Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Friday, March 9, 2018

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?

24 comments:

  1. "The mayor of Oakland, once a great city" When was that? It certainly wasn't when I lived there in the late 60's.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Well, of course, there's more" Classic Billy Mays. Another great American gone to a better place. IDK about you, but the rising frequency of widening gyre posts across the internet has me a little concerned. What if the falcon really isn't hearing the falconer? And what is the falcon, anyway? Should I be stocking up on beans? Help me out here, Mr. Diplomad.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well Anon of March 9, 2018 at 7:30 PM I'm thinking (just personally mind) the "widening gyre [of] posts" has more to do with how screwy all our uhm, er, ... ahem "old-fashioned sources of news" all seem now to've been prescribed perpetually Xanax (sp?) [heck, for all I know they could all be on drips] a goodly ending such as Mr. Amselem's "Well, of course, there's more" is kinda refreshing.

    You've heard of the nerve agent attack over in the UK, supposedly "professionally" targeting the spy-swapped former Russian FSB guy proven associate of the "impeccably credentialed" former MI6 guy our FBI fired "for cause" because of maybe, perhaps, possibly, the former FSB guy possibly, perhaps, maybe, gave info to the former MI6 guy who, beyond doubt, leaked to that Isikoff guy of Yahoo News? And now (probably, I haven't tuned in) Don Lemon of CNN is currently indisposed as he's trying to learn how to pronounce "Seychelles"?

    I'd suggest anyway Anon going ahead stockpiling the beans - VA cholesterol experts keep telling me beans are a good source of fiber. Oh and probably some oatmeal too.

    "Help you out here" Anon?

    You came to the right place. Hell we're all mystified.

    JK

    ReplyDelete
  4. "We're going to be negotiating with North Korea.... many question the wisdom of negotiating with a madman... but that's Kim Jong Un's problem" - Trump

    This will probably be the first time in decades that we've come to the table without our "true bottom non-negotiables" already reported fully in the NYT.
    One of the amazingly common sense but still not Washington DC points Trump kept hammering home... "Why the heck do we keep telling people exactly what we're going to do right before we do it? Are we their parents?" (paraphrased)

    - reader #1482

    ReplyDelete
  5. "....ANC took power - and Surprise- South Africa is now a hellish place for everyone, black, white, Zulu, Boer, Anglo, Asian etc...".
    Well, no surprise, this is Africa. The South African parliament declared that it is now lawful to steal the property of white people. Shocking racism, anyone ? And hardly a peep in the MSM anywhere, no political reactions. The S.A. politicians seem to be unaware of what happened in Zimbabwe after the land-grabbing there. Or rather, they don´t care, they are totally irresponsible. This is after all, Africa.
    Swedish lady

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey.. it's just vigilante justice! errr.. I mean SOCIAL justice!
      Who doesn't want social justice?

      Delete
  6. Speaking of the British "nerve-gas" attack:

    When I did my "mil-spec" NBC training, a couple of decades ago, "nerve agents" were a thing of dread and fascination. Staggering around in MOPP3 gear in the middle of Summer was no fun at all, either.

    Given the documented lethality of the "good stuff", administering it to a couple of unprotected folk in a PARK would be "interesting", to say the least, even though a tiny droplet on the skin is enough to really ruin your day.

    Binary brews are a bit safer to transport and "deliver" but you still don't want to be in the neighbourhood when they start cooking.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have an internet friend in SA who tells me she isn't worried because her land has been in her family for 350 years. I wish her well.

    ReplyDelete
  8. A friend of mine makes a very good point regarding developments in South Africa:

    When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and white-owned farms were confiscated and distributed to non-whites, the country stopped being the breadbasket of Africa and ultimately had to import food from South Africa.

    Now that South Africa is trying the same experiment, which will ultimately lead to the same conclusion, who is left to feed them?

    Few will remember that Congo, later Zaire, now once again Congo, went through the same process. When the Belgians gave independence to Congo, white-owned farms were confiscated ("nationalized") and given to black owners. Most of them knew next to nothing about farming, so just plundered the farms for whatever wealth existed and Congo stopped exporting huge quantities of dairy and other farm produce to Europe. Eventually roads disappeared back into jungle, Mobutu plundered the nation's wealth for his own personal fortune, and the country was torn apart by civil war.

    And yes, Dip -- the whole South African thingie was overlaid in the US as something akin to our own civil rights struggle. I was serving in Africa then, and tried to tell anyone who would listen that South Africa was not not repeating our civil rights experience, that the Afrikaaners were merely another tribe in the African context. Of course no one would listen: State had decided that was the policy. It did not end well.

    BTW, have you seen that Asians (people of Indian and Pakistani descent) in Kenya recently won the right to declare themselves another one of Kenya's tribes? Folly.

    ReplyDelete
  9. As I see it, the mayor of Oakland, along with others like her, should be charged with Sedition, and shipped off to Guantanamo as enemy combatants.

    ReplyDelete
  10. What most people do not realize and seems counter intuitive is that all the blacks in South Africa were illegal aliens who over ran the country. South Africa simply did not control their borders and blacks from neighboring countries flowed in. The too little too late effort to control that illegal immigration looked a little too rough but in fact was less rought than that black population was. Most of the atrocities were committed by the blacks. Eventually the illegal immigrant population was too big to control the violence was too great to accept and the outside meddling was to great to overcome and South Africa gave up. Sadly for the native South Africans, the whites (I did say it was counter intuitive) they were left at the mercy of the new black leaders. Well, luckily the world was still watching and there was free stuff being handed out if they acted nice so they did act nice (mostly). But that is over and now the world will get a ring side seat to what shit hole countries do to people of non-color. There will be a genocide. Every white will be/must be killed or run out of the country. More than likely after this happens the various black factions in South Africa will continue their killing spree until one of those factions succeeds in killing most of their opponents. Don't look for the MSM to cover it in depth or for the UN to boycott the neo-apartheid South African government. As South Africa devolves into tyranny and despicable and unprintable acts look for China or Russia to move in and take advantage of the disarray. That is the future of South Africa, much worse than their past.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. iirc, the South African economy was highly dependent upon the labor of those (correctly defined) illegal immigrants. If the preexisting afrikaner population had implemented strong borders and a proper temporary visa program, perhaps the coming calamity would've been avoided. Hard to say, *but* I'm pretty sure the nearly-free labor created a temptation that ran roughshod over the existing population.

      Delete
  11. To be fair i gave SA five years to implode after black communist rule was established. Going on 20+ years now. The whites are down to 8% of population from 40% in the 50s. Ironically the apartheid government established modern hospitals and farming methods that allowed the blck population to increase in SA by 40-50 million. The white tribe is up against it -for sure. Nonetheless, chaos breeds opportunities and i am strangely optimistic about the prospects in SA.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only if you're "Lord of the flies".

      I was in Jo-berg back in '98 on business, and even then(5 years or so into Mandela's regime) white folks were doing everything they could to get out. It was a terrible place. The national pastime was carjacking. They told me at the airport that if I were to be driving at night, to not stop at any red light. I was never so happy to fly out of anyplace I'd been...

      Delete
    2. I've talked at length to a couple of acquaintances who have travelled widely in south and east Africa in the last few years. They neither of them have spent more than a few hours in Zimbabwe. Neither liked Zambia.

      Otherwise they found the countries they had visited better than they had expected and certainly far better than, for instance, Nigeria. With one exception: they found the perpetual threat of violence in South Africa frightening and wearying.

      South Africa has been brought down by the desire for cheap labour and cheap servants, combined - I am told - with American bullying.

      Delete
  12. Am I interpreting this correctly? The problem was the inversion of priorities and accompanying naivety? Instead of trying to stop slavery in the arab world, progressive decided they needed to stop segregation in South Africa. But the purpose was actually racist in its intent, ie, *white* people in South Africa should *know* better than to have a segregated state, while arabs in the middle east are 'just inferior'?
    Or was it mainly that they would ignore the larger conflict between the US and the USSR, and effectively wind up on the team of the USSR even while supposedly representing the west?

    - reader #1482

    ReplyDelete
  13. "President Trump and Secretary Mattis made clear that Kim Jong-Un was heading for the most terrifying 20 minutes of his existence."

    As long as Trump and company repeat this every few minutes at the talks things will work out.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Robert M Mitchell Jr.March 10, 2018 at 2:48 PM

    Alas, given what we now know about the corruption of the FBI, CIA, Justice and State, Trump had a darn good reason to seek out fresh channels to the Russians.

    ReplyDelete
  15. "once-formidable and world-beating education system": Americans often claim - or used to claim - that the world envies them their wonderful education system. That's not my experience: I've met plenty of people who dismiss it as hopelessly second-rate, with the exception usually being allowed of admiration of many postgraduate research schools.

    The second exception I can think of is that I've met thorough-going admirers of the Californian universities. The combination of the UC system, Berkeley being an example, with the State university system, plus the private universities especially Stanford and Caltech, but also e.g. the Claremont Colleges, obviously commanded much respect.

    I'm out of touch with such things: I wonder if the whole shebang still commands respect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Correct as usual, DM. I always warn my British friends and relations that there are people ready and willing to give Britain the "benefits" of an American style education. CS Lewis was warning about this as early as 1952, in an essay about exams, in which he discussed "Reformers" questions about what anyone would learn from some question. Lewis pointed out that when one was writing an exam, the time for learning was passed. The exam would test what had already been learned. A sometime commenter here, now on Her Majesty's business, overseas, attended Grammar Schools, before the Comprehensives took over everything that they had not already ruined. He learned things I would not see until University.

      MFA

      Delete
  16. The apartheid government was going to fall one way or the other: either it would manage a soft landing, or it would end up going the way of Rhodesia.
    South Africa chose the former.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As I tired to make clear, there was no difference in the end between a soft or a hard landing. The plane landed in Rhodesia either way.

      Delete
  17. I sadly feel vindicated. The Anti-apartheid movement is a sham. This so so predictable.

    ReplyDelete
  18. And WA state and Oregon are headed the same way as CA. I left CA in the early 70s, so I recognize the signs. It has become like living in an insane asylum.

    Oakland used to have black middle class families, supported by good wages at the shipyards. It started sliding in the mid 60s with the civil rights rioting. It is truly sad that the current politicians can't see the difference between California in the 60s and California now.

    ReplyDelete