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Jan. 17, 2025 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
01:00:08
Warning: Peyote Shortage

Jared Taylor learns that overharvesting threatens Indian "peyotism." He also discusses Keir Starmer, Algerian gratitude, LA arson, and "My First Ankle Monitor."

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Radio Renaissance.
I'm your host, Jared Taylor, and today is January 16th, Anno Domini, 2025. And as usual, we begin with comments from listeners.
Now this comment really has to do with an interview that I gave on X, and I've been taken to task about this, I've mentioned this earlier, because I said some rude things about West Virginians.
And just to put this all in context, I will say exactly what I said on that occasion.
I said that I'd spent a couple of days in Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital, and I was struck by what almost appeared to me to be a city ordinance that required that any person who lived there had to be fat and have tattoos and smoke cigarettes.
Well, I would agree that it is an unkind thing to have said.
And this provoked a certain amount of controversy, and some people told me that I was bad to be insulting fellow white people.
I did add at the end of those remarks, though, that these were our brothers and our sisters, and it was our duty to help them be the best white men and white women they could possibly be.
But there were people who said I had no business talking about white people that way.
Our listener writes in to say, I listened to Scott Greer's defense of your comments about white West Virginians.
You didn't say anything wrong.
They have problems.
Obesity, reliance on government assistance, and drug use being chief among them.
That doesn't mean they can't be good-hearted people, but they need to correct their behavior.
They act more like blacks and Hispanics than do the average white.
That isn't something that should be celebrated.
I have cousins who live in trailers in West Virginia.
I visit them often.
They're great people, but they and their neighbors have real issues.
One of my cousins is an addiction counselor, and he has lamented that pretty much every other person in the holler has got some sort of addiction.
How can we, as a white race, help our brothers without being honest about their problems?
I believe it's worse for the people from West Virginia if you lie about their problems or conceal them.
I think in my case, what I did wrong, really, was talking about them in a particular context with a guy who really has the lowest contempt for, I think, whites in general.
And to say it in a joking, humorous sort of way, as if I was making fun of these people.
So, no, I... I think that's absolutely true.
We have to talk about our problems, and we definitely have to help the people of our race who have those problems.
This commenter goes on to reply to a question that I asked in my previous podcast, having to do with the absence of my indispensable co-host, Paul Kersey, for all these weeks, whether I should have him back.
And the listener says, Mr. Kersey is a great co-host.
Now, that question really got me quite an earful.
And in preponderance, I would say that the answers so far have been pro-Kersey.
Here's one.
Kersey can go off on tangents that diverge a little too much from the topic Mr. Taylor is covering.
I think the same thing happened with his podcast, A View from the Right with Gregory Hood.
But that doesn't mean I don't want Kersey.
I think he should have his own podcast.
Here's another comment.
I like when you do the podcast on your own.
No Paul Kersey needed.
Here is Diana from Australia.
I enjoyed listening to Jared Taylor and Paul Kersey together.
If Paul is not around in the future, perhaps consideration be given to guest co-presenters.
Comment.
I enjoy the podcast with both of you on it.
Comment.
I say three cheers from Mr. Kersey.
I enjoy the solo podcast, but I also enjoy the podcast with you both, and it's important for our movement to nurture the next generation of activists.
Comment.
I, like you, am a certified geezer, and I enjoy your solo performances.
They have a high-toned quality.
Well, thank you, commenter.
This is not to say those featuring PK are bad.
Each has its place and can serve our cause.
Comment.
P.K. contributes a youthful viewpoint and energy.
I hope he returns.
Comment.
I think you're doing very well on your own, but I also think Mr. Kersey adds a great deal and that you do even better together.
I do hope he's not in the doghouse.
Well, I can assure you he is not in anyone's doghouse.
Comment.
I hereby cast my vote yes for Paul Kersey.
Comment.
Keep him on your podcasts.
Mistakes are often corrected during the podcast with both of you on it, and besides, it's a good team.
Comment.
I think you're doing fine on your own.
No disrespect for Mr. Kersey, but perhaps you could do some shows with people like Ramsey Paul, Z-Man, Blonde in the Belly, Radix Verum.
I think that might be engaging.
Comment.
I think the show works better with both of you, and I've been missing Mr. Kersey.
Comment.
I will not.
Miss Paul Kersey, if he never comes back, I'm happy to hear Uncle Jared all by himself.
Comment.
Bring him back.
But he must stop interrupting Mr. Taylor.
It drives me crazy hearing Paul speak over Jared three or four times each episode.
Well, there you go.
As I say, the preponderance of the evidence seems to be pro-Kersey.
Well, we will take all these things under advisement.
Now, our first story is one that was sent to me by a listener and has to do with the fact that Starbucks, the coffee chain, has introduced a policy that will require people to make a purchase if they want to hang out in their cafes or use the restroom.
You'll remember this little contretemps of 2018. That's the year in which the open-door bathroom policy was established.
After the company booted two black men who hadn't ordered anything.
They were warned they had to get out, and they didn't get out, and the police came and arrested them.
They were warned by their manager, but they stayed anyway.
But this caused a huge stink about racism within the company.
They ended up getting some big cash payout from the company.
Starbucks shut down all of its shops for half a day, as I recall, to train employees on letting bums and wine owls hang out in the store and how to avoid being racist for the rest of their lives.
Well, the policy...
Which has been changed.
It will be implemented later this month at the more than 11,000 Starbucks stores in North America.
11,000.
And will require a three-hour training session for the staff.
It will take three hours to persuade them that, yes, it's a good idea not to let bums and winos hang out in the store for as long as they like.
Now, as it turns out, some local store managers Already had the discretion to modify store operations, including restroom access, in accordance with specific store circumstances.
Now, I think you've probably noticed you don't have Starbucks in the skeeziest of neighborhoods.
But if they aren't semi-skeezy, then the managers have the right to kick out lowlifes who don't pay.
And so some managers were already booting non-paying visitors.
Now, the listener who sent this in suggests that this change in policy has something to do with Trump.
I honestly don't think it does.
I think it's just common sense.
People don't like lowlifes hanging out in the same place where they are.
A lot of people do.
Take a book or take their laptop.
They spend an hour or two in Starbucks while they sip a vainty, as I understand those big ones are called.
And they don't like people who they don't like.
So I think it's just a natural swinging back of the pendulum towards a greater sanity.
And I think we're seeing that in a number of different places, including all of this ditching of DEI. Well, that's it for this week's comments.
I do love to hear from you.
I do love to hear what you like, what you don't like, and especially when I make a mistake.
And if I've got the wrong end round on something, please straighten me out.
The way to reach me is to go to amren.com, A-M-R-E-N.com, hit the Contact Us tab, and you can send a message straight to me.
I read them all, and I'm happy to receive them.
Okay, now the first story has to do with Los Angeles, where fires have been raging.
They're raging a little bit less now, but they continue to rage.
And I believe they've flattened, they've reduced to cinders 10,000 buildings.
I can't remember the numbers at this point.
But Juan Manuel Sierra is a Mexican in the U.S. illegally.
He is suspected of trying to start fires in Woodland Hills, close to the Kenneth.
Fire.
That was one of the big ones.
Residents in Woodland Hills, California, many of whom were preparing to evacuate due to the nearby Kenneth Fire, noticed a man bicycling around the neighborhood holding a blowtorch trying to light trash cans on fire with tree debris and a dead Christmas tree.
They shocked locals, chased him down, handcuffed him with zip ties, and called the police.
There's pretty good cell phone video.
White guys grabbing this guy, detaining him.
I'm a little bit surprised he didn't take off sprinting, but I suppose he was worried he'd lose his bicycle if he did that.
In any case, ICE issued a detainer for Juan Manuel Sierra, but as you know, California's sanctuary laws may stop local law enforcement from notifying the federal agency about his immigration status or when he might be released.
Under California law, police and sheriffs must not ask.
People about their immigration status or share anything they know with ICE. I wonder how the news media found out this guy was illegal.
Now, this is always suspicious, but news also learned that Sierra goes by several different names.
His real name, at least as far as we know, is Juan Manuel Sierra.
Sometimes he's called Juan Manuel Sierra Leva, Juan Leva, Leva Monicar, and Juan Sierra.
All of these name changes are a bad sign.
Do you know people who have different names under different circumstances?
Usually, it's a pretty sketchy thing.
Well, Juan, whoever he is, has had multiple encounters with law enforcement since November 2016, which is when he is thought to have slipped into the country illegally at least four encounters with LA law enforcement over just the past year.
He was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in October 10 of 2023 in Van Nuys, California.
Why is he still around?
Well, that's thanks to Sanctuary City or thanks to Sanctuary Jurisdiction.
After he got out, if he ever got out on that, if he was ever in on that, I should say, he should have been turned over to ICE and booted.
Absolutely.
Jettisoned across the border, but he was not.
And at the time, he was arrested for setting his fires.
He was under probation supervision at the time.
And once again, I mean, I've said this before.
I'll say it again.
I've said it so many times, you're probably bored hearing me, but look out, folks.
I'm going to say it again.
To me, this is incomprehensible.
Here you have a guy who has been known to the police.
Multiple times.
He is convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.
He's a legal immigrant, and apparently he's been in jail, out of jail.
And why does anyone want to keep him?
This guy should be catapulted 20 miles across the border.
And yet, California wants the little deer to stay in California so the guy can set fires.
Crazy.
This is just one of the craziest things the lefties do, but there's so many crazy things, I should not consider this number one, I suppose.
Meanwhile, Jose Carranza Escobar was taken into custody after admitting he started a brush fire at Pioneer Park in Azusa, California.
Officers showed up following reports of a fire, and upon arrival, a witness directed the officers to this guy, Carranza Escobar.
Police described him as a transient.
Whatever that means these days.
He admitted to setting the fire.
Maybe he just wanted a place to stay.
Three hots and a cot.
Los Angeles County Fire Department has since extinguished the flames.
This guy's status was unreported, and I suppose California doesn't care if he wants a place to stay for the night while the fires rage.
They will happily put him up, and they won't tell ICE if he doesn't even belong in the country.
And meanwhile, police arrested a man on suspicion of arson.
After firefighters saw him lighting fires about 12 miles east of the Eden Fire.
That is the biggest and the worst of the blazes.
Ruben Montes, age 29. They say he's of Baldwin Park.
I would rather know a little bit more about him.
I don't care where he lived in the United States or in California.
I want to know what countries he's from.
He was arrested by the L.A. County Police after the fire department saw him actively lighting fires.
His legal status is not reported.
Although, whether he's legal or not, he shouldn't be in the country.
Not this guy named Ruben Montes who sets fires.
And meanwhile, again, the Daily Mail has an article.
LA's lowlifes, the looters, burglars, and drug addicts arrested during Palisades fire all share a common trait.
Well, now what would the Daily Mail have remarked as to what their common trait might be?
Well, cops charged more than 40 detainees with various offenses, including burglary and drug possession, since the fires broke out.
Remarkably, none of those arrested actually lived in the evacuation zone and seemingly traveled with the intention of taking advantage of the devastation.
Remarkably?
Remarkably?
Why is that remarkable?
Some of these areas that have burned, like Potter State Park, some of these places are really ritzy, ritzy neighborhoods.
You wouldn't expect those people to be suddenly out looting their neighbors' houses.
Of course they came in from outside.
This is remarkable?
No.
Well, and interestingly enough, the Daily Mail runs 16 mugshots.
Now, what I thought, this common trait that they shared, All but one, all but one of the 16 was obviously and clearly not white.
That would have been the common trait that I would have focused on.
It's like looking for where's Waldo in these mugshots to find what might be a white man.
There is a guy who probably, well, you know, it's a 50-50 chance he's a white man.
You can't really tell in some of these ambiguous cases.
And I do confess, there was a notable, notable case of a white burglar, white looter, who was trying to dress like a fireman and not be caught.
So we must tell not just the truth, but the whole truth.
When we have these podcasts, there was a white guy who was looting.
So, moving on to a different form of diversity, a taste of diversity of a most unpleasant kind in the state of Massachusetts.
It was a roge-rage incident that involved someone by the name of Gladior Quazia, Age 26. I think you can imagine just what sort of racial extraction he might be.
He's from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, they say.
But again, I don't care where he lived in the United States.
Where is he from, really?
And Hylia Soares, age 31, of Somerset, Massachusetts.
Now, if this is road rage, it went exclusively one way.
Hylia Soares is a very nice-looking 31-year-old white woman.
Well, she accidentally hit Quazia's car from behind.
Gently, mind you.
No great damage done.
This was at an intersection in Attleboro, causing the man to get out of the car and bang on Suarez's roof.
Then video footage showed Quazia dragging Suarez out of her car, lifting her tiny body above his shoulder before slamming her headfirst onto the pavement.
It is gruesome to watch.
Then he picked her up and he did it again.
She weighs 110 pounds and is only 5 feet tall.
He looks to be well over 6 feet, must weigh 200 pounds.
As she now says, after she is recovered, well, she hasn't really completely recovered by any means, but she's out of the hospital.
She says, by the time I realized I was in the air, I thought I might die right now.
Police found the single mother on the ground with blood.
Coming from her head wound and she was rushed to the hospital, she had suffered severe injuries including a broken knee, a broken foot, damage to her eye socket and a serious skull injury.
She spent days in the hospital and is expected to be out of work for months while she recovers full use of her body.
Her mother said, I burst into tears when I saw that video.
It's heartbreaking and devastating to see someone pick up your child.
And throw her like a rag doll.
And he did it twice.
The victim herself says this.
I don't know if he was having a bad day.
I don't know what it was.
But if that's the type of person he is, I don't think he belongs in society with the rest of us.
No, he doesn't belong with the rest of us.
This guy is straight out of Africa.
Black.
He shouldn't be here at all.
And this poor little white girl, who was nearly killed, she says, I don't know if he was having a bad day.
Well, it doesn't sound like he was having a bad day.
He was just being the way he is.
Well, Quazia faces a felony charge of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, and by that they mean the pavement, with serious injury resulting.
He's also charged with malicious destruction of property.
Not quite sure what that is.
Maybe she broke her glasses.
And operating a motor vehicle without a license.
This guy wasn't even licensed to drive a car.
Now, it seems to me he ought to be charged with attempted murder.
I mean, if you pick up, if you weigh twice as much as a small woman, pick her up and throw her as hard as you can onto the pavement twice, I think that's attempted murder.
But here is the most astonishing element of the entire news story.
Quazia was released on $2,500 cash bail.
And told to stay away from the woman he nearly killed.
$2,500 cash bail?
And this guy's still walking around after he behaved that way?
No.
Again, I've said this many times.
I'll say it many times again.
I will bore you all.
There should be the death penalty for somebody who behaves like that.
Now, here's a story from Great Britain.
After British saxophonist Martin Speak wrote in an email message that there is no systemic racial inequality in the UK jazz scene, and that critical race theory is divisive and dangerous, his music conservatory, where he taught saxophone, it's called Trinity Laban, threatened disciplinary action.
Students boycotted his classes, and the London Jazz Orchestra, for whom he had been lead alto sax for 15 years, told him to take a leap of absence.
This is quite astonishing.
I'll repeat what he said.
There is no systemic racial inequality in UK jazz.
I'm sure that's true.
If you can play the horn, you get the job.
Also, he says critical race theory is divisive and dangerous.
I agree.
Well, some students claim that what Speak said affected their mental health.
Give me a break.
Their mental health.
And a change.org petition created by someone who called him or herself distressed student.
This person refers to him or herself as he slash she.
So this is an ambiguous case.
He slash she.
It was deeply affected by Speaks' message, and it perpetuated harmful and defamatory narratives about black musicians in the jazz industry.
If you say they're not discriminated against, that perpetuates harmful and defamatory narratives about black musicians.
In any case, Speaks' scheduled performances were all canceled.
The release of his latest album was stopped.
And bands will now no longer play his compositions.
As he writes, Now, this is the kind of story that I think had pretty much ended.
You could have imagined something like this in the United States at the worst of the BLM madness.
But here it is.
Here it is, 2025. Now at least this guy is filing suit.
He's going to try to get his job back.
But Britain really just seemed to be sinking lower and lower and lower.
Now here is a rather shocking case of Algerian gratitude.
This is about an Algerian who came to France for medical treatment.
They have a kind of humanitarian visa system in which If you cannot get the proper treatment in your own home country, France will let you in.
Now, I don't know who pays, but the point is they let you in if you have some terrible condition that cannot be appropriately treated in your home country.
In this case, he got specialized care for burns he got in his home country of Algeria.
No details as to how he got himself burned.
In any case, he's been arrested after a series of violent robberies targeting elderly women in the southern coastal town of Hiers.
It's a pretty small place, just 55,000 people, but he shows up, he whips out a knife, and he robbed three people in recent days.
All elderly women age between 65 and 75, and he steals their handbags, menaces them with his knife, and roughs them up a little bit.
A perfectly nice guy.
And he has admitted to doing this.
Because, as I said before, a medical visa or humanitarian status can be granted to someone whose treatment is not available in his home country.
Now, this I don't understand.
If, after being treated for burns, he was healthy enough to run around robbing old ladies, why wasn't he sent packing?
Surely a visa of this kind runs out, or maybe they just give it to him for a certain period of time.
But this guy was up and running around.
He wasn't in the hospital.
His burns were probably all healed and is out robbing old ladies.
What a way, what a way, what a way to thank France for what it did for you.
Well, he'll be in the pokey for a while, and then, of course, he'll be booted back to Algeria.
I wish the booting back stopped midway across the Mediterranean.
Now, here's a different story.
It's from Cook County.
That's where Chicago is located.
A Cook County judge elected in 2024 to her first six-year term has been reassigned.
She's circulated a fake image of a toy.
Well, it's an imagined toy.
It would be called My First Ankle Monitor.
It's a really kind of realistic, sort of plasticky, toyish-looking ankle monitor and included a picture of a black toddler wearing this thing right around his ankle.
Very realistic thing.
Looks just like a kind of toy advertisement.
Also, just as an interesting detail, the foot on which the monitor is worn has only four toes.
I don't know if that was deliberate or the artist just didn't count correctly.
As Judge Caroline Glennon Goodman said in the accompanying message, my husband's idea of Christmas humor.
Well, and she circulated this to another member of the judiciary by mistake.
And this other member of the judiciary got it and turned her in.
Well, as it turns out, her husband, a Dr. Paul Goodman, he is a podiatric foot and ankle surgeon.
No doubt he has a particular interest in feet with four toes.
In any case, he thought it was funny, she thought it was funny, but Glennon Goodman, the judge, has been reassigned, and the Judicial Inquiry Board will now determine whether she will be slapped with further sanctions.
My guess is probably she will.
No joking allowed when you're talking about four-toed black feet.
Anyway, as it turns out, though, Glennon Goodman...
Who was in the pretrial division.
There were nine judges.
She was the second most lenient in the pretrial divisions of the nine judges when considering detention petitions.
She was the most likely to turn criminals loose.
So she probably is not your typical, I love every criminal I ever saw kind of a girl, but she just thought this was funny.
Nice looking blonde woman, but my guess is she's going to be doffing that black robe pretty soon.
Now here's more on the sex grooming scandal, of which I have already said plenty.
And I think it was the previous podcast I mentioned that the idea of having a national investigation.
Well, a British publication reports that Keir Starmer, current Prime Minister, and his Labour Party are completely out of touch.
That is the key finding of a bombshell news survey.
After Starmer...
And every single Labour MP voted against holding a fresh national inquiry, a position which I believe will become untenable.
The British people have now shared their view.
As it turns out, 76% of Brits want a national inquiry into the horrors that took place and are probably still taking place in at least 50 towns across England and Wales.
Now, who backs this inquiry?
91% of reform voters.
84% of Tory voters, 71% of the Liberal Democrats, and even 65% of Labor Party voters.
Two-thirds of Labor voters want this.
But the Labor leaders, oh no, no, no, can't have that.
My look, Pakistanis look bad.
Also, deporting people with dual nationality who are convicted of raping a child is supported by 77% of all people.
Including 70% of Labor Party voters.
These are the most liberal voters in the country.
And 70% of them want to deport people with dual nationality who are convicted of raping children.
Of course, 96% of reform voters want that.
Those are very, very substantial majorities.
And to fly in the face of that is, it seems to me, a pretty dangerous thing.
And one speaks to the vast majority in this country who think, If you rape our kids, break our laws, and hold dual nationality, then you should be thrown out of our country.
If you are a British national who commits this horrific crime, then you should be locked up for life.
Yes, that seems to be the general sentiment, but the labor bigwigs don't seem to think so, and they're flying in the face even of their own constituents.
Well, here's another bump in the road for Keir Starmer, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain.
As it turns out, his anti-corruption minister, and I don't know how to pronounce her name, it's either Tulip, it's spelled like Tulip, and last name is Sadiq.
Is it Tulip or Tulip?
I don't know.
But she's Bangladeshi.
We'll call her Tulip for now.
Tulip quit her post weeks after being named in an embezzlement investigation in Bangladesh.
This was the anti-corruption investigator, the anti-corruption minister.
Ms. Sadiq.
is the niece of Sheikh Hasima, the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, who resigned last year after 15 years in power and fled the country amid a broad student-led protest movement against her repressive rule.
Not a well-beloved ruler of Bangladesh.
Well, Tulip was an economic secretary to the Treasury, a position she was given when the Labor Party came back into power last July.
She was responsible for tackling corruption in financial markets, including money laundering and illicit finance.
Well, she was named in December in an investigation into claims that her family had embezzled up to £3.9 billion from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh.
Officials of the new Bangladesh government have accused her auntie The former Prime Minister of siphoning off billions and splashing it around her family.
Now, Mrs. Starmer's ethics advisor, he has an ethics advisor, in addition to Tulip, Laurie Magnus says it was regrettable that Ms. Hasina, that's Tulip, was not more alert to the potential reputational risks both to her and the government arising from her close family associations with Bangladesh.
Well, she's a Bangladeshi.
How can she not have close family associations with Bangladesh?
In any case, I would call this Bangladesh for poor Keir Starmer.
Now, did y'all know we have a peyote problem?
A peyote shortage?
Experts warned just last week of a shortage of the sacred cactus used by Indians, Native Americans, as they're called in this article.
In religious rituals, the peyote cactus produces the hallucinogenic drug.
It's mescaline, as I recall.
That's the drug that's produced by this thing.
And the peyote cactus grows only in a limited range across southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico.
Apparently the problem is the renaissance in psychedelic drug-taking.
It's just gone.
Great guns in wealthy Western societies.
Demand for psychedelic drugs, which became popular during the counter-culture hippie movement in the 1960s, has been booming.
Now, the shortage is a real bother for members of what's called the Native American Church of North America.
They practice something called peyotism.
I've never heard of peyotism before, but...
It is a religion that is a synthesis of traditional American Indian beliefs and Christianity.
And this church considers peyote a sacred sacrament.
It's like the wine and the wafer.
And this church has about 350,000 adherents.
Typically, the sacrament is taken at night in a teepee around a half-moon-shaped altar.
Carved out of sand, which represents the grave of Jesus Christ, and there's a fire burning.
The ceremonies include prayer, singing, water rites, whatever they are, and spiritual contemplation.
Well, you know, I don't think if I were in a situation like that, I'd need to take peyote.
I think I'd get high, or I'd be in an altered state just being around this thing.
It's at night in a teepee around a half-moon-shaped sand altar representing the grave of Jesus Christ and a fire.
You pray, you sing, and you contemplate who needs peyote for that.
Well, maybe they dreamed all this up when they were pretty high, but it's all exotic stuff.
Well, one of the practitioners says this is a Native American sacred medicine and white people shouldn't mess around with it.
Got that, white people?
Now, in order to qualify for membership in the church, you have to be at least a quarter Native American.
That's called a blood quantum.
Kind of like the Nuremberg laws, you know?
How much of a Jew do you have to be a Jew to be an unpleasant and sort of out-of-bounds Jew?
Or how much of a Jew can you be to be an acceptable sort of Jew?
Well, this is the way it is for American Indians.
And one quarter, one quarter is a little bit stiff.
Many tribes require only 1 16th, and some of the more lenient ones require only 1 32nd.
But this must be the only race-based religion in the entire United States.
To quantify, to take this mescaline as part of your religious ceremony, you have to be at least one quarter Indian.
Under U.S. federal law.
The drug that's in peyote, mescaline, is a controlled substance, but a 1994 exemption was granted to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, so it is legal for members of this church to use it.
Indian privilege.
On the other hand, Colorado and Oregon have legalized natural psychedelic compounds, including peyote.
Presumably including psilocybin.
That's what the old hippies used to call magic mushrooms.
But they legalized peyote apparently without proper consultation with Native American groups.
You see, it takes a peyote cactus 10 to 12 years to reach maturity and produce these peyote buttons.
And so Colorado and Oregon should have consulted with the practitioners of this religion because it looks as though their sacrament is being looted by these wretched white people who want to get high.
Oh boy, cultural appropriation, I suppose.
Now, here is a remarkable story.
It comes from Lacey, Washington State.
And it has to do with Ihsan Ali, age 44, and his wife, Zahra Ali, age 40. Well, they had a daughter, age 17, who remains unnamed in this article.
And the family lived, as I say, not far from the Canadian border in Lacey, Washington.
Now, the father had recently been threatening her with honor killing for refusing to enter into an arranged marriage with an older man in Iraq, These Ali's are from.
So on the day they were going to fly her there, she ran away from home.
And she showed up at school at her boyfriend's class.
She has a boyfriend, you see.
It's all romantic stuff.
And the teacher decided to take her in and help her because she looked very malnourished.
Well, later, the girl and her boyfriend were walking to the bus stop in front of the school.
And Daddy, he shows up in a pickup truck.
Well, suddenly Ishan, Ishan Ali, that's the dad, he hops out of the truck, rushes over to them, yelling at his daughter in Arabic, and then he threw her down on the ground and tried to choke her to death.
She went limp, unconscious, but the boyfriend managed to subdue daddy.
With the help of other students, they repeatedly punched Ishan in the face until he was dazed and he let her go.
Then Zahra, the mother, also showed up and tried to choke her daughter to death, but was separated by a growing group of students who flocked to the rescue of this poor girl.
She then fled inside with her boyfriend, yelling, My dad is trying to kill me!
As Zahra, the mom, allegedly chased after her up the school doors, but she was locked out.
Dad was arrested on the spot and charged with attempted murder.
Well, Zahra, that's mommy, was in court with her elder daughter.
She has an older daughter who is named here.
Her name is Hani Ali.
At Ilshan, that's daddy's arraignment, when prosecutors said they believed that mommy was also a threat.
And they were seeking an arrest warrant for her.
Well, the second she heard that...
Mommy dashed out of the courtroom and she drove her youngest children, two boys, ages five and three, into Canada and dropped them off from an uncle who lived there.
She then reportedly returned to Washington before, again, trying to escape into Canada a second time.
I guess she went back for, who knows, maybe a few trinkets that she couldn't live without?
Well...
The fact is police had in the meantime gotten statements from the daughter, her boyfriend, and other witnesses and had issued an arrest, flagging her passport, and she was arrested on her second trip up to the Canadian border and is now in the pokey awaiting trial along with her husband.
Now this is the kind of craziness that we get from multiculturalism in the United States.
And see, I don't understand.
These Iraqi types.
They come to the United States and they're all upset that their children aren't going to be good little Iraqis.
So if they really want their children to be good little Iraqis, stay in Iraq.
You don't belong here.
You don't belong here.
Your children don't belong here.
And you and they are going to be unhappy living among us infidels.
But this is the kind of excitement we would not otherwise have if we did not have multiculturalism.
And now, thanks to incidents like this, Americans know all about honor killings.
They were going to kill her because she wouldn't go back to Iraq and marry some horrible old drooling guy, much older than she, probably never even met in her life.
But that's the way they do it in Iraq.
And when you come to the United States, they're going to do it that way anyway.
Now here's another horrible story about somebody who doesn't belong in a European country.
This guy is Somali-born Basim Yusuf.
He was just sentenced to eight years in prison.
So what did he do?
The crimes pertain to his employment at Forende Cares Home Service in Uppsala.
So what he would do, he would go visit older people as part of a home care service, these vulnerable elderly clients who were home alone and who came to look after them.
And what he did, at least four women aged between 77 and 88, two of whom suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and he forced them to commit sexual acts and also forced himself upon them.
During one assault, Yusuf subjected a 77-year-old woman with dementia to a violent rape and filmed it all.
He filmed his crimes for his own gratification, apparently didn't try to peddle them on the internet.
During his initial police interview, he laughed when he was confronted with the charge.
He claimed the victims had consented and that he was hoping to be paid.
Good grief!
Wow, what cheek!
Well, he got eight years in the big house.
He will be 36 when he gets out, young enough to commit all manner more awful crimes.
But, and this is the punchline, ladies and gentlemen, which I withheld to the end of the story, because he is now a Swedish citizen.
He's been one since 2018. He cannot be deported.
He is a Swede.
Once a Swede, always a Swede.
Despite the fact that, as I've said many times, just because you plant a carrot in the potato patch, it doesn't make it a potato.
As it happens, a report published by a research group at Lund University in Sweden showed that between 2000 and 2020, 63.1% of all those convicted of rape Aggravated rape or attempted rape were first or second generation immigrants.
Now, I don't know the exact percentage of immigrants, but I'm sure it is far less than 63.1%.
But that is the number of rapes, aggravated rapes, and attempted rapes of which they were arrested.
Now, let's see another French story.
This was a nasty surprise for some.
But a delicious outcome for others, and you can guess which side of the story I'm on.
A theater in Paris, which is known for its radical shows and exhibitions, has been occupied by more than 250 African migrants after they were let in for a free event five weeks ago.
They've been there for five weeks.
The Gaieté Lyrique.
That could be translated as lyrical gaiety.
That's the name of the theater in Paris.
It staged a conference called Reinventing the Welcome for Refugees in France.
That was back on December 10th.
Reinventing the Welcome for Refugees.
And it had talks by academics from top universities, Red Cross officials and activists, talking about how it was so important to welcome these border hoppers.
But when the conference was open, when the conference was finished, The migrants, who were mainly blacks from former West African colonies, street people, they did exactly what the show was all about.
They reinvented the welcome for refugees, and they refused to leave.
So 55 days later, the theater is still occupied, and now it faces bankruptcy because it's had no revenue from ticket sales.
It's had to cancel all its performances out until at least January 24th.
And the theater's income model, 30% of its income was subsidies.
I mean, that's the way culture works in France and, alas, to a large degree in the United States.
70% of its income was based on ticket sales.
Well, that has completely ended.
Kaboom!
And now it's going to go out of business.
The management said in a statement that the number of people taking shelter in the theater is continuing to increase.
And there are now around 300 of these black migrants.
Also, according to the statement, the sanitary conditions are deteriorating day after day.
Well, I bet they are.
On the other hand, according to the statement, it is unthinkable for the gaieté lyrique to throw these people out onto the street in the middle of winter.
So they've got to stay.
Now, according to this report from a French publication, most of these blacks are known to the authorities.
They are street people, louts, layabouts.
They know all about them.
But now they are in a warm place.
I don't know who's feeding them.
Probably some bleeding heart white folks.
And the Gaietelirique is in a 19th century building.
It's owned by the city council and located in Paris' third arrondissement.
Well, the third arrondissement, that is smack in the middle of Paris.
Very high-priced real estate.
And the photographs of the building...
To make it clear, it is a really beautiful old 19th century building.
Well, Paris' socialist-led council called for the national government to deal with the problem, but President Macron's centrist cabinet is said to have ignored the request.
So they're stuck.
There they are.
And the Gaete Lirique would rather go bankrupt, rather go out of business, than force these people to leave.
Well, this is something of a parable for the country as a whole, isn't it?
Let them in.
Think they're going to be grateful.
Tell them how much you love them.
And then, lo and behold, they don't turn out to love you.
They take advantage of you.
They come in and they stay, no matter what.
Well, this is happening to Western countries all around the world.
As I say, these lefties are getting just a little bit of what they deserve.
But, alas, this is happening to the countries all around them.
What's happening back in the U.S.? Well, it turns out the Biden administration gave nearly 7,000 exemptions for foreigners who would otherwise be ineligible for admission into the United States.
Just this last year, 7,000 exemptions due to terrorism-related restrictions.
Foreigners who want to come to the United States can be deemed inadmissible.
If they are associated with, supported, or worked with a terrorist organization.
Well, just this last year, 7,000 exemptions were granted by the Biden administration.
The majority of them, 6,653, were refugees.
The Biden administration has greatly increased the annual refugee cap to 125,000, up substantially from the 18,000 set in the last year of the Trump administration.
Now, I don't know if an administration has complete leeway on how many refugees it decides to let in.
If the figure can vary from a low of 18,000 under Trump to as high as 125,000 over Biden, I wonder if Trump could drop it to zero.
In any case, this sudden jump in exemptions comes ahead of a Trump administration that is expected significantly to reduce refugee admissions.
I sure hope it does.
Zero would be a good number in my book.
Now, I couldn't find comparable figures for this number of exemptions of this kind for the Trump administration.
But I'm sure it was nothing like 7,000 a year.
Trump, I mean, in any case, this is just unthinkable to me.
And if you were to ask Joe Biden, ask him, well, why?
Why?
I mean, these people are inadmissible under standard criteria because of their association with terrorist organizations or terrorist acts.
Why do you want to let them in?
I'd be curious to know what he would say.
How would he answer a question like that?
How does anyone answer a question like that?
They're reformed.
They're really nice people.
I don't know.
They're pregnant and they need a place to give birth.
Gee, if you've got a good reason to say no, this is one of the very best reasons to say no.
I'd say no to all of them, but this is one of the best.
And Trump says, no, no, no.
Can't say no to these wonderful people.
And moving on to Pete Hegseth.
Pete Hegseth, of course, as you know, has come in for a bit of a drubbing in his Senate confirmation hearings to be Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense.
He has said he doesn't want women in combat.
He is sick and tired of this DEI nonsense.
And I think that is all great stuff.
The idea of really sending women into combat, this is to me a kind of absolute insanity.
Women, even if they are strong enough to hump 40-pound artillery shells around, they do not belong in the front line in combat.
It is bad for troop morale to have those women around, and they break more easily, they get in trouble.
I don't think women have the kind of real killer instinct that you want in a soldier.
There are a whole host of reasons not to have women in combat.
So I hope Hegseth...
Gets in, and I hope he removes all women from combat.
Sorry if there are any ladies out there who think that's a mistake, but this should be not about women's liberation.
It should be about finding and killing the enemy.
In any case, he has taken the correct side on this business of removing the names of Confederate generals from U.S. military bases.
In various media appearances between 2021 and 2024, he has called these name changes a sham, garbage, and crap.
Now, he characterizes this as a politically motivated progressive agenda infiltrating American institutions, which is exactly what it is.
Now, between the...
The years of 2022 and 2023, the names of nine U.S. military bases that were previously named after Confederate leaders were changed.
This was the result of the National Defense Authorization Act passed at the end of the first Trump administration.
Donald Trump vetoed the bill, partly in provision over this renaming provision, but Congress overwhelmingly overrode the veto.
And passed the bill in January 2021. I recall there were some Republicans who ended up voting for it.
They didn't like this business of renaming the Maces and getting rid of Confederate names, but they joined in the override because they wanted to get the bill passed.
As Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, he could very well argue in favor of changing the base names back to their former Confederate names.
But this would require congressional approval, and I suspect he would not get it, but we'll see.
Now, moving on to something that could be referred to as good news, I think.
Costco's Board of Directors has unanimously recommended that its shareholders vote.
Whoops, no, this is the opposite of good news.
No, I'd forgotten this.
Costco's Board of Directors unanimously recommended that shelters vote against a proposal brought by a conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, that would require Costco to evaluate and issue a report on the financial risks of maintaining its diversity and inclusion goals.
So here we have a shareholder proposal brought by a conservative think tank and the board of directors say, no, no, vote against that.
We love our diversity.
The National Center for Public Policy Research has criticized Costco for possible illegal discrimination against employees who are white, Asian, male, or straight.
I think it's very likely to be illegal in discrimination.
Costco still has a chief diversity officer and a supplier program that focuses on expanding small and diverse businesses.
It also donates to organizations like Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
And it says its DEI efforts help the company attract and retain a wide range of employees and improve merchandise and services in stores.
This is Costco, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, does having A diverse workforce really improve the merchandise and the services in the stores?
I've been to several Costco's, and I must say, they really are a grab bag of everything under the sun.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only white person there.
Most of the clientele are from who knows where.
The people who are waiting on you are from who knows where.
But Costco also said its members want to interact with a diverse employee base.
And I wonder how they know that.
Says the company, among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the treasure hunt that our customers value.
Well, as I say, I'm a Costco customer.
I never went on what I thought was a treasure hunt.
And Costco said in its proxy statement to investors, we believe, and member feedback shows, that many of our members like to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses with whom they interact.
Oh dear.
So the shareholder resolution says that Costco's DEI practices are discriminatory.
Costco says they're legal and non-discriminatory.
But as it turns out, a huge part of their budget is devoted to equity out of a $177 million budget they have for operations.
$31 million is devoted to equity.
Then another $20 million is devoted to safety and inclusion.
This all sounds deeply suspicious and mighty expensive to me.
Well, let's see.
Oh, no, this was a delightful story from MIT. MIT. You'd think of MIT people as rigorously scientific, unswayed by fashion, but no.
Here's a press release from the MIT Initiative on Combating Systemic Racism.
They've got one at MIT. The concept of systemic racism is central to the study of race.
As I say, I'm reading the press release.
There's extensive research showing racial discrimination and systemic inequity in essentially all sectors of American society.
Thus saith MIT professor Fotina Christia.
He co-leads, well, he co-leads the Initiative on Combating Systemic Racism.
Newer research demonstrates how computational technologies typically trained or reliant on historical data can further entrench racial bias.
But these same tools can also help to identify racially inequitable outcomes to understand their causes and impacts and even contribute to proposing solutions.
So these guys want to keep tabs on every single racial aspect of everything that happens in America.
And you're going to have something called the Initiative on Combating Systemic Racism Data Hub.
It will serve as an evolving public web depository of data sets gathered by researchers.
Now, Ben Lewis is a recent MIT alumnus and a current doctoral student.
He worked as a member of the Initiatives on Combating Systemic Racism policing team.
And it's a group...
Across MIT that examines the role data plays in the design of policing policies and procedures and how data can highlight or exacerbate racial bias.
So far, the data hub offers 911 dispatch information and police stop data gathered from 40 of the largest cities in the United States.
Now, as I say, they're going to get all of this racial information.
My suspicion is that some of it could be very useful.
Some of you remember when the crime went up.
Police officers have to wear these body cameras.
And they were rubbing their hands and drooling at the prospect that the body cam videos were going to show that these police officers are doing just the most horrible, brutal things to our black and brown brothers and sisters.
But no.
Turns out that 99% of the time, 99.99% of the time, the stuff that shows up on these videos is these black and brown brothers and sisters absolutely deserve.
To be locked up, restrained, cuffed, shot, taken into, in any case, it did not at all show up the kind of police misbehavior that the liberals were hoping.
Now, I think there's a good possibility that all of this data gathering on race will actually turn out to be very disappointing to these folks at MIT.
So, as they say, we want to stitch the data sets together so that we have a more comprehensive and holistic view of law enforcement systems.
And so we can better understand the causal effect of race at different stages of the criminal justice process.
I think what they're going to find is there's no causal effect of race at all.
There's going to be a causal effect of criminal behavior, violence, drug-taking, resisting the police.
But they think a cross...
Disciplinary systemic racism research initiative that includes teams working in domains, including housing, health care, and social media, all will uncover racial disparities in the data.
Yes, they will.
There are racial disparities wherever you look.
And as I say, these people may be very surprised by what they find, and I hope they do make this information available to the public so we can see all the racial disparities in...
Welfare use, in crime, in school truancy, in drug taking, in all of these things that the other side says are due to racism.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, as always happens, we've run out of time.
So I have to bring this podcast to an end, but it is a joy and a pleasure to spend this time with you.
And it would be my great pleasure to talk to you again next week.
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