Tag: America

Ilana Mercer: ‘Gun Violence’? No! Goon Violence

For a short while, the thing called “gun violence” was uppermost in the minds of the blabbering class. Two lovely young people, Alison Parker (news reporter) and Adam Ward (photojournalist), of Roanoke, Virginia, were gunned-down on live TV, is a scene reminiscent of the film “15 Minutes,” in which an anchor’s drive for ratings and a murderer’s quest for his 15 Minutes of Fame result in … gun, fist, and other gratuitous, on-air violence.

A week on, CNN’s Poppy Harlow was using the language of George Orwell’s Oceania to describe the entity, “gun violence,” that “took” the life of poor Deputy Darren Goforth, of Harris County, TX. Shortly thereafter, the same inchoate culprit claimed Lt. Joe Gliniewicz of Fox Lake, Illinois.

Ambush assaults on police are, indubitably, up. And so is Orwellian newsspeak.

In Roanoke and Harris County, black men were implicated in directing the guns at Parker, Ward and Goforth. The killers acted on a tip from their mentors in media. That’s right: Do not be so hard on the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The movement is in its infancy. Most people are unfamiliar with it. “Black Lives Matter,” moreover, is not nearly as innervating and enervating as the meme disseminated, year-in and year-out, by media, academia, by the pedagogy and the politicians; over the airwaves, on the teli, in classrooms, in the halls of power; in textbooks, film, music and in every other cultural outlet and product.

For decades has this “Racial-Industrial Complex” been schooling Americans in the fiction of systemic black oppression by white America. The threshold for oppression is remarkably low. To be white is to oppress The Other; to be black is to be oppressed.

Concomitantly, there has been an epidemic of citizen fatalities at the hands of police officers. Combine the latter with the ritualistic, imbecilic, systemic and baseless drumbeat about oppression of blacks by whites—and you have your catalysts (not causes) for why so many blacks imagine they’ve been wronged, and how some individuals are encouraged, inadvertently, to act on their anger.

As to the former catalyst: In 2014 alone, attests activist William B. Scott, police “gun-violence” dispatched 1,100 people, an average of three every day of the year. Scott’s son, Erik, a decorated ex-Army officer, West-Point graduate, and Duke Univ. MBA, was shot to death by a slob of a cop in Las Vegas. Erik’s BlackBerry was mistaken for a firearm. (Excellence runs in this family. Senior is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.)

One can’t help but wonder at the incongruous specter of black leaders and advocates (media, pols, pedagogues) complaining when those they consider incorrigibly racist—cops—make themselves scarce in black neighborhoods. The “Racial Industrial Complex” conflates higher arrest and incarceration rates among blacks (rather than lawbreaking and too many laws), with “scientific” proof of systemic racism. Surely, then, police presence in black communities will only increase arrests and bolster these “racist” statistics. Surely a lack of police presence in black communities is to be celebrated.

Go figure!

As kids, we knew our local policeman by name. He patrolled our neighborhoods regularly and joshed around with us. He lived among us. Community policing, however, is a thing of the past. Former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson—notorious for shooting Michael Brown—gave a clue as to why. Wilson told The New Yorker that while he didn’t want to work in a white area, liked the black community and had fun there—he had experienced “culture shock.” Wilson described venturing into a “different culture”: a “pre-gang culture where you’re just running in the streets, not worried about working in the morning, just worried about your immediate gratification.” For his candor about an alien culture, Wilson was called racist by CNN’s Boris Sanchez and Kate Bolduan.

“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely,” said Edmund Burke, in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” Darren Wilson’s words suggest a variation on Burke’s theme: To make cops love the communities they police, the communities they police ought to be lovely.

Burke further reminded us in 1790 that, “To love the little platoon we belong to is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.” But what happens when those little platoons are not so little and not so lovely?

A country that is without a modicum of cultural cohesion and is, by D.C. design, comprised of ever-accreting, competing factions—this kind of country cannot be lovely in the Burkean sense. In fairness to law-enforcement, communities in America must be damn difficult to police.

Ultimately, thinking logically about crime and the criminals who commit it is likelier to lead to solutions than irrational thinking.

Repeat after me: It was not an inanimate object or an abstraction—“gun violence”—that murdered innocent cops and cub reporters, but malevolent men with murder on their minds and weapons in their hands.

Columnist Jack Kerwick’s reductio ad absurdum illustrates the absurdity of “gun violence” speak:

Imagine if, while discussing the Holocaust, we spoke about ‘gas chamber violence,’ or while discussing Islamic State mass beheadings, we talked instead of ‘machete violence.’ Or suppose that discussions of the lynching of blacks were peppered with references to ‘rope violence.’ None of this would sit well with decent human beings, for it is clear, or at least it is thought that it should be clear, that such descriptions miss entirely that which is fundamental to the phenomena being described—the perpetrators responsible for these wicked deeds.

Let us speak, then, of “goon violence.” For to grasp the distinction between goons with moral agency, on the one hand, and inanimate guns with no such thing, on the other, is to come to grips with reality. (Of course, it would help a lot if stupid liberals quit their litany of lies about eternal, never-ending black oppression.)

We’ve covered the catalysts. Let us address the causes:

Guns are not the root cause of man’s evil actions. Neither are the multiplying categories of the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Evil is part of the human condition, always has been, always will be. Evil can’t be wished away, treated away, medicated away or legislated away. Evil is here to stay.

Bad people do bad things. Deal, as they say in the hood.

**
Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S. She is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her latest book is “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. Follow her on Twitter. “Friend” her on Facebook.

How America became an Oligarchy

American democracy no longer exists

According to a new study from Princeton University, American democracy no longer exists. Using data from over 1,800 policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concluded that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of – or even against – the will of the majority of voters. America’s political system has transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where power is wielded by wealthy elites.

“Making the world safe for democracy” was President Woodrow Wilson’s rationale for World War I, and it has been used to justify American military intervention ever since. Can we justify sending troops into other countries to spread a political system we cannot maintain at home?

The Magna Carta, considered the first Bill of Rights in the Western world, established the rights of nobles as against the king. But the doctrine that “all men are created equal” – that all people have “certain inalienable rights,” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – is an American original. And those rights, supposedly insured by the Bill of Rights, have the right to vote at their core. We have the right to vote but the voters’ collective will no longer prevails.

In Greece, the left-wing populist Syriza Party came out of nowhere to take the presidential election by storm; and in Spain, the populist Podemos Party appears poised to do the same. But for over a century, no third-party candidate has had any chance of winning a US presidential election. We have a two-party winner-take-all system, in which our choice is between two candidates, both of whom necessarily cater to big money. It takes big money just to put on the mass media campaigns required to win an election involving 240 million people of voting age.

In state and local elections, third party candidates have sometimes won. In a modest-sized city, candidates can actually influence the vote by going door to door, passing out flyers and bumper stickers, giving local presentations, and getting on local radio and TV. But in a national election, those efforts are easily trumped by the mass media. And local governments too are beholden to big money.

When governments of any size need to borrow money, the megabanks in a position to supply it can generally dictate the terms. Even in Greece, where the populist Syriza Party managed to prevail in January, the anti-austerity platform of the new government is being throttled by the moneylenders who have the government in a chokehold.

How did we lose our democracy? Were the Founding Fathers remiss in leaving something out of the Constitution? Or have we simply gotten too big to be governed by majority vote?

Democracy’s Rise and Fall

The stages of the capture of democracy by big money are traced in a paper called “The Collapse of Democratic Nation States” by theologian and environmentalist Dr. John Cobb. Going back several centuries, he points to the rise of private banking, which usurped the power to create money from governments:

The influence of money was greatly enhanced by the emergence of private banking. The banks are able to create money and so to lend amounts far in excess of their actual wealth. This control of money-creation . . . has given banks overwhelming control over human affairs. In the United States, Wall Street makes most of the truly important decisions that are directly attributed to Washington.

Today the vast majority of the money supply in Western countries is created by private bankers. That tradition goes back to the 17th century, when the privately-owned Bank of England, the mother of all central banks, negotiated the right to print England’s money after Parliament stripped that power from the Crown. When King William needed money to fight a war, he had to borrow. The government as borrower then became servant of the lender.

In America, however, the colonists defied the Bank of England and issued their own paper scrip; and they thrived. When King George forbade that practice, the colonists rebelled.

They won the Revolution but lost the power to create their own money supply, when they opted for gold rather than paper money as their official means of exchange. Gold was in limited supply and was controlled by the bankers, who surreptitiously expanded the money supply by issuing multiple banknotes against a limited supply of gold.

This was the system euphemistically called “fractional reserve” banking, meaning only a fraction of the gold necessary to back the banks’ privately-issued notes was actually held in their vaults. These notes were lent at interest, putting citizens and the government in debt to bankers who created the notes with a printing press. It was something the government could have done itself debt-free, and the American colonies had done with great success until England went to war to stop them.

President Abraham Lincoln revived the colonists’ paper money system when he issued the Treasury notes called “Greenbacks” that helped the Union win the Civil War. But Lincoln was assassinated, and the Greenback issues were discontinued.

In every presidential election between 1872 and 1896, there was a third national party running on a platform of financial reform. Typically organized under the auspices of labor or farmer organizations, these were parties of the people rather than the banks. They included the Populist Party, the Greenback and Greenback Labor Parties, the Labor Reform Party, the Antimonopolist Party, and the Union Labor Party. They advocated expanding the national currency to meet the needs of trade, reform of the banking system, and democratic control of the financial system.

The Populist movement of the 1890s represented the last serious challenge to the bankers’ monopoly over the right to create the nation’s money. According to monetary historian Murray Rothbard, politics after the turn of the century became a struggle between two competing banking giants, the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The parties sometimes changed hands, but the puppeteers pulling the strings were always one of these two big-money players.

In All the Presidents’ Bankers, Nomi Prins names six banking giants and associated banking families that have dominated politics for over a century. No popular third party candidates have a real chance of prevailing, because they have to compete with two entrenched parties funded by these massively powerful Wall Street banks.

Democracy Succumbs to Globalization

In an earlier era, notes Dr. Cobb, wealthy landowners were able to control democracies by restricting government participation to the propertied class. When those restrictions were removed, big money controlled elections by other means:

First, running for office became expensive, so that those who seek office require wealthy sponsors to whom they are then beholden. Second, the great majority of voters have little independent knowledge of those for whom they vote or of the issues to be dealt with. Their judgments are, accordingly, dependent on what they learn from the mass media. These media, in turn, are controlled by moneyed interests.

Control of the media and financial leverage over elected officials then enabled those other curbs on democracy we know today, including high barriers to ballot placement for third parties and their elimination from presidential debates, vote suppression, registration restrictions, identification laws, voter roll purges, gerrymandering, computer voting, and secrecy in government.

The final blow to democracy, says Dr. Cobb, was “globalization” – an expanding global market that overrides national interests:

[T]oday’s global economy is fully transnational. The money power is not much interested in boundaries between states and generally works to reduce their influence on markets and investments. . . . Thus transnational corporations inherently work to undermine nation states, whether they are democratic or not.

The most glaring example today is the secret twelve-country trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If it goes through, the TPP will dramatically expand the power of multinational corporations to use closed-door tribunals to challenge and supersede domestic laws, including environmental, labor, health and other protections.

Looking at Alternatives

Some critics ask whether our system of making decisions by a mass popular vote easily manipulated by the paid-for media is the most effective way of governing on behalf of the people. In an interesting Ted Talk, political scientist Eric Li makes a compelling case for the system of “meritocracy” that has been quite successful in China.

In America Beyond Capitalism, Prof. Gar Alperovitz argues that the US is simply too big to operate as a democracy at the national level. Excluding Canada and Australia, which have large empty landmasses, the United States is larger geographically than all the other advanced industrial countries of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) combined. He proposes what he calls “The Pluralist Commonwealth”: a system anchored in the reconstruction of communities and the democratization of wealth. It involves plural forms of cooperative and common ownership beginning with decentralization and moving to higher levels of regional and national coordination when necessary. He is co-chair along with James Gustav Speth of an initiative called The Next System Project, which seeks to help open a far-ranging discussion of how to move beyond the failing traditional political-economic systems of both left and Right..

Dr. Alperovitz quotes Prof. Donald Livingston, who asked in 2002:

What value is there in continuing to prop up a union of this monstrous size? . . . [T]here are ample resources in the American federal tradition to justify states’ and local communities’ recalling, out of their own sovereignty, powers they have allowed the central government to usurp.

Taking Back Our Power

If governments are recalling their sovereign powers, they might start with the power to create money, which was usurped by private interests while the people were asleep at the wheel. State and local governments are not allowed to print their own currencies; but they can own banks, and all depository banks create money when they make loans, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged.

The federal government could take back the power to create the national money supply by issuing its own Treasury notes as Abraham Lincoln did. Alternatively, it could issue some very large denomination coins as authorized in the Constitution; or it could nationalize the central bank and use quantitative easing to fund infrastructure, education, job creation, and social services, responding to the needs of the people rather than the banks.

The freedom to vote carries little weight without economic freedom – the freedom to work and to have food, shelter, education, medical care and a decent retirement. President Franklin Roosevelt maintained that we need an Economic Bill of Rights. If our elected representatives were not beholden to the moneylenders, they might be able both to pass such a bill and to come up with the money to fund it.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally.

Backdoor for jihadists?

Top U.S. counterterrorism officials say they worry a potential terrorist could be hiding among refugees who are looking to come to the United States after escaping the brutal war in Syria.

“It’s clearly a population of concern,” the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Nicholas Rasmussen, told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.

Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, went further, saying it would be a “huge mistake” to bring refugees from the conflict to the U.S. – even as an estimated 4 million children, women and men have been forced to flee Syria and another 7 million have been displaced from their homes there, unable to leave.

Senior officials leading the State Department’s refugee efforts say the U.S. government has a long history of caring for the innocent victims of war.

“It’s not a matter of should we do it, it’s really a matter of how we do it,” Larry Bartlett, the State Department’s director of Refugee Admission for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, told ABC News. “One of the fundamental principles of our country is that we care about others. We will help others.”

With tens of thousands of Syrians joining groups in the region like the Islamic State, the U.S. government “cannot allow the refugee process to become a backdoor for jihadists,” Republicans added.

Source: Yahoo News

WIN/Gallup poll: US represents threat to world peace

Is the most dangerous country in the world the United States of America? According to a new poll from WIN and Gallup International, the U.S. represents the largest threat to world peace today.

In their annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States on the poll, with 8 and 6 percent, respectively. Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea all tied for fourth place with 4 percent.

Much of the animosity toward America comes from Muslim Middle Eastern and North African nations, all located in a region most likely to be affected by American military actions over the past decade. Forty-four percent of Pakistani respondents, for instance, voted America as the most dangerous nation, despite Pakistan’s acceptance of U.S. foreign aid. The Chinese and Russians rated the United States as dangerous even more than Pakistanis did, at 54 and 49 percent, respectively.

However, a plurality of people polled in several officially American-allied nations also rated the United States as dangerous. Thirty-seven percent of Mexicans and 17 percent of Canadians view their neighboring country with suspicion on the world stage. A surprising 13 percent of American respondents rated their own nation the biggest threat to world peace as well.

While poll respondents seem anxious about the United States’ role in world affairs, many of them would have no problems moving to America if they could. The United States topped WIN/Gallup’s list of top countries people would move to with 9 percent of the vote. Canada and Australia came in second with 7 percent apiece, while 38 percent said they were happy exactly where they are.

Overall, responders seemed remarkably optimistic about their own futures, despite any misgivings about the United States. Nearly 50 percent of responders say that 2014 will be better than 2013, the first time since 1990 that people thought a better year was on the way.

“Despite an unstable economic situation, our happiness index is extremely high all over the world except in Europe,” Jean-Marc Leger, President of WIN/Gallup International Association, said in a statement. “Moreover people think that 2014 will be better than 2013. Optimism is back in the world.”

‘Shock and awe’ comes to America

The United States has employed “shock and awe” techniques – described by Pentagon policy documents as the use of “spectacular displays of force” to intimidate an opponent – against the civilian population of the St. Louis, Missouri suburb of Ferguson, just a stone’s throw from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

The police use of shock and awe tactics followed street protests after the police shooting death of an 18-year old black teen, Michael Brown. According to a private autopsy, Brown, an African-American, was shot six times, including twice in the head, by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The St. Louis County coroner concluded that the number of shots that hit Brown could have been as high as eight.

Many media commentators also drew comparisons between the scenes of the heavy paramilitary presence on the streets of Ferguson to scenes of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and on the West Bank. There are valid reasons for the comparisons.

In 2011, St. Louis County Police Chief Timothy Fitch received training from Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and Israeli National Police officials during a trip to Israel sponsored by the right-wing Anti-Defamation League (ADL). That same year, Oakland, California police who received similar training from former members of the IDF, shot Iraqi war U.S. Army veteran Scott Olsen in the head. Olsen suffered a severe brain injury from the assault.

Companies associated with Israel’s military-law enforcement infrastructure, including those specializing in Israeli Krav Maga martial arts techniques and other Israel crowd control tactics, have not only trained state and metropolitan police forces in the United States, but also state National Guard units. Police departments receiving such training include the St. Louis County Police, as well as the police departments of New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, Louisville, Richmond, Charlotte, Nashville, Albuquerque, Tulsa, and Atlantic City.

American police departments have a seemingly unlimited supply of military gear, weapons, and vehicles at their disposal. Under the Pentagon’s 1033 program, the Defense Department has made available, often free-of-charge, surplus military equipment to police departments from St. Louis County and Ferguson to Lewiston, Maine and Ohio State University.

Among the excess military equipment distributed to local, metropolitan, county, and state police by the Defense Logistics Agency are highly-mobile multi-wheeled vehicles (Humvees), militarized water craft, mine-resistant ambush protection (MRAP) vehicles, long-range acoustic device (LRAD) sound cannons, assault rifles, night scopes, flash bang grenades, and helicopters.

In addition to receiving population control training from Israelis, American police departments have also been trained by the constantly name-changing firm once known as Blackwater. Formerly known as Xe Security and Academi, the CIA-linked private military company, now merged with Triple Canopy under the Constellis Holdings, Inc., trained a number of U.S. police departments at its military base-like facility in Moyock, North Carolina. One of the police patches on the firm’s training alumni board in Moyock is that of the St. Louis County Police.

In addition to the St. Louis County Police, other U.S. law enforcement agencies trained by Blackwater include the Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff’s Department; Atlanta Police; Chillicothe, Ohio Police; Charleston, South Carolina Police; Metropolitan Washington, DC Police; Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police (Dulles and Reagan National Airports); Prince George’s County, Maryland Police; the FBI SWAT Team; New York Police Department; Fairfax County, Virginia Police; Tampa Police; U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); DeKalb County, Georgia Police; Arlington County, Virginia Police; Baltimore Police; U.S. Coast Guard; University of Texas Police; Norfolk, Virginia Police; Chicago Police Department; Oregon State Police; Los Angeles Police Department; Harvey Cedars, New Jersey Police; City of Fairfax, Virginia Police; Alexandria, Virginia Police Special Operations; Illinois State Police; and Dallas Police.

Based on the actions of the St. Louis County police and their cache of Pentagon weapons, as well as their Israeli and Blackwater training, the next dead U.S. citizen – African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, or otherwise – could be found lying in a pool of his or her own blood, drawn by a militarized police officer, from the Jersey shore to the streets of Los Angeles.

By Wayne Madsen.

Israel follows American expert’s public-relations rules

Israeli spokesmen have their work cut out explaining how they have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, compared with just three civilians killed in Israel by Hamas rocket and mortar fire. But on television and radio and in newspapers, Israeli government spokesmen such as Mark Regev appear slicker and less aggressive than their predecessors, who were often visibly indifferent to how many Palestinians were killed.

Dr. Frank Luntz
Dr. Frank Luntz

There is a reason for this enhancement of the PR skills of Israeli spokesmen. Going by what they say, the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe. Written by the expert Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz, the study was commissioned five years ago by a group called The Israel Project, with offices in the US and Israel, for use by those “who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel”.

Every one of the 112 pages in the booklet is marked “not for distribution or publication” and it is easy to see why. The Luntz report, officially entitled “The Israel project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was leaked almost immediately to Newsweek Online, but its true importance has seldom been appreciated. It should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its “dos and don’ts” for Israeli spokesmen.

These are highly illuminating about the gap between what Israeli officials and politicians really believe, and what they say, the latter shaped in minute detail by polling to determine what Americans want to hear. Certainly, no journalist interviewing an Israeli spokesman should do so without reading this preview of many of the themes and phrases employed by Mr Regev and his colleagues.

The booklet is full of meaty advice about how they should shape their answers for different audiences. For example, the study says that “Americans agree that Israel ‘has a right to defensible borders’. But it does you no good to define exactly what those borders should be. Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel’s military history. Particularly on the left this does you harm. For instance, support for Israel’s right to defensible borders drops from a heady 89 per cent to under 60 per cent when you talk about it in terms of 1967.”

How about the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 and in the following years, and who are not allowed to go back to their homes? Here Dr Luntz has subtle advice for spokesmen, saying that “the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate effectively because much of Israeli language sounds like the ‘separate but equal’ words of the 1950s segregationists and the 1980s advocates of Apartheid. The fact is, Americans don’t like, don’t believe and don’t accept the concept of ‘separate but equal’.”

So how should spokesmen deal with what the booklet admits is a tough question? They should call it a “demand”, on the grounds that Americans don’t like people who make demands. “Then say ‘Palestinians aren’t content with their own state. Now they’re demanding territory inside Israel’.” Other suggestions for an effective Israeli response include saying that the right of return might become part of a final settlement “at some point in the future”.

Dr Luntz notes that Americans as a whole are fearful of mass immigration into the US, so mention of “mass Palestinian immigration” into Israel will not go down well with them. If nothing else works, say that the return of Palestinians would “derail the effort to achieve peace”.

The Luntz report was written in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009, when 1,387 Palestinians and nine Israelis were killed.

There is a whole chapter on “isolating Iran-backed Hamas as an obstacle to peace”. Unfortunately, come the current Operation Protective Edge, which began on 6 July, there was a problem for Israeli propagandists because Hamas had quarrelled with Iran over the war in Syria and had no contact with Tehran. Friendly relations have been resumed only in the past few days – thanks to the Israeli invasion.

Much of Dr Luntz’s advice is about the tone and presentation of the Israeli case. He says it is absolutely crucial to exude empathy for Palestinians: “Persuadables [sic] won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show Empathy for BOTH sides!” This may explain why a number of Israeli spokesman are almost lachrymose about the plight of Palestinians being pounded by Israeli bombs and shells.

In a sentence in bold type, underlined and with capitalisation, Dr Luntz says that Israeli spokesmen or political leaders must never, ever justify “the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children” and they must aggressively challenge those who accuse Israel of such a crime. Israeli spokesmen struggled to be true to this prescription when 16 Palestinians were killed in a UN shelter in Gaza last Thursday.

There is a list of words and phrases to be used and a list of those to be avoided. Schmaltz is at a premium: “The best way, the only way, to achieve lasting peace is to achieve mutual respect.” Above all, Israel’s desire for peace with the Palestinians should be emphasised at all times because this what Americans overwhelmingly want to happen. But any pressure on Israel to actually make peace can be reduced by saying “one step at a time, one day at a time”, which will be accepted as “a commonsense approach to the land-for-peace equation”.

Dr Luntz cites as an example of an “effective Israeli sound bite” one which reads: “I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child.”

The study admits that the Israeli government does not really want a two-state solution, but says this should be masked because 78 per cent of Americans do. Hopes for the economic betterment of Palestinians should be emphasised.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted with approval for saying that it is “time for someone to ask Hamas: what exactly are YOU doing to bring prosperity to your people”. The hypocrisy of this beggars belief: it is the seven-year-old Israeli economic siege that has reduced the Gaza to poverty and misery.

On every occasion, the presentation of events by Israeli spokesmen is geared to giving Americans and Europeans the impression that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians and is prepared to compromise to achieve this, when all the evidence is that it does not. Though it was not intended as such, few more revealing studies have been written about modern Israel in times of war and peace. – UK Independent

Why Israel will fall

Ever since Hitler not one Western country with a single (exclusive) identity has been allowed to exist.

The chaos caused by the highly controversial (Obama mandated?) reintroduction of the word “God” and the sentence “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel” at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, is ominously foreboding of the fate that awaits Israel in the near future.

Ironically enough, it is mainly due to the utopianism of secular Jews that Israel now finds herself in the current predicament where she is increasingly vilified by the world media and protesters in the world’s capitals. From Karl Marx to KGB agent Joe Slovo (Mandela’s mentor/handler) in South Africa, these secular Jews have done their utmost to destroy cultural and racial hegemony in the name of global “Equality/Diversity”.

Jerusalem, a physical territory, is symbolic of the wider physical territory called Israel. And the State of Israel is defined by a single (exclusive) identity namely Jewishness. And that is why Israel will fall.

Ever since Hitler not one Western country with a single (exclusive) identity has been allowed to exist. Apartheid South Africa’s whites-only territory is no more, like Milosevic’s Orthodox Christian-only Yugoslavia.

The same fate awaits Israel.  Its singular identity, its Jewishness, is also its Achilles heel; for the rights of the individual and the rights of non-territorial groupings is the flavor of the month in the year dominated by Pax Americana.

According to the Ten Commandments of Pax Americana, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a gay, an African, a Muslim, a Jew, et cetera, has the a-historical right to exercise his/her unique individuality in any physical territory under direct dominion of the West.

These same rights are afforded to all other non-territorial groupings like, for example, lesbians and the illegal Hispanic immigrants in Arizona – and the Somalis (and other Africans) gathered together in the world’s largest detention centre (in Saharonim) and then deported from Israeli territory.

The quirks of History never cease to amaze. Not unlike the Germanic tribes with their Völkerwanderung, the Jewish tribes had to literally wander the earth for ages in order to finally find their Heimat…only to be denied that final place of rest where they can simply be themselves and enjoy the fruits of that which they have struggled and suffered for, for so long.

Is this fair? Does anybody in the world have the moral right to deny the Jews their Heimat called Israel – a tiny 20 770 square kilometer territory in the Middle East? Haven’t the Jews suffered enough, especially given the fact that they have been physically kicked out of more than 100 countries during the past 1800 years, and have suffered innumerable pogroms – the latest being the Crown Heights Riot in Brooklyn, New York, in 1991.

Obviously this is not fair, but that is obviously also not good enough. The trials and tribulations of the Jews in Israel are about to treble exponentially.

According to an 82-page research paper called “Preparations for a Post-Israeli Middle East” – compiled by the American intelligence community and presented by Franklin Lamb – America’s leadership is urged to stop supporting Israel lest a permanent two-state solution for the Palestinian question is found forthwith. In short; America, via its foreign policy, can no longer afford to be seen as a supporter of an “Apartheid Israel”, as Desmond Tutu calls it so fondly.

Will America throw Israel to the wolves? Yes; it is a demographic inevitability. Israel’s staunchest supporters in America – white Christian males forming the base of the Republican Party – have a maximum of 10 years left to steer America’s foreign policy before they are demographically swamped by the very “individual-rights” holders and non-territorial groupings who jeered so loudly and proudly when the sentence “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel” was reintroduced into the Democratic platform a few years ago.

The end of the GOP is nigh. The vultures are circling. Just ask Paul Krugman, who unabashedly proclaimed that the Republican base is formed, “by and large [by] elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.”

Be that as it may; what can Israel try to do to maintain its unique Jewish identity once America, the (current) dominant global power, has withdrawn its support?

Well, it is quite elementary. By the nature of things, you have to exclude if you want to include, and vice versa. Male lions do it when they take over a territory – as do women when they choose a man to marry, to the exclusion of all others. This is just the way life works. And the Jews have learned this the hard way, throughout their tragic history.

Israel is now building a physical wall around its territory in order to protect its unique identity. The building of this wall – much to the chagrin of, amongst others, Pax Americana and the Muslim countries completely surrounding Israel  – is, apart from the projection of its formidable military might, the only soft-power option left to maintain the physical integrity of its territory.

Will this work? No. Even Milosevic’s mighty hard-power army succumbed eventually, as did Apartheid South Africa’s soft-power pass system. It is truly game over for the state of Israel.

The identity/body politics of the secular-humanist West tops any and all soft and hard power projections aimed at maintaining a singularly exclusive identity within a clearly defined physical territory.

In Pax Americana, to paraphrase Foucault; physical territory is the prison of the individual.

Why I hate South Africa, part 1

by Dan Roodt

Like Dan Roodt’s Facebook page

South Africa is a land of great natural beauty. Its unique flora and fauna attract tourists from all over the world. Due to geological accident, we also have buried beneath our soil and rock the biggest or second biggest mineral bonanza of all time, including 80% of the world’s platinum. Since 1886 when gold was discovered, various fortunes have been made in mining those mineral deposits.

The weather, at least where I live in the north of Johannesburg, is more than ideal; it is perfect. We have three hundred days of sunshine per year or thereabouts and it is never too hot or too cold. Visitors from the northern hemisphere mistake our winters for summer as midday temperatures go above twenty Centigrade.

When the Voortrekkers, our nineteenth-century pioneers crossed the Drakensberg in their ox-wagons and arrived in the Transvaal, they stumbled upon a pristine land of sunshine, savannah and plentiful game, a true paradise.

South Africa could have been utopia, if it had not been for her people. Even using such a possessive pronoun in the feminine gender implies some kind of connection between the land and its inhabitants, if not patriotism. Now, patriotism and a sense of belonging would be the last thing the average interloper strutting and stomping about this fair land could be suspected of. Rather, he or she regards this bountiful place as the forty thieves did the cave of Ali Baba, simply a source of loot!

The turning point in South African history came in the nineteenth century when the gold rush drew like a magnet a horde of crazed would-be capitalists and criminals to these shores. For a few decades during the twentieth century we had managed to staunch the mayhem, the cold, unscrupulous greed venting itself upon us. Alas, for a variety of reasons – not least the utter cowardice and stupidity of the former Afrikaner leadership – that time of growth and hope for the future is long past. All that we may look forward to is more decadent dissolution, more crime and venality that will rage unabatedly. It is as if the land itself has been wounded, stung and, like a predator sensing its own demise, lashes out at every living being within the arc of its claws and fangs.

The floodgates of hell have been opened, in the name of “democracy”, that exalted term. It has become, in our context, comical, ironic and even absurd. It reminds me of the GDR, the German “Democratic” Republic which was equally lacking in real democracy. But let me not insult that erstwhile “farmers’ and workers’ state”, the GDR, by comparing contemporary South Africa to it. At least in the GDR there were still some principles held by a few people, communists at that, whereas South Africa has descended to the level of delinquent insouciance in which values or principles only exist to be mocked or sneered at.

Normally I would write these words in our noble local language, Afrikaans, which washed up on the shores of the Cape from Northern Europe. A spoken language, a patois of Dutch and Low German, we have lovingly preserved and standardised it to become one of the world’s great cultural languages. Yet, in recent times and under the influence of the ambient nihilism of South Africa, many of our people have discarded this age-old tongue, full of mysterious words and expressions that formed that “bridge between Europe and Africa” that NP van Wyk Louw, perhaps our greatest poet, spoke of.

South Africa has become a dump in every sense of the word. And I say that not only because garbage or litter is literally strewn all over, but because its inhabitants have no real sense of value. Money is proverbially “easy”, obtained through corruption or simple robbery and theft. So like all parvenus the “South Africans” do not know what it means to save, invest or work for money. However, in a more fundamental sense, things of great value – cultural, historical, linguistic, architectural, artistic – are simply thrown away, dumped. Some of our greatest buildings, monuments to a past of taste and a strong national identity, have been demolished without so much as a second thought.

Afrikaans too, has been dumped, with everything else, including by many Afrikaners who have become caught up in the general decay, the loss of societal moorings that have come to characterise this entity which we still mistakenly call a “republic”. To say that I feel alienated from South Africa represents an understatement. However, I feel almost equally alienated from my fellow Afrikaners, these new, obsequious, treacherous and venal people who are but a pale shadow of their patriotic and pioneering forebears. Apart from a tiny minority of proud and civilised Afrikaners who still honour their culture, language and traditions, the rest have become almost mimic men in the sense given to that term by V.S. Naipaul, a second-hand, quasi-British people and as rootless as the illegal African immigrants that wander over our borders on a daily basis.

Perhaps predictably, the Afrikaner has become ashamed of himself. Taunted and vilified by the invective and propaganda of his enemies, he has lacked the courage and the intelligence to respond in any meaningful way. The abjectness of the Afrikaner’s spiritual surrender is painful to behold. That is why this text would be simply lost on the vast majority of Afrikaners, milling about in their confusion, self-doubt and self-hatred. The glib clichés of their journalists and pundits, imitating American-liberal or politically correct discourse, are quite beyond any form of serious discussion or reflection. Like Captain Ahab confronting Moby Dick, I have to face up to this monstrous entity with the bland geographical name, South Africa, casting this message appositely to sea like a message in a bottle that might be read somewhere on the other side of the globe, or not read at all.

Apparently the first Roodt came to South Africa in the early 1700s, so despite what Afrocentric blacks proclaim to the contrary, that “Africa belongs to the Africans”, I may consider myself to some extent naturalised. I hold no other passport. Yet I am also very aware of the murderous xenophobia at the heart of contemporary South Africa which holds that both the white man and the foreign African are unwanted, “foreign”, fit only to be expelled or to be killed.

Like any sensible person of European descent has to admit, South Africa hates us. We are despised for many reasons, some more atavistic and preposterous than others, but in no other country has pure, unadulterated ethnic hatred been so mythologised and so obfuscated by largely spurious interpretations of history as here. Lest I be accused of lapsing into the commonplace black-white rhetoric representing analysis or thinking in South Africa, I am accutely aware that much of what passes for racial feeling in South Africa has always been stirred up from outside or been a handy way for the oligarchy currently looting us to justify its domination and ludicrously discriminatory policies, however much they may be clothed in US-style, politically correct jargon.

Sooner or later, one has to confront the salient fact: South Africa, or the gathering mob on the way to another necklace killing, that symbol of “liberation”, hates me. In turn, and increasingly so, I have come to hate South Africa. With a passion.

I may still love boerewors and biltong, and soaking up the winter sun through my window, but I have only contempt for this failed-state-in-the-making, this pseudo-democracy, this Little England, Little America and everything little, belittling and petty that one may imagine.

South Africa has no reason for existing. It is not the name of a country, but of a pathology. It possesses no identity to speak of. It is just a big parasite preying on the labours of the few who are still, against all odds, pursuing a normal existence under the Southern Cross.

I think I could write a book about why I hate South Africa. However, immediately I have to concede that writing books in South Africa is generally a waste of time. The few people who are still able to read, after umpteen educational experiments, the advent of cellphones and the ambient degeneracy, do not constitute a market for books. There is no literary society. Like everything else in South Africa, the book industry is controlled by a few colonial souls who make money out of importing British books. What is known as the local book, especially the so-called non-fiction book, is merely the endless repetition of baseless clichés and idées reçues. Otherwise there are various talking heads from radio and TV who somehow think that they should also bestow upon themselves the imprimatur of “author” by having their usual vacuous sayings coagulated into print.

The notion of “debate” and especially a debate by means of an argument that might span two or three hundred pages of a book, is so foreign to South Africa that it would make me even more of an outsider than I already am if I had to attempt anything like it. It would appear to be some foreign activity, like playing pétanque on a rugby field.

It remains therefore for me to sum up the very good and multifarious reasons why I hate South Africa.

(To be continued)

Donate or subscribe to praag!

BNP Paribas fine: are $10 billion too much?

bnp-paribas2Forget the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings and the elaborate preparations to celebrate later this week the liberation of France by its allies. Forget “Lafayette, nous sommes ici”, which General John Pershing is supposed to have said when the American Expeditionary Force showed up for what remained of the first world war, saluting the Frenchman who fought at George Washington’s side. Relations between France and America are bad and getting worse.

For that thank the whopping fine that American authorities are thought to be about to levy on BNP Paribas’s American arm for allegedly processing transactions with countries on America’s black list, such as Sudan and Iran. The precise amount of the fines, and the conditions attached to them, is still a matter of conjecture and probably negotiation. But whether or not the total fine tops $10 billion, as the Wall Street Journal reported possible last week, it will greatly exceed the €1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) that the bank said in February it had set aside to manage the sanctions-busting fall-out. Worse, it threatens to drive a coach and horses through its balance-sheet, just as the European Central Bank is about to assess eurozone banks’ robustness in an effort to flush out the bad news and boost bank lending to the “real” economy. BNP Paribas is France’s largest and Europe’s second-largest bank.

Unsurprisingly, the va et vient of top French financial figures crossing the Atlantic has been frenetic in recent weeks. Now the matter has become overtly political. Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, did not hide his irritation when he said on France 2 television today that the fine was “unreasonable”. On Thursday evening the D-Day festivities will provide an opportunity for men with whom bucks are supposed to stop to speak about the matter face to face. Presidents Barack Obama and François Hollande are to have dinner together on Thursday, though other acrimonious subjects—France’s determination to carry on with defence sales to Russia, America’s still-remembered reluctance to intervene in Syria—will not be lacking.

Many in France, and probably elsewhere in Europe, are beginning to think that America lets its own banks off rather lightly (though JPMorgan Chase might disagree) and cracks down on foreign ones instead to appease voters’ visceral dislike of finance. American rules often differ from European ones (they do on sanctions), criminalising behaviour that would be legal in a bank’s home country. The Front National, for one, has publicly backed BNP Paribas, urging the government to “defend and protect the interests of millions of French depositors”. Such views are not confined to the far-right.

Calmer heads, Mr Fabius among them, agree that banks doing business in America should abide by American laws. But punishment for infringing them cannot be capricious: it should be roughly proportionate to the harm caused, plus an extra slug for deterrence.

The most handed over by any of the clutch of non-US banks already fined for sanctions-busting was HSBC’s $1.9 billion in 2012. BNP is looking at paying a fine several times that amount, as well as pleading guilty to a felony (as Crédit Suisse had to do when it paid a $2.6 billion fine in May for helping Americans escape US taxes) and losing, presumably temporarily, the ability to clear dollar transactions for its customers, which means losing the customers. Against all that the heads that will have to roll in New York and the official gumshoe sitting watchfully at the heart of the bank’s operations there are mere bagatelles. – The Economist

Where’s America’s right to referendum, secession?

mercer_ilanaby Ilana Mercer

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

From a node in the neoconservative network, a Fox News studio, Charles Krauthammer has complained about the eviction of the Ukrainian Navy from the city of Sevastopol, where it was headquartered. Not a word did the commentator say about the city’s location: Sevastopol is on the Crimean Peninsula. It would appear that the city now falls within Crimean jurisdiction – starting March 16, the day the people of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine.

By most estimates, between 97 and 93 percent of Crimean voters said yes to a reunion with Russia. High too was voter turnout. McClatchy pegs it at 83 percent of registered voters in Crimea. BBC News was agreed, also reporting a ballot of “more than 80 percent.” Zerohedge.com counted a “paltry” 73 percent turnout, still “higher than every U.S. presidential election since 1900.”

As rocker Ted Nugent might say, the Russians and Crimeans are blood brothers. Nugent got into trouble for using this perfectly proper appellation to describe his affinity for a politician, of all people: Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful Greg Abbott. Notwithstanding that in the land of the terminally stupid, linguistic flourish can land one in hot water – blood brother is a good, if colorful, turn of phrase that denotes fealty between like-minded people. Steeped in state-enforced multiculturalism, America’s deracinated, self-anointed cognoscenti have a hard time grasping the blood-brother connections between the people of Russia and Crimea.

For no apparent reason other than that it is pro-Russian, Americans have reflexively aligned themselves against the swell for secession in southern Ukraine. Separatist referenda in Kosovo, Catalonia, South Sudan and Scotland have been accepted without demur by a political and media establishment unprepared to countenance a similar referendum in Crimea.

Guided by the pack animals of politics and punditry who seldom fail to shed darkness on whatever topic they tackle, a nation that struggles to locate the disputed territories on the map has been convinced of the menace posed by Russia. According to a CNN poll, 69 percent of Americans say they see Russia as a threat. A Rasmussen Report poll indicated that “52 percent support U.S. diplomatic action against Russia over Crimea.”

Helping to drive American Russophobia is the implacable logic exemplified by Bill O’Reilly of “The Factor,” yet another node in the network mentioned. At the suggestion that there are similarities between Russian and American military bellicosity, the TV host foams at the mouth. Fulmination is followed not by argument, but by a form of ad hominem or psychologizing.

Into the Cannibal's Pot

It is absolutely verboten on this popular and powerful show to compare Russia’s “excursion” into Ukraine to America’s naturally illicit and illegal occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In defense of their reflexive rejection of the reasonable, if inaccurate, comparison – for decades the U.S. has been far more aggressive than Russia in its forays abroad – Bill and his gang “argued” (on March 3) as follows:

President Vladimir Putin is a thug. That’s why his actions can’t be contrasted with the actions of “a good country” like the U.S. By “logical” extension, George Bush and Barack Obama are never to be fingered as thugs.

Why, Billy, some of you will inquire? Is it because these thugs are American? Precisely.

Next, Bill O’Reilly’s mind-reading gifts were galvanized to negate the juxtaposition of the actions on the ground of the Russian and American governments. Putin, it would appear, seeks the recrudescence of the Russian empire. On the other hand, the U.S., with a military presence in 148 countries and 900 bases worldwide, has neither sought nor achieved empire status.

Why, Billy, some of you will ask? Is it because the U.S. is a good country? You got it!

Be it in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Japan, Bahrain, Djibouti, South Korea, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Kuwait – even Aruba, Iceland, Indonesia, Kenya, Norway and Peru – wherever it plants its military boot, a “good country” is never an empire, only a force for good.

Me, O’Reilly would dismiss as “anti-American.” But what of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger? While Kissinger has condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he excoriated “the demonization of Vladimir Putin.” This antipathy “is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” “The United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington,” wrote the statesman in the Washington Post.

Is Henry Kissinger anti-American or simply smarter than some Americans?

At least Secretary of State John Kerry hung on to his sense of humor. “Unless you are the United States of America, you just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” Kerry lectured the congenitally incurious David Gregory, of “Meet the Press.”

I ad-libbed. Except for the first eight words in quotation marks, Secretary Kerry did indeed say the foregoing. Given America’s military record, the missing words are implied.

The O’Reilly school of “thought” could – and does – counteract that Crimea’s vote to join Russia was tainted by fraud. This is certainly possible. Nevertheless, it is none of our business. Americans have their own tyrants to dethrone.

We’re supposed to be the freest people in the world, aren’t we? Is this claim not the moral basis for America’s we-know-best global meddling? But if we Americans are the freest people in the world, where’s our right to a referendum on, say, that “little” legislative “blip” called Obamacare? And if we’re so bleeding free, where’s our right to secede from D.C.?

© 2014 by Ilana Mercer

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

US defies China’s fly zone with B-52 flight

B-52 bomber
B-52 bomber

Two American B-52 bombers flew over a disputed area of the East China Sea without informing Beijing, challenging China’s claims to an expanded air defense zone, officials said Tuesday.

The flight of the giant, long-range Stratofortress planes sent a clear warning that Washington would push back against what it considers an aggressive stance by Beijing in the region.

The move also signaled staunch US support for Japan, which has been locked in a mounting feud with Beijing over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

The unarmed bombers took off from Guam on Monday on a scheduled flight, as part of what defense officials insisted was a routine exercise dubbed “Coral Lightning Global Power Training Sortie.”

“Last night we conducted a training exercise that was long-planned. It involved two aircraft flying from Guam and returning to Guam,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.

Although China has insisted it has a right to police the skies over the area, no flight plan was submitted beforehand to the Chinese and the mission went ahead “without incident,” Warren said.

The two aircraft spent “less than an hour” in China’s unilaterally-declared Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and did not encounter Chinese planes, he said.

A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AFP the two US planes were B-52 bombers.

The military flight carried important symbolism as it came a week before US Vice President Joe Biden’s scheduled trip to China, Japan and South Korea next month.

China announced the expanded air defense zone amid a sovereignty dispute with Japan over the island chain in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.

The area also includes waters claimed by Taiwan and South Korea, which also have both denounced Beijing’s move.

Without taking sides in the territorial argument, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called on China and Japan to negotiate an end to their dispute.

Ban on Tuesday said tensions should be handled “amicably through dialogue and negotiations.”

Under the rules declared by China, aircraft are expected to provide a flight plan, clearly mark their nationality and maintain two-way radio communication to allow them to respond to identification queries from Chinese authorities.

Pentagon officials said the United States views the area as international air space and American military aircraft would operate in the zone as before without submitting flight plans to China in advance.

Japan, the United States and several other governments promptly rejected China’s announced air defense zone after it was announced Saturday.

The US State Department renewed its criticism Tuesday, saying China’s action appeared to be an attempt to “unilaterally change the status quo in the East China Sea.”

The move “will raise regional tensions and increase the risk of miscalculation, confrontation and accidents,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Australia summoned Beijing’s ambassador to express its opposition and Japanese airlines said Wednesday they had stopped following China’s new rules.

The reversal came after pressure from the Japanese government, which insisted China’s announcement was invalid, and after governments around the world lined up alongside Tokyo.

France and Germany each expressed concern and urged restraint on all sides.

“We are committed to a peaceful resolution through dialogue to this dispute, in accordance with international law,” French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said.

The territorial dispute over the islands has simmered for decades but in September 2012, Japan nationalized three of the islands, in what it portrayed as an attempt to avoid a more inflammatory step by a nationalist politician.

Beijing, however, accuses Tokyo of disturbing the status quo, and has sent ships and planes to the islands in a show of force.

In response, Japan has mobilized vessels and aircraft, raising fears the tensions could trigger an accidental clash.

Beyond the East China Sea, Beijing has taken an assertive approach to a number of territorial disputes, particularly in the strategic South China Sea.

In response to China’s growing military might and influence, the United States has sought to shift its strategic focus to Asia, planning to expand America’s military presence across the Pacific.

But a spate of crises in the Middle East and budget woes have often hampered Washington’s attempt at a so-called “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. – AFP

What if the media were moral?

mercer_ilanaby Ilana Mercer

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

Media conservatives and liberals were agreed. The Republican brand, as National Review’s Jonah Goldberg put it, had been damaged by the debt-ceiling standoff.

Chuckie Krauthammer, another phony conservative, concurred. After badmouthing tea-party Republicans for attempting to leverage a partial government shut-down and debt-ceiling deadline to dilute ObamaCare, Krauthammer scolded “the media” for its biased coverage of the quixotic showdown.

Pot. Kettle. Krauthammer

No sooner had the Senate voted, on Wednesday Oct. 16, to unconditionally reopen the spending spigot—seconded in short succession by Congress and the president—than an unabashed Dana Bash, chief congressional correspondent for CNN, cornered Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Her angle, like every other media mouthpiece in the country, was the futility of the fight Cruz had spearheaded:

“As you well know, you have a lot of fellow Republicans really downright angry at you because, here we are, almost three weeks later, the strategy that you started out on to defund Obamacare as part of funding the government. They never thought it was going to work because the votes aren’t there. And here we are, reopening the government after a lot of bruising political warfare internally, and you got nothing for it.”

More a leading suggestion than a journalistic question, Bash’s crude calculus—that outcomes, rather than principle, should dictate the political action pursued—was what Americans had been force-fed by her ilk over the past two weeks.

Throughout the so-called shutdown (unnoticed by hardworking Americans), Americans were exposed, day in and day out, to asphyxiating agitprop. The Taliban-like tea party caucus, they were told, was criminally negligent for refusing to allow the government to keep borrowing. Damned they were as “aging, white bigots” for daring to demand changes to a despised law, at the expense of the temporary furlough of 800,000 non-essential oink-sector workers, whose salaries are, on average, double that of the average wage in the country, and whose hefty healthcare and bankrupting retirement benefits the rest of the country can only dream of, but must pay for.

Into the Cannibal's Pot

What Cruz had to say throughout the ordeal was not what Americans—who get most of their news from cable television and the news networks—got to hear.

Repeated ad nauseam by these noisy, Democratic sleeper cells were the results of polls that reflected a media-manufactured consensus: “Republicans continue to get more blame than the Obama administration for Washington’s fiscal policy stalemate.”

Is there any wonder that infantile America mirrors its squandering government with respect to debt carried? “Like father, like son” goes a saying about the similarities between the behavior of parent and progeny. Like their government, Americans are debt-addled (the “fore horse for oppression and despotism,” forewarned Founding Father Thomas Jefferson). The total household debt in the U.S. stands at $13 trillion; student loans at $3.04 trillion.

If the media were moral, they’d have told Americans these truths.

If the media were moral, they’d have told Americans that the perennial debt crises are manufactured crises.

That the U.S. government’s receipts are more than sufficient to cover its debt payments by a factor of approximately 10.

That the 14th Amendment (Section 4) of the U.S. Constitution prohibits a default on the country’s debt.

That if the country were to default on the debt, it would be because President Barack Obama deliberately and maliciously chose to flout the Constitution (it’s the law of the land, unlike Obamacare), and not service the debt, so as to win a political battle.

If the media were moral, they’d tell America that it’s do or die. That capping the debt ceiling is perhaps the only way to compel a government that owes $17 trillion and carries “$70 trillion in off-balance-sheet liabilities” to make do with the loot it collects.

That the stock-market’s “confidence,” pursuant to lifting the cap on the debt, amounts to faith in confidence men; that soaring stocks in a debt-fueled, stagnant economy is a consequence of the confetti of funny-money raining down from the nation’s pantheon: the Federal Reserve Bank.

That non-stop monetary stimulus is the road to ruin—it results in a rise in prices, stocks included. Homes too. And that an increase in the price of an item is not the same as an appreciation in its value.

That the natural laws of economics dictate that Obamacare will increase both public and private debt.

That members of the media-monetary-military-congressional complex are immoral and have an allergy to the truth.

And that’s the honest to goodness truth.

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

John Stossel and the New Rome on the Potomac

Ilana Mercer
Ilana Mercer

by Ilana Mercer

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

Libertarian extraordinaire John Stossel asks the right questions. He doesn’t always arrive at the right answers.The questions Mr. Stossel poses on his Fox-Business TV show, small mercies, have little to do with the mindless things that busy Big Media.

For a couple of weeks, for example, the impetus among the mindless has been to provide the priapic Anthony Wiener with the boost his worthless life and life’s work have clearly needed. The sexting antics of this engorged organism—a New-York City mayoral candidate and once a Democratic congressman—have allowed Major Media to carry out its mission: knocking down one straw man (Weiner) to conceal the catastrophes of another (Obama).

Back to Stossel. To the question of “Are We Rome?” posed on the July 18 segment of his eponymous show, Mr. Stossel replied, “Not yet.” Wrong. Mr. Stossel takes comfort in the fact that “we don’t kill people for sport. When we go to war, misguided or not, we don’t conquer or plunder. And when we win, we usually leave.”

The popular host is utterly mistaken—just as he was wrong to summarily dismiss the threat to liberty of the “National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls,” to quote his nonchalant column.

Who is Stossel kidding? American assassins hunt down and kill very many innocents abroad by drone. Unmanned aerial U.S. “drones have killed thousands, many of them civilians,” attests Gabor Rona of Human Rights First. And talk about a Roman spectacle! Targeted killing is even a bit of a sport—so much so that the New Rome has established a “new medal that honors drone pilots and computer experts” for their long-distance killing prowess. It was to be called “The Distinguished Warfare Medal.”

Rome’s rulers were not nearly as efficient as the US is at killing. Uncle Sam has industrialized and streamlined war-time slaughter. No longer do thousands of legionnaires lay siege to a city with attack catapults; one pilot flattens it with a single “daisy cutter” (and few qualms).

Compare the demographic and economic indices of countries the US has invaded—for their own good, of course, but without their consent—before and after those faith-based initiatives. You’ll get a better idea of the carnage than John Stossel’s optimism allows.

Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there.

Into the Cannibal's Pot

The Comitatus—”the sprawling apparatus that encompasses the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”—refused to keep count of the casualties in the Iraq war. Thus are the losses variously estimated to run from 110,600 violent deaths (Associated Press), to 601,027 (a Lancet survey), and likely even 1,033,000 (Opinion Research Business survey).

Likewise has “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, still ongoing, been the direct and indirect cause of the deaths and displacement of many thousands of Afghan civilians. (Wikipedia has tallied the “deaths caused by Coalition forces in Libya.”)

Again, contrary to Stossel’s assertion, the latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare-state’s killing capabilities and has refined its propaganda wing to an art—so fine an art that John Stossel has bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Nobody attempting to tackle the “Are We Rome?” vexation should get away with a failure to mention Cullen Murphy’s book by that name. This question Murphy has asked and answered. Superbly so.

Murphy’s “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome” draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America, down to the contemporary “musicians” [like Beyoncé and Jay-Z], “the courtesans, diviners, buffoons [clearly categories are not mutually exclusive] … the people who taste the emperor’s food before he himself does … the core groups of bureaucrats and toadies who function within the nimbus of great power.”

The domain name “USA.gov.”, if you will.

Lest you forget, the D.C. hood is also home to your favorite, oh-so gritty media personalities, who gather inside or near the Bubble to reap “the benefits of being at the center of the Imperium.” This means rocking the ship of state just enough to retain street cred with “the folks.”

Ultimately, “All life in Washington today derives … from the capital’s own version of Rome’s annona — the continuous infusion not of grain and olive oil but of tax revenue and borrowed money,” avers Murphy. “Instead of ships and barges there are banks, 10,000 of them designated for this purpose, which funnel the nation’s tax payments to the city. This ‘never-ending flow of revenue creates a broad level of affluence that has no real counterpart anywhere in America. Washington simply doesn’t look like the rest of America.” But its residents “fail to view this as bizarre.”

The rest of the country doesn’t much flinch about the fleecing. The people of the provinces are programmed to go on pilgrimages to D.C., and genuflect to their opulent oppressors. The rest exist merely to serve the masters of modern Rome. Thanks to the graft flowing into the Beltway, the average income in and around Washington D.C. is $85,189 compared to $49,777 for the hinterland, where unemployment rates are almost double.

Unless the pauperized hoi polloi are willing to do something drastic, like repeal the “annona”—the number of that beast is 16: the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—we’ll continue to live as the Beltway’s bitches.

Yet another of Mr. Stossel’s less piercing insights consists in objecting “to President Obama’s $100 million dollar [African] trip,” but consoling himself that “The Romans were worse”: “Nero traveled with 1,000 carriages.”

By Murphy’s telling, when on-the-go, “just one element of the president’s U.S. security detail [is] a thousand strong”! It entails Air Force cargo planes which bring helicopters, Secret Service SUVs, and the official presidential limousine (plus the official decoy limousine). Along for the ride are ground forces, U.S. Naval vessels, with surface-to-air missiles as backup.

When the modern-day Xerxes is on the move, he travels with more auxiliaries than Nero, bringing smaller countries to a standstill.

There’s nothing Spartan or beneficent about the latter-day Rome’s rule.

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

Read Ilana’s website

The rainbow Bantustan

mandela222

by Albert Brenner

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. (Dante Alighieri)

In a recent interview with MNBC, the black Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson had the following to say in lieu of the Trayvon Martin case:

“White people will not understand racism until their children are murdered… Not until, and unless, the number of white kids die that approximate the numbers of black and other kids who have died will America see it is beyond logic, it is beyond rationality…”

And right he has. It is indeed “beyond logic and rationality” why so many blacks are killed in America – the supposed multi-culti paradise on planet Earth.

The only problem is that it is blacks killing blacks… not whites killing blacks!

Of the 7000 black Americans who died violently in 2012, 92% died at the hands of fellow blacks. This is just a fact. This is not a “racist” fact.

As is the fact that black Americans kill other Americans at a rate 10 times higher than that of white and Hispanic Americans combined. As is the fact that black Americans commit 50% of all the murders in America, although they only comprise 12% of the total population of America.

These are just facts. They are not “racist” facts!

What is indeed “racist” about these facts, is the fact that white Americans don’t kill white Americans at the same rate as black Americans kill black Americans – or Hispanic Americans kill Hispanic Americans, for that matter.

And the exact same applies to South Africa. It is black South Africans killing black South Africans at a world-record rate… and black South Africans killing white South Africans at the exact same world-record rate – and even at a higher rate when it comes to white farmers.

Meaning that there is one (easily identifiable and scientifically verifiable) common denominator when it comes to determining which race is responsible for the above-mentioned horror.

Blacks.

And this is exactly why Dyson is right when he stated that “… it is beyond logic, it is beyond rationality (that)…White people will not understand racism until their children are murdered”.

For white people living in 21st-century Western countries are indeed flabbergasted by this wanton slaughter of blacks by blacks… in 21st-century Western countries!

Let us be brutally honest here; white areas during Apartheid had the same murder-rate as (comparable) Western countries at the time. I.e. it was just as safe in white areas during Apartheid as it was in, for example, white areas in England, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Germany, America, et cetera.

Ergo, you cannot compare apples to pears… hence Dyson`s despair.

For if you see everything through the prismon of equality (see my previous column), you will, inevitably, stub your toes bloody on the border separating that which is “logical and rational” from that which is “illogical and irrational”.

And this is exactly why the notion of (a) White Genocide is derided in Mandelatopia. For we (whites) are being killed at the exact same rate as blacks killing blacks. Meaning we are all truly equal now in Mandelatopia… even in (violent) Death.

As if being slaughtered at the same rate as blacks – slaughtered by fellow blacks – is somehow “positive”… because we are all being slaughtered equally now – all according to that multi-culti (moral) dictum which has elevated the Xhosa goat herder called Mandela to (a) God in South Africa…and globally.

All equal in life and death – precisely as god-man Mandela wanted it. All precisely according to Dyson`s despair… his desperate cry of “racism”.

For “racism” has become a metonym for come-down-to-our-level. Dyson`s cry is, in effect, nothing more than a desperate call (on the part of blacks, worldwide) to accept their brutally primitive pre-Neolithic (moral) dictates.

Be that as it may; it suffices to say that I, for one, will not heed this call!

I, as a Child of the Enlightenment, deserve and demand, more from Life.

Just ask yourself the following simple question; who brought/enacted democracy and human rights to/in South Africa… or America, England, Sweden, Australia, et cetera.

We, the Westerners, did. Nobody else.

Be that as it may; we Westerners are definitely not perfect – a fact none of us can ever plausibly deny. But we sure as hell do not deserve that which is being dealt out by blacks, globally, at our expense!

South Africa (Mandelatopia) has become a Bantustan. We have been (psychologically) socially-engineered to simply accept being “equal” in every aspect… be it (in) Life or Death. There is no denying this fact. The prismon of equality is merciless.

We, as Westerners in Mandelatopia, can therefore either integrate (i.e. become black), or demand our God-given right to live according to the (moral) dictates that have characterized our (absolutely unique) civilization.

The former, i.e. becoming pre-Neolithic – plastered (over) with a Zeitgeist-bound feel-good MSM/-popular culture-driven bling bling White Guilt white-liberal The End of History neo-liberal Western façade – has never been an option for me… for, as a famous French thinker said:

Everyone has a limit, beyond which she or he will no longer acquiesce in their own oppression. (Albert Camus)