vdare--2020-02-20--Coronavirus STILL Hasn’t Killed Any Whites (Not Counting Iranians). NEW YORK TIMES Ignores, But Conc

Coronavirus STILL Hasn’t Killed Any Whites (Not Counting Iranians). NEW YORK TIMES Ignores, But Concedes Gender Difference. Why?

• STILL No Non-East Asian Deaths From Corona—But CNN ’ s Sanjay Gupta Won ’ t Admit It • STILL No Non-Chinese Deaths From Coronavirus , But The WASHINGTON POST Wants You To Rat Out Your Neighbors • Do You Know All Coronavirus Victims Appear To Be Chinese ?
Thought Not !
The racial dimension to the Corona virus has fascinated me since the outbreak began .
Despite some ethnic Europeans having caught it , including white Americans trapped on a quarantined cruise ship off Japan which has turned into a floating Corona epidemic [ Indiana woman is latest Diamond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus , by Jackie Salo , New York Post , February 19 , 2020 ] , it ’ s still true although as of today ( February 20 ) no white people have died of the virus as far as we know .
Two people in Iran have just died of Corona [ Coronavirus : Iran reports two suspected fatal cases at Qom hospital , BBC News , February 19 , 2020 ] , but this doesn ’ t necessarily undermine the argument that Corona is primarily—but , of course , not necessarily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elucidate .
It is certainly interesting that two deaths have been reported in Iran .
According to many U.S. statutory bodies , including the Census Bureau , Iranians—and all people of Middle Eastern descent—are “ Caucasian ” and are , therefore , categorized alongside “ Europeans ” for official purposes .
Consequently , in the US , Iranians are legally “ White , ” this being the closest available option to what they are .
Egyptian journalist Sarah Essa has written : “ I do n't think I ’ ll ever forget my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ White ( including Middle Eastern , such as Egyptian ) .
’ ” Some Middle Easterners in the U.S. , needless to say , claim this is a conspiracy to deny them victim status—what Steve Sailer calls the “ Flight from White ” [ 'White ' minus privilege : 2020 US census erases Middle Easterners , North Africans , by Sarah Essa , The New Arab , December 31 , 2019 ] .
In genetic terms , it is true that North Africans and Middle Easterners are very similar to “ Europeans.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rushton used the broad “ Caucasoid ” racial category in his analysis of racial differences Race , Evolution .
and Behavior .
He compared “ Caucasoids ” ( which also encompassed South Asians a.k.a .
Indians ) to “ Mongoloids ” and “ Negroids.
” Each of these broad categories , however , were composed of a number of narrower races .
And some races , such as Australian Aborigines , did not fit into the three categories at all .
But with regard to Europeans and North Africans/ Middle Easterners , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ differently that they are usually categorized as separate “ races ” beneath the Caucasoid umbrella , as in Frank Salter ’ s book-length analysis On Genetic Interests .
So who exactly are the two people who have died in Iran of Cvid-19 ?
Official Tehran spokesman “ Kianush Jahanpour tweeted that they died due to their ‘ old age and deficient immune systems ’ while being treated in hospital in Qom , ” which is about 80 miles south of Tehran [ Coronavirus : Iran reports two suspected fatal cases at Qom hospital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 ] .
When dealing with official spokesmen from dictatorships , it is , naturally , difficult to know what to believe .
However , Jahanopour ’ s implication would seem to be that the regime doesn ’ t think ordinary Iranians are going to die of Corona .
The pair that died were particularly elderly and particularly ill anyway .
In other words , they were precisely the kind of people who succumb to pneumonia every year , be it Cvid-19 or any other kind .
So their deaths do not disprove @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iranians should be regarded as “ white ” —are unlikely to die of this disease .
The fatalities are extreme outliers ; unusual cases .
Jahanpour also asserted that this pair had not left the city of Qom , which would imply that they were native Iranians .
Indeed , according to the BBC report : “ Deputy Health Minister Qasem Janbabaei told the Young Journalists ' Club ( YJC ) that they were both Iranians.
” But it is unclear precisely what the ethnicity of these two Iranian Corona fatalities was .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ route—Iran is home to many ethnic groups , each with their own language .
The major ones are Persians—historically the dominant ethnicity in the area .
They display an admixture with South Asians [ Complete Mitochondrial DNA Diversity in Iranians , by M. Derenko et al.
, PLoS ONE , 2013 ] .
But there are also Azeris , Kurds , Lors , Arabs , Baluchs , Turkmans , Mazanis , and Gilaks .
In addition , there are Armenians and other smaller minorities [ Iran ’ s Multi-ethnic Mosaic : A 23-Year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fesharaki , Social Indicators Research , 2019 ] .
These are all ethnically Caucasian peoples—with the exception of Turkmens .
Despite the fact that the Turkmen language , like the Azeri language , is related to Turkish , the Turkmens carry substantial East Asian admixture , clustering with Han Chinese [ Revealing the Genetic Impact of the Ottoman Occupation on Ethnic Groups of East-Central Europe and on the Roma Population of the Area , by Zsolt Banfai et al.
, Frontiers in Genetics , 2019 ] If the elderly pair who died in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Turkmen minority then it could be true that Corona deaths are still exclusive to East Asians .
Turkmens mostly live in the province of Golestan , which is in the northeast of Iran , bordering Turkmenistan .
But Qom is a wealthy city , home of a major Shia shrine , so it is perfectly possible that it would attract provincial migrants .
And here has long been a Chinese presence in Qom .
Chinese Muslims ( there are a number of Muslim minorities in China such as the Hui and the Uighurs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Qom to study at the Madrasa , the Islamic theological college , there .
Indeed , according to the director of the Madrasa “ demand from China is overwhelming ” [ Between Pakistan and Qom , by Mariam Abou Zahab , In The Madrasa in Asia , 2008 , p.133 ] .
Even so , it seems improbable that the two fatalities , considering their age , would have been ethnically Chinese .
It is possible that some Chinese Muslims may have settled in Qom , having studied there , but this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with certainty : there exist racial differences in susceptibility to flu-like viruses , as a study by Chinese scientists [ Ethnic differences in susceptibilities to A ( H1N1 ) flu , by C. L. Chen et al.
, African Journal of Biotechnology , 2009 ] , which I highlighted in my first column on Coronavirus , has shown .
Most obviously , Spanish Flu was far deadlier to Native Americans , Pacific Islanders , Inuit and to the Saami reindeer herding people of Nordic Lapland than it was to Europeans All of these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adopted agriculture , meaning they have less genetic resistance to viruses that jump the species barrier .
But they are also , with the exception of the Saami , “ Mongoloid ” ( i.e .
East Asian ) peoples .
And even the Saami have been estimated to be genetically “ 47.5 % Mongoloid ” [ Physical Anthropology of the Arctic , by G. Richard Scott et al.
, The Arctic , 2019 , p.355 ] .
And it was documented in Britain ’ s Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from China , that “ Mongoloids , at least , are unduly susceptible to influenza and pneumonia ” [ Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health , Office of the Ministry of Health , 1954 , p.173 ] .
According to the medical textbook Immunoepidemology , [ by Peter Krause et al.
, 2019 , Ch .
7 : 7 ] , South Asians and Europeans also vary , for genetic reasons , in their antibody response in influenza , with Europeans displaying a stronger response .
This racial difference may be because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flu thrives either when there is low humidity combined with low temperature or when it is extremely humid [ Flu Risk And Weather : It 's Not The Heat , It 's The Humidity , by Nancy Schute , NPR , March 8 , 2013 ] .
Humans whose ancestors adapted to these two extreme conditions are , therefore , more resistant to flu .
But , for whatever evolutionary reason , Europeans have long been seen to be more resistant to flu than East Asians or , for that matter , South @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line : Coronavirus has still not broken decisively into the white ( or black ) population .
And , like SARS , it may never do so .
It ’ s apparently acceptable for the Narrative Police to concede that Coronavirus impacts men more than women [ Why the Coronavirus Seems to Hit Men Harder Than Women , by Roni Caryn Rabin , NYT , February 20 , 2020 ] but not that it discriminates by race .
They must have some agenda .
What is it ?
Lance Welton [ email him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freelance journalist living in New York .

Earlier:
The racial dimension to the Corona virus has fascinated me since the outbreak began. Despite some ethnic Europeans having caught it, including white Americans trapped on a quarantined cruise ship off Japan which has turned into a floating Corona epidemic [Indiana woman is latest Diamond Princess cruise evacuee to test positive for coronavirus, by Jackie Salo, New York Post, February 19, 2020], it’s still true although as of today (February 20) no white people have died of the virus as far as we know. Two people in Iran have just died of Corona [Coronavirus: Iran reports two suspected fatal cases at Qom hospital, BBC News, February 19, 2020], but this doesn’t necessarily undermine the argument that Corona is primarily—but, of course, not necessarily exclusively—an East Asian disease. Let me elucidate.
It is certainly interesting that two deaths have been reported in Iran. According to many U.S. statutory bodies, including the Census Bureau, Iranians—and all people of Middle Eastern descent—are “Caucasian” and are, therefore, categorized alongside “Europeans” for official purposes. Consequently, in the US, Iranians are legally “White,” this being the closest available option to what they are.
Egyptian journalist Sarah Essa has written: “I don't think I’ll ever forget my Rutgers undergraduate application, which read, ‘White (including Middle Eastern, such as Egyptian).’” Some Middle Easterners in the U.S., needless to say, claim this is a conspiracy to deny them victim status—what Steve Sailer calls the “Flight from White” ['White' minus privilege: 2020 US census erases Middle Easterners, North Africans, by Sarah Essa, The New Arab, December 31, 2019].
In genetic terms, it is true that North Africans and Middle Easterners are very similar to “Europeans.” This is why psychologist J. Philippe Rushton used the broad “Caucasoid” racial category in his analysis of racial differences Race, Evolution. and Behavior. He compared “Caucasoids” (which also encompassed South Asians a.k.a. Indians) to “Mongoloids” and “Negroids.”
Each of these broad categories, however, were composed of a number of narrower races. And some races, such as Australian Aborigines, did not fit into the three categories at all.
But with regard to Europeans and North Africans/ Middle Easterners, the two groups’ gene frequencies cluster sufficiently differently that they are usually categorized as separate “races” beneath the Caucasoid umbrella, as in Frank Salter’s book-length analysis On Genetic Interests.
So who exactly are the two people who have died in Iran of Cvid-19? Official Tehran spokesman “Kianush Jahanpour tweeted that they died due to their ‘old age and deficient immune systems’ while being treated in hospital in Qom,” which is about 80 miles south of Tehran [Coronavirus: Iran reports two suspected fatal cases at Qom hospital, BBC News, February 19, 2020].
When dealing with official spokesmen from dictatorships, it is, naturally, difficult to know what to believe. However, Jahanopour’s implication would seem to be that the regime doesn’t think ordinary Iranians are going to die of Corona. The pair that died were particularly elderly and particularly ill anyway. In other words, they were precisely the kind of people who succumb to pneumonia every year, be it Cvid-19 or any other kind.
So their deaths do not disprove the hypothesis that whites—to the extent that Iranians should be regarded as “white”—are unlikely to die of this disease. The fatalities are extreme outliers; unusual cases.
Jahanpour also asserted that this pair had not left the city of Qom, which would imply that they were native Iranians. Indeed, according to the BBC report: “Deputy Health Minister Qasem Janbabaei told the Young Journalists' Club (YJC) that they were both Iranians.”
But it is unclear precisely what the ethnicity of these two Iranian Corona fatalities was. Being on the Silk Road—an historic trading route—Iran is home to many ethnic groups, each with their own language. The major ones are Persians—historically the dominant ethnicity in the area. They display an admixture with South Asians [Complete Mitochondrial DNA Diversity in Iranians, by M. Derenko et al., PLoS ONE, 2013]. But there are also Azeris, Kurds, Lors, Arabs, Baluchs, Turkmans, Mazanis, and Gilaks. In addition, there are Armenians and other smaller minorities [Iran’s Multi-ethnic Mosaic: A 23-Year Perspective, by Mahdi Majbouri & Sanaz Fesharaki, Social Indicators Research, 2019].
These are all ethnically Caucasian peoples—with the exception of Turkmens. Despite the fact that the Turkmen language, like the Azeri language, is related to Turkish, the Turkmens carry substantial East Asian admixture, clustering with Han Chinese [Revealing the Genetic Impact of the Ottoman Occupation on Ethnic Groups of East-Central Europe and on the Roma Population of the Area, by Zsolt Banfai et al., Frontiers in Genetics, 2019].
If the elderly pair who died in Qom were part of Iran’s Turkmen minority then it could be true that Corona deaths are still exclusive to East Asians. Turkmens mostly live in the province of Golestan, which is in the northeast of Iran, bordering Turkmenistan. But Qom is a wealthy city, home of a major Shia shrine, so it is perfectly possible that it would attract provincial migrants.
And here has long been a Chinese presence in Qom. Chinese Muslims (there are a number of Muslim minorities in China such as the Hui and the Uighurs, and some Han) come to Qom to study at the Madrasa, the Islamic theological college, there. Indeed, according to the director of the Madrasa “demand from China is overwhelming” [Between Pakistan and Qom, by Mariam Abou Zahab, In The Madrasa in Asia, 2008, p.133].
Even so, it seems improbable that the two fatalities, considering their age, would have been ethnically Chinese. It is possible that some Chinese Muslims may have settled in Qom, having studied there, but this is just speculation.
What can be said with certainty: there exist racial differences in susceptibility to flu-like viruses, as a study by Chinese scientists [Ethnic differences in susceptibilities to A(H1N1) flu, by C. L. Chen et al., African Journal of Biotechnology, 2009], which I highlighted in my first column on Coronavirus, has shown. Most obviously, Spanish Flu was far deadlier to Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Inuit and to the Saami reindeer herding people of Nordic Lapland than it was to Europeans. All of these peoples never (or never fully) adopted agriculture, meaning they have less genetic resistance to viruses that jump the species barrier.
But they are also, with the exception of the Saami, “Mongoloid” (i.e., East Asian) peoples. And even the Saami have been estimated to be genetically “47.5% Mongoloid” [Physical Anthropology of the Arctic, by G. Richard Scott et al., The Arctic, 2019, p.355].
And it was documented in Britain’s Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health back in 1954, with reference to people from China, that “Mongoloids, at least, are unduly susceptible to influenza and pneumonia” [Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health, Office of the Ministry of Health, 1954, p.173].
According to the medical textbook Immunoepidemology [by Peter Krause et al., 2019, Ch. 7: 7] South Asians and Europeans also vary, for genetic reasons, in their antibody response in influenza, with Europeans displaying a stronger response.
This racial difference may be because, according to scientist James Tamerius, flu thrives either when there is low humidity combined with low temperature or when it is extremely humid [Flu Risk And Weather: It's Not The Heat, It's The Humidity, by Nancy Schute, NPR, March 8, 2013]. Humans whose ancestors adapted to these two extreme conditions are, therefore, more resistant to flu.
But, for whatever evolutionary reason, Europeans have long been seen to be more resistant to flu than East Asians or, for that matter, South Asians with whom Persians display admixture.
Bottom line: Coronavirus has still not broken decisively into the white (or black) population. And, like SARS, it may never do so.
It’s apparently acceptable for the Narrative Police to concede that Coronavirus impacts men more than women [Why the Coronavirus Seems to Hit Men Harder Than Women, by Roni Caryn Rabin, NYT, February 20, 2020] but not that it discriminates by race.
They must have some agenda. What is it?
Lance Welton [email him] is the pen name of a freelance journalist living in New York.


vdare--2020-02-20--Bahrain—Electing A New People…And Shooting The Old One

The unprovoked killing by government forces of five Shi'ite protestors in the Persian Gulf statelet of Bahrain , headquarters for the U.S. Fifth Fleet , turns out upon examination to be deeply intertwined with Bahrain 's troubles with diversity and immigration .
And they turn out to be uncomfortably not completely dissimilar to ours .
The indigenous population of Bahrain is about two-thirds Shi'ite Muslim .
The local Shi'ites tend to view Bahrain 's Sunni upper class as Johnny-come-lately usurpers ( the ruling Al-Khalifa dynasty are Sunnis from the Arabian mainland who conquered Bahrain in 1783 ) .
The Shi'ites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hiring for government jobs and that they import cheap labor to drive down their wages .
( Over half the population of Bahrain is now foreign-born . )
Most explosively , the Shi'ites argue that the minority Sunni rulers of Bahrain have been trying , in effect , to elect a new people by importing Sunni mercenaries from poorer countries and putting them on the path to citizenship .
Ian Black , Mideast editor of The Guardian reported on February 17 , 2011 : Similarly , Bill Law of the BBC reported on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ youths in `` Bahrain troops fire on crowds '' [ February 18 , 2011 ] : And in Bahrain 's Sunnis Defend Monarchy in the New York Times [ February 17 , 2011 ] , Michael Slackman reported on the opinions of the well-educated Sunni minority : Back on June 22 , 2009 , Yaroslav Trofimov noted in the Wall Street Journal in U.S. Navy Fleet 's Mideast Home Is Facing Rise in Sectarian Tension : Brian Murphy and Hadeel Al-Shalchi of the Associated Press report in Bahrain 's Sunni outreach fuels protests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' Few policies anger Bahrain 's Shiites more than bestowing citizenship to outside Sunnis , mostly Arabs but also from Pakistan and other South Asian countries .
On the broadest level , it 's a clear attempt to offset the lopsided demographics with Shiites comprising 70 percent of the country 's 525,000 citizens .
But to many Shiites , it also reflects a cynical view by Bahrain 's leaders that it 's possible to buy loyalty and use that to strengthen their grip over the country .
`` The problem is that this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' said Sheik Hassain al-Dahi [ leader of the main Shi'ite opposition party ] .
`` It is made up of people who do not share our traditions or culture , and do not have the best interest of the people at heart . ''
It 's funny how much more readily the American Main Stream Media grasps how unfair it is for the government to elect a new people in Bahrain—while they cheer it on in the U.S. Not surprisingly , these foreign-born Sunni gunmen appear much less reluctant to open fire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , say , Egypt 's conscript soldiers have been to shoot fellow Egyptians in Cairo .
For all of Egypt 's severe problems , its relatively homogeneous population has helped it , so far , avoid the worst .
From an American perspective , Bahrain is interesting for two reasons .
• First : Bahrain has been a mercantile center for centuries .
So , it has n't been quite as indolent and backward as most of the Persian Gulf .
Summers in that region are perhaps the most stiflingly hot and humid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outside Bahrain showed correspondingly little initiative .
When Americans discovered vast reserves of oil under Bahrain 's neighbors in the mid-20th Century , the Bahrainis kept something of a middle class by refining their neighbors ' oil and selling them stuff .
In other words , Bahrain 's social and political problems are somewhat analogous to our own .
Bahrain , where 54 percent of the population is foreign-born , resembles a dystopian sci-fi novel about a future America .
( In contrast , Saudi Arabia 's problems , such as schoolgirls being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Immodesty Police , are kind of hard for Americans to relate to . )
In Bahrain , for instance , young men complain about a lack of jobs .
Yet there are actually , quite a few jobs in Bahrain .
But foreigners have a huge share of them .
In 1998 , Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor wrote in Minorities and the State in the Arab World about Bahrain 's ruling elite 's addiction to cheap immigrant labor : So the Kingdom of Bahrain is n't that different , after all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be more outspoken about immigration .
Similarly , importing foreigners to do the jobs Bahrainis just wo n't do tends to turn those jobs into ones that Bahrainis just wo n't do , just as H-1B visas are turning computer programming into a job Americans just wo n't do .
• Second : unlike much of the Middle East , the U.S. actually does have some element of national interest tied up in Bahrain , where the U.S. Navy stations 1,446 personnel ashore , a couple of miles from the clashes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. could use in the Persian Gulf as its regional headquarters .
But for a couple of decades , Bahrain has suited the interests of both the Gulf Arabs and the U.S. An in-law of mine who was a Naval officer was stationed in Bahrain for several years .
He says it got old fast .
There are certainly more fun Naval bases to be assigned to—oh , say , Pearl Harbor in Honolulu or Coronado Island in San Diego Harbor—but there also are worse places in the Persian Gulf than Bahrain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the widespread urge to have our military play Team America : World Police is expensive for the American taxpayers and hard to justify rationally .
On the other hand , policing the Persian Gulf to prevent banditry , small and large , has clear economic logic behind it .
Strategically speaking , the Persian Gulf is `` The Prize '' a region absurdly well-endowed with oil , especially relative to the military competence of the locals .
When oil pumping got going in the Persian Gulf in the 1940s , U.S. oil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to camel-riding sheiks than they did to the oil companies ' accountants .
The American firms passed on some of their savings to American consumers , who built a hugely prosperous suburban economy based upon gasoline at $ 0.29 per gallon .
Then a savvy Venezuelan oil minister named Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo studied how the Texas Railroad Commission had restricted pumping to drive up oil prices .
In 1960 , he founded a would-be cartel called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries .
Eventually , the Persian Gulf potentates came around to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boycott and price increases following the Yom Kippur war of 1973 kicked off The Great Stagnation in prosperity for the average American family .
It could be worse , however .
OPEC 's ability to raise prices depends upon its twelve members , six of them in the Persian Gulf , agreeing upon voluntary cutbacks in output .
In the 1970s , Gulf Arab populations were low enough that their governments , especially the Saudis , could afford to limit their own national production for the good of OPEC .
OPEC 's huge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underpopulated Saudi Arabia good-naturedly not retaliating when the Shah of populous Iran cheated on his promises to cut back .
A generation and a half of population growth , however , has made it much harder for all of the Gulf exporters to afford to cooperate .
For example , Saudi Arabia 's population has almost quadrupled since 1973 .
U.S. policy since the 1970s has been , in effect , to pay market prices for the oil—even conquering Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq in 2003 did n't lead to American appropriation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as Iraq 's stickup of Kuwait in 1990 .
The economic theory of oligopolies states that , all else being equal , the fewer the decision makers , the more likely the cartel is to succeed .
The various governments of the Persian Gulf have to sell their oil to survive economically .
But the more oil exporters that remain independent in the region , the harder it is for them to make their cartel work to raise prices .
Going back as far as FDR 's meeting with King Saud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather feckless Gulf Arab rulers have tended to prefer the distant and powerful U.S. as their protector against closer threats , such as the Soviets during the Cold War , Egypt 's Pan-Arabist president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s , Iraq 's Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and early 1990s , and the Iranians , under both the Shah and ayatollahs .
The Persians have not shown themselves to be terribly dynamic militarily .
Iran has n't invaded a foreign country in at least a century and a half .
And it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to invade anybody right now .
Its 2009 military budget was $ 9 billion ( compared to America 's $ 663 billion ) .
That 's only 2.7 percent of GDP ( compared to America 's 4.3 percent ) .
So the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy 's main hope for extending its power in the Gulf is thus through subversion of neighboring Sunni regimes with large Shi'ite populations .
Above all , Saudi Arabia—which is ruled by Sunnis , but in which the main oil-producing regions are heavily Shi'ite .
Bahrain , along with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are the only Muslim countries with Shi'ite majorities .
Ever since Bush 's invasion of Iraq , which managed to replace a virulently anti-Iranian Sunni regime with a pro-Iranian Shi'ite government , Bahrain has been the only Shi'ite majority country ruled by Sunnis .
Thus , Iran sponsored coup attempts in Bahrain in 1981 and 1994 .
Yet both failed .
Do Shi'ites in Bahrain , some of whom are of Persian descent , some of Arab descent , look to Iran more now than in the past ?
I would n't think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2011 , but I really do n't know .
Would Shi'ite revolution then spread from Bahrain to the nearby oil fields of Saudi Arabia ?
Well , one advantage of being an old coot like me is that when the latest worries come along , after a while you remember that you already worried about it long ago ... and got bored .
Folks , I was worrying about Iran taking over the Shi'ite oil zone of Saudi Arabia in 1979 .
Despite all the complex theories I constructed at the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it did n't .
And it has n't happen over the last 32 years .
Will it happen over the next 32 years ?
Theoretically , Iran would n't need ownership to exercise pumping restraint to drive up prices—if Tehran could put the word out to the new Shi'ite oil regimes that they were all going to cut back , a Shi'ite consortium might be able to have sufficient market power to boost prices .
But , that all seems terribly theoretical .
I strongly doubt that separate Shi'ite states would or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own sales because they trust the others to cut back too .
There are good reasons that people in that part of the world are n't very trusting of each other .
So the U.S. may get lucky in the Gulf .
But the demographic situation is unquestionably unstable .
And Bahrain is an object lesson in how a ruling class is can use immigration policy as a weapon against its own people .
Even the Bahraini ruling class gets away with it , that 's no guarantee that our American rulers will @

Originally published on VDARE.com on this day in 2011.
The unprovoked killing by government forces of five Shi'ite protestors in the Persian Gulf statelet of Bahrain, headquarters for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, turns out upon examination to be deeply intertwined with Bahrain's troubles with diversity and immigration.
And they turn out to be uncomfortably not completely dissimilar to ours.
The indigenous population of Bahrain is about two-thirds Shi'ite Muslim. The local Shi'ites tend to view Bahrain's Sunni upper class as Johnny-come-lately usurpers (the ruling Al-Khalifa dynasty are Sunnis from the Arabian mainland who conquered Bahrain in 1783). The Shi'ites feel the Sunnis discriminate against them in hiring for government jobs and that they import cheap labor to drive down their wages. (Over half the population of Bahrain is now foreign-born.)
Most explosively, the Shi'ites argue that the minority Sunni rulers of Bahrain have been trying, in effect, to elect a new people by importing Sunni mercenaries from poorer countries and putting them on the path to citizenship. Ian Black, Mideast editor of The Guardian reported on February 17, 2011:
Bahrain security forces accused of deliberately recruiting foreign nationals "Al Khalifa regime hires non-native Sunni Muslims in concerted effort to swing balance in Shia-majority Bahrain, say analysts"
Similarly, Bill Law of the BBC reported on his 2007 visit with unemployed native Shi'ite youths in "Bahrain troops fire on crowds" [February 18, 2011]:
"I was also told of how the government was hiring men from Syria, Yemen, Jordan and Pakistan—all Sunni—to serve in the police and security forces. Fast-tracked to citizenship, they were able to jump the queue for housing and also had voting rights that skewed the demographic in favour of candidates supported by the al-Khalifas."
And in Bahrain's Sunnis Defend Monarchy in the New York Times [February 17, 2011], Michael Slackman reported on the opinions of the well-educated Sunni minority:
"Bahrain … is divided along sectarian lines and politics is often regarded as a zero-sum game — if Sunnis win, then Shiites lose, in a community where sectarian identification trumps national identity. … [To Sunnis] a police force staffed by foreigners is preferable to a police force staffed by Shiite citizens."
Back on June 22, 2009, Yaroslav Trofimov noted in the Wall Street Journal in U.S. Navy Fleet's Mideast Home Is Facing Rise in Sectarian Tension:
" 'There seems to be a clear political strategy to alter the country's demographic balance in order to counter the Shiite voting power,' says Toby C. Jones, professor of Middle East studies at Rutgers University and a former Bahrain-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. 'This naturalization stuff is a time bomb.'"
No kidding.
Brian Murphy and Hadeel Al-Shalchi of the Associated Press report in Bahrain's Sunni outreach fuels protests [February 19, 2011]:
"Few policies anger Bahrain's Shiites more than bestowing citizenship to outside Sunnis, mostly Arabs but also from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. On the broadest level, it's a clear attempt to offset the lopsided demographics with Shiites comprising 70 percent of the country's 525,000 citizens. But to many Shiites, it also reflects a cynical view by Bahrain's leaders that it's possible to buy loyalty and use that to strengthen their grip over the country. "The problem is that this army is not a national one," said Sheik Hassain al-Dahi [leader of the main Shi'ite opposition party]. "It is made up of people who do not share our traditions or culture, and do not have the best interest of the people at heart."
It's funny how much more readily the American Main Stream Media grasps how unfair it is for the government to elect a new people in Bahrain—while they cheer it on in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, these foreign-born Sunni gunmen appear much less reluctant to open fire on Bahrain's native-born Shi'ite protestors than, say, Egypt's conscript soldiers have been to shoot fellow Egyptians in Cairo. For all of Egypt's severe problems, its relatively homogeneous population has helped it, so far, avoid the worst.
From an American perspective, Bahrain is interesting for two reasons.
First: Bahrain has been a mercantile center for centuries. So, it hasn't been quite as indolent and backward as most of the Persian Gulf.
Summers in that region are perhaps the most stiflingly hot and humid in the world, and most locals outside Bahrain showed correspondingly little initiative. When Americans discovered vast reserves of oil under Bahrain's neighbors in the mid-20th Century, the Bahrainis kept something of a middle class by refining their neighbors' oil and selling them stuff.
In other words, Bahrain's social and political problems are somewhat analogous to our own. Bahrain, where 54 percent of the population is foreign-born, resembles a dystopian sci-fi novel about a future America. (In contrast, Saudi Arabia's problems, such as schoolgirls being forced back into a burning building by the Immodesty Police, are kind of hard for Americans to relate to.)
In Bahrain, for instance, young men complain about a lack of jobs. Yet there are actually quite a few jobs in Bahrain. But foreigners have a huge share of them.
In 1998, Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor wrote in Minorities and the State in the Arab World about Bahrain's ruling elite's addiction to cheap immigrant labor:
"The large and growing population of young people … meant that new jobs should be created rapidly. But because foreigners make up some 65 percent of the workforce, there has been little room for labor market growth. According to opposition sources, unemployment was as high as 30 percent. Particular criticism was directed against Shaykh 'Isa [father of the current king] for continuing to allow an influx of cheap foreign labor rather than provide jobs for Bahrain's citizens. In July 1994, a petition was signed by 1,200 unemployed youth requesting the government to deal with their problems; the response was to crack down on protesters."
So the Kingdom of Bahrain isn't that different, after all ... other than that its citizens tend to be more outspoken about immigration.
Similarly, importing foreigners to do the jobs Bahrainis just won't do tends to turn those jobs into ones that Bahrainis just won't do, just as H-1B visas are turning computer programming into a job Americans just won't do.
Second: unlike much of the Middle East, the U.S. actually does have some element of national interest tied up in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy stations 1,446 personnel ashore, a couple of miles from the clashes.
Bahrain is hardly the only naval base the U.S. could use in the Persian Gulf as its regional headquarters. But for a couple of decades, Bahrain has suited the interests of both the Gulf Arabs and the U.S.
An in-law of mine who was a Naval officer was stationed in Bahrain for several years. He says it got old fast. There are certainly more fun Naval bases to be assigned to—oh, say, Pearl Harbor in Honolulu or Coronado Island in San Diego Harbor—but there also are worse places in the Persian Gulf than Bahrain.
In most parts of the globe, the widespread urge to have our military play Team America: World Police is expensive for the American taxpayers and hard to justify rationally. On the other hand, policing the Persian Gulf to prevent banditry, small and large, has clear economic logic behind it. Strategically speaking, the Persian Gulf is "The Prize" a region absurdly well-endowed with oil, especially relative to the military competence of the locals.
When oil pumping got going in the Persian Gulf in the 1940s, U.S. oil firms paid royalties that seemed more munificent to camel-riding sheiks than they did to the oil companies' accountants. The American firms passed on some of their savings to American consumers, who built a hugely prosperous suburban economy based upon gasoline at $0.29 per gallon.
Then a savvy Venezuelan oil minister named Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo studied how the Texas Railroad Commission had restricted pumping to drive up oil prices. In 1960, he founded a would-be cartel called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Eventually, the Persian Gulf potentates came around to his way of thinking. Their oil boycott and price increases following the Yom Kippur war of 1973 kicked off The Great Stagnation in prosperity for the average American family.
It could be worse, however. OPEC's ability to raise prices depends upon its twelve members, six of them in the Persian Gulf, agreeing upon voluntary cutbacks in output. In the 1970s, Gulf Arab populations were low enough that their governments, especially the Saudis, could afford to limit their own national production for the good of OPEC. OPEC's huge successes in the 1970s were dependent upon underpopulated Saudi Arabia good-naturedly not retaliating when the Shah of populous Iran cheated on his promises to cut back.
A generation and a half of population growth, however, has made it much harder for all of the Gulf exporters to afford to cooperate. For example, Saudi Arabia's population has almost quadrupled since 1973.
U.S. policy since the 1970s has been, in effect, to pay market prices for the oil—even conquering Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq in 2003 didn't lead to American appropriation of oil—but to prevent consolidation within the region, such as Iraq's stickup of Kuwait in 1990. The economic theory of oligopolies states that, all else being equal, the fewer the decision makers, the more likely the cartel is to succeed.
The various governments of the Persian Gulf have to sell their oil to survive economically. But the more oil exporters that remain independent in the region, the harder it is for them to make their cartel work to raise prices.
Going back as far as FDR's meeting with King Saud of Saudi Arabia in 1945, the rather feckless Gulf Arab rulers have tended to prefer the distant and powerful U.S. as their protector against closer threats, such as the Soviets during the Cold War, Egypt's Pan-Arabist president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s, Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the Iranians, under both the Shah and ayatollahs.
The Persians have not shown themselves to be terribly dynamic militarily. Iran hasn't invaded a foreign country in at least a century and a half. And it doesn't seem to be gearing up to invade anybody right now. Its 2009 military budget was $9 billion (compared to America's $663 billion). That's only 2.7 percent of GDP (compared to America's 4.3 percent).
So the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy's main hope for extending its power in the Gulf is thus through subversion of neighboring Sunni regimes with large Shi'ite populations. Above all, Saudi Arabia—which is ruled by Sunnis, but in which the main oil-producing regions are heavily Shi'ite.
Bahrain, along with Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, are the only Muslim countries with Shi'ite majorities. Ever since Bush's invasion of Iraq, which managed to replace a virulently anti-Iranian Sunni regime with a pro-Iranian Shi'ite government, Bahrain has been the only Shi'ite majority country ruled by Sunnis.
Thus, Iran sponsored coup attempts in Bahrain in 1981 and 1994. Yet both failed.
Do Shi'ites in Bahrain, some of whom are of Persian descent, some of Arab descent, look to Iran more now than in the past? I wouldn't think the Iranian regime is all that galvanizing in 2011, but I really don't know.
Would Shi'ite revolution then spread from Bahrain to the nearby oil fields of Saudi Arabia?
Well, one advantage of being an old coot like me is that when the latest worries come along, after a while you remember that you already worried about it long ago ... and got bored. Folks, I was worrying about Iran taking over the Shi'ite oil zone of Saudi Arabia in 1979. Despite all the complex theories I constructed at the time about how this was about to happen, it didn't. And it hasn't happen over the last 32 years. Will it happen over the next 32 years?
I don't know.
Theoretically, Iran wouldn't need ownership to exercise pumping restraint to drive up prices—if Tehran could put the word out to the new Shi'ite oil regimes that they were all going to cut back, a Shi'ite consortium might be able to have sufficient market power to boost prices.
But, that all seems terribly theoretical. I strongly doubt that separate Shi'ite states would or could coordinate that much, sacrificing their own sales because they trust the others to cut back too. There are good reasons that people in that part of the world aren't very trusting of each other.
So the U.S. may get lucky in the Gulf. But the demographic situation is unquestionably unstable. And Bahrain is an object lesson in how a ruling class is can use immigration policy as a weapon against its own people. Even if the Bahraini ruling class gets away with it, that's no guarantee that our American rulers will.


vdare--2020-02-20--Tucker Carlson Warns America About The Threat Of Chinese Influence

On Monday , Tucker Carlson described the ripoff Red China has perpetrated on California ’ s state pension fund CalPERS .
Tuesday ’ s opening added details to that story , but more importantly , he explained the many ways that influential Americans have been bought off by the Chinese communists to serve their nefarious ends .
It ’ s both shameful and dangerous .
The detailed report deserves your careful attention because the threat will be with us for a long time and needs to be understood in its complexity , in particular how thoroughly the Chinese have infiltrated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some links to the text below : TUCKER CARLSON : There are serious long-term problems facing America , as we ’ ve told you about for years on this show .
Thanks to outsourcing , this country no longer has the same reserve of stable middle-class manufacturing jobs we did even 30 years ago .
In coastal cities , housing has become astronomically expensive .
Prices are rising far quicker than wage growth .
And most tragically , an opioid epidemic kills tens of thousands of Americans every year .
One of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opiate called fentanyl that is smuggled in from abroad .
Now , these might seem like unrelated problems , but they ’ re not .
A single theme unites them — a systematic decision by many of our country ’ s most powerful leaders to sell out America to China .
Those jobs that were outsourced , they went to China .
Those rising home prices , all-cash Chinese buyers are a major contributor to that , though it ’ s almost never said out loud .
Fentanyl — made in China with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chinese Communist Party .
China is no longer simply an economic rival of the United States ; it ’ s becoming a dangerous enemy .
But instead of protecting us from this threat , an existential one , our leadership class collaborates with the other side .
Why do they do that ?
Simple .
They ’ re getting rich from it .
This only became clear to many people a few months ago when the most American of all sports , professional basketball — a game literally invented in a gym in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mask and showed the world who really controls the league .
NBA general manager , Daryl Morey , you ’ ll remember , wrote a tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong , and in the resulting backlash , the NBA and Morey both apologized for daring to criticize China ’ s fascist regime .
And then LeBron James weighed in and explained to us that , actually , freedom of speech in America is vastly overrated .
LeBRON JAMES : So many people could have been harmed , not only financially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So just be careful what we tweet and we say , and what we do , even though , yes , we do have freedom of speech .
But there can be a lot of negative that comes with that , too .
CARLSON : Yeah .
Just be careful with what you tweet or say because the Chinese are watching , and they pay the bills .
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr , meanwhile , explained that there ’ s really no moral difference between America and communist China .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ come up in terms of people asking me about it , people discussing it .
No .
Nor has our record of human rights abuses come up , either .
People in China didn ’ t ask me about , you know , people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall .
CARLSON : Yeah , so America has school shootings .
China is on its third or fourth genocide since World War II .
You know : Tomato , To-mah-to .
Six dozen to one .
Whatever .
Yeah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be shocking , but it ’ s not really .
It ’ s a taste of just how completely the people in charge identify with China over this country .
In some cases , they ’ ve literally joined China ’ s payroll .
Former Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk , for example is a registered foreign agent who lobbies for the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation .
That ’ s a Chinese organization with ties to the Communist Party .
A former senator .
Former Senator Joe Lieberman works for another Chinese company , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Well , ZTE is so dangerous to American interests that last August , the President signed a bill banning the federal government from using that company ’ s equipment because it ’ s too threatening .
But Lieberman ’ s lobbying for them .
Former Congressman Rick Boucher , meanwhile , has lobbied for a whole list of Chinese companies , including Hikvision , Huawei and the search engine , Baidu .
But China isn ’ t content buying off our retired lawmakers .
They ’ re also targeting people who have jobs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night , we told you about a man called Yu Meng .
He is the chief investment officer at California ’ s massive state-run pension fund called CalPERS .
Meng , who was born in China and moved here at the age of 25 , previously ran China ’ s $ 3 trillion portfolio of foreign investments .
CalPERS has long engaged in shareholder activism to advance leftwing causes in this country , like gun control , and have been very aggressive about it .
But now the fund also supports China ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invests in companies that supply the Chinese military , literally .
They ’ re also invested in Hikvision , which makes the surveillance equipment that China uses to monitor ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs .
So they ’ re actively abetting fascism .
There ’ s nothing harmless about these investments .
As Yu Meng himself once noted , “ Of course , it empowers the Chinese regime to have the money flowing in.
” Of course , it does , but they did it anyway .
When Meng worked for a Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Thousand Talents Initiative — that ’ s a Chinese program designed to encourage foreign businessmen , scientists and other experts to work on China ’ s behalf , often secretly .
The explicit goal is to obtain Western technology and research for China ’ s own use so they can surpass us , which they are .
Last month , Harvard chemistry professor , Charles Lieber , the head of the department , was arrested for hiding his work on behalf of China .
In effect , Lieber was working as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t special .
The entire sleazy academic world — and it ’ s one of the sleaziest — is addicted to Chinese money .
Harvard and Yale both stand accused of hiding hundreds of millions in donations from payments from foreign countries .
Needless to say , China is one of the top contributors .
Recently , the Texas A & M University system tried to gauge how many of its faculty were getting Chinese money .
More than a hundred of them had been recruited , it turns out , but only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hostile foreign government .
How many were indicted ?
Your guess ?
Oh , yeah — zero .
Now Chinese officials aren ’ t paying these academics because they love scholarship .
No .
America ’ s universities are key centers of scientific research and technical innovation .
China would like to steal that information , and they are .
As of now , the FBI is investigating more than 1,000 cases in which they believe China has stolen research from American firms .
If anything , our top colleges and universities are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can see it by the way they recruit .
Chinese grad students fill our research labs .
This makes college administrators much richer , but it also allows the Chinese government easy access to critical information , some of it that directly bears on our national security .
American academics have made it clear whose side they ’ re on .
Last November , officials at the University of Missouri-Kansas City removed an artistic display supporting protesters in Hong Kong because Chinese students complained .
According to The New Republic , Columbia University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talks because they might upset Chinese officials .
They ’ re squelching free speech at the direction of Communist China .
And that ’ s common in the business world .
Disney changed its Tibetan character in one of its movies into a European woman because acknowledging Tibet ’ s existence would anger their masters in China .
They should be ashamed .
GAP apologized for selling a t-shirt in Canada that didn ’ t feature Taiwan as part of China .
( By the way , it ’ s not part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pretend that it is , and they complied . )
We could go on .
There are endless examples of this kind of thing .
It ’ s happening all around us .
So how about Michael Bloomberg ?
He ’ s running for president .
Maybe more than anyone in America , Bloomberg represents the beliefs and values of our current aristocracy , which is by far the worst in American history — the stupidest and the most greedy .
Not surprisingly , Bloomberg has both kowtowed to the Chinese and gotten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not embarrassed by it .
In 2014 Bloomberg once explained that actually , China ’ s unelected leader isn ’ t really a dictator .
CANDIDATE MICHAEL BLOOMBERG : The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China , and they listen to the public .
When the public says I can ’ t breathe the air — Xi Jinping is not a dictator — he has to satisfy his constituents , so he ’ s not going to survive .
HOST OF PBS ’ FIRING LINE MARGARET HOOVER : He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ No , he has — he has a constituency to answer to .
CARLSON : So the Chinese dictator is not a dictator .
It makes you wonder how Michael Bloomberg would govern as president or maybe it explains how he ’ d govern as president .
But Bloomberg ’ s personal admiration for the bloodthirsty fossil in charge of the world ’ s largest communist country isn ’ t the only reason he likes China .
There ’ s big money at stake , of course — that ’ s always what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s company has enormous investments in the country and that has influenced how Bloomberg News reports on China .
In 2013 , for example , Bloomberg News was accused of killing stories that would have revealed corruption by family members of the Chinese dictator — and yes , he is a dictator .
Ben Richardson , Bloomberg Asia editor , later said he ’ d been told directly by leaders at his company that covering the Chinese Politburo was off-limits .
That ’ s like telling a Washington bureau chief you can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
That ’ s Michael Bloomberg ’ s position .
Just on Tuesday , former Bloomberg reporter Leta Hong Fincher wrote in “ The Intercept , ” about how Bloomberg ’ s lawyers threatened to destroy her life if she wouldn ’ t sign a nondisclosure agreement about the company ’ s censorship practices .
But don ’ t take their word for it .
A few years ago , Bloomberg openly admitted that he let China censor his company ’ s news .
He actually said that on television .
Here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ANDREW ROSS SORKIN : Over the past year , there ’ s been questions about the journalism going on in China and whether the company in its effort to grow has muzzled .
BLOOMBERG : In China , they have rules about what you can publish .
We follow those rules .
If you don ’ t follow rules , you ’ re out of the country .
We write the stories that we think are interesting , and we distribute them where they are allowed to be distributed .
The scariest part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful , America has grown more dependent on it .
Outsourcing our manufacturing power brought American companies big short-term profits .
Head to Florida , and you ’ ll see the houses they ’ ve built with those profits .
But in the long run , that decision made this country dangerously dependent on a nation that seeks to displace us on the world stage .
Consider just one small sector of the American economy , medical supplies .
China is now a top producer of antibiotics , surgical tools , prescription drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential products that you need to stay alive .
Eighty percent of our antibiotics right now come from China .
Hard to believe , but true .
The coronavirus panic alone was enough to cause shortages of some of these materials .
What will happen if an even bigger crisis comes along , as it inevitably will ?
Or what if China simply cuts off exports as a show of force ?
That could happen .
Maybe they invade Taiwan and then cut off exports .
How do we respond ?
We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most infuriating part is that none of this needed to happen in the first place .
China didn ’ t just one day magically overtake us .
Our leaders made that possible .
They abetted it .
They profited from it .
They betrayed us .

On Monday, Tucker Carlson described the ripoff Red China has perpetrated on California’s state pension fund CalPERS.
Tuesday’s opening added details to that story, but more importantly, he explained the many ways that influential Americans have been bought off by the Chinese communists to serve their nefarious ends. It’s both shameful and dangerous.
The detailed report deserves your careful attention because the threat will be with us for a long time and needs to be understood in its complexity, in particular how thoroughly the Chinese have infiltrated our institutions.
I’ve added some links to the text below:
TUCKER CARLSON: There are serious long-term problems facing America, as we’ve told you about for years on this show. Thanks to outsourcing, this country no longer has the same reserve of stable middle-class manufacturing jobs we did even 30 years ago.
In coastal cities, housing has become astronomically expensive. Prices are rising far quicker than wage growth. And most tragically, an opioid epidemic kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. One of the chief reasons for that is a synthetic opiate called fentanyl that is smuggled in from abroad.
Now, these might seem like unrelated problems, but they’re not. A single theme unites them — a systematic decision by many of our country’s most powerful leaders to sell out America to China.
Those jobs that were outsourced, they went to China. Those rising home prices, all-cash Chinese buyers are a major contributor to that, though it’s almost never said out loud. Fentanyl — made in China with the knowledge and tacit approval of the Chinese Communist Party.
China is no longer simply an economic rival of the United States; it’s becoming a dangerous enemy. But instead of protecting us from this threat, an existential one, our leadership class collaborates with the other side.
Why do they do that? Simple. They’re getting rich from it. This only became clear to many people a few months ago when the most American of all sports, professional basketball — a game literally invented in a gym in Springfield, Mass. — ripped off the mask and showed the world who really controls the league.
NBA general manager, Daryl Morey, you’ll remember, wrote a tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and in the resulting backlash, the NBA and Morey both apologized for daring to criticize China’s fascist regime. And then LeBron James weighed in and explained to us that, actually, freedom of speech in America is vastly overrated.
LeBRON JAMES: So many people could have been harmed, not only financially. but physically, emotionally, spiritually.
So just be careful what we tweet and we say, and what we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech. But there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.
CARLSON: Yeah. Just be careful with what you tweet or say because the Chinese are watching, and they pay the bills.
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, meanwhile, explained that there’s really no moral difference between America and communist China.
COACH STEVE KERR: It has not come up in terms of people asking me about it, people discussing it. No. Nor has our record of human rights abuses come up, either.
People in China didn’t ask me about, you know, people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall.
CARLSON: Yeah, so America has school shootings. China is on its third or fourth genocide since World War II. You know: Tomato, To-mah-to. Six dozen to one. Whatever.
Yeah, saying something like that out loud should be shocking, but it’s not really. It’s a taste of just how completely the people in charge identify with China over this country.
In some cases, they’ve literally joined China’s payroll. Former Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, for example is a registered foreign agent who lobbies for the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation. That’s a Chinese organization with ties to the Communist Party. A former senator.
Former Senator Joe Lieberman works for another Chinese company, ZTE. What’s ZTE? Well, ZTE is so dangerous to American interests that last August, the President signed a bill banning the federal government from using that company’s equipment because it’s too threatening. But Lieberman’s lobbying for them.
Former Congressman Rick Boucher, meanwhile, has lobbied for a whole list of Chinese companies, including Hikvision, Huawei and the search engine, Baidu. But China isn’t content buying off our retired lawmakers. They’re also targeting people who have jobs that matter right now.
On Monday night, we told you about a man called Yu Meng. He is the chief investment officer at California’s massive state-run pension fund called CalPERS. Meng, who was born in China and moved here at the age of 25, previously ran China’s $3 trillion portfolio of foreign investments.
CalPERS has long engaged in shareholder activism to advance leftwing causes in this country, like gun control, and have been very aggressive about it. But now the fund also supports China’s efforts to eclipse America.
CalPERS invests in companies that supply the Chinese military, literally. They’re also invested in Hikvision, which makes the surveillance equipment that China uses to monitor ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs. So they’re actively abetting fascism.
There’s nothing harmless about these investments. As Yu Meng himself once noted, “Of course, it empowers the Chinese regime to have the money flowing in.” Of course, it does, but they did it anyway.
When Meng worked for a Chinese investment fund, he was recruited by the Thousand Talents Initiative — that’s a Chinese program designed to encourage foreign businessmen, scientists and other experts to work on China’s behalf, often secretly. The explicit goal is to obtain Western technology and research for China’s own use so they can surpass us, which they are.
Last month, Harvard chemistry professor, Charles Lieber, the head of the department, was arrested for hiding his work on behalf of China. In effect, Lieber was working as a spy. But his case isn’t special. The entire sleazy academic world — and it’s one of the sleaziest — is addicted to Chinese money.
Harvard and Yale both stand accused of hiding hundreds of millions in donations from payments from foreign countries. Needless to say, China is one of the top contributors. Recently, the Texas A&M University system tried to gauge how many of its faculty were getting Chinese money. More than a hundred of them had been recruited, it turns out, but only five had reported their work for a hostile foreign government. How many were indicted? Your guess? Oh, yeah — zero.
Now Chinese officials aren’t paying these academics because they love scholarship. No. America’s universities are key centers of scientific research and technical innovation. China would like to steal that information, and they are.
As of now, the FBI is investigating more than 1,000 cases in which they believe China has stolen research from American firms. If anything, our top colleges and universities are encouraging this to happen. And you can see it by the way they recruit.
Chinese grad students fill our research labs. This makes college administrators much richer, but it also allows the Chinese government easy access to critical information, some of it that directly bears on our national security.
American academics have made it clear whose side they’re on. Last November, officials at the University of Missouri-Kansas City removed an artistic display supporting protesters in Hong Kong because Chinese students complained. According to The New Republic, Columbia University’s global center in Beijing canceled talks because they might upset Chinese officials. They’re squelching free speech at the direction of Communist China.
And that’s common in the business world. Disney changed its Tibetan character in one of its movies into a European woman because acknowledging Tibet’s existence would anger their masters in China. They should be ashamed.
GAP apologized for selling a t-shirt in Canada that didn’t feature Taiwan as part of China. (By the way, it’s not part of China. But China demanded that GAP pretend that it is, and they complied.)
We could go on. There are endless examples of this kind of thing. It’s happening all around us.
So how about Michael Bloomberg? He’s running for president. Maybe more than anyone in America, Bloomberg represents the beliefs and values of our current aristocracy, which is by far the worst in American history — the stupidest and the most greedy.
Not surprisingly, Bloomberg has both kowtowed to the Chinese and gotten rich from the Chinese. He’s not embarrassed by it.
In 2014 Bloomberg once explained that actually, China’s unelected leader isn’t really a dictator.
CANDIDATE MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public. When the public says I can’t breathe the air — Xi Jinping is not a dictator — he has to satisfy his constituents, so he’s not going to survive.
HOST OF PBS’ FIRING LINE MARGARET HOOVER: He is not a dictator?
BLOOMBERG: No, he has — he has a constituency to answer to.
CARLSON: So the Chinese dictator is not a dictator. It makes you wonder how Michael Bloomberg would govern as president or maybe it explains how he’d govern as president.
But Bloomberg’s personal admiration for the bloodthirsty fossil in charge of the world’s largest communist country isn’t the only reason he likes China. There’s big money at stake, of course — that’s always what it’s about.
Bloomberg’s company has enormous investments in the country and that has influenced how Bloomberg News reports on China. In 2013, for example, Bloomberg News was accused of killing stories that would have revealed corruption by family members of the Chinese dictator — and yes, he is a dictator.
Ben Richardson, Bloomberg Asia editor, later said he’d been told directly by leaders at his company that covering the Chinese Politburo was off-limits. That’s like telling a Washington bureau chief you can’t cover Congress because you might insult them. That’s Michael Bloomberg’s position.
Just on Tuesday, former Bloomberg reporter Leta Hong Fincher wrote in “The Intercept,” about how Bloomberg’s lawyers threatened to destroy her life if she wouldn’t sign a nondisclosure agreement about the company’s censorship practices. But don’t take their word for it.
A few years ago, Bloomberg openly admitted that he let China censor his company’s news. He actually said that on television. Here it is:
CNBC SQUAWK BOX CO-ANCHOR ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Over the past year, there’s been questions about the journalism going on in China and whether the company in its effort to grow has muzzled.
BLOOMBERG: In China, they have rules about what you can publish. We follow those rules. If you don’t follow rules, you’re out of the country.
We write the stories that we think are interesting, and we distribute them where they are allowed to be distributed.
CARLSON: “Where they’re allowed to be distributed.”
The scariest part is that as China has grown more powerful, America has grown more dependent on it. Outsourcing our manufacturing power brought American companies big short-term profits. Head to Florida, and you’ll see the houses they’ve built with those profits. But in the long run, that decision made this country dangerously dependent on a nation that seeks to displace us on the world stage.
Consider just one small sector of the American economy, medical supplies. China is now a top producer of antibiotics, surgical tools, prescription drug ingredients, facemasks, and many more essential products that you need to stay alive. Eighty percent of our antibiotics right now come from China. Hard to believe, but true.
The coronavirus panic alone was enough to cause shortages of some of these materials. What will happen if an even bigger crisis comes along, as it inevitably will? Or what if China simply cuts off exports as a show of force?
That could happen. Maybe they invade Taiwan and then cut off exports. How do we respond? We’d be helpless.
The saddest and most infuriating part is that none of this needed to happen in the first place. China didn’t just one day magically overtake us. Our leaders made that possible. They abetted it. They profited from it. They betrayed us.


vdare--2020-02-20--Illegal Aliens Still Don’t Fear Enforcement

Illegal aliens now are quite open about their defiance and contempt for American immigration law .
Their flagrant attitude is only encouraged by Sanctuary Cities and politicians who pander to them .
Sadly , there is still no fear in their hearts of the Trump Administration , something that is essential for all law enforcement , but particularly for immigration law enforcement .
If a criminal does not fear arrest , that criminal is encouraged to commit more crime .
The same with immigration violations .
Sadly , U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) , has been resisting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public enforcement is needed and a news from the Sanctuary State of California is symptomatic of the failure of the Deep State to enforce immigration laws , and the failure of the Trump Administration to force the Resistance to do their jobs .
A private prison company wants to operate an immigration detention center in McFarland , Calif. , a town that is home to thousands of undocumented farm workers .
As an undocumented immigrant , Maribel Ramirez does not officially have a say in the affairs of the small agricultural town in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has called home for 20 years .
But late into the night on Tuesday , she stood with hundreds of field workers and other residents outside McFarland ’ s City Council chambers , a bullhorn in her hand .
“ No ICE !
No GEO !
We ’ re farmworkers , not delinquents , ” they chanted in Spanish , led by Ms. Ramirez , 42 .
At issue was a multi-billion-dollar corporation ’ s proposal to convert two state prisons slated for closure into detention centers for undocumented immigrants , operated under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a plan that city leaders said could provide this impoverished town with a financial lifeline .
A new law in California outlawing private prisons will cost the city $ 1.5 million a year in taxes and other fees paid by the prison corporation , the GEO Group , unless the company can convert the two facilities it has operated there into immigration detention centers .
[ An ICE Detention Center ?
You Picked the Wrong Town , Residents Say , by Miriam Jordan , NYT , February 20 , 2020 ] Here we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a population that is half illegal .
An illegal alien decides that the Federal government , the enforcement arm of immigration enforcement , may not have a detention center in her town , and she is not afraid to have her photo on the front page of a newspaper .
Maribel Ramirez does not fear ICE SVU , she does not fear arrest .
Why is that ?
For almost three years saboteurs at ICE SVU have refused to do public enforcement , instead continuing the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty , only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the jurisdiction of the ICE SVU office in San Francisco , and the Special Agent-in-Charge is familiar to readers .
Tatum King is known for his National Football League centered law enforcement strategy .
King is not interested in arresting illegal aliens like Maribel Ramirez , nor raiding towns where illegal aliens are half the population and openly attack ICE in public , interfering with obtaining important ICE facilities for enforcement .
But he is very big on sex crimes and drugs .
But he has little interest in work-site enforcement , immigration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Tatum King , Not Doing Anything About Maribel Ramirez You can contact King here : Let King know that you want Maribel Ramirez and her husband , Eusebio Gomez , arrested .
Let him know that you want raids , checkpoints , and sweeps in McFarland to show that illegal aliens can not interfere with ICE logistics , nor can they flagrantly disobey U.S. immigration laws .
Fear is the mind killer—time for illegal aliens to fear immigration enforcement .

Illegal aliens now are quite open about their defiance and contempt for American immigration law. Their flagrant attitude is only encouraged by Sanctuary Cities and politicians who pander to them. Sadly, there is still no fear in their hearts of the Trump Administration, something that is essential for all law enforcement, but particularly for immigration law enforcement.
If a criminal does not fear arrest, that criminal is encouraged to commit more crime. The same with immigration violations. Sadly, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been resisting public enforcement of immigration laws, but public enforcement is needed. News from the Sanctuary State of California is symptomatic of the failure of the Deep State to enforce immigration laws, and the failure of the Trump Administration to force the Resistance to do their jobs.
A private prison company wants to operate an immigration detention center in McFarland, Calif., a town that is home to thousands of undocumented farm workers. As an undocumented immigrant, Maribel Ramirez does not officially have a say in the affairs of the small agricultural town in California’s Central Valley that she has called home for 20 years. But late into the night on Tuesday, she stood with hundreds of field workers and other residents outside McFarland’s City Council chambers, a bullhorn in her hand. “No ICE! No GEO! We’re farmworkers, not delinquents,” they chanted in Spanish, led by Ms. Ramirez, 42. At issue was a multi-billion-dollar corporation’s proposal to convert two state prisons slated for closure into detention centers for undocumented immigrants, operated under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a plan that city leaders said could provide this impoverished town with a financial lifeline. A new law in California outlawing private prisons will cost the city $1.5 million a year in taxes and other fees paid by the prison corporation, the GEO Group, unless the company can convert the two facilities it has operated there into immigration detention centers. [An ICE Detention Center? You Picked the Wrong Town, Residents Say, by Miriam Jordan, NYT, February 20, 2020]
Here we have it. A town in California has a population that is half illegal. An illegal alien decides that the Federal government, the enforcement arm of immigration enforcement, may not have a detention center in her town, and she is not afraid to have her photo on the front page of a newspaper.
A town of immigrant farm workers says no to an ICE detention center https://t.co/mIfkmdTPq9 Since Maribel Ramirez is an ILLEGAL ALIEN why does the NYT give her and her ilk any say in the matter. They're here illegally! Get it NYT? — Wolf J. Flywheel Keep America Great! (@RufusTF45774819) February 20, 2020
Maribel Ramirez does not fear ICE SVU, she does not fear arrest. Why is that? For almost three years saboteurs at ICE SVU have refused to do public enforcement, instead continuing the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty, only arresting criminal aliens.
McFarland is under the jurisdiction of the ICE SVU office in San Francisco, and the Special Agent-in-Charge is familiar to readers. Tatum King is known for his National Football League centered law enforcement strategy. King is not interested in arresting illegal aliens like Maribel Ramirez, or in raiding towns where illegal aliens are half the population and openly attack ICE in public, interfering with obtaining important ICE facilities for enforcement. But he is very big on sex crimes and drugs. But he has little interest in work-site enforcement, immigration fraud, or protecting the ICE mission.
Tatum King, Not Doing Anything About Maribel Ramirez
You can contact King here:
630 Sansome Street, Suite 890
San Francisco, CA, 94111
Phone: (415) 844-5455
Fax: (415) 844-5451
Let King know that you want Maribel Ramirez and her husband, Eusebio Gomez, arrested. Let him know that you want raids, checkpoints, and sweeps in McFarland to show that illegal aliens cannot interfere with ICE logistics, nor can they flagrantly disobey U.S. immigration laws.
Fear is the mind killer — time for illegal aliens to fear immigration enforcement.


vdare--2020-02-21--In 2018 Florida, Blacks Represent 16% of the Population of the State, But 54 Percent of Homicide Sus

In 2018 Florida, Blacks Represent 16% of the Population of the State, But 54 Percent of Homicide Suspects

The statistics are right there , if you just know where to look .
Florida is an 53 percent white state .
Its population is 16 percent black .
The 2018 Florida Uniform Crime Report provides an interesting look at violent crime in the 53 percent white state : • There were 712 known homicide offenders in 2018 , with 388 of those offenders being black .
• This means 54 percent of known homicide offenders in the 16 percent black state of Florida in 2018 were black .
Though blacks are just 19 percent of the population , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homicide in the state of Florida in 2018 .
It should be noted Hispanics are lumped in with whites in the Florida Uniform Crime Report .
It should also be noted the publication here of the 2018 Florida Uniform Crime Report racial demographics for homicide represents the first time this data has been published by any news site or webzine .
Not one newspaper or local ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX affiliate published this data in the state of Florida .
Racial disparities exist in the criminal justice system throughout the United States of America because blacks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , necessitating not just imprisonment , but the forfeiture of their franchise .

The statistics are right there, if you just know where to look. Florida is a 53 percent white state. Its population is 16 percent black.
The 2018 Florida Uniform Crime Report provides an interesting look at violent crime in the 53 percent white state:
There were 712 known homicide offenders in 2018, with 388 of those offenders being black.
This means 54 percent of known homicide offenders in the 16 percent black state of Florida in 2018 were black.
Though blacks are just 19 percent of the population, they represented 54 percent of the arrests for homicide in the state of Florida in 2018.
It should be noted Hispanics are lumped in with whites in the Florida Uniform Crime Report.
Per capita…
Despite being…
It should also be noted the publication here of the 2018 Florida Uniform Crime Report racial demographics for homicide represents the first time this data has been published by any news site or webzine. Not one newspaper or local ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX affiliate published this data in the state of Florida.
Racial disparities exist in the criminal justice system throughout the United States of America because blacks disproportionately commit the bulk of violent crime, necessitating not just imprisonment, but the forfeiture of their franchise.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-02-21--Latino Voters All-In For Gun Control...Our New Country Is Going To Be Great

File this data under the category “ our new country is going to be great !
” If you can ’ t figure it out , we ’ ll spell it for you : The Great Replacement in the USA means those inalienable rights the founding fathers left for their posterity will be outlawed once Democrats , aided by massive Hispanic immigration , take permanent power of state legislators and then the entire nation .
The NRA will fall .
It ’ s inevitable : Just look at the demographics.
, by Adam Winkler , Washington Post , October 19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to favor gun rights over gun control by a significant margin ( 57 percent to 40 percent ) .
Yet whites , who comprise 63 percent of the population today , won ’ t be in the majority for long .
Racial minorities are soon to be a majority , and they are the nation ’ s strongest supporters of strict gun laws .
An overwhelming majority of African Americans say that gun control is more important than gun rights ( 72 percent to 24 percent ) .
While the African American population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial minority groups are growing more rapidly — and report even greater support for gun control .
The fastest-growing minority group in America is Latinos .
Between 2000 and 2010 , the nation ’ s Latino population grew by 43 percent .
Hispanics , which make up 17 percent of the population today , are expected to grow to 30 percent of the population in the coming decades .
Of course , the NRA will continue to fight , and fight hard , against gun control .
But the heart of the organization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can turn out to vote , and they are likely to decline in number .
Unless the organization begins to soften its no-compromises stance on gun safety legislation , it ’ s likely to become increasingly marginalized in a changing America .
One more time : “ our new country is going to be great !
”

File this data under the category “our new country is going to be great!”
If you can’t figure it out, we’ll spell it for you: The Great Replacement in the USA means those inalienable rights the founding fathers left for their posterity will be outlawed once Democrats, aided by massive Hispanic immigration, take permanent power of state legislators and then the entire nation.
The NRA will fall. It’s inevitable: Just look at the demographics., by Adam Winkler, Washington Post, October 19, 2015 Polls show that whites tend to favor gun rights over gun control by a significant margin (57 percent to 40 percent). Yet whites, who comprise 63 percent of the population today, won’t be in the majority for long. Racial minorities are soon to be a majority, and they are the nation’s strongest supporters of strict gun laws. An overwhelming majority of African Americans say that gun control is more important than gun rights (72 percent to 24 percent). While the African American population shows signs of slow growth, other racial minority groups are growing more rapidly — and report even greater support for gun control. The fastest-growing minority group in America is Latinos. Between 2000 and 2010, the nation’s Latino population grew by 43 percent. Hispanics, which make up 17 percent of the population today, are expected to grow to 30 percent of the population in the coming decades. Of course, the NRA will continue to fight, and fight hard, against gun control. But the heart of the organization’s power is the voters it can turn out to vote, and they are likely to decline in number. Unless the organization begins to soften its no-compromises stance on gun safety legislation, it’s likely to become increasingly marginalized in a changing America.
One more time: “Our new country is going to be great!”


vdare--2020-02-21--This Day In VDARE.com History, 2008: Rural Kentucky—Where  "The Police Control The Streets."

Originally published on VDARE.com on this day in 2008 .
A reader wrote to say nice things about my recent article The Mexican Country Mouse And The American City Mouse and to point out something I missed : The `` country mouse '' piece was excellent , as usual , but , whoa , Nellie , you let the most outrageous—and revealing—statement by the Mexican woman who moved to Kentucky pass without comment : `` The police control the streets . ''
Rural Kentuckians control themselves .
Indeed , rural [ insert state demonym here ] control themselves everywhere .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything .
Members of small-town ( and suburban ) police forces are notorious for getting in trouble themselves , with substances , their families , and occasionally the law , because their jobs are too boring for their personality type , which is similar to that of criminals in its attraction to risk .
( One year , 90 % of the infractions at the two-year state campus in tiny , isolated Canton , N.Y. , were committed by the 50 % of students majoring in Criminal Justice . )
But Mexicans assume @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diligent police work .
What a window into their mentality !
!
It 's not only immigrants who do n't understand what things are like outside the big city .
I wrote a while back , when Michael Bloomberg was making fun of Mayor Lou Barletta [ “ I testified before Congress and New York 's a city of 8.3 million people .
The guy who testified after me came from Hazleton , Pa. , which is 30,000 people , and according to him , there has never been a crime committed in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ committed by an undocumented.
” ] that even as a fairly safe New Yorker , who does n't have to ride the subway , for example , Bloomberg has lived all his life behind locked doors , in constant peril of crime , keeping a close eye out for people on the street who might attack him .
I do n't believe he has any concept of what small-town life might be like , except to mock it .
To give you a counter example , when Denny Hastert , who lives in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the House in 1999 , his new security detail went to his home to install new , high security locks on the doors , they found that that there were no locks there , period .
They had to install them from scratch .
There are a lot of homes in Kentucky with no locks on the door , but not in Los Angeles , New York , ... or Mexico City .

Originally published on VDARE.com on this day in 2008.
A reader wrote to say nice things about my recent article The Mexican Country Mouse And The American City Mouse and to point out something I missed:
The "country mouse" piece was excellent, as usual, but, whoa, Nellie, you let the most outrageous—and revealing—statement by the Mexican woman who moved to Kentucky pass without comment: "The police control the streets." The hell they do! Rural Kentuckians control themselves. Indeed, rural [insert state demonym here] control themselves everywhere. The police don't have to do anything. Members of small-town (and suburban) police forces are notorious for getting in trouble themselves, with substances, their families, and occasionally the law, because their jobs are too boring for their personality type, which is similar to that of criminals in its attraction to risk. (One year, 90% of the infractions at the two-year state campus in tiny, isolated Canton, N.Y., were committed by the 50% of students majoring in Criminal Justice.) But Mexicans assume the low crime rate is due to diligent police work. What a window into their mentality!!
It's not only immigrants who don't understand what things are like outside the big city. I wrote a while back, when Michael Bloomberg was making fun of Mayor Lou Barletta [“I testified before Congress and New York's a city of 8.3 million people. The guy who testified after me came from Hazleton, Pa., which is 30,000 people, and according to him, there has never been a crime committed in Hazleton, Pa., that wasn't committed by an undocumented.”] that
even as a fairly safe New Yorker, who doesn't have to ride the subway, for example, Bloomberg has lived all his life behind locked doors, in constant peril of crime, keeping a close eye out for people on the street who might attack him. I don't believe he has any concept of what small-town life might be like, except to mock it. To give you a counter example, when Denny Hastert, who lives in Yorkville, Illinois, became Speaker of the House in 1999, his new security detail went to his home to install new, high security locks on the doors, they found that that there were no locks there, period. They had to install them from scratch.
There are a lot of homes in Kentucky with no locks on the door, but not in Los Angeles, New York, ...or Mexico City.


vdare--2020-02-21--Major League Baseball Is Getting Slightly Whiter

The percentage of major league baseball players got slightly whiter from about 60 % in 2004 to 64 % in 2016 , largely driven by the profusion of relief pitchers in baseball , according to an article for the Society of American baseball research : Pitchers were about 72 % white American these days , versus about 53 % for position players .
Baseball teams recently carry more pitchers on their roster of 25 players ( which this year increases to 26 ) , and , my impression is , they shuttle pitchers back and forth between the minors and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latin American surge has stabilized , while the African-American percentage was by 2016 barely a third of its 1981 pea .
The percentage of white outfielders also increased .
African-Americans made up at least 40 % of outfielders from 1966 to about 2000 , but are now down to 22 % while whites are up to around 50 % .
I ’ m wondering whether the new defensive shifts of recent years has cut down on the need for footspeed in outfielders because they are now positioned closer on average to where the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the increase in strikeouts means that outfield defense is slightly less important .
Only about 2 % of pitchers and catchers are African-American these days .
As I mentioned in my Taki ’ s article this week , the decline in interest among African-Americans in baseball means that there are fewer blacks in the more technically intensive positions like pitcher and catcher .
In contrast , my impression is that African-American basketball technical skills , such as in three-point shooting and defense , have improved .

The percentage of major league baseball players got slightly whiter from about 60% in 2004 to 64% in 2016, largely driven by the profusion of relief pitchers in baseball, according to an article for the Society of American baseball research:
Baseball Demographics, 1947-2016
This article was written by Mark Armour and Daniel R. Levitt
Pitchers were about 72% white American these days, versus about 53% for position players.
Baseball teams recently carry more pitchers on their roster of 25 players (which this year increases to 26), and, my impression is, they shuttle pitchers back and forth between the minors and the majors more often now.
The Latin American surge has stabilized, while the African-American percentage was by 2016 barely a third of its 1981 peak.
The percentage of white outfielders also increased. African-Americans made up at least 40% of outfielders from 1966 to about 2000, but are now down to 22% while whites are up to around 50%. I’m wondering whether the new defensive shifts of recent years has cut down on the need for footspeed in outfielders because they are now positioned closer on average to where the ball will be hit. Also, the increase in strikeouts means that outfield defense is slightly less important.
Only about 2% of pitchers and catchers are African-American these days. As I mentioned in my Taki’s article this week, the decline in interest among African-Americans in baseball means that there are fewer blacks in the more technically intensive positions like pitcher and catcher. In contrast, my impression is that African-American basketball technical skills, such as in three-point shooting and defense, have improved.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-02-21--Are Any Living Humans Descended from Pre-1492 Trans-Atlantic Contacts?

In my review of Adam Rutherford ’ s book , I wrote : I would add , however , that some geographic barriers to gene flow were extremely formidable until fairly recent times .
For instance , although we know that Vikings briefly sojourned in Canada about a thousand years ago , we ’ ve yet to find definitive genetic evidence that anybody alive today is descended from a man and woman who were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic before the 15th-century Age of Exploration .
A friend points out this article from the American Journal of Physical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ haplogroup C1 found in Icelanders : evidence of pre-Columbian contact ?
Although most mtDNA lineages observed in contemporary Icelanders can be traced to neighboring populations in the British Isles and Scandinavia , one may have a more distant origin .
This lineage belongs to haplogroup C1 , one of a handful that was involved in the settlement of the Americas around 14,000 years ago .
Contrary to an initial assumption that this lineage was a recent arrival , preliminary genealogical analyses revealed that the C1 lineage was present in the Icelandic mtDNA pool @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raised the intriguing possibility that the Icelandic C1 lineage could be traced to Viking voyages to the Americas that commenced in the 10th century .
In an attempt to shed further light on the entry date of the C1 lineage into the Icelandic mtDNA pool and its geographical origin , we used the deCODE Genetics genealogical database to identify additional matrilineal ancestors that carry the C1 lineage and then sequenced the complete mtDNA genome of 11 contemporary C1 carriers from four different matrilines .
Our results indicate a latest possible arrival date in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a likely arrival date centuries earlier .
Most surprisingly , we demonstrate that the Icelandic C1 lineage does not belong to any of the four known Native American ( C1b , C1c , and C1d ) or Asian ( C1a ) subclades of haplogroup C1 .
Rather , it is presently the only known member of a new subclade , C1e .
While a Native American origin seems most likely for C1e , an Asian or European origin can not be ruled out .
So it could be that Vikings brought an American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back from Canada to Iceland around 1000 years ago and her descendants are found in Iceland today .
The Icelanders are likely the most DNA-sequenced population in the world due to their having excellent genealogical records so a local company exists to figure out can be determined from their genes .
I haven ’ t seen any updates on this question in recent years .

In my review of Adam Rutherford’s book, I wrote:
I would add, however, that some geographic barriers to gene flow were extremely formidable until fairly recent times. For instance, although we know that Vikings briefly sojourned in Canada about a thousand years ago, we’ve yet to find definitive genetic evidence that anybody alive today is descended from a man and woman who were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic before the 15th-century Age of Exploration.
A friend points out this article from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology:
A new subclade of mtDNA haplogroup C1 found in Icelanders: evidence of pre-Columbian contact? 2011 Jan
Ebenesersdóttir SS, Sigurðsson A, Sánchez-Quinto F, Lalueza-Fox C, Stefánsson K, Helgason A. Although most mtDNA lineages observed in contemporary Icelanders can be traced to neighboring populations in the British Isles and Scandinavia, one may have a more distant origin. This lineage belongs to haplogroup C1, one of a handful that was involved in the settlement of the Americas around 14,000 years ago. Contrary to an initial assumption that this lineage was a recent arrival, preliminary genealogical analyses revealed that the C1 lineage was present in the Icelandic mtDNA pool at least 300 years ago. This raised the intriguing possibility that the Icelandic C1 lineage could be traced to Viking voyages to the Americas that commenced in the 10th century. In an attempt to shed further light on the entry date of the C1 lineage into the Icelandic mtDNA pool and its geographical origin, we used the deCODE Genetics genealogical database to identify additional matrilineal ancestors that carry the C1 lineage and then sequenced the complete mtDNA genome of 11 contemporary C1 carriers from four different matrilines. Our results indicate a latest possible arrival date in Iceland of just prior to 1700 and a likely arrival date centuries earlier. Most surprisingly, we demonstrate that the Icelandic C1 lineage does not belong to any of the four known Native American (C1b, C1c, and C1d) or Asian (C1a) subclades of haplogroup C1. Rather, it is presently the only known member of a new subclade, C1e. While a Native American origin seems most likely for C1e, an Asian or European origin cannot be ruled out.
So it could be that Vikings brought an American Indian (not an Eskimo) woman back from Canada to Iceland around 1000 years ago and her descendants are found in Iceland today. The Icelanders are likely the most DNA-sequenced population in the world due to their having excellent genealogical records so a local company exists to figure out what can be determined from their genes.
I haven’t seen any updates on this question in recent years.
[Comment at Unz.com]