O Tempora, O Mores! (September, 2007)
American Renaissance, September 2007
Investigate Cult, Get Fired
Brett Hart, a white man, is the former chief jailer in Clarke County, Georgia. His boss, Sheriff Ira Edwards, is black. Sheriff Edwards used to give Mr. Hart favorable job performance reviews, and a 2004 Georgia Sheriff’s Association report praised the Clarke County jail as “one of the best-managed jails in the state.”
All that changed when Mr. Hart began investigating black deputies who were involved in a cult called the “United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.” Even the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it a “black supremacist cult.” Mr. Hart says Clark County deputies were distributing Nuwaubian cult literature, recruiting prisoners into the cult, and writing to Nuwaubian cult leader Dwight “Malachi” York, who is serving a 135-year sentence. The law forbids deputies to do these things. Mr. Hart also found that in exchange for financial contributions to his election campaign, Sheriff Edwards had hired at least six known Nuwaubians as deputies or as other public employees.
Mr. Hart drew up a report on these activities but Sheriff Edwards and other county officials deleted some 40 pages from it, and ordered Mr. Hart to destroy all remaining copies. Sheriff Edwards then fired Mr. Hart, who has filed a civil rights lawsuit against his former boss. [Joe Johnson, Fired Jailer Sues Sheriff: Probe of Cult Influence at Issue, Athens Banner-Herald, June 22, 2007.]
Washington Goes Brown
Franklin County, in south-central Washington, is the fastest-growing county in the Pacific Northwest and was the first to have a majority Hispanic population (it is also the 31st fastest-growing county in the nation). Fifty-seven percent of county residents are Hispanic, up from 47 percent in 2000. Neighboring Adams County is 52 percent Hispanic.
Pasco, the seat of Franklin County, had 15,000 residents in 1978. Thanks to the Hispanic influx, it now has more than 50,000. In 1982, there were 5,000 students in the school system; by 2006 there were 13,000. The city has built five schools to accommodate them, and plans to build more. Sixty-five percent of students in Pasco come from homes where English isn’t spoken at all or is not the primary language. The high school makes morning announcements in both English and Spanish.
Pasco is having trouble paying for its expanding school system. Many Hispanics are farm workers living in cheap houses, so the city doesn’t have much property tax revenue. It desperately needs taxable industries, but school superintendent Saundra Hill isn’t worried. “I look at our diversity as a strength, and I think that approach has really helped us tackle some difficult issues and be successful with them,” she explains.
Hispanics are the fastest-growing non-white population in the state of Washington. Between 2000 and 2006, their numbers increased by 28 percent. [Shannon Dininny, Washington’s Franklin County First Hispanic-majority County in NW, AP, July 28, 2007.]
Nashville, Tennessee, has more Kurds — 10,000 from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran — than any other city in the country. Unlike Hispanics, Kurds have largely stayed away from crime — until recently. Now a gang calling itself “Kurdish Pride” has taken to assault, rape, and home invasion. It has borrowed heavily from California gang patterns, using rap slang, hand signs, and an official color — theirs is yellow. They scrawl “KP” on buildings to mark their territory. Members say they established Kurdish Pride after the Sept. 11 attacks in response to threats and harassment of “their community,” but Nashville police know of no violence against Kurds.
Kurdish Pride targets Hispanics. Police say that since January, members have invaded 10 homes of Hispanics. During one invasion, gang members raped a pregnant woman. Police caught one suspect, but 17-year-old Zana Noroly hanged himself in jail before trial. In June, police arrested four Kurdish Pride members on suspicion of trying to murder a park police officer who interrupted a drug deal.
Unlike most gang members, these young criminals tend to come from stable middle-class families. The Kurdish community hopes that summer mosque school and a youth soccer league will prevent others from joining Kurdish Pride. “They need to realize what they do is harming themselves and to a larger extent the Kurdish community,” says Kirmanj Gundi, a professor of educational administration at Tennessee State University. [Kristin M. Hall, Kurdish Gangs Emerge in Nashville, AP, July 31, 2007.]
International Corruption
Transparency International is a non-governmental organization that ranks the world’s countries from least to most corrupt. The ten most corrupt countries are, in descending order: Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Guinea, Iraq, Myanmar, and Haiti. The least corrupt nations, from the top, are Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands. The United States ranks 22nd out of 163 countries. [Corruption Index Places Africa at List’s Bottom, eindiana.com, July 28, 2007.]
McKinney’s Folly
Cynthia McKinney, the black former Georgia congresswoman best known for hitting a Capitol Hill policeman who didn’t recognize her, is suing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and black columnist Cynthia Tucker for libel. During Miss McKinney’s unsuccessful primary fight last summer against Hank Johnson, Miss Tucker described her as “ineffectual” and a “hothead.” She also mentioned anti-Semitic remarks made by Miss McKinney’s father (former Georgia state rep. Billy McKinney) in 1997, and brought up the 2006 incident with the Capitol Hill cop.
Miss McKinney doesn’t say anything in the column was demonstrably false — except for a small detail about cop incident — but she claims to have suffered “physical and emotional stress” and “permanent impairment to her ability to continue her livelihood” as a member of Congress. She wants more than $10 million in actual damages, plus punitive damages.
This is not the first time Miss McKinney has sued after losing an election. In 2002, she sued her opponent Denise Majette, the Georgia Secretary of State, election officials in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, and the Georgia Republican Party. A Georgia court dismissed the case, and the state Supreme Court denied appeal. [Greg Land, Experts: McKinney Libel Claims Face a Tough Road, DailyReportOnline.com, July 31, 2007.]
Gangs in the Military
On July 3, 2005, Army Sgt. Juwan Johnson, an Iraq war veteran then stationed in Germany, died of injuries from a “jump-in” — a gang initiation rite in which members take turns beating up the new guy. Sgt. Johnson had hoped to become a member of the black, Chicago-based gang, the Gangster Disciples.
Sgt. Johnson’s death underscores the growing problem of gangs in the US military. The Army Criminal Investigation Command says there were 61 gang investigations and incidents last year, up from nine in 2004. There have been reports of Marines dressed in gang clothing at the Paris Island boot camp, 82nd Airborne paratroopers flashing gang signs near Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and Ft. Hood infantrymen showing off gang tattoos. Gang graffiti have been found in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a recent report, the FBI called gangs “a threat to law enforcement and national security.”
The problem is worse because of the manpower shortage brought on by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To fill the ranks, military recruiters have been issuing a lot of “moral waivers,” which let certain felons enlist. Since 2003, 125,000 recruits with criminal records have joined up.
Colonel Gene Smith of the Army’s Office of the Provost Marshal says reports of gang activity in the military are overblown. “We must remember that there are a million people in the army community,” he says. “And these small numbers are not reflective of a tremendous, pervasive, rampant problem. We represent America — our demographics are the same — so the same problems that America contends with we often times contend with.”
Military regulations allow gang members to join up, but disqualify members of so-called “hate” groups. [Gangs Spreading in the Military, CBS News, July 29, 2007.]
Signing Off
Earl Brown runs a used-furniture store in Monroe, North Carolina. When he set up shop in 2001, there were no Hispanic businesses in his part of town. Since then, poultry plants and the construction boom lured thousands of Hispanics to Monroe. A decade ago, 11 percent of the schoolchildren were Hispanic; now 50 percent are.
“The dynamics of this area has changed so much,” he says. “Every time a house has been empty, it’s gone Latino.” There are now Hispanic-owned stores on his street, with signs in Spanish. When people he suspects were Hispanic broke windows in his store last fall, Mr. Brown put up a sign. One version read, “Honk if you hate Spanish.” Another, “Honk if you loathe Mexico & its flag.” “I was tired of running a store and not understanding a single word my customers said,” he says.
Hispanic neighbors were upset. Matilde Gomez, who owns Tienda Mexicana Juquilita across the street, thinks his signs are racist. “I can’t put a sign out that says, ‘I don’t like black people,’” she says. The local paper sniffed, “When you peddle hate — and make no mistake that was exactly what he was doing when he was seeking support for his loathing of Mexico and its flag — you should expect to be repaid in kind.”
Mr. Brown says he got a lot of support from US citizens and legal residents. “In a way, it kind of voiced the opinion of a lot of middle-class white Americans — and blacks. I think a lot of people are downright frustrated because there’s nothing they can do about it.”
On March 31, he argued with a Hispanic customer who warned him something would happen if he didn’t take down his sign. Two weeks later vandals smashed his windows. Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime, but have made no arrests. Mr. Brown now carries a pistol and keeps the door to his store locked. A sign — in English — asks customers to knock. He still gets Hispanic customers, though the number has fallen from 25 percent of his business to 15 percent.
Mr. Brown plans to close his store and leave Monroe. He says the controversy has nothing to do with his decision, but the vandalism “convinced me to get out of town quicker than I had planned.” He says he will continue selling furniture, but only on eBay. [Julia Oliver, Store Owner Uses Sign to Criticize Latino Influx, Charlotte Observer, May 22, 2007.]
Diversity at Yale
Yale University, established in 1701 to train young men for the ministry, is the third oldest university in the United States and the first to grant the Ph.D. degree. Like other Ivy League schools, Yale was once synonymous with the WASP elite. No longer. The incoming freshman class is the most “diverse” in the Yale’s history, with 40 percent from ethnic or religious “minority groups.” [Yale Says New Class Most Diverse Ever, AP, August 1, 2007.]
Mayor Stands His Ground
Pat McCrory is the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. During this year’s Fourth of July festivities in uptown Charlotte, there were 169 arrests for various forms of public misbehavior. Mayor McCrory wrote a letter to the city manager, in which he mentioned that “too many of our youth, primarily African American, are imitating and/or participating in a gangster type of dress, attitude, behavior and action.”
Ken White, president of the Charlotte branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, demanded an apology, claiming the mayor used “insensitive” words that “characterized all young black people as troublemakers and gang members.” Pat McCrory refused to apologize. Why not? “Because my comments were accurate. Period.” [Melissa Manware, NAACP Asks McCrory to Apologize, Charlotte Observer, July 12, 2007.]
Police in Jackson, Mississippi, feared they had a “hate crime” on their hands on July 4 when someone burned a cross at the Freedom Corner Monument, which is dedicated to Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers. Police and firemen at the scene discovered racial slurs scrawled in a notebook, and this led them to the suspect, 52-year-old Bill Sanders, Jr. They were surprised to find that Mr. Sanders is black. “We’re not sure right now of his motive,” says Jackson Fire Chief Vernon Hughes. “The only thing we know right now is he was looking for some sort of attention.” [Carole Cole, Jackson Cross Burning Update, WJTV.com, July 5, 2007. Arrest Made For Cross Burning, AP, July 6, 2007.]
In-state Tuition for Illegals
A new Colorado law requires Colorado state colleges and universities to charge out-of-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. Across the state line in New Mexico, however, a 2005 law prohibits educational institutions from “discriminating” against illegals, and the University of New Mexico (UNM) is even trying to “qualify” at least seven illegal alien graduates from Colorado high schools for in-state tuition. All seven would be spirited across yet another border to receive American largesse.
New Mexico and Colorado have an agreement according to which up to 100 high school graduates from each state can get in-state tuition rates in the other state. New Mexico appears to be using some of these 100 slots for the Colorado illegals, even though the agreement requires that everyone in the program be in the country legally.
This doesn’t bother Isabel Thacker, who is a counselor at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, from which some of the New Mexico-bound illegals graduated. “The neat thing . . . is that we have been able to open the door of opportunity for these [illegal] students,” she says. Now that this gimmick has been exposed, it remains to be seen whether the taxpayers of New Mexico will think it is a “neat thing.” [Immigrants to Get In-state Tuition, Albuquerque Journal, July 17, 2007.]
