Category Archives: Technology

UPDATE II: Review ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’ on Amazon (Homesteading in the New South Africa)

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, GUNS, Ilana Mercer, Literature, Propaganda, South-Africa, Technology

“Into the cannibal’s Pot is brilliant, exceeding all my expectations; it is very courageous of Ilana also to attack the whole notion of ‘democracy.’ This is a much-needed shot at a holy cow.”

– DAN ROODT, Ph.D., noted Afrikaner activist, author, literary critic, director at PRAAG.

The word about my book is spreading—and will continue to spread slowly. But not without your help. I’d like to take the opportunity to ask readers to please review the just-released “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” on Amazon.

Many of you have read “Into the Cannibal’s Pot.” Thank you for the glowing (if somber) messages sent via email and Facebook.

However, a better way to help my work and its mission is to post your reviews to Amazon. Us talking among ourselves will achieve nothing in raising awareness of the issues covered in depth and in detail in the book.

And you don’t have to have purchased the book from Amazon to review it on the site.

The Kindle, e-book version, is available from Amazon too. Please note that you can purchase the lower-cost Kindle copy of “The Cannibal” without having to own a Kindle – all you need is a PC. This hyperlink describes the free Amazon software application for the PC. So you do not require a gadget to read the book on Kindle.

I appreciate your help.

Thanks in advance,

ilana

UPDATE I: THE SILENCE OF CELEBRITIES. Abelard Lindsey: Yes, I read Wilbur Smith’s novels in my teens. How am I to know what he thinks of the reality, as I describe it in my book (which has 800 plus endnotes), or if he thinks about it at all? We know Charlize Theron doesn’t think too hard. Lots of celebrities don’t think. That doesn’t mean you, the reader, should follow suit. Or that you should deduce anything from the silence of celebrities. The fact that a rich dude has a farm in CT, where I’m from, does not mean the “area is not adversely affected.”

The rich are more likely to afford high-quality private security than the average South African, whose right to bears arms has been severely infringed. The sub-chapter titled “Your Home: The ANC’s Castle,” in Chapter One: “Crime, The Beloved Country,” tells of what remains of gun rights in South Africa.

Take your cues from South African celebrity and Afrikaner activist, Steve Hofmeyr.

UPDATE II (June 24): As readers pointed out, the Cape’s demographics are different (and I thought I could duck that one on the blog!) However, it is still a relatively high-crime province when compared to where I live in the Pacific Northwest.

And farms (as I document in my book) are always under threat of expropriation by stealth. How? A “tribe” squats on the farmers property, cuts the fences, steals the crops, kills the livestock in slow torturous ways (cutting the calf muscles…), and claims the land in the newly indigenized courts. That’s homesteading in the New South Africa.

Any animal activists out there? Care about animals? Read the section titled “Killing God’s Creatures” in Chapter 2 of Into the Cannibal’s Pot.

UPDATE I: US Engineering & Egalitarian Education

Barack Obama, Bush, Business, Education, Europe, Feminism, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Labor, Technology

I heard it said that in the US there are two types of engineers: overworked or unemployed. A tough economy would indeed force increases in productivity: fewer and fewer workers are doing more and more of work. But there’s something else at play. It comports with what Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, has exposed:

There’s a mismatch between the jobs that are available, at least in our portfolio, and the people that we see out there,” Mr Spiegel told the Financial Times. “There is a shortage (of workers with the right skills.)” … a recent survey from Manpower, the employment agency, found that 52 percent of leading US companies reported difficulties in recruiting essential staff, up from 14 percent in 2010.

German education is known for its rigor and high standards. But more importantly: The Germans run the same sort of schools I attended growing up in Israel, where, because no pedagogue believes all kids are created equal, students are streamed into different tracks.

Wikipedia:

… German secondary education includes five types of school. The Gymnasium is designed to prepare pupils for university education and finishes with the final examination Abitur, after grade 12 or 13. The Realschule has a broader range of emphasis for intermediate pupils and finishes with the final examination Mittlere Reife, after grade 10; the Hauptschule prepares pupils for vocational education and finishes with the final examination Hauptschulabschluss, after grade 9 or 10 and the Realschulabschluss after grade 10. There are two types of grade 10: one is the higher level called type 10b and the lower level is called type 10a; only the higher level type 10b can lead to the Realschule and this finishes with the final examination Mittlere Reife after grade 10b. This new path of achieving the Realschulabschluss at a vocationally-oriented secondary school was changed by the statutory school regulations in 1981 – with a one-year qualifying period. During the one-year qualifying period of the change to the new regulations, pupils could continue with class 10 to fulfil the statutory period of education. After 1982, the new path was compulsory, as explained above. Other than this, there is the Gesamtschule, which combines the approaches. There are also Förderschulen/Sonderschulen. One in 21 pupils attends a Förderschule.[2][3] Nevertheless the Förderschulen/Sonderschulen can also lead, in special circumstances, to a Hauptschulabschluss of both type 10a or type 10b, the latter of which is the Realschulabschluss. German children only attend school in the morning. There is no provision for serving lunch. There is a lot more homework, heavy emphasis on the “three R’s” and very few extracurricular activities.

The secondary school I attended (I grew up in Israel) provided a vocational track, just like German schools do, where kids with no academic aptitude acquired useful skills and graduated with a diploma in woodwork, welding, sewing, etc. The academically inclined were also streamed into grades in accordance with aptitude. You could take math, for example, on different levels of difficulty. We had a special math genius class of 5 kids with super high IQs. Nobody pretended everyone was equal. Kids were kept busy with the kind of work that was best suited to their abilities, not egos.

On the other hand, “evidence of how stupid American students (and teachers) are has been slowly amassing. The creeping cretinism is confirmed by reports like “A Nation at Risk.” Especially indicative are the below-international-average scores of 17-year-olds. One out of four children is dropping out and not graduating. High schools have been so dumbed down that even average students sit bone idle. Fully 50 percent of students with IQs that border on mental retardation manage to pass. Unlike our European counterparts, American universities, colleges and even corporations spend a fortune on teaching students elementary things they should have learned in high school. College professors attest to a decline in the quality of students entering colleges.” (“THE WORM IN THE APPLE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION”)

In the US of Obama’s “Yes We Can” and Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” all kids are treated as equally able. If a subject appeals to a certain cohort—or selects for smarts—why then, we cancel it; make it fun by sucking out the hard work required to master it; make it girl/minority/Deep-Space-alien friendly. New Math replaces eternal math; social studies does away with history, etc.

Look, libertarians, yes, public schools and unions are a big part of the problem. As important, however, is the country’s progressive pedagogic philosophy, which dominates in private schools as well.

We’ve ditched canon and core curriculum. We’re replaced reason with sentimentality and attitude. We’ve manned our schools with females to the exclusion of strong male role models. I would not wish to be the parent of a young, hyper-active boy drawn to the hard sciences, in schools full of females, bent on promoting every mythical, politically correct orthodoxy that pervades the Zeitgeist.

What Herr Spiegel has observed is the end result of decades of these low or no standards.

UPDATE I (June 21): Abelard Lindsey: My sources confirm your point about HR. But you’re wrong about the MBA managers. They are no better: these are technically clueless individuals, hot-housed in America’s pinko business schools, who have no place screening for technical and temperamental competence. However, America’s most famed corporations have screening processes that go on for days and have a candidate interview in front of many higher-ups. One particularly brilliant friend, a genius who works for Apple, was regaled for days with the intellectual equivalent of a special ops training unit. He loved every minute of it. (I would have crumbled.)

Alas, the largest and richest corporation work a lot like government, the connections between private property and profits having been long since loosened. These giants consist of many fiefdoms, layered with deadwood, and governed often by nepotistic hiring practices. It takes massive failures, as Microsoft’s Kin project surely was, to instigate some corrections (but seldom any firings).

The Israel-Kinect Connection

Business, Economy, Education, Family, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Media, Regulation, Science, Socialism, Technology

Who do you think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? Microsoft would like to claim the credit, but it belongs to an Israeli outfit called PrimeSense.

It’s my guess—and CNN’s Zombie Zakaria might wish to investigate this—that, overall, those who invent these silly contraptions are not necessarily the same sort of people who use them obsessively. (I recently watched a boy bob up-and-down and sideways like an automaton for over an hour in front of the Kinect. Back in the day, my own, now-grown girl would have been building Lego, painting, reading, or “inventing” creative games in the yard.)

Yes, the fogies of “60 Minutes” are obsessed with kids; errant American adults cater to, and worship, but never guide, their kids. The outcome of deification without direction is that the current crop of fattened little Buddhas is not that great.

Truth be told, the hybrid, hi-tech workforce—comprised as it is of local and outsourced talent—is manned, generally, by terribly smart, much older people with advanced engineering degrees. (That’s too much like hard work which is hardly “fun.”) The truth is that the people designing gadgets for America’s (face it, dumb) kids are older and highly educated. Some are Americans; others are Asians (South more than East, but both) and Israelis. The hi-tech endeavor is thus all about the older generation—veteran techies—uniting to supply their young, twittering twits with the playthings that keep their brainwaves from flatlining.

Back to the point: Some of my readers refer to Israel’s economy as a socialistic one, a fact that could reflect a general media bias (against Israel, not socialism). Although Israel’s economy is by no means unfettered, it is not much different from Western Europe’s Third-Way, mixed economies, with a respectable per capita GDP. Warren Buffett has invested billions in Israel’s private sector, with good returns. The country’s high-tech industry has certainly been on the cutting edge for sometime.

Significant is the trend. And it is unmistakable: “Emerging markets,” as Israel is, are becoming freer, whereas America is becoming less free. The devil is in this detail.

I am affiliated with the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Those who’re interested in tracking the effort to liberalize Israel’s economy will get a good idea by following JIMS’ remarkable work out of Jerusalem.

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For a third day in a row, my book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is Amazon’s #1 in the category on Social Policy. The Publisher (link here) is not charging for shipping. This is valuable for our South African readers. Kindle will be up by, I am told by the best man possible, early this week, probably tomorrow.

UPDATED: Weiner Worm Poster Boy for Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism, Democrats, Economy, Islam, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Politics, Technology

Someone has to say it. Everyone is thinking it. Better that a Jew do the job gentiles fear doing, and thus defuse the issue. Hypersexual. Hyperbolic. Obnoxious. Pushy. Left-liberal. Bright: These are some of the stereotypes that attach to Jews, at least to Jews of East-European origins. (Herein more information about ethnic dynamics in Israel, ignored by most American pundits.) And these are some of the subsurface traits people have in mind—but won’t mouth—about Rep. Anthony Weiner’s antics. Despite this “engorged organism’s” delusions to the contrary, his appearance doesn’t help matters.

But there’s more. Here’s what makes the Weiner worm more toxic. The Democratic congressman from New York is married to Huma Mahmood Abedin, a gorgeous, modest-looking, evidently devout Muslim woman.

Weiner, a libertine liberal, has demonstrated enormous ignorance of Islam, in general, and of Islam vis-a-vis the Jews, in particular. I can already see placards hoisted high, by angry mobs in the Middle-East, bearing Weiner’s ugly mug. This idiotic Jew has dissed and disrespected a Muslim woman.

Before you brand me a self-hating Jew (and I know that the “Age of the Idiot” dictates that my accuser will so do without searching my writings on Jews/Israel in support of his accusation), listen: In conspiratorial anti-Semitic “thinking”, Jews qua Jews are said to possess certain inherent, immutable, saboteur traits. I disagree. My opinion is this: What makes Jewish misguidedness more pronounced than gentile misconception is that Jews are more likely to rise to the top in many fields and professions, politics included. (See the “THE JEWISH CONNECTION.”)

As to Israel’s very different demographic dynamics: Most Israelis are descended from the Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497. From their exile in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, they fled to Israel as refugees after 1948. Fierce Zionists, Sephardis are as indigenous to the region as the sand dunes and the Sabra cacti. Their loyalty to the Likud Party derives, in part, from a loathing of what the Labor Party stands for, not least, a racist condescension for dark-skinned Jews. Sephardi Israelis often voice hostility to the leftist rank-and-file European Ashkenazis that populate Labor, as they are fed-up with being looked down upon and mistreated by them.

In other words, Weiner would likely be regarded as a foreign organism in Israel.

UPDATE (June 12): ISRAELI ECONOMY. The assertions about the Israeli economy in the comment below probably reflect the lack of coverage of the Israeli private sector achievements by the media. As well as this mummified media’s bias. They are wrong. We just don’t hear much about Israel’s economy. The information can be Googled. I’ve covered it in recent columns, so … search the Mercer archives.

Although Israel’s economy is by no means ideal, it is not much different from Western Europe’s Third-Way, mixed economies, with a respectable per capita GDP. Warren Buffet has invested billions in the private sector there, with good returns.

Israel’s high-tech industry has been on the cutting edge for ages. We Americans (including CNN’s Zomby Zakaria, who knows nothing about “innovation”) like to pretend we’ve invent everything we successfully market. Some of us do. But many times, small companies in Israel (and Asia) do the work, and sell off to big, lazy American companies.

For example, who does our reader think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? A tiny Israeli outfit called Primesense. (I once watched in horror as one American tot, clearly retarded, pranced in front of this TV-operated invention like an epileptic having a petit mal seizure. This, when my (now-grown) girl would have been building Lego, painting, reading, or playing outside. But the American Idicoracy rising is another issue entirely.)

I am affiliated with the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Those who’re interested in tracking the liberalization of Israel’s economy will get a good idea by following JIMS’ remarkable work in Jerusalem.

This is an old column, but still relevant:

True, Israel’s founding fathers were socialists (although there’s something to be said for voluntary forms of socialism like the kibbutz, in contrast to politically imposed socialism). Born of a collectivist political philosophy, Israel has been progressing, albeit slowly, toward greater economic freedom (as America regresses). Trade liberalization, financial market reforms, increased privatization and decreased regulation have been part of this historical retreat from socialism. But the steady abolition of state subsidies and the enhancement of competition supported by Sharon’s Thatcherite Finance Minister (Bibi Netanyahu) cannot easily offset the effects of endemic violence. Coupled with the slowdown in the U.S. economy, terrorism is one of the main reasons for slumps in the Israeli economy.