Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

That’s what little Afghan boys are made of.

Oh, and don’t forget man-love Thursdays. Beats TGIF by a mile! J/k.

I’m not trying to dog their culture or anything, but this is what happens  when you put your females in purdah starting at age 12 and make them wear bags outdoors for the rest of their lives: the guys start screwing each other like crazy.

Situational homosexuality is universal. If the chicks aren’t putting out for one reason or another, the guys, especially the young guys, are going to start fucking each other. Which is a great argument either for socially approved mass early marriage, sexual revolution or legalized prostitution, or some combination.

I’ve seen it with my own horrified eyes in California in the early 1980’s, and I fended off plenty of “straight” (wink) guys myself. A young man has a semi-hardon all day, and all it takes is a breeze to give him a full one. Nature abhors a useless hardon as much as she abhors a vacuum and will strive to fill the vacuum and find any hole in a storm for that lonely hardon.

Your choice, Afghans. Don’t like man-love Thursdays? Fine. Get rid of the purdah for tweens and the bags later on.

The Terrorist Nukes Bullshit

Barack Obama is in Washington hosting a stupid international conference on terrorism and nuclear weapons. Supposedly, the terrorists are trying to make a nuclear bomb. Once they get one, they will use it. Everyone is scared! Even the smart people!

There are several strands of idiots who are feeding this Stupid Frenzy.

First, there are the National Security Staters in the US, ever hungry for a bigger budget.

The Defense budget is higher than any time since WW2, we spent more on defense than the rest of the world combined, yet it’s never enough, and we are terrified of nations like Iran with a military budget

None of it makes sense, but it’s been a part of American Stupid Culture for a long time now. Both parties are “strong on defense.” Why? Who knows? With the Republicans, it’s an article of faith, and with the Democrats, they keep trying to act like Republicans on this issue, but no matter how hard they try, Republicans scream that the Dems are “soft on defense.” Tens of millions of otherwise intelligent Americans are actually intensively involved in this insipid debate.

There is one reason for a gigantic military budget like that, and one only. If the US is an Empire, and US capitalist imperialism intends to rule the globe for multinational corporations and the world elite, then the gigantic US imperialist army makes perfect sense. Like the Roman Army back in the day. But no one ever says we need the huge military for Empire, although apparently that’s what it is for, since it can’t be for anything else. Why is that?

US imperialism is funny. Anyone with a brain can see it exists, as all huge capitalist powers are necessarily imperialist, but no one ever admits it.

Ever hear a Republican shout, “Hooray for US imperialism!”? Of course not. Republicans all insist there is no US imperialism, and they call you Commie for even bringing it up.

Democrats, sadly, also say there is no US imperialism, and they give you a disgusted look when you say there is. The more intelligent ones say that we used to be an imperial power, back in, say, 1903. But we chucked all our colonies, except for a few! Whoops! And we have not been imperialist for decades now. Others will tell you that the USSR was imperialist because they controlled Eastern Europe, but the US isn’t.

US imperialism works great. Everyone who matters knows it exists, but they never talk about it. The other 9

The second faction is International Zionism.

International Zionism is in control of about 400 nuclear weapons, including atom bombs, hydrogen bombs and the ultimate capitalist weapon, the neutron bomb. The neutron bomb is cool because it kills off the useless wage-hogging human workers while letting the capitalists keep all their stuff, like buildings and factories and banks. Israel also may have tactical nukes, which are some of the worst of all. These are designed for specific situations, and can be supposedly fired out of artillery.

Like the Americans above, the Israelis have Insecure Bully Syndrome. They have 400 nukes and the 4th biggest military on Earth, but they scream and yell like children every time some nignog from Gaza shoots a glorified bottle rocket at them. It’s like there’s a 300 champion prize fighter screaming that 7 year old girls are going to kick his ass. So he beats up little girls in self-defense, while everyone nods and agrees with him. That’s how nutty it is.

Anyway, Israel doesn’t want any competition. They get all the nukes, and their enemies get none. That’s called: fair. I’m not kidding. That’s what it’s called: fair.

International Zionism is always yelling, “Terrorists will get nukes and drop them on Aunt Ruth in Tel Aviv! Oy vey!”

It’s ridiculous, but it’s mostly just a way of whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria. After all, terrorists = Muslims.

The other faction are the liberals.

Liberals hate nuclear weapons, and they are always wringing their hands about them. We have to stop proliferation!

Hmm, are the nuclear powers going to give up their bombs? Course not. Don’t ever challenge a liberal on this one. They will stammer and sputter and slam their fist on the table. The US must have nukes because we are Good. Possibly even God-ordained Good. Therefore we can’t give up our nukes. So…does anyone else get nukes to, like, defend themselves against the saintly Americans? No way! The liberal is pounding the table by now and his face is turning red.

US liberalism has always been pretty bankrupt.

So Obama’s hosting the Stupid Conference. You know, the Conference To Keep Muslims From Getting Nukes, because that’s what it’s really all about:

The day before the conference, the Indian prime minister met Obama and tackled him about Pakistan’s inaction against Muslim terrorists and exhorted him to jointly combat terror emanating from Pakistan as the most dangerous source of potential nuclear terror.

According to Debkafile’s military and intelligence sources, the Indian and US leaders failed to agree on whether Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was sufficiently secure. Indian leaders as well as their military and intelligence advisers have repeatedly warned Washington that al Qaeda and Taliban were moving in on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities through their deep penetration of Pakistan’s intelligence service and may soon be in position to take over.

In his previous conversations with Obama, Singh reported that Israeli intelligence shared India’s assessment of the Pakistani nuclear hazard.

Or maybe it’s the Get Pakistan Conference. Pakistan is home of the Muslim nuke, and Muslims are terrorists, so Pakistan = nuclear terrorism. Um, right?

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel, was supposed to show up, but he canceled, afraid he would have to admit to the 400 nukes he has stashed in his backyard.

Well? So is it real or what? I mean the terrorist nukes?

No, no and no. It’s not real. The terrorists, whoever they are, cannot make a nuke. Even large countries with huge budgets, gigantic universities and thousands of the best engineers have the darnedest time making these things. It’s quite difficult, and many nations have tried to make nukes and given up because they were not able to do it.

So that means a bunch of terrorist yo-yos hiding in caves are going to “make a nuclear bomb,” right?

Can you believe serious people discuss this stuff?

Another thing is that a nuke, if you have one, is more or less useless. For instance, if I were a terrorist, I could not stash my secret nuke here in my apartment. That’s because a nuke is about the size of a Volkswagen. Should be simple to smuggle such a tiny object around, no?

OK, suppose I got a nuke the size of a Volkswagen. I bought it at Osama’s Used Terror Supplies on the Internet.

I somehow got it shipped to my house without the world’s intelligence agencies finding out, and now I’m storing in my garage, next to my other car. Suppose I put it on a truck to detonate it. Thing is, there is no way to detonate this bomb.

I could even put it in a plane, assuming I could find a plane big enough to carry a Volkswagen, and drop it on New York City and nothing would happen other than a few folks might get squashed. Same as if you dropped a Volkswagen on Manhattan. Just dropping the thing won’t detonate it.

You could shoot it with any weapon you can think of, drop bombs on it, set the darn thing on fire, heck, I bet you could even stick on a rocket and shoot into the Sun and nothing, I mean nothing, is going to detonate that bomb.

In order to detonate a nuclear bomb, you have to perfect a detonation device. The device must be calculated down to the thousandth or millionth of a second. Many nations have spent years trying to get the detonation right and have not succeeded. I doubt if North Korea has the detonation down yet, and they’ve probably been trying for 15-20 years.

So, obviously, a bunch of yahoos who ride donkeys and live in mountain caves could make a detonation device just like that, huh?

See how dumb this debate is?

The International Zionists and US Security Staters (pretty much the same folks anymore) like to scare themselves, and scare you. They’re like this international brotherhood of Steven King types running around thinking up scary stories all the time to keep their oft-useless paychecks coming.

One of their latest horror stories was something called the suitcase nuke. Fools have been on prime time news for 20 years now warning us direly about these suitcase nukes, perfect for terrorists. And the terrorists are always trying for the suitcase nukes. You know, so they can act like they’re going to the office and instead blow up Washington DC while they’re riding on the subway reading the paper.

You picture some guy with a suit and tie, carrying a suitcase, right? Inside is a nuke! To blow up Manhattan! Scary, huh?

Know what? It’s bullshit. There are no suitcase nukes. They exist in the same netherworld as anything in the world of science fiction. They are totally theoretical, and anyway, they would be the size of a footlocker, not a briefcase, if they even did exist. After the USSR broke up, wild rumors swirled around that the Soviets had developed suitcase nukes. 20 years later, and not one has ever turned up. No photos, no evidence, no nothing. So far, they’re as real as the Man in the Moon.

So this is what Obama is hosting an international conference about right now. Barack today:

Ahead of the Washington conference, US president Barack Obama called nuclear terror “the single biggest threat to US security, short term, medium and long-term.”

You idiot.

US Blacks Make Great Educational Gains

Here.

From the paper:

In the United States, based on a national assessment of adult literacy, African Americans improved their scores more than any other racial/ethnic group in the years between 1992 and 2003. The survey measured three elements of literacy: prose, document, and quantitative literacy – which are reading, synthesizing information from documents and graphs, and basic math.ch are reading, synthesizing information from documents and graphs, and basic math.

There’s an agenda behind most of the White nationalist and race realist arguments about Blacks. It should be no surprise that almost all such folks are conservative to reactionary, and many are out and out libertarians. They nearly all subscribe to the philosophy of minimal government and a free market. Such an agenda always decimates public education, but that’s how they want it. They’re either going to home school, send their kids to private schools, or they’re idiots.

There’s a reason that they continually harp on lower Black IQ’s and fall all over themselves to say that the Black IQ has been flat for 100 years. This means that Blacks are, for all intents and purposes, ineducable. Any money you spend on educating them is money down the rathole since they’re incapable of learning. This is a very convenient argument for moneyed Whites who hate the public schools. If educating Blacks is useless, let’s just quit educating them and cut them off. Think of all those nice White tax dollars you could save.

Marx was right in a sense. Everything isn’t all about economics, but in the modern world, so much of life surely is.

And with the White nationalists and race realists, there’s an ugly economic argument behind all the racist rhetoric: “I don’t want my hard-earned White tax dollars going to educate useless niggers.” This is the thought process underlying a lot of the anti-government movement in the US for the past 30 years. I know. I’ve lived in rightwing White communities all those years, and I know exactly how my people think. The rightwing revolution, from Reagan on, was about a lot of things, but it was so about race.

Above we see that one of their prime arguments is a lie. Turns out Blacks are educable after all. Turns out that they can improve over time, giving the lie to the sly hereditarian assumption that Black achievement will be frozen by genetic constraints.

On the NAEP, Blacks have reduced the gap by about 1/3. You would never know this if you went to a White nationalist site. All they do is rant that there’s been no progress.

Blacks now nearly match Whites on vocabulary, controlling for socioeconomic status.

Controlling for economic status, Blacks now nearly match Whites on vocabulary. So increasing Black economic status raises Black vocabulary scores dramatically. At the same time, rising White economic status had no effect on scores.

Young Blacks have closed the B-W IQ gap by 5.5 points over 30 years.

Young Blacks have closed the B-W IQ gap by 5.5 points over 30 years. However, this applies only to Black minors. By age 24, the gain is all lost, and the B-W IQ gap is the same. One thing that is very interesting is that Black 5 year olds have IQ’s of 98 (US White IQ = 103). That’s only 5 points below US White IQ’s. People say it’s because Blacks mature faster, but that seems like a lousy argument. Black kids score about the same as Black adults in Africa.

On the cynical side, I could note that environmental effects are greatest in childhood. As one moves into adulthood, environmental effects diminish, and genetic effects tend to predominate.

However, this data does show that the extremely rich Western environment of the US is dramatically raising the IQ’s of Black children. It is interesting that this gap closing has occurred in the past 30 years, which coincides with Liberation from 1964-on. There may be hope yet.

All this positive news aside, any discussion of B-W achievement gap that does not include talk about IQ is useless. Yet that’s what passes for policy debate in the US.

The gap may never be entirely closable, but surely it can be reduced.

Not One Jew Was Killed in the 9-11 Attacks, and the WTC Is Full of Jewish Workers

“Not one Jew was killed in the 9-11 attacks, and the World Trade Center is full of Jewish worker.”

So goes a popular theory/rumor that began going around the Arab and Muslim World soon after the attacks. Although many were understandably dubious of this charge, we lacked hard evidence to refute it until recently.

The argument continues that 4,000 Jewish workers who worked in the towers stayed home from work that day, presumably because they had been warned by the Israelis that the WTC would be attacked. But the argument would have to be that these 4,000 Jewish workers were not only warned ahead of time by the Israelis, but they also neglected to tell even one single person of this warning and furthermore, they did not warn any non-Jews or the plot nor did they inform authorities. This seems highly dubious to say the least. 

The argument was compelling though. Downtown New York is full of Jews. Obviously the WTC must have had many Jewish workers at work that day. How could only one Jew die in the attack? Surely there is something suspicious about that.

Both of these theories, the thousands of Jews being forewarned and only one Jew dying are based on the theory that the 9-11 attack was actually carried out by the Israelis or that the Israelis were involved in it somehow. Israeli involvement in the plot remains to be proven, though hazy Israeli foreknowledge that something suspicious was afoot seems to be a reasonable conclusion.

The problem with this theory is that it is apparently based on lies.

There is no evidence that even one Jew who worked in the towers was warned to stay home that day, nor did any Jew, or any other WTC worker, stay home from work that day due to a forewarning.

I estimate that 10-1

It is true that only one Israeli died, but why is this so important? The argument would have to be that the Israelis saved their own Israeli Jews from the attack but left hundreds of Diaspora Jews to die. This sounds highly improbable to say the least. At any rate, one wonders just how many Israelis worked in the WTC on any given day? The number could not have been large.

At a bookstore, reading a magazine, I once saw a list of all 3,000+ victims of the 9-11 attacks. On a whim, I decided to test out the “no Jews died in the 9-11 attacks” theory. I started counting the obviously Jewish names on the list to see if there was anything to the rumor. I quit when I got to 300-400 and threw down the magazine in disgust.

 

We now have lists of some of the Jews who died in the attacks, including this list of these 76 Jews who died, for whom we have names and brief biographies. 

Here is a list of 77 Jews who died in the 911 attack (a partial list of ~350+ Jews who apparently died in the attacks):

Lee Alan Adler, 48, was a computer designer at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Adler was a member of the board of trustees of Temple Beth Ahm in Springfield, New Jersey, where memorial services were held for him. He was married to his wife. Alice, for 15 years and had a 12-year old daughter. His daughter wrote in a February 22, 2002 message on an internet memorial site, “Daddy I love you!”

Joshua Aron, 29, was an equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. Joshua’s father, Barry Aron, says, “Not a minute goes by in a day that I don’t think about Josh. … It’s like part of you being ripped out and you can’t replace it.” Barry talks to his son’s widow, Rachel daily. Mr. Aron and Rachel would have celebrated their first wedding anniversary on September 16, 2001. Memorial services were held at the Oceanside Jewish Center in Oceanside, New York.

Michael Edward Asher, 53, was vice president and senior technology architect at Cantor Fitzgerald. On September 10, 2001, he talked with his son Jeremy, 18, about rebuilding an old Jaguar automobile. Mr. Asher was also survived by his wife Dana and a daughter, Rachel, 16. A memorial service was held for him at the Monroe Temple of Liberal Judaism in Monroe, New York.

Debbie S. Bellows, 30, was an executive assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald. She was survived by her husband Sean, who wrote, “Debbie meant the world to me. … My heart will always be filled with the love and beauty that filled her soul.” A memorial service was held for Ms. Bellows at the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.

Alvin Bergsohn, 48, was an equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. From a picture posted on the Internet, it appears that he was survived by a wife and two sons. A service was held for him at the South Baldwin Jewish Center in Baldwin Harbor, New York.

Shimmy D. Biegeleisen, 42, was vice president of Fiduciary Trust International. Susan Townsend, who interviewed for a job at Mr. Biegeleisen’s company, described him “a genuinely kind and gentle soul, a man of true integrity.” A friend, Joseph Weinberger, said he was “a person with a golden heart, loved everybody, always with a smile.” Another described him as “a perfect mix of God-fearing, friendly, and fun.” Tony Skutnik said he was “a kind and gentle man, generous and forgiving almost to a fault.” He was survived by a wife and five children.

Joshua David Birnbaum, 24, was an assistant bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. His best friend, Leehe Matalon, wrote, “Josh’s smile always managed to light up the faces of those he surrounded himself with. He had a special charm ….” He was survived by his parents, Sam and Marcel, and a sister, Jill. A memorial service was held for him at the Sephardic Congregation of Long Beach in Long Beach, New York.

Kevin Sanford Cohen, 28, was a computer support person for Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his parents, Barry and Marcia, and a brother Neil. His mother said that when she had asked him why he didn’t slow down, he replied, “Mom, I believe in living life to the fullest.” A memorial service was held for him at Neve Shalom in Metuchen, New Jersey.

Michael Allen Davidson, 27, was an equity options trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. A co-worker named Jay wrote, “He could have been the nicest, most sensitive person I have ever met. Everyone loves him.” He was engaged to be married the following July to Dominique DeNardo. Mr. Davidson was survived by his mother Ellen. A memorial service was held for him at Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Peter Feidelberg, 34, worked for Aon corporation. Mr. Feidelberg was from Montreal, Canada, and worked at Aon with his wife, Meredith Ewart, whom he had married in March 2000. According to the Canadian Jewish News, Mr. Feidelberg attended Jewish Peoples School, ran in the 1998 New York Marathon, enjoyed rugby, mountain biking, skiing and scuba diving, and had backpacked through Europe, Costa Rica, Turkey and other countries.

Steven Mark Fogel, 40, was vice president and assistant general counsel for Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Kori, a son and a daughter. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Emanuel in Westfield, New York.

Morton H. Frank, 31, was an insurance equities broker at Cantor Fitzgerald. In college, he was a member of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi. A childhood friend said he had “a fun-loving spirit and a wonderful heart.” He had married his wife Jessica 14 months before 9/11.

Arlene Eva Fried, 49, was vice president and assistant general counsel at Cantor Fitzgerald. She met her future husband Ken when she was 15 and he was 17. When the youngest of their three daughters entered kindergarten, Arlene went back to school to study law. Her parents, Nicholas and Ronnie Joseph, were both survivors of Nazi concentration camps; her mother had been at Auschwitz.

They wrote, in a October 13, 2003 internet tribute, “As Arlene Joseph Fried’s parents, the loss is indescribable; a daughter with indescribable warmth and love toward her whole family and friends — losing her left an unhealable wound in our hearts.” A memorial service was held for her at Temple Beth Shalom in Roslyn, New York.

Douglas B. Gardner, 39, was a vice chairman at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife, Jennifer, and two children. Memorial services were held at the Stephen Weiss Free Synagogue in New York City.

Steven Paul Geller, 52, was an institutional trader for Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Geller loved to cook with his daughter, Hali, 12. He was also survived by his wife, Debra. A memorial service was held for him at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City.

Marina Romanova Gertsberg, 25, was one of 16 Russian-speaking Jews who perished in the 9/11 attacks, according to World Congress of Russian Jewry. Her family had emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine to the United States when Marina was four so that her father would not have to serve with Soviet forces in Afghanistan. She joined Cantor Fitzgerald as a junior manager one week before September 11. A memorial service for her was held at the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Jeffrey Grant Goldflam, 48, was senior vice president and chief financial officer at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Goldflam was survived by his wife Risa and two children. He was a track and soccer star in high school. Robert Kayton, a college acquaintance, remembered Mr. Goldflam as “easygoing, friendly, and helpful.” A memorial service was held for him at Temple Beth Tohar in Melville, New York.

Michelle Herman Goldstein, 31, worked as a broker for Aon Risk Services insurance company. She had married her husband, Edward Goldstein, exactly seven months before 9/11. After the first plane struck the North tower of the World Trade Center, she called her mother, a Hebrew teacher at the Tamarac Jewish Center in Florida, from the 96th floor of the South tower to reassure her that she was all right. Her mother described her as “full of life. She lights up a room when she smiles.”

Monica Goldstein, 25, was an accounts specialist at Cantor Fitzgerald. She spent long hours at her older sister’s house, caring for her two young nephews and visiting with her sister. Her father said, “Her smile and her laugh were infectious. … The loss has totally changed our lives. We’ll never be the same anymore. … She was a very, very special person.” Ms. Goldstein was engaged to be married in September 2002. A memorial service was held for her at the Congregation B’nai Israel in Bay Terrace, New York.

Steven Goldstein, 35, had started work for Cantor Fitzgerald two weeks before September 11. Working in his basement, he had started and developed an online trading system, which he sold to Cantor Fitzgerald. His wife said his motivation was to make a lot of money and retire so he could spend time with his family. She said he loved nothing more than spending time with his one-year old son Harris and three-year old daughter Hanna. Mr. Goldstein had been a member of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi when at the University of Michigan.

Marcia Hoffman, 52, was vice president and senior technical architect at Cantor Fitzgerald. A former child-welfare worker, she switched to a career in computers. She was survived by her husband, Jim, and her daughter, Lara. A memorial service was held for her at the Kane Street Synagogue in New York City.

Aaron Horwitz, 24, was a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was described as a showman who loved entertaining people, someone who “seized souls, not letting go until he made them merry.” A memorial service was held for him at the Brotherhood Synagogue in New York City.

Daniel Ilkanayev, 36, was a senior programming analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Ilkanayev was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the former Soviet Union. He was one 16 Russian-speaking Jews who perished in the 9/11 attacks, according to World Congress of Russian Jewry.

Brooke Alexandra Jackman, 23, had just started working as an assistant bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. On September 10, 2001, she had told her mother she was applying to Columbia University’s School of Social Work because “there is more to life than making money.” A crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 attended her memorial service at the Jewish Center in Oyster Bay, New York. She had volunteered a community soup kitchen and a thrift shop for cancer patients.

Aaron Jacobs, 27, was a vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was making plans for a honeymoon, perhaps to Africa, with his bride-to-be, Jeannine McAteer. He had backpacked through Europe, taught English in Mexico, and climbed a volcano in Greece. His dream was to retire at an early age and travel. He also taught job skills to welfare recipients. A memorial service for him was held at Temple Emanuel in Newton, Massachusetts.

Steven A. Jacobson, 53, was a transmission engineer working on the 110th floor of World Trade Center’s north tower. His job was to keep the WPIX television station on the air, no matter what happened. After working the night shift at the television station, he opened the Town and Village synagogue where he worshiped. Mr. Jacobson was survived by his wife, Deborah, and two daughters, Rachel and Miriam.

Family was the most important thing to him; he called his mother every day. Colleagues say he called them on September 11, saying his room was filling with smoke but it was too hot to leave even though he was having trouble breathing.

Shari Ann Kandell, 27, was a support staffer at Cantor Fitzgerald. She loved the theater and was studying for a degree in English in the evenings. Her father said, “the overwhelming and outstanding quality that Shari showed all her life was her total selflessness.” Many at her memorial service at Temple Beth Rishon in Wyckoff, New Jersey spoke of her giving priority to the needs of others.

Andrew Keith Kates, 37, was a senior managing director of Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Emily Terry, two daughters, Hannah, 5, and Lucy, 3, and a son, Henry, 1. His wife said that although Mr. Kates was a serious bike rider, swimmer, and runner, having run the New York Marathon in three hours and 15 minutes, his family came first. Every Saturday morning, the children would crowd into bed with Mr. Kates and his wife. A memorial service for him was held at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City.

Peter Rodney Kellerman, 35, was a vice president and equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Robi. Mr. Kellerman had a doctor’s appointment on the morning of September 11, but came to work when the appointment was rescheduled. Friend Jon Bott wrote how he misses Mr. Kellerman’s “infectious humor, your wonderful wit and how comfortable and easy you made people feel.” A memorial service was held for him at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City.

Howard Kestenbaum, 56, was an executive vice president at Aon Corporation. His 24-year old daughter Lauren saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Kestenbaum, who was in the second tower hit, had evacuated his office on the 103rd floor and was at the 78th floor when his tower was struck. Witnesses say he was knocked unconscious by flying debris.

Mr. Kestenbaum was always joking and made others laugh. He was an active member of Congregation Beth Ann in Verona, New Jersey, visited the sick and old, and volunteered at a homeless shelter.

Mary Jo Kimelman, 34, had worked for Cantor Fitzgerald for 13 years. Friends and family say she was an extremely loyal, outgoing person who wrote poetry and enjoyed traveling. Her boyfriend, Thierry LeBras, said she had a special talent of listening to people she had just met, getting them to open up about their lives. A memorial service was held for her at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

Glenn Davis Kirwin, 40, was a senior vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was also an avid cyclist, runner, golfer, and skier, who would go on 80-kilometer bicycle rides. His wife, Joan, says he always found time to play with his sons, Miles, 10, and Troy, 7, even after long workdays. A memorial service was held for him at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.

Alan Kleinberg, 39, was just days away from transferring to a different Cantor Fitzgerald office on September 11. He was survived by his wife, Mindy, a three-year old son, Sam, a seven-year old daughter, Lauren, and a nine-year old son, Jacob. His mother said Mr. Kleinberg limited his outside interests so he could spend more time with his family. A memorial service was held for him at the Jewish Center in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Karen Joyce Klitzman, 38, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. She and her twin sister Donna spoke with each other every day on the phone. Karen had taught English for two years in Macao and Beijing, China, and traveled in Siberia and throughout the Middle East. A memorial service was held for her at Stephen Weiss Free Synagogue in New York City.

Nicholas Craig Lassman, 28, was a computer technician for Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Lassman studied computers after several years of teaching golf in Florida. He also taught himself how to play the guitar and learned Russian and German so he could read books in those languages. He spoke to his parents, Ira and Laura Lassman, almost every day. A memorial service for Mr. Lassman was held at Temple Beth-El in Cloister, New Jersey.

Alan Lederman, 43, started work for Aon Corporation two months before September 11. Just before reporting to work, he climbed Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the continental United States. Most of his co-workers left the World Trade Center’s south tower, where he worked, but Mr. Lederman stopped to help two women who were paralyzed by panic. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Neve Shalom in Metuchen, New Jersey.

Neil D. Levin, 46, was Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs New York’s three major airports, its port facilities, six bridges and tunnels, and is landlord of the World Trade Center complex. Mr. Levin was at a breakfast meeting at the Windows on the World restaurant atop the north tower when it was hit on September 11.

Mr. Levin’s wife, Christine Ferer, called him “the love of my life, the most kind and generous person,” and someone who became a “super-Dad” to Ms. Ferer’s two daughters from a previous marriage. A memorial service for Mr. Levin was held at the Temple Emanu-El in New York City. His family set up a scholarship fund in his name for children of Port Authority employees killed on September 11.

Steven Barry Lillianthal, 38, was a mortgage bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Adina, 4-year old twins, Emma and Gabriel, and a three-month old son, Sam. A memorial service was held for Mr. Lillianthal at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, New Jersey.

Stuart T. Meltzer, 32, was an energy broker at Cantor Fitzgerald. He had two young sons; the eldest, Jacob, was four years old when he died. His brother, Larry, said he talked with Stuart at least five days a day, often discussing sports. A memorial service for Mr. Meltzer was held at Temple Emeth in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Nancy Morgenstern, 32, was an administrative assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald. She was an Orthodox Jew whose passions were cycling and skiing. She would bring kosher food and the pots and pans needed to stay kosher on cycling racing trips. In a website dedicated to her memory, her mother wrote, “Nancy, I miss you more than mere words can express. Not only were you my daughter, but you were also my best friend.”

A co-worker described Nancy as “one of the most thoughtful, disciplined, funny, crazy, independent women I ever knew.” Fifty-eight friends wrote tributes to her on her memorial website.

Laurence M. Polatsch, 32, was a partner in equities sales at Cantor Fitzgerald. A prankster, Mr. Polatsch donned a tuxedo and crashed the 2000 wedding of celebrities Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. He ate with actor Jack Nicholson before security guards asked him to leave. Mr. Polatsch’s mother said he once flew back from college to present her with flowers on her birthday.

Recently, Mr. Polatsch had resumed a relationship with childhood sweetheart Marni Wasserman, and they were expected to marry. Guttermann Funeral Home in Woodbury, New York confirmed that Mr. Polatsch was Jewish.

Faina Rapaport, 45, was a computer programmer working as a consultant to March & McLellan. In 1994, she and her family emigrated from Moscow, Russia to New York. At the time of her death, her son Alex was 25 and her daughter, Elena, 19. Elena said, “I know my mother is still happy about coming to America. She accomplished things that she never would have been able to do in Russia.”

Joshua Reiss, 23, was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. An enterprising young man, Joshua began delivering newspapers at age 10, worked in the family business before attending college, and worked full-time as a waiter while also being a full-time student with a double major at college. More than 1500 people attended his memorial service at Adath Israel Synagogue in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. On August 27, 2002, his mother wrote on the internet, “We miss you and still want you to come home. I will always have a void in my soul.”

Brooke David Rosenbaum, 31, was supervisor in the overseas division of Cantor Fitzgerald. He was sick on September 10, but went to work the next day because, according to a friend, he felt that without him, “the whole place would fall apart.” He was survived by his mother, Dorothy. A memorial service was held for him at the Jewish Center in Rego Park, New York.

Sheryl Lynn Rosenbaum, 33, was an accountant and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald. Her father described her as the “glue” of their family. She was survived by her husband, Mark, and two children, aged 3 months and 17 months. A memorial service was held for her at Temple Har Shalom in Warren, New Jersey.

Lloyd Daniel Rosenberg, 31, was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Glenna and three daughters, Samantha, 5, Kaylee, 3, and Alyssa, 1. His wife said that “Lloyd’s passion was being a ‘daddy.’ His girls were his pride and joy. I will forever miss the Saturday mornings when I would sneak downstairs and watch him reading them a book or playing ‘horsie.'” A memorial service was held for him at Temple Shalom in Aberdeen, New Jersey.

Mark Louis Rosenberg, 26, was a computer programmer for Marsh & McLellan. He attended Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy in New York and Yeshiva University for a short time. Mr. Rosenberg met his wife, Jennifer, at a Jewish youth event. She said, “He was a great people person. He got along with everybody. He had a great smile and a great sense of humor.”

Andrew Ira Rosenblum, 45, was a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald. He married his wife, Jill, at Temple Hillel in North Woodmere, New Jersey, and their sons Jordan and Kyle were 14 and 11, respectively, when their father died. Mr. Rosenblum’s friend, Steve Cohen, said, “Andy was the kind of guy that had many circles of friends and many dear friends within each circle.”

Joshua M. Rosenblum, 28, was an assistant trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was only four days away from marrying colleague Gina Hawryluk on September 11. Ms. Hawryluk stayed home from work that day to plan their wedding. Mr. Rosenblum and co-workers smashed out windows with computers on the 104th floor to let smoke escape. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Beth El in Cedarhurst, New York.

Joshua Rosenthal, 44, was a senior vice president at Fiduciary Trust. He was an avid reader, mountain hiker, and sailor. A friend described Mr. Rosenthal as “a wonderfully warm and witty person who was loved and admired by those who knew him.” A memorial service was held for him at Birmingham Temple in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Richard Rosenthal, 50, was vice president of finance at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Rosenthal was treasurer of the Jewish Center in Fair Lawn, New Jersey and also treasurer of the Dysautonomia Foundation.

His son Evan, 18 years old when Mr. Rosenthal died, suffers from dysautonomia, a disorder of the nervous system that confines him to a wheelchair. Evan has needed a feeding tube to eat since he was 2. Friends say Mr. Rosenthal “was always with [Evan].” His younger son Seth, 15 years old when Mr. Rosenthal died, said, following September 11, “I’m going to keep calling him on the cell phone until he answers.”

Michael Craig Rothberg, 39, was a managing director for Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Rothberg was an avid skier, boater, and jogger. Described as “modest and unassuming” and extremely loyal to his co-workers, Mr. Rothberg raised money for multiple sclerosis in a bike-a-thon and for a friend who had cancer. A memorial service was held for him at the Temple Sholom in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Ronald J. Ruben, 36, was a vice president of equity trading at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Mr. Ruben, who was unmarried, “was Uncle Ronnie to 100 kids,” said his sister, Leslie Dillon. When he received his first holiday bonus, he spent it all at a toy store, delivering gifts to children at a hospital near his home.

Mr. Ruben’s father, Peter, died of cancer in 1998 and his mother, Marjorie, died in 1996, also from cancer. To honor them, Mr. Ruben had their initials, M and P, tattooed over his heart. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Israel in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

Jason Elazar Sabbag, 26, was a portfolio manager at Fiduciary Trust. He was engaged to be married to Sarah Hare when he died. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Sholom in Greenwich, Connecticut, at which friends recalled his “warm demeanor, his playful sense of humor, his extraordinary talent in sports, academics, and business, and, most of all, his love for his family and very large circle of friends.”

Eric Sand, 36, was an equity trader at cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Sand, a talented musician who had once pursued a career in music, had more recently played guitar for a special audience — his young son, Aaron, who was 18 months old when Mr. Sand died. Mr. Sand’s wife, Michelle, said he would rush home from work to spend as much time as possible with his son. A memorial service was held for Mr. Sand at Congregation B’nai Yisrael in Armonk, New York.

Scott Schertzer, 28, worked in the human resources department of Cantor Fitzgerald. On September 10, he felt terrible because he had to give layoff notices to a number of co-workers, but this saved their lives. Mr. Schertzer was an excellent soccer and baseball player who could bench press 102 kilograms, even though he weighed only 70 kilograms.

A memorial service was held for him at Congregation B’nai Ahavath Shalom in Union, New Jersey. On December 5, 2001, his mother, father and sister posted this note on an internet memorial site: “We can never say ‘Good-bye.’ You will always be with us. We love you and will always love you.”

Ian Schneider, 45, was a senior managing director for Cantor Fitzgerald. His lifelong friend Howie Kessler said, “This guy loved life. No one danced harder at a party or shouted louder at a ball game.” His wife Cheryl said that when he arrived home, his three children Rachel, 11, Jake, 9, and Sophie, 7, fought for the right to jump first into his arms. Almost 2000 people attended Mr. Schneider’s memorial service at Temple Sharey Teflio-Israel in South Orange, New Jersey.

Many were families of the children he coached on soccer, softball, and baseball teams, a chore he undertook so he could spend more time with his children.

John Burkhart Schwartz, 40, was a bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

Jason Sekzer, 31, was a vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald. His father, Will Sekzer, who is active in a fraternal society of Jewish New York policemen, described his son as “handsome, smart, humble, and polite.” Mr. Sekzer had married Nastasha Makshanov eight months before he died. On September 10, the photographer called to say that their album of wedding photographs was ready. A memorial service was held for him at East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Hagay Shefi, 34, was the co-founder and chief executive of GoldTier Technologies, a software company. Mr. Shefi had lived in the United States for eight years, after emigrating from Israel, and was close to becoming a U.S. citizen. He was in the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center to make a business presentation when it was struck. On September 16, 2001, his body was found intact in the rubble. He was survived by his wife Sigal, also from Israel, a five-year old son and a three-year old daughter.

Mark Shulman, 47, was a disaster inspector, fire prevention and risk consultant for March & McLellan. He was survived by his wife, Lori, and daughters Melissa, 17, and Jamie, 12. “His family always came first,” his mother Evelyn said. “He did everything for his family. I lost a treasure.” A memorial service was held for Mr. Shulman at Temple Shaari Emeth in Manalapan, New Jersey.

Allan Abraham Shwartzstein, 37, was a managing director and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald. “He was about the most considerate person I knew,” longtime friend Mark Madoff said. One thousand people attended the memorial service for him at Temple Beth El in Chappaqua, New York. He was survived by his wife, Amy, a five-year old daughter, Jessica, and a four-year old son, Matthew.

Arthur Simon, 57, was a vice president and equities trader at Fred Alger Management company. He and his son, Kenneth Alan Simon, both died in the World Trade Center. The elder Mr. Simon worked on the 93rd floor; the younger on the 104th. One of Mr. Simon’s greatest loves was dancing. He was survived by his wife, Susan, a son, Todd, and two daughters, Mandy and Jennifer. A memorial service was held for him and his son at Temple Beth El in Spring Valley, New Jersey.

Kenneth Alan Simon, 34, was an equities trader for Cantor Fitzgerald. He and his wife, Karen, had adopted a daughter, Maya, who was 10 months old when he died. “You should have seen his face when he looked into her big brown eyes for the first time,” his wife said. “He just melted.” The Simons had plans to adopt more children.

Mr. Simon called his wife after the plane hit to say that he was going to look for his father, Arthur Simon, who worked 11 stories below him. A memorial service was held for both father and son at Temple Beth El in Spring Valley, New Jersey.

William E. Spitz, 49, was a government bonds broker at Cantor Fitzgerald. He had a degree in elementary education. A memorial service was held for him at Oceanside Jewish Center in Oceanside, New Jersey.

Eric A. Stahlman, 43, was a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. He joined the company about 10 weeks before September 11. He was survived by his wife, Blanca, who is from Ecuador, a seven-year old daughter, Allison, and a four-year old son, Jacob. Long friendships and close family ties were the things he cherished most, family members said. A memorial service was held for him at Temple Beth El in Papchoque, New York.

Alexander Robbins Steinman, 32, was a vice president in equities sales for Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Steinman had attended the wedding in Italy of lifelong friend Richard Diamond on the weekend before September 11. He then rushed home to get back to work, which he loved. “Alex had an incredible sense of humor and he got as much out of life as anybody possibly could,” Mr. Diamond said. He said Mr. Steinman had been “the life of the party” at his wedding in Italy. A memorial service was held for Mr. Steinman at Temple Israel in Staten Island, New York.

Kenneth W. Van Auken, 47, was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Lorie, and two children, Matthew and Sarah. His wife says Mr. Van Auken was her “rock,” the loving spirit in her life, and someone who was always willing to interrupt what he was doing to have some fun with his children. He was also a skilled carpenter, building a deck, bookcases, and other projects around his home. A memorial service was held for him at Temple B’nai Shalom in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Steven Jay Weinberg, 41, was an accounting manager for Baseline Financial Services. He was survived by his wife Laurie and three children, Lindsay, 12, Samuel, 8, and Jason, 6. He went to all his children’s sports events and volunteered at the Parents-Teachers Association. A memorial service for Mr. Weinberg was held at the Nanuet Hebrew Center.

Simon Weiser, 65, was a power-distribution engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A Jew born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1936, he arrived in New York in 1978. He was survived by his wife, a son, and three grandchildren. He was planning to retire in 2002.

David Thomas Weiss, 50, was vice president and deputy general counsel for Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife Marcia and daughter Gina. He was described as a “very private man with a kind, sweet and generous heart and … above all else … limitless devotion to this family.” A memorial service was held for him at the Brotherhood Synagogue in New York City.

Michael Wittenstein, 34, was a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was scheduled to marry his fiancée, Carrie Bernstein, on October 20, 2001. His uncle, Mark Hershkowitz, said he had thought many times after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 about buying Michael a parachute, and wishes he had. “Michael was one of those people who always had a smile, always seemed happy at whatever he was doing,” relative Warren Treuhaft wrote. As in the Jewish tradition, Mr. Wittenstein was buried with some of his possessions.

Marc Scott Zeplin, 33, was an equities trader for Cantor Fitzgerald. He was survived by his wife, Debra, and two sons, Ryan, 3, and Ethan, 10 months old. Mr. Zeplin once dreamed of becoming a professional sportscaster, having broadcast hockey games at the University of Michigan. His friends formed the Marc S. Zeplin Foundation, which helps children who lost a parent or loved one on September 11. A memorial service for Mr. Zeplin was held at the Jewish Community Center in Harrisson, New York.

Charles A. Zion, 54, was a senior vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald. Mr. Zion was survived by his wife, Carole, and his 16-year old son, Zachary. “He was a great guy and a great husband,” his wife said. A memorial service for Mr. Zion, who was the son of a rabbi, was held at the Greenwich Reformed Synagogue in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Andrew Steven Zucker, 27, was a lawyer with Harris Beach LLP, which had offices in the World Trade Center’s south tower, which was the second one hit. Mr. Zucker, a former volunteer fireman, stayed around the 78th floor, where the second plane hit, to help others evacuate. He was survived by his wife Erica, who was pregnant with their first child when he died. Mr. Zucker was a member of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi.

Igor Zukelman, 29, worked with computers at Fiduciary Trust Company, on the 97th floor of the north tower, which was hit first. Mr. Zukelman was an immigrant from the Ukraine, arriving in the United States in 1992, and was survived by his three-year old son. According to the World Congress of Russian Jewry, Mr. Zukelman was one of 16 Russian-speaking Jews killed in the September 11 attacks.

Mark Brisman, an attorney from Armonk.

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Nice Summary of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Excellent article from the BBC covers Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni, Paktika, Khost, Paktia, Logar, Wardak, Nangarhar and Kunar Provinces in Afghanistan. The Taliban are most prominent in the South, in Helmand, Kandahar, Oruzgan and Zabul. They also have a strong presence in the East, in Khost, Paktika and Paktia and to the north in Kunar.

They have a lesser presence in Nangarhar, Ghazni, Logar and Wardak, but I think this article unnecessarily played down their presence in Ghazni. In Ghazni, the Taliban rule the night.

Excellent graphic from the BBC of the main Taliban areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ghazni is way worse off than Logar and Wardak.

In Pakistan, the Taliban have a strong presence all along the border, especially in Chaghai, Quetta, Toba Kakar, North and South Waziristan, Mohmand, Bajaur and Swat. I think they have a very strong presence in Dir also. In fact, I have long suspected that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Dir. Ayman al-Zawahiri recently married a woman from the Mohmand tribe, the major group in the Mohmand region.

They have a lesser presence in the Orakzai, Kurram and Khyber Agencies.

The Pakistani Taliban are divided into groups that mostly fight in Afghanistan and others that mostly fight in Pakistan. The ones that mostly fight in Afghanistan are the ones that the Pakistani government would be most likely to cut a deal with.

I think the article is correct that the Taliban leadership is in Quetta. It would not surprise me.

There are 24,000 militants in South Waziristan, including many foreign fighters who for all intents and purposes are part of Al Qaeda. The foreign jihadis, including Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and Uighurs, have married deeply into the local tribes and are now part of the neighborhood. In the West, a Taliban group fights mostly in Afghanistan, while in East, another group fights in Pakistan.

There are 10,000 militants in North Waziristan. Jalaluddin Haqqani is a powerful force here. The militants mostly use this area as a base for operations in Afghanistan, and Haqqani brokered a peace deal with the Pakistan government in 2006. Haqqani has an excellent force, and it was his forces who blew up the CIA base in Khost a while back, killing 8 CIA officers, including the CIA chief of Khost. That’s some darned good counterintelligence.

Orakzai and Kurram have a lesser Taliban factor due to many Shia living there. Shia want nothing to do with the hyper-Sunni Taliban. However, there are 2,000 militants in Orakzai controlled by Hakimullah Mehsud of the Mehsud tribe. He is also one of the big shots in South Waziristan. His forces are present in Orakzai and in Lower Kurram where there are few Shia.

They have filtered up to the Khyber Agency where they are behind a lot of the attacks around Peshawar. Peshawar is no longer a safe city. There is a strong Taliban presence in the slums on the outskirts of the city in particular.

The Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is present in the Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber Agencies. This group has been fighting Pakistani forces from the very start. The Pakistani government is currently in the midst of a large operation against militants in Mohmand and Khyber.

Maulvi Faqir Mohammad is the head of the Taliban in Bajaur, and he is  a dangerous fellow. I’ve long suspected him of harboring top Al Qaeda figures. He has about 10,000 militants under his command. A truce ended hostilities here in 2009, and the TTP was supposed to dissolve itself and yield to the state. That has not happened, and they are back in charge of much of the Agency.

There are 5,000 militants in Mohmand Agency who are currently fighting the Pakistani government. The government is making good progress against them.

There was a large militant network of unknown size until recently in the Swat Valley. Swat had always been governed under archaic British colonial law which was ended in the early 1990s’s. This resulted in a campaign to impose Sharia Law. Finally, Sharia Law was imposed in 2009 as part of a deal with the government, but the fighting continued. Militants here were vicious, attacking anything and anyone having anything to do with the Pakistani state.

After a savage counterinsurgency by Pakistani forces, things are pretty calm. But there was a price to be paid for this, as many militants were murdered by state death squads who abducted them, tortured them horribly until their deaths and then left their mangled and mutilated bodies in the open for everyone to see. This was the Salvadorization of Swat Valley. It worked, but I don’t support such tactics.

All in all, the article lists 51,000 Pakistani Taliban forces in Pakistan, but I am afraid there are a lot more than that, since the forces in rear bases of Quetta and Chaghai are not included.

Racism and Dissidents in Cuba, From the Miami Herald

In the comments section, tulio, referring to a propagandistic Miami Herald article on Blacks in Cuba, disagrees with me about the Cuban treatment of Blacks.

But it’s a strict meritocracy.

That sounds like Castro propaganda. There are no strict meritocracies anywhere on earth. I have no reason to think one exists in Cuba, especially in was is still by western standards a corrupt Latin American nation. Things like bribing officials are still standard fare as is common the Latin countries.

You don’t see so many Blacks and mulattos in the top positions probably because their IQ’s are lower and they can’t cut the tests, etc. Cuban education is extremely competitive and if you can’t cut it, you’re gone. Cuba has no US style affirmative action.

There’s discrimination across the board, even lucrative jobs like tourist service and driving cabs. They don’t take high IQ and these jobs mostly go to white Cubans. So I don’t thing it’s just a matter of IQ. I don’t know what the average IQ of black vs. white Cubans is anyway.

Well, whether it’s a meritocracy or not, that’s what the WN’s on American Renaissance say it is. They all hate Communism and Castro, and they hate Blacks. If there was discrimination, they would openly admit it.

But as I can see in the article, there is indeed still racism and discrimination in Cuba. But it’s not true that if you bring it up, you go to jail. Lots of Black revolutionary Cubans have been talking about this for a long time. For the tourist industry, I guess they figure that the tourists would rather deal with a White person than a Black person. Cynical thinking there.

Cuba has the lowest poverty rate in Latin America at

As far as jobs requiring a good education, it’s well known that the Blacks and mulattos do poorly in school, get poor grades, etc. Further, they commit a wildly disproportionate amount of street crime, so that’s why the cops harass them. Black Cubans work in the worst jobs because they have the least education.

There is also a certain amount of ghetto type behaviors that started in the Special Period. The government would build brand new housing for Cubans, a bunch of Blacks would move in and in a few months, it would be ruined as they took apart everything they could unscrew to sell it on the Black market. It’s widely acknowledged that Cuban Whites would not have fouled their own nests like that.

Contrary to this lying article, there has been a huge debate in Cuba for many years about the Blacks and their elevated rates of various pathologies. Cuba has many sociologists, and they debate this all the time in their journals and publications. The current fashionable theory is Oscar Lewis’ “The Culture of Poverty” theory. So it’s not true that the regime doesn’t care about race or never talks about it.

The educational system is a meritocracy. There’s no affirmative action in the schools. The Blacks and mulattos do poorly in the schools and on tests. The Cubans test you all the time, and the educational system is very competitive. There’s no passing people along. A lot of the Blacks just can’t cut it academically, and Cuba doesn’t have educational affirmative action to inflate their numbers at the colleges.

However, I think that Raul should take an anti-racist stand and encourage the Blacks to form civil rights organizations. I don’t think he should worry it’s going to bring down the state.

That article seems wrong about other stuff. I’m not aware that Internet is illegal in Cuba. I thought it was legal. There are lots of Cuban bloggers, some anti-government, openly blogging and no one does anything.

I’m also not aware that satellite TV is illegal. If you go to the richer parts of Havana, you will see those dishes everywhere. If they’re illegal, no one is doing anything about it.

The Cuban dissidents, unlike the dissidents in Eastern Europe, simply have no support. Or very little support. That’s why they’re not popular.

There are ~2,500 dissident organizations on the island and ~500 political prisoners. You do the math. Most of dissidents, the government just leaves alone and ignores them.

But some of the dissidents are working with the US government and the CIA to bring down the government. They are working hand in hand with the US Interests Section (We have no Embassy). They go there, get money, advice, plans, etc. That’s illegal in Cuba. That’s what most of those arrests are for.

Man, This Is So Wrong

Here.

Along the same lines, and in the same backwards land, here.

This makes me sick.

Age of consent laws are there for a very good reason. Some humans are just too young to be having sex. Leaving the moral and mental health issues aside, if for no other reason than basic biology and anatomy, we ought to oppose the radical pro-pedophile activists.

I don’t think a 12 year old girl should fucking anyone, except herself maybe, and if she, God forbid, gets pregnant, she probably needs to be forced by the state to have an abortion for the sake of her own health. After all, she’s a minor, and via in loco parentis, the state has the right to intervene and force treatment of minors to safeguard their health.

I know some Yemenis, and they are nice enough people, but Yemeni society is viciously misogynistic. The Yemenis I know tell me that their sisters all stay home and don’t work, since Yemeni men don’t allow their women to work. Such wonderful Medieval reactionary cultures the multicultural Leftists are flooding this modern Western land with.

The second link is to a feminist site, and the feminists are roaring furious about this. It’s about time, and three cheers for them.

Western feminism is all about the evils of Western White men. Truth is that no group of men on the face of the Earth treats women better than Western White men, and what do we get for it? A kick in the balls. Thanks a lot, bitches.

Recently, a bill was introduced to the Yemeni Parliament to raise the marriage age to 17, but the Islamist idiots shot it down, saying that it violates Sharia Law. What the Hell does Sharia Law say about this matter?

Everywhere on Earth, Islamists are always reactionary and backwards. In Jordan, Islamists have blocked efforts to increase the penalties for honor killings, even though all Muslim scholars agree that honor killings are un-Islamic.

In Iraq and elsewhere, Islamists fought land reform, since the Koran says it is natural for there to be rich and poor. In addition, in Iraq at least, the mullahs were in bed with the large landowners and were very corrupt. In Palestine in the 1930’s, Islamists and mullahs once again were in bed with the large landowners, in this case mostly absentee landowners.

"The Same Old Song," by Alpha Unit

Since I’ve been here I’ve seen several instances of a White person telling the story of how he used to be liberal or egalitarian when it comes to race – and then he saw the light. He came to realize that there are, in fact, serious differences among races. That a lot of the politically unpalatable stuff said about Blacks is…true. The way they describe this new-found recognition of innate Black deviance, you can almost hear the sigh of relief. “Now I can criticize Black people out loud. And there’s a whole community of people just like me out there with whom I can share stories and vent all my frustration.” A “race realist” has just emerged from the Liberal Womb. Only it’s not really that impressive. The most hardcore post-slavery racists saw themselves as “realists” when it came to race. Some of them mocked people – especially well-intentioned Northerners – who were trying to assist in the advancement of Blacks. In belittling such efforts, their amused attitude regarding “the Negro” was, “God save him from his friends!” They had the entirely “realistic” view that there was only so much that could be done for “the Negro,” and that White people had their hands full just trying to deal with the very real likelihood that “the Negro” among them would revert to his natural savagery, inflicting ruin on decent White society. These latter-day race realists are heirs to a really old tradition. Blacks who lived through the worst of Jim Crow would instantly recognize “race realism.” And so would Whites who lived through it, I’m assuming. Is there anything about this new mindset that’s different from what others have believed since the founding of the republic?

“The Same Old Song,” by Alpha Unit

Since I’ve been here I’ve seen several instances of a White person telling the story of how he used to be liberal or egalitarian when it comes to race – and then he saw the light.

He came to realize that there are, in fact, serious differences among races. That a lot of the politically unpalatable stuff said about Blacks is…true.

The way they describe this new-found recognition of innate Black deviance, you can almost hear the sigh of relief. “Now I can criticize Black people out loud. And there’s a whole community of people just like me out there with whom I can share stories and vent all my frustration.”

A “race realist” has just emerged from the Liberal Womb.

Only it’s not really that impressive.

The most hardcore post-slavery racists saw themselves as “realists” when it came to race. Some of them mocked people – especially well-intentioned Northerners – who were trying to assist in the advancement of Blacks. In belittling such efforts, their amused attitude regarding “the Negro” was, “God save him from his friends!”

They had the entirely “realistic” view that there was only so much that could be done for “the Negro,” and that White people had their hands full just trying to deal with the very real likelihood that “the Negro” among them would revert to his natural savagery, inflicting ruin on decent White society.

These latter-day race realists are heirs to a really old tradition. Blacks who lived through the worst of Jim Crow would instantly recognize “race realism.” And so would Whites who lived through it, I’m assuming. Is there anything about this new mindset that’s different from what others have believed since the founding of the republic?

The “Western Blacks Act Bad Because They Are Stupid” Nonsense

A commenter disagrees with me when I said that I don’t think there is anything to this “Blacks act bad because they’re dumb” argument.

Nevertheless, I would say that easily 10

Only one problem: it is complete nonsense.

Whatever causes Blacks to engage in pathological behavior to an excessive degree, being dumb can’t possibly have anything to do it, at least not with Blacks in the US and the UK.

Race realists typically bandy about the “Blacks act bad because they’re stupid” thing.

Well, if you’re intelligent, you would *think* before you act. You wouldn’t pull a knife or gun out on someone simply because you lost a basketball game or an argument. Plus, you would be far less likely to engage in impulsive behavior and have a greater ability to delay gratification. What do blacks do when they get their welfare checks? Spend it on a perm or a weave.

Yes, but there are quite a few populations all over the world that have IQ’s in that range where people do not behave that way at all. They are not idiotically impulsive in behavior or spending, they save their money, they are calm and emotionally controlled, crime rates are very low, violent crime is almost nonexistent, family life is stable, pathological behavior is rare, and society generally hums along pretty well.

Costa Rica   89
Laos         89
Samoa        88
Azerbaijan   87
East Timor   87
Indonesia    87
Myanmar      87
Tajikistan   87
Turkmenistan 87
Uzbekistan   87
US Black    86.8
Kuwait       86
UK Black    86
Cuba         85
Yemen        85
Iran         84
Jordan       84
Morocco      84
Saudi Arabia 84
UAE          84
Algeria      83
Bahrain      83
Libya        83
Oman         83
Syria        83
Tunisia      83

Granted, there’s some political violence in a few of those places, but there’s political violence everywhere. I don’t think political violence automatically means you have a nation full of morons, or Germany and Japan would end up two of the most retarded nations on Earth.

This argument about Western Blacks makes no sense at all.

Populations with the exact same IQ’s of US and UK Blacks do not engage in ridiculous impulsive violent and spendthrift behaviors. They are able to delay gratification and plan for the future quite well.

Granted, there’s a case that Blacks have difficulty in planning for the future, delaying gratification, engaging in impulsive criminal, violent or prodigal behaviors, but IQ can’t possibly have anything to do it, since there are many populations with the exact same IQ which don’t behave this way at all. Obviously something is causing it, but lack of brains can’t have anything to it.

It is here that we may enter into the realm of race and personality.

But the argument in the title deserves to be thrown on the trash heap once and for all. I’m tired of it.

Linguistic Map of Latin America

Map of the major languages of Latin America

This is an interesting map, though on first thought it seems unnecessary.

First of all, it makes quite clear how Brazil stands out as the Portuguese speaking state in Latin America. One could argue that this makes them odd man out, but if we look in terms of population, Latin America has a population of 570 million. 192 million of those are Brazilians. So 3

All the Spanish-speaking countries can communicate well with each other, and there is a “neutral Spanish” that any educated person can use when conversing with any other educated person from Hispanophone Latin America. As long as you are doing this, you will both be understood.

Getting down to regional dialects, things do get complicated. I understand that Chilean soap operas, spoken in the rich dialect of the Chilean street, are dubbed in the rest of South America because other South Americans can’t understand Chilean street Spanish. But they are  probably well understood in Argentina. There does seem to be a “Southern Cone Street Spanish” that is harder to pick up as the latitudes move northward.

Bolivian Spanish sounds strange, but it’s probably intelligible in South America. It heavily inflected with Indian languages.

There is a general Caribbean Spanish that can be hard to understand.

The language of the Colombian Caribbean coast can be hard for even other Colombians to understand.

Dominican Spanish is notorious for being hard to understand. First of all, it seems to be based on Canarian Spanish of the Canary Islands, which is a very strange form of Spanish. Into this base went a ton of African words, much more than in the rest of Latin America. Further, it is spoken very fast. Dominican Spanish is pretty baffling to other Spanish speakers, at least for a while. Nevertheless, there is a more neutral form of Dominican Spanish that is widely intelligible to other Hispanophones.

On the streets of Mexico City, a very hardcore slang has emerged, sort of a Mexico City Street Spanish, that is pretty hard to figure out outside of Mexico.

Latin America is interesting in that the rest of the world seems to be learning “English as the universal language,” while Latin America is lagging behind.

I know quite a few educated Latin Americans who barely speak a lick of English. Latin Americans live not so much  in the society of the Western Hemisphere, but more particularly in the society of Latin America. And Latin America is extremely Hispanophone. Everywhere you go, most everyone speaks Spanish. Spanish is a very highly developed modern language with words for everything. Why bother to learn English? What for? To talk to gringos?

However, at advanced university levels, such as Master’s Degree and particularly doctorate level, increasingly there are requirements to learn English.

One would think that Mexicans at least would be required to take some English in school, right? Forget it. First of all, Mexican schools are crap, and they are broke. The elite and upper middle class steal all the money in the country, and the Libertarian/Republican dream minimal state/free market economy hosts horribly defunded and decrepit schools. It’s not uncommon to meet 20 year old Mexicans who dropped out in the 2nd grade.

English is typically not offered in Mexican public schools. It’s only offered in private schools, which is of course where the moneyed class above sends their kids, which is why they won’t pay for public schools (They don’t use ’em), which is why the public schools are crap. I’m sure many more non-Hispanic Americans in the US are taking Spanish than Latin Americans are studying English.

Hispanophones also often do not bother to learn Portuguese. Some of the educated ones claim they can understand it without studying it, but I doubt it.

A lot of Brazilians say they can understand Spanish pretty well (I think they study Spanish more than Hispanophone Latins study Portuguese), but when you start talking to them in Spanish (which I do on a regular basis) it doesn’t seem to work very well. Want to talk to a Brazilian? Learn Portuguese!

As we can see on the map, both French Guyana and Haiti speak French.

I was talking about Haiti with my liberal Democrat Mom once. The general conversation was along the lines that Haiti was all screwed up. She said, “Well, they’re all Black, they’re dirt poor, and worst of all, they’re in the Western Hemisphere, but they all speak French!” Indeed. What do these funny Frencophones think they’re doing in our Anglophone, Hispanophone and Lusophone Hemisphere anyway?

Further, the language of Haiti is not really intelligible to French speakers. It makes about as much sense as hardcore Jamaican English does to us. However, the Haitian elite often speaks good French. They also say they understand Spanish, but I’ve tried to talk to them in Spanish, and it didn’t go anywhere. Often they don’t understand much English either. Want to talk a member of the Haitian upper class? Learn French!

So the Haitians are rather isolated in this Hemisphere, but I’m not sure if your average dirt poor Haitian cares. I suppose they could always talk to the Quebecois, but no one understands Quebecois either.

French Guyana is also a French speaking country. It’s still a colony, and it has a very nice standard of living. Nowadays, colonies don’t even want to go free anymore, as it means a standard of living crash.

As you can see, British Honduras speaks English. There are some other English speaking islands in the Caribbean and some French speaking islands too, but none are marked on the map.

Dutch has pretty much died out in the Western Hemisphere, but it used to be spoken widely in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean.

The main language of Guyana is probably some English creole, but it’s not shown on the map.

Indian languages are still very widely spoken in Peru (Quechua), Bolivia (Aymara) and Paraguay (Guarani).

Thought Broadcasting and Thought Disorder: Pathognomic Schizophrenic Symptoms

Here.

This is a most unusual schizophrenic symptom that most folks do not know about. It’s probably quite rare to nonexistent in other disorders; in fact, I think it is pathognomic of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. I doubt if you would see this symptom in a bipolar or unipolar depressed person.

As you can see if you read that post, this is a very terrifying symptom! It’s probably much misunderstood. For instance, right now, if I worked myself into an anxious enough frame of mind, I could imagine that my thoughts were being broadcast out to others. But that’s not what’s going on with these folks. Imagine of you could walking into a coffee shop full of people and suddenly all of your thoughts are being broadcast out loud to everyone in the room.

This is what you are going to experience. You will experience you own thoughts shot out into the environment, and they will sound as clear and as real as the voices of folks around you and other sounds in the environment.

In such a situation, schizophrenics often have a hard time believing that other people can’t hear their thoughts being shot out into the environment seemingly out of loudspeakers. As you can imagine, that’s quite a disturbing symptom! If I experienced a symptom like that, I’m not sure how I could go into public and try to function. It would be awfully hard.

They also often feel that they can hear other people’s thoughts.

Here is one guy’s experience:

This is a difficult concept for me in both experience and articulation to others…here is what can happen to me…I will be thinking some thoughts about something I am doing at the moment or something(s) I will do in the future…these thoughts are completely separate from my ‘voice’ hallucinations (??) ….and later in the day/week/month REAL PEOPLE (usually strangers) will come up to me & repeat these thought fragments or statements to me WORD FOR WORD!…

They aren’t generalized thoughts that most folks have in a day, but are specifically related to my own situation or something occurring in my personal realm…this has happened both in my own town and in several other locations (and other states!)…I’ve even had strangers say them from open windows of other cars at traffic lights, and even leave pieces of paper on the floor (ground) in my path with the EXACT thought or fragment on it!!…

What all this really is, I don’t know, but it seems to me to be a form of thought broadcasting (against my will)…very strange…

Whoa! I had to think about this one a bit! At first I thought the guy was psychic. Then I figured out what was going on. Those people are not really coming up to him and repeating his thoughts of earlier in the week word for word. This is a hallucination. Someone is walking up to him, and he hallucinates them saying his thoughts of earlier in the week.

Same thing with the folks at the traffic lights. They aren’t talking to him. He’s just hallucinating them talking to him.

The pieces of paper. He is just finding pieces of paper on the street and looking at them. Then he hallucinates the words of his thoughts on the paper.

Some schizophrenics experience their thoughts being broadcast out to others, sometimes insults, and then they hear the other people broadcasting angry response thoughts back to them. What a strange experience!

This case is very weird, and it was explained as so real that for a while I wondered if the guy was mentally ill. I thought he might have been psychic. He says he’s not mentally ill, just psychic, and he has not been diagnosed. All of those reactions are typical.

My own experiences began a long time ago when I noticed a conversation traveling circuits around a crowded room while remaining completely intact. It would jump from one group of people to another repeating itself, without any of those groups interacting on another dynamic. I watched this pattern loop through the room several times before I attempted to engage and alter it, rather than talking to its hosts directly.

This brought on a response I couldn’t have expected, in that suddenly a nonphysical intelligence began affecting the world around me, due to its sudden apparent sense of having been intruded upon.

Whoa! That’s really weird. Imagine being at a party. You hear a particular bit of a conversation.

“So anyway, Steve told me he really likes my hair. He was texting me but he said I didn’t answer. He doesn’t understand that it was 4:30 AM and I was out in the rain!”

Then the exact same bit of conversation, word for word, starts actually moving around the room, with different people repeating those same words above before it moves on to the next group of people. Then the conversation circles the room a few times. That would be a weird experience! I thought about this a bit and concluded that this could not possibly be actually happening. I mean, you could do it as a practical joke, but that’s not what’s happening. He is simply hallucinating this conversation going around the room.

Over years of having similar experiences of series’s of impossible coincidences, messages directed specifically to him, and the sense that this Entity was sending him missions of various sorts, he concluded that he was in touch with some psychic or mystical entity that he calls the “hivemind,” or universal consciousness. Granted, such a thing may exist, and for a while I thought the guy was psychic, but I doubt if he’s in touch with it, and I think he’s just mentally ill.

Over the years, I’ve been fascinated by the existence of this entity, and puzzled that so few (though they do exist) others are able to operate on a level where this entity has relevance. I have studied numerous metaphysical beliefs and philosophies attempting to find a corollary between it and something that was written down in history. I’m proud to say that I have found quite a few answers, but unfortunately most of them are not solid.

The entity appears to be some kind of “hivemind” entity that is in fact not conscious like we individuals are, and it seemingly does not interact with time in the same way we do. Nor does it recognize any concept of “self” due to its distributed nature. Despite all of that, it’s quite intelligent and has a decent sense of humor…For me, those moments all string together as “the entity” tries to talk to me. The message might take days to become complete and make sense, and the individuals, radio signals, television commercials, conversations on the street, cat acting funny, all of it…string together into one long coherent message…assuming I bother to listen. Furthermore, if I refuse to listen and try to block it out that’s when stuff starts going bad again.

The situation below is seriously bizarre, but I wonder what really happened.

I knew this pretty girl once who was dating a guy that represented authority to me. The guy was a lot like my father, and at the time he was being nasty to someone else so he could get what he wanted.

The girl is the focus here because of her role in that relationship. I met the guy through her in the first place, on the day I met her as well.

She was crashing his birthday party and needed a ride. Well, the message came through as the girl needing a ride again at a later time for a different scenario, but again I was the only driver available. The way she approached me about it was the message itself.

She kidnapped me and stole my car while I was sleeping in the back seat. The reason this is important about the authoritarian boyfriend is because she effectively took on his role in her own situation in order to put me in her role.

She had stolen my keys while I was asleep a few days before, and made a copy for herself. When I woke up halfway across the state from where I had parked, she explained that I could come along for the ride or wait for her to pick me up on the way back, but either way she was taking the car. I ended up driving. I would have taken her anyway had she asked, but she never asked.

This situation is so strange and is reported as if it really occurred, but I seriously doubt if it did, even though his description sounds so real.

The girl did not kidnap him and steal his car while he was sleeping in the back seat. Forget it. Simply did not happen.

Nor did she steal his car keys when he was asleep a few nights earlier and make a copy for herself. I don’t believe it. Forget it.

Nor did he wake up in the car halfway across the state from where he had parked it, with the girl driving and the girl telling him that she had stolen his car and he could either get out or go along for the drive. I simply do not believe that this occurred.

So what happened? I have no idea! But his story is so bizarre is simply strains credulity.

If you keep reading that guy’s posts (he’s not medicated), it seems like they are quite logical and make sense in a nice way, even though he is describing very strange things. But the more you read, the style of the writing itself starts seeming a little odd.

This is very typical of schizophrenic writing. At first it seems like normal speech or writing, but the more you think about it, the more there seems to be something wrong with it, though you can’t quite put your finger on it, and if someone asked you to explain why it’s strange, you could not really explain it very well in words.

This is usually called loosening of associations or formal thought disorder. Put another way, it is something like, “Talking without making sense,” but that doesn’t explain it very well.

Suppose I describe to you a series of wild and improbable adventures that I had that culminated with me going out into the woods, where bats flew out my butt and I was proclaimed King of Germany, Lord of the Jews, Prince of the Robert Lindsays and Warlord of the Race Realists at a huge feast which featured endless rounds of huge Subway sandwiches and mugs of near beer.

OK, that story is pretty weird, and no doubt it’s fiction, but it makes sense: it is intelligible and understandable. It has an intelligible story line with events described in a certain way so that everything fits together. The scenario is ridiculous, but it’s not incoherent.

Schizophrenic speech and writing is different. It is not intelligible in a very strange way. It is often almost intelligible, but not quite. For some reason, you can’t quite figure out exactly what it is the person is trying to say, and you can’t even figure out why or how it doesn’t make sense. That is thought disorder.

I believe that thought disorder is actually pathognomic of schizophrenia in a sense: that is, if you don’t have thought disorder, I don’t believe you have schizophrenia. Where there is schizophrenia, there must be thought disorder in most or possibly all cases.

Does Dumb Population = Dumb Government?

A new commenter, Portland Bus Driver, suggests that the IQ of a general population is reflected in the IQ of its top state officials. I beg to disagree. He also points to some behavioral differences between his Hispanic and Black passengers and suggests that it’s not all IQ. In fact he’s correct. Illegals probably have lower IQ’s than Blacks. Race realists typically bandy about the “Blacks act bad because they’re stupid” thing. In the case of US and UK Blacks anyway, I’d just as soon chuck this theory.

There is most definitely a causal relationship between higher IQ and a potential economic situation. Look at predominately East Asian and white countries compared to any black country, and South Africa does not count. Brazil is 5

The point is that the commanding heights of the economy and government must be in the hands of higher IQ people. Once the lower IQ masses take over –See: Haiti, Rhodesia, the US after George Bush 🙂 — the country declines.

That being said, environment and culture and all of that can still play a role.

In my experience Hispanics ride the bus to work early in the morning with lunchboxes, they show me respect and pay their fare (or have counterfeit fare). Blacks start getting on later in the afternoon in comfy workout style clothes to go “chill”. Then the Hispanics come home from work.

Later that night the blacks get back on in expensive clothes and jewelry and watches and flash their bus pass which is right next to their food stamp card, they give me a dirty look and use obscene language right next to children. I could go on, my point is that it is not just IQ, Hispanics may have some other trait that predisposes them to work. Every black run society, with a few exceptions that are easily explained, is economically “disadvantaged.”

I would say it is the IQ of the population that matters. Yet South Africa was able to work pretty well as long as the high-IQ Whites were running the state. S. African White IQ = 94.

But I bet that in the present South African government, at the highest positions, you have folks with high IQ’s. Same in Latin America, South Asia, SE Asia, Arabia, North Africa, the Caribbean. Even though the general population may be dumb as rocks, the folks at the top of government are typically well-educated and bright.

So I don’t think low IQ country = low IQ idiots in government. I just don’t buy it. Besides, past a certain point, IQ just does not matter. It’s “high enough.”

More than the state, it is the IQ of the general population that matters in terms of how the society functions. Let’s not place too much emphasis on government here! In Haiti, I imagine that those at the stop of the state are bright folks. I have met some of the Haitian elite, and they were not stupid at all. I’ve also met some of the African elite, and they were not dumb either. I have met very bright Africans from all over Sub-Saharan Africa. Surely there are enough bright folks to form a competent state at the highest levels.

You may start running into problems at the local levels, but I still say that it’s the composition of society, not the state, that matters. If your society has an IQ of 67 or 72, I am sorry, but chances are you are going to have lots of problems functioning in the modern world no matter how bright your officials are. This is what is really going on here when we compare say Africa with East Asia and the US.

The “Obama is in charge so dumb Blacks rule” thing is a fallacy. I don’t know Obama’s IQ, but it has to be higher than George Bush’s. Obama’s administration is full of bright folks of all different races. They are certainly intelligent enough to run a modern state well. He is conflating a relatively lower Black IQ with “Obama” and his admin. But Obama is very smart, and so is his Cabinet and his aides.

The IQ of Mexican immigrants is probably ~85. The IQ of US Blacks is 86.8. The illegals are less intelligent than the Blacks. But look at the behavioral difference. Let us not place too much weight on IQ.

Also, let us not conflate US and UK Black IQ = 86.8 and 86, with African IQ = 67. The IQ’s of US and UK Blacks are about 20 points higher. That alone almost makes them a separate race.

There are many societies that function quite well and have IQ’s of 86-87. US and UK Black IQ is certainly adequate to function in modern society. That they don’t seem to do too well has its reasons I’m sure, but IQ can’t possibly be one of them.

He suggests that every Black society is economically disadvantaged. However, there are some Black nations in the Caribbean and even in Africa that are doing quite well.  Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have per capita incomes of ~$20,000/yr.

Is Afrikaans Close to English?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKKJSfYraU&feature=related]

Cruising around the Net researching my piece on the Dutch languages, I read up on Afrikaans quite a bit. Afrikaans is the language, very close to Dutch, spoken in South Africa. It seems to be a Dutch dialect from a few centuries ago. It’s rather close to Flemish, and of course it is close to Dutch. It is often described as a simplified Dutch, and some Dutch speakers feel it almost resembles Dutch “baby-talk” or child speech. There are theories that Afrikaans is a creole (a simplified form of a language) but these seem to be discarded, though it does have influences from other languages, especially English and various African languages.

A number of English speakers on the Net said that as an English speaker, they could either communicate or almost communicate with Afrikaans speakers, each using their own language. I decided to test that out by listening to the “De La Rey” video above. There were English subtitles, but I turned my head away so I could not read them and just listened to the song trying to figure out English words.

If you listen to it with the subtitles up there, you can see a lot of cognates, but when we talk to other humans, we don’t get subtitles floating over each other’s heads so we can understand better.

I could hardly understand one single word of the Afrikaans speech in this song. I got Transvaal, but that’s just a place name, and your average uneducated American would never pick that up. I also got flammen, and I thought that might be flame. Close, it’s fire. The idea that Afrikaans and English are the slightest bit intelligible in spoken form is not supported.

Anyway, it’s a cool song. You might as well check it out. It’s banned in South Africa, though there’s nothing racist about the song. It talks about the Boer War, in which the Afrikaans speaking Boers fought against the British military around 1904 or so.

Your more educated White nationalists around the world love this war for some reason. I’m not really up on what the war was all about – apparently an anti-colonial rebellion? Anyway, this Boer War is an integral part of the South African legendary history of their time in this land, hence this song is part of their heritage. Where these Blacks think it’s racist, I don’t understand.

Excellent News Out of India

Here.

These Maoists have a kickass army all right. You don’t often hear of other revolutionaries like the FARC in Colombia, Sendero in Peru or the NPA in the Philippines carrying out such devastating blows.

The state paramilitary police force of 82 men was ambushed with by a Maoist force of 500 with IED’s, bombs, hand grenades and automatic weapons fire in the forests near Raipur, Chattisargh. Reinforcements rushing to the scene were surrounded and attacked. A heavily armored “mine-resistant” vehicle sent in to gather the wounded was blown up by an IED.

An incredible 76 Indian police were killed. The other 44 were wounded. All police in the column were either killed or wounded.

Chattisargh is Maoist Ground Zero in India. This Operation Green Hunt is obviously not going as planned, and these Maoists are a far more competent force than most people assume.

Also, the Maoists’ numbers are downplayed. There are said to be only 20,000 armed Maoists in India. But if you count unarmed party member, it must be more than that. One of India’s largest women’s organizations has 90,000 members and they are all Maoists. Also many of the villages in Maoist territory are controlled by heavily armed village militia who do not wear uniforms. The 20,000 figure does not appear to include village militia.

The state has been issuing a lot of statements lately releasing the names of various leftwing intellectuals, often professors and students in Delhi, and accusing them of being Maoists. I’m not sure if they are, but I believe the CPI-M definitely has supporters on university campuses across India. It will be interesting to see how well they can expand to the cities, because so far they have just been a rural based insurgency.

The latest rumor is that an Indian government official said that the Maoists could conquer India by 2050. A Maoist leader is said to have replied that it would be more like 2020.

Statement from PUDR (People’s Union for Democratic Rights) here.

To the Supporters of the Serbian Regime on This Site

There are supporters of the Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian Communist-fascist government during the Bosnian War on this site.

This is a typical example of what the Serb Nazis were doing not just for part of the war, but for the entirety of the war.

Good job guys. You really picked a winner here, huh?

“Lansford Hastings and His California Dream,” by Alpha Unit

With visions of Manifest Destiny in his head, Lansford Hastings, a young attorney from Mount Vernon, Ohio, set out for Oregon. It was 1842. He had met a Dr. Elijah White, who had come through Knox County with a group of emigrants on their way to Oregon. Hastings saw opportunity and became a member of their party.

White’s party was being led by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a frontiersman who had, in 1841, led the Bidwell party on an unsuccessful attempt to bring a wagon train into the Mexican territory of California. Circumstances eventually put Hastings in charge.

He was an ambitious young man whose ambitions expanded after going West. His focus soon turned from Oregon to Alta California – that same province of Mexico that other White men saw as a land of opportunity. In 1843 he led a small party to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley of California. It had been founded by John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant who had gotten a land grant from the Mexican government. Sutter and Hastings became friends.

Both men believed that a British or French takeover of California was a distinct possibility, and preferred to see California in American hands. What they envisioned was Americans heading West to populate California, rid it of Mexican rule, and create an independent republic.

With this in mind, Hastings wrote The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, for the purpose of persuading Americans to uproot and head to California.

In the book Hastings mentioned a possible shortcut along the California Trail. The search for shortcuts, or “cutoffs,” was well-established; Hastings wasn’t the only guide who was proposing one.

The exact route to California depended on a number of factors: starting point, final destination, the time of year one traveled, the state of relations with Indian tribes, and, most importantly, water and grass availability. Travelers and their animals needed water and grass, which is why emigrants sought to travel along river valleys.

The trip typically began in April or May, when grass was growing and trails were dry enough to support wagons. It was set to be completed before the first snow out West.

The overland route to California began – as the Oregon Trail did – in towns along the Missouri River. It would diverge from the Oregon Trail in either Idaho, Wyoming, or Utah to take trails leading to the Humboldt River valley of northern Nevada. The Humboldt River provided a pathway across the Great Basin desert as it headed West.

The river would disappear into what is called the Humboldt Sink – an alkali-laden lake. One of the worst sections of the California Trail would then appear: the so-called Forty Mile Desert. Travelers would be crossing an area with no usable water.

It was at this point that travelers had to figure out how to get beyond the desert and over the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Trail split into two major branches here: the Truckee Trail and the Carson Trail. The Truckee and Carson Rivers drained the Sierra Nevada, flowing eastward. So travelers followed the rivers westward to get across the mountains.

In 1844, members of the Stephens party, some of whom were experienced mountain men, met with a Paiute Indian chief who gave them directions over the mountains. As the story goes, he told them to follow the Truckee River to a pass over the Sierra Nevada. It was the Stephens party that completed the opening of the first overland wagon route to California.

Lansford Hastings had eagerly anticipated the arrival of emigrants to California, and he himself led small parties of emigrants. In April of 1846 he left California and headed east to meet the year’s emigration, sending a message to them by way of an eastbound traveler: if they met him at Fort Bridger (in Wyoming), he would lead them on a new, faster route to California.

Sixty to seventy-five wagons traveled with him on this cutoff and made it safely to California. The Donner party, led by brothers George and Jacob Donner and James Reed, were on the trail after this successful trek.

The Hastings Cutoff, which the Donners had also chosen to take, involved difficulties such as a dangerous descent down Weber Canyon (in Utah), a drive across the Great Salt Lake Desert, and a long detour around the Ruby Mountains of Nevada.

The Donner party – consisting of families with their wagons and draft animals – made it to the mouth of Weber Canyon, which sits in the Wasatch Mountain range. Hastings left them a message that the road ahead was impassable, telling them to send someone ahead for new instructions. James Reed and two others set out.

What they had to do was build a road through the Wasatch Mountains. Creating this path set the Donners back a week. In late August they were able to set out across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Their water ran out, and some of their animals took off, so they spent another week at the base of Pilot Mountain trying to recover animals and prepare for the next leg of their trip. They finally got around the Ruby Mountains and arrived at the Humboldt River – and the regular trail.

The delays had cost them about three weeks.

The Donner party was the last emigrant group of 1846 to get to California. They made it to just east of the Sierra Nevada when an early snowfall began. They were stranded in the eastern Sierras.

The details of what the Donner party faced make for some of the most harrowing stuff I’ve ever read. What those families went through can only be described as a living Hell. The Donner party were men with their wives and children. A number of the children were quite young. Among them were infants.

Roughly half of them didn’t make it. Most of the dead were men.

It was in April of the following year that a rescue party – one of several – brought out the last member of the Donner party, a man named Louis Keseberg.

Some people who chronicle these events lay much of the blame for what happened to the Donners right at the feet of Lansford Hastings. They say he promoted that alternate route through the Wasatch Mountains without having traveled it himself.

It is also suggested that he may have actually taken the route but that he had been on horseback with other men – a far different scenario from being in a caravan of oxen-drawn wagons.

The same year the last member of the Donners was brought into California marked the end of hostilities in California involving the Mexican-American War. The war was concluded there by informal agreement, the Treaty of Cahuenga. The Californios (Californians of Mexican descent) agreed to lay down arms for the duration of the war and conform to the laws of the United States. In six months, U.S. naval forces had seized and “pacified” the entire area of what is today California.

Lansford Hastings had dreamed of holding high office in an independent Republic of California, but his aspirations were to go nowhere. The “Capitulation of Cahuenga” saw to that. The following year, Mexico formally gave up Alta California, among other territories, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Hastings wasn’t quite done with California, though. Pro-South during the Civil War, he favored a plan to separate California from the Union and unite it with the Confederacy. His plan came to nothing.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

Eugene Terreblanche was just murdered by Black farm workers in a wage dispute. A few years back, Terreblanche got into it with a Black guy at a gas station and severely beat the guy. The Black guy suffered serious brain damage as a result. I don’t know the details of the incident.

Eugene Terreblanche made racial hatred his whole raison d’ etre, and he reaped the hatred that his karma sowed. What comes around, goes around; paybacks are a bitch; you get out of this world what you put into it. Insert favorite aphorism here.

See that swastika-looking AWB insignia in the background? That’s not an accidental design. If being a White advocate means sticking up for bastards like this, I’d almost rather throw in with the Abagonds, but it ain’t much of a choice.

Terreblanche was a White nationalist hero, and there are a lot of comments on White nationalist sites about the White farmer murders. It is a very serious problem.

But it’s not some extermination campaign because they are White. As with most rural violence, it’s tied up in land tenure. If those White farmers had as much land as your average Black farmer did, they wouldn’t be getting killed any more than anyone else in South Africa. Those few White farmers have most of the farmland, and almost all of the good farmland, in the country.

The Blacks were removed from the land, banana republic style, to squatter “homelands” which quickly become overpopulated, overfarmed and badly eroded. But it was shitty land anyway (Malan 1990). Meanwhile, ~

Obviously, there needs to be some kind of a land reform, but it’s been stalled. The Black farmers are landless or have tiny and infertile plots, and they are attacking the White farmers to kill them and take over their land. Were a decent land reform done, none of this would be happening.

By the way, if you want to read an awesome book by a White South African that is coming from something like the Liberal Race Realism of this blog, check out the reference.

References

Malan, Rian. 1990. My Traitor’s Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

The World of the Bully and PC Anti-White Cultural Marxism

In the comments section, Bay Area Guy talks about the perpetually grievanced world of the intellectual non-White Cultural Marxist permavictims.

I’m going to riff on that by bringing up the stuff I dealt with for decades in my own crazy family. I don’t care if they read this, I don’t care what they do about it, and I don’t care who it pisses off. If they don’t want this going out to the whole world via the Intertubes, they should think again about how they treat me.

Bay Area Guy:

At the same time, if you visit blogs such as Abagond, angry black woman, Unapologetic Mexican, or other non-white blogs, all they talk about is white racism and the mindset of white people.

I can’t emphasize strongly enough how offensive the approach of these Black and Hispanic Cultural Marxists is. Even when you bend over backwards and try to accommodate them, it’s like we are never doing good enough. I go to Abagond, and a lot of times it is chastening. I think, “Wow, so this is what we are doing that is pissing off Blacks. Ok, let’s stop doing it.”

Then I resolve to do better.

But the grievance never ends, no matter how hard I try to do better. I’m still a White racist jerk, no matter what.

It’s like someone who hates you because supposedly you don’t act right, so you say, “Ok, I’m going to try to act right to get this person to like me.” You spend decades doing this, and no matter what you do it’s never good enough, and the whole time they are blaming you for the fact that they hate you.

Why do they hate me? Because I’m bad! They’re justified!

Wow, I need to stop being bad.

So you spend decades trying to “be good” to get these people to stop hating you, and they just keep moving the goalposts, keep on hating you, and keep blaming you for the fact that they are haters.

I dealt with this shit in my own White middle class suburban family for decades, and frankly it’s just bullying tactics. The person blaming me for the fact that he hates me is a bully. No matter what I do, the bully keeps on picking on me, laughing at me, ridiculing me, hating me and blaming me for everything.

I can never do anything right, the bully hates me, and it’s all my fault. I keep trying to do better, and eventually I get self-esteem problems because I think I’m bad and deserve to be hated.

What these intellectual Blacks do to us feels like the bullying I dealt with in my own family. They’re bullying us Whites. They pick on us, they ridicule us, they laugh at us and they hate us. And just like in my family, if I try to fight back even

In the bully’s world, Poland is always attacking Germany. You’re always Poland and the bully’s always Germany. If you try to defend yourself in the tiniest way, the bully flips out, goes nuts and turns it all around so the bully is the victim and the victim fighting back against the bully is the evil, psycho, sociopathic, criminal aggressor.

Some of us Whites are liberals, and we keep trying to be good non-racists and get these people to stop hating us. No matter how good we try to be, they keep on hating us and blaming us for the fact that they hate us. White liberals get low self-esteem and start thinking that Blacks hate us justifiably because were are perma-defective in some way.

After ages of this, you finally just throw up your hands and decide that the non-White bullies simply cannot be appeased. You’ve been trying to appease them for years, just like the jerks in your family, and it’s all hopeless. They’re going to hate us forever, they will blame us for them hating us, and no matter what we do, it will never be enough. The sane Whites will just say, “Fuck you, I’m done with you, and I’m keeping away from you,” just like the bullies in your own family.

Now, granted, if you study the history of Jim Crow in the US closely, it’s quite clear that this bully routine was par for the course under Jim Crow. Under Jim Crow, Whites bullied Blacks for decades, and Blacks just suffered in silence. If the Black man ever stood up to raise one pinky finger to fight back, Poland was attacking Germany once again and the poor victim, transformed into monster criminal, was hanging from tree, while crowds of grinning White murderers were transformed into outraged super-victims.

If you look at photos of Nazis dealing with Jews in Germany, especially in the early years, you see this same sort of bullying, with the Jews doing the same abject victim thing.

So it’s not anything unique to any one race or other. The tendency to bully others is simply a human one. Personally, I think it’s childish, and I don’t think adults should pick on or bully other adults. Are you still in high school? That’s something kids do. Adults don’t bully each other. It’s profoundly shameful.

Incest Should Not Be Illegal

I was visiting some silly White people recently and I managed to infuriate everyone at the gathering by suggesting, like a typical jerk, that incest should not be illegal.

Thing about middle class White people is that there’s like 899,943,097,107,165,221,669,507 things that are never allowed to be discussed because some uptight White weenie is going to get offended. Not just not discussed at dinner. I mean not discussed ever. Whenever I piss off some uptight White middle class Professional Offended Persons, I always figure it’s a great subject for a blog post!

I’m a libertine, and my libertarian argument is that incest laws are no damned business of the state!

The most typical type of incest is father-daughter, in fact, these are really the only kind that are ever prosecuted. The reason for the societal hatred and outrage over incest is due to societal hatred of normative male sexuality. Incest means fathers screwing their daughters. Since male sexuality is evil under the current Matriarchy-Mangina Dictatorship, fathers screwing their daughters is normative male sexuality. All fathers are evil horny bastards who wish to take advantage of their pure as the virgin snow (on account of being morally pristine females) daughters.

Mother-son incest doesn’t happen too much, so no one cares. Brother-sister incest occurs quite a bit, but no one ever goes to jail for it, so the laws are ridiculous. And if anyone ever did go to jail in the case of brother-sister incest, it was be the male, since it’s male sexuality that is evil, naturally predatory and malign according to the feminist maggots and wussieboys who run society. The female in the brother-sister incest would always be innocent because feminist cunts and their fagboy buddies say females are perennial innocents.

I would argue that in most cases of brother-sister incest, there’s no predatory behavior involved. In which case it’s no business of the law’s. Brother-sister incest is not a good idea, and it ought to be stopped (But not by cops!), but it’s often just two adolescent innocents exploring their budding sexuality. Just what business is this of the state’s? None whatsoever!

As far as father-daughter incest, it’s surely covered under existing child sexual abuse abuse statutes. There’s an argument that father-daughter incest is a particularly nasty form of child abuse, and the victims are harmed worse than others. Fine. Have incest as an enhanced penalty statute in cases of child abuse.

Since no one ever goes down in brother-sister incest, and it’s just silly kids who don’t know what they are doing anyway, why is it even illegal in the first place? Good question. Probably to police those evil brothers with their persistent 16 year old erections that threaten their permanently hymened sisters of ivory white goodness and rectitude.

In cases where both parties are over the age of 18, why is incest against the law at all?

It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes a father has sex with an adult daughter. A mother having sex with an adult son is even rarer. No one ever goes to jail for adult-adult incest, so why is it against the law in the first place? Once again, it’s only to police those evil fathers, who never stop wanting to fuck their daughters, even after they are all grown up into womanhood.

In many US states, any sexual contact between first cousins of any age is illegal. This is particularly preposterous, as cousin incest is extremely common worldwide, even in the US.

A silly argument against these rarely enforced laws is that incestuous sex leading to pregnancy leads to inbred offspring and birth defects. This can be dealt with via laws against incestuous marriage. In most civilized states, incestuous marriage is rare enough anyway, so there’s no reason for the state to worry about it.

Incest laws exist due to moral panic. What’s going to happen if we get rid of the laws? Why! There will be a huge wave of incest, followed by a tidal wave of babies, most of them with ears growing out of their groins!

Some sensible states have seen the light recently and gotten rid of their stupid incest laws. Rhode Island sensibly eliminated all incest laws in 1989. Ohio’s law only targets parents as offenders. In New Jersey, incest is legal, as it ought to be, for adults.

Incest, reasonably enough, is completely legal in Russia, Belgium, Portugal and India at the very least.

Incest ought to be legal not because it’s a good idea, but because it’s none of the state’s damned business. The most harmful kind, father-daughter sex, is readily dealt with under existing child sex abuse statutes. Incest involving adults, problematic though it may be, is simply none of the state’s damned business.

Although I’m a libertine, I am troubled by incest at any age.

Father-daughter incest is often quite harmful to the underage daughter. Father-daughter incest with an adult daughter is typically not harmful for the father, but the daughter often comes out of it feeling harmed. Mother-son incest is very rare. In a few cases, mothers have had sex with adult sons. The mothers escape unharmed, but the sons often feel it was a bad idea.

Brother-sister incest is often not a good idea. One or the other, the brother or the sister, frequently feels harmed by the experience. If it’s going on, parents need to intervene and separate the sexual explorers. Cousin incest should simply be legal, though cousins should not be allowed to marry. It’s dubious whether cousin incest is any more harmful to participants than any other sexual behavior.

A lot of harmful things in society are no damned business of the Nanny Cop State’s. In fact, many harmful activities, are, properly, not even illegal at all. The Nanny Cop State has no prerogative, and indeed no right, to legally sanction all harmful behaviors.

Great article here on the subject, and the great William Saletan of Slate asks the same question here. From Saletan:

This week, the Associated Press published an interview with Rick Santorum, the third-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. Referring to a pending case involving sodomy laws, Santorum argued, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.”

Surely, Santorum is right. Now there’s one principled fundamentalist wacko! Surely, no one should go to jail for bigamy, adultery, polygamy or incest involving siblings, cousins, or adults. The piece then goes on to interview gay rights ultra-liberals arguing, absurdly, that the state should be able to ban adult incest but not ban gay sex. It’s always sorry when the conservative crazies make sense and we Lefties are the nuts. It’s worse than sorry. It’s embarrassing!

Reading the arguments in favor of incest laws, most of them seem to revolve around the same misandrist feminazi-Mangina fag argument that incest is all about power. In other words, it’s evil humans with dicks preying on poor innocent forever children humans with vaginas. The permachildren with mammaries being too stupid to look out for their own good and avoid being talked into doing stupid things, we (The Cops!) have to watch over them like shepherds until they are dead, protecting the Braying Female Lambs from the Evil Male Wolves.

One more thing. You know what else is “all about power?” Heterosexual sex. I’ll give the Feminazis like Andrea Dworkin credit for at least figuring out the obvious. C’mon Nanny Staters, lets make fucking illegal too!

This article from the Harvard Law Review makes the logical assumption that most laws against incest lack a rational basis and argues instead for a reforming of such laws on the basis of consent vs. non-consent. The article points out, unbelievably, that incest and even marriage is often illegal even between adult step-relations, and even between adult ex-step-relations, when there is no reason for this.

Since adult step-relations have no blood relationship, there is no reason for that sex between them should be illegal, nor should marriage between them be illegal. The usual argument against this sort of thing is moral revulsion, but recent cases striking down laws against gay sex indicate that moral revulsion is no reason to outlaw any private sexual behavior.

References

Inbred Obscurity: Improving Incest Laws in the Shadow of the ‘Sexual Family’. Harvard Law Review. June 2006.

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“Racist!”

Note: This post is extremely long, at 108 pages, so be forewarned. However, it’s very good, and I think it’s well worth your time.

There is not a whole lot I can add to this seminal work by a University of Montana Professor of English named Paul Trout. The piece speaks for itself. Here it is, 15 years later, and not a single thing has changed,  has it? This means that serious forms of PC insanity have devastated our universities, and from there, spread, virus-like, into society at large for over two decades now. In the meantime, in the past 20-25 years, things have only gotten worse for non-Whites in general, Blacks and Hispanics in particular.

So, while a blatantly White racist politics has held sway over the nation, causing serious harm to various non-Whites as Whites attacked them, at the same time, an idiot PC Idiocracy has held a Dictatorship of the Idiotariot over society as a whole. One wonders what good this PC silliness does, other than just spreading even more stupidity and insanity through a society that has too much of both already.

The PC Idiot Class has not been able to prevent a White racist politics from gripping the nation, yet it has gone on a jihad against a bunch of a nonsense, and its most frequent victims were non-racist and even anti-racist Whites. One wonders how any of the incidents below affected any US Black or Hispanics polities as a whole in any real and meaningful way. They didn’t. So all PC madness is attack innocent Whites, usually, most perversely of all, the liberal ones who are friendliest to non-Whites.

The main conclusion that we liberal Whites draw from all this looniness is that minorities are nothing but trouble. Blacks in particular. Read the article below and I defy you to conclude that modern PC Blacks are anything but a heap of ridiculous problems waiting to blow up on you at any unknown time. The only sensible conclusion Whites, even non-racist ones, draw from PC madness is that minorities, particularly Blacks but to a lesser extent Hispanics, Amerindians and other Professional Victims, are just not worth the trouble and are best avoided.

If you read below, you will notice that the only sane people protesting the PC lunacy are conservatives, particularly White racist conservatives. Great. So White people can either be PC professional flagellants or they can defy it and be White racist jerks. Well! That’s certainly one Hell of a choice!

Conservatives are so crazy and wrong on most everything that anytime the conservatives are right, you know the Left must be catastrophically screwed up. It embarrasses me to no end that the only folks making sense below are the rightwing nasties at US News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal. Where are all the sane liberals? On vacation, I guess. Or, worse, afraid of being called racist.

Cruising around the Black blogosphere, you note that the PC nonsense below is the standard view on race at most intelligent Black blogs. This is a classical, and typical, example. And on many Hispanic blogs too. And, I am sad to say, it’s the standard view on most of the leftwing sites I read.

This piece was originally found on this site here. That’s a White racist site, and so is Nicholas Stix, probably, though I guess Nick has an excuse for being racist (he experienced a lot of terrible treatment by Blacks). One again, we see that the only folks promoting this eminently sane piece are racist Whites. How sad!

(This landmark monograph was originally published in 1995 in direct link nor the “Racist!” as an Epithet of Repression

Paul Trout

Dept of English

Montana State U – Bozeman

Montana Professor Journal

Fall 1995

Introduction

About the worst thing you can be called nowadays is “racist.” The word not only brands a person as intellectually and morally inferior but links him or her to hooded sickos who beat and lynch innocent minorities. And the accusation – whether merited or not – often brings stinging penalties, from shunning to firing. Ask Senator Conrad Burns, Andy Rooney, Jimmy the Greek, Marge Schott, or Christina Jeffrey. No wonder people who subscribe to liberal social and intellectual ideals, who abhor race prejudice, fear being branded with the scarlet “R.”

Since the term carries so much social opprobrium and can hurt a person’s private life and public career, it should be defined clearly and used cautiously. This is not the case, however, on today’s college campuses. The examples in this essay suggest that on college campuses across the country, the epithet “racist,” hard enough for dictionaries to define (see “Defining Racism,” Chronicles, August 1994, 46), has become alarmingly unmoored.

We have now reached a point where the term can be used, usually without explanation or justification, to stigmatize any policy, statement, symbol, statistic, outcome, word or expression that any minority member does not like, including all kinds of legitimate, scholarly, and protected material.

As Robert Hughes observes in The Culture of Complaint, the irresponsible and promiscuous use of “racist” has robbed the term of “whatever stable meaning it once had” (19). Even worse, since its use is sanctioned by the subjectivity of the user, there can be no false accusations of “racism.” In short, anyone accused of “racism” is ipso facto guilty.

As a result, the epithet “racist” has become a powerful weapon of intimidation, the contemporary equivalent of the 1950s charge of “communism.” Since nobody on campus wants to be labeled a “racist,” and since nobody knows what the term means, most people stay clear of saying or doing anything that some minority member may label as “racist.” Out of fear, most people – and especially Whites – studiously avoid touchy issues, provocative statements, or ambiguous symbols or behaviors.

Unfortunately, as the examples in this essay show, not everybody succeeds in avoiding trouble. An untoward statement, word, metaphor or observation, even an unpalatable research finding, can catapult a student, faculty member, or administrator, into the category of “racist” with regrettable results.

Of “Racist” Epithets There Is No End

Campus speech codes forbid and provide punishment for certain types of expressive behavior which causes an individual or group to feel demeaned or abused because of their racial or ethnic background (so long as they are non-White). Such codes are often said to be aimed at only the most outrageous ”ethnic slurs” and “racial epithets” (Cass Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, 198).

But anybody staying abreast of this issue knows that speech codes have been invoked to punish all kinds of acts and statements, from quoting upsetting statistics to evincing “disrespect” (see Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors, 26).

Part of the problem with these codes is that they do not emphasize the objective content of the behavior or language, but the subjective response of the self-proclaimed victim. So an “ethnic slur” or “racial epithet” is whatever that person deems it to be. Another problem is that these codes – remarkably – never list the epithets that they forbid.

What words or epithets are “racist”? The only right answer is, more and more of them. Now even the noun “Jew” is “racist,” according to WordPerfect 6.0’s Grammatik, which warns us to “avoid using this offensive term.” So is the verb “to welch,” according to the Welsh-American Legal Defense, Education, and Development Fund. So is “digger pines” (Pinus sabiniana), according to a curator at the California State Indian Museum, who claims it is a slur on Native Americans.

So is “spook,” as in “Spook Hill” (in Mesa, Arizona), according to the NAACP, even though it refers to ghosts who haunt the area (in Phoenix, there was a brouhaha over Squaw Peak).

Given people’s notorious and awe-inspiring linguistic inventiveness (see A. A. Roback’s Dictionary of International Slurs) and their exquisite sensitivity to grievance, the list of offensive epithets will keep going and going…It is already quite long.”

An author who gave a talk at Harvard on why liberals like Jack Kerouac were drawn to Black culture provoked protests by entitling his talk, quoting Kerouac, “Spade Kicks” ( CHE 10 June 1992). The phrase “playing goalie Kamikazestyle” was deleted from a story in a textbook because it was construed to be an ethnic slur (Campus Reports, December 1992).

Even the word “slave” is now dangerous to use. An Education Commission in New York recommended in 1991 that the word “slave” be replaced with “enslaved person” in all school textbooks. Students at historically Black Prairie View Texas A&M University complained that they were offended by the Latin term servitium, in the school’s motto Recercare, Doctrina, Servitium, because in the Middle Ages it allegedly meant slavery. Regents approved the following translation: “Research, Teaching, Service” (CHE, 3 August 1994, A4).

Murray Dolfman was fired for using this word. When no one in his University of Pennsylvania law class knew what the Thirteenth Amendment forbade, he said according to his version), “We have ex-slaves here who should know about the Thirteenth Amendment,” (in Kindly Inquisitors, 148-149). He also referred to himself as an ex-slave (as a Jewish ’slave unto Pharaoh’).

When several Black students complained after class, Dolfman apologized but that did no good. Black students invaded his class and read a list of accusations to Dolfman’s students. News of Dolfman’s amazingly clumsy remark convulsed the campus for weeks, and Houston Baker, the well-known scholar of Black literature, engaged in a little signifying by publicly denouncing Dolfman as an “asshole…unqualified to teach dogs” (Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue, 112).

Dolfman’s contract was not renewed. Richard Bernstein draws this moral from the Dolfman affair: “In the era of political correctness and craven university administrations, the charge of racism, unsubstantiated but accompanied by a few demonstrations and angry rhetorical perorations, suffices to paralyze a campus, to destroy a reputation, and to compel an administration into submission,” (Dictatorship of Virtue, 114-115).

Other words one should stay away from include – according to the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri – ”shiftless,” “fried chicken” (“a loaded phrase when used carelessly”), and “watermelon.” In 1987 at Harvard, Stephen Thernstrom, a respected historian of race relations, was accused of “racism” by students because he used the words “American Indian” and “Oriental” (Maclean’s, 27 May 1991; Lingua Franca, April 1991, 37).

At the University of Virginia Law School, a hapless White guy got into trouble simply trying to be hip when he shot back at one Black student, “Can you dig it, man?” The next day an anonymous note called the teacher a “racist” and a “White supremacist,” without regard to his pro bono work for the civil rights movement, his membership in Klanwatch, and his work in recruiting minorities to campus (D’Souza, Illiberal Education, 6).

At Antioch, Ralph Luker, an associate professor of History and a civil rights activist, was denounced as a “racist” when he said that in the eyes of the law, slaves in the antebellum South had the same legal status as domestic animals. Students thought that he was comparing Black people to animals and took over his class in protest (CHE, 17 June 1994, 4D; 22 June, A14). Afterward, he was denied tenure.

A political science professor at the University of British Columbia (my alma mater) said, during a discussion of apartheid, that “Blacks were at the bottom of the totem pole in South Africa,” (Globe and Mail, 6 August 1994, D7). One student felt the metaphor to be a “racist” appropriation of the sacred symbols of the Kwakiutl and the Haida.

And everyone in the country now has been alerted not to use “water buffalo” within the hearing of Blacks. One night in January, 1993, a group of Black sorority women were dancing and chanting outside a dormitory window at 3 a.m. Several dorm residents shouted for the women to be quiet, and apparently some racial epithets were exchanged.

One student, Eden Jacobowitz, shouted “Shut up, you water buffalo. If you’re looking for a party there is a zoo a mile from here.” (CHE, July 7, 1993, A32). (The women claimed he said, “Shut up, you Black water buffaloes,” and “Go back to the zoo where you belong!”; see “The Raging Water Buffalo” by John K. Wilson, in The Newsletter of Teachers for a Democratic Culture, 2 [2], Fall 1993, 11-12).

The five female students charged Jacobowitz with “racial harassment” under the university’s vague hate-speech code (Scott Shepard, “Penn: The Most Poisoned Ivy?” Campus 5 [1], Fall 1993, 6).

Jacobowitz, an Israel-born Yeshiva student, used the word “water buffalo” because it was the English translation for the Hebrew word “behemah” (there are various spellings for this word), which means “water oxen” and is used as slang to describe an inconsiderate or foolish person. “It was the furthest thing from my mind to call them anything racial,” he said (CHE, 5 May 1993, A39).

During preliminary hearings, Penn Judicial Inquiry Officer Robin Reed asked Jacobowitz if he had been “thinking racial thoughts” on the night his supposed offense took place. She also explained that “water buffalo” could be taken as a racial slur because it “is a dark, primitive animal that lives in Africa” (AP, 14 May 1993). Reed is wrong. The animal is native to southeast Asia.

Although several Black faculty members were asked to testify that “water buffalo” is not a racial slur (until now, at any rate), John Wilson has argued that the fact that the phrase “is not a common racial epithet hardly makes it immune from use in a racist way.” In other words, any word can be used as a “racist” epithet. Charges against Jacobowitz were eventually dropped.

Students and faculty must be especially wary of potentially “racist” color words nowadays. Recently, at Columbia University, “chocolate” and “vanilla” were held to be “racist” after two White students who worked for the escort service were overheard by a Black security guard referring to certain escortees as “chocolate” or “vanilla.” The students explained that chocolate merely meant “attractive” and vanilla “unattractive” or “plain.”

The director of the service, however, summarily fired them for uttering “blatantly racist” remarks (see Dogmatic Wisdom, 84).

In a similar vein, the U. of Missouri stylebook warns writers to stay clear of using the word “articulate” when describing Blacks, saying that it implies that most Blacks are not articulate. In other words, it could be “racist” to say to a minority student, “because you are extremely articulate, you will probably excel in my class.”

Hunting Indians, Minutemen, and other “Racist” Mascots

The Sherlocks of Sensitivity have found “racist” messages not only in the most neutral and honorific expressions but in all kinds of university logos, mascots, and icons.

American Indians have been particularly assiduous in finding “racism” in any and every use of Indian names and images. Over the last ten years or so, their campaign to get colleges to drop team names, logos, and mascots associated with Indian culture has been very successful.

This campaign took a new twist early this year when five students at the University of Illinois filed a complaint with the Illinois’ Human Rights Commission, claiming that the school’s mascot, Chief Illiniwek, causes a “hostile and abusive” environment for American Indians (Campus 6 [3], Spring 1995, 11).

The Commission noted that if the complaint were successful, it would set a precedent that would enable African-American groups to prevent showings of Birth of a Nation, Jewish groups to repress The Merchant of Venice, and Native Americans to prevent the screening of cowboy movies.

When Native Americans find these logos “offensive” or “insulting,” not much can be said, since these subjective terms are self-validating. But are these logos “racist”? That term should be applied to depictions that imply and promote contempt, even hatred. But the images of logos are honorific, usually connoting power, integrity, honor, and nobility.

The Ute tribe has, I think, understood this distinction. It recognized that the University of Utah, in calling its teams the “Running Utes,” was actually implementing (in a small way) the tribe and the state’s Native-American culture. So instead of campaigning against the name and logo, the tribe attempted to control them. All accouterments had to be authentic, all depictions respectful.

Some measure of just how touchy Indian activists have become is seen in the campaign to change the mascot of Fort Lewis College. The icon/mascot was not a Native American, but a White male, a mounted U. S. cavalryman carrying a sword.

Native Americans found the image offensive (CHE, 13 April 1994, 4A). In an effort to make the graphic palatable, the college first replaced the sword with a military banner (no good), then with an “FLC” pennant (not good enough), and then it removed the horseman’s rife and pistol, describing the figure now as “the Raider” (still no good). Finally it dropped the Raider entirely, replacing him with a golden eagle. The A.S.P.C.A. has not complained – yet.

While animals still seem to be a safe bet as logos and mascots, other images and symbols are sitting ducks for charges of “racism.” Any image of a White man is now automatically “racist,” the very term used to describe “Blaze,” the cartoonish Nordic warrior emblem of the University of Alabama. The logo of the University of Alabama – a White, gentlemanly, Colonel-Sanders type – was attacked as “racist” because it allegedly reminded some minority students of “plantation owners.”

Even the Minuteman mascot of the University of Massachusetts was decried as “racist” (it was also “sexist” for being male and violent for holding a gun). Said Martin Jones, the student who led the attack, “to have a White male represent a student body that is not exclusively White or male is culturally biased, and promotes racism.”

The university chancellor agreed, making the university, according to the president of the Republican Club on campus, look like a “politically correct wasteland” and the “laughingstock of the country” (CHE, 10 November 1993).

But after Jones did “some research” into the historic contributions of the Minutemen, and after the campus library was named for the founder of the NAACP (W. E. B. DuBois), he defended the image and announced his “mistake” in criticizing it. “These men, as the original liberators of America, have earned the right to be honored fully by Americans everywhere…Long live the Minutemen of Massachusetts,” (USA Today, 28 October 1994, 10A).

So far the “leprechauns” of the University of Notre Dame have escaped attack.

In these examples, images and logos are being called “racist” not so much for what they depict as for what they exclude – they don’t depict other races or ethnic groups. The Representation Police want school logos to look like Benetton ads, all cuddly rainbow inclusivity. That’s an awful lot to ask of a college logo. In “Mascot Studies,” a writer for The American Spectator (December 1993, 14) puts this foolishness into perspective:

At our universities, neither professors nor administrators apparently possess the discernment to distinguish between a harmless mascot and, say, a flaming cross on a hill…There is today on campus…an innocent assumption that any protester must have a point.

We have quite forgotten that familiar figure of the past, the malcontent. Past generations recognized these odious cranks when they commenced to bawl and took them cum grano salis. If by accident the malcontent had come upon a legitimate grievance, fine – the Republic initiated a reform and passed on.

Today the country is at the mercy of these disturbed people, and actually raises many to lifelong prominence…Worse, these grumblers have inspired thousands of common malcontents to take up a noble cause. Vexed debate over the campus mascot is but one of the unhappy consequences.

In other words, get a life.

Remove That Tattoo, That T-Shirt, and That Elihu Yale!

Official logos and mascots are not the only images on campus ‘under erasure’ for being “racist.” This section will overview a number of incidents in which harmless and relatively benign images and activities were proclaimed to be “racist” and then almost always punished. These incidents demonstrate once again just how unmoored and repressive the R-word has become on today’s college campuses. Let’s begin in the kitchen.

A dishwasher in a residence hall at Iowa State University got into hot water when students noticed he had a swastika and the letters KKK tattooed on his arms. He had neither said nor done anything “racist,” he just sported some old tatoos left over from when he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (he explained that he repudiated the organization in a letter to the student newspaper).

Still, students demanded his removal. As one of them put it, “I’m for free speech. But…the KKK is wrong and has no place in a university environment.” What’s notable is that he had worked at the university for eighteen years before anybody noticed, or bothered to complain (U. Magazine, February 1994, 10). The university was warned by the state not to fire him.

Now to the infamous “racist” T-shirt at the University of California (Riverside). In 1993, Phi Kappa Sigma advertised its South of the Border Fiesta with a T-shirt featuring a figure in a serape and sombrero sitting on a beach looking at the setting sun and holding a bottle of tequila.

Next to the figure was a set of steel drums and a wooden Tiki head, in which was carved the word “Jamaica.” The lower half of the shirt shows a Rastafarian standing in the doorway of a Mexican cantina with a big smile and a six-pack of brew. This graphic was wrapped in a lyric from Bob Marley: “It doesn’t matter where you come from long as you know where you are going.” The shirt, according to the fraternity, was meant to show the ‘inclusivity’ of booze and partying down.

But campus Hispanic organizations charged the fraternity with “offensive racial stereotypes” and filed a formal complaint. Although the fraternity president, Rich Carrez, apologized to the campus Hispanic organization, the apology did no good. The fraternity was accused of being “racist,” even though it was the most racially diverse fraternity on campus (22 of its 47 members were non-White).

Carrez himself is part Native American, while the fraternity’s Vice President is Latino, and the student who designed the T-shirt is Hispanic. When this was pointed out, the Hispanic organization merely replied, “You should have known better.”

After a series of hearings, in which the fraternity was accused of launching a “racist” attack on the Latino community, the fraternity was forced to destroy all of the offending T-shirts, to write a letter of apology, to do 16 hours of community service, and to attend two sensitivity seminars on multiculturalism. But Hispanic students were still not satisfied, so the fraternity was also barred from intramural sports and rush activities, stripped of its charter and kicked off campus.

When the fraternity’s cause was taken up by the Individual Rights Foundation, the university settled out of court, agreeing to reinstate the fraternity, to drop all charges against it, and, in an unprecedented concession, to require two administrators to undergo sensitivity training in the First Amendment (see “Counter Coup: When Sensitivity Training is a Good Thing,” Heterodoxy 2 [3], November 1993, 12; “Campus Speech Codes Are Being Shot Down as Opponents Pipe Up,” WSJ, 22 December 1993, A1).

A similar graphic landed a student cartoonist at Portland State University in the gazpacho. In trying to point out that the American Free Trade Agreement was good for corporate America but not for the average Mexican citizen, the student drew a Mexican staring longingly at a display of beans, wondering if he could afford them. One would think that this would be received sympathetically by Hispanic students, but it wasn’t. All they saw in the cartoon was an implicit epithet: ‘beaner.’

The Chronicle of Higher Education sided with the thin-skinned students outraged by this scene, chiding the editors – “none of whom are Hispanic” – for not realizing that the depiction of beans could be construed as a “slur” (CHE, 17 November 1993, A39).

This spring, students at Yale demanded that the university remove a portrait of its founder, Elihu Yale, from its boardroom because it is “racist.” The painting portrays the school’s eighteenth-century founder seated in a chair with a young Black male (some think an Indian servant), perhaps kneeling, handing him a letter (CHE, 28 April 1995, A6).

Not nearly as exciting as the “Hovey murals” at Dartmouth, which feature drunken, scantily clad Native Americans, and which have been covered with panels since the 1970s because of protests that they were ”racist” (USA Today, 18 October 1993, D1).

At the University of Oregon, a banner depicting the faces of Michelangelo, Plato, Jane Austen, and eight other renowned, but White, figures was torn down by a group of students, who scrawled “racism” on it and painted some of the faces brown (CHE, 27 May 1992, A2).

What they did not realize, apparently, was that painting White faces brown was itself gravely “racist.” That was established in 1988, when a White Stanford student, to make a point, colored the face of Beethoven brown. The incident took place at Ujamaa House, Stanford’s “African-theme” dormitory.

One evening, a Black student claimed that Beethoven was Black. Several White students thought not. One of them found a big picture of Beethoven and, using a crayon, gave the composer an Afro and Black features and hung the poster outside the Black student’s room. When the Black student saw it, he was “flabbergasted,” and another was “outraged and sickened,” condemning the poster as “hateful, shocking.”

The White student explained that he did it only because disliked what he called “ethnic aggressivity,” and the campus obsession with race. He was also upset by a Black student who insisted that she would never marry anyone but another Black (a “racist” comment?). So he defaced the Beethoven poster “to show the Black students how ridiculous it was to focus on race.” He said the poster was “satirical humor.”

Threatened by members of an exceedingly hostile crowd of outraged Blacks, the White student apologized, but to no avail. Two days later, all the White students in Ujamaa – about 60 – found anonymous notes under their doors telling them to move out. In the photo display of the freshmen in Ujamaa, all the White faces had holes punched in them. Soon signs appeared that read: “Avenge Ujamaa. Smash the honkie oppressors!” (Chronicles, January 1990, 51-53).

And don’t even think about painting your own face Black! If you think Ted Danson got into trouble for his Friars Club routine, try it on campus. A number of frat boys have, and have been swatted with suspensions and hefty fines. No matter what the intent or context, painting your face Black is always a “racist” act, even when no Black person is present to be offended. The only problem is, that punishing people who do this is unconstitutional, even on campus, as a federal judge ruled in a case involving George Mason University (CHE, 4 September 1991).

At Brown, an art professor had to cancel a long-planned screening of the classic film Birth of a Nation when the local branch of the NAACP denounced it as “racist” (Commentary, September 1989, 22).

At Harvard, a government professor was forced to cancel a showing of It’s a Wonderful Life when Black students protested that its depiction of the household maid, which was both dignified and accurate, was a “racist” stereotype (D’Souza, Illiberal Education, 217).

At the University of Pittsburgh, a professor of public relations scrapped the showing of a Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew, when some Jews called it “racist” and “anti-Semitic,” which it is. But it was to be shown to instruct students about how the mass media could be misused (CHE, 13 November 1991). The logic that prevailed in these cases would forever cut us off from the past to avoid discomfiting the most thin-skinned.

Classroom movies aren’t the only thing that can provoke a charge of “racism.” In 1994, a French professor of psychology was roundly attacked as a “racist” for asking students taking a final exam to give the “clinical reasons” why the majority of Jews saw deportation between 1939 and 1942 as their “inexorable fate” (Chicago Tribune, 28 June 1994, 10).

This year a physics professor at MIT also got into trouble for an exam question: “You are in the forefront of a civil-rights demonstration when the police decide to disperse the crowd using a water cannon. If the cannon they turn on you delivers 1,000 liters of water per minute, what force does the water exert on you?”

After apologizing in print, the teacher explained that the question was intended to make physics come alive and to honor the courage of activists. A Black student responded that the question revealed how badly all faculty members needed sensitivity training (CHE, 3 March 1995, A33).

Another professor was called a “racist” for reading aloud in class from Moral Panic, 230). Apparently, David Mamet’s Oleanna is not an exaggeration.

In the censorious climate that prevails today on many campuses, even statements that are supported by observation, common sense, or statistics can be tagged as “racist.” A candidate for a university presidency did not get the job when it was learned that he had once said, perhaps after watching the Tom Brokaw special on “Black Athletes–Fact and Fiction” (1989), that “a Black athlete can actually out-jump a White athlete.” This occurred just before a movie enshrined this truism in its title (White Men Can’t Jump).

As Jared Taylor remarks, “Whites are not supposed to speculate about a possible Black superiority in athletics because to do so could be construed as a suggestion that Blacks may also have a natural inferiority in other areas. The tennis champion Arthur Ashe, however, is allowed to think Blacks may be specially talented at running because he, himself, is Black,” (222).

At Harvard, a memo distributed to students by the instructor was claimed to have created a hostile environment because it reported scholarly findings on negotiating styles that grouped Blacks and women as “low risk-takers.” A Black student said, “Just on the face of it, the memo is offensive,” (The Wall Street Journal, 30 October 1992, B1).

The prevailing assumption is that any generalization – favorable or unfavorable – about any minority that someone does not like is by definition “racist” and deserves to be suppressed – as long as it is said by a White person. Minority diversity consultants, in contrast, can parade, without a shred of empirical evidence, the grossest racial and ethnic stereotypes with virtual impunity.

Even statements about matters that are not directly racial are likely to be denounced as “racist” when they conflict with reigning groupthink. When Yale College dean Donald Kagan urged a group of freshmen to study Western Civilization, arguing that the freedom and civil liberties enjoyed by the West have led to a tolerance and a respect for diversity unknown in most cultures, the student newspaper denounced him as “racist, sexist, and out of touch,” (Campus Report, July/August 1993, 5).

In 1993, students at Cornell managed to free the epithet “racist” from all objective constraints. Someone spray-painted graffiti over an exhibition of art by Hispanic students. Although the graffiti contained not one “racist” slur, the students charged that the act was “racist” anyhow (CHE, 1 December 1993, A4). In short, even what is not “racist” is “racist.”

This perverse logic also governed the handling of a celebrated incident at Bowdoin College involving four fun-loving Asian students. What these students did was to dress themselves in White togas, wear bandannas around their heads, and march around the quad playing mandolins and harmonicas, holding candles and chanting, and throwing Toastee-Os breakfast cereal.

Incredibly, some students alleged that this was a “racist” demonstration. Because the togas were predominantly, but not exclusively, White, these students claimed that this was like having the Ku Klux Klan parading around campus – that they were, you guessed it, “intimidated” and “offended.”

While the Dean of Students conceded that these four festive Asians did not purposely set out to intimidate or offend anyone, nevertheless, the groups was charged with the Orwellian offence of being “grossly insensitive to the implications of their actions.”

The frolicsome foursome had letters of reprimand placed in their files, were forced to write an apology, to hear multicultural lectures on “issues involving racial sensitivities,” and to create an educational program on the conflict of freedom of expression with multicultural sensitivities (Campus, Winter 1992). Who better to speak from experience about the results of such conflicts?

Since anything can now be attacked as “racist,” it should not be surprising that this epithet has been hurled even at posters and exhibitions meant to combat racism. At Pennsylvania State University, a well-intentioned poster that listed almost fifty offensive slurs (“There’s a nasty name for everyone. Including you. Think about it.”) was itself attacked as “racist” (Campus, Fall 1991).

The same fate befell an art exhibit at Passaic County Community College attacking racism by depicting the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis and the epithets they hurl. The administration removed the paintings from a campus gallery when some students complained that they were “racist” (CHE, 8 December 1993, A6).

An exhibition at Johns Hopkins meant to honor the abolitionist movement unintentionally committed a ‘hate crime’ when it included material on James and William Birney, White abolitionists who released their slaves to demonstrate their anti-slavery commitment.

Blacks would have none of this sly “racist” endorsement of slavery. “This stuff will not be tolerated,” said Paul Brown, one of the Black students who staged a sit-in. “There are plenty of resources in the library if you just made a half-ass attempt to find something.” The library director who failed to make the half-assed attempt did manage the obligatory abject apology: “Personally, I deeply regret any offense given by the exhibit of abolitionist material,” (Heterodoxy, March 1993, 3).

This incident brings to mind the notorious attack on Jeanne Cannizzo, the University of Toronto anthropologist who curated the Royal Ontario Museum exhibit “Into the Heart of Africa” (1990), a well-meaning indictment of the humiliating way in which colonialists treated Africans.

Although no Whites protested this “insensitive” presentation of their forebears, some Blacks denounced the portrayals of vanquished African warriors as “racist.” According to this logic, any depiction of the victims of oppression must be “racist.” The protesters advised the museum that it should have exhibited only works of great African art.

Protesters mounted demonstrations not only outside the museum, but they invaded Cannizzo’s classroom, hurling insults and epithets at her. On one occasion, according to an eye-witness, “a large Black male chased Cannizzo down the hall.” Administrators and faculty did nothing to stop the defamation and assaults, abjectly afraid to oppose the will or criticize the behavior of campus minorities (“The Silencers,” Maclean’s, 27 May 1991, 63).

Cannizzo, shattered by this experience, left the university and eventually emigrated to England. All this, for organizing an exhibition that attacked racism!

This section ends where it began, in the kitchen. A group of dining-hall workers at Harvard wanted to have a “Back to the Fifties” party. But the Minority Affairs Dean denounced them for being “racist,” arguing that it was wrong to feel nostalgia for a decade that included segregationist sentiments (D’Souza, Illiberal Education, 217; Newsweek , 6 May 1991).

A far more notorious incident occurred at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where the swampy multicultural atmosphere that now chokes ‘cutting-edge’ campuses led to a menu being found “racist.”

Two semi-autonomous colleges on the campus share a kitchen. Merrill College caters to ‘multicultural’ students; Crown appeals to science and economics students, many of whom are Asians. The incident began innocuously enough with the Crown kitchen staff deciding what to serve at a monthly College Night dinner.

Weeks earlier Merrill had chosen an Asian theme, but a Crown staffer, a Japanese-American, noticed that the dinner happened to fall on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Thinking this might appear to be by design and be misinterpreted, she chose a non-ethnic menu instead. While Crown students munched on chicken and spare ribs, a rumor spread at Merrill College that Crown had refused to serve Asian food because it blamed Asians for the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Soon fliers littered the campus denouncing the Crown administration as “racist.” Crown staff members were besieged by groups of angry students, angry phone calls, and even death threats. Meanwhile at Merrill, students and faculty, gloating at the troubles of their colleagues, issued a public statement about Crown’s “overt and covert racism” and calling the decision – keep in mind that it was made by a Japanese-American – ”the racist unconscious at work.”

After months of turmoil, the staff at Crown was forced to attend sensitivity workshops, which Crown’s provost, Peggy Musgrave, described as “brainwashing perations…humiliating experiences where people have to bare their souls and expose their innermost thoughts.” Musgrave was forced to resign. Crown’s bursar was so distraught and exhausted by the controversy that he was forced to take extended medical leave. Other Crown staff resigned.

All this bloodletting began, remember, over an allegedly “racist” menu (see Barbara Rhoades Ellis, “A Day of Infamy at UC Santa Cruz,” Heterodoxy 1 [3] June 1992, 6).

Muzzling the “Racist” Student Press

Unmoored charges of “racism” have sanctioned far more serious and repressive attacks on free expression and debate than the ones mentioned so far. The epithet “racist” has been used with particular effectiveness to intimidate and silence the student press. According to an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, during the academic year 1992-93 there were 38 “major trashings of publications” on campus.

At the University of Maryland, students stole 10,000 copies of the Diamondback, alleging that it is “racist” for misspelling the title of W. E. B. DuBois’s book The Souls of Black Folk (which came out The Sales of Black Folk; CHE 17 November 1993, A39). Most often, the accusation of “racism” is invoked to discredit opinions that minority members find uncongenial or embarrassing.

At Duke, the Duke Review was denounced as “racist” and summarily trashed by a Black student because it dared to criticize the Black Student Alliance as wasteful and monolithic (Campus 5 [2], Winter 1994, 13; 5 [3], Spring 1994, 12).

At the University of Iowa, Black students “filled the offices”– as the Chronicle of Higher Education euphemistically put it – of The Daily Iowan to protest the publication of a political cartoon comparing the Blacks who almost killed Reginald Denny to members of the Ku Klux Klan. Apparently the White editors had not heard that Blacks cannot be “racists” – by definition.

At the University of South Carolina, the student newspaper was threatened with a funding review by administrators when it published a student’s poem satirizing then presidential candidate Jesse Jackson (Illiberal Education, 145).

At Virginia Commonwealth University, Black students stole the entire press run of the student newspaper to punish it for running “racist” editorials charging that Black student groups receive disproportionate funding from the school: “We find you guily [sic] of several counts of vandalist, slanderist, racist, scandalist journalism. Therefore we are shutting you down.” The Black student newspaper complimented the thieves for “staging a courageous and peaceful protest,” (Campus Report, 10 [3], April 1995).

At Vassar, the student newspaper was called “racist” after it proclaimed Black activist Anthony Grate “hypocrite of the month” for espousing anti-Semitic views while denouncing bigotry against Blacks. The newspaper quoted Grate as saying “dirty Jews” and “I hate Jews.”

When the Spectator publicized the hypocrisy and racism of this Black leader, the Vassar Student Association attempted to suppress the offending issue, and then, when that failed, withdrew its funding. The newspaper had to be punished, according to VSA, for “unnecessarily jeopardiz[ing] an educational community based on mutual understanding,” (D’Souza, Ibid. 10).

On most campuses, it is presumptively “racist” to point out minority “racism.” The editor of the student newspaper at the State University of New York at Stony Brook provoked a tirade of abuse when he wrote that his experiences on this multicultural campus had “taught me to be wary, distrustful, and, at times, downright revolted by African Americans.”

In a column, Stony Brook Teaches Reactive Racism , the student wrote: “In one particular Africana Studies class I was called a ‘kike’ by one Black student, while another yelled out, ‘You! You Jew. You raped my people!’” The student, who is Jewish, said that other White students had told him that they also had been victims of racism by members of minority groups.

After the column was published, Black students didn’t apologize, as so many White students have been coerced into doing, but engineered a boycott against businesses that advertised in the paper. Although the student editor was physically threatened, the president of this “inclusive community” did not denounce Black racism or even investigate the charges – he denounced the column (CHE, 9 March 1994, A33).

At the University of California-Riverside, it is unhealthy even to criticize gangsta rap! The trouble for Mark Hardie, a Black 22-year-old senior, began when he wrote two columns in the student paper, one denouncing ‘gangsta rap’ and the other calling Afrocentrism a “racist” concept. Hardie was forced to resign his position as a staff writer and columnist because retaliation was promised if he stayed on.

Police had to provide Hardie with security escorts on campus because Black students threatened to kill him. One caller to a campus radio program said: “Ya know, he’s a victim here, he’s gonna be a victim. I’m waiting outside. I’m gonna kill him. I swear to God I’m gonna kill his family,” (Campus Reports 9 [4], April 1994, 3).

At the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Black students occupied the offices of, and temporarily closed down, The Massachusetts Daily Collegian when the White staff replaced three minority editors (others still served). Another grievance was that the paper refused to run an editorial condemning the first verdict in the Rodney King case. During the attack on the office, demonstrators broke a plate glass window and a stereo, and ripped up files, photographs, and documents.

When the student editor criticized the demonstrators in the Boston Globe, one Black student protester invaded the student-newspaper office armed with a baseball bat and attacked the newspaper’s photo editor, dragging him out of The Collegian office to the main floor of the Campus Center (CHE, 14 October 1992).

To also show their displeasure, the protesters confiscated or trashed most of the 19,000 copies of the press run. Although the theft of the papers was arguably a crime and certainly a violation of First Amendment rights, the administration refused to condemn, or even comment on, this act.

Throughout the controversy, the administration, as Gary Brasor points out, tacitly approved unlawful acts it deemed compatible with its multicultural agenda (for a blow-by-blow account, see Gary Crosby Brasor, “Weimar in Amherst,” Academic Questions, 8 [2], Spring 1995, 69-89).

At DePaul University, the DePaulia was recently denounced as “racist” and shut down by Black students who didn’t like the DePaulia correctly reporting that several DePaul students arrested for fighting at a campus “Bootie-Call” party were Black. In the story, the DePaulia quoted the police report, which described those arrested as “M/Bs,” police shorthand for male/Blacks and one of several routine abbreviations used by police to describe people either arrested or victimized.

According to the protesters, however, the abbreviation is “offensive” (Chicago Sun-Times, 12 April 1995, 11). Their leader said that the mention of race was “disrespectful” and contributed to negative stereotyping of Blacks on campus (Chicago Sun-Times, 11 April 1995, 13). In other words, quoting directly, quoting accurately, and having the facts straight are now “racist” if the truth discomfits minorities.

Predictably, DePaulia staffers will receive counseling about “cultural sensitivity” but the Black protesters will not receive tutoring in the First Amendment. And, of course, no reprimands for those who trashed the office and shut down the paper.

Perhaps the most outrageous attacks on a student paper occurred in 1993 at the University of Pennsylvania during the tenure of Sheldon Hackney, the Poster Boy of Invertebrate Administrators.

Gregory Pavlik, a politically incorrect columnist for The Daily Pennsylvanian, had criticized Martin Luther King for being a plagiarist and adulterer, Malcolm X for being a pimp, and racial preferences for being “racist.”

Pavlik wrote a column in March of 1993 that criticized university officials for expelling two White freshmen who dumped water on Black members of the Onyx Senior Honor Society who were holding an initiation/hazing ceremony under their dormitory windows at 2:30 a.m. (Maybe Penn’s code should tell students when to go to bed.)

Pavlik provocatively claimed that the two students were suspended because they were White, and that the Onyx Society was the real culprit and should be punished, even though Black.

The column ignited a firestorm. The university’s Judicial Action Office filed 32 charges of “racial harassment” against Pavlik, despite the fact that the newspaper is financially and legally independent of the university. In the most wonderful doublespeak, the Judicial Action Officer said she filed the complaint because she was “afraid for [Pavlik’s] safety” (Campus Report, 8 [5], May 1993, 4).

To protest the “blatant and voluntary perpetuation of institutional racism” at the newspaper and on campus, a number of Black students removed nearly all 14,000 copies of one edition from campus distribution sites (CHE, 28 April 1993, A33). 202 Penn Blacks signed a letter justifying the act.

A university report on this incident found that the theft of the newspapers was a “form of student protest and not an indicator of criminal behavior,” and that the campus police who arrested demonstrators caught in the act were wrong (see excerpts in WSJ, 26 July 1993, A10, and editorial). They should have contacted “Open Expression Monitors” to study the students actions (I am not making this up).

The police were sent to sensitivity training seminars to have their sense of fair play adjusted. The chief of security for a campus museum, who nabbed two protesters sneaking out with plastic garbage bags, was officially reprimanded for “racial harassment” and suspended. He too had to undergo sensitivity training. The Black students who threw away the entire press run of the newspaper were not punished (see “Penn Report Faults Campus Police for Response to Students’ Taking Papers,” CHE, 4 August 1993, A27, and 22 September 1993, A35).

In July 1988 – before many of these incidents had occurred – Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, issued a prescient statement:

We are extremely concerned about incidents…which we believe reflect a growing wave of campus censorship inflicted under the guise of fighting racism. Faced with a real concern about an important issue, universities appear to be accepting the misguided notion that viewpoint suppression is an appropriate means to their end.

We note with some irony that this same means was used a generation ago against students who were advocating equality and desegregation (in Illiberal Education, 145).

Suppressing Debate about Public Issues

As the previous section makes clear, the term “racism” has been used on campus to squelch debate about a number of crucial social issues. The term has proven particularly effective in silencing debate about racial preferences. “On virtually every campus,” writes Dinesh D’Souza, “there is a de facto taboo against free discussion of affirmative action or minority self-segregation, and efforts to open such discussion are considered presumptively racist,” (Illiberal Education , 238).

Jennifer Imle, a junior at Southwestern University in Texas, displayed in her room a poster attacking admissions policies based on race. She was soon attacked as a “racist” and ridiculed by her professors during class. The Dean of Students took one look at the poster and said “This must go!” circulating a memo that said the poster smacked of White supremacy.

Imle resisted the effort to suspend her First Amendment rights, and arranged to have Dinesh D’Souza and a campus advocate of racial preferences debate the issue before 350 students eager to hear the issue publicly and honestly discussed.

Other stories don’t have such happy outcomes. At one major university, an associate dean was asked to resign because of his candid opposition to affirmative action and multiculturalism (Lingua Franca, April 1991, 37). At another, an assistant vice chancellor of academic personnel was fired, and escorted by police from her office, when she pointed out that a new affirmative-action plan violated the university’s stringent guidelines for faculty search procedures Heterodoxy 2 [10], October 1993).

At Harvard, a professor got into trouble merely for defining affirmative action as “government enforcement of preferential treatment in hiring, promotion, and college admissions.” Black students denounced the phrase “preferential treatment” as “racist” (D’Souza, Illiberal Education, 199-200).

In 1987, at UCLA, a student editor was suspended for printing a cartoon ridiculing affirmative action. In the “intolerably racist” cartoon, a student stops a rooster on campus and asks how it got into UCLA. The rooster responds, “Affirmative action.” When another editor at a different school wrote a column criticizing UCLA officials for suspending the editor – and reproduced the cartoon to support his argument – he too was suspended.

The newspaper’s adviser, an assistant professor of journalism no less, said that his crime was publishing controversial material “without permission.” Incredibly, other editors agreed with her, clucking that the student journalist had learned “a valuable lesson in common sense,” (Dictatorship of Virtue, 209).

As John Leo put it, “Whenever the curtain parts and the public gets a peek at what is really going on in college admissions…voices are raised to expel the student who released the data, as well as the college editor who printed them. This kind of defense of furtiveness is routine,” (“Endgame for affirmative action,” U. S. News and World Report, 13 March 1995, 18).

The most outrageous example of denouncing a critic of affirmative action as a ”racist” involved Timothy Maguire, a law senior at Georgetown University Law School. After working as a clerk in the admissions office, Maguire wrote an article reporting that Georgetown admits Blacks with lower LSAT scores than Whites (a routine practice throughout the country).

The article provoked outrage, with one White student characterizing it as “assaultive.” “People were injured. I think that kind of speech is outrageous,” (in Hentoff, Free Speech for Me, 219). Black students accused Maguire of being a “racist” and demanded his expulsion (CHE, 29 May 1991).

When the law school prosecuted Maguire for revealing “confidential” admissions data (he named no names), lawyers refused to defend him out of fear of being called “racists” (Jared Taylor, Paved With Good Intentions, 1992, 181). The two who did were not only accused of being “racists” but placed on probation at the D. C. School of Law (Hentoff, 223-27).

Clearly, the safest way to express opinions about affirmative action on campus is anonymously, on the internet. At Yale recently, a posting contended that affirmative action should play no part in the selection of editors for The Yale Law Review, and defended using anonymity because “self-identification could lead to personal harm.” The law school dean determined that this posting had to go (CHE, 7 April 1995, A36).

Strategic interventions of the word “racist” have discouraged debate on other crucial issues as well. The University of Charleston refused to renew the contract of a conservative scholar after he criticized “diversity” standards for accreditation (National Review, 1 February 1993, 14).

At the University of Oregon, faculty members who had raised questions about a proposal to increase the number of required multicultural credits were called “racists” in a full-page ad published in an alternative campus newspaper. The ad listed the professors’ names, class schedules, and office telephone numbers (CHE 30 June 1993, A27).

Diane Ravitch was called a “racist” for criticizing “racial fundamentalism,” the notion that children can learn only from people of the same race. She has also been physically threatened: “‘We’re going to get you, bitch. We’re going to beat your White ass,’” (New York Magazine , 21 January 1991).

At the University of New Mexico, the contract of a part-time instructor was not renewed after she was charged with “racism” by a Hispanic graduate student for saying in class that “there are six generations of South Valley residents who cannot speak English. There’s no excuse for that since they have many opportunities to learn. There’s just no excuse for that if they want to stay in this country, and if that’s the case, as far as I’m concerned, they can go further south.”

Although the professor denied saying these words, no formal hearing was ever held, and she was not interviewed before she was released (NAS Update, 4 [1]).

At Chico State University, a professor got into hot water when he published a letter in the local newspaper arguing that demands for Indian teachers were unrealistic because there were not enough qualified candidates. He went on to say that Indian students ought to be on campus “to get the best education…not have their sensibilities stroked and grades of ‘A’ doled out on the basis of their race or correct politics.”

Native Americans across the country attacked these comments, and the Chico administration informed the professor that he had violated the school’s racial harassment policy, which calls for expulsion of faculty or students who create “an atmosphere of intimidation and hostility.” When the professor threatened to sue, the university dropped its charges (Heterodoxy 2 [4], December 1993, 3).

A similar incident occurred at the University of Alaska, when a Harvard-trained expert on Native American education was charged with “racism” and “discrimination” for saying that a teacher-education program at the university was under “equity pressures” to pass Alaskan Natives through the system.

Angry faculty and students organized demonstrations against her, and the Fairbanks Native Association filed a complaint with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. The OCR eventually determined that the professor’s remarks did not violate the rights of students (CHE, 23 September 1992; see also Steven Wulf, “Federal Guidelines for Censorship,” Academic Questions, 8 [2], Spring 1995, 58-68).

To avoid being stigmatized as a “racist,” it is best not to say anything that might disturb a minority member.

At Iowa State University, a White African-American history professor disagreed with a Black student about the role of Afrocentric theories in the course; the student, a member of the Nation of Islam, called her a “racist liar” and threatened her with a “jihad” (CHE, 20 October 1993, A5; 1 December).

At the University of Illinois a feminist scholar was removed from her course in women’s studies when she said of one Black student who “snickered” and trivialized rape that he fit the profile of a Black male rapist – a remark he found “racist.” She, of course, condemned the university for being “sexist,” (CHE, 7 October 1992).

At the University of Michigan, a White professor of sociology and the nation’s leading expert on the demography of Black Americans was denounced as a “racist” after he read a passage from the Autobiography of Malcolm X in which the author describes himself as a pimp and a thief. Black students called for a person of color to teach the course (and perhaps to re-write the Autobiography).

The professor stopped teaching the class and observed that several of his colleagues intended to drop any discussion of various important race-related issues from their courses, for fear of being accused of “racism” (Chester Finn, “The Campus: An Island of Repression is a Sea of Freedom,” Commentary, September 1989, 19).

One of the most notorious instances of intimidation was directed at two eminent, and exceedingly liberal, Harvard professors who co-taught a course on American history and demography. In 1987, both were attacked in the Harvard Crimson for being “racially insensitive.”

Bernard Bailyn’s crime was reading an exculpatory passage about slavery from the diary of a southern planter without giving equal time to the recollections of a slave.

Richard Thernstrom’s crime was assigning a book that defined affirmative action as “the government enforcement of preferential treatment in hiring, promotion and college admissions,” and endorsing Patrick Moynihan’s thesis that the breakup of the Black family is an important cause of persistent Black poverty (John Taylor, New York Magazine, 21 January 1991, 33-34).

As a Black student put it, “I am also left to question his sensitivity when I hear that Black men get feelings of inadequacy, beat their wives, and take off” (in Illiberal Education , 195-96). Thernstrom’s defense, that he “presented factual information in an objective and dispassionate way,” is beside the point; the facts hurt the feelings of Black students, and that, by definition, proves “racial insensitivity.” Thernstrom wrote:

Teaching in a university in which a handful of disaffected students can all too easily launch a smear campaign…one must think about how many times one wants to be a martyr. I love to debate historical interpretations, but what I experienced…was not public discussion of the validity of my ideas but an indictment of my character and motives. I am not alone in deciding to avoid yet another irrational and vicious personal attack like this…

I know of other scholars who have censored their courses by dropping any treatment of touchy topics such as the disintegration of the Black family. When I was an undergraduate in the 1950s, the menace to academic freedom in America came from the right.

Academic freedom is again under attack today, this time from leftist students…who believe in “no free speech for fascists” and think mistakenly that all the fascists are on the right ( Harper’s, February 1992, “Letters”).

Given this repressive climate on campus, it is now dangerous even to report widely accepted facts, if those facts are unwelcomed by, or embarrassing to, minorities and their protectors. At the University of Michigan, a professor of statistics (for 37 years) was accused of “promoting racism” and temporarily suspended after he noted in class that minorities average 55 points lower on the SAT than Whites (Campus 5 [2], Winter 1994, 12).

As Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer points out, “We have to deal with some very bad news when we talk about Blacks…We have to talk about unpleasant matters, matters that Blacks will find upsetting and depressing, and that can only make them unhappy.” If universities choose to have a curriculum that includes African-American Studies and courses on race, then universities, as Dinesh D’Souza argues, have a responsibility to make sure that professors and students are free to talk about these issues without intimidation (Illiberal Education, 201).

Suppressing “Racist” Research

The effort to discourage and suppress ’social risk’ research has a long and ignoble history (recall Bruno and Galileo). During the 1960s and early 70s, this urge took on a ‘humanitarian’ guise. The goal was to protect minorities from “racist” research that might harm the interests or psyches of minorities.

Why is it “ignoble” to suppress allegedly “racist” research? Jonathan Rauch provides an elegant answer in Kindly Inquisitors (1993). Rauch argues that the only way that liberal science can effectively work to find truth and establish consensus is to presume that any and all subjects are open to competent investigation.

To do otherwise would require authoritarian control of vast proportions, and countries that have tried to exert such control have suffered grievous social, political and economic deprivations as a result. The knowledge-making enterprise itself, with its checks and balances, is the only agent that can fittingly determine who and what is competent and when a case has been “proved.”

Liberal science, according to Rauch, “declares that the issue of race and intelligence should be explored by any researcher who cares to explore it and who will follow the rules,” (144). Whatever one thinks about this research, amateurs must leave it to experts and the processes of free intellectual debate to determine if and when it can be added to our body of knowledge.

Research that cannot withstand the vigorous fact-checking and error-finding that drives our knowledge-making enterprise will eventually be discredited and marginalized. Research that can withstand such scrutiny will be incorporated into the mass of data, findings, theories, etc. that we call knowledge. Once there, other agencies and forums can debate and deal with its political and social implications.

This crucial processes of testing can only occur, obviously, on research that has already been done and made public. To prevent research from being done, no matter how risky it may seem at the time or to some members of society, could rob society of potentially useful insights, and would likely, in the long run, lead to the undermining of the most successful and beneficial collaborative and international enterprise in the history of humanity.

Let me illustrate the truth of this observation. Back in 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan broke the silence on the problems facing Black culture with his book, The Black Family: The Case for National Action. Noting a sharp rise in the number of single-parent Black families, he forewarned that this trend posed a threat to Blacks’ social progress and to society at large.

For his efforts, he was vilified for “blaming the victim” and accused of “crypto-racism” (Joseph G. Conti and Brad Stetson, “The New Black Vanguard,” Intercollegiate Review , Spring 1993, 34). But as Adam Walinsky has recently pointed out, Moynihan’s dire predictions have come true; vilifying his “racist” research only served to blind people to the “long descending night” of violence which he foresaw and which is now upon us (“The Crisis of Public Order,” The Atlantic Monthly, July 1995, 48-49).

As Rauch has shown, humanitarians continue to attack scientific and social research that threatens to lead to findings that some minorities, and indeed some Whites, might find disturbing, especially if true. At the University of Michigan, for example, an administrator called for the suppression of “theories” that might conflict with a multicultural agenda, since “harassment in classrooms is based on theories held by teachers,” (Kindly Inquisitors, 136).

The notion that some credible scientific theories and findings are, in and of themselves, “racist” has spread to undergraduates, with dangerous implications for academic freedom. “An amazing 38 percent” of students evaluating a teacher’s lecture on the genetic contribution to intelligence felt that this was not an appropriate topic for a psychology course.

When these students were asked about the professor’s motives for presenting this material, “24 percent specifically mentioned ‘racist,’ ‘racism,’ or notions of ‘racial superiority’” (Stanley Coren, “When Teaching Is Evaluated on Political Grounds,” Academic Questions , Summer 1993, 77; reprinted in The Montana Professor, 5 [1], Winter 1995, 12-14). Clearly, scholars working on touchy subjects – and the list of these keeps growing and growing too – run their own risk of being label “racists,” no matter how valid their findings.

At the University of California-Berkeley, a professor of physical anthropology who argues that crime, intelligence, and other human behaviors are influenced by genetic factors and that there is a relationship between race and innate abilities, was prevented from teaching his class when 75 students marched into his anthropology class and drowned out his lecture (CHE, 4 March 1992; Russell Jacoby, Dogmatic Wisdom, 137).

Trouble befell a similar course taught at the University of Denver. Charles Murray, of Bell Curve fame, who studies the relation between race and IQ and how intelligence traits can be inherited and measured, was to lecture for half the course on intelligence and public policy with the other half reserved for his critics.

Not good enough. His critics at DU think his “racist” ideas were not worthy of any discussion and demanded that the course be canceled (Campus Report, June 1991; CHE, 16 January 1991). Fortunately for academic freedom, the university disagreed.

At the University of Maryland, a “thoughtfully organized” conference on genetic components in criminal behavior, which reviewers said did “a superb job of assessing the underlying scientific, legal, ethical, and public policy issues,” was canceled by the National Institutes of Health when Blacks said it would promote “racism.” The Committee to Stop the Violence Initiative, formed at Howard University, said of the conference, “It is clear racism. It is an effort to use public money for a genocidal effort against African Americans,” (CHE, 2 September 1992).

At the University of Delaware, two researchers were prevented from accepting funds from a private foundation some administrators deemed “racist.” The campus African-American Coalition claimed that the research threatened “the very survival of African-Americans,” (Campus Report, May 1992). An arbitrator, saying that the university based its decision on perceptions rather than on facts, overturned the ban (CHE, 4 September 1991).

Both researchers had already endured years of institutional harassment and character assassination for publishing the results of their research on race-norming (As a result of this work, race-norming was banned in 1991). After the Department of Educational Studies denied major credits for their courses and defined their publications and investigations as “non-research,” they filed a federal lawsuit to gain relief from the persecution and won an out-of-court settlement in 1992 (Campus Report 9 [2] February 1994, 6).

This humanitarian effort to restrict “racist” research can wind up inhibiting research by Blacks that could help the Black community! At the University of Chicago, a Black sociologist encountered all kinds of opposition to his research on racial integration, especially when he found that Black schoolteachers were less prepared than their White counterparts (Lingua Franca, April 1991, 37; CHE , 21 November 1990).

Other Blacks at the same school have also complained about the pressures they face to avoid research that might reflect badly on Blacks or bring unwelcome news. Professor William Julius Wilson observed, “There has been a tendency in our field not to discuss issues that are unflattering,” (CHE, 30 October 1991).

Personally, I very uncomfortable with the theories of Philippe Rushton and Michael Levin, who argue, as I understand them, that on average Blacks score lower than Whites and Asians on intelligence and most other tests, and that these results may have something to do with genetic endowment (see Jared Taylor, Paved with Good Intentions, 123-182 for an overview of comparative test results in many fields).

I am also offended by the notion that Whites may be, on average, less intelligent than Asians, or that, as Leonard Jeffries incredibly argues (he is not a researcher), Whites, as “ice people,” are not as nice as Blacks, who are “sun people.”

I, like many others, worry about how any of this information may affect immediate human behavior and long-term social policy. But I first want to know if it is true, as truth is consensually defined by the experts in the appropriate fields. If it is not true, then I can dismiss it as I dismiss horoscopes no matter how flattering. If it is true, then we have to determine how this information bears upon the way we live together.

We must allow social-risk research to be done because we cannot know beforehand if the risks will materialize or not, or if the research will benefit some of us in unexpected ways. After all, most knowledge entails social “risks” for some group or other. The only way to avoid such risks would be to profoundly curtail through authoritarian fiat the knowledge-making enterprise of Western civilization. This program of repression, however, would entail the gravest risks of all.

Conclusion

I have tried to show that the epithet “racist” is often used irresponsibly to punish and suppress a wide range of words, images, statements and findings – from innocuous metaphors to unwelcome facts and theories. I am not arguing, of course, that the term “racist” is only or always used this way, but I do contend that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish legitimate uses of the term from exaggerated, promiscuous, and repressive ones.

It is time for responsible students, academics, and administrators to discountenance all heedless, negligent, and intolerant invocations of this word. The use of repressive and stigmatizing epithets has no place in a community of fact-gatherers, truth-sorters, knowledge-makers, and opinion-shapers.

How did campuses get into this fix? Why do so many students, teachers and administrators make, or treat seriously, patently preposterous accusations of “racism”? To understand this phenomenon, let me invoke a concept recently used by John Fekete in another context: the concept of “moral panic.” A moral panic emerges from the impulse to root out all moral evil and to prevent its germination.

Driven by a “zero-toleration” mentality, a campaign of moral panic feeds on itself, always expanding its boundaries (and thus enemies) and intimidating its adherents into ever more fervent demonstrations of compliance and support.

Many on campus – both minorities and non-minorities – apparently believe that such a panic is good for the “racist” souls of White folks. In Paved With Good Intentions, Jared Taylor explains why:

It is widely assumed that if the struggle against racism is not maintained at fever pitch, White people will promptly relapse into bigotry. Thus a great deal of the criticism of Whites is justified on the grounds that it will forestall potential racism…The process becomes circular.

Since Whites are thought likely to turn racist if not constantly policed, it is legitimate to denounce acts of racism they might commit as if they had already done so. In this climate, all charges of racism must be taken seriously because they are potentially true (107).

A couple of years ago, a Black student at Emory reported being racially harassed, eventually falling into silence and curling up into a fetal position. Emory’s president solemnly denounced “renascent bigotry” and imposed new speech-code rules. An investigation proved, however, that it was all a hoax concocted by the student to divert attention from her cheating on a chemistry test.

But today, even hoaxes are defended as being morally true, given the assumption of rampant White “racism.” What does it matter if Twana Brawley was really raped or not by five White New York politicos? The truth is that every once and a while a White man does rape a Black woman. Of the Emory hoax, the head of the Atlanta NAACP said, “‘It does not matter whether she did it or not, because of all the pressure these Black students are under at these predominantly White schools,” (Campus Report, July/August 1993, 5).

In the perfectionist and puritanical climate of a moral panic, even trivial, trumped-up, or absurd charges of “racism” can have valuable political and therapeutic effects. Since racism is a bad thing, the more opportunities to condemn it the better. As a result of this deranged view, “charges of racism can be made with the same reckless impunity as were charges of communism at the height of the McCarthy era,” (Taylor, 23). To ask for the facts supporting the charge is to expose one’s own “racism” and to invite more accusations.

Campus culture provides a fertile field for the flowering of moral panic. The campus equity bureaucracy plays a crucial role in fomenting baseless and capricious charges of “racism.” The income and careers of these people depend on the discovery and extirpation of White“racism.”

Each accusation, no matter how idiotic, is interpreted as evidence of the increased racial tensions on campus; increased “racism” justifies the existence of – and the increased power of – the race-relations experts who must spring into action to avert campus race war.

This readiness to believe any accusation colludes insidiously with the desire of activist minority groups to “mau-mau,” as the insightful Tom Wolfe phrased it, campus flak catchers. “Blacks learned long ago that Whites can be silenced and intimidated by accusing them of racism. White acquiescence has made the charge of racism into such a powerful weapon that it should be no surprise to find that a great many Blacks cannot resist the temptation to wield it,” (Taylor 61).

In short, minorities enjoy assaulting the dignity of ‘Whitey.’ To push an absurd accusation to a successful conclusion is the perfect way to do it and to demonstrate, and thus increase, one’s clout. The equity bureaucracy doesn’t oppose such shenanigans because almost every successfully prosecuted accusation of “racism” results in the hiring of more minorities and equity-specialists, thus driving up their price and increasing their clout.

Even White adminstrators are seduced into this game. By responding to all minority complaints, White administrators, most of whom seem riddled with guilt, can demonstrate their oneness with oppressed peoples, salve their conscience, and placate menacing groups of minority students (with their sun glasses, hooded parkas and military fatigues). Lending credence to every accusation also serves to strengthen the hand of administration.

Administrators like stringent speech codes not only because they testify to the purity of their motives but because these codes generate accusations that help intimidate the majority of students and faculty on campus, making them more dependent upon the intercessory goodwill and power of administrators.

Meanwhile, administrators, being insulated from classroom teaching and most direct interaction with students, are usually able to escape the pernicious effects of the repressive codes they champion. When they can’t, as in the case of Francis Lawrence, they call in their chits and hang on until the tempest blows over.

Countenancing trivial, baseless, and absurd charges of “racism” carries a terrible price.

First of all, it trivializes real racist incidents, which get lost in the moral panic over innocent logos, innocuous words, and legitimate research data.

Second, it sours even good-willed Whites on tolerance and diversity. If they are “racist” by virtue of their skin color, and if almost anything they do can get them into trouble anyhow, why try?

Third, it creates for Whites an intimidating and hostile educational environment. Those in favor of prohibiting the use of words that demean and victimize members of the campus community might want to consider adding “racist!” to their hit list.

Fourth, trivial and baseless charges of “racism” inevitably embitter many Whites, more and more of whom are sick and tired of their ritual role as “racists.” Even the Washington Generals got tired of being programmed losers, and they got paid for it.

And fifth, the moral panic over “racism” has led to outrageous double standards harmful to both Whites and Blacks. As Jared Taylor points out, “Whites are held to a system of ’sensitivity’ requirements that do not apply to Blacks,” (Taylor 217).

Whites are monitored, pestered, and punished for preposterous reasons – for a look, for an innocent word, for wearing a T-shirt, for expressing a plausible argument – but Blacks can say almost anything with perfect impunity. The wording of many speech- and conduct-codes explicitly sanctions such double standards, protecting only certain, privileged minority groups, not all students.

Taking the hint, many minorities advance the absurd but self-exonerating claim that they cannot be “racists,” and then feel free to expound the most absurd and vilificatory racist nonsense ever heard on campuses.

No doubt some Whites, angered by this punitive duplicity, are provoked into “racist” thoughts and acts that would not have occurred to them in a more tolerant and even-handed environment. Moral panic over “racism” may create racists, not eliminate them.

Nor is the moral panic surrounding “racism” good for Blacks and other minorities. The climate of moral panic generated by exaggerated and unfounded accusations of “racism” only serves to dangerously reinforce “an already exaggerated sense of grievance in Blacks,” (Taylor, 87). This is not good for race relations. It encourages Blacks to mistrust all Whites and to see themselves as saintly victims of a system in which they cannot prosper.

Phony or trivial charges of “racism” may seem harmless enough in their particular contexts, but cumulatively they gnaw away at freedom. The argument Catharine R. Stimpson made to defend art is relevant here: “Higher education cannot delude itself into thinking that the arts can lose a little freedom here, the humanities a little freedom there, and everything will still be manageable…For academic and cultural freedom is like air: Pollution in one zone spreads to another,” (CHE, 26 September 1990).

In Fahrenheit 451, that remarkably prescient book, censorship does not come from the top down, but from the bottom up, and it comes through a thousand ostensibly minor restrictions on freedom in the name of humanitarian good will.

There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick… You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred… Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin . Burn it (Valentine, 53-4).

There are many ways to deal with false and trivial accusations of “racism,” but the one that seems most effective is to sue.

When something Eric Shane, the art historian, had written was said by another scholar to be open to a “racist construction,” Shane threatened to sue for defamation of character and libel.

The chastened critic, and her publisher, took out an ad in several major literary periodicals saying that the “slur” was “wholly unwarranted and [that they] deeply regret[ed] that the suggestion was made.” The ad went on to say that they were “pleased to have this opportunity to withdraw unreservedly this unfounded suggestion and to apologise most sincerely to Mr. Shane for the considerable distress and embarrassment which he has been caused,” (The Times Literary Supplement, 18 November 1994).

Given the moral panic that prevails on many campuses today, threatening to sue may be a more effective way of discouraging the irresponsible use of intimidating epithets than, say, appeals to this country’s principles of due process and free expression that still remain the envy and goal of so many people throughout the world.

More articles by Trout: Disengaged Students and the Decline in Academic Standards & Flunking the Test: The Dismal Record of Student Evaluations.

Opposition to Health Care Reform Has Nothing To Do With Race

Video here .

Oh, of course not. In fact, this video really sums up what the whole Republican Party has been all about for a good 30 years now. Why do only

We have lots of Republican commenters on this site who insist that the party has nothing to do with race. Well, maybe for them it doesn’t. A lot of White Republicans don’t necessarily seem like very racist people. I’ve known some of them. On the other hand, they aren’t very anti-racist people either. And almost all Republicans are running interference for the racists in the party. I don’t know if that’s racism, but it’s almost getting there. I sure don’t want to be apologizing for racist jerks on here. My clean soul doesn’t need to be smudged with that grunge.

The calculus is simple. White America is a racist politic. Not that all Whites are racist, but if you want to get the White vote, the racists are such a huge block that you need to play to them. If you don’t play to the racists, you lose the White vote. The Democrats last carried Whites in 1964. That year mean anything to you?

1964.

That’s the year Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. With what I imagine was his classic haunted expression, Johnson presciently noted, “Well, we just lost the South for a generation.” It was longer than that, and it was worse than that. It wasn’t just the South, it was the White body politic. And it’s been more than one generation now.

I’m not even sure how racist your average Republican pol is. These guys are cynical like human snakes. Republicans get elected by mining White racist bullshit, so that’s the game plan, morality be damned.

Why don’t the Dems do the same? Well, there are no votes in it for us. If we imply, “Condi’s a nigger!” snigger, snigger, well, there are no votes in that. We can’t get the votes of White racist voters by playing to their racist bullshit. Our base won’t stand for it. If we make that Condi remark above, our base goes ballistic.

And anyway, the Republicans can always out-racist a racist White Democrat. Some conservative White Dems to try to run by appealing to White racism, but the Republican opponent can always out-KKK them, so the Dem always loses. When they have to choose between a real Republican and a fake one (A Democrat pretending to be a Republican), the voters always pick the real deal.

However, the Dems are not stupid. One way to play to the White racist vote is to run rednecks for President. So we get Southern good ol’ boys like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, with some implied racism to go along with it.

One thing for sure though, for a Democrat to win, he must carry through with one ritual: “Stick it to the Blacks!” At least once in the campaign, the Dem must “stick it to the niggers” to show the White rednecks that he’s not with the Black enemy, that he’s on their side in the race war.

Hence Bill Clinton’s ritual denunciation of Sista Soulja in one of his campaigns.

In another Clinton campaign, Bill ran home to Arkansas right before the election to pull the trigger and fry some retarded Black guy in the electric chair. He killed the poor Black guy, then ran back to Washington to campaign. He won the election.

One thing that was interesting about Obama’s election was that this was the first time in many years that a Dem has not had to ritually “stick it to the Blacks” in the campaign. Obama ran an openly pro-Black campaign all through the election, and he somehow won anyway. In America, that’s called a watershed. Predictably, crossing this racial Rubicon threatens to herald a giant step forward in US race relations. Alarmed, and frequently armed, the militias and Teabaggers are lining up in formation to combat the realignment.

This Is Not Schizophrenia

One of the many purposes of this site is to enlighten people about human psychology and in particular about abnormal psychology or mental illness. Even though most of us shout to the heavens about how sane we are, for some reason, we are terrified of discussions of mental illness. I notice that whenever I bring up the subject, it very quickly gets shut down.

There’s something strange going on. People are very afraid of mental illness, even the most minor, harmless and neurotic kinds. The psychotic stuff makes people very nervous too.

I don’t get it. People like me who are fascinated by mental illness and can talk about it all day long don’t understand. What’s the worry? Psychotics are frightening to be around, but not as much as you think. Anyway, if you’re just talking about them, it’s not like the conversation is going to jump out and kill you. Fear of discussing neurosis must be based on the idea that most of us are afraid that we might become neurotic, or more neurotic, ourselves at some point.

It never fails to bother me that most folks can’t tell the difference between neurosis and psychosis. Granted, there are some borderline folks, but generally the distinction is quite clear. If you have spent a lot of time around the two types, it’s like they are people from two different planets.

I remember 25 years ago, I was having a lot of anxiety issues. I thought I was mentally ill and recovering from a nervous breakdown, which I was more or less. So I went to this meeting of a group called Recovery.

Well, it turns out it was for schizophrenics. There were two normals running the show, there were the schizophrenics, and there was me. As nuts as they were, the schizophrenics very quickly figured out that I was not one of them, anxious as I was. The leaders figured it out too. It’s funny that people who are totally nuts can make obvious distinctions that supposedly sane folks cannot.

I do a lot of work with folks who have OCD, since I have it. It’s quite common for these people to tell me that people think they are schizophrenic, and they are often diagnosed with various forms of “psychosis,” by idiot shrinks.

People with OCD can go psychotic, but it’s rare, they are not all that nuts, there is extremely prominent anxiety, it’s pretty easy to pull them out of it – usually only after a few weeks or so – and of course they are never dangerous. It’s just some guy sitting in a chair shaking so hard he can hardly get out of the chair to go outside.

As Freud noted in his class study of the Rat Man, “They are not crazy. Nevertheless, OCD is certainly a crazy illness!” Freud was very insightful. “They are not crazy,” – in other words, they are not psychotic. “It’s a crazy illness,” – it’s very strange, and when they are very ill, they appear psychotic. The Rat Man was a wild case of OCD. The guy had an obsession that there were rats crawling into his anus. Of course that’s impossible, and most people figuring something who thinks that way is psychotic. But the Rat Man was not psychotic.

OCD one of the nuttier of the neuroses, but only on a surface level. This is because when it gets really bad, the anxiety and mental distortion are so extreme that an OCD person appears psychotic. However, a good clinician can pretty quickly figure out that they are not.

Let me give you an example.

An OCD guy I know, in a bad episode, was afraid to turn around in the shower. Why? He was worried that he was a child molester (though he wasn’t, and none of these folks ever molest anyone), and in the shower, he would get the idea in his head that there was a naked 9-year old girl in back of him. Logically, he knew that she wasn’t there, but OCD is powerful form of magic, and it almost convinces you that its bullshit is true. So he was afraid to turn around, because he was afraid that the naked 9 year old girl might be there.

To most people, that’s psychosis. Except that it’s not.

A schizophrenic person simply says matter of factly that when they take a shower, there’s a naked 9 year old girl in back of them showering with them, and this bothers them.

I knew another guy who had severe OCD that was not responding to treatment. He had harm OCD, with thoughts of attacking and killing people in general and those around him. He was also a dwarf with severe physical problems, which made his thoughts even more ludicrous. His Mom gave him a knife at one point and said, “Just do it! Stab me!” Of course he didn’t. They never do these things.

Why they never act on these horrible thoughts is an interesting subject, but it’s best for another post.

Anyway, the guy had various fears, and at one point, he got an intense worry that he was The Devil. OCD was telling him that he was The Devil. Most people will say this is psychotic, but I doubted it, though I found it disturbing. I questioned him further. “You know you’re not really The Devil, right? Or at least it’s unlikely you are?”

His response was interesting. “Logically, I know that,” he said. These people often say that, and it’s quite curious. It’s as if the mind is split between a part of the mind that knows this is all bullshit and an OCD part, terrifying and full of gale-force anxiety, that is telling you all sorts of scary crap. The OCD part has a powerful pull to it due to the psychological force of anxiety and fear, which can actually seem to bend emotions, self-image, reality and even perceptions.

At that point I knew the guy wasn’t psychotic, and I blew it off.

In contrast, a schizophrenic person simply reports that he is The Devil. Maybe it bothers him, maybe it doesn’t, but that’s just the way it goes. He’s describing obvious reality, like the sun rising in the east.

It’s hard to explain logically the difference between the two experiences, but if you’re intelligent and think about it a while, you should be able to figure out the clear-cut difference.

Here we see an example of something that looks like schizophrenia, except it ‘s not. It’s some kind of anxiety disorder. I’m not sure which, but it may be OCD:

Like I stated in my previous thread, I have not yet been diagnosed with anything because I have yet to see a doctor. I was wondering if there is any medication that one could recommend for me. This is the third week I have really been feeling strange, and I don’t know if I should start on medication yet even if a doctor recommends it.

My symptoms are:

Always hearing a different song in my head when my mind is idle (I know that it is in my head, not external).

Feeling uncomfortable talking to people or making eye contact (this comes and goes, really bad after a night of drinking, not bad after a good workout and sauna).

Depersonalized feeling, even when I am talking and joking around with friends, I feel outside of myself in a way, always worrying that I could be schizophrenic.

Less motivated.

Forgetful (always have been, recently a bit more then usual). After a recent night of drinking, I even started to see objects sort of move or grow or something in the corner of my eye or only when I concentrate on them (this isn’t 24/7 tho).

There are a few things going on here. The person is worrying that they might have schizophrenia. A person with schizophrenia typically does not do that. Suppose your name is Jim Brown. Do you worry that your name is Jim Brown? Of course not.

Schizophrenia so contorts reality that the person does not know that they are ill. They don’t have the foggiest clue. The schizophrenic reality is simply their reality, and they don’t think it’s an illness. It’s just what’s happening.

When they get on drugs, they get much better and start figuring out that they are ill, but that’s different. Schizophrenics often have to rely on loved ones to tell them when they are going psychotic because they don’t have the foggiest clue when they are ill and when they are not. Some can sort of figure it out, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t real.

Schizophrenic hallucinations are quite real and are not the sort of anxiety-driven nonsense that this excessively introspective individual is experiencing. If you worry that you’re hearing things or seeing things and start overemphasizing your perceptions and freaking out about them, you’re probably going to start thinking that you are seeing things and hearing things.

The visual hallucinations will often be peripheral vision things, but even normals see weird stuff out of the corners of their eyes all the time. Normals just re-analyze it, figure out what it really is, and move right along.

Sane people often think they hear things too. I’ve noticed that sometimes in the rain, I think I hear stuff. It was raining the other night in the parking lot, and I thought I heard someone yell, “Bob!” I turned around, and of course no one was there. I thought about it a little bit and then just drove away and decided not to think about it anymore. I know enough about psychotic hallucinations to know that that was not one. Once I start hearing stuff all the time, maybe I’m going to get worried, but until then, forget it.

These anxious types are overhyping their sensory organs, worrying way, way too much, and misinterpreting all sorts of normal sounds. Probably anyone can do this if you work yourself into a nutty enough frame of mind. Whatever it is, it’s not schizophrenia, nor is it psychosis.

It’s basically an anxiety issue, not a psychotic issue.

In general, these are different trajectories of craziness. One dichotomy is anxiety/psychosis. You’re either going crazy in an anxiety way, or you’re going crazy in a psychotic way. True, psychotic people can get anxious, but it’s for different reasons than the anxiety-disordered. You might get pretty anxious too if you were convinced that the Mafia had a murder contract out on you! See what I mean? The anxiety-in-psychosis and the pure anxiety disorder are coming from fundamentally different places.

Later in the thread, one fellow adds this helpful bit of diagnostics:

This doesn’t sound like schizophrenia. From what you’ve said it sounds like depersonalization disorder with comorbid social anxiety and OCD. It isn’t common, but this does occasionally occur with heavy cannabis use. It is also notoriously hard to treat. Maybe a benzodiazepine for the anxiety. Antipsychotics don’t usually work very well for depersonalization, but some individuals respond to them. I think the standard treatment is SSRI’s with a benzo. Sometimes Lamictal. Lamictal and low dose benzos would have the least side effects.

Sounds about right to me, but I’m no clinician.

Also later in thread is another guy with similar symptoms who thinks he has schizophrenia, but he doesn’t. He probably has a condition like what the fellow above has offered for a diagnosis.

Schizophrenia is a pretty clearcut illness. People who are actively ill are pretty easy to spot and typically don’t make a lot of sense when they talk. I can’t understand why someone would accuse a person with a run of the mill anxiety disorder of having something as complex and devastating as schizophrenia. The smartest people can be so damned ignorant.

On Writing

Good prose, ideally, should be musical. It ought to sound something like poetry.

I go around all day thinking up sentences and paragraphs in my head, and I am looking for some kind of music, a rhythm.

I also “think in pictures” or “think in movies” when I write. A lot of times I get stuck, and I try to think of a picture or a movie that represents allegorically what I am trying to say. Then when I get the pictures or movies, I try to find words to describe them. Some people call that “painting with words,” and it’s similar to what James Joyce did.

Really, all of the arts come together, and good prose should be musical (music, the aural arts), artistic (live movies or art, the visual arts), and poetic. I am not sure about sculpture and architecture, that is going to be harder to work into words.

One thing you notice about a lot of artists is that they did not limit themselves. Great artists often wrote poetry too. Poets wrote novels and short stories and vice versa. Poets and novelists wrote plays and even operas. It’s not so common to find writers who also write music, but Ezra Pound did, and there are also artists who do music. The Talking Heads came out of art school.

It’s hard to explain, but on some level all of the arts are doing the same thing with different instruments and sensory organs, but it all comes together in the end. I think that all of the academic disciplines are doing the same thing as each other too, and maybe the same thing as the arts.  I call this, “The search for the perfect relationship,” but you might have your own phrase for what is going on.

Surely, when we saw cave paintings written on the walls in France 40,000 years ago, I can assure you that those folks had language. Why? Because art and language are intimately tied. How? They are both what I call, “the external representation of reality,” but you may have your own phrase.

Another thing you notice about most academic disciplines is that as you go higher and higher in the discipline, it all starts going mathematical. This is true in almost every field. So at the pinnacle of every discipline it all starts coming together as math. We could say that mathematics is “the ultimate language,” and I would not be the first person to say that.

Another thing that I do is I am constantly being influenced by everyone I read, all the good writers I read. That includes my own commenters, bloggers, magazines, novels, books, etc. You realize after a while that there are good and even great writers everywhere, even commenting on blogs. It’s very humbling. So all of these influences are constantly going up into my head and influencing my style, because my style is always open to new influences since I leave it open all the time.

For a while there I was reading a lot of New Yorker magazines. One thing you see if you read a lot of magazines is that many magazines have a “style” about them. There is a New Yorker style and a Rolling Stone style. Most New Yorker pieces have this “New Yorker style” about them. I don’t know how it works that way, but it seems to.

Anyway, after a while, I noticed that my style was starting to sound sort of New Yorkerish. I just let that New Yorker style go into my head and  influence my writing. I did not stop and analyze it or worry that I was being inauthentic, because I’m not sure a writer can be inauthentic.

Sometimes I will be reading a lot of a certain blogger and I notice that their style starts going into my head. I just let that happen and allow myself to be ok with that.

So, it feels like my style is constantly changing and being influenced by whoever I’m reading at the time. All the influences are up in my head swirling around, mixing, mingling, taking each other out, etc. Some new ones are going in and some old ones are heading out. I don’t analyze the process or try to stop it, I just let it happen.

I am insecure, see? I don’t like other writers all that much, and I am very jealous of them. No matter who it is, I am trying to beat them. I am always trying to be the best, the greatest, or if that’s not possible (It’s not) at least to be a great writer, a very good writer, etc. My view of myself is always that I sort of suck, so I’m always anxious and trying to be better.

You might argue that this is a lousy way to be, but a lot of people – artists, musicians, sports stars, writers, filmmakers, architects, sculptors, or really anyone who wants to excel in any field – are trying to be the best, beat everyone else, and are pretty hard on themselves.

This vicious competition of the mind does seem to drive a lot of great work. If everyone was totally humble and didn’t try to beat everyone else, I think there might be less superior achievement in the world.

“Just Give Me The News,” by Dano Bivins

Dano is a friend of mine who sent me this piece that he dashed off the other night. It was so good, I asked him if we could run it, so we are. This is his first piece for us. I hope he writes more. Dano is a great writer!

We do accept guest writers here, but you have to be good. If you want to know how good, you have to be as good as Dano or Alpha Unit.

Wall to wall coverage of Sandra Bullock’s marriage troubles. C’mon. Give me a effing break. She’s worth 50 million, Jesse James had a super expensive motorcycle customizing shop and he has “pay up sucker” tattooed on his hand.

Did she think he was a choir boy? No. She didn’t. In fact, his bad-boy rep probably attracted her to him in the first place. Now she’s the martyred America’s sweetheart victim cuz he was screwing around? Now, for 3 weeks straight, the story dominates the TV news and celeb shows?

She’ll be OK. She can relax in a 4 star hotel in Tahiti and pig out on baked Brie and marinated Abalone till she gets over it. The rest of us will fork over 12 bucks to see her next movie. And as for the news…listen, JUST GIVE ME THE NEWS. Spare me the clever repartee, the lame comedy, and the inside jokes. Don’t make cryptic remarks to the other newspeople on the set like, “Oh what a unique tie, I’ll bet Stewart has that one, ha ha ha! ”

Just give me the damn news. Who what when where and why. Don’t tell me how I should “feel” about it, or how I should “think” about it, don’t make wrap-comments like a pained, sad faced, “Such a tragic story,” or “How terrible”…okay Katie and Diane? If it’s tragic and sad, I’ll be the judge, I don’t need you practicing for an Emmy and looking like you’re all broke-up and deeply moved over the 412th murder or accident victim you’ve reported on this week.

Don’t try to convey the deep, consuming empathy and compassion you…the on-air talent…experience in response to the teleprompter story as you take every opportunity to repeat your name.

Just give me the damn news. I’ll pass on the manufactured pathos, thank you.

And cut out the teases. Don’t tell me that there’s a serial murderer that just broke out of prison in my county and you’ll let us know what neighborhood he’s believed to be in, “AFTER THE BREAK”. Don’t report that a truck carrying 2000 gallons of cyanide flipped and ruptured a water main contaminating the water in 400 homes and you’ll tell us which area is affected, “WHEN WE COME BACK”.

Just give me the news.

Don’t substitute the 5 “W”‘s for long, lingering shots of grieving parents or siblings and closeups of their tears, anguish and blubbering.

Tell me what the hell happened, don’t just assume it’s such a big story that I already should know that a 15 yr old boy beat a 16 yr old girl into a coma at the local middle school, and instead of actually reporting the details of the story we get, “Poor Amber’s parents and her friends have gathered at the school gym to pray and remember their beloved friend and schoolmate as her assailant is arraigned today in county court,” (cut to her distraught, teary-eyed mother saying our kids are growing up without a conscience). Ummm…what the HELL happened?

Who what when where and why.

Just give me the freakin’ news.

"The Delusion of White Exceptionalism," by Alpha Unit

Some Whites have the mistaken impression that what has been happening to Western Whites – and, specifically, to American Whites – is somehow unique in the history of Western civilization. They seem to be under the delusion that to be White means to be dominant – all the time. The fact that Whites in this country are on the defensive so much of the time, as they see it, dismays them and angers them. Unable to grasp the fact that no status quo is ever permanent, they seek to blame someone, or something, for the reversal of political fortune that Whites, as a race, have experienced in America. It’s Jews. It’s Leftists. As if it matters. Change always comes, one way or another. Whites are subject to the same vicissitudes of fortune as all other groups of people. White people are not special in this world. They don’t get to be exempt from the problems other groups have to deal with. They are not immune to what groups inflict on one another. It is a given that groups compete with one another and very often oppress one another. Whites are not unique in what they have done to others. And when the same thing gets done to them, there’s nothing strange about it, no matter how perplexed and upset racists get. It is a fantasy of White racists that the White race is above all others. It isn’t. The proof is all around. What has happened to other groups of people happens to Whites, too. It is the way of the world. Racists, who are unable to understand this, are essentially children. They cannot face the realities of the world or of humanity as they are.

“The Delusion of White Exceptionalism,” by Alpha Unit

Some Whites have the mistaken impression that what has been happening to Western Whites – and, specifically, to American Whites – is somehow unique in the history of Western civilization.

They seem to be under the delusion that to be White means to be dominant – all the time. The fact that Whites in this country are on the defensive so much of the time, as they see it, dismays them and angers them. Unable to grasp the fact that no status quo is ever permanent, they seek to blame someone, or something, for the reversal of political fortune that Whites, as a race, have experienced in America. It’s Jews. It’s Leftists. As if it matters. Change always comes, one way or another.

Whites are subject to the same vicissitudes of fortune as all other groups of people. White people are not special in this world. They don’t get to be exempt from the problems other groups have to deal with. They are not immune to what groups inflict on one another.

It is a given that groups compete with one another and very often oppress one another. Whites are not unique in what they have done to others. And when the same thing gets done to them, there’s nothing strange about it, no matter how perplexed and upset racists get.

It is a fantasy of White racists that the White race is above all others. It isn’t. The proof is all around. What has happened to other groups of people happens to Whites, too. It is the way of the world.

Racists, who are unable to understand this, are essentially children. They cannot face the realities of the world or of humanity as they are.

Tory Map of the World

Click to enlarge and read the type.

Pretty darned hilarious! The Tories are the conservative party in the UK, more or less aligned with the Upper Classes and their views and prejudices. In particular, as this map indicates, they are characterized by some pretty blatant racism and a creepy fondness for the British Empire. They also have a Nordicist bent in that they don’t like Southern Europeans too much.

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Some Commenters Just Don’t Get It

Some commenters are saying that the rightwing is not being racist or using racial rhetoric against Obama, or that anyway, even if they are, the Left does it anyway.

One commenter noted that I have used the phrase “feral Blacks” before, and that’s racist.

Well, I used that phrase to refer to a certain type of thuggish ghetto-type Blacks. Blacks themselves make similar comments all the time. If I implied that all Blacks, or Blacks in general, were feral, well, that would be racist.

But what the rightwingers are doing is saying the equivalent of “feral Blacks” and then tying that in with Obama and his supporters, implying that Obama and his supporters are some sort of gangsta thugs. It’s a lie, and that’s racism.

The difference is that they are using this racially charged language to attack Obama! Why? Because he’s Black? See? And that’s racist.

They aren’t just criticizing Blacks. That’s one thing. They are attacking Obama by playing into White racism, and that’s messed up. And yeah, that’s racist. See, when Clinton was in, we didn’t see all this racially charged language on the Right. Now that Obama is in, we see it, though Obama is just like Clinton really. Well, that’s the definition of racism.

Let’s look at the language bit by bit:

Rush Limbaugh: “We need segregated buses… In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, right on, right on, right on….”

Wow! Rush needs to start writing for American Renaissance! Segregated buses? Yeah, that’s racism all right.

Fox News’ Glenn Beck went a step further to declare that President Obama “has a deep seated hatred for white people, or the white culture…”

Obama does not hate Whites or White culture. There are Blacks who do, but this law professor – millionaire is not one of them. This is straight out of American Renaissance. The White nationalists are always screaming, “The Blacks are racists who hate us all!” Funny coming from them, since they are racists. Are they opposed to racism, or only when Black people do it? Obama hates White culture. He does? Like Hell he does. That’s racism.

Bill O’Reilly told his viewers that “the left sees white men as a problem” and sees putting women and minorities in power as the solution.

This is a lie when talking about Obama. The Left wingers who talk like that are PC Leftists. Obama is just a liberal Democrat. Liberal Democrats don’t go around talking like Sociology profs who say Whites are the enemy. O’Reilly is saying that Obama is Tim Wise. He’s not. And that’s racism.

Rightwing blogs still abound with charges that a campaign reference to his own grandmother as a “typical white person” reflected anti-white racism on Obama’s part.

It wasn’t racism. I say the same thing about White people all the time. Once again, Obama is not an anti-White racist. He’s more an Oreo who spent his whole life sucking up to the White man.

Accusing Obama himself of being a racist who is deliberately advancing policies that are meant to help people of color at the expense of white people, and foreigners at the expense of Americans is their biggest line of them all.

But it’s not true. There are Black racists, but Obama is not one of them. That’s racism.

Thus, when Jimmy Carter spoke the obvious truth that some of the hostility directed at the Obama presidency is a reflection of racism, the Right went nuts and demanded that Obama disavow these comments.

Denial of racism is one of the techniques that racists use to legitimate their racist bullshit. Denial one’s racism is racism.

Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remarks were taken out of context to imply that she was some kind of ethnic supremacist, and Tancredo and Limbaugh called her a racist.

Sure, there are Hispanic racists, but she is not one of them. Calling Sotomayer an Hispanic racist is racism.

Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, slammed another potential Obama judicial nominee, Deval Patrick, the African American governor of Massachusetts, as “a racialist extremist and judicial supremacist.”

Deval Patrick is some kind of dashiki-wearing Black nationalist? Give it up, man.

Glenn Beck, for example, has insisted that every single policy initiative that the Obama administration is trying to advance in Congress is grounded in the president’s supposed obsession with getting white Americans to pay reparations for slavery, or as Beck put it, “settling old racial scores.”

This is not true. Obama is opposed to reparations. Accusing Obama of pushing reparations is racism. Really, the whole reparations debate is shot through and through with White racism. There’s a non-racist way to oppose reparations, but they ain’t doing it.

When economist Robert Reich testified that stimulus funds should benefit not only white construction workers but also other groups of workers, some right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin wrongly suggested that the Obama administration was plotting to keep stimulus funds away from white construction workers altogether and have them sent instead to “[Rep. Charlie] Rangel’s pet constituents.”

See, that’s racism. They aren’t going to take money away from White construction workers and give it to inner city Black welfare layabouts. The implication was that all ethnic groups of workers should benefit from stimulus funds. Saying that Obama wants to fire White construction workers and take their paychecks and give them to Black ghetto leeches is racism.

At the recent How to Take Back America conference session on voter fraud and ACORN, Republican activist Kris Kobach, who is running to be Secretary of State in Kansas, asserted that in America nowadays no one is disenfranchised because of the color of their skin; it is now voters like those in the room who are disenfranchised when their votes are canceled out by the supposed voter fraud carried out by ACORN and its allies.

Yeah right! “Voter fraud” perpetrated by ACORN (ACORN Blacks that is) is disenfranchising Whites! First of all, there is no ACORN “voter fraud.” Many people have taken this apart long ago. ACORN paid people, often inner city Blacks, to register new voters. A lot of the registerers were not exactly model citizens. So they made up fake registrations to pad their numbers and collect more money from ACORN.

None of these Mickey Mouses or Donald Ducks are going to be registered to vote, and John Wayne is not going to show up at the voting booth on voting day. All these fake regs are going to be disqualified; none will result in fake new voters. What happened here was ACORN themselves were being ripped off by their own workers.

Saying that ACORN is engaging in voter fraud by falsely registering fake Blacks, or worse! To disenfranchise Whites the same way that Blacks were disenfranchised by poll taxes and whatnot, that’s racism. Straight up, 100 proof.

On right-wing pundit Michele Malkin’s blog, a commenter responding to her Obama is ACORN. ACORN is Obama diatribe, wrote, “Now as President B. Hussein Obama he has credibility as a Marxist, black nationalist and Chicago street hustler/organizer but little else. He could no more disown ACORN then he could Jeremiah Wright or his Typical White Grandmother.”

See, Obama is not a Black nationalist, he is not a Chicago “street hustler” – racist language falsely applied to Obama. Implying that Obama is, among other things, a sleazy Black “street hustler” (What’s that? A pimp?) from the gritty streets of Chicago when he’s not, well, that’s racism.

Investors Business Daily and Fox Nation teamed up to portray health care reform as “affirmative action on steroids” and to suggest that reform is actually a back-door way to implement reparations for slavery:

The racial grievance industry under health care reform could be calling the shots in the emergency room, the operating room, the medical room, even medical school. As Terence Jeffrey, editor at large of Human Events puts it, not only our wealth, but also our health will be redistributed.

See what they are doing? Health care reform is affirmative action in health care. Sick White workers will be tossed out of emergency rooms to make way for worthless inner city Black leeches. Saying that Obama will throw dying Whites out of emergency rooms to die to make way for worthless ghetto Blacks is racism.

At the recent How to Take Back America conference organized by far-right doyenne Phyllis Schlafly and her heir-apparent, right-wing radio host and activist Janet Folger Porter, a panelist attacked health care reform saying it would amount to a reenactment of slavery by our first black president, this time with doctors being enslaved.

But Obama is not re-enacting slavery, this time being a Black slavemaster who is enslaving White workers to supply his welfare Black plantation owners. Equating Obamacare with slavery, except this time it’s Black bums enslaving White workers. That’s racism.

Bishop Harry Jackson, the Religious Right’s favorite African American minister, has denounced health care reform proposals that he claims would divert health care resources from wealthier to poorer Americans as “reverse classism.”

See, this Black guy is playing into anti-Black racism here. He used the phrase “reverse classism” which is a play on reverse racism. Since Whites are wealthier and Blacks are poorer, health care reform is reverse racism, taking money from wealthier White workers and giving it to worthless poorer Black bums. That’s racist language.

Before the election, Bishop Harry Jackson and others suggested that voting for Obama would be voting against God.

Why is it voting against God? Because Black people are evil, the spawn of Satan, devil children. That’s the language of racism, straight out of White Nationalism. Whites have been calling Blacks satanic and evil forever.

But because America did elect Obama, the nation is now living under a curse, declares Janet Porter, and America must repent. Religious Right leaders insist that Obama’s election has put the nation under a “curse” and ask Black Christians to repent for putting “race over God.”

It’s under a curse like a voodoo curse, implying that Obama practices voodoo, a Black religion. He doesn’t. He’s a Christian. That’s racism.

The “birther” movement – the ongoing theory and ludicrous legal campaign alleging that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not a legitimate president – is all about portraying the president as an African usurper, not one of us.

See? That’s racist. Blacks are not one of us, they are not White people. Black people came from Africa, a foreign continent, you know, like Obama, from Africa. They are not Americans, they are Bantus. This line is straight out of American Renaissance.

Still another theme is the return of “states’ rights” on steroids, such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry earlier this year suggesting that Texas should consider seceding.

But the states rights thing was all about White racism and opposition to integration. For this guy to bring up states rights and secession in the context of a Black President, well, that racism, straight out of 1861.

On MSNBC, commentator Pat Buchanan suggested recently that white Americans are now suffering “exactly what was done to black folks.”

Yeah, right! Blacks are enslaving us, and putting us under some “liberal Jim Crow” regime. Come on! That’s racism.

Republican strategist and commentator Pat Buchanan has complained that presidential candidate John McCain didn’t “drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis.”

Yeah but see, that Willie Horton thing was a blatantly racist tactic that Bush used to win the election.