Category Archives: Environmentalism & Animal Rights

UPDATE II: Review ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’ on Amazon (Homesteading in the New South Africa)

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, GUNS, Ilana Mercer, Literature, Propaganda, South-Africa, Technology

“Into the cannibal’s Pot is brilliant, exceeding all my expectations; it is very courageous of Ilana also to attack the whole notion of ‘democracy.’ This is a much-needed shot at a holy cow.”

– DAN ROODT, Ph.D., noted Afrikaner activist, author, literary critic, director at PRAAG.

The word about my book is spreading—and will continue to spread slowly. But not without your help. I’d like to take the opportunity to ask readers to please review the just-released “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” on Amazon.

Many of you have read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.” Thank you for the glowing (if somber) messages sent via email and Facebook.

However, a better way to help my work and its mission is to post your reviews to Amazon. Us talking among ourselves will achieve nothing in raising awareness of the issues covered in depth and in detail in the book.

And you don’t have to have purchased the book from Amazon to review it on the site.

The Kindle, e-book version, is available from Amazon too. Please note that you can purchase the lower-cost Kindle copy of “The Cannibal” without having to own a Kindle – all you need is a PC. This hyperlink describes the free Amazon software application for the PC. So you do not require a gadget to read the book on Kindle.

I appreciate your help.

Thanks in advance,

ilana

UPDATE I: THE SILENCE OF CELEBRITIES. Abelard Lindsey: Yes, I read Wilbur Smith’s novels in my teens. How am I to know what he thinks of the reality, as I describe it in my book (which has 800 plus endnotes), or if he thinks about it at all? We know Charlize Theron doesn’t think too hard. Lots of celebrities don’t think. That doesn’t mean you, the reader, should follow suit. Or that you should deduce anything from the silence of celebrities. The fact that a rich dude has a farm in CT, where I’m from, does not mean the “area is not adversely affected.”

The rich are more likely to afford high-quality private security than the average South African, whose right to bears arms has been severely infringed. The sub-chapter titled “Your Home: The ANC’s Castle,” in Chapter One: “Crime, The Beloved Country,” tells of what remains of gun rights in South Africa.

Take your cues from South African celebrity and Afrikaner activist, Steve Hofmeyr.

UPDATE II (June 24): As readers pointed out, the Cape’s demographics are different (and I thought I could duck that one on the blog!) However, it is still a relatively high-crime province when compared to where I live in the Pacific Northwest.

And farms (as I document in my book) are always under threat of expropriation by stealth. How? A “tribe” squats on the farmers property, cuts the fences, steals the crops, kills the livestock in slow torturous ways (cutting the calf muscles…), and claims the land in the newly indigenized courts. That’s homesteading in the New South Africa.

Any animal activists out there? Care about animals? Read the section titled “Killing God’s Creatures” in Chapter 2 of Into the Cannibal’s Pot.

UPDATED: “Are We Running Out of Resources?” Hell, No!

Barack Obama, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Markets

Most “resources” in nature are useless lumps of nothing. If not for man’s ingenuity, iron, aluminum, coal and oil would lie purposeless and pristine in the wildernesses; the matter and energy abundant on earth would come to naught. The ability to discover and transform natural resources into usable goods, and continue to develop “resource-enhancing and sustaining technologies,” is, after all, unique to man. At least to some men.

Watch this wonderful YouTube clip courtesy of economist Steve Horwitz, who demonstrates that, provided we allow profits and prices to serve as the street signs of the economy, we will not run out of resources. If only the “brilliant” Barack Obama, who keeps looking for ways to curtail production, would watch with you (or, at least, read Henry Hazllit’s Economics In One Lesson, which even BHO could grasp):

And this from “THE GOODS ON GAS”:

Purchasing patterns drive prices up or down. Through their “competitive bidding” people raise the price of a commodity. In an unhampered market, rising prices would have signaled to established oil companies and other entrepreneurs and investors that there are profits to be made in the industry.
Absent legislative barriers to exploration, enterprising capitalists would have defied central planners and turned from tinkering with ethanol to drilling for—and refining—oil. Forecasted profits would guarantee accelerated production. Had Exxon and the others been allowed to satisfy their only overlords, consumers, they’d have long since increased the production of oil. Increased supply would have brought down prices—and profits, eventually.
The much–maligned price system works not only to secure supply but to conserve. The price system—rising prices in this case—signals to consumers to adjust their consumption. …

UPDATE: Hybrid hypocrites. Yes, “State-sponsored ‘sexy’ technologies in the West have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Copenhagen Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean. Enter the Chinese worker. Read “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists” for what’s involved in the screwy, skewed Prius production line.

As for the gaseous Bill O’s Theory of Oil, which Bob below alludes to by way of the reference to the cartel: Purchasing patterns drive prices up or down. The particular price of fuel, concomitantly, is determined by supply and demand. The general trend of price increases is a consequence of government-generated inflation. I understand that Bill O’Reilly believes otherwise, but the natural laws of economics cannot be suspended, not even by “Bill O.”

The Pseudoscientific Method Of ‘Climate Change’

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Pseudoscience, Reason, Science

“Evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.” That was “Reincarnation of the Reds,” my 2006 article which first articulated the “scientific” principle that undergirds “climate change.” Back in 2006, when I wrote the piece, the movement was still called global warming.

The media continue to blow hot air about global warming, as much of the country’s South and Northeast looks as though it is heralding an Ice Age. If you want to master the watermelons’ scientific methods, here’s more from “Reincarnation of the Reds”:

“These mutant Marxists have had to create a theory that can’t be falsified—the kind of ‘theory’ Karl Popper referred to as irrefutable. As Popper reminded us, ‘A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is,’ of course, ‘non-scientific.”

Here’s how you use the Socratic method to question a climate kook with the hope that reason will prevail. It never does.

UPDATE VI: Bravo David Frum

Canada, Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, The State

David Frum deserves credit for significantly transforming his position about what I call the global right of return to the USA; mass immigration. Ever the realist, Mr. Frum has abandoned the flippant, immigration free-for-all fetish to which neoconservatives subscribe. Frum now galvanizes the research of economist George Borjas (could VDARE.COM be next?) in his work, and is no longer delinquent about reporting the “small net benefit” mass migration yields in the age of “high and prolonged unemployment” (among other problems).

“What’s the value of immigration?” asks Mr. Frum in his latest CNN column. Here are some excerpts:

“What is immigration for? What are we trying to accomplish?

A century ago, the answer seemed obvious. Factories and mines clamored for workers as an underpopulated continent beckoned settlers.

America in the 21st century, however, does not suffer from a generalized labor shortage. If labor were scarce, you’d expect wages to rise. Instead, wages were stagnating even before the recession hit in 2008. …

… So why import almost a million people a year legally, plus nearly the same illegally? That’s a question that usually goes not only unanswered but unasked.

… the question we need to ask now at this time of high and prolonged unemployment is: Why mass migration at all?

You often hear it said that the U.S. needs to create 150,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth. What’s seldom mentioned is that almost all of America’s net population growth is driven by immigration.” …

…Back in the 1950s and 1960s, immigrants arrived with higher skills and soon gained higher incomes than the native born. That’s how immigration still works in Canada and Australia. Their immigration systems are race-neutral and favor prospective immigrants who arrive with language skills, advanced degrees or capital to invest.”

[SNIP]

David is yet to confront the transformation of America via immigration, where the “the historic American nation —its culture and Christian faith—is… eventually … confined to an ethnic enclave among many. This is the ‘End of Days’ scenario that immigration patriots must contemplate, once they’ve exited the hypobaric chamber that is the current ‘conversation” about immigration.”

UPDATE I (Dec. 31): It is probably advisable to refrain from using the “intellectual” appellation in naming one’s website if one has a problem arguing one’s case logically. To the comment below: From the fact that Christian factions have squabbled—fights within the family—how does it follow that changing the original cultural and religious composition of this country is inconsequential, or not worth contemplating? From the fact that your average Mexican might be more devout than his American counterpart, and that some founding fathers were less religious than the average illegal Mexican alien (no doubt, most Mexicans have a better grasp of Western civilization and its Christian muse than Thomas Jefferson)—it does not follow that a mass influx of said population is inconsequential, not worth slowing down, or should not be debated.

As for the call to think about the US as a propositional nation; an idea rather than real flesh-and-blood communities animated by shared language, history and heroes. Why, that is the call of statism at its purist. For the rootless deracinated people are the most pliable, most miserable, and, thus, easier to control.

UPDATE II (Jan. 1): Larry Auster is less charitable about David Frum’s about-face:

“It’s not true that he’s been consistently opposed to unrestricted immigration. From time to time, he’s made wimpy, ambivalent criticisms of illegal immigration. That’s it. To my knowledge, he has never seriously criticized the overall level and content of U.S. immigration or suggested an alternative policy.
I sum up his pathetic record on the issue in this 2007 entry, where I respond to his bizarre, self-serving claim–made right in the middle of the life-and-death battle over the 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill–that he has been a leader and pioneer on immigration reform.
Nota bene: the fact that a person claims to have taken a certain position on an issue, doesn’t mean that he has actually taken it. We are not obligated to accept self-seeking parties’ views of their own great contributions.”

UPDATE III: The Center for Immigration Studies, via Steve Sailer:

“2010 Census: Population Up 27 Million in Just 10 Years

Immigration Drives Huge Increase; Since 1980, Population Up 82 million, Equal to Calif., Texas & N.Y.

WASHINGTON (December 21, 2010) – Most of the media coverage of the 2010 Census will likely focus on the country’s changing racial composition and the redistribution of seats in Congress. But neither of these is the most important finding. Rather, it is the dramatic increase in the size of the U.S. population itself that has profound implications for our nation’s quality of life and environment. Most of the increase has been, and will continue to be, a result of one federal policy: immigration. Projections into the future from the Census Bureau show we are on track to add 130 million more people to the U.S. population in the just the next 40 years, primarily due to future immigration.

So much for attempting to hold national carbon emissions stable.

* Immigration accounted for three-quarters of population growth during the decade. Census Bureau data found 13.1 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) who arrived in the last 10 years; there were also about 8.2 million births to immigrant women during the decade.1
* The numerical increase of 27.3 million this decade is exceeded by only two other decades in American history.
* Without a change in immigration policy, the nation is projected to add roughly 30 million new residents each decade for the foreseeable future.
* Assuming the current ratio of population to infrastructure, adding roughly 30 each decade will mean:
building and paying for 8,000 new schools every 10 years;
developing land to accommodate 11.5 million new housing units every 10 years;
constructing enough roads to handle 23.6 million more vehicles every 10 years.

* While our country obviously can ‘fit’ more people, and technology and planning can help manage the situation, forcing such high population growth through immigration policy has profound implications for the environment, traffic, congestion, sprawl, water quality, and the loss of open spaces. …”

MORE.

UPDATE IV (Jan. 2): “Did the Founding Fathers Support Immigration?” Not really. Hamilton understood intuitively what Harvard scholar Robert Putnam took five years to discover scientifically. Hamilton called it “heterogeneity,” Putnam calls it “diversity.” Either way, it makes people miserable. The difference between Putnam and the founders is that the fathers of the nation loved the American people; they did not delegitimize their ancestry and history by calling them eternal immigrants. John Jay conceived of Americans as “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.” The very opposite of what their descendants are taught.

UPDATE V (Jan. 3): Thomas Jefferson famously cautioned in “Notes on Virginia” (Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:118):

[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible … founded in good policy? … They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.

These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass … If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements …

Writing of immigration to George Flower in 1817, Jefferson worried about “consecrat[ing] a sanctuary for those whom the misrule of Europe [my emphasis] may compel to seek happiness in other climes.” And to J. Lithgow in 1805, “A first question is, whether it is desirable for us to receive at present the dissolute and demoralized handicraftsmen of the old cities of Europe [my emphasis].” Jefferson feared that immigrants under “the maxims of absolute monarchies” – again, he was not talking about the monarchies of Buganda or Ethiopia – may not acclimatize to “the freest principles of the English constitution.”

What would he say about arrivals from Wahhabi-worshiping wastelands whose customs not only preclude “natural right and natural reason,” but include killing their hosts? That would have appalled Jefferson, and again, not because of his limitations, but because of ours; because of how low we have sunk.

[SNIP]

UPDATE VI: “Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others ? intentionally or unintentionally ? falls perfectly within the purview of the ‘night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,’ in the words of the philosopher Robert Nozick.

But thumping majorities within rarified libertarian, Objectivist, and loony left circles disagree.

When Objectivists eulogized the dazzling Randian Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., most downplayed her trenchant opposition to the unfettered flow of migrants across the 1,940-mile-long border with Mexico. To that end, the late Dr. Cosman ‘never hesitated to put her own time, money, and neck on the line for her beliefs,’ even volunteering as a patrolwoman with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

The quintessential ‘Renaissance woman,’ Dr. Cosman was an expert aviator, health-care policy analyst, marksman, and musician. …” And immigration patriot.

MORE (with links to Dr. Cosman’s work).