California, North Korea, South Africa, Seychelles: Things are Happening

So much is happening that it is difficult to see it all, much less boil it down to comprehensible lumps; and then, hardest of all, discuss the lumps with some intelligence. I am going to give it a try--well, not discuss it all, but some of it, and see if I can reduce a few of these "things" to lumps I can see and understand. No guarantees. The intelligence part nails me every time.

My old home state of California is in the news, again, and not for good things. My once beloved California, in days now gone the envy of the globe--the generator of so much of what now comprises the modern world such as amazing aerospace technologies, television, music, movies, computers, cars, freeways, video games, "smart" phones, surfing, birth control pills, Uber, Lyft, Google, Twitter, shelled walnuts, and so much more, is now a place caught in a death spiral.

Uber, yes, that's a word we will use a lot in describing California.

The politics and bureaucracy of the ol' Bear Republic, along with those of its counties, cities, and once-formidable and world-beating education system have fallen into a deep, deep progressive hole from which there seems no escape--the digging continues at a furious pace. Just about any sensible person who can do so (there's the rub) has left or is making plans to leave the state. Businesses are closing up, unable to survive the increasingly oppressive rule of new regulations, taxes, and the most extreme sort of political correctness. It has become a state of the uber rich and the uber poor, many imported from abroad, and its key politicians proudly proclaim that California is the future for America!

It is a state in which national laws, including the Constitution, no longer seem to apply. Illegal aliens by the millions are welcomed, given bounty from the declining treasure chests of the state, cities and counties, protected from law enforcement for the crimes they commit, and allowed, nay, encouraged to vote. The cities of San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles (to name just three) are now third-world repositories of disease, with fecal matter adrift in the air and water, massive tent cities, and uber violent street gangs. The authorities respond to the chaos in the streets by making it increasingly difficult for the law-abiding to defend themselves and their families. The mayor of Oakland, once a great city, and now . . . well, go there and see for yourself . . . warns violent, criminal aliens that ICE raids are forthcoming, making it possible for them to escape the long-arm of the Feds.

The progressives are up in arms, alarmed, driven by a righteous woke anger, because the Trump administration has had the temerity to suggest that California must comply with the law and Constitution, or pay the consequences. For the Jefferson Davis clones of California, this is a war on immigration! Persons of color are being targeted! California authorities appear looking for a Ft. Sumter to attack and make known their intention to secede from the Union! We'll see how this turns out, but I see no happy ending.

North Korea's "Little Rocket Man"--Surprise!--has realized that he has come up against somebody, Donald Trump, quite different from what he and his reprehensible family have faced in the past. President Trump and Secretary Mattis made clear that Kim Jong-Un was heading for the most terrifying 20 minutes of his existence. He is today making noises that well, maybe, he and Trump should talk and work something out, because, he might be thinking, that, maybe, having a little nuclear force is not worth the cost of getting his country, regime, and himself (above all) vaporized and turned into radioactive dust. It seems (remember that word) Trump has gotten the measure of Kim. We'll see how this turns out, but there is, just maybe, a possibility for a happy ending. I am sure the progressives will be heaping praise on Trump . . . right.

South Africa. Complicated place with a complicated history which few outside of the Boers and the Zulus seem to understand or appreciate. When I was at the UN in the 1980's I had to deal with the South African "Issue." Israel and South Africa, of course, were the greatest evils facing mankind, and the UN spared no effort to crush them both. I would, on occasion meet, quite discreetly, the harried and tired-looking South African diplomats assigned to New York and Geneva. I remember their Mission in NY had no identifying flag or symbol; you knew you were entering South African property only because the door handle read "Trek." A giveaway, that. The British, Israelis, and we were about the only ones who argued for a more moderate treatment of South Africa. In the end, of course, our policy likely would have produced the same thing that eventually happened, to wit, the death of Africa's richest and most productive country.

In dealing with South Africa back then, we viewed it as some sort of replay of our own civil rights struggle and fight against Jim Crow. That, of course, was nonsense, but few of us had the knowledge or courage to say so. The Boers, especially, had about as much claim to South Africa as did the Zulus. Both were conquering tribes. Traditional enemies of the British, the Boers and the Zulus, in fact, had reached a sort of accommodation and seemed tacitly united against the massive influx of outsiders that finally did alter irrevocably the demographics of South Africa. Immigration did the place in. Yes, evil South Africa under the evil Boers was a net recipient of immigrants and refugees, almost all black and Asian from other parts of Africa. For a time, of course, big business such as in the diamond, gold, and agricultural sectors welcomed these migrants as a source of cheap labor. Well, as we can see at home and in Europe, cheap labor can get very expensive very quickly especially once it gets politicized by "progressive" forces. So, evil apartheid was destroyed; Mandela and his ANC took power, and--Surprise!--South Africa has become a hellish place for everybody, black, white, Zulu, Boer, Anglo, Asian, etc.

We now see the South African parliament declaring that white-owned property (about ¾'s of the most productive agricultural land) can and should be seized without compensation, in the style of Zimbabwe. We have prominent South African politicians calling for the murder of whites. The world reaction seems, to say the least, muted. I see no calls for a meeting of the UNSC, or emergency human rights meetings in NY or Geneva. Silence in the face of genocide. White Lives Don't Matter!

The freak show known as the Mueller investigation into Trump-Russian collusion has moved on to the Seychelles. This small African island republic was APPARENTLY the setting for a meeting in January 2017 between Trump reps and the Russians brokered by the real-life all-purpose Orwellian Emmanuel Goldstein known as Eric Prince. Mr. Prince, once the head of Blackwater, features prominently in the progressive pantheon of evil ones; the fact that he's also the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos makes him a double-plus-good bogeyman. It seems, per this silly story, that Prince sought to help Trump set up a back channel to the Russians shortly before the President-elect took office. The story is rubbish. Why would the President of the United States need a double-plus secret back channel to Moscow when we have infinite number of channels to Russia? Why would Trump, whom, we should remember, according to the DNC had been bought and paid for by Putin, need Prince to broker such a deal? Presumably the Russians had all the "channel" they needed . . . Nonsense. Total rubbish.

Well, of course, there's more, but what would I write about in the days to come if I spelled it all out now?