NEW COLUMN (Updated 10/23): The American Architects of The South-African Catastrophe

Crime, Democracy, Foreign Policy, History, libertarianism, South-Africa

“The American Architects of The South-African Catastrophe” can be read in full on the Mises Institute’s Wire. An excerpt:

…  Yes, it has happened. A mere 23 years after the 1994 transition, in South Africa, to raw ripe democracy, six years following the publication of a wide-ranging analysis of that catastrophe, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, a Beltway libertarian think tank has convened to address the problem that is South Africa.

The reference is to an upcoming CATO “Policy Forum,” euphemized as “South Africa at a Crossroad.” One of the individuals to headline the “Forum” is Princeton Lyman, described in a CATO email tease as having “served as the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa at the time of the transfer of power from white minority to black majority.” At the “Forum,” former ambassador Lyman will be discussing “America’s original hopes for a new South Africa and the extent to which America’s expectations have been left unfulfilled.” (Italics added.)

The chutzpah!

The CATO Institute’s disappointment in the South Africa the United States helped bring about is nothing compared to the depredations suffered by South Africans, due to America’s insistence that their country pass into the hands of a voracious majority. Unwise South African leaders acquiesced. Federalism was discounted. Minority rights for the Afrikaner, Anglo and Zulu were dismissed.

Aborted Attempts at South African Decentralization

This audacity of empire is covered in a self-explanatory chapter of Into the Cannibal’s Pot, titled “The Anglo-American Axis of Evil,” in which Lyman makes a cameo. (It’s not flattering.) From the comfort of the CATO headquarters, in 2017, the former ambassador will also be pondering whether “growing opposition will remove the African National Congress [ANC] from power.” The mindset of the DC establishment, CATO libertarians included, has it that changing the guard  —replacing one strongman with another — will fix South Africa, or any other of the sites of American foreign-policy interventions.

So, what exactly did Princeton Nathan Lyman do on behalf of America in South Africa? Or, more precisely, who did he sideline?

Ronald Reagan, who favored “constructive engagement” with South Africa, foresaw the chaos and carnage of an abrupt transition of power. So did the South Africans Fredrick van Zyl Slabbert, RIP (he died in May 2010), and Dr. Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The first was leader of the opposition Progressive Federal Party, who, alongside the late, intrepid Helen Suzman became the PFP’s chief critic of Nationalist policy (namely Apartheid). The second was Chief Minister of the KwaZulu homeland and leader of the Zulu people and their Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). …

… READ THE REST. “The American Architects of The South-African Catastrophe” is on the Mises Institute’s Wire.

UPDATE 10/23/017):

Into the Cannibal’s Pot: advocacy as early as 2011:

Turns Out Comey Looks Down At Trump In Every Way

Donald Trump, Ethics, Etiquette, Federalism, Government, Intelligence

At 6’8”, 2.03m, James Comey towers over other mortals. Slender and clean cut, Comey cuts quite a figure. He carries himself and conducts himself like a patrician. But he’s also a snob who looks down at others, and certainly at the president.

A friend says James Comey “felt it was his job to protect the FBI from Trump,” and that Comey was “‘disgusted’ by the Trump hug.”

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You described Comey’s concerns as — quote — “improper contacts and interferences from a group of people he, Comey, didn’t regard as honorable.”

What gave you that sense that he didn’t view these people as honorable people?

BENJAMIN WITTES: It was written on every line in his face. It was evident in the disapproving tone that he took when he described them.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Including the president?

BENJAMIN WITTES: Oh, very much so. The color of wallpaper was that these were not honorable people, and that protecting the FBI from them was his day job.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You write about the famous hug, when Comey was asked to come with a bunch of different law enforcement agents to the White House soon after the inauguration.

BENJAMIN WITTES: Yes. So, Comey really didn’t want to go that meeting. And there were a lot of Democrats who kind of blame him for Trump. So, he was particularly sensitive to the idea of a sort of show of intimacy or closeness with Trump. That said, he didn’t feel that he could say no to an invitation from the president, particularly one that went generally to law enforcement senior officials. He really wanted to kind of blend in and not be singled out. And he’s 6’8”. So, when you’re…

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Kind of tough to do that.

BENJAMIN WITTES: And when you’re 6’8”, it’s really hard to blend in. And he stands in the part of the room that is as far from Trump as is physically possible to be, and also against blue drapes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: He chose that spot?

BENJAMIN WITTES: He chose that spot because it was — almost like a chameleon. And then, at the end, right at the end, Trump singles him out in a fashion that he regarded as sort of calculated to maximally drive home this sensitivity of Democratic voters.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He’s become more famous than me.

BENJAMIN WITTES: And he extends his hand kind of preemptively, and Trump grabs the hand and kind of pulls him into a hug, but the hug is entirely one-sided. And Comey was just completely disgusted by the episode. He thought it was an intentional attempt to compromise him in public, in a way that would sow and emphasize concerns that half of the electorate had about him and the bureau.

MORE at PBS.

NEW COLUMN: Trump Fends Off ‘Showboat’ Comey And The Federal Zombies

Business, Donald Trump, Russia, The State

“Trump Fends Off ‘Showboat’ Comey And The Federal Zombies” is the current column, now on American Thinker. An excerpt:

He pleaded the case of a loyal soldier, rather than forsake retired US Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn to the mercies of FBI director James Comey. And he asked for loyalty from the congenitally disloyal. You’ll agree: President Donald Trump is being indicted on technicalities and on personal style.

Distill the president’s unremarkable actions, subject to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, and it becomes clear that The establishment—for sensible people outside the beltway have dissociate from the Russia-collusion phantasmagoria—is indicting him on the plain, impolitic speech that catapulted Donald Trump from candidate to president.

Trump is “aggressive and oblivious to the rules of engagement,” fumed CNN’s sibilant Chris Cillizza, formerly of the Washington Post. Correct. But was the language of combat you deployed, Mr. Cillizza, a Freudian slip?

The president’s linguistic infelicities—a word salad, at times—have given the press popinjays and their Washington overlords the foothold needed to go after the president. Throw in the “bad” habits of a businessman he has retained. Trump transacts with everyone—Russians too. We voted for deals, not wars.

This is the sum and substance of President Trump’s offenses. That, and beating Hillary Clinton to the White House.

Proponents of free-markets understand how business operates. Statists don’t. To the statist, the Fake News fabricator and the stark raving mad Washington Post (WaPo), “Trump sitting next to Russian Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, at a luncheon hosted by Leonard Lauder, the oldest son of Estée Lauder,” in 1986, is incriminating evidence … of something.

The tidbit made it on to a sinister WaPo list, “Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests.” To the same statists, Trump “meeting with Russian businessmen, including a real estate developer,” in 2013, “while in Moscow for his Miss Universe competition,” is yet more circumstantial evidence of … something.

Citizen Trump was bringing a fun event to Russia! To members of the American media-military-congressional-industrial complex, being amicable with foreign interests is a foreign concept. At the same time, he did some business there. Inconceivable! Had Mr. Trump smuggled a dirty bomb into Russia, under the “clever” guise of pursuing commerce, his militant enemies stateside might forgive him today. The tools threatening President Trump with impeachment have one bag of tricks stuffed with power tools: they audit, indict, arrest, bomb, change regimes. They don’t make profitable business deals; they tax them. They don’t make peace; they wage war.

Prone to seeing faces in the clouds, the reporters—they’ve lost their minuscule minds—frame the act of putting in a kind word for “a good guy,” as Trump did in February 2017, for Gen. Michael Flynn, as an obstruction of justice. …

… READ the rest. “Trump Fends Off ‘Showboat’ Comey And The Federal Zombies” is the current column, now on American Thinker.

MI5 Is MIA: British Security Missing In Action. Reliably So.

Britain, Government, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Islam

A degenerate culture, filming and fawning over the most dangerous individuals in society, who are free to roam around and plot murder: UK’s Channel 4 produced a TV documentary, The Jihadis Next Door, starring one of the London Bridge attackers, Khuram Butt. Butt was not on the lam, or being apprehended by UK Insecurity Forces, or hunkering in a bunker in Iraq. He was parading around in Barking, east London, broadcasting his intentions. Pretty much.

Even the Imam at the mosque expelled Butt for his murderous lust, but not his British protectors.

Scotland Yard? MI5? All missing in action. Always. Isn’t abnegation by the State Security apparatus the norm, rather than the exception? A norm the sheeple agree to live with?

British authorities hound, even jail, English men and women found in contempt of Islam. But never the reverse. Arrests of individuals for non-violent speech infractions, such as reciting a verse from a book by Churchill book, are not unheard of.

But that was yesterday or the day before. What’s Islam been up to today? French gendarme hammered, literally, with hammer. Authorities are in the dark. They always are:

And as I was writing the above, Murder by Muslim in Australia.