Category Archives: America

Updated: Barack Wants More History From Below

Affirmative Action, Africa, America, Barack Obama, History, Pseudo-history, Race, Racism

For the Atlantic slave trade, contemporary Americans and Britons have been expiating at every opportunity. But as historian Jeremy Black points out in The Slave Trade, Europeans also brought about the demise of this despicable practice in Africa.
Having made the obligatory pilgrimage to Ghana, Barack told Anderson Cooper—the “journalist” noted for introducing the country to the practice of tea bagging—that “slavery is a terrible part of the United States’ history and should be taught in a way that connects that past cruelty to current events, such as the genocide in Darfur.”

What a change that makes, doesn’t it?

Does our overlord seek to repetitively rub in the never-changing theme of the white man’s burden, the theme WASPs welcome like wimps? Or is he open to teaching Americans about the robust slave trade conducted by Arabs across the Sahara Desert? Or across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to markets in the Middle East. How about the vibrant, indigenous slave trade conducted well into the nineteenth century in the interior of West Africa?

I suggest that Africa’s own Little Lord Fauntleroy read the words of a brother who’s seldom seen on the idiot’s lantern, and whose works are not distributed widely across the racial tyranny that is America: Keith B. Richburg.

Wrote Richburg in Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa:

“I feel for [Africa’s] suffering, I empathize with her pain, and now, from afar, I still recoil in horror whenever I see yet another television picture of another tribal slaughter, another refugee crisis. But most of all I think: Thank God my ancestors got out, because, now, I am not one of them. In short, thank God that I am an American.”

Repeat after Richburg, Mr. president.

Update (July 14): Myron, I had objected to the use of “slavery” with reference to the West. Alistair addressed the so-called plight of women in the West. The Third World is a different matter (or is it what remains of the Second World that you decried?). There, statutes may declare slavery illegal, but tradition sees nothing wrong with forms of it. Guess what wins out?

Update II: Michael Revivalist Revelry

America, Journalism, Media, Music, Pop-Culture, Sarah Palin, The Zeitgeist

Civilians are dying in Iraq; soldiers in Afghanistan, Putin, his little helper (Dmitry Medvedev), and the patriotic Russian people, are getting the better of Barack; China’s Uyghur minority is going ape on its Han majority, Zelaya is seeking solace from Clinton—Bill, that is; key Irani clerics have dismissed the results of the vote (that’s good news; sensible non-interventionist wanted any findings to issue from Iran)—all the while, America’s cable news channels have been glued for hours-on-end to the formless shape of Rev. Al Sharpton, and other other black entertainers, swaying to the sounds of a pop singer passed. The same specter has occupied the front-pages of major newspapers.

To paraphrase Pat Buchanan, a silly people living in serious times.

Perhaps our Alaskan lass gets it. Having, we hope, seceded from “politics as usual,” Sarah went fishing with her hunk and her adorable kids. I hope she’s winking in the direction of Russia, and having a laugh at the expense of the self-important Obamas.

Update I: Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D, Bill O’Reilly’s token black intellectual (read: a man who is clearly a product of America’s system of racial promotion, and doesn’t make O’Reilly’s lack-luster intellect too obvious), said: “Michael Jackson is the greatest child prodigy since Mozart.” Good grief. This man teaches at an elite university and he cannot distinguish between a Mozart and a songster, who was able to write a simple, three-chord jingle and dance to it; and who couldn’t even play an instrument proficiently, much less compose a symphony or an opera?

For this music lover—Bach, anytime anywhere—that was the most obscene comment to come out of the “wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage.” Writes Debbie Schlussel, with equal disgust: “the only people I feel for at this funeral circus are those kids. Sad to see his daughter, Paris Michael Jackson, cry. It’s probably the only sincere moment in the entire thing. The rest are just phonies glomming [sic] onto a successful circus act.”

[SNIP]

Bubbling up from this sewer of coverage, so emblematic of American society, was the repeated refrain that MJ managed to transcend race and gender. How stupid. The man was tortured by his race and his looks. The latest reports detail the shocking lily-white color of his frail, emaciated body, and the fresh track marks along his snow white bony arms. This was a man wracked by hate for his original looks. It takes self-loathing to voluntarily transform yourself—through dangerous, disfiguring, bone-crushing surgery—from a black young man into a no-nosed elf whose facial structure—the bones—had been chipped away to render a concave, collapsing mess, both sexless and raceless.

As for MJ’s alleged genderless “achievement”: the claim that Jackson was gay is certainly silly. He was clearly childlike and quite innocent. He didn’t have a history of affairs, male or female, and there was no evidence of child-molestation, although there was ample evidence that MJ assembled around him grafters who did not hesitate to use their kids to blackmail a childish man with means.

Update II: Jackson’s adopted daughter is a lovely little girl, who doesn’t sound remotely like the Valley Girls infesting that state. I dread to think how she’ll fare if one of the sisters takes her in. MJ seems to have imparted some manners to his kids.

“Ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine.”—PARIS KATHERINE JACKSON, Michael Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter, at the pop icon’s memorial service Tuesday.

Update II: 'The Narcissism Revolution'

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, History, Intelligence, Iran, Old Right, Propaganda

Richard Spencer of Taki’s Magazine makes astute observations about the cloying American coverage of what he dubs “The Narcissism Revolution.” “The blogosphere has been far worse. If Republicans are saying, ‘We’re all Iranians now!’ then with the bloggers it’s, ‘The Iranians are all Americans now!’ It’s the Narcissism Revolution, and everything that happens in Tehran is, pretty much, all about us.”

Richard captures the self-absorption madness. To apply his whipping words to McCain (they were meant for Jonah Goldberg): “Hate to break it to [you], but [Iranians] don’t like you, they really don’t like you.”

Does anyone think Iranians are hanging on the words of the sanctimonious moron who let loose with the ditty, “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran”? I don’t think so.

I don’t get the National Geographic Channel. My impression is that it’s stacked with skirts such as Lisa Ling, transmitting the propaganda du jour, as they travel through “dying” forests and straddle “dissolving” icecaps.

Now that Ling is preoccupied getting her sister free after the latter was caught nosing around in North Korea, they’ve allowed an intelligent man, in-the-know, to impart to a mind-numbingly ignorant people something of the history of American interference with Iran.

I believe Michael Scheuer is associated with “Iran and the West,” although I can’t see his name among the list of credits.

It should be worth watching.

Update I (June 22): “The Narcissism Revolution” is in full swing. Glenn Beck, indistinguishable from the neocons on foreign affairs, entertained a guest on his show, from one of the Spread Democracy think tanks. The man said, and I paraphrase, “the Iranians are holding up signs in English; they are speaking to us.” As Spencer observed, “It’s all about us.” The same contention I’ve heard made repeatedly by the Republican Mullahs.

Update II (June 23): A good post by Prof. Bainbridge, who conjures Russel Kirk in support of the paleo-libertarian, in my case, (paleo-conservative in Buchanan’s case) mitts-off approach to Iran:

Of Bush 41’s war on Saddam, Kirk wrote that: “Now indubitably Saddam Hussein is unrighteous; but so are nearly all the masters of the “emergent” African states (with the Ivory Coast as a rare exception), and so are the grim ideologues who rule China, and the hard men in the Kremlin, and a great many other public figures in various quarters of the world. Why, I fancy that there are some few unrighteous men, conceivably, in the domestic politics of the United States. Are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy? And, having accomplished that, however would we ensure persons yet more unrighteous might not rise up instead of the ogres we had swept away? Just that is what happened in the Congo, remember, three decades ago; and nowadays in Zaire, once called the Belgian Congo, we zealously uphold with American funds the dictator Mobutu, more blood-stained than Saddam. And have we forgotten Castro in Cuba?” To which one might now add Hamas in Gaza.

Kirk pointed out that the policies of Bush 41 resulted in a situation in which, “in every continent, the United States is resented increasingly as the last and most formidable of imperial systems.”

Bush 43 made that situation even worse by trying to impose democracy by military means.

And that’s what paleos despise.

Concludes Bainbridge: “I’ve changed my mind in recent days about Obama’s handling of this issue. On this issue, I think he’s being remarkably prudent in Kirk’s sense of the word.”

‘Foxy Knoxy’: Another Toxic Export

America, Celebrity, Crime, Europe, Media

Ann Coulter is right about very many things; it’s a shame she rarely writes about the things she’s right about. This week, she has—and with a vengeance—in an excellent column exposing the crime that is America’s news coverage of the case of creepy, corrupted “Foxy Knoxy” (Amanda Knox), an American college student, aged 21, from Seattle, Washington, who is on trial for murder in Perugia, Italy.

With O.J.-type evidence in support of their case, Italian law enforcement agencies are alleging Knox murdered and sexually assaulted one of her roommates, British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

I’ve watched the case unfold and have had similar thoughts as those Ann Coulter expresses in “NYT: DUKE LACROSSE PLAYERS KILLED MEREDITH KERCHER:

“The evidence includes:

— a large kitchen knife, believed by forensic investigators to have caused at least one of Kercher’s three wounds, found at Sollecito’s house. Despite having been thoroughly washed, the knife had Knox’s DNA on the handle and the murder victim’s DNA on the blade.

— a bloody footprint at the crime scene that matches Sollecito’s. The floor had been cleaned so that the footprint was invisible to the naked eye, but was revealed with Luminol (just like on “CSI”).

— Knox’s bloody footprints, mixed with Kercher’s blood, were found in another roommate’s room, where a window had been broken to make it look like there had been a break-in — a theory discounted immediately by investigators. Knox’s footprints, too, had been scrubbed but were discovered with Luminol.

— Kercher’s bloody bra strap at the crime scene that had abundant amounts of Sollecito’s DNA on it.” Read on.

[SNIP]

The case is instructive in what it says of a deep-seated pathology infecting American society, where reality takes a backseat to some self-serving parallel universe. You see it again and again … Something else that’s worth noting and is not forthcoming from the American media, paragons of pity that they are: Meredith Kercher, whose throat was cut with a pen knife during the sexual assault, died an agonizingly slow death.