01m45s Back to open borders. (Biden's immigration policy.)
05m45s Light in the gloom? (A Biden Rush might help.)
12m32s Europe slowly sinks. (Britain too.)
17m50s The retreat from Kabul. (Trump fires his DefSec.)
23m38s Sad faces in the Kremlin. (Elites really believe Russia-Russia.)
29m47s Turkmenistan's National Dog. (Why don't we have one?)
33m28s Derbyshire moos. (Not much happens in Belper.)
36m47s Hillary feels better! (After four years of teeth-grinding.)
38m11s Toobin gets fired. (Some words of encouragement.)
39m31s Tot-tossing in France. (A passion for learning.)
41m22s Aussies grovel. (Cultural appropriation Down Under.)
43m41s Signoff. (O Valiant Hearts.)
01—Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from your iconoclastically genial host John Derbyshire.
The fog of battle surrounding the November 3rd election has cleared somewhat, but there are still uncertainties about the consequences. Plainly there was much more than the usual amount of skullduggery in the registering and counting of votes, and it all seems to have favored Joe Biden. Whether much of it can be dealt with in the courts; and whether, if it can, the judgments will be enough to swing the result back to Trump; these are open questions as I come to the mike here.
As best I can predict, we'll be looking at a Joe Biden inauguration in January. It's not certain, and I'm glad the President and his team are fighting for what's right—all strength to them. It's probable, though, and I base my commentary on that.
So what shall we get from a Biden administration? One thing we are sure to get is open borders.
02—Back to open borders. As VDARE.com's correspondent Jack Dalton noted on Thursday, a Biden administration will go full-bore open borders, jumping to the whips cracked by cheap-labor business lobbies and anti-white ethnic grievance activists.
The dribble of reforms and improvements made by the Trump administration's executive orders will all be canceled. If we're lucky, the new stretches of border wall will not be dynamited; but no more will be built.
The Biden people are perfectly open about their intentions. CBS News ran a report on Tuesday, presumably sourced from Biden campaign insiders, spelling it all out.
And so on. It's all deeply disheartening.
Are there any shafts of light in the gloom? I'll go looking for some. New segment …
03—Light in the gloom? As I said, Biden's victory is very disheartening to those of us at VDARE.com and like-minded groups, who have been toiling away for years—for decades now—to bring the true facts about immigration to public attention, to expose the carefully-concocted blend of misty sentimentality and cold cash racketeering that guided the immigration policy of Presidents from LBJ to Barack Obama.
We advocate for a rational immigration policy: one to the advantage of American citizens in general, just as Japan's immigration policy is designed for the advantage of Japanese citizens, just as Israel's immigration policy is designed for the advantage of Israeli citizens. It can be done, as those nations have shown.
Immigration is not some kind of natural force against which resistance is futile, or immoral. It's just a policy, like tax rates, farm price supports, or how many aircraft carriers we need. Donald Trump was the first President in sixty years who seemed to understand that.
Now we're back to sentimentality and racketeering, to the delight of the Koch brothers, the Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley billionaires, and the refugee resettlement scammers—but to the further impoverishment of the American middle class.
And while Trump has done much with executive actions and appeals to the courts, we shouldn't let him off the hook for his administration's failures. We've heard a lot about his problems finding staffers who are on board with his policies; yet when capable, reliable people were available—I'm thinking of Kris Kobach, Steve King, Jeff Sessions—they were discarded and humiliated by Trump, the jobs they should have had given to mediocrities and anti-Trumpers.
Above all there was that wasted two years when Trump's party controlled Congress. Real immigration reform needs legislation; legislation needs congressional action.
To be sure, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan were much more interested in feeding their business-lobby donors with cheap foreign labor and virtue-signalling their anti-racist piety than in enacting Trump's policies; but with energy, determination, and the negotiating skills he boasts of, Trump might have gotten something done. He didn't even try.
The future, however, isn't completely dark. Quote from that CBS report on Biden's plans, quote:
While Mr Biden's team will have the legal authority to overturn Mr Trump's policies, Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), said it will not be an easy endeavor, given bureaucratic requirements, the ongoing COVID-19 emergency and the volume of changes implemented over the past four years.
[Inner quote from her.] "The Trump administration had an extraordinary preoccupation with immigration issues and they invested an enormous amount of attention and single-minded focus on immigration … An administration that wants to undo those changes would have to devote a similar amount of time and effort." [End inner quote.]
End quote.
If the lady is right, Trump's actions on immigration won't all be swept away with a stroke of the pen. Some of them may survive.
And then there's the Biden Rush. American voters may not give immigration the attention it deserves, but elsewhere in the world, interest is very keen. Hundreds of millions of people in crap-hole countries worldwide have been watching this recent election intensely. They believe a Biden administration will throw the borders wide open, and they are packing their bags to make their way to those open borders.
If this develops into a real human tide, as it well might, immigration will be front and center of the national consciousness, with strong public pressure to re-impose controls.
"Numbers are of the essence," said the great British immigration patriot Enoch Powell. Indeed they are; but the sheer stupendous numbers of people who want to come and live in America is the hardest thing to get across to ordinary voters.
With the encouragement of Biden and his people, those numbers may be clearly visible on our TV screens a few months from now … or perhaps in the run-up to the 2022 mid-terms.
This could get interesting.
04—Europe slowly sinks. As a footnote to that, having mentioned Enoch Powell there, while immediate prospects for the U.S.A. are dark, for Britain and Western Europe the longer-term prospects are way darker.
In Britain's case, Brexit is a factor. Remember Brexit? In 2016 the Brits voted to leave the European Union. That was one of the two great populist-nationalist events of that year, the other of course being the election of Donald Trump.
Three and a half years of fussing and fudging followed, until at last, on January 31st this year, Britain did formally leave the EU.
Key word there: "formally." Britain's out of the EU but still subject to EU laws and regulations until the end of this year, December 31st. This eleven-month span from January 31st to December 31st, is the so-called "transition period," when details of future trade, customs, travel rules, and, yes, immigration are worked out.
So seven weeks from now, Britain will be really, truly, at last, finally, no more fudging, honest injun out of the EU. What will Britain's immigration rules then look like?
Incredibly, with severe lockdowns leading to soaring unemployment, with illegal immigration at levels that an independent inspector has told the government are, quote, "unsustainable," end quote, and with widespread housing shortages, incredibly the government wants to relax immigration controls.
You ready for the punch line? Britain's current ruling party is the Conservative Party!
The post-Brexit immigration rules were published three weeks ago. The changes that have gotten the most attention relate to work permits for skilled workers, like our own H-1B visas.
The cap on total numbers has been removed. Eligible skill levels have been lowered. The minimum salary on offer has been reduced … These post-Brexit rules are a cheapskate employer's wet dream, and of course a middle-class British worker's nightmare.
Last year here on Radio Derb I pooh-poohed the idea that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had any kind of a clue on the National Question. I didn't know the half of it. National Question-wise, this guy is worse than Tony Blair.
In Western Europe, as in the English Channel, the invasion quietly accelerates. Less than a hundred miles off the coast of West Africa lie the Canary Islands, which are Spanish territory. Their being Spanish means that an African who wants to live in Europe just has to cross that few miles of sea to the Canaries.
So far this year 11,000 have done so. Just last weekend, Saturday and Sunday, 2,000 Africans on 45 boats landed on the islands. The authorities have had to put them up in hotels, a thing the British have also had to resort to with illegal aliens crossing the Channel.
There is no strong will, in Britain or Western Europe, to do anything about this. The citizens of these countries seem determined on national suicide. Meanwhile living conditions in Africa get worse. Latest news: Civil war is breaking out in Ethiopia.
05—The retreat from Kabul. President Trump fired his Defense Secretary on Monday. This was Mark Esper, who had held the job since July last year.
Prior to joining the administration three years ago, Esper was a lobbyist for big defense contractors. Did Trump know that when he appointed him? If you get elected President on an America First platform, why would you hire in a front man for the military-industrial complex, and then promote him to your cabinet? Just another Trump administration mystery we'll have to wait for the memoirs to clarify.
Anyway, Trump fired Esper on Monday. Major areas of discord seem to have been
So good riddance to another lousy hire. Don't let the door hit ya, pal.
Esper's replacement is Christopher Miller, a counter-terrorism expert who won his credentials through thirty years in Special Ops actually fighting terrorists.
That's good work, but kind of ground level. For some loftier geostrategic perspective, Acting Defense Secretary Miller has hired in as senior adviser retired army Colonel Douglas Macgregor.
That's good news, or would be if this wasn't so late in the game. Macgregor is on record as believing a lot of what Radio Derb believes.
And so on. That's gotten Colonel Macgregor tagged as "divisive" and "iconoclastic" by the media—another good sign. "Divisive"? I'm all for dividing off lobbyists for defense contractors and Middle East potentates from Americans who just want their country secure and prosperous, minding its own business.
I should add that Colonel Macgregor's boldest iconoclasm is his desire to get rid of the U.S. Marine Corps. Quote from him on that:
The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army's horse cavalry in the 1930s.
End quote.
That's not as outrageously iconoclastic as it sounds. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower both favored scrapping the Marine Corps. Both of them were, though, like Colonel Macgregor, Army veterans. Sharing a house as I do with another Army veteran, I can testify that some Army guys have … issues with the Marines. I'll just leave it at that and return to my main theme.
Which was, what? Oh yeah: sensible new policies on our World Policeman role.
Remember that this, along with patriotic immigration reform, these were the two issues that, more than any others, got Trump elected in 2016. The Clinton-Bush-Obama policies of "invade the world, invite the world" were out of favor with a huge segment of the voting population. Trump promised to end them.
In the event he didn't do much either of de-invading or de-inviting. The things he did do on immigration, Biden has promised to undo.
Will the same apply to policing the world? Will Biden send our troops back out policing after Trump has brought them home, assuming he can? I guess we'll find out.
06—Sad faces in the Kremlin. Here's an old story from my Liverpool days. For background I need to explain that mid-20th-century Liverpool had two First Division football teams—that's soccer, of course—named Liverpool City and Everton.
Now Liverpool was almost as much an Irish city as an English one. It's just across the water from Ireland, so there was considerable Irish influence. That included sectarianism, strong Protestant and Catholic identities. One manifestation of that was in football. Liverpool City and its supporters skewed heavily Protestant; Everton were for the Catholics.
OK, the story. One year a derby was played, Liverpool against Everton. The result was a win for Liverpool. On a bus taking supporters home after the game, there was a glum little group of Everton supporters tasting the ashes of defeat. One of them was heard to say: "Sure, there'll be some sad faces in the Vatican tonight."
For some reason I had that story on my mind last weekend when the media declared that Trump had lost the election. The phrase my inner cynic came up with was: "Sure, there'll be some sad faces in the Kremlin tonight."
I hasten to explain that wasn't me thinking that; it was me guessing at what the anti-Trump Establishment were all thinking. Hadn't they been telling us for five years that Trump was Vladimir Putin's glove puppet?
So it would make sense for them to believe that Trump's loss would be Putin's loss. So, yes, according to them there should be some sad faces in the Kremlin.
I dismissed those thoughts as low and facetious. Surely Establishment progressives aren't that stupid?
I dismissed too soon. Here's a progressive tweeter labeled "Trump's Zombieland," November 11th, responding to the news about Colonel Macgregor's appointment and his wish to bring the troops home. Tweet:
Putin has called in all of Trump's carrot and stick IOUs. Trump has 2 months to make good on his end.
An America in shambles was a bonus for Putin. Giving Russia the Middle East was the payday that Putin bargained for.
What do you think all those Pentagon firings are about.
End tweet.
That is actually, really, the Establishment mindset. Putin put Trump in power by hacking the 2016 election. The Russians have kept him in power by similar shady means, and he's been obediently doing their bidding.
Now they're calling in their IOUs. Their endgame is to replace our influence in the Middle East with theirs.
Leaving aside that there is no evidence Russian hacking had any significant effect in 2016, and that the Trump administration has done Putin no favors—by, for example, lifting the sanctions that followed the 2014 annexation of the Crimea—I wish someone in the Establishment would explain a few things they have never bothered to explain. Like:
If that tweeter, or some other Establishment shill, wants to address those questions, I'm all ears.
07—Turkmenistan's National Dog. Here's an item from — yes!—Turkmenistan.
You know how your state has a state song, a state bird, a state flower, and so on? Well, Turkmenistan has a national dog: the Alabay, described here as "a home-bred Turkmen variety of the Central Asian shepherd dog."
It's quite a handsome critter, the Alabay. "Strong and fearless. Independent, freedom-loving and confident," says this website I'm looking at. "Body heavy, huge, balanced and muscular … Weight 40 to 80 pounds." That's a big dog.
No surprise, given all that, to learn that Turkmenistan's strong, fearless, balanced and muscular president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, patron and friend of Radio Derb, is also a big fan of the Alabay. Last year he wrote a book about it, to unanimous acclaim from Turkmenistan's literary critics.
On Tuesday last President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov accorded the breed a further honor, unveiling a golden (actually, of course, gilt) statue of an Alabay in the center of the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat.
The statue is hard to miss: It's nineteen feet high, on top of a plinth thirty feet high, in a residential area of the city inhabited by government workers.
The BBC, reporting on this in its usual snooty style, still burning with resentment at the loss of Britain's empire, honked that, honk:
Despite the grandeur of the statue, much of Turkmenistan's population is impoverished. The country is ranked one of the least free in the world by press freedom organisation RSF, just one place above North Korea.
End honk.
Yeah, right, Sir Humphrey. Whatever. Here's one statue that, unlike yours and ours, won't be daubed with anarchist slogans, or pulled off its plinth by a jeering mob—not while President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov is there to protect it.
Long live President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov! Long live the noble republic of Turkmenistan!
[Clip: Turkmen national anthem.]
08—Derbyshire moos. Derbyshire, as well as being the surname of your genial host, is also the name of an English county, one of the 39 historic counties in the mother country. It's a bit of a backwater: rural and hilly, no great centers of power, wealth, or influence, not much industry. The busier, smokier counties to its north and west regard Derbyshire folk as gap-toothed bumpkins.
Derbyshire born,
Derbyshire bred:
Strong in the arm —
Weak in the head.
I hasten to say that other than sharing its name, I have nothing to do with Derbyshire, and have no gaps in my teeth. I have only been in Derbyshire twice, briefly on business both times. That doesn't stop Radio Derb listeners sending me news items about Derbyshire, usually items that reinforce the bumpkin stereotype.
Here's one such. This is a story from BBC News, November 7th, headline: Belper's mass moo returns for second lockdown.
Belper is a small town a few miles north of Derby. There was a coronavirus lockdown there from March to June. To keep up their spirits, the townspeople organized a daily moo. That's "moo" as in, the sound made by a cow. At 6:30 every evening they would stand on their doorsteps or lean out of their windows and moo for two minutes.
Quote from the BBC story:
Back in April, resident Isabel Kennedy said the moo had become "the highlight of my day."
End quote. Are you getting the impression that not a lot happens in Belper?
The lockdown was suspended in June as the pandemic ebbed. Now the virus is coming back and another lockdown has been ordered; so the good people of Belper are warming up to resume their daily moo.
That's the latest moos from Derbyshire.
09—Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Contemplating President Trump's defeat, Hillary Clinton told an interviewer that, quote:
I am feeling better than I have felt in four years
End quote.
Can you imagine taking politics so seriously you've been out of sorts for four years over losing a race? Well, if you're female you probably can. As I've noted before, quote from me:
Women take things a whole lot more personally than men do.
End quote.
I do understand, though, how galling it must be for Mrs Clinton, after devoting all those years to being some guy's wife with opinions out of the Wellesley College Progressive Student's Handbook, 1968 edition, to lose an election to a political nobody out of right field — a guy who made his fortune in, eiuw, business.
I'm glad you're feeling better, Hillary.
Item: I mentioned in the podcast three weeks ago the case of Jeffrey Toobin, star writer at New Yorker magazine. Toobin was caught jerkin' the gherkin when he thought he was off-camera on a Zoom conference. The magazine suspended him pounding … I'm sorry: pending, pending an investigation.
Wednesday this week the New Yorker announced the investigation was complete and Toobin had been fired.
It's a sad story … but not all that sad. I'm here to assure Mr Toobin that getting dumped by a prestigious magazine is not the end of the world. He's a smart guy, and only sixty years old—a spring chicken. If he can't get work in the magazine business, he's still young enough to adapt and change careers. A guy as capable as Toobin should be able to turn his hand to anything.
Item: Very little remains of my high-school French. I only did one year of it, then I switched to German as being more mathy and sciencey. I can still construe "La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle," but beyond that all is mystery.
I therefore had to resort to Google Translate for this one: "Je ne lance pas mes enfants par-dessus le portail." That, according to Google, means: "I don't throw my children over the gate."
The story here concerns Trillade primary school in Avignon, southern France. The school is surrounded by a six-foot fence with a six-foot gate in it. At precisely 8:30 a.m. the gate is closed and locked. Local parents who missed the deadline had been throwing their kids over the gate into the schoolyard. So to discourage this practice, the school has posted a big sign outside saying "Je ne lance pas mes enfants par-dessus le portail."
I think I did the right thing switching to German. Ich werfe meine Kinder nicht über das Tor.
Item: From even further afield, here is a once-proud nation of pioneers, adventurers, yeoman farmers, and … well, OK, convicts, all bending over and grabbing their ankles in self-abasement at the demand of social activists.
Yes, this is Australia. The postal service down there is running a campaign to get people writing the aboriginal names of cities and districts when they address a letter or parcel. So instead of addressing your Christmas card to Sydney, you write it as "Eora"; Melbourne should be "Woiworung"; for Brisbane you should write "Yuggera"; and so on.
Aboriginal activist Rachael McPhail—who, by the way, looks about as aboriginal as I do—started the campaign on social media in August, telling us that aboriginal people had lived in Australia for at least 60,000 years.
Well, that's nice. In all those 60,000 years, however, aborigines never developed any kind of writing system; so by imposing our Latin alphabet on their precious place-names, aren't they committing an act of cultural appropriation?
Come to think of it, aborigines never, in those 60,000 years, developed a postal service. Nor did they develop agriculture, enabling their people to feed themselves up to the size of Ms McPhail, who I would judge weighs north of 300 lbs. These things were all gifts of the white man.
You're welcome, Ma'am.
10—Signoff. That's it, ladies and gents. Thank you for listening; and particular thanks, in this week of Veterans' Day, to any veterans among the Radio Derb listenership.
As is customary at this time of year, I shall play us out with what is, in my opinion, the loveliest of all hymns appropriate to Veterans' Day—or, as I was brought up to call it, Remembrance Day. Here is the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, singing "O Valiant Hearts."
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
[Music clip: the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, "O Valiant Hearts."]
