The Man Who Is Thursday offers “The Steve Sailer Rule of Theories:”

Over the past couple years, Steve Sailer’s writings on conspiracy theories (see below) have intrigued me. Like most educated Westerners I don’t think much of conspiracy theorizing, but the examples Steve has given got me thinking. …

More interesting though are some of Steve’s other examples: the Mafia, the 90s Russian oligarchs, the Donmeh, the diamond business. What these all have in common is that they all involve closely knit ethnic groups or people with close family ties. To be precise, actual conspiracies tend to be found only among family members or, what amounts to the same thing, closely knit, endogamous ethnic groups. Therefore, in honour of Steve’s abiding interest in family, I give your the Steve Sailer Rule of Conspiracies. So far as I know, Steve hasn’t spelled this out explicitly, but I’ll do it for him:

Click here to find out what Thursday proposes.

When you get back, I want to raise a related issue: the declining value of covert conspiracies relative to overt conspiracies.

Say we were sitting around in a dorm room in 1978 and I told you that each winter the world’s richest men gather in an obscure village high in the Alps to discuss how to impose economic policies in their self-interest on the nations of the world.

You’d say I had seen too many paranoia thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, Parallax View, and Winter Kills. Surely, if this conspiracy existed, enterprising journalists like Woodward and Bernstein would expose it.

Then, I’d say, no, you don’t understand: the rich guys invite Woodward and Bernstein to the meetings (well, maybe not Bernstein, he’s not really important enough anymore). Journalists all compete with each other to be big enough celebrities to get invited to this meeting, where they and the rich guys can all bask under the TV lights in their mutually-reinforcing celebrityhood.

The secret is that there is no secret. In fact, everybody invited immediately notifies his publicist to spread the word that he’s going.

And, you’d say, that’s crazy! A conspiracy in plain view? Who ever heard of such a thing?

I’m fed up.

When my family subscribed to Netflix, I was delighted to see they have NBC’s Law & Order: SVU (Special Victims Unit) listed in their “Watch Instantly” category. Basically what that means is that I can turn on what was one of my favorite shows, about good cops finding bad sexual predators, and watch it on my laptop. It’s useful while cooking dinner, cleaning up or fiddling around with busy-work in other windows on my computer. And the fact that there are no commercials is a big plus.

Well, I just finished the first season. Half way through I was already able to predict each episode’s perpetrator. Allow me to illustrate by listing descriptions of the first five criminals:

1: Two white women mutilate and kill a white man, but are sympathetic characters because the man they kill had raped them previously. A seperate middle-aged white man makes a cameo appearance and is convicted of a lewd act.

2: Another middle-aged white man makes a lewd act cameo. The rapist in the main plot is the wealthy, middle-aged white father of the victim.

3: This killer duo are a wealthy middle-aged white male and white female couple who rape and kill as a team. Episode features yet another middle-aged white father cameo, in which the father is accused of encouraging his son to rape.

4: Rapist/killer is a young wealthy white male, whose victim was a highly educated middle-class black girl mistaken for whore (because she dressed like one). Features a fourth middle-aged white cameo,

5: Main suspect is a white middle-aged mother, and the actual perp is a teenage white girl.

So it has become pretty obvious. Even without the commercials, I get the message they’re selling: these crimes are only committed by white people - of all ages and genders, even teenage girls! - and usually by wealthy men, often fathers.

Of the entire first season (and folks, that’s almost 21 hours of television, with 37+ white suspects about 30 of whom confess) there is only one (1) non-white perpetrator. And even he gets his own pity party. He only molested that little boy because it’s what his wealthy, white, middle-aged father-figure did to him first! He was taught that behavior by Whitey! He’s not really a bad guy! Promise!

The only thing “special” about the “Special Victims Unit” is their interpretation of crime statistics.

For the facts about race and crime, click here and here.

Tell NBC.

The Washington Post reports on the latest Latin American trend from El Alto, a poor suburb of 650,000 at 13,300 feet, well above Bolivia’s capital, the whimsically named La Paz.

But first, I can’t resist digressing on La Paz’s social topography. In contrast to many cities, such as Los Angeles, where the rich live in the hills above the plains, the rich in La Paz live at the bottom of a deep canyon, with the wealthiest neighborhoods down at 10,200 feet. In Bolivia’s capital, social climbers try to claw their way to the bottom. WikiTravel writes:

“La Paz’ geography (in particular, altitude) reflects society: the lower you go, the more affluent. While many middle-class paceños live in high-rise condos near the center, the really rich houses are located in the lower neighborhoods southwest of the Prado. The reason for this division is that the lower you go in the city, the more oxygen there is in the air and the milder the weather is. And looking up from the center, the surrounding hills are plastered with makeshift brick houses of those struggling in the hope of one day reaching the bottom.”

The fundamental reason for this is that white women miscarry frequently at very high altitudes–a problem that is seen in a few places in Colorado as well, such as Leadville. Indian women are more likely to carry to term the higher about 10,000 feet you go.

This underlies the recent threat of the lowlying Bolivian lands north of Paraguay to secede. Their inhabitants tend to be white and mestizo, while the Altiplano is Indian and mestizo. The low country has the main natural resource, natural gas, but the Indians of the high plains have recently finally seized control of the government after 400+ years, and are trying to seize the natural gas wealth.

Anyway, lots of vibrant stuff is happening in Bolivia, which we ought to keep an eye on because these “principles, cultural values, norms and procedures” are slowly migrating here:

EL ALTO, Bolivia — Tattered dummies look down on this city from street poles in barren squares, like scarecrows for anyone with bad intentions.

The dummies are meant to warn would-be thieves that if they try to rob anyone here, they could be hanged. Or lashed to a pulp. Or set on fire. Or buried alive.

“If there are cases in which people are caught in the act, why can’t we take justice into our own hands?” asked El¿as Gomes, a community leader in an El Alto neighborhood where two accused thieves were burned alive by an angry crowd of residents in November. “We want the people of the neighborhood to be the ones to judge the crimes. Beyond the question of whether lynchings are good or bad, we want to be the ones to judge.”

Determining who gets to judge criminals is a matter of national debate in Bolivia, where a draft constitution that has already won preliminary approval would make punishments doled out by indigenous leaders and tribal communities as legitimate as sentences handed down by the country’s courts.

The proposal has invigorated communities such as this, where many residents maintain strong links to Aymara and Quechua indigenous traditions and few trust what they call the “ordinary justice” system of police, judges and courtrooms. …
Valentin Ticona Colque, a vice minister in charge of communal justice in President Evo Morales’s government, said such justice is less likely to be corrupt because it is administered by active members of the communities themselves, not by state-supported judges.

“When the community is involved and vigilant, it’s difficult to corrupt the system — almost impossible, in fact,” he said.

According to one article of the draft constitution, decisions made under the communal justice system would be immune from challenge by any outside judicial system. The constitution does not spell out how justice should be dispensed but states that indigenous and campesino, or peasant, authorities “will apply their own principles, cultural values, norms and procedures.”

Makes you want to book that lama trekking vacation through the Bolivian highlands, doesn’t it?

I’d like to remind VDARE.COM readers that, aside from being Groundhog Day and Candlemas, February 2nd is also the 160th anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo . It was this treaty, signed in 1848 in Mexico , that officially ceded most of the Southwest to the U.S.A.
Given that the anniversary is sometimes used by reconquista-types and fellow travelers, and that most Americans don’t know much about it, I invite readers to peruse my article, published a year ago, entitled “On Guadalupe Hidalgo Day, Here’s Why the U.S. Has Title to the Southwest”, located here .
Far from being a mere historical curiosity, it’s a topic that, given today’s climate, is likely to be brought up again and again.