»  Radio Derb — Transcript

01 — Intro.     Yes, I'm ringing the changes on our intro music. That was the organ rendition of Haydn's Derbyshire March No. 2 — it is actually the organ at Derby Cathedral — signaling yet another edition of Radio Derb! And this is your empathetically genial host John Derbyshire with enough news to keep you awake nights in fear, apprehension, and disgust until next week comes around.

If you sail south down the Aegean, hang a left at Rhodes, then keep going east for a couple hundred miles, you arrive at the lovely island of Cyprus. They've been having a spot of bother there recently, and in fact we've had a few refugees putting in at our own island, though I'm not sure that "refugees" is quite the right word.

These people appear offshore in large and well-equipped yachts, then they row over to us to take a look around. The women are all very beautiful, but the men tend to be thickset, with crew-cuts and pinkie rings, and to have names like Ivan, Sergei, and Vladimir, which seems odd in a Greek-speaking region.

Well, they look around; but when they learn that we run on a barter economy here, with no banks, and have nothing much to offer them but goatburgers, feta cheese, and fig soda, they go back to their yachts and head for the mainland.

So we don't have much first-hand information about what's going on down there in Cyprus, but we shall cover it from the news wires as best we can, for your elucidation and instruction.

First though, to get us warmed up, what could be better than a racist outrage?

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02 — Eeek! White guy writes about race!     Every big city in the U.S.A. has a magazine dedicated to it. You know the kind of thing: Lots of restaurant reviews, lots of real-estate ads, cinema and theater listings, chatty light-as-air pieces about health fads or local sports celebrities … that sort of thing.

Well, Philadelphia has one of these, popularly known as Philly Magazine. It's a monthly, and the March issue came out three weeks ago. It caused quite a sensation.

Why? Because it included a long article — over 5,000 words — titled "Being White in Philly." The author of the article, a fiftysomething white guy named Robert Huber, tried to capture what it's like being a fiftysomething white guy in a city that's 44 percent black.

Huber just walks around talking to white people, asking them how they are with the race thing. He's a liberal, and most of them are too, so the whole piece comes across as a bit mealy-mouthed, whiny and guilt-ridden — very NPR, in fact: but there are some flashes of frankness.

Huber writes, for example, about how self-conscious he is around the well-behaved middle-class blacks who live on his street. Going to the supermarket, he says, quote:

I find myself being overly polite. Each time I hold the door a little too long for a person of color, I laugh at myself, both for being so self-consciously courteous and for knowing that I'm measuring the thank-you's.

End quote.

Most of the piece, though, is about the dysfunctional blacks who plague other parts of the city. Huber talks to some cops sitting in their patrol car in Fairmont, a district that is 30 percent black. Who commits crimes here? he asks. Mostly black guys from North Philly, they say.

He talks to an 87-year-old guy who's lived on the same block since 1930 and watched the blacks move in. He talks to some guilty white liberals out of central casting, who've been robbed or beaten by blacks and blame themselves for it. He talks to some urban homesteaders — white yuppies trying to gentrify blocks, schools, public swimming pools.

He talks to a Russian girl who doesn't have the exquisite self-blaming sensitivity that native-born American white liberals have. Quote from her:

Blacks use skin color as an excuse. Discrimination is an excuse, instead of moving forward … It's a shame — you pay taxes, they're not doing anything except sitting on porches smoking pot … Why do you support them when they won't work, just make babies and smoking pot?

End quote.

That one particularly caught my eye because it's a normal kind of thing to hear from people who weren't born and raised in America. You hear frank talk like that from some Americans, too; but not from many. Most just avoid talking about race — out of despair, is my theory.

Huber ends his piece with some can't-we-all-get-along platitudes, garnished with another helping of white liberal guilt.

It was mild, squishy stuff — as I said, very NPR, hovering on the edge of white liberal self-parody. Even at that level, though it outraged blacks. March 13th the Mayor of Philadelphia, a black man named Michael Nutter, fired off a foam-flecked letter to something called the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, which apparently exists to reprimand people who hurt other people's feelings. Sample quote from that letter, quote:

I ask that the Commission consider specifically whether Philadelphia Magazine and the writer, Bob Huber are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potential inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia's racial relations possibly caused by the essay's unsubstantiated assertions.

End quote.

That was just the beginning of the fuss, though.

Last Monday evening, March 19th, Huber and the magazine's editor, one Tom McGrath, submitted themselves to a Two Minutes Hate session at a public hall, on a panel with some race hustlers. One of those parasites, a Community Activist type named Farah Jimenez, said that, quote, "the magazine, which has an all-white editorial staff, was not the right 'messenger' for a story encouraging racial dialogue," end quote.

Since the article was explicitly about being white in Philadelphia, I should think that an all-white editorial staff would be just the right thing. And of course we all know what "encouraging racial dialogue" means. It means white people being yelled at by black people and told how wicked their ancestors were.

McGrath and Huber groveled, of course. McGrath, quote: "I'm committed to having a more diverse staff." He pronounced himself, quote, "enlightened" by the meeting. Then he handed Ms Jimenez a whip and begged her to beat him … No, I made that up; though I wouldn't have been surprised if it had happened.

Tuesday night Huber and McGrath did it over again, in front of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. They were polite and apologetic; the blacks were rude and angry. Once again McGrath promised to hire in blacks. More diversity on the editorial staff would, he said, quote, "bring a richer experience to the magazine."

Reading these stories, I found myself getting quite angry. Not angry at the black hustlers, who are just doing what they've learned they can get away with, and probably having a lot of fun doing it, but with the whites.

Why are Huber and McGrath behaving like such craven pussies? Why are they giving the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists the time of day? Why don't they tell Michael Nutter to go boil his head?

As for that sinister-sounding Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, what power do they have? What does it mean to be rebuked by them? Do you get a certificate of rebuke, or what?

I'm a race realist, and I belong to a couple of clubs of like-minded people. I know, from things that other people have said to me when I've told them this, that outsiders assume we sit around at these clubs grumbling about blacks.

Well, there is a certain amount of that, but by far the commonest topic of conversation when race realists get together is: What on earth is the matter with white people?

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03 — Curse of the penis snatchers.     There has been a new outbreak of penis snatching in West Africa.

Quote from the London Daily Mail, quote:

Louisa Lombard, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, said villagers in Tiringoulou [Central African Republic] told her of a traveller, upon arriving on a Sudanese merchant truck, who removed two men's penises with a handshake.

The academic was told the stranger had targeted a tea seller in the market and a second man.

After handing over his money, he [the stranger] clasped the vendor's hand. The tea seller felt an electric tingling course through his body and immediately sensed that his penis had shrunk to a size smaller than that of a baby's. His yells quickly drew a crowd.

End quote.

Terrifying stuff, but not new. This is one of those news items that comes up every few years, usually when it's a slow news week in the Western media. I remember Mark Steyn reporting on it once, with an account very much like the one I just quoted. Mark said the same thing had happened to him when he shook hands with Hillary Clinton.

Penis snatching. One more damn thing to worry about. If you're a guy, that is.

Less reported on is the related phenomenon of gonad snatching. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I've never seen it reported on. It surely must happen, though. How else can you account for the behavior of white liberals when confronted with a roomful of angry black Community Organizers?

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04 — Cyprus in crisis.     Ah yes, Cyprus. Cyprus is one of those object lessons in the joys of diversity, somewhat like Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia.

The place was basically Greek until the Ottoman Empire snaffled it in the 16th century. When that empire began to fall apart in the late 19th century, Britain got Cyprus via some treaty or other.

By that time, of course, after 300 years under the Ottomans, Cyprus had acquired a big Turkish minority, around 20 percent. There's your diversity. Ah, the joys of diversity!

When I was a lad in England in the late 1950s, Cyprus was in our newspapers all the time. The Greek Cypriots wanted union with Greece — be careful what you wish for there, guys — while the Turkish Cypriots felt rather strongly that they didn't want to live under Greek rule. The Brits were stuck in the middle as usual.

We had universal conscription in Britain at the time, so the poor squaddie driving his jeep over a landmine in Famagusta was your neighbor's son from down the street who'd never had any interest in matters military.

Well, the Brits got fed up and left, but the diversity celebrations went on until 1974, when Greece invaded the island. Turkey counter-invaded, and we swiftly reached the logical endpoint of all diversity problems: total ethnic disaggregation, with all the Greek Cypriots over here and all the Turkish Cypriots over there.

This was about the point where Secretary of State Henry Kissinger issued a memo to his staff instructing them that if he ever showed signs of being interested in the Cyprus problem, they should put him in a straitjacket.

You can't beat ethnic disaggregation as a solution. Things settled down, Cyprus prospered, old rancors faded, and eventually the island joined the European Union and the Eurozone.

So far, so good. A bit too good, actually. Usual story: a property boom, belief that the good times would go on for ever, banks lending too much money. You know the story.

This one's worse, though, because a lot of the money the Cyprus banks were lending was being lent to Greece, and the Greeks were repudiating some of their debt.

So big trouble for over-extended Cypriot banks. What to do?

When the U.S.A. hits a speed bump like this, the federal government just prints a ton of money and gives it to the banks in return for IOUs. Unfortunately for Cyprus, Euro bank notes are not printed there. They are printed in Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, and a few other places, but not in Cyprus.

To make matters worse, Cyprus's comrades in arms in the wonderful, fraternal European Community are less willing to help than they might otherwise be, because they know that a lot of the money swilling through those banks is laundered from the Russian mafias. They're demanding that Cyprus put up some security before they'll loan the island any bailout cash, preferably security skimmed off from those big fat accounts belonging to Sergei, Ivan, and Vladimir.

The banks, contrariwise, would like to keep faith with those big depositors and screw the small ones instead. Then the thing becomes political, though — the place is, after all, a parliamentary democracy.

The Russian gangsters of course want their big fat deposits out of there. So do the small savers. This is the Eurozone, remember. Close your account in Cyprus, withdraw your ten thousand Euros, you can go and deposit them in a bank in Germany or the Netherlands.

Hence Cyprus's banks have been closed all week by government order, or else they'd now have no funds in them at all. The island's Euro-buddies have given them till this weekend to work out a deal the Cyprus parliament, the Cyprus banks, and the Cyprus government all agree on. We'll see what happens.

What looks like happening as we go to tape is that the Cypriots will give Europe the finger and turn to Russia for a bailout. The Cypriot Finance Minister has been in Moscow all week. It's hard to see what's in it for the Russians, though, unless the Russian mobsters have more power than anyone knew.

And if this all sounds like picayune stuff — Cyprus? Who cares about Cyprus? — take note that some serious analysts are very worried about it. In the world today, a local banking crisis could become a global banking crisis in days. Here's a story at random from the international press, quote:

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English's favoured option for dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank's bail out.

End quote.

In other words, this Finance Minister is plotting a Cyprus-style solution. But which nation is he Finance Minister of?

New Zealand — a long way from the Eurozone. He knows the thing I just told you: Local could go global before you can say "Lehman Brothers."

Keep your eyes on the financial news. You may not be interested in it, but it's interested in you.

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05 — Bongos for the Archbishop.     How about a religious segment? We don't have many of those on Radio Derb. The powers above must be served, though, so let's see what's happening in the world of worship.

The Church of England, of which I am a lapsed communicant, has a new boss — which is to say, a new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Justin Welby, who seems to be a terribly nice chap, was installed as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury on Wednesday in a ceremony thick with multiculturalism.

When he showed up to bang three times on the cathedral door with his crozier, the door was opened for him by Evangeline Kanagasooriam, a 17-year-old lass from Sri Lanka. The actual enthronement, on the throne of Saint Augustine — which is to say Saint Augustine of Canterbury, not to be confused with Saint Augustine of Hippo, who wrote The City of God and asked the Almighty to give him chastity and continence sed noli modo, "but not yet" … Where was I? Oh yes: The actual enthronement was supervised by the Archdeacon of Canterbury, name of Sheila Watson.

After the swearing-in was done on a 1400-year-old Bible, the assembled clerics and dignitaries were treated to a show that included a Punjabi folk song and a vigorous dance by a troupe of Negroes in colorful costumes and accompanied by bongo drums. Such a wonderful sense of rhythm!

What Saint Augustine would have made of it, I tremble to think; but I guess time marches on.

It also sashays on. Archbishop Welby had nice things to say about homosexuals in a post-inaugural interview, quote:

You see gay relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the relationship.

End quote.

However, he also said that, quote, "sex should take place only in a marriage between a man and a woman." So the Anglican position is: Jolly good luck to homosexuals in those stunning-quality relationships, so long as they don't get up to any hanky panky. Nice to have that made clear.

If you would like to know more about the Church of England I refer you to Roger Scruton's new book on the subject, which I reviewed in the March issue of American Spectator.

Or you could get yourself over to Canterbury and ask the new Archbishop in person. Just be sure to take your bongo drums and memorize a couple of Punjabi folk songs; the Archbishop will make you more than welcome.

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06 — I love you, Ann Coulter.     About the first time I heard of Ann Coulter was a dozen or so years ago when I had just started writing for conservative outlets in the U.S.A. I saw her quoted as saying she'd dated everybody on the Right. I got Ann's email address from National Review and sent her a message saying: "You've never dated me."

Ann did not favor me with a reply. Perhaps I sounded too needy — women hate that. Or perhaps she knew I was already an old married guy. Whatever: I forgive you, Ann.

After last Saturday, in fact, I am willing to forgive Ann anything. She was one of the wind-up speakers at the CPAC conference, and she zeroed in on immigration.

[Clip:  Ann Coulter on immigration.]

Ann even had unkind things to say about Teddy Kennedy's nation-wrecking 1965 Immigration Act. Not being a close follower of Ann's, I thought this was the first time she had addressed legal immigration, which is generally out of bounds for discussion even among people willing to criticize illegal immigration. Marcus Epstein reminds me, however, that Ann said the following thing back in August of 2011 on The Kudlow Report, quote:

How about we do this: repeal Minimum Wage, repeal unemployment insurance, have no more immigration … legal or otherwise, of low-wage workers. We'll have high school kids working. We'll have people who have never worked before. It is a fantastic idea.

End quote.

Yes it is, Ann — a fantastic idea, though only a start. Contrary to what you hear from the immigration shills, there is no shortage of skilled workers, either. We have demonstrated this time and again at VDARE.com. There is only a great hunger on the part of employers for lower wages, and a complicity on the part of politicians and the government in satisfying that hunger.

Welcome to the patriotic immigration reform movement, Ann. I look forward to seeing you lay in to the absurd "diversity visa lottery," the refugee rackets, birthright citizenship, chain migration, and the H-1B cheap labor boondoggle.

Yes, let's have immigration reform — of a kind that benefits Americans.

Thank you, Ann. It's OK about not dating me, it totally is.

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07 — Signoff.     Once again, ladies and gentlemen, I have run way over my time. I leave you in haste.

There will be more from Radio Derb next week.

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