genes are very rare in the Isles,” what he more realistically means is “NRY and mtDNA haplotypes that I assume represent those of the ancient Romans are not found at high frequency in the British Isles” — a far cry from the original definitive statement.

While I understand why Dr. Trask wishes to minimize the differences between Germans and Celts, it is true that he wrote in the same essay that the two groups separated “tens of thousands” of years ago, which would mean they were not much alike at all. Truth be told, Dr. Trask is in error. Time frames of “tens of thousands” of years are actually what separate Europeans from Asians; differences between Germans and Celts are likely measured in the thousands, not tens of thousands, of years. The point remains that they were not identical peoples.

In a sense, however, this is irrelevant for the purpose of British preservationism. It doesn’t matter how the British people and their gene pool came to be; they exist, and the British people have a vital interest in their own continuity. It doesn’t matter how “admixed” the British are, and past “admixture” of whatever degree does not obligate a people to accept present or future admixture, nor does it justify genocidal race replacement. However, I do agree that an understanding of their identity and ancestry may help motivate the peoples of Britain to defend themselves and their genetic inheritance. Unfortunately, the questionable work of Prof. Sykes is a weak reed on which to lean.

Carl Aldophus Lundgren, St. Paul, Minnesota

Sir — A couple of days ago a friend here in the prison asked if I had received the November issue of AR, which included my article about my prison experiences (see “Integration at its Worst,” AR, Nov. 2009). I jokingly told him it was probably sitting on the desk of the Gang Intelligence (GI) Officer. The very next day, a mail clerk brought me a denial slip for the issue, meaning that it was being held up because it included an article that was a threat to the security of the prison — the article I wrote, for heaven’s sake! I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I have had run-ins with GI Officers and the mail room before.

Of course, there is nothing I wrote that could be considered a threat to anyone or anything. It is all history and common knowledge. I appealed the denial, but this is a waste of time. The only time I have ever seen a denial withdrawn was when the publisher wrote in protest. It would be nice to see my own article.

H. Scott Lacy, Lovelady, Tex.

Editor’s note — AR received a notice from Mr. Lacy’s prison explaining that pages 1 and 3 of the November issue contain “material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve a breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots” and that the issue must therefore be confiscated.

We have appealed this absurd ruling.

You must enable Javascript in your browser.