Category Archives: Private Property

UPDATE III (4/27): Land Confiscation? Fuhgeddaboudit! More Myth-Making About South Africa. This Time From The Economist

Africa, Crime, Individual Rights, Media, Multiculturalism, Private Property, Propaganda, Socialism, South-Africa

Here they go again. The know-nothing, groupie media.

South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has only just announced he’ll proceed apace with land confiscation. But no sooner than a new South African tyrant shows his true colors, than old idiots show theirs. The Economist ignores—or is unprepared to wrestle with the meaning of—the despicable promise made by the new president. Instead, they get down to the business of perpetuating the myth of a multicultural, peaceful country bequeathed by Saint Mandela, and subverted by one man alone: Jacob Zuma.

But the reality is that, “In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, Not Tyranny”:

The seductive narrative about the ANC’s new boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, gets this much right: There is nothing new about the meaningless game of musical chairs enacted throughout Africa like clockwork. The Big Man is overthrown or demoted; another Alpha Male jockeys his way into his predecessor’s position and asserts his primacy over the people and their property.

The delusions via The Economist:

Mr Ramaphosa steps into the presidency he will be able to tap a deep well of goodwill that he earned in his previous careers, as a trade unionist and then as a businessman. In less than two months since Mr Ramaphosa became head of the party, South Africa’s currency rose to its strongest level against the dollar in almost three years. The prospect of his presidency has already inspired some of the optimism that greeted that of Nelson Mandela, who was elected president in 1994 and who had wanted Mr Ramaphosa to be his successor.

After Mr Ramaphosa lost out to Thabo Mbeki, who was elected president in 1999, he told friends he would not be outfoxed again. His record as a negotiator, leading the ANC side in talks to end apartheid, had already marked him as patient and prudent, and he put both attributes to use in his long struggle to supplant Mr Zuma. Optimistic South Africans speculate that he may pick up Mandela’s mantle.

UPDATE I (3/12):

Right to self-defense?

Right to life?

And the carnage continues:

Socialism is the default position of the evil and the envious. And thus of most of humanity. Socialism is a secondary issue in South-African politics. It’s dumb to reduce race hatred etched on thousands of mutilated bodies to … Stalinism:

Joel Pollak:

Complete convergence of liberalism & conservatism on South Africa:

Handing over commercial farms to subsistence “farmers”:

Refugees:

It was on the cards. Always:

Didn’t have to “predict” land theft. The ANC was candid. They promised it.

UPDATE II (3/26):


Peter Dutton:


And always, RIP:

UPDATE III (4/5-018): Crime beloved country.

UPDATE IV (4/27): Ramaphosa is off to England, where his Highness will get the royal treatment.

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UPDATED (4/5): South Africa Land Theft: Crappy Constitution All But Allows It

Africa, Communism, Constitution, Free Speech, Private Property, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN: “South Africa Land Theft: Constitution All But Allows It” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. Unabridged version can be read on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

Up until, or on the day, a predictable calamity unfolds in South Africa, you still find Western media insisting that,

* No, there’s no racial component to the butchering of thousands of white rural folks in ways that would make Shaka Zulu proud.
* No, the mutilated, tortured bodies of Boer and British men, women and children aren’t evidence of racial hatred, but a mere artifact of good old crime. No hate crimes. No crimes against humanity. Move along. Let the carnage play on.

And the latest:

To listen to leftist, counterfactual, ahistoric pabulum served up by most in media, a decision by South Africa’s Parliament to smooth the way for an expropriation without compensation of private property came out of … nowhere.

It just so happened—pure fluke!—that the permanently entrenched, racialist parties in parliament used their thumping majorities to vote for legalizing state theft from a politically powerless minority. Didn’t see that coming!

And still they beat on breast: How did the mythical land of Nelson Mandela turn into Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”?

How did that country’s “vaunted” constitution yield to “the horror, the horror” of land theft?

Easily, even seamlessly—as I’ve been warning since the 2011 publication of “Into the cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” which provided the analytical edifice for what’s unfolding. You can pile more murders, more state corruption, more horror atop the same analytical foundation; but, distilled to bare bones, the truth about South Africa remains unchanged.

One of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidential campaign promises was to finally get down to the business of the people: stealing private property. Since replacing Jacob Zuma as president, Ramaphosa has openly endeavored to “speed up the transfer of land from white to black owners after his inauguration two weeks ago.” Yet, this inherently aggressive, coercive act was studiously finessed by the news cartel.

Before Ramaphosa, Zuma, too, had “called on parliament to change South Africa’s Constitution to allow the expropriation of white-owned land without compensation.”

Unlike so many celebrity journos involved, both men know that said constitution is no bulwark against state expropriation. Or, against any “public” or private violence, for that matter. As a protector of individual rights to life, liberty and property, the thing is worse than useless—a wordy and worthless document.

Take Section 12 of this progressive constitution. It enshrines the “Freedom and Security of the Person.” Isn’t it comforting to know that in a country where almost everyone knows someone who has been raped, robbed, hijacked, murdered, or all of the above—the individual has a right to live free of all those forms of violence?

Here’s the rub …

… READ THE REST.  “South Africa Land Theft: Constitution All But Allows It” is now on Townhall.com. Read the long version on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

UPDATE (4/5): Free Speech? Not under the SA Constitution.

Property-Rights Obliterator Cyril Ramaphosa Is A New Party Boss In The Dominant-Party State Of South Africa. No Reason To Party.

Africa, Communism, History, Private Property, South-Africa

“A disastrous president is shown the door. Now for the clean-up,” writes one of the otherwise intelligent generic writers at The Economist. (These excellent, humble journalists omit the names on their always-edifying reports.) This Pollyanna-like pablum is in the February 17 issue.

Enough of the ahistoric deception! “In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny:”

Nobody with a modicum of cerebral agility should see in the new South-African Strong Man, union boss-cum-tycoon Cyril Ramaphosa, a significant change of the guard. There’s a reason Ramaphosa riles crowds at a South African Communist Party rally just as easily as he excites the head of Goldman Sachs’s South Africa office. (For a clue, ask yourselves how a union boss becomes a tycoon.)
Yet in the tradition of dimming debate, the chattering class has reduced systemic corruption in South Africa and near collapse in Zimbabwe, respectively, to the shenanigans of two men: Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe. …

By the way, Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise of “land redistribution through expropriation without compensation” is also the ANC’s vow in 1994. Now he is delivering, as fools continue to celebrate the crowning of a billionaire and an ex-union thug (Ramaphosa).

Boldly libertarian, but doable, the solutions are in “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

… READ:  “A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party” is now on Townhall.com.

Or the version for nerds: “In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny.”

UPDATED (4/5/018): Jews Must Never Forget Trump For Remembering Our Unforgettable Jerusalem

Christianity, Donald Trump, Hebrew Testament, History, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Private Property, Religion

NEW COLUMN: “Jews Must Never Forget Trump For Remembering Our Unforgettable Jerusalem” is the new column, now on Townhall.com.

An excerpt:

…. A quick quiz: What does “unoccupied” or “liberated” Palestinian land look like? Answer: Like Gaza.

Gaza serves as a sufficiently strong precedent against the folly of ceding territory to Islam. (With the exception of the long-suffering Kurds, what Muslim nation has recently made good on territory gained or on self-determination won?)

Gaza was “returned” to the Palestinians, who promptly destroyed the hothouses Israelis had built there, and planted in the ground Qassam rocket launchers, instead. Gaza now hothouses Hamasniks. In all, granting statehood to their nihilistic neighbors has been pretty thankless for Israelis.

But what of Palestinian families who’ve resided in The City for generations? This the libertarian must address.

The question of generational attachment to place and title in property is simple to solve if intentions are good.

Of course Palestinians should retain their properties.

An historical, national Jewish right to the city of Jerusalem does not extinguish the property rights of individual Arab homesteaders acquired over the years.

Muslims residing in East Jerusalem must just learn to extend to their Jewish neighbors the courtesy their Muslim brethren receive from their Jewish neighbors, in Israel proper.

In other words, allow Jews to live in peace. Or, just live.

Faith and the facts of history notwithstanding, Jerusalem undivided as the capital of the Jewish State is what Christians should be praying for if they value celebrating future Easter Holy Weeks in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, located in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The current pontiff is not Pope Benedict, who was—still is—a brave and brilliant scholar.

Pope Francis is likely more familiar with Quranic verses than with Psalms 137:5, in which the exiled Jews likened forgetting Jerusalem to forgetting the function of one’s right hand. (Literally translated, it is a vow: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.”)

That was in 607 BC (Before Christ), and we Jews have still not forgotten. …

… READ THE REST. THE Complete column, “Jews Must Never Forget Trump For Remembering Our Unforgettable Jerusalem,” is now on Townhall.com.

Pope:

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