Posts Tagged ‘anti-communism’

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, RIP

Sunday, September 10th, 2023

South African Zulu leader and key figure in helping end apartheid Mangosuthu Buthelezi has died at age 95.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a towering figure in South African politics and outspoken Zulu chief, has died at the age of 95.

During the racist apartheid regime, he founded the Zulu Inkatha [Freedom] party after becoming disillusioned with the African National Congress (ANC).

Thousands were killed in clashes between supporters of the two parties in the early 1990s.

But he was later welcomed back into the fold, serving as President Nelson Mandela’s minister of home affairs.

Chief Buthelezi was a shrewd but controversial politician, who disagreed with the ANC’s tactics of armed action against white-minority rule and trod a moderate path as leader of an ethnic-Zulu homeland.

He was opposed to international sanctions on South Africa, arguing that they would only harm the country’s black majority.

Buthelezi was a key figure in ending apartheid, not only as ancestral leader of the Zulu nation, the largest ethnic group in South Africa, but also as elected leader of the (at the time) KwaZulu bantustan homeland. Both he and his Inkatha Freedom Party were strongly pro-Western, pro-capitalist and anticommunist, as opposed to the ANC, who were unabashed allies of the South African Communist Party. The ANC itself was riddled with communist sympathizers, including Mandela’s wife Winnie, who was a real piece of work, and who advocated “necklacing” ANC’s political opponents by setting fire to gasoline-filled tires around their neck.

Despite this, Buthelezi insisted that Nelson Mandela’s release was a precondiction for a political solution in South Africa.

For decades, the Soviet Union had been funding communist revolutionary organizations around the world, the economic strain of which was one of the many factors (along with communism’s horrible economic inefficiency and low oil prices) that forced Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to institute perestroika and glasnost. Those dire economic straits meant the Soviets could no longer afford to fund their “franchise for totalitarianism” program for communist parties in Africa and elsewhere.

The combination of Soviet bankruptcy, Buthelezi’s insistence on a peaceful, democratic and capitalistic post-apartheid South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s moderation, and South African President F. W. de Klerk belief that apartheid was unsustainable all came together to allow South Africa a peaceful transition to majority rule.

For all the troubles South Africa has experienced over the last 40 years, it has fared far better than the like of Zimbabwe, Mozambique or Angola, and Buthelezi’s influence was a big factor in making South Africa’s transition a peaceful one.

I met Buthelezi at a 1987 Dallas-area conference put on by the Landrum Society, a conservative group founded (I think) by Dallas Morning News columnist William Murchison. Buthelezi struck me as a smart, dignified man.

In addition to his political work, he also got to play his own ancestor in the classic film Zulu. How cool is that?

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Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy | 8 Comments »

LinkSwarm for December 24, 2021

Friday, December 24th, 2021

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! For some reason, corrupt scumbags seem to be a theme of this LinkSwarm.

  • This week marks the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an evil empire who’s passing made the world a better place. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and even George H. W. Bush all had key roles in bringing the Cold War to a successful close.
  • Biden’s vaccine mandates go before the Supreme Court. There’s a good chance they lose there on federalism grounds, even as the Supremes have avoided overturning state vaccine mandates. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Tom Cotton has a modest proposal: “Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.”

    Last year, our nation experienced the largest increase in murder in American history and the largest number of drug overdose deaths ever recorded. This carnage continues today and is not distributed equally. Instead, it is concentrated in cities and localities where radical, left-wing, George Soros progressives have captured state and district attorney offices. These legal arsonists condemn our rule of law as “systemically racist” and have not simply abused prosecutorial discretion, they have embraced prosecutorial nullification. As a result, a contagion of crime has infected virtually every neighborhood under their charge.

    Soros prosecutors refuse to enforce laws against shoplifting, drug trafficking, and entire categories of felonies and misdemeanors. In Chicago, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx allows theft under $1,000 to go unpunished. In Manhattan, District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. refuses to enforce laws against prostitution. In Baltimore, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has unilaterally declared the war on drugs “over” and is refusing to criminally charge drug users in the middle of the worst drug crisis in American history. For a time, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon even stopped enforcing laws against disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and making criminal threats.

    All of these cities have paid a terrible price for these insane policies. Last year, the number of homicides in Chicago rose by 56%, and more than 1,000 Cook County residents have been murdered in 2021. In New York City, murder increased 47% and shootings soared 97%. In 2020, the murder rate in Baltimore was higher than El Salvador’s or Guatemala’s — nations from which citizens often attempt to claim asylum purely based on gang violence and murder—and this year murder in Baltimore is on track to be even higher. Murder in Los Angeles rose 36% last year and is on track to rise another 17% this year.

    Soon after taking office in Boston, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachel Rollins published a list of 15 crimes that she would refuse to prosecute except under special circumstances. Among the charges on her “do not prosecute” list was drug trafficking, malicious destruction of property, trespassing, driving with a revoked license, and resisting arrest. Rollins also declared that she was “going to battle” against the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts and has slandered Boston police officers as “murderers” before accusing the department of “white fragility.”

    Unsurprisingly, Boston’s violent crime rate surged shortly after Rollins took over, as the number of murders in Boston skyrocketed by 38% in 2020. As Rollins implemented leniency for drug trafficking, opioid overdose deaths increased by 32% in Suffolk County. As a reward for her ineptitude and extremism, President Biden nominated her to run the U.S. Attorney’s office in Massachusetts, the very office she had gone “to battle” against only months before. Every Democrat in the Senate voted to confirm her.

    Another Soros prosecutor, Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, came to office after suing the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times as a private citizen. He began his tenure by purging dozens of veteran prosecutors in his office and then slashed his jurisdiction’s prison population by over 30%. In most cases, Krasner also refuses to seek bail for accused criminals and has maintained a highly antagonistic relationship with the police, once accusing the Fraternal Order of Police lodge president of being “with the Proud Boys.”

    The number of homicides in Philadelphia has increased every year that Krasner has been DA. Last year, the murder rate rose 40% and this year it reached an all-time high.

    In San Francisco, the voters elected the son of two cop-killing terrorists as their district attorney. Chesa Boudin (pictured) has since unleashed chaos on the streets of a once-great city and inaugurated what the San Francisco mayor labelled the “reign of criminals.” San Francisco’s homelessness crisis has spiraled out of control, smash-and-grab looters are such a menace that the city had to close its downtown during Black Friday, and shoplifters have closed down retailers throughout the city. Since Boudin took over, car theft has increased by 27%, murder by 29%, arson by 36%, and burglary soared 38%.

    The liberal mayor of San Francisco, as if struck by amnesia of her own tenure and complicity in the crime wave, recently emerged to condemn her city’s appalling rise in crime. Speaker Nancy Pelosi also condemned the disorder and “attitude of lawlessness” in her city. However, in one of the great examples of “see no evil, hear no evil,” Speaker Pelosi pretended to be baffled by what could have caused the crime wave. The answer is obvious: Liberal extremists like Nancy Pelosi and Chesa Boudin caused this crisis.

    Conclusion: “The Republican Party must then join with independents and common-sense Democrats to wage an unrelenting war on crime. That war must begin with a campaign to recall, remove, and replace every last Soros prosecutor. Throw the bums out.”

  • Even CNN is wondering if Biden’s senile.
  • One rule for you, another for them. “California Dems Sip Champagne, Violate State Mask Mandate While Celebrating Successful Gerrymander.”
  • “According to data from Nielsen/MRI Fusion, Fox News is watched by more Democrats than CNN and by more Independents than both MSNBC and CNN.” Average network news viewers want truth, not a force-fed Narrative at odds with reality. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • More on why Build Back Better sucked:

  • Two defund the police state Democratic congresscritters carjacked. “In late December, two Democratic politicians were carjacked just hours apart in Philadelphia and Chicago. Ironically, both women – Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon and Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford – supported slashing police budgets and other reform measures, which many Republicans have blamed as the cause of the rapid increase in crime.” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh…
  • So you want to move to a red state.

    In the now three and a half years since I have decamped with my family from Los Angeles to Nashville—some have called us “early adopters”—I have spent considerable time on phone, email and texts with old friends and acquaintances in New York and California who are asking me what it’s like. Am I happy? Should they move? What’s best—Florida, Tennessee, Texas or someplace else?

    Although answering the question “should they move?” for someone else is rather like answering for them should they marry or divorce—it’s too big a decision and really none of your business—that doesn’t stop me from almost universally saying yes.

    I do this because I have been in L.A. and NY lately and know them to have turned into the ghosts of their former selves—basically hellholes.

    I haven’t been to Chicago for a few years, but it seems to be, if anything, worse. And when I was in L.A., covering the late, lamented Larry Elder campaign, I didn’t even want to go to San Francisco. That was a Golden Gate Bridge too far.

    It’s not just the pervasive homelessness and the escalating Clockwork Orange-like ultra-violence, the actual souls of the cities that I knew very well—born in NY and lived decades in LA—seem to have vanished.

    Who wants to sing “New York, New York” or “I Love L.A.” anymore? And can you imagine leaving your heart in San Francisco? What has happened is a true American tragedy—and it’s not just because of COVID, although that helped. The cancer has been growing for a long time.

    It could be said you should stay to help resuscitate these cities although I would argue you do more for them by leaving, making those governing the cities—universally Democrats, as everybody knows—and even more those dopey enough to have voted for that governance, wake up.

    But even in red states, the culture war continues…

  • Hundred of holiday flights have been cancelled due to “staffing shortages.” How’s that vaccine mandate working out for you, Biden voters?
  • Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith, infamous for refusing to approve concealed carry permits, is indicted on multiple misconduct charges:

    Sheriff Smith is being indicted for:

    • Count 1: Illegally issuing concealed carry weapon permits (CCW) to VIP’s
    • Count 2: Failing to properly investigate whether non-VIP’s should receive CCW permits
    • Count 3: Keeping non-VIP CCW applications pending indefinitely
    • Count 4: Illegally accepting suite tickets, food, and drinks at Sharks game
    • Count 5: Failing to report Sharks game gifts on financial documents
    • Count 6: Committing perjury by failing to disclose Sharks game gifts
    • Count 7: Failing to cooperate with internal affairs investigation surrounding treatment of Andrew Hogan

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • How bad did New York Corrections screw up for the courts to free someone on 8th Amendment grounds? This bad. Holy crap!

  • Play stupid games, win pink slip prizes: “New York Times fires editor accused of leaving profane voicemails for gun group.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Speaking of the New York Times, here’s a video on how Times reporter Ian Urbina ripped off the royalties for over 2,000 songs from 462 different artists. Bonus: Noam Chomsky!
  • “Florida Sheriff Cheers Homeowner Who Shot a Broad Daylight Home Invader.”
  • Short Twitter thread about the fiendship between Alice Cooper and Groucho Marx.
  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health now tops the Amazon non-fiction bestseller list. I haven’t read it, and usual Robert F. Kennedy Jr. caveats apply, but this is the book we have now, and I suspect regular BattleSwarm readers may find some of the same topics covered here within its pages.
  • The Grand Tour lads speak admiringly about how the French are ungovernable.
  • YouTube: You liked that one video on fixing door hinges? Here, have hundreds more!
  • The best of the Internet for 2021.
  • “New York Restaurant Adds Voting Booth So They Can Allow People In Without ID.”
  • “San Francisco To Require Proof Of Vaccination To Poop On The Sidewalk.”
  • If you’re bummed out from all these scumbags, here’s a palate cleansing Christmas puppy:

    • Merry Christmas everyone!

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    Posted in Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »

    Robert Conquest, RIP

    Wednesday, August 5th, 2015

    Robert Conquest, one of the leading historians of Soviet genocide, has died at age 98.

    It’s hard to remember now, but for most of the Cold War, western liberals vehemently denied that genocide had occurred in the Soviet Union (or other communist nations) at all. Conquest’s The Great Terror helped crack that facade of willful ignorance, as did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s monumental The Gulag Archipelago.

    I once reviewed The Harvest of Sorrow, his work on the Holodomor, Stalin’s terror famine in the Ukraine, and it’s a devastating, amazingly well-researched book. “In the actions here recorded about 20 human lives were lost, not for every word, but for every letter, in this book.”

    He was also a poet, and dabbled in science fiction as a writer and editor, but it was as a historian he made far and away his greatest impact. Communism was the great evil of the 20th century, and Conquest had a key role in exposing it. “Over all, Mr. Conquest estimated the death toll for the entire Stalin era at no less than 20 million.”

    Here’s an obituary from The Telegraph. “Conquest personified the truth that there was no anti-communist so dedicated as an ex-communist.”

    Here’s Christopher Hitchens’ essay on Conquest from 2007.

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    Posted in Communism | 1 Comment »

    Vaclav Havel, RIP

    Sunday, December 18th, 2011

    We’ve lost one of the great heroes of the 20th century.

    Vaclav Havel, a man who was (in chronological order) an important playwright, a hero of the struggle against communism, and founding President of the Czech Republic, is dead at 75.

    Of the three, Havel’s role in the struggle against communism was far and away the most important. In a country in which the state’s (and in turn Moscow’s) imprimatur was necessary for a playwright to make a living, Havel refused to buckle under or avoid criticizing the great evil that was communism. In the wake of Prague Spring, his works were banned and he was repeatedly imprisoned, but he kept speaking out, finally helping lead the Velvet Revolution and, after the fall of Communism, setting the stage for the “Velvet Divorce,” in which the Czech Republic and Slovakia split peacefully into two separate nations, even though he opposed it.

    Havel, unlike Yasser Arafat, Le Duc Tho and Barack Obama, never won a Nobel Peace Prize, despite doing more for peace, justice and freedom than the vast majority of winners.

    Understand that there are people as noble, brave and truthful as Havel sitting in jail in Cuba and China this very moment, many of whom who have been beaten and tortured for speaking truth to power. And Havel, in and out of power, never stopped fighting for the victims of communism, as shown by this video:

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    Posted in Communism, video | 1 Comment »

    Rep. Charles Wilson, RIP

    Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

    Texas Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Lufkin) has died. Wilson was famous for two things: 1.) A reputation for unbridled drinking, carousing and hijinks (probably including a little cocaine, though Wilson never came out and admitted it) that lead to him being nicknamed “Good Time Charlie”, and 2.) Being the biggest Democratic advocate of aid to the mujaheddin fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. (This was back in the days when the phrase “conservative Democrat” wasn’t an oxymoron.) Wilson’s support was crucial in helping to defeat Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the blow-back from which in turn helped topple the Soviet Union. On such unlikely crucibles are evil empires broken.

    Back when I was writing for The Texas Review in college, I met Wilson at room in the Texas state capitol, where some compatriots and I turned over a check to Wilson to support the mujaheddin efforts. (I’ve long since forgotten how much we gave him; it was probably some piddling sum like $200.) Wilson struck me as a bluff, sharp-minded good ole boy with the sort of tan that could have come from a Wagner Power Painter.

    I haven’t read Charlie Wilson’s War (or seen the movie, for that matter), but Charlie Wilson was one of the few Democratic congressmen of the 1980s that actually had a hand in defeating communism.

    Requiescat in pace.

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    Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »