Category Archives: Media

UPDATE III: Merciless Revolution & Its Masterminds (‘Crimes Against Libya – Redux’)

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Journalism, Just War, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism

“The concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice.” So Billy Hayes told his inhuman and inhumane Turkish jailers in “Midnight Express” (a film that surely represents Hollywood’s heyday).

Hayes’s (essentially Christian) protest against a merciless authority now, sadly, applies to the US (“NATO”) and its adopted surrogates around the world.

Once again the US is supervising, and/or lending imprimatur, to a French-Revolution like upheaval in a Muslim country.

(The blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution, of course, bore no philosophical resemblance to the American Revolution.) Repulsive (deeply silly) Western journalists are darting about cheering like groupies for the amorphous entity the same “tards” have termed “Rebels.” America helped kill-off the extended family of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, who is on the lam, small children included. Now we’re whooping it up for those who want to do the same to Qaddafi.

Naturally, our enlightened “leaders” said not a word about the quality of justice former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is receiving in another court that is masquerading as a court of law, but seeks to oblige the masses. This set-up (down to the caged defendant) also more closely resembles the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice mercilessly by popular demand.

Under American auspices a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, was hung (and heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner). Even more repugnant than that hasty hanging were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” also had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly’s methods.

As Hayes said in that memorable scene, asking mercy from the merciless is “like asking a bear to sh-t in a toilet.”

UPDATE I: In answer to TL on Facebook: Would you feel you’d gotten due process sitting in a cage in court, being tried by the Muslim Brotherhood? Why the trials? Why not just begin your democracy with a pardon? I’m not the Christian; you guys are. What did i quote in the beginning of the post? If these new, Middle-East regimes are so magnificent, why not be munificent? Forgive and spend your money on building your society, not prosecuting crimes for which evidence in a court of law is impossible to muster.

UPDATE II: Compassionate Fascist: Yes, why haven’t anti-Semites like yourself (and others who bayed about the Jews having brought about an invasion of Iraq) pointed toward the Arab neoconservatives pushing lies about Libya in the media?

Fouad The Awful Ajami is not the only Arab agitating for ever more intervention.

UPDATE III (Sept. 5): “Crimes Against Libya – Redux.”

Gold Is A Girl’s Best Friend (& bona fide)

Debt, Economy, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Inflation, Liberty, Media, Political Economy, Republicans

Are there any economic Austrians out there who treat gold as a topic for pontification, rather than as a real-life refuge from the irreparable debasement of the dollar?

Surely, if you’re Austrian in economics—namely, you follow the natural laws of economics—your personal financial portfolio, however meager, ought to have included gold well before the spot price settled at $1,869.00? (Which is now unaffordable to us ordinary Americans.)

If devotees of Austrian economics had a support group in every state, here is how I’d introduce myself: “ILANA MERCER, author of ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot,’ and WND.COM’s longest-standing (possibly most predictive), exclusive, libertarian column. Gold-bug since $800.”

So many patriotic Americans continue to waste time and precious money on books and columns offered up by top-dog Republican writers. Invariably, the boosterism and jingoism of these well-to-do gasbags (girls and boys) leads them to talk up US Treasuries (in addition to other foreign policy fatuities) on FoxNews.

If your Republican heroes have jumped on the gold bandwagon, ask them: “When did you become a gold-bug?” Demand proof, because they tend to fib.

Gold is a girl’s best friend and bona fide (although credential are not worth much in the age of the idiot).

HERE’S Peter Schiff on the meaning of the flight to gold.

UPDATED: Media Top-Dogs Kick Underdog Ron Paul (Look Inside the ‘Cannibal’)

Ethics, Free Markets, Journalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Ron Paul

The following is from “Media Top-Dogs Kick Underdog Ron Paul,” now on WND.COM:

“Republican and Democratic media whores briefly came clean about ignoring presidential hopeful Ron Paul. Then they promptly returned to ignoring him.

No sooner had Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and CNN’s Piers Morgan interviewed Dr. Paul about his untouchable status among their colleagues, than John King of the eponymous CNN show could be heard recounting the winners of the Republican 2011 Iowa Straw Poll, to the exclusion of the man who secured second place: Congressman Ron Paul.

Michele Bachmann won 4,823 votes; Texas Rep. Ron Paul 4,671. With 152 votes separating the two frontrunners, one might even say that, in Ames, Iowa, Paul jostled with Mrs. Bachmann for first place.

A slick Drew Griffin, also at CNN, cracked up as he instructed a cub reporter on the ground: ‘If you get a sound bite from Palin bring that back to us. You can hold the Ron Paul stuff.”

Following the Republican Poll, Politico.com ran an article about Paul, the caption to which read: ‘Ron Paul remains media poison.’ The article featured an image of Ron Paul flanked by signs touting the stuff the press finds so poisonous: ‘Liberty and Freedom.’

As is often the case, satirist Jon Stewart stepped in to correct—and to make fun of—the farrago of misinformation spread by mainstream media. …”

The complete column is “Media Top-Dogs Kick Underdog Ron Paul,” now on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is now available. The errors of the previous copy have been corrected.

If you’re interested in syndicating my weekly, WND column, kindly email me for details at ilana@ilanamercer.com. “Return to Reason is WorldNetDaily’s longest standing, exclusive libertarian column.

UPDATE (Aug. 19): At last, after a lot of aggravation, Amazon has activated the “Look Inside” feature to “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.” This will enable you to read ten percent of the book online.

Amazon is simply amazing. To appreciate how magnificently Amazon operates, consider this and this lone: how would the government operate this highly complex, super-efficient online business? Still, when certain features are still in their infancy and are in the process of being streamlined—the individual (like myself) can lose perspective. Understandably so.

However, not a day goes by—when I interact with Amazon, Costco, or any other vendor—that I don’t stop to apprecaite the genius of spontaneous order. In the process of making a living, people cooperate voluntarily to bring about magnificent, munificent, mutually beneficial outcomes.

Piersing Christine O’Donnell

Celebrity, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Pop-Culture

Admittedly, it didn’t take much to revive the moribund CNN slot which had been occupied for decades by the braindead Larry King. Piers Morgan is a lefty, but for a bloke who works for CNN—and does lightweight stuff—Piers does a good interview. (I mean, contrast Morgan with the mindless Anderson Cooper!)

And boy-oh-boy, did Mr. Morgan, politely yet emphatically, expose Madam Christine O’Donnell’s high-and-mighty antics. The former Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware appeared on “Piers Morgan Tonight” to promote a book (which some major publisher, sadly, found worth publishing). O’Donnell being O’Donnell, she refused to answer a question about a topic she discussed in the very book her host had had the courtesy to read. (I give Piers props for that; it must have been torture.)

Speaking of mindless and narcissism, here Cooper goes into paroxysm of laughter over a an overwritten spoof he or one of his side kicks wrote about actor “Gerard Depardieu’s [recent]… airplane peeing incident.” I find the Keith Obermann-like bloated text from which Cooper was reading far more offensive that the actor’s behavior (which you just know had to be provoked by the American airline on which he was flying).