The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘They Started to Fight Over Her and I Knew She Was Going to Be Raped’

Posted on | December 6, 2013 | 197 Comments

 

Maybe if it had been committed by the Duke lacrosse team, you would have heard of this atrocity by now, but it happened five years ago in another country. Amanda Marcotte probably didn’t notice:

Jamie Paterson, 17: “I was lying down and I could hear them undoing the TV and then throwing it across and then something fell on me. I thought it was the TV, but it was my mother. And then I looked up. And then they dragged her away again and the carpet was covered in blood. They kept saying to my father, ‘We are going to kill you, we are going to kill you now.’ . . .
Alan Paterson (her father): “She was bargaining her flute, she was bargaining her [school] badge. She was doing it, almost knowing what was going to happen to her was almost inevitable.”
Jamie: “He said to me ‘I’m HIV positive. But you’re young, I don’t want to ruin your life. So if you could just give me gold. I want gold, money and I want your gun.’I said to him, ‘We don’t have it.’ He hit me around the head and said, ‘No, you have a gun, don’t lie to me.'”
Bronwyn Paterson (her mother): “They started to fight over her and I knew she was going to be raped.”
Jamie: “And then he took me into the bathroom and locked me in and raped me there.”

You never heard of Jamie Paterson or the criminal gang that attacked her, and I never heard about it either until I saw a video interview with Jamie, which was included at the end of a long post Kathy Shaidle wrote in July about another violent criminal gang:

During the 1950s Mandela was banned, arrested and imprisoned for challenging apartheid . . . and, following the 1960 banning of the ANC, he went underground . . .
During this time, he and other ANC leaders formed its armed wing — Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). . . .
That “armed wing” carried out terror attacks at shopping centers, movie theaters and other civilian targets . . .
And when Mandela was arrested, the authorities claimed to have uncovered “210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 anti-personnel mines, 1,500 time devices, 144 tons of ammonium nitrate, 21.6 tons of aluminium powder and 1 ton of black powder.”
Governments around the world, such as the ones in the U.S. and Great Britain, placed the ANC on their terror lists, along with the PLO, the IRA and the FLQ.

You really should read the whole thing at PJ Media, because it explains how the violent terrorist Nelson Mandela got an image makeover with the help of liberal celebrities in America and England who jumped aboard the anti-apartheid crusade when it became a fashionable cause in the late 1980s. None of those celebrities live in South Africa, of course, and none of them gave a damn about the epidemic of violent crime that has afflicted South Africa in recent years, an epidemic of which Jamie Paterson and her family were victims.

Well . . . context, says our friend Drew when he derides David Swindle as a “conservative juiceboxer” for Swindle’s remembrance of Nelson Mandela’s communist past. Certainly I have labored to supply the necessary Cold War context of what the ANC actually meant during the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher refused to be intimidated by “further intensification of the armed struggle.”

Professor Donald Douglas also provides context:

We know that Mandela, in his membership with the African National Congress, was a terrorist and Communist, even though his ties to the Moscow-led revolutionary world program were disguised at the time. Here’s Telegraph UK from last year, “Nelson Mandela ‘proven’ to be a member of the Communist Party after decades of denial.” (And see the fascinating contemporary piece from Thomas Karis, at Foreign Affairs, “South African Liberation: The Communist Factor.” Also, here’s a communique from South African Communist Party Leader Joe Slovo from 1989, “Message by Joe Slovo, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, to the Soweto rally for the released ANC leaders.”)
In any case, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing overwhelming acclaim for Mandela’s legacy from the left and the right, although it’s pretty pathetic that even so-called conservatives are attempting to tamp down the meme that Mandela was a Communist.

Some conservatives are like a dog that’s been kicked a few times and flinches at a gesture — this is especially true on the subject of RAAAAACISM! — and, as I said late night, “many conservatives are so intimidated by the enormous prestige of liberalism that it takes a stern contempt for mere popularity to speak unpleasant truths.” Nobody wants to be excluded from polite society, or to show up on a left-wing “kill map” for gay psychos with a Chik-fil-A rage.

Is that our job? To be interrogated as if we were suspects? To assume, and to confirm, the media’s self-vaunted status as the Judges of Truth and the Priests of Righteousness?
Why would we ever concede that to them? . . .
Do we ever swing the hot light around and begin Watching the Watchmen?

See, the media’s omissions from Mandela’s biography are not random.

It is impossible to believe that any figure on the Right, with a comparable history of association with terrorist violence, would be celebrated by the media as a secular saint when he died.

“Well, yes, but . . .” and then our conservative friends give us a lecture (which sounds a lot like what MSNBC has been saying in its wall-to-wall Mandela telethon today) about how Mandela embraced peace and democracy and everybody lived happily ever after.

Except maybe for the people who got killed or raped.

The Gospel of Saint Nelson does not merely omit the long-ago victims of ANC terrorism, but also manages to ignore the ultra-violent reality of contemporary South Africa, “The Rape Capital of the World.”

It’s not me, the Evil Right-Wing Racist, who’s saying this, it’s South Africans themselves, and most of the victims of South Africa’s world-historic rape rampage are black, as are their rapists.

And hey, let’s talk about murder: In 2011, the murder rate in South Africa was 31.9 per 100,000. The U.S. rate is 4.7 per 100,000.

How is it that all these liberals on MSNBC who wring their hands and blame the NRA for the horrible murder rate in America don’t blink an eye in praising the wonderful post-apartheid government of South Africa, where the murder rate is six times as high?

In 1991, at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, the U.S. murder rate was only 9.8 per 100,000 — less than a third of the murder rate in South Africa today. Mexico, wracked by drug cartel violence, managed to get its murder rate down to 22 per 100,000 last year.

Three years ago, a government study of South Africa’s crime problem described several factors, including  “a subculture of violence and criminality” and “problems of inefficiency and corruption” in the criminal justice system. Gosh, that sounds kind of like . . .

Detroit, where the murder rate is 54.6 per 100,000.

OK, so South Africa is 40 percent less dangerous than Detroit, but that’s small comfort to the 15,000 or so South Africans who are murdered every year. This crime epidemic is why many South Africans live in gated communities protected by private security forces, but this was not enough to protect university professor Alan Paterson and his family when they were attacked at their home in Sandton, an affluent suburb of Johannesburg.

The family’s attackers became notorious as the Razor Gang, named after their leader Raymond “Razor” Bheki Zulu, and they “carved a devastating crime swathe through nearby suburbs,” according to a recent article about another of the gang’s victims:

Diana Thomson’s life was changed forever on the stormy night eight years ago when her son Mike was stabbed and shot repeatedly as he fought for his life, while trying to protect his wife and little children in their Johannesburg home. . . .
He, his wife Lorna and their three children aged between seven and 11, were at home on Thursday, September 27 2007 as a wild storm dumped so much water into the swimming pool that it began to overflow.
Mike went out to backwash the pool when he saw four men hiding in the corner of his courtyard.
He shouted and Lorna heard the crack of a handgun amidst the thunder. It was a shot going into Mike’s torso. He was a big, strong man who was running a karate school with his brother Allan, and he continued to fight the gang, sustaining 14 stab wounds before another shot killed him.
The gang moved into the house where Lorna and her children were tied up and threatened with death before the robbers fled in a waiting car.

The same gang attacked a pastor’s family:

In the robbery of Pastor Neil Rischbieter, his wife Carol and two other women were raped and his elderly parents terrorised for three hours. . . .
On December 17, five men broke into Rischbieter’s Buccleuch home — where he and his wife Carol throw swimming parties for children from a nearby shelter.
Neil’s parents, Joey and Noel, and a woman renting a cottage also live on the property. On the night, the tenant had three friends over, including another woman in her 20s.
The gang tied up their victims and rounded them up in Joey and Noel’s cottage.
Carol was brought to the cottage but then marched back to the house. Her assailant tried to force her into the bathroom, but she refused, and he raped her in the bedroom.
“I was praying for him and his forgiveness,” she said.
“I told him: ‘You don’t need to do this. You don’t know how much Jesus loves you. Jesus will forgive you’.”
The young tenant and her friend were also raped and one of their male friends was beaten by the robbers after he slipped out of the phone cords used to tie him up.

Alan Paterson described the sadistic glee of the criminals who attacked his family:

“They enjoyed every bit of the attack. It was brutal.” . . .
[T]he robbers pistol-whipped [Paterson’s wife] and then stabbed her in the back of the head and neck with a pair of scissors.
“All the time they kept shouting at her: ‘You f***ing white bitch.’ “

And, in case you forgot, 17-year-old Jamie Paterson got raped:

 

Raped by an HIV-infected criminal? All too common in South Africa, which is not only “The Rape Capital of the World,” but also a country in which more than 5 million people are infected with the AIDS virus, according to official statistics:

At least 28% of South African schoolgirls are HIV positive compared with 4% of boys because “sugar daddies” are exploiting them, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has said.
He said 94,000 schoolgirls also fell pregnant in 2011, and 77,000 had abortions at state facilities, The Sowetan newspaper reports.
About 10% of South Africans are living with HIV, official statistics show. . . .
Last year more than 260,000 people with AIDS died — almost half the figure of all those who died in the country.

Nobody else is going to remind you of that today. There are a lot of things the media doesn’t want you to know about, aren’t there?

 

Category: Crime, Terrorism

1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’

Posted on | December 6, 2013 | 79 Comments

When Margaret Thatcher died in April, the British Left reacted with the kind of ugly viciousness you would expect of the British Left. This is worth remembering today when liberals are demanding that everyone must now forget the reality of who Nelson Mandela was.

Thatcher’s death, in fact, was the occasion for the Left to recycle a misquote about South Africa intended to smear Thatcher. Her enemies claimed she said, “The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation… Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo land.” The first sentence is a decontextualized misquote; the second is a distorted misattribution.

In the 1980s, the leadership of the ANC (African National Congress) included Marxist revolutionary Chris Hani, who was both an official of the South African Communist Party and the Political Commissar of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (also known as “MK”). Hani, who had engaged in guerrilla warfare in Zimbabwe, set up “an underground infrastructure” for MK inside South Africa.

This background is necessary to understanding the Cold War context of the situation in South Africa during the ’80s, a context to which I alluded Thursday evening in recalling Mandela’s anti-American rhetoric. Liberals would now have us forget both those words, and the historic context of Soviet-backed “wars of national liberation” that characterized Moscow’s policy in the Third World.

Along with Ronald Reagan, Thatcher was a leader of worldwide opposition to communism and, in the 1980s, the West was under intense pressure to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, pressure which both Reagan and Thatcher resisted.

My conservative friend Joel Pollak’s reaction to historic evidence of Mandela’s alliance with communists reminded me that Pollak, born in 1977, can be excused for forgetting — as he was only a child at the time — when left-wing students on American university campuses staged protests demanding “divestment” from South Africa.

These protests were the kind of childish radical tantrums Pollak would certainly abhor. The “shanty wars” at Dartmouth, where conservative students were suspended for attempting to dismantle protesters’ huts on the campus green, were memorialized in a 2006 book, The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent. Pressure for “divestment” and sanctions against Johannesburg was a perfect example of how Western liberals enthusiastically embraced Soviet policy aims during the Cold War.

It was predictable: If the KGB wanted something, the hippie scum at American universities would march in favor of it, and whatever the Kremlin opposed, the hippie scum would denounce as an intolerable abomination. Hell’s bells, the fact that the United States doesn’t have more nuclear power plants today can be blamed on those idiotic Commie stooges in the “No Nukes” movement of the 1970s and ’80s.

Historical context is everything, you see, and in 1986, the communist leader of the ANC’s military wing, Chris Hani, warned that the ANC was “going to step up attacks against those factories, transnational corporations and monopolies, which exploit and maltreat the South African working class and in the process it is more than probable that white civilians will lose their lives.”

Communist ANC leader Chris Hani.

This was an outright threat of terrorism which Western leftists found perfectly acceptable, at a time when Fidel Castro had 40,000 Cuban troops in Angola where, with the Soviet Union’s active support, Cuban solders were fighting South African troops deployed in support of anti-communist UNITA insurgents in a bloody civil war.

The sanctions and “divestment” campaign against South Africa was therefore an effort to advance Soviet foreign policy aims in Africa by sabotaging the economy of a key Western ally.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

In October 1987, at a summit conference of the British Commonwealth held at Vancouver, ANC official Mfanafuthi Johnstone “Johnny” Makatini “said Britain’s refusal to support these measures would result in ‘the further intensification of the armed struggle’ and also in attacks on British corporations in South Africa.” At a press conference in Vancouver, Thatcher answered a question about these threats:

“When the ANC says that they will target British companies, this shows what a typical terrorist organization it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism. They will if they believe in democracy.”

You can read the rest of Thatcher’s October 1987 press conference and find a handy lesson on the nature of liberal media bias in the fact that so many of the media questions amounted to parroting Johnny Makatini’s demand for sanctions against South Africa. Thatcher said “apartheid is a totally repugnant system and must go,” but also pointed out the political, military and diplomatic reality:

So far as Britain is concerned, we believe that sanctions would only harden attitudes rather than promote progress . . .
There is a very considerable Soviet influence throughout Africa. There are main Cuban forces, as you pointed out, in Angola, but I understand that there are Cuban people or forces or advisers in something like twelve other countries in Africa and also there are of course East German advisers and, of course, as you know, a considerable number of the ANC leaders are communists. . . .
I will have nothing to do with any organisation that practices violence. I have never seen anyone from ANC or the PLO or the IRA and would not do so. Nor will we have any truck with any of the organisations; we never negotiate with hostage taking or anything like that. But please, I hope you will fight terrorism and violence and not in fact embrace it.

The status of the ANC as a terrorist organization — comparable to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army — was quite clear to Thatcher, as was also the communist allegiance of many ANC leaders, who sided with the Soviets in Angola. The same Johnny Makatini who at Vancouver threatened “intensification of armed struggle” and attacks on British companies in South Africa, turned up a month later at an ANC meeting to denounce South Africa’s “criminal warpath” against “the People’s Republic of Angola.”

If it walks like a Communist duck and talks like a Communist duck . . .

Having supplied the proper historical contest to Margaret Thatcher’s (accurate) description of the ANC as a “terrorist organization,”  what about the “cloud cuckooland” part of the quote her enemies falsely attribute to her? This leftist smear stems from a question asked of Thatcher’s spokesman, Bernard Ingham, about the potential for a violent revolution in South Africa in 1987:

“When a Canadian reporter suggested that the African National Congress might [forcibly] overthrow the white South African regime, Thatcher’s spokesman responded, ‘It is cloud cuckooland for anyone to believe that could be done.'”

Wait a minute: Haven’t the liberal myth-makers told us that Mandela’s ANC was a peaceful movement? Why, then, would a reporter have asked in 1987 whether the ANC might stage a violent revolution? Well, if it walks like a Communist duck . . .

 

IRONIC FOOTNOTE: Chris Hani, the Marxist revolutionary who in the 1980s threatened violence against “white civilians,” was assassinated in 1993 by a Polish immigrant, Janusz Walus, using a pistol loaned to him by a pro-apartheid official, Clive Derby-Lewis. Hani’s assassination increased tensions and fears of further violence. Nelson Mandela gave a speech calling for peace: “Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for — the freedom of all of us.” The crisis sparked by Hani’s assassination is credited with hastening the first post-apartheid election in 1994 that elected Mandela president.


Category: History, Terrorism

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT: 12.06.13

Posted on | December 6, 2013 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Nelson Mandela Dead At 95

The former South African president in a 1986 photo

A flood of emotion from around the world


French Reinforcements Arrive In Central African Republic
UN authorizes French, African military action


“Ice Friday” Bears Down On South, Midwest
Snow, freezing rain, sub-freezing temperatures from Texas to Indiana



POLITICS
Congress Nears Modest Accord On Budget

Speaker of the House John Boehner

House Democrats insist on extension of unemployment; Boehner not averse

Bratton Returns To Lead NYPD

Obama Tries To Quell Youth Revolt

White House: Oh, You Mean THAT Uncle

Shoppers Face Rising Milk Prices If Congress Can’t Break Farm Bill Impasse

Administration Close To Giving Wind Farms A Decade-Long Pass On Killing Eagles

Study Says Union-Backed Fast Food Wage Proposal Could Cost Half A Million Jobs

Bipartisan House Votes Against Patent Trolls

Fast-Food Protests Spur Backlash



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Prices Mixed As Data Point To US Economy Rebound: NYMEX $97.37, Brent $111.02
Arts, Culture Add $500B To GDP
Markets Steady Despite Talk Of Fed Stimulus Cut
Economy Grows At 3.6% In Q3, Beating Estimates
Shell Scraps Plans For Gulf Coast Gas Plant
Kohl’s Tries Overnight Hours In Runup To Holiday
Apple Guides Shoppers Inside Stores With iBeacon
Microsoft And Law Enforcement Team Up To Disrupt “ZeroAccess” Click-Fraud Botnet
Android Flashlight App Caught Collecting & Selling User Data
Ryan Seacrest Just Invested $1 Million In This iPhone Keyboard
The Next USB Plug Will Finally Be Reversible



SPORTS
Pounded On The Glass, Heat Fall To Bulls

No Wade? No Rose? No problem for Bulls

Boozer, Bulls hand Miami 107-87 defeat

Are The Mariners Dumb Enough To Pay Cano What He Wants? Probably Not


Jags Hand Texans 11th Straight Loss

Lundquist Solid As Rangers Top Hapless Sabres

Pens Cruise To 5-1 Win Against Sharks

Poms Melt As Aussies Turn Up The Heat In Adelaide

Knicks Crush Nyets In First Meeting Of Big Apple Busts

Hall’s Hat Trick Leads Oilers To Rout Avalanche



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Amanda Bynes: “I’m Doing Well”

So what’s she doing after rehab?

Heading home for the holidays after months in rehab

Keri Russell, Shane Deary Filing For Divorce

Liam Hemsworth Wants Another Shot At Miley Cyrus?

Jennifer Lawrence Talks Fame, Fortune And Family


Mila Kunis & Ashton Kutcher Secretly Engaged

ABC Brass Turn Thumbs Down On Barbara Walters’ Pick Of Ed Snowden As Most Interesting Person Of The Year

Mark Wahlberg: “My Mom’s Not Speaking To Me Right Now”

“Real Housewives” Star Porsha Williams Officially Divorced From Kordell Stewart

Katy Perry, Niall Horan Meet Up For Dinner In NYC

Britney Spears May Retire After Las Vegas For Marriage, More Kids

Couple Recalls Paul Walker’s Secret Act Of Kindness A Decade Ago



FOREIGNERS
Bundesbank Raises German Growth Projections
PRC Stocks Fall As Coal Shares Slump Amid Pollution Concerns
Lethal Storm, Tidal Surge Forces Thousands From Homes In UK
Jihadi Attack On Yemen Defense Ministry Compound Kills 52
Pope Forms Commission To Advise On Prevention Of Sex Abuse
Russia PM: No Amnesty For Political Prisoners
Aide To Nork Leader’s Ousted Uncle Seeks Asylum In ROK
US Charges Russian Diplomats With Healthcare Fraud
Thailand’s King Calls For Unity In Birthday Speech



BLOGS & STUFF
The Looking Spoon: Settling Whether Santa Is Liberal Or Conservative
Aewl’s Abode: The True Spirit Of Christmas
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: More Magical Thinking From The Post-Modern President
Proof Positive: They Say That A Conservative Is A Liberal Who’s Been Mugged…
Doug Powers: Obama Says Christmas Is No Time To Tell People They’ve Lost Insurance
Twitchy: No, Paris Hilton Did Not Confuse Nelson Mandela With Martin Luther King
American Power: Obama To Paint The Golden State Red?
American Thinker: Is ObamaCare Barack Obama’s Vietnam?
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – The “Working” Part Of The Enrollments Doesn’t Work
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, December 5
Jammie Wearing Fools: Obama Admits He Lived With Illegal Alien Uncle In Boston
JustOneMinute: Tales From The South
Pat Dollard: Trey Gowdy Asks “What’s To Stop Obama From Deciding Not To Enforce Election Laws?”
Protein Wisdom: “Obamacare Architects Plugged Their Ears And Misled The Public”
Shot In The Dark: Open Letter To Minimum Wage Strikers
The Jawa Report: Melanie Phillips On Islam In Britain – Parts 1 & 2
The Lonely Conservative: Liberal Group Hijacks Message Of The Hunger Games
This Ain’t Hell: WWII Veteran Bumped – He Made The Plane Too heavy
Megan McArdle: “Doc Shock” On Deck In Obamacare Wars


Deadline to submit links for this weekend’s FMJRA is noon tomorrow, December 7.
DO IT.


Category: Live at Five

‘Unspeakable Atrocities’

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 135 Comments

“It’s a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing. All Bush wants is Iraqi oil. There is no doubt that the U.S. is behaving badly. Why are they not seeking to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from their ally Israel? This is just an excuse to get Iraq’s oil. . . .
“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”
— Nelson Mandela, Jan. 30, 2003

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, eh?

History is distorted beyond recognition because liberals insist that their heroes must be everyone’s heroes, and many conservatives are so intimidated by the enormous prestige of liberalism that it takes a stern contempt for mere popularity to speak unpleasant truths.

The news of Nelson Mandela’s death at age 95 was announced while I was babysitting my newborn grandson Jimmy, and between attending him and my desire to be properly decorous, it was surprisingly easy to say nothing until I happened to see Mark Krikorian RT a message from the Communist Party of Scotland:

Ah, ancient history. There’s no one under 40 who really remembers the Cold War and the era of those Third World “wars of national liberation” in places like Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam. Locked into a worldwide battle for survival against communist aggression — the “long twilight struggle,” as John F. Kennedy called it — the United States supported or opposed foreign governments with a single-minded view toward defeating the Soviet menace. Under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA masterminded coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), while under Kennedy, we attempted to overthrow Castro in 1961 and supported the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem in 1963. Various other such adventures, less noted in history, were undertaken in many countries — hell, Greece nearly went Red after World War II — and if U.S. foreign policy was not defined by “unspeakable atrocities,” it was certainly not always a peaceful or pleasant business.

Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Vietcong terrorist, February 1968.

The best articulation of sound Cold War policy was Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” from which I quote:

The American commitment [under the Carter administration] to “change” in the abstract ends up by aligning us tacitly with Soviet clients and irresponsible extremists like the Ayatollah Khomeini or, in the end, Yasir Arafat.
So far, assisting “change” has not led the Carter administration to undertake the destabilization of a Communist country. The principles of self-determination and nonintervention are thus both selectively applied. We seem to accept the status quo in Communist nations (in the name of ‘diversity” and national autonomy), but not in nations ruled by “right-wing” dictators or white oligarchies. . . .
Something very odd is going on here. How does an administration that desires to let people work out their own destinies get involved in determined efforts at reform in South Africa, Zaire, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere? How can an administration committed to nonintervention in Cambodia and Vietnam announce that it “will not be deterred” from righting wrongs in South Africa? . . .
[T]he Carter administration . . . came to power resolved not to assess international developments in the light of “cold-war” perspectives but to accept at face value the claim of revolutionary groups to represent “popular” aspirations and “progressive” forces — regardless of the ties of these revolutionaries to the Soviet Union. To this end, overtures were made looking to the “normalization” of relations with Vietnam, Cuba, and the Chinese People’s Republic, and steps were taken to cool relations with South Korea, South Africa, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and others. These moves followed naturally from the conviction that the U.S. had, as our enemies said, been on the wrong side of history in supporting the status quo and opposing revolution.

What Kirkpatrick was saying was that the Carter administration’s policies were a departure from three decades of U.S. policy, and had set aside both opposition to communism and the pursuit of other U.S. interests. It did so because of its commitment to abstract ideals and its miscalculation of Soviet intentions. Carter was thereby weakening our friends and strengthening our enemies:

The foreign policy of the Carter administration fails not for lack of good intentions but for lack of realism about the nature of traditional versus revolutionary autocracies and the relation of each to the American national interest.

It was in this difficult context, then, that the U.S. was obligated to support the friendly (and staunchly anti-communist) government in South Africa, not because of apartheid, but despite apartheid. Furthermore, so long as the worldwide struggle against communism continued, the United States could not afford to “accept at face value the claim of revolutionary groups to represent ‘popular’ aspirations and ‘progressive’ forces.” Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was one such group. I’m grateful to Bob Belvedere at the Camp of the Saints for calling attention to the file on Mandela at David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks site, which details the ANC’s resort to violent terrorism and includes this:

In 1990, as the government of Frederik DeKlerk moved to end apartheid, the ANC was legalized and Mandela was released from prison. In part, DeKlerk was motivated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had made no secret of its desire to control South Africa’s vast mineral wealth and keep it out of Western hands.  With the USSR gone, the Communist threat vanished. For his part, Mandela, in a 1991 speech to a joint meeting of the ANC and IFP, urged black Africans to abandon terrorist tactics and to use peaceful methods to end apartheid.

This is a key point: Revolutionary groups with no worse reputation than the ANC, and leaders with no worse reputation than Mandela, had in other nations posed as “agrarian reformers” and critics of abusive governments, until such time as they succeeded in toppling those governments, at which point they cast aside the “reformer” mask, unfurled the banner of Marxism, and aligned their “popular” regimes with the Soviet bloc. Such was the story in Cuba and Nicaragua, and the U.S. could not ignore Soviet aspirations in Africa.

Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with the Soviet Union collapsing into “the ash heap of history,” could a peaceful transition to a post-apartheid South Africa safely occur. The tsunami of obituary praise for Mandela — “an international emblem of dignity and forbearance,” the New York Times proclaims — threatens to wash away the historical reality of who Mandela actually was.

Now, Joel Pollak is a friend, but he was born in 1977 — the year I graduated high school — so that by the time he was old enough to vote, the Cold War was already a fading memory. And I appreciate Pollak’s concern that conservatives observe decorum on this occasion, but if conservatives do not insist on remembering history as it really was, we acquiesce in liberal revision of that history.

Nelson Mandela was at all times a man of the Left — anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel — as attested by the fact that as late as 2003, he could say, “All Bush wants is Iraqi oil,” make a sneering reference to Israel, accuse the U.S. of “unspeakable atrocities,” and even play the race card over the Iraq War:

Bush is now undermining the United Nations. . . . Both Bush, as well as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? . . . They never did that when secretary-generals were white.

Mandela’s tenure as president of South Africa was, thank God, not the nightmare that Mugabe inflicted on neighboring Zimbabwe, but we ought not be fooled by liberal myth-makers who wish to reinvent Mandela as a secular saint whom all are obligated to revere.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams

 

 


Category: History

Obama’s Underpants Gnome Economy

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 73 Comments

Remember the infamous business plan from the South Park episode?

  1. Collect Underpants
  2. ?
  3. Profit

Say hello to the president’s economic theory:

It would be an insult to readers to explain why this won’t work, but I will say that in my adult lifetime, every increase in the minimum wage has been followed within a year or two by a recession. Drew M. at AOSHQ endeavors to address the flaws in Obama’s idea, but it’s depressing to think that any adult can’t figure out why raising the minimum wage inevitably causes an increase in unemployment.

And speaking of depressing things to think about, we’ve got 9 million people on disability, 15% of them for mood disorders!

Mood disorders! More than a million Americans are currently collecting a check every month because they feel sad.

It that’s not enough to make you fly into a manic rage . . .

The Declaration of Independence speaks of “the pursuit of happiness” as a natural right, but we can’t re-distribute happiness, can’t we?Nevertheless, we’ve got 1.3 million people getting disability payments for mood disorders, and Medicaid pays for their happy pills.

If that’s not enough to drive you crazy, try this:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday said Democrats would not support a budget deal that does not extend emergency unemployment benefits, which are set to lapse on Dec. 28 for about 1.3 million people.

Right: We must spend more money we don’t have to pay people not to work and WE ARE SEVENTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT!

OK, so now that you’re in a frothing bipolar rage, hurry to the nearest mental hospital and get diagnosed: Obama-Induced Mania.

There’s a lot of that going around lately . . .

 

 


Category: Barack Obama, Economics

Ace Hates Him Some Spider-Man

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 35 Comments

Our hero battles an evil franchise that possesses sinister powers of luring dumb 13-year-old boys to the local multiplex:

Apparently they’re making so much money with bad Spider-Man movies they’ve already greenlit sequels for 2016 and 2018. I guess that’s the ultimate in movie properties — if you can make $750 million with a bad movie, then why the hell not just keep making them forever? . . .
So we all have this continuing Cartoon Nightmare for Adult Children to look forward to for some number of years . . .
Okay, I’m officially done with comic book movies. It took a while to get here, but now I’m agreeing with the cranky guys who’ve been saying “What the hell is this stupid crap?” for eight years.

Here’s a scenario: A lone blogger is transformed by a radioactive bottle of Valu-Rite vodka into a crime-fighting super-hero. He is opposed by the villains, SCOAMF and Pelosi the Botoxed Skeletor.

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Movies

Britain Belatedly Admits It Has an ‘Islamist Extremism’ Problem

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 33 Comments

Woolwich, England, May 22: Killer shouted, ‘Allahu akbar!’

Gee, how did they ever figure this out?

Britain plans to classify “Islamist extremism” as a distinct ideology, British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday, as part the government’s response to the murder of a soldier on a busy London street.
Cameron said he would implement recommendations he had received from a task force he set up after the murder of Lee Rigby in May, to try to stop people being radicalised by “hate preachers”. . . .
“Islamist extremism” would, for the first time, be classified as a distinct ideology to guard against it being confused with traditional religious practice, he said.
Cameron wants to tackle violent ideologies that claim Islamic justification but by doing so in a way that does not alienate Britain’s 2.7 million Muslims.
The new definition would make it clear that “Islamist extremism” was a distorted interpretation of Islam that betrayed the religion’s principles and tried to sow division.

Did the killers of Lee Rigby betray the “principles” of Islam?

The Muslim terrorist who hacked a British soldier to death in broad daylight [May 22] — and was captured on shocking video shouting, “You people will never be safe!” — was identified [May 23] as the son of Nigerian immigrants who had embraced radical Islam to the horror of his devout Christian parents. Michael Olumide Adebolajo, 28, was known to Britain’s MI5 intelligence as a potentially dangerous extremist, the Sun tabloid reported. Sources told Sun reporters that Adebolajo became a Muslim as a teenager and was linked to radical leader Anjem Choudary, whose Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun has been banned in Britain. . . .
Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old Army veteran of Afghanistan, was the target of the attack. . . . Video of Wednesday’s attack showed Adebolajo yelling “Allahu akbar” while brandishing a butcher knife and a meat cleaver with Rigby’s blood covering his hands.

It seems there are an awful lot of Muslims who share this “Islamist extremism” hatred of the West. Perhaps I’m the only one who remembers watching TV news coverage on Sept. 11, 2001, when crowds of Muslims were dancing in the streets of Cairo and Gaza in celebration of the terrorist attacks masterminded by al-Qaeda.

Pamela Geller notices how the British government has tied itself in knots trying to distinguish Islam (good) from extremism (bad). Perhaps she and her colleague Robert Spencer could explain this problem to the British, if they weren’t banned from entering the country because of their “pro-Israel views”:

The move to ban us . . . was a massive operation. . . . At the first whisper of a rumor by some “hooligans” that Robert Spencer and I might be speaking at a freedom demo in the UK, numerous British government and law enforcement agencies sprung into action. Although Robert Spencer and I had not decided to go and speak in the UK until June, various government agencies began working to ban us as early as February.

Are supporters of Israel beheading British soldiers in broad daylight? Are radical Zionists bombing London’s subways and buses?

No, of course not, but the British elite class has succumbed to the kind of cowardly fecklessness that inspired Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” folly at Munich and so — as appeasement to Britain’s most dangerous enemies — Geller and Spencer are banned.

Can no one in England do simple arithmetic? The population of the United Kingdom is 63 million, and yet Her Majesty’s Government is engaged in this humiliating appeasement because of their concern that they “not alienate Britain’s 2.7 million Muslims.”

The 4 percent tail is wagging the 96 percent dog.

While certainly no civilized person wishes to infringe anyone else’s legitimate rights, must the vast majority of Britons silently endure the humiliating spectacle of their own government tiptoing around for fear of hurting the feelings of the 4% Muslim minority?

How rapidly does decadence advance! Scarcely seven decades ago, Britain stood alone against the unspeakable terror of the Blitz. Her soldiers, sailors and airmen covered themselves in eternal glory, fighting in the distant desert, on the high seas, and in the skies over London to defeat Hitler’s deadly totalitarian war machine. Yet now the grandsons of those heroes are willing to surrender everything because they are afraid of offending a handful of disgruntled imams, professional “activists” and liberal newspaper columnists?

Is there not one courageous man left in the United Kingdom who can summon that once-proud nation to recall its great heritage?

UPDATE: “By the command of Allah“:

The alleged murderers of Lee Rigby told police they cut his throat with a knife because ‘this is how we kill our animals in Islam’, a court was told today.
Michael Adebolajo said in an interview that ‘the most humane way to kill any creature is to cut the jugular’, the Old Bailey heard.
He allegedly also told detectives that he and Michael Adebowale targeted Fusilier Rigby because he was the first soldier that they saw while waiting near Woolwich Barracks on May 22 this year. . . .
Describing the day of the killing, he said: ‘We decided to wait in the vicinity of the barracks that are in Woolwich. By the command of Allah, Allah’s decree, we waited to find a soldier because between us we decided that the soldier is the most fair target because he joins the army with kind of an understanding that your life is at risk.’

Britain’s soldiers are killed in the name of Allah, but Her Majesty’s Government must take care not to “alienate” Muslims.

 

 


Category: Great Britain, Islam, Terrorism

A Death In Bedford Falls

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 12 Comments

— Wombat-socho


Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look twice at, and so far this month I’ve found two of them. The first is a peculiar beast: It’s A Wonderful Death is a noir sequel to Frank Capra’s classic Christmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life, starring former New York assistant DA Richard Incles as a newly minted private eye, hired by Mary Bailey to clear her husband George. It seems the man everybody loves to hate, Old Man Potter, has been found dead in his office, his mouth stuffed full of money. Everyone’s a suspect – everyone had the motive and a lot of folks had the opportunity to off the old banker, but George Bailey is the #1 suspect. E.N. McMahon’s short novel plays with all the noir movie tropes in an amusing way, and is well worth your time and money. It’s free to Amazon Prime users under the Lending Library program.
So Join Amazon Prime.


The other unusual book is Monster Hunter Alpha by Larry Correia. I should point out that I don’t have much interest in conventional horror; tales of vampires, werewolves and such tend to leave me cold. By and large, I much prefer my horror in the Lovecraftian vein, whether it’s the Old Master himself (H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Collection) or contemporary versions of the Mythos such as Tim Powers’ Declare or Charles Stross’ The Atrocity Archives and its sequels. Correia does a good job of telling a classic tale of werewolf horror set in rural Michigan, one with its roots in the past but with plenty of contemporary complications to make a bad situation worse. I liked this enough to make me seriously think about checking out the rest of this series, and in the meantime I checked out his holiday novel, The Christmas (Noun) (and its two sequels) here. Good clean violent fun for the whole family!


A commenter brought this up on Black Friday’s In The Mailbox thread: Herbert Werner’s Iron Coffins, a grim and very personal history of the U-boat war in the Atlantic that goes very well with the more famous movie Das Boot , which is available free on Amazon Instant Video to Prime members.


I’ll probably be making a library run tomorrow. Any suggestions?
Also, thanks to everyone who bought books, movies and the Wand Essentials 8 Speed 8 Mode Wand, Purple (no, that’s not a joke) through my links last month. It was very much appreciated!


Category: Books
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