Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Speech, Race, Technology
NEW ON YOUTUBE: Deep Tech As Pirates In Competition With The State:
… In which I share a few leftover thoughts about Deep Tech or Big Tech, as pirates in competition with the state, wishing their woke leaders could commandeer the ship of state. Certainly, when Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon were growing up, they wanted to be government. Now they are!
America, Democracy, History, Ilana Mercer, Race, South-Africa
How much of an old-school South African is this writer?
Consider the image appended to this short, lyrical post. It is a rare picture of P.W. Botha, South African prime minister, later president, with his second wife, Barbara Botha (nee Robertson), also the person who sent me this image.
This dear lady contacted me after the publication, in 2011, of Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. We corresponded. I felt we spoke the same language.
Yes, Americans rabbit on about the “Boers, Boers, Boers,” but in truth, it was the Boers, the Brits and the Bantu, in South Africa, locked in a struggle, as Into The Cannibal’s Pot honestly chronicles.
South Africa, it seems to me, is only ever refracted thorough uniquely, New World, American lenses. To me, most young South Africans sound as though they have no connection to the old South Africa in any real sense. And why would they? As detailed in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, the country’s history has been expunged or rewritten:
… landmarks in the country’s founding history are slowly being erased, as demonstrated by the ANC’s decision to give an African name to Potchefstroom, a town founded in 1838 by the Voortrekkers. Pretoria is now officially called Tshwane. Nelspruit, founded by the Nel Family (they were not Xhosa), and once the seat of the South African Republic’s government during the Boer War, has been renamed Mbombela. Polokwane was formerly Pietersburg. Durban’s Moore Road (after Sir John Moore, the hero of the Battle of Corunna, fought in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars) is Che Guevara Road …. (p. 80)
It’s a strange thing to say, but, again, to me, young South Africans sound more American. They sound like they are more likely to know Candice Owens than to have heard of Gatsha Buthelezi.
I am a South African by birth. The sources I used in Into The Cannibal’s Pot reflect my being an older South African, who had been steeped in the place prior to democracy; having known South Africa and the characters at play on the political stage well before democracy.
People like the brilliant commentator Dan Roodt, the famous musician and activist, Steve Hofmeyr, and patriot Cuan Elgin: These people know of what I speak. They understand the Old South Africa.
I don’t mean this unkindly, but honestly, Americans don’t have a feel for the place as it was—yet so many South Africans look to American writing about South Africa to set the tone of the narrative about the region.
And they seem to have no value for an older generation of their own sons and daughter who did know the old South Africa.
Argument, Canada, COVID-19, Critique, Healthcare, Liberty, Nationalism, Politics, Propaganda
The “vaccine hesitancy” pejorative is an attempt to demonize clear thinking and reasoning.
Apropos the COVID-19 vaccine: Not one TV ego in an anchor’s chair has had the intelligence to ask about longitudinal studies.
“The creation of a vaccine involves scientists and medical experts from around the world, and it usually requires 10 to 15 years of research before the vaccine is made available to the general public. [HERE]
There are none! The Covid vaccines are just too new; they were rushed to market. I’m all for well-tested vaccines. (Especially when liability is attached to the manufacturers. This is not the case with Covid-vaccine manufacturers.)
Then there is the Covid variants saga. It is clear to anyone with a critical mind thinks Covid vaccines will go the way of the flu vaccines: An annual affair if one chooses to make it so, because of the natural mutation these clever RNA strands undergo.
Personally, I’ve never taken the flu vaccine. My doctor concurs: The flu shots aren’t very effective.
UPDATE I (3/29/021): Logically, the COVID vaccine is likely to be an annual affair.
Who predicted that, above, on ? The same person who urged you to wear the N95 mask, on 3/5/020, when St. Fauci was cautioning you against protecting your life with a mask (for which that man should stand in the dock).
The planet could have a year or less before first-generation Covid-19 vaccines are ineffective and modified formulations are needed, according to a survey of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists. …
Instead of listening to America’s crooked medical talking-head imbeciles, all clawing their way to becoming part of the Biden—or, before that Trump’s—task force—or consultants to the corporate media—here is an aggregated opinion:
The grim forecast of a year or less comes from two-thirds of respondents, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, who carried out the survey of 77 scientists from 28 countries. Nearly one-third of the respondents indicated that the time-frame was likely nine months or less.
…“New mutations arise every day. Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more fit than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially evade immune responses to previous strains,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, in a statement.
For the evolutionary advantage—mutation—of a clever little RNA coil the experts blame the “vaccine hesitancy” of the population at large. Or, global, systemic racism: Not enough sharing by the developed world.
We vaccinate every year for the flu because of mutations, don’t we? Why would the clever SARS-CoV-2 be less efficient?
MORE: “New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists.”
UPDATE II (3/31/021): Strokes.
Correlation is not causation, but a person I love dearly had a stroke a few weeks after the vaccine. The individual was NOT AT RISK FOR A STROKE. WTF!
Trace Alex Berenson’s Socratic questions about the correlation of all the new, messenger-RNA technology vaccinations to strokes:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1376911443367501828
UPDATE III: Will They WACO Vaccine Resisters?
As surmised in this space, the Covid vaccines last as long as the virus’s next mutation.
Israel’s Netanyahoo, however, has floated the freaky idea of a six-monthly vaccine schedule:
“The vaccines we have, no one knows how long they last…We need to prepare for the worst scenario. The worst scenario is that we have to vaccinate every half year.”
Do they plan to intern or force the stuff into the resister community’s veins? Upon arriving in Canada, the newly arrived must submit to being corralled into a government-designated “hotel.” There is an exorbitant shakedown fee, too. The policy was instituted by Justin Trudeau, who is both despicable as he is deeply stupid.
Could they WACO resisters? Will WACO now become a verb? Oh, I forget: the kids don’t learn history, ancient or recent. It might teach them something.
Argument, Conservatism, Democrats, IMMIGRATION, Law, Republicans
On the immigration front, the “Open Sesame” magical phrase that gets you into polite, conservative company is J. D Vance’s “True ‘Compassion’ Requires Secure Borders and Stopping Illegal Immigration.”
Banal. Puke. Yawn.
“True ‘Compassion’ Requires Secure Borders and Stopping Illegal Immigration” is the typically bankrupt, conciliatory, “conservative” argument we’ve come to expect from these quarters, regarding America’s promiscuously loose immigration policy, under Republicans and Democrats alike.
First, the “moral” preening component: “All’s I’m saying, you folks, comes out of the goodness of my hillbilly heart.”
For the second point, allow me to excerpt from my “Immigration Scene,” written in 2006 (has anything changed? why vote?):
Everyone (and his dog) currently concurs that we have no problem with legal immigration, only with the illegal variety. It’s now mandatory to pair an objection to the invasion of the American Southwest with an embrace of all forms of legal immigration.
Vance opposes the rot of our immigration reality simply because he’s so kind, diverse and open, but still law-abiding.
Note the name-dropping from our hoedown Hillbilly, a member of the elite by any other name:
“… my friend (and my wife’s former boss) Brett Kavanaugh [of the] Supreme Court...”
Ooh. Impressive. While Vance forgot to brag directly about having married an Indian-American lady, who “Rid Him of His Hillbilly Ways“; he brought her up indirectly while touting his elite credentials.
Then there’s the shtick that is the constant mentioning of his “working-class background.” Once they’ve “arrived” in the power zone; conservatives like Vance are as good at lefty elitists at assuring us of their (manifestly fake) authenticity.
By the way, Appalachian folks, whom Vance depicted in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, say justifiably that “Vance was not an authentic hillbilly or an example of the working class.”
Cassie Chambers Armstrong, an Appalachian and author of Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains, tells why her Aunt Ruth didn’t think much of JD Vance’s endeavor:
portrayal of Appalachia is designed to elevate Vance above the community from which he came. Remember that it seeks to tell his story in a way that aligns with a simplistic rags-to-riches narrative. Think critically about how that narrative influences the way we are taught to think about poverty, progress, and identity.
When all is said and done, J. D. Vance utters the code words at the door of the Establishment, Left and Right, when discussing immigration–and has been allowed in.
The right answer, the one J.D. Vance wouldn’t dare give, is this:
Vance and his phony conservative friends misplace compassion. Their job is not to flaunt their virtue to The World currently on its way to America.
True compassion demands that American politicians and policy makers stick strictly to their mandate—and that is looking out ONLY for their American constituents, and sending all the rest THE HELL HOME. These politicians are hired hands: hired by the American electorate to do its bidding, alone.
Except for a tiny elite, Americans are struggling. But the political class, Dem & Republican, has developed crooked ways of virtue signaling about immigration, using these safe words: Humanitarian crisis! The Kids are in cages. Trafficking. Cartels. Sex.
See:
Do We Still Have A Country? Part I
“We Aren’t Americans; We ARE The World (Part II)”
UPDATE:
The GOP is RIP to me: Typically, Sen. John Kennedy, with his contrived Southern act (he’s Ivy League) and rehearsed, overwrought cracks, puts Trump’s party back decades, tells “Fox News Primetime” host Trey Gowdy that Americans love 1 million legal immigrants coming in annually, object ONLY to illegal, Biden-created chaos on border. (3/9/021)