Epic Tram Lady

Her language is crude; her feelings are real.  Who can deny that her native London has been destroyed? Certainly not the Diversity on the tram, who, mouthing television commetary, can only claim they're doing jobs the Brits won't.

This woman has apparently been arrested for "racially aggravated public order offence." If any were in doubt of the true tolitarian nature of Cool Britannia, let Epic Tram Lady stand as an example.   

Ramzpaul makes a powerful response (if a bit stretched analogy-wise): when European cities are overrun, none dare call it genocide.  

The Real First Thanksgiving

The sagacious New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has quipped that conservatives should reject the Thanksgiving holiday as "un-American," since its mythical first occurrence involved Pilgrims and Indians generously sharing seasonal food and goods—or in other words, Socialism.

Here’s how it went down: a bunch of people got together, with each group bringing what it could — the Wampanoag brought deer, the Pilgrims apparently shot some birds, etc.. Then everyone shared equally in the feast — regardless of how much they brought to the table. Socialism!

Worse yet, many of the lucky duckies benefiting from the largesse of this 17th-century welfare state were illegal immigrants. (That would be the Pilgrims).

What Krugman truly reveals is that the founding myths modern Americans like to recount to themselves—and instill in students in public and private education—are, at their core, egalitarian. The genuinely heroic myth of close-nit communities' surviving in a rugged wilderness and reaping their first harvest is eclipsed by the vision of interracial harmony.

The good thing is that the reality of the First Thanksgiving barely resembles the contemporary myth. Indeed, the truth is something out of The Conquest of the Continent.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alex and I--along with all contributors to AlternativeRight.com--wish our American readers the best this Thanksgiving!

Maintaining AltRight is a struggle, to be sure, but it's also a joy. I'm particularly grateful for the emails--some encouraging, some critical--from readers and the thoughtful comments contributed by our most active AltRighters. And most of all, I'm thankful to our donors. They are the lifeblood of a site dedicated to forming a new intellectual Right.

In the coming weeks, Alex and I will be announcing an exciting new stage of AltRight's journey--indeed, we'll be launching a number of new projects.        

Until then, I remain faithfully yours,   

The Bernanke Simulation

Tyler Durden: 

Everywhere you look these days, it seems that ZIRP, or the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy, is the panacea to all the world's problems. In fact, ask any tenured economy Ph.D. what inflation is and you will get a stare down, be told you are a moron, that banks need to print more, more, more and that we are really roiling indeflation, with some latent mumblings about buying their economics textbook for the inflationary price of $124.95. Everywhere, that is except the Fed itself. Because in an extremely ironic twist, it is none other than the San Francisco Fed, which operates the "Be Fed chairman for a day" simulation, where you try to keep both unemployment and inflation within the "price stabeeleetee" barriers, that reveals the reality of ZIRP. The laughter really begins when one recreates precisely what the Fed is doing: namely the policy of Zero Interest Rates, now well in its third year, that things take a turn for the surreal. We challenge any reader to play the Fed simulation game, and to do what Bernanke has done: namely lock the Fed Funds rate at the legal minimum: between 0.00% and 0.25%. In our personal experience, we were dismissed as Fed Chairman after annual inflation literally went off the charts and hit 38.36% following 4 years of ZIRP. And according tothe Fed, inflation would now, 2.5 years into ZIRP, realistically be running at about 17%. Which incidentally isexactly where it is, at least for those who have not mutated sufficiently to be able to metabolize iPads and fly to and from work using their own pair of wings. Of course, every hyperinflation has a silver lining: US unemployment will be just 1.5%. Granted everyone will be making pitchforks and rope, but they would be employed.

HBD, Left, and Right

“Heartiste” (who’s still “Roissy” to me) demonstrates, through the ramblings of blogger Amanda Marcotte, that HBD and Feminism are implacable enemies.

Most everything he writes there is true...but the science of human nature demolishes more than just bitchy feminism.

In America, and much of the Western world, right-thinking people think about Evolution thusly: 

• If you’re liberal, then Darwin was absolutely correct. Only backward, religious people think otherwise. That said, around 60,000 years ago, Evolution pulled the emergency break: no significant human development has occurred since then; all apparent racial differences are either “skin deep” or social constructs. Only backward, racist, religious people think otherwise.

• If you’re a conservative, Darwin was dead wrong. To believe his Theory is to deny that there is a moral thrust to the universe—and thus to undermine the basis of Democracy, Equality, and Apple Pie. Plus, Darwin is racist.  

It’s difficult to judge which side is wronger in this dispute…

In the conservatives' defense, Darwin is “racist,” in the sense that the procedure of Evolution explains not only the differences between Africans and Europeans but those between Yorkshire Terriers and Pit Bulls.

What’s significant is that the positions of both the acceptable Left and Right are radically egalitarian, each in its own way.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that there’s no inherent reason why a sincere religious believer could not affirm that God (or the Gods) made the races distinct and separate—or that He (or They) delineated the fates of each individual. The godfather of scientific racism, Arthur de Gobineau, an ancien-regime Catholic, actually rejected Darwin, exclaiming, “We are not descended from the ape, but we are headed in that direction!”

Whatever the case, the American Creed, of both Left and Right,  is that You Can Be All That You Can Be, and anyone and everyone can be an American.  HBD is pure heresy.

Race and Evolution from NPI TV on Vimeo.

Eurocalypse

Morning shows seem to be a lot more interesting in Ireland! 

There are two things to consider. 

First, in the concentric circles that make up the international, dollar-based monetary system, a crash of the Euro would in all likelihood benefit the dollar, which is still the “safe haven,” until it isn’t.

Second, the European Monetary Union is kept together through a tug-of-war between “Core Europe” (which essentially means Germany) and “Periphery Europe” (that is, the rest).

The Euro makes sense for Germany to the extent that it can take advantage of a single market for its goods; for this, the Euro should be not too hard...not too soft...just right. (In other words, the Euro should be cheap enough to keep German exports attractive, but then dear enough not to raise the specter of Weimar.)

The Euro stops making sense for Germany when the above advantages are overwhelmed by the need to bailout the Periphery’s creditors and prop up its welfare bureaucracies.

The Euro is advantageous for Periphery countries like Greece and Italy in that they can borrow in Euros (that is, at low rates). It’s disadvantageous in that they must pay it back. The majority of Greek and Italian debt could be re-nominated into Drachma and Lira, allowing the countries to pay it off with their printing presses (an option not open to them while on the Euro). 

What is clear is that the arrangement described above is highly unstable, as both Core and Periphery have very good reasons for wanting to get out. 

I’m terrible with predictions, especially about the future, but my view is that the Euro won’t last another two years. And it’s demise will benefit Washington...for a while.

Cain's Palin Moment

Herman Cain had something like a “Palin moment” in an interview released yesterday by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

According to his campaign, he was going on little sleep… Jet-lagged or not, it’s obvious that Cain was ignorant of the most basic facts regarding Washington’s latest foreign intervention. But who could blame him? One gets the sense that, much as with his time spent on the Federal Reserve Board—and much as with the many Blacks appointed as CEOs to fulfill Rainbow quotas in the new South Africa—Cain has come a long way repeating mindless catchphrases that White people like to hear.

There’s also no reason to believe that a revelation that the candidate knows precious little about world affairs will derail the Cain phenomenon—which is much bigger than details like whom Washington was fighting in its last war. 

Matt Parrott:

The insecure and self-conscious Whites fear that their own animosity towards Obama might be racist—but Cain’s animosity can’t be . . . because he’s Black! The Tea Party’s cardinal agenda is to thwart ongoing efforts by Cosmic America to redistribute White America’s wealth and privilege: It’s integrally racist and pro-White. Cain absolves White America of the dissonance they’ve been trained to experience when taking their own side in a fight . . . because he’s Black! 

Pat Buchanan and James Edwards

Pat Buchanan's latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, is fresh off the press. It will, no doubt, be the subject of discussion and debate on AltRight in the coming weeks.  

Last weekend, Pat appeared on James Edwards's program, The Political Cesspool. TPC is, as advertised, pro-White. It's also patriotic and intelligent. Whatever the case, Pat's willingness to associate with people like us has inspired predictable righteous outrage from the usual suspects...  

Kudos to Pat for not giving in and "apologizing" for doing nothing wrong. He's one of the precious few mainstream figures who's not under the spell of PC. 

You can listen to my interview of Pat Buchanan from last year here.  

The Vatican Calls for Global Usury

Beginning with the Council of Nicaea, the Catholic Church has forbidden usury, in some way or form, for most of its history. (And usury was most often strictly defined as charging any kind of interest on a loan (“making money from money”), and not simply charging excessive interest, as the term is used today.)

For centuries, the money-lender was forbidden a Christian burial. One of the most consequential effects of this was that Europe’s Jews filled this tabooed market niche, resulting in intense resentment on the part many Christians...and unfathomable power for certain Jewish families, Frankfurt’s House of Rothschild being the most (in)famous.

The Church, of course, eventually came to terms with finance in its own way, as evidenced by the Papal Coronation of Leo X—formerly Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici.

Whatever the twists and turns of this history might be, it remains deeply ironic that in 2011, the Vatican has explicitly called for the creation of a massive new usurious bank with “universal jurisdiction.”

From Reuters:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

Three points.

1) Contrary to what is reported, I don’t think the Vatican’s call will have any appeal to Occupy Wall Street, and not simply due to anti-Catholic bigotry. To the OWSs credit, they are unitedly anti-Federal Reserve System (from what I can tell, at least). I’ve seen many signs reading something to the effect,“Congress should issue currency, not the banking system!” The prospect of a Global Bernanke would likely horrify them.

2) Don’t we already have the World Bank and IMF? Does the Pope want a Universe Bank that would make loans to the World Bank?

3) The Vatican’s Note laments the great concentration of wealth in the financial sector—certainly a valid concern! And yet, this has occurred in the context of a global system of Central Banking, and one in which the U.S. Fed, which has loaned trillions to foreign banks, has acted very much like the “global authority” the Vatican describes. Indeed, the Goldman Sachses and Citigroups of this world would have been blessedly destroyed in 2008 (or at least dramatically weakened) were it not for The Bernanke’s ability to bail them out through money creation.

The secondary irony of all this is that, much as the Church unwittingly empowered non-Christians (that is, the Jews) through its forbiddance of usury in the Middle Ages, if its latest plan were enacted, the clear winners would be...the Banksters, who would go wild with a global bank blessed by the Holy Father.

Bellow is a translation of a meaty section from the Vatican’s Note (which is worth reading in its entirety, by the way, as it offers an intelligent recounting of recent economic history):

On the way to building a more fraternal and just human family and, even before that, a new humanism open to transcendence, Blessed John XXIII’s teaching seems especially timely. In the prophetic Encyclical Pacem in Terris of 1963, he observed that the world was heading towards ever greater unification. He then acknowledged the fact that a correspondence was lacking in the human community between the political organization “on a world level and the objective needs of the universal common good”. He also expressed the hope that one day “a true world political authority” would be created.

In view of the unification of the world engendered by the complex phenomenon of globalization, and of the importance of guaranteeing, in addition to other collective goods, the good of a free, stable world economic and financial system at the service of the real economy, today the teaching of Pacem in Terris appears to be even more vital and worthy of urgent implementation.

In the same spirit of Pacem in Terris, Benedict XVI himself expressed the need to create a world political authority. This seems obvious if we consider the fact that the agenda of questions to be dealt with globally is becoming ever longer. Think, for example, of peace and security; disarmament and arms control; promotion and protection of fundamental human rights; management of the economy and development policies; management of the migratory flows and food security, and protection of the environment. In all these areas, the growing interdependence between States and regions of the world becomes more and more obvious as well as the need for answers that are not just sectorial and isolated, but systematic and integrated, rich in solidarity and subsidiarity and geared to the universal common good.

As the Pope reminds us, if this road is not followed, “despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations.”

Later today, the Catholic conserva-sphere will, no doubt, issue forth blogs and articles about how the Vatican doesn’t really mean what everyone thinks it means, or that global government would be enacted in accordance with the Church’s concept of Subsidiarity, which balances human freedom and solidarity, etc.

But let’s just take the Vatican at its word. It sounds like it wants a New World Order to me!

The Baby-Boomer Establishment...

What OWS is Saying

I instinctively dislike "Occupy Wall Street," and its primitive, let's hold-hands-with-the-99%" egalitarianism. That said, it's hard not to conclude that the OWSs have a more penetrating critique of the American elite than the Tea Party.

Hilarious...

America's ruling class is filled with some of the most wonderful people around. 

Gaddafi and American Empire

In some ways, I’m glad that Colonel Gaddafi has (apparently, at least) been captured and killed in his hometown of Sirte by the barbaric hordes that he had kept at bay for so long. I don’t say this because I have much hope for the democratic dawn in Libya. Indeed, my guess is that one of two outcomes are most likely under the new leadership:

1) The rebels become Washington’s puppets, who make sure that the oil flows (and gets denominated in U.S. dollars), enrich themselves through foreign aid, hold onto power by their fingernails, and become justly reviled by their people;

2) The rebels begin slitting each others' throats, and the country swiftly descends into failed-state status.

Instead, I am somewhat gladdened by the reported outcome because there is a certain heroism to Gaddafi’s demise, which would have been lost were he to live out his life in secluded exile. We can now remember Gaddafi in happier times, when he cut the figure of a dashing dictator.

But what does it all mean? Here are three perspectives:

The End of "Shock 'n Awe." In the 1900s and 2000s, presidents could engage in “laptop bombardier” wars in foreign lands—wars completely unjustified on the basis of national interest—and expect them to stir up a kind of nationalism on the home front and grant them popularity boosts. This was the premise of David Mamet’s 1997 filmWag the Dog, a thinly veiled satire of Clinton’s bombing of Serbia. In turn, both presidents Bushes were defined by their Iraqi campaigns, even if they were eventually brought low by them as well.

But “Shock ‘n Awe” doesn’t work anymore. The current social mood, with regard to Libya and foreign policy in general, is one of apathy and disgust.

And Obama won’t get any help from the usual enthusiasts of Global Democracy, the neocons. As a friend reminded me this morning, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarek was detested on the proverbial “Arab street”—and appreciated in Israel—as a pro-Zionist. When the Arab Spring erupted in Egypt, and threatened to replace Mubarek with the Muslim Brotherhood, the neocons quickly lost their taste for democratization… It went much the same with Gaddafi, who was clearly willing to deal with the Jewish state.

It's Still More Dangerous To Be America's Friend. U.S. support for the rebels is yet another instance of the dangers of befriending Washington. One shouldn’t forget that Gaddafi actively made nice with the Bush administration in 2004, dropping his nuclear weapon program, providing intel on terrorists, and much else. The colorful colonel will, no doubt, be the last of Washington’s potential adversaries and media-assigned Baddies who will purse such a strategy.

Cold War II. But what is it really about? In the geopolitical context, economist Bud Conrad had described the Libyan campaign as a fool’s errand of “late-stage empire,” and part of what he has terms “Cold War II”:

Everyone is uncomfortable with the role we played in the Middle East. They fear we could enter a World War III. But a cold war is not a conflict between the main parties. We didn't battle with the Russians directly. We fought in Vietnam. The same is going on with China in an economic war over resources. The U.S. bombs the place in hopes that a new government will come in and give us cheap oil while China is busy winning contracts for the access to resources in many far-flung regions from oil in Africa to soybeans in South America. China is building cultural centers and roads to mines in an attempt to gain the favor of the people while gaining access to resources. Our approach of bombing people just makes enemies and is very expensive. It is another example of the stupidity of a late-stage empire. 

“Cold War II” has explanatory power. But I’m afraid “The Stupid Empire” is capable of World War III as well…

STIHIE: American Juggalo

The following is an installment in AltRight's ongoing series “So This Is How It Ends” (STIHIE), which chronicles instances of decadence so advanced that one can only conclude and hope that we are living in a terminal stage of Western civilization.

Herewith, I introduce AltRight readers to the Juggalo phenomenon.  

You're welcome. 

[ht: Kevin Slaughter]

The African Talent for Mimicry

Recently, I was sent this hilarious video (“Reporter turns ghetto in 3 seconds”) of a Black television news reporter “losing it” after a fly flew into his mouth.

My sense is that most people find this video funny in the way they find the famous "Winnebago Man" video funny, or the way they find the legendary Bill O'Reilly meltdown on Inside Edition funny. A television “straight man” gets angry; his mask slips; and loud cursing, wild gesturing, and cruel epithets ensue.

But there's something else to this video. Not only did the reporter become insanely angry, but his intonation, accent, and vocabulary changed completely. He went from sounding “White,” to sounding “Black”—indeed, sounding like a character out of Cleopatra Jones.

Even when Bill O'Reilly was mad with rage, he was still recognizably Bill O'Reilly.

What the video reveals is an important aspect of Africans that leads Whites to misunderstand and misjudge them. Alongside—and perhaps connected to—their well known talent for rhythm, Africans possess an innate gift for mimicry.

Joseph Kay delved into this component of the Negroid race in the context of academia:

There is a certain type of black student on today's campus who outwardly is smart, articulate, motivated, ambitious, punctual, socially engaging, and all else that any professor might want. For both the champions and the doubters of affirmative action, such black students seem to be just what the doctor ordered to banish racial stereotypes. Unfortunately, the performance of such students on intellectually demanding tasks usually disappoints. The anticipated "A" on a research paper, for example, turns out to be a minimal "C," and, to make matters worse, writing style, logic, footnoted references, and all else indicating cognitive talent contradict the splendid outward appearances. Compromise typically resolves the discrepancy. To avoid trouble, the "A"-looking African American student is given a "B" for "C" work. If he or she complains of the unanticipated "B," matters can deteriorate yet further. Discussions may reveal an inability to grasp the assignment's aim or why the performance was judged sub-standard. He or she may claim that similar work always won "A's" elsewhere. It is as if professor and student resided on different planets.

Because these surprised professors only know their own students, and are not aware of the general phenomenon, they seldom dig deeper. The lousy grade is easily attributed to shoddy high school preparation, lack of prior help, and the other liberal excuses that are proffered for low black academic achievement. Moreover, similar outcomes have occurred with white students, i.e., the classroom brain unexpectedly flunks the course. But what makes this "disappointing smart-appearing black" phenomenon interesting is that it is pervasive. When the subject is raised in personal conversations, countless professors say, "Yes, now that you mention it, I've had several like that, but I thought I was the only one."

These disappointing outcomes are predictable, and have consequences far beyond the campus. The problem begins with the fact that few African Americans at a given university, thanks to lowered admission standards, have the IQs necessary to compete with their white classmates. If merit alone determined admission, this mismatch would not occur. All students would vie on a roughly level IQ playing field, and, given overall IQ distributions, few blacks would populate top academic programs.

What can paper over this deficiency is that many black students master the outward signs of "being smart." This is traditional outsider adaptive behavior, regardless of ethnic/racial backgrounds, and is reflected in phrases such as "passing" or "fitting in." For those with above average intelligence, a keen eye plus a gift for mimicry is often sufficient to play imposter. Familiar academic tools include learning fancy words like "paradigmatic" adroit name-dropping, affecting the professorial sartorial style (e.g., a tweed jacket, blue Oxford shirt), certain verbal mannerisms, even a sprinkling of Yiddish in some venues. A PowerPoint presentation with multiple equations bedazzles. A few Black Panthers once pulled off this deception by tossing around a little Marxism. This is no different from a competent actor with a few weeks of observation plus some props convincing an audience that he is a business tycoon though the real tycoon would sense the charade.

There is a scientific basis to this skilled imitation. IQ test data indicate that blacks usually perform better on items reflecting social norms, less well on abstract, highly "g" loaded items. This is the opposite of popular criticisms of IQ testing, which argue (falsely) that blacks score low because they lack access to the "white" culture underlying IQ tests. In reality, blacks perform worse on abstract, non-cultural sub-tests like spatial relations and better on questions reflecting everyday life (e.g., "What is a bed?" an actual question on the popular WAIS-R IQ test). Thus, a black sociology student who confidently asks about a "construct validity of a multi-dimensional operational indicator" at the department's Thursday symposium will be deemed a rising star and doubters risk being called racist ("Are you hinting that blacks can't do measurement"?). And with actor-like performances rewarded by approving professors, this superficial verbal facility improves. But when lengthy tests require students to evaluate and apply in detail alternative validity approaches to varied statistical indicators, the game is up. 

Non-university people cannot grasp just how simple it is to fool those wanting to believe that outward appearances signify intellectual ability. This is particularly the case in soft disciplines that do not require mathematics. The clever law student imposter can conspicuously carry around legal tomes, ask "serious" questions whose sole purpose is to name-drop obscure cases, complain about spending too much time in the library, join organizations to build a stellar resume, and otherwise construct a false persona. Success at one level leads to triumph at the next. Few professors have the gumption to flunk a pretender who has successfully fooled dozens of others (con artists use this technique when telling potential suckers about all the others who have bought the scheme). But assuming that the lightweight must be the real thing is painless.

My impression is that it is often even easier to fool so-called conservatives. These folk are always suspected of racism, and when they find that seeming stellar African American intellectual, the fawning can be embarrassing. This, they hope, will convince the world that they are not racists, and they may even exaggerate the imposter's abilities--a mediocrity becomes brilliant. Needless to say, these highly presentable intellectual lightweights are often sufficiently savvy to exploit conservatives anxious to demonstrate their anti-racist bona fides.

What separates real life, including politics, from the academy is that real life seldom requires the individual to pass a tough test to demonstrate genuine mastery prior to being given a position. Only afterwards, when the candidate is elected or the junior executive hired, are there unexpected "surprises." At least initially, superficiality always carries the day. A well-tailored, eloquent black office seeker can easily impress audiences by announcing "the declining yield of each marginal investment suggests a cautionary approach." But the listener can never know if this high-sounding verbiage reflects knowledge, or just a knack for picking up economic lingo. Certainly no media personality will ask if this declining yield still represents a net gain in light of alternative investments elsewhere, or whether the opportunity costs associated with alternatives still warrant investment. If this occurred, the interviewer, not the befuddled black candidate, would be condemned with the withering statement that "No white candidate would be so badgered." Thus no incentives exists to expose the arriviste.

Conflating articulateness with high intelligence invites disaster, since the "smart style" is all too easily acquired. Think of Eddie Murphy playing Prof. Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor. The tip-off is usually the lack of tangible accomplishment, for example, a well-crafted research paper done with minimal assistance. Verbal ability and "white" style is decisive. Again, the fact that many whites, particularly conservatives, desperately want to believe the best, only facilitates the swindle. Perpetrators may even believe their own act since it goes undisputed.

Thus, after decades of failed efforts to achieve racial equality, the market for black empty suits is booming. We've invested billions, perhaps trillions, to get blacks into high-level positions, and to demand a genuine demonstration of intellectual competence, not just mesmerizing appearances, risks exposing massive wastefulness. What you see is not what you get. 

One wonders how many of the conservative movement's beloved “Black conservatives” are, in truth, brilliant actors... (And what does it really matter, as the field of punditry is based on posturing and reciting buzz words?) I fear that movement idol Terrance George, whose speech sounds like a campy parody of William F. Buckley Jr., is one stray fly away from revealing his inner self. 

"Twist"

I first heard about “Operation Twist”—the Fed's latest knob-twisting and deck-chair-on-the-Titanic-rearranging effort—from James Rickards back in August. Still, I never thought “the Bernanke” would actually call the initiative by this name, a Chubby Checker reference from when this kind of thing was last tried.

“Quantitative Easing 3” had apparently become a non-starter: “money-printing” (even though the Fed wasn't doing exactly that...) is now a Republican talking-point and political liability—and it has also clearly failed. Unlike QE, “Twist” doesn't involve an increase in purchases, but a selling off short-term debt and buying up long-term debt. The ostensible purpose is to lower long-term interest rates, which would allow middle-class voters to refinance their 30-year mortgages—and thus be happy and pacified for the 2012 election. (Perhaps the Bernanke even thinks he can re-inflate the housing market...)

One could, of course, look at this from another perspective, and see that the Bernanke is not so much leading interest rates as following them. The Fed is, in a sense, riding the 30-year tail wind of the bond market towards zero.

But I usually look at things from a different perspective altogether—namely, how the Central Bank will manage Washington's unfathomable debt mountain. Actually paying off some 100 trillion in Treasuries and entitlement liabilities—and I think these debts will be paid, at least nominally—entails massive inflation. As I discussed in depth a year ago, the Fed can get away with this by locking the world into long-term debt—the kind of debt that's difficult to get out of and which the Fed can more easily inflate into oblivion. In this way, the Bernanke is leading the charge into low-interest, long-term paper. Indeed, the Fed is set up as the biggest sucker.

STIHIE: But the Bookshops Shall Be Spared!

The following is an installment in AltRight's ongoing series “So This Is How It Ends” (STIHIE), which chronicles instances of decadence so advanced that one can only conclude and hope that we are living in a terminal stage of Western civilization.

The destruction of books—whether as acts of political censorship, rage, or symbolism—has been a recurring component of social movements in the West for centuries, from the early Christians to the Catholic Counter-Reformers to the Nazis. One could say that book burning has been the Western equivalent of the voodoo doll, a way to annihilating one's enemy—or rather his ideas—if only vicariously.

Interestingly, during this summer's rioting, looting, and burning across London and its outskirts—an episode that bore all the hallmarks of a mass uprising against “The Man”—the “urban youths” involved avoided bookstores as if they were infested with plague.

Let's allow a little sunshine to enter into the STIHIE world in which we live—Our cities may burn, but Western high culture shall not be harmed!

The shop that no rioter wanted to loot... because it sells books

London Evening Standard

By David Cohen

21 September 2011

On the worst night of London rioting almost every shop in Clapham Junction was ransacked - except one. The bookshop.

In one of the most telling images of the summer, looters stole TVs, hair products and iPods, but the Waterstone's branch was left untouched.

The "joke" the next day was that the rioters do not know how to read. Simon, the manager of camping shop Blacks, watched it all from an upstairs window, hiding in terror as hundreds of looters plundered his shop and the street.

"They smashed our window, ripped the plasma TVs off our walls, took all our jackets and rucksacks. I saw them go into Claire's Accessories, break into NatWest, liberate our neighbours Toni & Guy of hair products. They carted off iPods from Currys, clothes from Debenhams, mobile phones from Carphone Warehouse. I was horrified.

"But Waterstone's, directly opposite us was untouched. For the looters it was as if it did not exist."

When Waterstone's deputy manager Alicia Baiger arrived next day to a street littered with broken glass and debris, she was amazed to find that her shop - with its £199 Sony eReaders and three-for-two £10 paperbacks - had suffered "not even a scratch".

What this free-for-all revealed better than any consumer behaviour poll could, is that many young people have no desire for books. Not even when they are apparently free.

Something must be done to address illiteracy in London, and the Evening Standard is trying to play a small part in the solution. In a packed, buzzing conference room in Islington library, our first volunteers are being trained as reading helpers.

From undergraduates to retired bankers, they will shortly be placed in schools to support children who have fallen behind in their reading. They came because they were inspired by the Evening Standard's Get London Reading campaign which seeks to fund an army of helpers trained by our partner charity, Volunteer Reading Help.

All summer, VRH has been processing applicants. Of the 700 people who applied, 350 have been interviewed, 330 have been dispatched for Criminal Records Bureau approval, and 68 have already been trained and placed in schools.

"The quality of applicants has been extremely high and now it's all systems go," said VRH chief executive Sue Porto.

"A further 200 Evening Standard volunteers will be trained this month and next at 20 special sessions across London, from Hackney to Hounslow.

"We expect to have 170 volunteers in schools by the October half-term, which means a critical helping hand for more than 500 children. VRH aims to phase in the rest of the volunteers to help at least another 500 children as the school year unfolds."

Violent Black youths spare a few neighbourhood bookshops—out of illiteracy or anti-literacy—and our White liberal columnist's solution is to teach them how to read...