Category Archives: Propaganda

UPDATED: Mindless Response To Mine Massacre (In South Africa)

Crime, Democracy, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Race, Racism, South-Africa, The West

“Mindless Response To Mine Massacre” in South Africa is the current column, now on RT. Here’s an excerpt:

“… You’d have had to experience the onrush of a riled-up African crowd to comprehend the terror among these frightened, likely incompetent, cops entrusted with defending mine operators and other staff still at the site. The last would have endured hours, if not days, of menacing chanting, singing, stomping, all amplified through loudspeakers.

Likewise, the besieged police at Sharpeville [in 1960] would have been petrified, as the ‘unarmed’ mob brandishing pangas, spears and sticks, advanced on their isolated outpost and breached the station’s fence, at the eponymous African township.

In both instances, the cops—white and black, then and now, right or wrong—fought to stay alive.

The media mob has already cut some slack to the black cops who were assailed at Marikana by 3000 miners. The frightened, outnumbered fellows at Sharpeville, who confronted 5,000 to 7,000 frenzied protesters: They’ve been condemned for eternity.

Sharpeville’s ‘villains’ had also attempted to control the crowds with tear gas and batons before that fateful shooting.

Why not ask 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis what a tribe armed with indigenous weapons is capable of doing to a despised, helpless ‘Other’?

Ask the same of some 4000 white South Africans farmers, who once helped feed the continent.

Or, closer to home, let an all-American lass, Amy Elizabeth Biehl, tell you how furious her white skin and good intentions made an ‘unarmed’ crowd, back in Cape Town of 1993.

Silly me. Question those Tutsis—whose blood turned the Kigara River red—all you like, but they will not reply. For they were torn asunder or macheteed by their longtime Hutu neighbors.

Ask the late Ms. Biehl about her ordeal, but she too has been silenced—stabbed and stoned, by an ‘unarmed’ mob with murder on its mind.

As to the 4000 (and counting) Boers—they’re dead and buried too. Interred in the land they had farmed for centuries; culled like springbok on a hunting safari by the same, disarming, inadvertent enemies of peace and prosperity.

In a world awash in floating fiat currency, demand for platinum will remain consistent and predictably high, even as production plummets in one of platinum’s prime producers, South Africa.

That’s guaranteed.

The miners of Marikana told Time magazine that they would not return to work until their wages were doubled (poor productivity be damned). Any scab who stepped in to do ‘their’ jobs would be eliminated. Or so they promised.

And that’s one other thing you can take to the bank. …”

Read the rest of “Mindless Response To Mine Massacre.” It’s now on RT.

Also available from WND or from Amazon is the prophetic “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid.”

Read the editorial reviews.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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UPDATE (9/1/012): JD Hicks@Jdhickspi encapsulates the realities to which my column speaks (on Twitter):

“@IlanaMercer @RT_com Great perspective.most people have never experienced the existential,visceral threat of an agitated hostile mob.”

UPDATED: Seething Against All Things Southern (Right Of Secession)

History, Literature, Propaganda, States' Rights

From the New York Times comes a pleasant surprise. It outright condemns Chuck Thompson’s “screed” against Southerners, titled “Better Off Without ’Em,” finding Thompson guilty of proffering an “ignoramus theory.” About this man’s “Dixie bashing,” JANET MASLIN writes:

The historian Michael Lind, who has himself taken a dim view of the South, refused to cooperate with Mr. Thompson’s “Better Off Without ’Em,” telling him: “I disapprove of your project, which seems terribly snobbish, to judge by your nasty title. The last thing we need at this moment is one group of Americans suggesting others belong in a different country. … Even as a joke, it is not funny.”

Thompson’s picture of all things Southern is one to which nearly all historians, as well as liberals and establishment conservatives, have subscribed.

Thomas Jefferson considered “The natural aristocracy … as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”

If the South has deteriorated it is, to a large degree, because the South’s natural aristocracy was destroyed in the War Between the States and during Reconstruction. The elimination of this landed gentry was the work of Lincoln and the war he launched (provoking Fort Sumter).

The South still bears those scars.

UPDATE (Aug. 22): Facebook thread: Have you ever read William Faulkner? Hell: From the South comes some of finest literature. As to John Zube’s dismissal: Only about 15% of Southerner owned slaves. The fight JZ seems to dismiss was for states’ rights, not slavery. Judging the past by applying today’s egalitarian ideology, moreover, is worse than idiotic. As was written here, “The missionaries in Africa, for example, regarded slaves as children to be de-tribalized and missionized. They were taught skills and trades; mission stations acted as havens for refugees fleeing tribal depredations in South Africa. As you tour the homes of the founders mentioned above, you’re wont to hear about this or the other wonderful cabinet maker or marvelously gifted horseman, or farmhand, etc. Who do you think taught the slaves these skills and trades? The monarchs of Buganda or Ethiopia? As I say, the Founders were advanced for their time in EVERY respect. Not perfect, but a great deal more perfect than most of us.”

UPDATED: Don’t Be Fooled By Campaign Foreplay

BAB's A List, Debt, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Propaganda, Republicans, War

Don’t be fooled by campaign foreplay, counsels Barely a Blog contributor Myron Pauli, Ph.D., the country is going to be screwed for the next 4 years regardless of who wins the November race.

Over $4 billion will be spent to influence 400,000 swing voters in 6 swing states who are undecided between the champion of the White Churchgoing Party, Mitt, and the champion of the Party of the Secular and the Minorities, Barack. Ten thousand dollars a person to influence mostly ignorant voters. Although both candidates support health care mandates and endless no-win wars, billions must be spent on the façade that it is important to vote for one of these big government parties. The money will be handled by spin doctors, which is a term that also refers to Atomic Physics.
In fact, Atomic Physics seems an apt way to view this whole election process. Romney and Obama are both electrons in outer orbits circling far away from a nucleus (the Constitution) and rarely do their wavefunctions actually overlap with the Constitution. They do, however, obey a political form of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In the Uncertainty Principle, one can know where an electron is somewhat or where the electron is heading, but not both of them exactly.
With Romney, we basically know what sort of person he is – Mormon Venture Capitalist. However, there is hardly any idea what he stands for. His flip-flops are legendary. He can even change within the course of minutes. These rapid-phase oscillations are known in Atomic Physics by the term Zitterbewegung. Romney’s ideological twisting may be the first macroscopic sighting of Zitterbewegung. Perhaps this is part of a larger phenomena whereby supporting a party which claims that supporting the American Dream Downpayment Act, the Prescription Drug Plan, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and the Transportation Security Administration counts as being for small government.
On the other hand, Obama has been generally a consistent supporter of the Hollywood-Academia-Politically-Correct-Left but we have little idea who this Teleprompter-Zelig is as a person. Is he atheist or Christian or Muslim? Is he black or white or mulatto or Asian or post-racial? Is he American or Indonesian or Kenyan? Partisan or above political squabbling? Much of this ambiguity is part of Obama’s own making – in short, he is the primordial “Birther.” Nevertheless, if one votes for the “Party of Peace,” you are going to ensure more presidential undeclared wars
While it really takes a Large Hardon Collider to tell these two apart, the voters will instead be subjected to a great debate, where things hinge on important issues like sweaty unshaven Nixon, or Ford freeing Poland, or Reagan cracking jokes, or Dukakis’ apathy over his wife being violated. Instead of worrying about the impending financial collapse of the economy, Fox News can crown Romney the “winner” of the debate while MSNBC declares Obama the “winner” and the spin doctors search out every possible “gaffe” to magnify into cosmic significance.
The reality is that both candidates are identical particles, and choosing between them is as likely to change things as a Soviet citizen deciding between Brezhnev And Kosygin Regrettably, there is a correlation between having more people voting and the rise of government and the decline of economic freedom and growth as Ilana Mercer demonstrates in her excellent book.
Well, I know which side I stand on – mine. As a true swing voter, I will go for the first candidate who hands me my $10,000. No sense of my wasting a vote for free on Gary Johnson, when I can line up with a “mainstream” statist and pocket $10,000. Show me the money, and I am all yours – Barack or Mitt! Save 3 hours of your life and just watch the 10 minute debate summary here.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

UPDATE (Aug. 19): Facebook Thread. Robbie makes a good point. These automatic intonations about Romney’s past, absent further analysis, run to lazy. My fear is not that MR will flip-flop. That’s such a trite angle. And Romney might have learned his lesson. (Also, Myron’s links are old.) What I do believe is that Romney lacks a good (Austrian, even Chicago) understanding of the economy. The fact that this comprehension is better than BHO’s means squat. MR, moreover, does not understand freedom, and will take us to war, for sure. As I put it, “Mitt’s Foreign Policy Is Obama’s With A Daisy Cutter On Top: Unbridled, Bellicose American Exceptionalism.”

‘As Happens With Many Dictators’

Barack Obama, Constitution, Foreign Policy, Islam, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, The State

“As happens with many dictators …they grow comfortable with power.”

So spoke a CNN guest about the leader of … Syria, Bashar al Assad. “The Fall of the House of Assad” was the book under discussion.

For a moment, I thought the interviewed author was discussing creeping tyranny closer to home, but then it slipped my mind. The mandarins of the mighty Managerial State that stalks America, and the Middle East’s tinpot despots: never the twain shall meet, right?

Wrong, in this writer’s opinion.

Nevertheless, the more powerful dictator can easily depose of the lesser despot.

Duly, buried in CNN programing, yesterday, was the news that, “President Obama has secretly authorized American covert support for the Syrian effort to depose dictator Bashar al-Assad. Two U.S. officials tell us the president has signed what’s called an intelligence finding laying things out.”

When he signed that is not known. Nor do we know the exact contents. We do know that it gives the CIA and other American agencies permission to provide covert support to oust Assad. The dictator has not been seen in public for weeks. Today he put out a written statement, again blaming his year and a half war on, quote, “the criminal terrorist gangs.” That’s the phrase he’s been using justifying destroying cities.

Has this item made news headlines anywhere? Naturally not—not as far as I can see. Both political parties are agreed that, as Fran Townsend, homeland security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, explained, “We should assume, where we have foreign policy challenges around the world, this is what we have an intelligence community to do, right? To go in clandestinely, to support American policy around the world. And so I — it shouldn’t be surprising.”

[SNIP]

Correct. It shouldn’t surprise that The Decider, Republican or Democrat, commits funds not his to causes he fancies. But does the element of surprise cover this debate? Apparently so. At least from the perspective of the malfunctioning media.