Posts Tagged ‘South Africa’

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?

LinkSwarm for July 16, 2021

Friday, July 16th, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to a Friday LinkSwarm! Once again, this is a mixture new and ever-so-slightly older links.

As for the whole Democratic lawmakers flee Texas to thwart election reform story, I don’t currently have any particular insights…


  • Suddenly Democrats are waking up to the fact that wokeness is not an electoral winner.

    The gist of the article is that many Democrats are just noticing the problem, which is laughable. The far-left, ultra-woke territory was staked out by all Democrats years ago. They can’t suddenly act like it’s only the fringe that feels this way and the mainstream Dems aren’t on board with the madness. Virtually every Democrat of note has been slobbering all over chances for woke posturing for years. There has been pushback but they’ve been dismissive of it, resorting to their boilerplate “RACIST!” retort each time.

    Snip.

    While watching the Democrats go mega-woke — especially this year — I’ve wondered aloud whether any of the party’s Beltway elite have recently had a conversation with a Democrat in flyover country. It would seem not.

    It’s not unthinkable that Dems running next year would do a temporary 180 on wokeness in an effort to dupe people into voting for them. In recent weeks, we’ve seen them pretend that it was Republicans who wanted to defund the police and also try to convince the public that they’ve always been fans of voter ID. If they’re now worried about the extremely woke look on top of those two issues, the internal polling must really be rattling them.

    Honestly, I don’t see how Democrats can uncouple themselves from the woke train they enthusiastically hooked themselves up to so long ago.

    The caveat is that we’ve seen this sort of articles before, and the madness still continues…
    

  • Old and Busted: Voters hate Kamala Harris. The new hotness: Her own staffers hate Kamala Harris:

    When Vice President Kamala Harris finally made the decision to visit the Mexico border last week, people inside her own office were blindsided by the news.

    For days, aides and outside allies had been calling and texting with each other about the political fallout that a potential trip would entail. But when it became known that she was going to El Paso, it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside the VP’s office charged with crafting the messaging across the administration.

    The handling of the border visit was the latest chaotic moment for a staff that’s quickly become mired in them. Harris’ team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris’ chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year.

    In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue.

    While much of the ire is aimed at Harris’ chief, two administration officials said the VP herself also bears responsibility for the way her office is run. “It all starts at the top,” said one of the administration officials, who like others requested anonymity to be able to speak candidly about a sensitive matter.

    “People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” said another person with direct knowledge of how Harris’ office is run. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.”

    Of course, we’ve already seen similar reports before, but this one is a lot more nakedly critical. Having such deeply critical pieces launched at a sitting Democratic Vice President in their first year in office is highly unusual, to say the least. Either Harris really is horribly bad at managing her staff, or powerful people in the Biden administration have the knives out for her. Or both.

  • Federal officials gave Hunter Biden special treatment because of course they did.

    Last summer, federal officials in Delaware investigating Hunter Biden faced a dilemma. The probe had reached a point where prosecutors could have sought search warrants and issued a flurry of grand jury subpoenas. Some officials involved in the case wanted to do just that. Others urged caution. They advised Delaware’s U.S. Attorney, David Weiss, to avoid taking any actions that could alert the public to the existence of the case in the middle of a presidential election.

    “To his credit, he listened,” said a person involved in the discussions, reported here for the first time. Weiss decided to wait, averting the possibility that the investigation would become a months-long campaign issue.

    Translation: They withheld the truth from the public because they wanted the Democrat to win.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • States ending extra Flu Manchu payments are are doing better than other states:

    Thanks to recently released Labor Department data on unemployment claims, we can now, quite predictably, see the welfare rolls expanding in the states where the unemployment bonus remains in place. Yet the number of people on welfare is rapidly shrinking in the states where the supplement is set to expire or already has expired.

    “The 26 states that have announced their plan to end participation in the $300 weekly unemployment bonus have seen a 12.7 percent decline on average in initial claims over the past week,” the fiscally-conservative Foundation for Government Accountability reports. “Meanwhile, states that have indicated they will continue participating in the unemployment bonus programs have seen an increase in initial claims by an average of 1.6 percent during this same period. The 12 states that have officially opted out of the $300 weekly bonus thus far have seen consistent declines each week since ending participation in the bonus.”

    In other words, people are leaving the welfare rolls and returning to work in the states where the government is getting out of the way. They are not doing so as much in the states where expanded welfare continues to create dysfunctional incentives.

  • Could San Francisco residents finally be fed up with turning their city into an open-air drug market?

    Tucked deep in San Francisco’s sixth district is Dodge Place, a residential street located in the notorious Tenderloin neighborhood. It’s been overtaken by drug users who come to get high, descend into madness, and then destroy themselves and their surroundings. Dodge is a dead end, literally and figuratively—a combat zone, with all sides fighting for their lives.

    Citizens’ cries for backup have gone virtually unanswered. Elected officials and government bodies from the district’s supervisor, Matt Haney, to the Department of Public Health have abandoned residents so completely that it’s hard not to wonder if the neglect isn’t deliberate.

    Though most of the sixth district, an area that includes City Hall, already rivals the world’s worst slums for its inhumane conditions, Dodge Place is a particularly intense concentration of immiseration. In effect, the dead-end street is at the end of a funnel, into which flow customers from San Francisco’s most rampant illegal drug trade. In fact, mere steps away from the street, residents recently held a rally against the scourge of fentanyl, the potent synthetic opioid responsible for the majority of the city’s fatal overdoses. Organized by journalist Michael Shellenberger, the rally focused on Jacqui, a distraught mother searching for her addicted, homeless son. Jacqui pleaded for help, and community members raged against the city’s inaction. Politicians gave speeches, including Haney, who proclaimed his outrage, conceded government’s failings, and told the crowd to hold him accountable.

    Yet the death toll from drug abuse continues to escalate. Data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner indicate that fatal overdoses this year in San Francisco are on pace to exceed the 2020 total, a record-breaking year in which more than 700 died.

    Hanging around in the Tenderloin is dangerous. Gangs rule the drug-dealing business. Scores of dealers, nearly all young males from Mexico and Central America, openly sell narcotics. Gunfire and homicides are common. On June 14, the San Francisco Police Department’s Tenderloin station reported three shooting incidents, with five victims, and 29 arrests on the corner. Law enforcement doggedly does its part, but the arrestees nearly always return to their spots within hours.

    As mayhem in the Tenderloin intensifies, many who have just made drug purchases drift over to Dodge Place so that they can use away from the drama. Once there, they create their own brand of chaos. The result is a place so bizarre and horrific that adequate descriptions sound hyperbolic.

    At any given time, dozens of people congregate in the small alley to inject or smoke their substance of choice. Teenagers to seniors, of all races and demographics, jab needles into their bloody, bloated limbs, hands, and feet. One inexplicably common figure is a man neatly dressed for a day at the office who drives syringes deep into other people’s necks. Soon after imbibing, users stand still as statues but bent at the waist, colloquially known as the “fentanyl fold.” Some collapse and crawl, while others sit listlessly on the curb, lining the walls. Or they wander, run, or flail, screaming at each other as well as invisible demons. Many urinate and defecate in their clothes, on the pavement or doorsteps.

    Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s George Soros-backed DA who refuses to prosecute drug dealers, is facing a recall election. This is the future that awaits Austin if Jose Garza stays in the DA’s office…

  • Los Angeles: Surprise! The mask mandate is back. Sounds like something that calls for widespread civil disobedience.
  • Vietnam is not the threat that China is, but don’t forget that their communist government still oppresses anyone who objects to their rule. “Vietnamese Dissident Writer Jailed for Five Years, Six Months by Hanoi Court. Pham Chi Thanh was charged under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, a law frequently used by authorities to stifle dissident voices.”
  • Being a black Democratic grifter really pays: “Stacey Abrams now owns two homes totaling $1.4M after starting 2018 campaign in massive debt.”
  • “Company Behind Keystone XL Pipeline Seeks $15B Damages After Biden Nixes Project.” As well they should.
  • Paul Ehrlich is spewing the same gloom and doom that’s proven wrong for the last half century.
  • “Basketball player uses nationally televised CBS interview to show off his ‘Free the Uyghurs’ T-shirt.” Good for him. Though, since this is Royce White, the first round draft pick who never suited up for the Rockets, “player” may be misleading in this case…
  • Democratic megadonor Ed Buck’s murder trial for giving young men fatal drug overdoses for sexual gratification finally gets under way. (Previously.)
  • Somebody hacked NATO’s cloud computing platform.
  • Kaseya VSA ransomware attack succeeded because the company didn’t include a NULL test for login bypass. Jesus. Freaking. Christ. That’s one of the first things you should set up in your QA automated regression testing suite.
  • Shenanigans at the College Republican National Committee?
  • Computers don’t argue. French woman Jeanne Pouchain spends five years trying to prove to authorities that she’s not dead.
  • Too unbelievable and unsubtle for fiction: “Lightning Strike Destroys George Floyd Mural in Toledo.”
  • Thinking outside the box:

  • How long does it take a ball to drop 1 KM on various bodies in our solar system?
  • “‘You Just Don’t Understand Socialism Like I Do,’ Says College Freshman To Man Who Escaped Socialism On A Raft.”
  • “Leftists Fear Communism Failing All The Time Is Making Communism Look Bad.”
  • “A Florida man stole an alligator from a mini-golf course and tried to heave the reptile onto the roof of a building to ‘teach it a lesson,’ authorities said.
  • Hey Bambi, do you like Phil Collins?
  • Hot dog:

  • South Africa Burning

    Wednesday, July 14th, 2021

    Though there hasn’t been a lot of coverage of this among the American MSM, those who watched the #antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots unfold in real time will find what’s going on in South Africa familiar:

    The death toll in South Africa has risen to 72 as violence continues across the country following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

    Crowds looting and setting alight shopping centres clashed with police in several cities on Tuesday.

    The BBC filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.

    A day earlier, 10 people were killed in a stampede during looting at a shopping centre in Soweto.

    The military have been deployed to help police overstretched since the unrest began last week.

    South African police said in a statement they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.

    If officials are actually arresting rioters, that would be a significant difference from how many Democrat-run cities and counties (especially those with George Soros-backed DAs) handled last summer’s riots.

    President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires started, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.

    Ministers have warned that if looting continues, there is a risk areas could run out of basic food supplies soon – but have ruled out declaring a state of emergency.

    Post-apartheid South Africa was a relative success story for Sub-Saharan Africa, especially compared to places like Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The collapse of communism allowed F. W. de Klerk to negotiate an end to apartheid with Nelson Mandela and transition to majority rule. But the ruling African National Congress party has long been plagued with rising crime rates and charges of widespread corruption. Indeed, corruption charges against Zuma preceded his ascension to the presidency. Successor Ramaphosa has promised to stamp out corruption…while being accused of corruption himself.

    Riots over the arrest of political figures is a sign of a tribal, post-liberal social order. They start as “peaceful protests” and then almost instantly descend into sprees of arson and looting. More than 100 mobile phone towers have been destroyed, which sounds less like a political protest and more like blood-red anarchy. And now there are reports of food shortages. “Kwanalu, the KwaZulu-Natal agricultural union, estimates the losses for the provincial farming community to be in the hundreds of millions of rands.”

    In a post-national tribal atmosphere, violence ceases to be a choice of last resort and becomes a tool to address every resentment, to be resorted to to win every argument. And this is the future that Social justice and Critical Race Theory are helping bring our way…

    LinkSwarm for July 7, 2017

    Friday, July 7th, 2017

    It’s Friday on CNN Self-Immolation Week! And yes, there are a few CNN items at the top of this week’s LinkSwarm:

  • 4Chan declares the Great Meme War of 2017. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Trump just schlonged the media again.

    Just before a holiday, Trump does something that amuses the rest of us but shocks the media into doing nothing but talk about it over and over again while he enjoys his time off.

    Hmm.

    When had he done that before?

    Oh yes, just before Christmas 2015, Trump said Obama schlonged Hillary.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • How CNN abandoned its written standards to go after “HanAssholeSolo.”
  • Why the media has broken down in the age of Trump:

    There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale — that most of what you read, watch and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.

    Snip.

    The behavior of much of the media, but especially the New York Times, was a disgrace. I don’t believe it ever will recover the public trust it squandered.

    Snip.

    Here is a true story about how Abe Rosenthal resolved a conflict of interest. A young woman was hired by the Times from one of the Philadelphia newspapers. But soon after she arrived in New York, a story broke in Philly that she had had a romantic affair with a political figure she had covered, and that she had accepted a fur coat and other expensive gifts from him. When he saw the story, Abe called the woman into his office and asked her if it was true. When she said yes, he told her to clean out her desk — that she was finished at the Times and would never work there again. As word spread through the newsroom, some reporters took the woman’s side and rushed in to tell Abe that firing her was too harsh. He listened for about 30 seconds and said, in so many words, “I don’t care if you f–k an elephant on your personal time, but then you can’t cover the circus for the paper.”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • The Democratic House IT Scandal deepens:

    A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing “ghost employees” on the congressional payroll.

    Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?

    Snip.

    Official documents, court records and multiple interviews suggest the crew may have engaged in tax fraud, extortion, bankruptcy fraud and insurance fraud and the money could have been funneled overseas. Abid has hired high-profile attorney James Bacon who specializes in anti-money laundering litigation.

    The Awans share modest homes, drive unremarkable cars and report little in the way of assets on congressional disclosures. The family owns significant amounts of Virginia rental properties, which are heavily financed, with second mortgages sometimes taken out. It’s unclear where the rental income goes because the Awans insist tenants pay in odd ways.

    The Daily Caller News foundation interviewed multiple current and former tenants who said Imran insisted rent be paid in untraceable ways. Many of those TheDCNF interviewed about the Awans asked not to be identified for fear of suffering retaliation by the family, particularly renters to whose homes Imran has keys.

    “He only wants cash — for the security deposit, everything. The mortgage is probably $600, we pay $1,800 a month,” one said.

    “I would write the rent to all sorts of different people,” another claimed. While still another tenant said the family insisted on blank money orders.

    Those interviewed also were puzzled that Congress kept the Awans on the payroll full-time when the family spent months of the year in Pakistan.

    The four Awans were each making approximately $160,000 a year on Capitol Hill. Other House IT workers told TheDCNF that the Awans appeared to hold no-show jobs, with bare-bones services provided, and it appeared one person was doing the work for the rest of them.

    Cristal Perpignan, a former Awan renter, said Imran instructed her to pay the rent to Imran’s friend, Rao Abbas, who lived in the basement of the home she occupied and was also on the House payroll as an IT worker. But Perpignan said Abbas spent his days at home.

    Imran’s wife purchased the home in 2008 for $470,000. A second mortgage was taken out in 2012, and — at least on paper — it was sold to Imran’s 22-year old brother Jamal in November 2016 for $620,000 — $43,000 more than its assessed value.

  • “Phoenix dropped their sanctuary city status and started enforcing the law…and crime rates went down.”
  • “Migrant smugglers in Honduras say their business has dried up since [President] Trump took office.” Also this: “Give Trump critics credit: They predicted he would destroy jobs, and they were right; he appears to have destroyed a considerable number of positions in the previously vibrant and lucrative illicit people-smuggling industry.”
  • How liberals gave up on telling the truth about immigration:

    In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”

    The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.

    Prominent liberals didn’t oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to America’s economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained America’s welfare state.

    Snip.

    Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country’s growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didn’t need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. “The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November,” Salon declared after Obama’s 2008 win. “If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”

    As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism. While Obama was running for reelection, immigrants’-rights advocates launched protests against the administration’s deportation practices; these protests culminated, in June 2012, in a sit-in at an Obama campaign office in Denver. Ten days later, the administration announced that it would defer the deportation of undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and met various other criteria.

  • More on the ObamaCare expansion/opiate overdose link.
  • South African is contemplating seizing the land of white farmers without compensation. Because Zimbabwe is such a sterling model of economic success to emulate…
  • The battle for Raqqa continues, with U.S. supported forces having breached the Old City’s wall.
  • Russia hits the Islamic State with cruise missiles. Good. (Hat tip: Stephen Green.)
  • The text of President Trump’s address to Poland:

    Through four decades of communist rule, Poland and the other captive nations of Europe endured a brutal campaign to demolish freedom, your faith, your laws, your history, your identity — indeed the very essence of your culture and your humanity. Yet, through it all, you never lost that spirit. (Applause.) Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken. (Applause.)

    And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down. (Applause.) They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer. A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: “We Want God.” (Applause.)

    In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future. They found new courage to face down their oppressors, and they found the words to declare that Poland would be Poland once again.

  • Speaking of Poland, they just agreed to buy Patriot missiles.
  • Austria deploys troops to Italy’s border to keep Muslim “refugees” out.
  • Czech Republic to enshrine right to bear arms in their constitution. Gee, why on earth would a nation situated between Germany and Russia need its citizens to own guns?
  • “Yeah, Abdul, we’re going to need to tweak your resume for this position. Instead of ‘Beheading Infidels,’ let’s put ‘Contractor.'”
  • Vladimir Putin and President Trump meet at the G20 summit.
  • Speaking of the G20 Summit, mostly peaceful protestors there commit the mostly peaceful arson for which they’ve become so well-known. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • German intelligence admits that hundreds of jihadis were among those Islamic “refugees.” Thanks again, Angela…
  • Study finds what conservatives have been saying for years: temperature readings have been systematically changed to support the global warming narrative:

    The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments,that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming.

  • “Democratic lawmakers voted 71-42 to override Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a $5 billion tax hike on Thursday.” Can’t possibly imagine how Illinois’ Democrats plan to tax and spend their way out of a financial hole could possibly backfire… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “From its founding in 1919 in the wake of the Russian Revolution until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Communist Party of the United States of America was an instrument of Soviet foreign policy.” Not that anyone should be unclear on the topic after all these years, but I’m sure the piece was a shock to at least some of the New York Times dwindling readership…
  • British woman convicted of making flase rape claims against 15 different men. One look at the convicted should tell that claims of multiple rapes are highly implausible. (Hat tip: Instaundit.)
  • Democrat Beto O’Rourke has raised over $1 million for his Senate race against Ted Cruz.
  • The ratings for some network TV shows are so bad that the networks are mispelling them to game ratings. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Common sense tips to keep your home from being broken into.
  • Scenes from Central America’s vibrant pre-Colombian diversity: Archeologists find an Aztec temple tower of skulls. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • AFSCME vs. 10 goats. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
  • Long, long, long article about video game maker Konami, where they actually get their money (fitness clubs and gambling machines), and how they came to treat their employees so poorly.
  • Tiny house regret.
  • And a few more CNN tweets:

  • LinkSwarm for April 20, 2015

    Monday, April 20th, 2015

    Last week was incredibly busy for sundry reasons. It would be nice to get the Friday LinkSwarm back to Friday, but in the meantime, enjoy the Monday version:

  • “One of the reasons why Obamacare remains stubbornly unpopular is because most Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being the sort of people who would punch nuns.”
  • The idea that the tea-party movement is animated or motivated by racism is pure fiction.
  • Wait a minute, an actual useful article from Vox on the assumptions underlying the Iran deal, and the case against those assumptions? I’m as shocked as anyone.

    One of the greatest advantages of sanctions as a coercive tool is their effect over time. Dismantling this thing, which in a way is what we’re doing, is kind of like taking money out of your retirement account early. As we let these sanctions work over time, by the time we got to 2012, they were really in dire straits. If a deal is signed this year and then in 2017 they cheat, it would take years and years and years of penalizing them before we could ever get back to the situation we had in 2012.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Women expelled from Calgary Expo due to thoughtcrimes.
  • Ten takeaways from Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape hoax.
  • “On the Internet, when all the social context is stripped away and you don’t even have to look at the face of the person you’re being mean to, shame loses its social, restorative function. Shame-storming isn’t punishment. It’s a weapon.”
  • Old and Busted: Getting Montazuma’s Revenge in Mexico. The New Hotness: Thanks to Obama’s illegal alien amnesty, now it’s coming to you! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Tsarnaev is, literally, a traitorous, child-murdering cop killer.”
  • The Kurds are kicking ISIS’s ass: “Picking a fight with the Kurds is a little like going to war against Lebanon’s Druze or the Israelis. It’s like trying to invade and occupy Texas.”
  • Islamic State beheads man for witchcraft.
  • People are burning and looting immigrant shops in South Africa. “South Africa, with a population of about 50 million, is home to an estimated 5 million immigrants….South Africa’s unemployment stood at 24 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014.” Doesn’t seem like a recipe for social harmony…
  • Parenting Protip: Although I’m unmarried and childless, I’m pretty sure the answer to “Mom, will you buy booze and weed for my naked Twister orgy, then have sex with my underage boyfriends?” should be “No.”
  • It doesn’t take six months to repair plumbing problems at a Wal-Mart. What gives? (Hat tip: Zero Hedge)
  • A blind person with a stick would be better than Hillary Clinton at reading people around her.”
  • De Blasio brings class warfare to Iowa.
  • Now that Rahm Emanuel has been reelected, he no longer needs to pretend to obey your puny peasant laws. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Here’s what’s roiling the Whacko American community these days.
  • Buzzfeed has outdone itself. You will be staggered by their amazing psychic powers…
  • Nelson Mandela, RIP

    Thursday, December 5th, 2013

    Given conservatism’s understanding of flawed, immutable human nature, our outlook can tend toward the cynical. (Or, as we like to call it, the realistic.) But every now and then, event turn out somewhat better than we expected. The most peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union was one example, and the reign of the post-Apartheid government of Nelson Mandela, who died today at age 95, was another.

    Conservatives were deeply skeptical of Mandela’s African National Congress due to its close ties to the South African Communist Party at a time when brutal communist regimes were making life hell for the citizens of Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique. SACP was fond of “necklacing” political enemies by placing tires filled with gasoline around their necks and setting them on fire. Conservatives wanted to end Apartheid, but didn’t think sanction or Mandela were the right way to do it.

    Nelson defied our expectations by presiding over a mostly peaceful, mostly legitimate and mostly democratic (and, ineed, far more of any than the average state in Sub-Saharan Africa). South Africa did not descend into civil war like Mozambique, or become an economic basket case like Zimbabwe. For that all the world owes Mandela thanks.