Category Archives: South-Africa

UPDATED: Xerxes Is On The Move

Africa, Ancient History, Barack Obama, Celebrity, Government, South-Africa

At a cost of “between $60 million to $100 million,” “President Obama goes to sub-Saharan Africa this month,” reports the usually adoring Washington Post. A good part of the comitatus—“‘the sprawling apparatus’ that encompasses … the emperor’s household and its personnel”—is going along for the ride.

The obscene details via The WaPo:

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.
The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post.

…

This ugly extravaganza is par for the course—and grounds well covered in Cullen Murphy’s book “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome,” in which Murphy draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America.

The First Family will be stopping in our former hometown of Cape Town. (As if the FLOTUS has not already propagandized from South Africa, during a 2011 trip. Inoculate yourself. Read “Clueless in South Africa With Mrs. Obama.”)

UPDATE (6/14): In case you forgot who Xerxes was, read “‘300’: Defending Civilization Can Be Messy.”

Anti-Apartheid Does Not Mean Pro-Democracy

Democracy, Ethics, Etiquette, Individual Rights, Morality, South-Africa

Miguel write:

Mrs Mercer:

I purchased your book Into the Cannibal’s Pot and have just started reading it.

From your book and other sources on your website, I understand that you and your family (particularly your father) held an anti-apartheid stance.

Your book however, describes the current situation in SA, particularly after the multi-racial, democratic elections of 1994, as having resulted in a borderline lawless state.

My question to you is: Did you believe, prior to 1994, that the an end to the apartheid regime would bring a more beneficial political and quality of life process to SA.

Thanking you advance

It goes without saying that I make a point of replying to almost all letters I get, provide they’re polite. Thousands, since I began writing. As George Will once wrote, “manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related—as a foundation is related to a house—to the word civilization.”

I’ll address in a future post the issue of what failing to answer your mail says about you. For now, here’s my reply to Miguel:

Hello Miguel,

Thank you for reading Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.

I believe that nowhere in my book do I state the belief below. Moreover, from the fact that I oppose state-enforced apartheid—it does not follow that I support what I call in The Cannibal, a “raw, ripe democracy.”

By the end of the book, you will better understand this perspective. My involvement in SA as a young woman was humanitarian, not political.

You are correct in your assessment of my father’s thinking.

ILANA Mercer

‘Liberal American City Charged With Apartheid’

America, Race, Racism, South-Africa

From the fact that African-Americans lag behind Anglo-Americans in academic achievements and socio-economic status, in New Haven, Conn., the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) has inferred, post haste and post hoc, the prevalence of deep-seated racism and segregation (“Urban Apartheid”), in the place WND’s John Bennett describes as “one of the most liberal cities in the country.”

Mr. Bennett, whose article has been well received, was kind enough to ask for my comments. These are interspersed in “Liberal American city charged with apartheid”:

Ilana Mercer, a WND columnist and author of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” left South Africa in 1995. She is highly critical of the NAACP’s “promiscuous use of the apartheid pejorative,” telling WND, “It is as ignorant as it is glib.”
“Like antibiotics that lose their potency through over dosage – yelling ‘apartheid’ at people just because they are richer and more educated than you makes you look ridiculous,” Mercer added. …

At least it ought to make you look ridiculous.

MORE.

Join the conversation on my Facebook Page.

Speak To Race In The Case Of Ria Van Straaten, Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Paleolibertarianism, Political Correctness, Race, Racism, South-Africa

Without addressing the racial angle, the story about the cruel trick played on 87-year-old South African pensioner Ria van Straaten is meaningless. If you’ve reported (as has The Raw Story), shared or provided commentary sans racial context as to how this frail, legally blind elderly Afrikaner was forced to sing for her meager supper, by ANC black state officials—you should speak up now or forever hold your peace.

In other words, shut up if honesty is not your journalistic policy.

Of course, the heroic South African journalist Adriana Stuijt has never made this mistake. As is her custom, she fearlessly reports the unvarnished facts. “[B]lack-state officials laughed uproariously as the old white woman sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in a trembling voice.” The “frail elderly Afrikaner woman, Ria van Straaten, 87, [was] forced to ‘sing for her R1200 pension’ over [a] PA-system at [a] government-agency in Newcastle, 2013-04-10, … before they would hand over her R1200 old-age pension.”

On doesn’t expect much by way of politically unpalatable honestly from The Huffington Post, MSN.COM, or UPI.

Ignorant invertebrates all.

To the libertarians, however, who take feeble intellectual refuge in merely implicating and condemning the abstract entity of the state I say: “grow a backbone.”

The endemic evil of the state is a necessary but insufficient explanation for the joy black affirmative appointees take in socking it to whites in post-apartheid South Africa, a place where full-on racial hatred is a state religion.

Add the sweltering heat to the dangers of a sadistically, racist bureaucracy—and claiming a pension at the social security office is a dangerous excursion for old, white South Africans.