Recent News

Voices from Knoxville

• “Time to hear some more bulls---t.” —Gary Christian, victim’s father, on his way into the courtroom, on Day 1
• “It kept going on and on. You start to get numb. If it was me, I’d have hired someone to do it right. Someone to shoot him. That’s what I’d do, if it was my daughter.” —Local taxi driver, who’d spent the first half of his life up North
• “They should just hang him! Did I just say that out loud?!”—Female worker in her late forties, in a local business
• “If they acquit him, he won’t live two hours…. I’d nail him to a tree.” —Previous lady’s 60ish man boss
• “It was very unfortunate. We were trying to put it behind us, but it turned out the judge was corrupt.”—Black hotel worker in his late twenties
• “They should have maybe let some of the local people take care of it.” —Female city worker, app. 55 years old

The Horror

The May 13-17 George Thomas retrial for the 2007 carjacking, kidnapping, robbery, gang-rape, torture and murder of Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23, which I have dubbed the Knoxville Horror, should have been a Main Stream Media magnet. It featured a defendant charged with participating in the most atrocious crime the Knoxville area, and maybe even the State of Tennessee, had ever seen. Both victims were anally raped, sexually tortured, brutally beaten and murdered.  Channon Christian was also orally and vaginally raped repeatedly. After shooting Christopher Newsom three times and killing him, his killers set his body on fire. They dumped Channon Christian in a garbage can, where she asphyxiated.

Additionally, the retrial was occasioned by a salacious scandal: Judge Richard Baumgartner, who had presided over the first Thomas trial as well as three other Knoxville Horror trials, was caught buying drugs from probationers under his power, and having sex with one—sometimes in his chambers! Baumgartner has since been disbarred, convicted twice, and entered federal prison. [Ex-Knox County Judge Richard Baumgartner gets 6 months in prison, By Alexis Zotos, WATE.com, April 10, 2013]

It promised drama: the defendant’s liberty hung on the jury’s interpretation of an ambiguously-worded passage of the law regarding “criminal responsibility.” (Hugh Newsom, victim’s father, to VDARE.com in the courthouse: “Laws are written by lawyers. And the largest proportion of them defense attorneys. Weasel words.”)

Finally, there was the seemingly never-ending hell of trials and pain for the two families. This was to be the seventh trial for the same crimes. (The five perps were tried and convicted separately, Thomas and Vanessa Coleman twice).

Family members and expert witnesses are paunchier, grayer, and have less hair on their heads. Knoxville Police Department fingerprint specialist Dan Crenshaw died last year of cancer. Other expert witnesses, including KPD Det. Nevil Norman, were recalled from retirement to testify yet again.

And yet the national Main Stream Media refused to cover the trial. At least, Big Media refused. The only journalist with a national organization who showed up was your trusty correspondent. (That’s yet another reason why VDARE.com is so important!)

The San Francisco Chronicle posted two anonymous AP blogs, both of which were purportedly based on reports from the Knoxville News Sentinel, but which got basic facts wrong, reporting the January, 2007 murders as having been committed in January, 2009, and that Thomas had testified in court. [Correction: Couple Slain-Thomas Retrial story, May 16, 2013] A Google News search for victim Channon Christian’s name finds only local new sources.

 Locally, the Knox News Sentinel’s Jamie Satterfield, the only journalist to write more on this case than I have, wrote a useful wrap-up after Thomas’ reconviction—but repeated her claim that  “racial differences have never been suggested as a motivator for what authorities view as a random carjacking.”

Well, I have suggested it. What else was the “motivator” for the unspeakable torture inflicted on the victims? [Horror of Christian/Newsom killings in focus: What happened on Chipman Street by Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News Sentinel, May 19, 2013, 8:59 p.m.]

The Outcome (Subject To Endless Appeals)

• Eric Boyd was convicted of being an accessory after the fact to carjacking in 2008, and sentenced to 18 years in federal prison.
•  Letalvis Cobbins was convicted of 46 charges, from murder
  

I bring an unusual perspective to the recent furor over Jason Richwine’s Harvard PhD dissertation on IQ and immigration policy: I taught English in various private schools in Mexico for fifteen years.

Any Mexican family that has the money seems to send its children to private schools. There is quite a range, from very exclusive ones to shoestring operations.

In the schools in which I taught, the curriculum was rather solid, heavy on math and science, and on English as a foreign language (which is what I was teaching).

But the Mexican educational system also includes a vast public schools system which educates about 90% of students. (Education levels in Mexico are lower than those in the United States. Only 35 percent of Mexican adults have achieved a high school degree, compared with 87 percent in the U.S.)

I never worked in a Mexican public school. It sounds like I really missed out on the fun. In some parts of the country, Mexican public school teachers spend much of their time striking and protesting. Right now in the Mexican state of Michoacan, “normalistas” (college education majors—future teachers) are all riled up, and have hijacked 60  public buses and delivery trucks, of which they still have possession. They also kidnapped four police officers, graciously releasing them after eleven days.

If the American educational system becomes more Mexicanized, we might expect this sort of thing here.

Mexico is a very diverse country—geographically, culturally and racially. It has a white upper class controlling the lion’s share of the wealth. (See Shackled To An [Ungrateful] Corpse By Steve Sailer on May 5, 2000). If you’ve watched Mexican media or seen winners of Mexican beauty pageants, you see that the Euro-Mexicans are dominant there as well.

This Mexican upper class is of mostly Spanish descent, but there are also Jewish, Arab, British, American, European, Armenian and East Asian elements. 

At the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are the Indians, prominent in southern and eastern Mexico, including some in isolated areas who don’t even speak Spanish. If they haven’t assimilated to Spanish culture in 500 years, why do we suppose they’ll assimilate to Anglo-American culture? Nevertheless, they are now appearing in the U.S.

Most Mexicans, though, are mestizos—that is, Spanish-speaking descendants of both Europeans and Indians. But the lines are not always clear. The Mexican population forms a spectrum, with rich whites on one end and poor Indians on the other, with the mestizo majority in the middle.

It’s acceptable for liberals to portray white conservatives as unintelligent. But you are not allowed to assert that average or mean IQs, partially determined by genetics, differ among the races—or even to ask if it’s true.

Nevertheless, the current scientific evidence does suggest that it is

The War In Chicago, the 48 Hours special with Maureen Maher and Armen Keteyian reporting that aired Saturday May 18, was a breakthrough—of sorts. It even had a logo that would make George Zimmerman blush: three hoodie-wearing thugs (eat your heart out, Trayvon Martin), one brandishing a gun, with a DEA Agent facing them.

Strikingly, the report candidly admitted that the city’s drug problem—heroin—is almost entirely driven by Mexican cartels; that only 26 percent of the more than 500 homicides in 2012 had been solved; and that in wake of the murder of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton—you know, the black girl that Barack and Michelle Obama tried to make the face of the gun control movement—the police surge launched by the city to try to make the streets safer is already threatened by budget concerns:

But like many big cities, Chicago has serious budget problems. The extra police on the streets is costing the city millions. Can they afford to keep up the fight?

There are lines of demarcation in every city. For this uniquely American city, the death of Hadiya Pendleton may well be one of them. Since her murder on Jan. 29 in Chicago, the number of extra police on the streets has doubled to 400. Officers are working seven days a week, but this is a relative peace that comes with a price: an estimated $1 million a week in police overtime.

The CBS special quoted a 28-year veteran of the DEA, Jack Riley, as saying:

"We've got people dying ... and I'm not rolling over, I have not thrown the towel in," said Riley, who thinks he knows why so many of Chicago's children are dying.

"I wanted to retire a few years ago ... my wife's naggin' me every day... get outta the job," he said. "I can't do it!"

… Riley says many Chicago shootings are carried out by the area's roughly 70,000 gang members who are going to war over one thing in particular: drugs

Is this America?

Yes—the very heartland of this nation…if America can be called a nation anymore

But one thing doesn’t ring true –“The War in Chicago” made this contradictory point:

Chicago is the gang capital of the United States. According to the Chicago Crime Commission, a 2012 Chicago Police Department gang audit found there are more than 600 gang factions in the city, with a minimum combined membership of 70,000. As the number of gangs in the city increase, it's difficult for gangs to control large areas. Instead, gangs cling to streets. Territory disputes mean increased rivalry and as a result, more shootings.

In 2011, a quarter of the 433 homicides in Chicago were gang-motivated according to Chicago Police Murder Analysis; 83 percent of all homicide victims died as a result of shootings.

But that means only 108 or 109 of the homicides in 2011 were “gang-related” i.e. due to drugs. (Update: in 2013 to date,

[See earlier Is the Rule of Law Immoral? Ask Archbishop José Gomez!]

Last week we looked at the Catholic Church and its advocacy of legislation granting amnesty to illegal aliens. Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, who leads the Church's campaign, has condemned the "nativism" and "bigotry" which in his view often motivates the advocates of the rule of law.

This is not the first time that bishops have taken sides on a political issue that divides Catholics. For two years and more, Bishop Stephen Blaire, who also hails from California, has lambasted Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, for authoring a budget that Bp. Blaire calls "unjust and wrong."

As Timothy Cardinal Dolan, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) observes, bishops have the right to hold personal opinions on political matters. However, in their role as shepherds, they must teach "precepts," not take partisan positions. Bishops Blaire and Gomez, seemingly oblivious to the Cardinal's assurances, have conducted their political advocacy not as individuals, but in the name of the Catholic Church. Bp. Blaire is Chairman of the USCCB "Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development," while Abp. Gomez chairs the USCCB "Committee on Migration."

The language that the two bishops use to advocate their personal legislative agendas is so specific in nature and so strident in tone that an unsuspecting listener might be led to assume that their views represent the authentic, magisterial teaching of the Church.

If they do, a question arises: in the words of Canon Law, must a Catholic "adhere with religious submission of mind" to these bishops' political views with the same fervor with which the faithful are called on to believe in the truths of the Creed or the objective evil of abortion?

Bishop Blaire has repeatedly refused to answer that question, but two other key prelates have, as the Rubble reported last fall when it examined the Ryan issue at length.

In May 2011, Cardinal Dolan affirmed Ryan's rights as a layman. "We bishops are very conscious that we are pastors, never politicians. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, it is the lay faithful who have the specific charism of political leadership and decision," he wrote.[PDF]

In addition, Bishop Robert C. M

Commenting last week on the Heritage Foundation’s despicable firing of Jason Richwine, VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow wrote:

The facts about the differing average IQ levels of the various post-1965 immigrant streams have been settled science for many years. The original draft of my huge 1992 National Review cover story Time to Rethink Immigration, which eventually resulted in my 1995 book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, contained a discussion of IQ and immigration policy, alluding to Richard J. Herrnstein's and Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve, which I knew was in preparation. The reaction of my dear friend John O'Sullivan, NR's Editor in those happy days, was very instructive. Not only did he insist on cutting out the discussion, but he also hunted down every copy of the original draft in NR's office and had them destroyed. His argument was that any mention of IQ or heredity at all would result in the issue monopolizing all response to my article, plunging the rest of my very broad case against contemporary immigration policy irretrievably into the dark.

At the time, I accepted that he was right. But I now think that, had we fought that battle then, Jason Richwine might still be able to support his family today—and, who knows, American might be a very different place.

Brimelow also mentioned but declined to press the immigration-IQ linkage in Alien Nation. He wrote in a footnote on Page 57:

As this book was in galleys, the greatest intellectual uproar for many years was caused by the publication of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life  (Free Press), which argued that scientific evidence shows human intelligence exists in a measurable way, is profoundly important in society, is largely hereditary, and differs, on average, between races. In a little-noticed passage, Herrnstein and Murray blamed the 1965 Immigration Act for a sharp deterioration in immigrant quality. They estimated that the current influx has an average IQ of 95, at least 5 points below the white American mean. If they are right, of course, this suggests the consequences of current policy are far more disastrous than anything argued in this book. However, I figure I’ve taken enough risks already and merely report their view for what it is worth. There are quite enough reasons to worry about immigration without using Herrnstein and Murray's work. Would-be demagogues should note that I do not so use it here.

(What Herrnstein and Murray had said, by the way, was "The rules that currently govern immigration provide the other major source of dysgenic pressure" [The Bell Curve, P 341])

You'll note that there's a hyperlink on "Would-be demagogues" above because I copied the section from the recently-released Kindle edition of Alien Nation, to which we added hyperlinks. That one goes to the U.K. Guardian's review of Alien Nation—a book that did not use the IQ argument, remember—entitled "The Far Right Leans Into The Bell Curve" (by Mark Taub, May 5, 1995).

Mark Taub is a good specimen of the "would-be demagogue." He described Brimelow as "one of the most fervent Bell Curve supporters,” which means he wrote a Forbes Magazine story about the controversy. (It was supposed to be a cover story but Steve Forbes had a last-minute hissy fit and insisted on burying it inside and excising all references to race. Come to think of it, Forbes is now a Heritage board member. Hmmm.)

But Taub was not as bad as Reason's Glenn Garvin [Email him], who wrote about Alien Nation

Self-preservation is colliding with a suicidal ideology within the American Right. The outcome of this battle will determine its future—and the future of the historic American nation.

Prior to last week, immigration patriots had growing reasons for optimism. Despite the best efforts of Grover Norquist and other corporate shills within Conservatism Inc., the American Right was slowly lining up against the Obama/ Schumer/ Rubio push for an Amnesty/ Immigration Surge. Even National Review featured a cover story written by CIS’s Mark Krikorian, which actually blamed Mitt Romney's defeat on the decline in white turnout. Drudge, after a period of silence, was prominently featuring anti-immigration stories. After Ann Coulter's declaration of war at CPAC 2013, other leading pundits, most critically Rush Limbaugh, joined the battle. Opposition to amnesty was becoming the default conservative position, with even the Weekly Standard joining the fight.

Maybe it’s simple partisanship. Unlike in 2006-2007, President Barack Hussein Obama is now leading the charge. After budget battles, gun control, Benghazi, the Boston terrorist attacks and the liberal MSM’s lust for white male villains and the IRS’ admitting it targeted Tea Party groups, Republicans were getting fed up.

But more importantly, a talking point that has made a real impact on the conservatives is the objective reality that “undocumented Americans” will never vote for Republicans—and that Amnesty ensures a blue Texas and a permanent Democratic majority.

Signs of discontent were coming from within the Congressional GOP. Pat Buchanan lookalike Ted Cruz proposed banning all illegals from ever obtaining American citizenship. Treason Lobby dallier Senator Rand Paul, as predicted, was showing signs of abandoning “reform” in order to protect his own Presidential ambitions. Even Marco Rubio, watching his lobbyist-promised path to the White House evaporating before

[Previously by Susie Green: Harmony before Insight? The Destruction of Western Man ]

There can be no better statement on the 2013 Amnesty/ Immigration Surge War than this:

The level of lying that has become common in the illegal alien debate is truly frightening and bespeaks an America that has passed some new threshold on the road to self-destruction.

One of these lies is intrinsic to the Senate bill and its variants: that these bills combine “enforcement” with amnesty. Given our current systematic failure to enforce the law and protect our borders, and given the president’s own palpable lack of interest in enforcing the law, and given the nonchalant or celebratory statements about illegal immigration by many of the president’s supporters, such as William Kristol and Michael Bloomberg, no intellectually honest person could believe that the enforcement side of the bill would be seriously acted upon.

Therefore the only way to establish the president’s and the government’s bona fides in this area is to pass an enforcement-only bill first and see if it is enforced. Otherwise we will inevitably end up with a vastly worse repetition of what happened in 1986, an amnesty of millions of illegal aliens, with no improvement in enforcement, leading to continued mass illegal immigration, followed by further calls for yet another amnesty.

Another big lie is the establishment’s denial that their various proposals are, in fact, amnesty proposals. Starting with the stinking head of our body politic…down to every liberal newspaper reporter, it is now simply taken for granted that a bill is only an amnesty bill if it involves giving the illegal alien instant citizenship. Anything short of that, such as giving him legal status in the United States with the option to pursue citizenship, is not, the establishment insists, amnesty.

Thus Jonathan Weisman writes in the Washington Post about a compromise bill that is now being floated:

The compromise could satisfy some conservatives opposed to any program that offers illegal immigrants a way to stay in the country and work toward citizenship, which they term “amnesty.”

See? A bill to allow illegal aliens to stay in the country legally and work toward citizenship is not amnesty. It is only falsely described as “amnesty”—by conservatives. See Weisman’s scare quotes. Thanks for straightening us out on that, Mr. Weisman.

In reality, amnesty means removing the penalty or the due consequence for a wrongful act. Under our law, the due consequence for a person who has illegally entered the United States is to be removed from the United States. Therefore to give illegal aliens legal residency in this country is amnesty, period.

All the bills that are on the table to give illegals some kind of legal status in the U.S., however that legal status is defined, are amnesty bills, period.”

[Hyperlinks added by VDARE.com]

Actually, wait a moment... that isn't about the Obama Administration's push for an Amnesty/ Immigration Surge at all! It’s about the second President Bush's efforts to push a nation-breaking legalization program in 2006, by my old friend, the late Lawrence M. Auster. [We must stop lying to ourselves or we will die, View From The Right, April 04, 2006 ]

It tells us something, both about Larry and about the 2013 Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill, that not a word needs to be changed—and once again, Larry’s View From the Right blog cuts to the core of the issue.

Immigration patriots have been here before. This isn't the first and may not be the last time Americans will have to face down a “stupid and evil” effort to push through amnesty. Luckily, we have a guide to waging the long war in the writings of the late and lamented Lawrence Auster, who never stopped

The firing of Jason Richwine by the Heritage Foundation is the most depressing thing that has happened in American politics for many years—and that’s a very hot competition.  Heritage was in an impregnable position: