Update II: Beck: ‘I’m With Ron Paul’ (Breaking From The Pack)

Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, Homeland Security, libertarianism, Ron Paul, War

A good few posts ago, I observed that “in his groundbreaking series on the American Progressive Movement, Fox News personality Glenn Beck, previously an unambiguously pro-war military-booster, was inching towards examining his support for the kind of state expansion (via warfare) the founders would have abhorred.

Glenn made the final leap today to a non-interventionist foreign policy emphasizing American interests and self-defense and no nation building. He said the words, “I am with Ron Paul.” This could be good for the country—unless Beck is forced by his backers (FoxNews) to back down.

For example, this reasonable remark of Obama’s is drawing FoxNews ire:

“It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

I will post the Beck YouTube feature as soon as it’s up (readers are welcome to beat me to it).

Update: “America Is a Republic, Not an Empire” by Glenn Beck:

“The example we set now is what pisses everyone off: We say we’re going to spread democracy, but we bed dictators, we bow to Saudi princes, when it’s to our advantage. George Washington wanted us to be like the Swiss: Enemy of none, friend to all. Places like Germany — hey, we’re glad you are all straightened out, but we’re pulling out, you’re on your own. We’re not staying. We need to get out of the Korean Peninsula and Japan. No longer will we be the world’s loiterers.

The United States spends approximately $102 billion annually to maintain troops, equipment, fleets and bases overseas — if you count Iraq and Afghanistan it jumps to $250 billion. Well, I’m tired of being the world’s policeman. And in many cases we are the world’s loiterers. We need to have a “no loitering” policy.

That policy comes from the progressives. The Republicans say we’ll send in the “green helmets” and just nation build our way to global security. The liberals want to do it through the United Nations; they want to send in the “blue helmets” — which we pay for.

This doesn’t work. I don’t want to nation build. I don’t want a global government or military force.

And for all the Don Rumsfelds out there watching who are cursing me out right now because they think no time is a good time to cut defense spending. Well, maybe this will help. This chart shows who accounts for all military spending in the world.

Almost half of all military spending in the world — 47 percent — is America. The next biggest spender is Europe — that’s not even a country, they spent $289 billion on military-related expenses. We almost spent that much outside our country for our own defense!

So don’t tell me we can’t afford to cut back. Clearly we can.

And when we are in a situation like Afghanistan, we fight to win it. With all of our technology today, why can’t we get in and out of Afghanistan in a couple of years? Because the politicians have their grimy little fingers on everything. Take the military off the leash; if you decide to go to war, unhook those dogs and get the hell out of the way.”

Update II (April 16): Together with the Cato Institute, the author of the blog Downsizing the Federal Government in particular, Beck has been running pragmatic, hour-long workshops on where and how much to slash. Pretty much everything. The man is a force of nature.

Back to the matter of Beck’s “I’m with Ron Paul on foreign policy” statement: This too is a very important development. Beck is pulling away from the neoconservative pack at Fox. By declaring war on their gratuitous wars he has driven a wedge between himself and the likes of Hannity, O’Reilly, Krauthammer, Kristol, and all the followers (I don’t know a Republican ditto head who doesn’t go along with the war-all-the-time = a strong national defense formula). The unity of the ditto heads on war policy was unshakable.

Again: By denouncing the war talisman, Beck, a major star on the Right, has created oscillation in the ossifying GOP. He has broken a united front which—thanks to the likes of Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, O’Reilly; National Review, Weekly Standards—seemed unchallenged.

Update II: The Carnage Continues; So Does Mandela's Silence

Africa, Crime, IlanaMercer.com, Journalism, Media, Race, Racism, South-Africa

“Only 70 miles from a 2010 World Cup football stadium, a farmer’s wife and a boy aged 13 learn to defend themselves with lethal weapons. They say thousands of white landowners have been killed by Zimbabwe-style marauders; their black rulers accuse them of belligerence and right-wing tendencies. Aidan Hartley reports on the war of words you won’t read about in your World Cup holiday brochure.”

And only a handful of journalists have been willing to report on the fate of white, rural folks in Mandela’s South Africa. Aidan Hartley of the British Daily Mail joins a select few. Read his report:

“Bella wakes. She hears a strangled, gurgling sound. It’s the dog, she thinks.

‘Peter, there’s something wrong,’ she says to her husband. Noises emerge from the room of her mother-in-law, who’s 98 and confined to a wheelchair.

It’s 1am. Bella gets up and walks out of the bedroom. In the hall she sees a young man who at first she thinks is her son. Except he’s black, wears a balaclava and is pointing a gun at her.

‘He comes for me,’ says Bella, her hand before her tear-stained face.

‘He’s going to shoot me! I trip as I run back to the bedroom. Peter comes to the door but he has nothing in his hand, no pistol. I hear a gun go off. I hear my mother-in-law screaming. I lock the door and telephone my son. I tell him: “I think they shot Pa!”’

Two men are outside the bedroom window with a rifle. She loads the pistol Peter keeps by the bed.

‘I take the gun and say, “Come on! I’ll shoot you!”’

Back in the hall she finds Peter dead, a trail of blood across the kitchen floor. Her mother-in-law Gerda is bruised and beaten.

‘I can’t tell you how hopeless I felt,’ Bella says. ‘I will see it in front of me for weeks, months, years.’ …

Days after Peter is cremated, the attackers return. The survivors are sleeping elsewhere by now, so the gang finds only the dogs in the house. They torture the animals with boiling water before soaking them in petrol and setting them on fire. [A fate that is not reserved for dogs and would have befallen their owners had they been in residence.–IM]

I ask Bella for a motive and she says a group of black South Africans who are squatting on their farmland have repeatedly threatened them.

After the family find the dogs, Bella’s son Piet calls the police. Weeks later the attackers are still at large; police arrested one man in connection with the killing but he was later released.

I am in her home. The bullet holes are still clearly visible. I ask her what she is going to do.

‘If we stay here they will kill us. You can’t say this was a dream, or rewind what happened. They want our land.’ …

…. Driving around Mpumalanga Province, east of Johannesburg, in what used to be the Transvaal, I found myself called by the farmers to a string of grisly murder scenes. In some the blood was still drying on the furniture or the street. In others, witnesses gave me accounts of killings involving rituals of extreme brutality: of victims boiled alive, forced to kneel and shot execution style and tortured in ways so unimaginable they are too horrendous to print. The same goes for the many pictures I have been shown of the barely identifiable corpses and horrific crime scenes.” …

Read the rest of Hartley’s report.

Update: WHAT WOULD GLENN SAY? I wonder what Beck the Boer basher say, in his histrionics, about KK (Kommando Korps) “formed to provide self-defence training for Afrikaner communities who feel under threat in today’s South Africa. Most of them came from the capital, Pretoria, which the government wants to rename Tshwane to reflect its pre-colonial, African history: an example of what the Afrikaners regard as the dilution of their historic identity.” [Boers built the place, so of course it should be renamed for the Bantu.]

Glenn: “OMIGOD, KK is short for KKK.” (As if everything begins and ends with the American perspective.)

And what would Glenn Beck, who sees fascists where there are only desperation and a legitimate quest for separation from evil incarnate, say of “Franz Jooste, who likes to be referred to using the old Boer paramilitary rank of ‘Kommandant”’?

The Telegraph:

“The KK was set up 20 years ago but has struggled to bring in new blood or funding in recent years. It runs training camps across the country to provide a pool of potential combatants if a war is declared against the Afrikaner people. In the meantime, unpaid KK operatives in military-style uniforms defend vulnerable white communities against what they describe as ‘a guerilla war’ and ‘genocide.'”

Before the KK, “Boer farmers were organised into farm militias known as Commandos. These defended rural communities from assault and, just over a century ago, they formed the vanguard of the rebellion against the hated British Empire. … In recent years the government has moved to disband the Commando units as part of a security plan to improve policing nationwide.”

Update II (April 16): About the link provided by our South African readers to images of the killings. I have seen the pictures. In my heart I have hoped hard that what I saw has not been inflicted on humans (or animals) and that these were forgeries (it’s hard to come by sourcing). Sadly, I fear I am wrong. What I have seen in the mangled flesh is the handiwork of pure evil. Again, I have not used these images out of respect for the victims, but also, mainly, becasue they are not sourced. I will allow them on the blog.

Moreover, as readers of this space know, I keep three lead blog posts open at any given time for comment. Of the three that propagate to the IlanaMercer.com’s front page, I will try and make one about South Africa, my homeland and my homies. We will keep the topic alive.

Regular readers and visitors, I hope, will send others to Barely a Blog and to www.IlanaMercer.com (archived under “South Africa”). So that blog and main site become a repository for facts and analysis about what’s underway in the once glorious South Africa.

Update II: The Carnage Continues; So Does Mandela’s Silence

Africa, Crime, IlanaMercer.com, Journalism, Media, Race, Racism, South-Africa

“Only 70 miles from a 2010 World Cup football stadium, a farmer’s wife and a boy aged 13 learn to defend themselves with lethal weapons. They say thousands of white landowners have been killed by Zimbabwe-style marauders; their black rulers accuse them of belligerence and right-wing tendencies. Aidan Hartley reports on the war of words you won’t read about in your World Cup holiday brochure.”

And only a handful of journalists have been willing to report on the fate of white, rural folks in Mandela’s South Africa. Aidan Hartley of the British Daily Mail joins a select few. Read his report:

“Bella wakes. She hears a strangled, gurgling sound. It’s the dog, she thinks.

‘Peter, there’s something wrong,’ she says to her husband. Noises emerge from the room of her mother-in-law, who’s 98 and confined to a wheelchair.

It’s 1am. Bella gets up and walks out of the bedroom. In the hall she sees a young man who at first she thinks is her son. Except he’s black, wears a balaclava and is pointing a gun at her.

‘He comes for me,’ says Bella, her hand before her tear-stained face.

‘He’s going to shoot me! I trip as I run back to the bedroom. Peter comes to the door but he has nothing in his hand, no pistol. I hear a gun go off. I hear my mother-in-law screaming. I lock the door and telephone my son. I tell him: “I think they shot Pa!”’

Two men are outside the bedroom window with a rifle. She loads the pistol Peter keeps by the bed.

‘I take the gun and say, “Come on! I’ll shoot you!”’

Back in the hall she finds Peter dead, a trail of blood across the kitchen floor. Her mother-in-law Gerda is bruised and beaten.

‘I can’t tell you how hopeless I felt,’ Bella says. ‘I will see it in front of me for weeks, months, years.’ …

Days after Peter is cremated, the attackers return. The survivors are sleeping elsewhere by now, so the gang finds only the dogs in the house. They torture the animals with boiling water before soaking them in petrol and setting them on fire. [A fate that is not reserved for dogs and would have befallen their owners had they been in residence.–IM]

I ask Bella for a motive and she says a group of black South Africans who are squatting on their farmland have repeatedly threatened them.

After the family find the dogs, Bella’s son Piet calls the police. Weeks later the attackers are still at large; police arrested one man in connection with the killing but he was later released.

I am in her home. The bullet holes are still clearly visible. I ask her what she is going to do.

‘If we stay here they will kill us. You can’t say this was a dream, or rewind what happened. They want our land.’ …

…. Driving around Mpumalanga Province, east of Johannesburg, in what used to be the Transvaal, I found myself called by the farmers to a string of grisly murder scenes. In some the blood was still drying on the furniture or the street. In others, witnesses gave me accounts of killings involving rituals of extreme brutality: of victims boiled alive, forced to kneel and shot execution style and tortured in ways so unimaginable they are too horrendous to print. The same goes for the many pictures I have been shown of the barely identifiable corpses and horrific crime scenes.” …

Read the rest of Hartley’s report.

Update: WHAT WOULD GLENN SAY? I wonder what Beck the Boer basher say, in his histrionics, about KK (Kommando Korps) “formed to provide self-defence training for Afrikaner communities who feel under threat in today’s South Africa. Most of them came from the capital, Pretoria, which the government wants to rename Tshwane to reflect its pre-colonial, African history: an example of what the Afrikaners regard as the dilution of their historic identity.” [Boers built the place, so of course it should be renamed for the Bantu.]

Glenn: “OMIGOD, KK is short for KKK.” (As if everything begins and ends with the American perspective.)

And what would Glenn Beck, who sees fascists where there are only desperation and a legitimate quest for separation from evil incarnate, say of “Franz Jooste, who likes to be referred to using the old Boer paramilitary rank of ‘Kommandant”’?

The Telegraph:

“The KK was set up 20 years ago but has struggled to bring in new blood or funding in recent years. It runs training camps across the country to provide a pool of potential combatants if a war is declared against the Afrikaner people. In the meantime, unpaid KK operatives in military-style uniforms defend vulnerable white communities against what they describe as ‘a guerilla war’ and ‘genocide.'”

Before the KK, “Boer farmers were organised into farm militias known as Commandos. These defended rural communities from assault and, just over a century ago, they formed the vanguard of the rebellion against the hated British Empire. … In recent years the government has moved to disband the Commando units as part of a security plan to improve policing nationwide.”

Update II (April 16): About the link provided by our South African readers to images of the killings. I have seen the pictures. In my heart I have hoped hard that what I saw has not been inflicted on humans (or animals) and that these were forgeries (it’s hard to come by sourcing). Sadly, I fear I am wrong. What I have seen in the mangled flesh is the handiwork of pure evil. Again, I have not used these images out of respect for the victims, but also, mainly, becasue they are not sourced. I will allow them on the blog.

Moreover, as readers of this space know, I keep three lead blog posts open at any given time for comment. Of the three that propagate to the IlanaMercer.com’s front page, I will try and make one about South Africa, my homeland and my homies. We will keep the topic alive.

Regular readers and visitors, I hope, will send others to Barely a Blog and to www.IlanaMercer.com (archived under “South Africa”). So that blog and main site become a repository for facts and analysis about what’s underway in the once glorious South Africa.

Update II: King Of Keynesians (Preaches To Commoners)

Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Natural Law

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expresses the monetary policy of the US government, both Obama and his predecessor. If anyone doubts how progressive the US is, listen to Krugman (via Peter Schiff) berate “the monetary priggishness of the German heavyweights in the European Union, who are ‘foolishly’ seeking to prevent inflation [in the Greek debt crisis] and impose fiscal discipline.”

Krugman argues “that the best solution for Athens would be to simply inflate away its debt burden with printing press money. His theoretical justification is put forward in a familiar Keynesian recipe: deficit spending leads to inflation and growth, which leads to greater employment and rising GDP, which makes debt payments much easier to bear in relative terms. He laments that Greece does not control its own currency and is therefore unable to pursue such a policy on its own accord. He implores U.S. policy makers, who do control their own monetary policy, to take heed of the danger and avoid such a course.

In simple terms, Krugman believes that inflation is the best cure for burdensome debt problems.” …

Peter Schiff, always worth reading.

Update I (April 12): Keynes’s theory is not economics, but politics. He came to dominate political platforms by opposing free trade, balanced budgets and the gold standards, and by proposing economic management and interventionism through busting the budget. His devotees are indeed pimps to the political class, with no fealty to or familiarity with the laws of economics.

Update II (April 13): WHEN KEYNESIANS PREACH TO COMMONERS. “Fed’s Bernanke stresses need for financial literacy”:

“Many American families are struggling in the aftermath of the financial crisis, which reinforces the need for reliable and useful information to facilitate good financial choices,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Bankers Association Foundation.

If applied by the Little Man, literacy such as the Chairman’s would imply endless spending financed by the counterfeiting of funny money.