Category Archives: Media

UPDATED: Home-Free on Facebook? Think Again

English, Individual Rights, Internet, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Correctness, Private Property, Racism, Technology, The Zeitgeist

The following is an excerpt from “Home-Free on Facebook? Think Again,” now on WND.COM:

“… certain habitual social meddlers have tried to imply that the Facebook forum is racist.

In particular, a public-spirited ditz named Danah Boyd, who is ‘Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, and a Research Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.’

A while back, Boyd was given a significant cameo on CNN to discuss a deeply silly ‘research’ paper she had slapped together.

Boyd’s narrative, cloaked in the raiment of ‘research,’ is titled ‘White Flight in Networked Publics: How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook.’ Sic and sic again: Yes, not even Microsoft’s woefully inadequate grammar and syntax checks have caught up with such linguistic infelicities.

Boyd’s infantile efforts were published by Routledge in the Digital Race Anthology.

The banal Ms. Boyd claims to have smashed our ‘techno—utopian belief’ that the internet has eradicated undesirable divisions. All this was accomplishes not with evidence of rank racism, but with a smashing postmodern word salad—-‘spatial referents,’ ‘taste markers,’ ‘reproduction of social categories,’ on and on.”

Yes, “I am now convinced that American society will collapse upon itself like a black hole under the weight of a young (mostly WASP), idiocracy rising”

The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Home-Free on Facebook? Think Again.”

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. The “Temporarily out of stock” notice on Amazon is a function of a “temporary” publisher-printer glitch. This should be corrected shortly. Place your order, and the always-awesome Amazon will ship the book as soon as humanly possible.

Readily available is the lower-cost Kindle copy of “The Cannibal.” And you do not have to own a Kindle to download your copy of “The Cannibal”—all you need is a PC or a hand-held device (iPad or phone). This hyperlink describes the free Amazon software application for these devices. You don’t need a gadget to read “Into the Cannibal’s-Pot” on Kindle.

Help this work’s mission, and raise awareness of the issues covered in depth and detail in the book, by posting your reviews to Amazon. And you need not have have purchased the book from Amazon to review it on the site.

UPDATE (July 29): Kennon Gilson writes on WND’s Facebook thread:
“Thanks for the article. … Statistically, both women and minorities are over-represented in the Libertarian movement.
Like

Ilana Mercer replies: “You offer no proof for your assertion, KG. The lonely plight of libertarian men—at least hard-core libertarians who are strong on self-defense, guns, property rights, and against welfarism—has been a long-standing joke in the community. Of course, ‘Libertarians Lite,’ who conflate liberty with Gaga and Glee: they get plenty of dates.

British Parliamentary-Police-Press Complex Splutters

Britain, Crime, English, Journalism, Law, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

In the US we have a military-media-industrial-congressional-complex. These branches share a symbiotic relationship. For example, when the top brass in government or in the military want to launch a war on another people (Iraq, for example), or on their own (The Transportation and Security Administration), they entrust the ratings-craving (and craven) television networks to do their bidding.

In the UK they have a similar set-up, call it, for our purposes, the parliamentary-police-press complex. As in the US, its mission is to keep the populace preoccupied with puerile nonsense. The already pathetic British press, it turns out, was going above the call of duty in emulating the government: News of the World, a News Corp, Rupert Murdoch British tabloid, has been hacking the phones and voicemail of interested parties.

Not unlike the government that is currently quizzing it.

Today, Rebekah Brooks of the tumbleweed hair apologized for the editorial direction she took.

It has to be clear that this is a dance of statists.

UPDATE II: Great Conversation About ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’

Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, IlanaMercer.com, Intelligence, Media

I had a wonderful time talking about my new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” with two interesting men, James Edwards and Bill Rolen of The Political Cesspool, a nationally syndicated Radio Show, today, Saturday, July 16, at 5:00PM Pacific.

I got quite passionate, but then you can do that when you feel you’re among individuals who value open debate and happen to be marvelously intelligent gentlemen too. If the men were hostile to an individualist’s perspective, as some have suggested here, they did not let on. Both Bill and James addressed the arguments advanced in my book. That’s the sum-total of a good interviewer.

I hope you search for the podcast on Political Cesspool Radio Program.

UPDATE I: James has just emailed the URL for the show’s podcasts, mine being the one on the 16th.

UPDATE II (July 17): Since I gave the exact time, date and day of this conversation, in this post, it should not be too hard for any individual to figure out when during the program I appeared. There is a limit as to how much info feeding I can do.