Category Archives: America

Mourn The Death Of Mining In South Africa (The Canary In The Proverbial Mine)

America, BAB's A List, Elections, Federal Reserve Bank, Founding Fathers, Inflation, Labor, Private Property, Socialism, South-Africa

A close acquaintance writes from South Africa: “With the unrest in mining, cash flow has gone for a ball of sh-t. No one can hire. Practically all mining has come to a halt. Bloody f-ucking Malema [ANC Youth League president]! Into The Cannibal’s Pot [my 2011 book] says it all. Thank you.”

[SNIP]

I don’t expect Americans to comprehend the loss of South Africa. Americans are, as Pat Buchanan once put it so well, a silly people living through serious times. Other than adjectival overkill (“a deeply silly people in deadly serious times), I’d add to Buchanan’s aphorism that, like Esau did, Americans have squandered their birthright—“the Old Republic of property rights, freedom of association, and radical political decentralization”—and replaced it with a mess of pottage.

Americans, moreover, lack an understanding of the philosophical inheritance they’ve frittered away. How then can such a silly people comprehend the loss of South Africa?

Mining has been “the main driving force behind the history and development of Africa’s most advanced and richest economy.”

Mining is dying in South Africa.

The mining sector is the canary in the proverbial mine.

Barry Downs is an American who knows better. Formerly based in South Africa, this mining sector investor knows a thing or two about what matters and what creates value. He emails with these invaluable insights:

“The mining industry unrest in South Africa is deepening, with militant senior trade unionist even talking about expropriation of assets and nationalization.

Shares of SA gold and Platinum mining companies remain under pressure as many miners remain on strike and non striking miners are being intimidated. The ANC government, meanwhile, appears powerless to turn the deteriorating situation around.

Just think: South Africa, over a 100 year span, produced 41,000 metric tons ( 1.3 billion ounces) of the only real money in the world, i.e., gold, and they still have identified 6,000 metric tons of mineable gold and with some high powered exploration will only increase reserves.

The ANC government and Reserve Bank regime fails to understand that the continuing global economic crisis will ultimately be focused on the global fiat paper money system, which is breaking down, and in the end there will be a massive run from paper and into gold.

There has been talk in this country about the US being eventually forced to stabilize the American economy by backing the dollar again with gold, and they will use the 1933 Bretton Woods formula that came up with $35 an ounce. To come up with the new gold price, they will take the US monetary base, which is $2.7 trillion, and divide it by the US Treasury gold holdings, which is 262 million ounces. The number becomes $10,300 and ounce.

The ANC government, if it had any smarts, should be going everything possible to protect it’s gold mining industry, knowing that future revenues from the industry will likely expand many times over as the gold price rises.

Nationalization will mean that the 6,000 metric tons of gold reserves may never be mined and the industry will just end up closing down. The 1,000 metric tons of gold South Africa produced, annually, 40 years ago, has declined to only 200 tons annually. It may end up at zero. Is it possible that the ANC government will just watch the goose that lays the golden egg killed off?

Given the mentality illustrated throughout your book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot,, I think the answer is yes.”

‘Bribing Some Countries & Bombing Others’ Equals Big-Time Blowback

America, Drug War, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, Ron Paul

After days of listening to the eminence grise of American opinion makers, it is clear to me that, left and right, Republican and Democrat; all are agreed and united in stupidity: The Arab world has erupted once again because of our pole dancers, our potty-mouthed entertainers, our loud and loutish politicians, those of us who insult Jihad’s muse (Mohammad); you know, the stuff that makes us “free”—to the exclusion, of course, of the IRS that hounds us to the end of the world, the alphabet soup of regulation agencies that prosecutes and regulates our best and brightest to the gills, the War on Drugs that claims our property and freedoms, a welfare state that one analyst likened “not [to] a principality, but [to] a vast empire bigger than the entire budgets of almost every other country in the world,” and a warfare machine that, much to the delight of the same stock characters, who deploy such similar stock phrases, has gobbled up so many of our men and so much of our wealth.

From the War Street Journal to the White House web journal; the empty heads who’ve invested huge egos (and out-of-control Ids) in a false, foolish storyline are singing from the same hymn sheet.

Ron Paul isn’t. “Bribing some countries and bombing others” equals big time blowback:

In Libya we worked with, among others, the rebel Libyan Fighting Group (LIFG) which included foreign elements of al-Qaeda. It has been pointed out that the al-Qaeda affiliated radicals we fought in Iraq were some of the same groups we worked with to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. Last year in a television interview I predicted that the result of NATO’s bombing of Libya would likely be an increased al-Qaeda presence in the country. I said at the time that we may be delivering al-Qaeda another prize.
Not long after NATO overthrew Gaddafi, the al Qaeda flag was flown over the courthouse in Benghazi. Should we be surprised, then, that less than a year later there would be an attack on our consulate in Benghazi? We have been told for at least the past eleven years that these people are the enemy who seeks to do us harm.

MORE.

“‘Islamikazes’ in Our Midst” put the whole “they hate us because of our liberties” debate thus:

“While it is far from a sufficient one, our adventurous foreign policy is a necessary precondition for Muslim aggression.”

Now Is Not A Good Time, Bibi

America, Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen a most inopportune time to demand face time with Barack Obama. A smart man, Bibi knows exactly that he can help make Obama look bad, and with this maneuver, make Romney’s insane foreign policy bellicosity look good.

I would even venture that Netanyahu has pulled a self-serving political maneuver by inserting himself into the middle of a rancorous American election season.

Via RT:

Reuters report that Netanyahu’s office had requested a meeting with the American commander-in-chief, but that staffers for the president don’t seem interested in entertaining the idea. “[T]he White House has got back to us and said it appears a meeting is not possible. It said that the president’s schedule will not permit that,” an Israeli official tells Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Now more than ever I fear that Mitt Romney, were he to be elected, would go to war with Iran, simply to fulfill a campaign promise: friendship with Israel no matter the costs to war-weary Americans.

I understand that readers who frequent this space crave partisanship. They’ll have to go elsewhere. I detest Obama and what he stands for. But that doesn’t mean I will not call it as I see it on those rare occasions when the president is right. Obama is on the campaign trail (fooling the American people for the second time around). Israel is a wedge issue in this election. Now is not a good time, Bibi.

Moreover, and as I put it in “The Titan is Tired”:

The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Israel, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.

UPDATED: Spoiled Sports, Tramp Stamps & Spectacular Speed

Aesthetics, America, Etiquette, Human Accomplishment, South-Africa, Sport

I spoke too soon about American sportsmanship.

McKayla Maroney didn’t look lost, as the Atlanta Journal described the sullen American gymnast. Rather, she looked sour, after botching her dismount “during the artistic gymnastics women’s vault final at the 2012 Summer Olympics on Sunday.” Romanian Sandra Izbasa, whose solid, but less dazzling, performance earned her the gold medal, approached Maroney and put her arms around her. The American stiffened, and looked daggers at Izbasa. The onus was on Maroney to congratulate the winner. Later on, when the time came to respond publicly, Maroney, predictably, suctioned herself to the camera and mouthed the right platitudes. “Supreme finesse” is how Salon’s correspondent characterized Maroney’s belated, phony show of manners.

But then Salon writers frequently create their own reality.

By contrast, Sanya Richards-Ross set the gold standard not only for speed in the women’s 400 meters, on Sunday, but in her gracious demeanor. Richards-Ross is flamboyant but fabulous, reminiscent of Flo Jo.

For a spontaneous, un-choreographed show of sportsmanship, look to Grenada’s Kirani James, not to McKayla Maroney. James, who took gold in the the men’s 400m final, run a qualifying race against “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, made his way to Pistorius, hugged the plucky double amputee and exchanged bibs with him.

As for the white leotard that practically dug-into and displayed the contours of Maroney’s crotch: Why?! The other girls wore dark colors that concealed their privates. Cringe-making too are the hugs and rubs the scantily clad gymnasts get from their male coaches. I’m not a complete prude, but that’s plain inappropriate and disgusting.

For ho couture, nothing beat the beach bims of volleyball. Misty May-Treanor, who is as rough as a man, displays a tart tat on her lower back. Real cheap. Here and here are images of the tramp stamps in progress.

Did you too predict the three medalist in the men’s 100-meter dash? It was a no- brainer: Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake of Jamaica, and our Justin Gatlin, spectacular sprinters all.

UPDATE, VIA FACEBOOK: AMM: Why, thanks. The only thing I know is track and field. I used to sprint as a youth, but, in those days, in Israel, it was hard to come by the funds to … buy spikes (the running shoes worn back when…). After racing bare-feet and breaking a toe, I sort of gave up on competing. Ah, regrets. I should have stuck it out. I still run 12 miles a week, but oh-so-slowly. If you have a teen girl; get her into running. You’ll have fewer ho problems (for which, face it, girls are notorious).