Category Archives: America

Update V: The Kindness Of (Caucasian) Strangers (On Brotherly Love)

Africa, America, Family, Foreign Aid, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Race, The West, Welfare

“Everywhere in quake-stricken Haiti, the same generic, benevolent, much-maligned ‘white man’ is doing the heavy lifting in the mostly thankless rescue, recovery, and rehabilitation efforts.”

To continue the topic I dared touch upon in “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values,” where are all the black would-be parents to Haitian orphans? Paraded on the menstrual channel (CNN), I’ve seen many sweet, do-gooder Caucasian couples having adopted a Haitian orphan. Where are the African-American benefactors of these children?

The pattern is discernible: Here’s Maya Esther and her folks. And Meet Katy Hansley, Jeremy Wardel, and dozens of other fat, pale-faced adoptive parents. “Since the 7.0 earthquake struck two weeks ago, 497 Haitian orphans have been evacuated to the United States.”

Agence France-Presse: “France will immediately take in 276 children from quake-hit Haiti who had been matched with French parents for adoption, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Wednesday.” I wonder if the French Maghrebi community is partaking in these acts of generosity.

Here is one of 14 Argentinian couples in the process of adopting a Haitian child.

Update I (Jan. 31): Believe me, you’d be hearing about black charity non-stop, at least from CNN, if it amounted to something. I hazard a guess that when compared the to Honky cohort, the proportional numbers of such charity are minuscule. Why, if there was an outpouring of world-wide African charity for Haiti, CNN would have that idiot Soledad O’Brien present “Black During a Disaster,” as a follow-up to her “Black In America,” “Latino In the Same Place,” and plain “Boring in America” series.

I wonder: Do blacks give to needy whites at all? I think you’ll find that blacks confine giving to their own; whites the opposite. Guys, girls: Why not research this crucial topic for the blog?

Update III (Feb. 1): Latino media have given in to the celebrity driven extravaganzas. Telemundo is riasing tons of money. “‘La Raza Esta Con Haiti,’ loosely translated as ‘the Hispanic people are with Haiti.'”

Update II: LET THE NOT-SO PASSIVE AGGRESSION BEGIN. Laura Sillsby from Idaho, who is probably every bit the sniveling, slobbering do-gooder that the aforementioned Katy Hansley is, was arrested by “Haitian authorities,” whatever gang is officiating now, on the manifestly bogus charge of trafficking in kids.

When she was apprehended by the intrepid Haitians, Sillby, who runs an “Idaho-based charity called New Life Children,” was with a minister and some other really good people. The party was crossing into the Dominican Republic in the hope of bringing “the children to an orphanage that we have there.”

The same authorities that do nothing whatsoever to stop home-grown Haitian child chattel (scroll down), have clamped irons on Americans who’re there to help. You can be sure that whatever were Sillby’s plans for these kids, these were better than what’s in store for them if they remain at home.

The NYT is reporting that the prisoners are from Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho. “The team traveled to Haiti to rescue children from orphanages destroyed in the quake.”

Update IV (Feb. 1): “Love me brother of mine, love me; can’t you see? We’re all the same under the skin.” That’s the cri de coeur of the liberal Brit or Boer before his Bantu brother—all South Africans—rapes his wife, slashes her Achilles heels (that’s in right now, don’t ask me why) and guns down her pleading, humanist of a husband.

Have I mentioned how much liberal men, especially, creep me out? All women appear to be biologically programed to be liberal, but a liberal man is an especially off-putting creature. The peerless Thomas Fleming explained why white liberal males are the problem, “not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans,” as they have turned away from their religion, civilization,” and against those they are supposed to love most and protect. In the Haitian context, the kids I most felt sorry for where the biological children of the liberal do-gooder daddies who bounced off planes from Haiti with a new Haitian son or daughter. How do you bring a stranger into the lives of your biological children? How do they feel deep-down when the cameras are off? Ghastly, I’m sure. Liberals pretend that charitable adoption is the easiest and most natural thing. Only for idiots is it easy.

And, no; we’re not all the same. A common liberal refrain (I would like to see what Steve Sailer has said in this regard) is that differences between individuals are statistically more significant than those between cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. I don’t see why the fact of inter-individual differences would nullify inter-group variance. That’s liberal logic for you.

Exhibit A: In Haitian and other African societies families don’t find it terribly hard to sell their girls into slavery.

Larry King, SJ Gupta, and A. Cooper like to frame this phenomenon as an agonizing decision. Grow a brain. The reason hundreds of thousands of little Haitian girls are given to wicked witches who beat them and to men who rape them is … can you guess? Their parents neither love them as much as, say, I love my daughter, nor want them. Most American mothers would sell themselves to save their children from such a fate, a sentiment simply not shared in backward societies.

Exhibit B: In the West, at least before liberalism made men into pathetic pansies, males make sure that women and children were evacuated, fed, and rescued first, while they wait their turn. I’d argue a lot of young, Anglo-men still possess such virtues or instincts. In fact, so basic are these values to our culture that even Hollywood transmits them regularly in repetitive, vapid screenplays.

In Haiti, “Relief workers began handing out women-only food coupons, launching a new phase of what they hope will be less cutthroat aid distribution to ensure that families and the weak get supplies following Haiti’s devastating earthquake.

“Young men often force their way to the front of aid delivery lines or steal from it from others, meaning aid doesn’t reach the neediest at rough-and-tumble distribution centers, according to aid groups.”

[SNIP]

I saw French rescuers crying, as they did their noble work: “I have kids this age.” I venture that few Haitian men would risk their lives to rescue French kids much less shed tear over mangled little white bodies.

Update V (Feb 2): From The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk: “The study of primitive societies refutes the notion that all men are brothers, and that all men are equal.”

Update III: Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values (Senegal Does It Right)

America, Celebrity, Christianity, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Media, Morality, Political Economy, The West, UN

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column: “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values”:

“… in all its self-serving displays, humanitarianism is, overwhelmingly, a Western affair; a Judeo-Christian thing. It’s as simple as all that. Liberals like Angelina Jolie will trace Western generosity to the founding of the United Nations, to the League of Nations, or to some other supra-national structure.

I suspect that what is at play in Haiti, and in countless locales around the undeveloped world, began with the revolutionary, universal, elaborate moral and legal injunctions encoded first in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus – and, thereafter, throughout the Hebrew Bible – to protect and do justice by the poor, the weak, the defenseless, the widow and the stranger. The people of Israel were enjoined to practice what Christians later perfected.

That stuff stuck.

A different set of beliefs animates Haitian society, and helps explain its helplessness and hopelessness. ‘Haiti is not a Catholic country, Haiti is a Voodoo country,’ Erol Josue told National Public Radio. Josue is a Voodoo priest in a country whose former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, officially recognized Voodoo as a state religion.” …

The complete column is “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update I (Jan. 22): Martin’s comment hereunder reminded me what I clean forgot: the Obamas’ very public giving. I’m also grateful to Martin for bringing to our attention the DIRECT injunction in the New Testament against showy charity. Martin quotes the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.” How has this country forgotten something as foundational as that?

Self-righteousness has replaced righteousness and self-aggrandizement has supplanted simple goodness.

Update II (Jan. 23): CHILD SLAVERY still thrives in Haiti in the form of the “Restavec system.” Children are kept in grinding poverty and worked to the bone. In the West this would be considered perverse in the extreme; in Haiti owning a Restavek is a status symbol. CNN has done stories on Restavec children, but has never connected the dots, as the favorite phrase goes. The angle is, invariably one of, “Look how good I am [Dr. Gupta here]; I’m crying.” Coupled with, “This happens in the US too.

No it doesn’t. When a slave is discovered, usually in the home of immigrants who imported their bad habit, American society shames and punishes the offenders.

Update III (Jan. 24): SENEGAL DOES IT RIGHT. Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has offered Haitian refugees a “parcels of land – even an entire region. It all depends on how many Haitians come. If it’s just a few individuals, then we will likely offer them housing or small pieces of land. If they come en masse we are ready to give them a region,’ he said.”

Wade “insisted that if a region is handed over it should be in a fertile area – not in the country’s parched deserts.”

Wade’s got the right idea, or at least the righteous one. He is offering Haitians a most generous chance at self-sufficiency; at working the land.

“Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher and codifier of Jewish law, holds that the most praiseworthy and effective means of fulfilling the commandment of Tzedakah [charity] is through offering an impoverished person a business partnership, a business loan or a job. … the Prime Minister and [former Finance Minister] of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently understood this well. Speaking on the benefits of workfare reform in Israel, Netanyahu was once quoted in the press as saying that it is not enough to be a Thatcherite, a Jew should go even further and become a Maimonidite. [Excerpted from the monograph titled Judaism, Markets, and Capitalism: Separating Myth from Reality, by Corinne and Robert Sauer of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, with which I am affiliated.]

[SNIP]

Will Haitians be tempted by a chance at an honest living when hand-outs abound?

Update III: Olby Sweats Haiti (Robertson Vs. The Devil)

America, Christianity, Colonialism, Foreign Aid, History, Media, Military, Race, Racism, The West

I almost felt sorry for MSNBC’s old Olby, so desperate was he to scoop at least one news story detailing Haitian agency, initiative, creativity, and, yes, altruism, in the face of the desperate realities of the quake. Alas, Olby had very little to work with. He was certainly not a happy camper when one of his houseboy reporters told of happening upon a group of Haitians desperately digging in the rubble. Olby’s enormous face softened. But not for long. It transpired that the site used to be a bank. Oh, there were people buried under the bank, but Olby’s touching scene of nobility and self-sacrifice was really a gold-digging expedition.

Goodness is glorious, and the glory belonged, mainly, to Western charitable organizations, with America in the lead.

America is clearly coordinating an awesome mission of mercy to Haiti. The US has practically taken over rescue operations. From the churches—who have storage warehouses in that blighted place; have had them for decades, just in case—to the military, the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, forced to control air traffic sans an “airport control tower or radar,” to the many private charities (Billy Graham’s Rapid Response Team commandeered at least three chartered planes)—how fabulous are the individuals involved in the rescue, recovery, and rehabilitation of Haitians, and how thankless their task.

The heartbreaking images of victims demanding help, complaining about its slow delivery (due to Haiti’s infrastructure or lack thereof), or, in the case of some young, fit, machete-wielding men, helping themselves to what little there was—all made our Olby edgy.

He did extract some comforting platitudes from one Sir John Holmes, Undersecretary of the UN. Holmes promised the pompous Olby that, considering how slow the West is moving to alleviate the suffering, some testiness among the victims is, well, understandable.

Holmes also alluded to the need to avoid being too dramatic in saying that people are going to start dying in large numbers tomorrow. Olby is very melodramatic and super sanctimonious.

Aside: What do you think of NICHOLAS KRISTOF’s new idea for Haiti? The New York Times’ columnist says “the best hope for Haiti was to encourage manufacturing (of garments, for example) aimed at the US market. How is Nic, the aid aficionado, going to get around the fact that scarce resources flow to where they are utilized most efficiently? I can just imagine.

Update I (Jan. 17): “Informed U.S. State Department sources tell WND that Washington has taken de-facto control of earthquake-ravaged Haiti.”

“USAID has now taken control [of Haiti],” said one source. “We [the U.S.] are the only ones who can get things done.”
Vice President Joe Biden told reporters at Homestead Air Force Base, Fla., where relief efforts are underway, that Haiti is a nation “that has totally collapsed.”

I was floored. After providing his viewers with a succinct and useful history of Haitian failures—and following a debate pivoting on the themes of Western culpability and the “road forward”—Zombie Zakaria ended a “FAREED ZAKARIA GPS” segment by posing this question:

“Do you think the United States ought to expend large amounts of money and resources to rebuild Haiti? How much can or should the United States do to save a country with problems as deep as Haiti’s? Will it do anything?”

To ask is to answer. Still, this is progress.

Let me end this update with the following excerpt from the Articles Archive, written about Africa, but adapted to “Hispaniola”:

Irrational superstitions, unfathomable brutality, atavistic attitudes, and self-defeating values—[Haiti’s] plight is not the West’s fault, although, Western governments have compounded its problems through foreign aid. “The Heart of Darkness” that is Haiti is a culmination of the failure of the people ‘to develop the faculties, attitudes and institutions’ (in the words of the brilliant Peter Bauer) favorable to peace and progress.

Update II (Jan. 18): A great deal of huffing and puffing has gone on in the media, lib and con, because of
Pat Robertson’s predictable take on why Haiti was struck. I say “predictable” unpredictably—not because of Robertson’s penchant for controversy, but because of his Christianity. Robertson’s “theological beliefs include the idea that one will reap God’s wrath if one defies His wishes, as Robertson construes them. So what?” Accordingly, the reverend said this on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club”:

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.”

While conceding that “Robertson’s comments were embarrassing and offensive,” an evangelical missionary by the name of Aaron D. Taylor elaborates on their internal logic:

“When I was a student at Christ for the Nations School of Missions, I learned about the so-called ‘pact with the devil’ that the African slaves of Haiti made to free themselves from the French. Later I learned about the so-called ‘renewal of the covenant’ presumably made by Aristide in 2003 where he officially recognized Voodoo as a state religion. When the earthquake struck Haiti, I knew that it was only a matter of time before a televangelist would say something that the media would pick up and allow themselves yet another opportunity to paint evangelicals in a negative light.

… many African social systems are structured around fear of evil spirits. Unlike in the West, where the predominant salvation model centers around guilt/forgiveness, in African societies people often place their faith in Christ because they view the message of the Resurrection as a cosmic defeat over the power of demonic forces. This is why when Africans (and/ or people of African descent) read their Bibles, most don’t read through the prism of Western liberalism. They take what the Bible says about the supernatural at face value.

Witchcraft is a poor moral base to build a prosperous society. When people are afraid to succeed in their jobs or businesses because they fear their neighbor will place a deadly curse on them, that’s bad news for the economy. Most African Christian leaders recognize this.” …

I cover some of this in my forthcoming book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post Apartheid South Africa. In the New South Africa, “traditional” belief systems (or superstitions) are seeping like sewage into what were once western systems of law and medicine. The results are predictably horrible.

Update III: Are you wondering why I lumped what passes for conservative, these days, in the liberal camp as far as the hysteria over Pat Robertson’s predictably Christian take on Haiti?

Check out the thread on the neoconservative Breitbart site.

Update III: It Worked With The Unabomber’s Brother, But Not With Abdul’s Father

America, Family, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

It worked like magic with the Unabomber’s brother, but not with the generic Abdul’s father. Not even a warning from dad could sway America to look upon a Muslim suspect with suspicion.

“FATHER OF TERROR SUSPECT REPORTED SON 6 MONTHS AGO.

“US Approved Passenger List.” NEWSWEEK is reporting that “Farouk Abdulmutallab (previously identified in the media as Abdul Mudallad), was entered into a database used by the government to deny or restrict U.S. … The fact that Abdulmutallab was not on the U.S. government’s ‘no fly list’ would help to explain why American authorities cleared the aircraft he boarded, Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, for takeoff. As NEWSWEEK reported earlier today, Dutch authorities say their U.S. counterparts were given the passenger list for review before the flight left the gate and its departure was not approved until clearance was received from the U.S.”

All the Kings Horses and All The King’s Men—the agencies the government has created to protect us—possessed all the requisite information needed to stop or supervise this character closely, but didn’t. Yawn. “Your Government Jihadi Protection Program” at work. (That’s why we need the state apparatus to manage medicine.)

The WaPo confirms too that, “The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was added to a catch-all terrorism-related database … Abdulmutallab was not placed on any watch list for flights into the United States, however, because there was ‘insufficient derogatory information available’ to include him, another administration official said.”

Maj. Nidad Hasan all over again?

Update I (Dec. 27): HAVE TUMMY TROUBLES WILL TRAVEL. Mass contagion ensues. A passenger lingers in the loo too long and is apprehended, but certified “Non-Threatening,” eventually. The man “spent about an hour in the bathroom and got upset when he was questioned by the crew of the flight from Amsterdam,” reports CNN.

The security alert aboard a Northwest Airlines jet Sunday was the result of a “non-serious” incident, and the man questioned in connection with the scare does not appear to be a threat, a law enforcement source said Sunday.
The crew of Northwest Flight 253 — the same Amsterdam, Netherlands-to-Detroit, Michigan flight targeted Friday in what prosecutors called a bomb plot — reported a “verbally disruptive” passenger Sunday and requested police meet the plane, airline and airport officials told CNN. The man was questioned by police after the plane landed in Detroit early Sunday afternoon.

If you thought you were hassled at the airport before, just you wait. The Nigerians manning America’s airport screening posts will be reacting against Oma from Omaha will a vengeance.

Update II (Dec. 28): The Transportation Security Administration (T.S.A) wasted no time in retaliating against the sheeple for an attempted attack by a profile in suspicious behavior:

The NYT: “the new T.S.A. measures required an additional round of searches, including body pat-downs at airport gates overseas.

International travelers were also told that they could not leave their seats for the last hour of a flight, during which time they also could not use a pillow or blanket. They were also limited to one piece of carry-on baggage, including a purse or briefcase, and that piece had to be stowed in an overhead compartment for the last hour of a flight.

Airlines were ordered to turn off in-flight entertainment systems with maps showing a plane’s location, and pilots and flight crews were told not to make comments about cities or landmarks below the flight path.
There also were unspecified measures at airports in the United States, where lines at screening machines grew long. At the Detroit airport, officers in bright blue vests marked “Police” walked through the check-in lobby. … Henry Chen, 48, a businessman who lives in San Francisco, said he was shocked to have a female flight attendant barge in on him in the restroom while he was washing his face during a flight from Seoul. “It was kind of weird, to have a lady try to get in,” he said. “She said that they had to watch people being in the restroom too long.”

Update III: SO MUCH FOR LISTS. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano “acknowledged that U.S. authorities had placed Abdulmutallab on a general counterterrorism watch list that contains about 550,000 names, which is shared with airlines and foreign security agencies. Administration officials acknowledged Abdulmutallab was placed on that list a month ago after his father, a respected Nigerian banker, went to U.S. authorities in Nigeria with concerns about his son’s ties to militants.
Napolitano said without specific and ‘credible’ evidence of suspicious activity, Abdulmutallab could not be classified as the kind of greater security risk that would bar him from traveling to the U.S.”

[SNIP]

What does a Muslim, bomb-carrying boy need to do in order to get American attention? Go on Oprah? This is a cry for help!