During the Obama years when his administration was young I pointed out repeatedly that he was basically a cheap Chicago Machine Pol.
It’s apparently much worse in the sense that his administration and the Biden admin that his people control have basically brought Chicago politics to the national level, where every part of government is used to quell & destroy opposition on one hand and the levers of power simply exist to enrich friends and perpetuate the machine, even down to the lowest civil service level.
They have remade the courts, the civil service and even the military in their image and the consequences of this are likely to destroy America or drive it toward Civil War and worst of all they’ve done it at the behest of our enemies.
I really don’t have words to describe what I think of the people who have allowed it to happen for the sake of power, status and greed but that’s a post Christian society for you.
A couple of days ago I saw it theorized that the reason Gallagher is resigning in a way to prevent his +15 GOP seat from being filled is to help the Democrats get the House long enough to declare Trump an “insurrectionist” and try to disqualify him per the SCOTUS ruling that killed the cases in Colorado etc.
There was a time when I would have laughed such a theory out the door but the incredible irrational fear and obsession the deep state and the left has of Trump has demonstrated that no tactic is beyond them.
This type of fear suggests that however bad and whatever illegalities and unconstitutional acts I might suspect have been going on during the Biden/Obama years, it’s much worse and they’re totally afraid of being exposed.
I must confess that I’m completely confused by how some people react to events in Ukraine and Russia
They are at war with each other and now have been for over two years. During war both sides try to attack the other, try to destroy infrastructure and target the other side. This tends to lead to death and destruction the scale of which depends on the size of the parties involved and the state of their military. This is how war actually works. It’s why it’s something to be avoided if at all possible.
So will people PLEASE stop having fits when Ukraine hits Russia and when Russia hits Ukraine and acting all shocked when it happens and concentrate on finding ways of ending the war instead. Surely there are easier ways of acquiring graft then this and frankly for those worried about the Russian Bear the lessons of this war would seem to be that the bear is not what people think it is.
Speaking of Military Confusion I’m a tad confused by Israel’s delay in moving into that final big Hamas City. I understand there might be logistical issues that they may be working out and given what we’ve seen there is plenty of mopping up to do farther north but I suspect if anything is going to move Hamas to made a deal for those hostages it’s the impending fall of that final safe haven.
Of course I’m still shocked they haven’t gone all General Sherman or more General Lemay on Gaza but that’s their call not mine.
Finally day one of up at five off to work at 6am, mass at 6 pm and home maybe 7-8 has gone without incident. It’s been 20 years since I’ve done 10 hour days so the real test isn’t the easy Sunday, it will be the Monday facing rush hour traffic and the Wednesday when I’ve done four straight.
Given the Biden economy & and the debt it’s helped me accrue combined with the empty tip jar I’m thinking of picking up a part time job on that now free day I have but I’m going to wait till I’ve done this a month or so to see how this sixty something body handles 10 hour days over the long haul first.
I didn’t give much attention to the African Peace Mission to Russia/Ukraine because it had no hope of success but there is one aspect I’d like to note. One of the delegates is President Ramaphosa of South Africa whose country you would call a basket case, if you wanted to insult basket cases that is.
Given the issues of violence, crime, electricity, infrastructure, and an inability of basic services in his country that he either can’t or won’t address it makes perfect sense for him to fly half way around the world to earn brownie points. It’s sort of like Gavin Newsome going after Florida. Much easier than solving problems at home.
Lately South Africa has been in a news a lot, for leading the charge against Israel and claiming it is committing Geocide in Gaza. They’ve gone to the international criminal court and continue to lead the international charge against the Jewish state.
But that still leaves the question why is South Africa, a state that isn’t Muslim or Arab making such a fuss about Gaza when they have no state in it at all.
Well two things come to mind quickly, the first and most important is Iranian money:
The same week that the ANC got its finances in a better state, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, according to South Africa’s Daily Maverick news outlet.
“The South African government is the same thing as Hamas. It’s an Iranian proxy, and its role in the war is to fight the ideological and ideas war to stigmatize Jews around the world,” Cronje during an interview on Chai FM Radio.
Iran has been cultivating SA for a while, apparently they’ve been putting those pallets of cash to use.
But the 2nd reason can be found it a story linked by Don Surber today about South Africa that isn’t getting a whole lot of play internationally:
Residents rich and poor have never seen a shortage of this severity. While hot weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after decades of neglect is also largely to blame. The public’s frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an election this year.
A country already famous for its hourslong electricity shortages is now adopting a term called “watershedding” — the practice of going without water, from the term loadshedding, or the practice of going without power.
In 1990 the year that Nelson Mandela was released South Africa’s unemployment rate was at 18.78% doubling the 1980 rate of 9.24%. By the first year of free elections (1994) it was up to 22.89%. There was a sudden drop in the rate in 1995 to 16.71% but by 1997 the rate was back over 20% (20.95%) and since h left office in 1999 through 2010 the rate has averaged 25.76% from a high of 30.41% in (2002) and a low of 22.23% (2007).
The current rate in the 3rd quarter of 2013 according to government stats is 24.7%
That piece was from ten years after I wrote that article the rate is over 32%
Last year linked a piece about the electricidal situation
Besides no airlines, no postal service and no trains, there is a dwindling electricity supply. They have rolling blackouts, euphemistically called “load shedding” which can last as much as 10 hours per day in Cape Town. Johannesburg is worse. People survive by always keeping their thermos flasks filled with hot water, using small gas camping stoves and using rechargeable lanterns for light and a healthy supply of batteries and candles at all times. Food rots in refrigerators so one needs to purchase small amounts of groceries just for a day. Few people can afford to have a generator, let alone the exorbitant cost of diesel fuel. Without electricity there is no viable economy. Retail stores, restaurants, businesses and factories cannot operate. The employees are idle and cannot do their job. As a result they are unable to earn a livelihood. The lack of electricity is a complex topic. In a nutshell, a history of huge financial losses, mismanagement, sabotage and corruption is evident.
Well at least there is equality…of misery:
There have always been people begging on the streets; mostly blacks. Now however, they are joined by ever-increasing white beggars. I did see an entire family including small blond haired children with crude cardboard signs saying “Please help – God bless you” .
According to some reports, over 50% of South Africans live in poverty on less than $2.00 a day. Some have no access to sanitation, water or electricity.
The bottom line is really simple. To solve the problems of Electricity, infrastructure, food and water in South Africa involve having the will to take on the problem of ANC which has been using South Africa as their personal plaything since Mandela left power and perhaps before.
It’s actually the same dynamic that you see today in US cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, DC where you have Democrat/Marxist rule for decades. The actual problems of the cities involve ending the gravy train for the connected and that’s just not to be done, much easier to pass a resolution against Israel in Gaza. Keeps the activists happy and the money to the connected flowing.
That’s South Africa who cares if the people starve or die of thirst if the ANC can keep getting Iranian money for going after Israel. That’s what counts to those who rule exploit South Africa
Closing thought: These topics are generally considered VERBOTEN in the MSM because in their mind to speak the truth about South Africa post apartheid is to suggest white minority rule was better. I’ll leave Glenn Reynolds to answer that:
It’s not black rule. Botswana next door is well-run. It’s rule by leftists, which always makes everything suck. And they always use race as an excuse for their failures. You can see that in the deep-Blue parts of the United States.
Murray blasted South Africa, saying, “I always think that for voters in any country, first order of priorities: getting the water clean; getting the roads running; getting the infrastructure working; getting healthcare; getting education. I do think that quite often, in my observation — I’ve covered a lot of countries around the world — quite often in my observation, those first-order priorities, if the government fails at that, it does distraction kinds of things. … I don’t think it’s something of primary importance to the people of South Africa; I don’t think it’s first order priorities for the voters, and I’m suspicious when governments pull international tricks.”
One of the things disadvantages that people in the west have when it comes to understanding what’s going on in Gaza is their lack of knowledge of the structures that exist there. One of these structures are the clans:
Most of these large families are “native” Gazans; as in, they’re not considered 1948 refugees (30 percent of Gazans are labeled “native” – with the Strip being their ancestral origin). Gaza’s clans, such as Dogmosh, Helles, Shawwa, Sweerky, Attallah, Abdel-Aal, Mushtaha, Sager, Abu Amra, and many others, have different forms of power and influence and are prominent in various sectors of Gazan society. They have more money, land, and resources than average families in the coastal enclave, and have had essential roles in governance and political factions. They also tend to have large stockpiles of munitions and arms (not ones used in “resistance” acts against Israel but strictly for internal purposes) that they’ve used in their fights and disputes with others.
This comes from Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib who has a Palestinian American from Gaza has some knowledge of the clans and how they work.
When reports came out that Hamas had executed the head of an important clain in Gaza and that the clan in question has declared open season on members of Hamas over this attack. I suspected this might be big trouble for Hamas but apparently not only have Hamas and the various Clans have been at odds for some time but apparently it was bringing of the clans under control that gave Hamas their popularity:
I remember vividly widespread armed clashes that the Palestinian police were powerless to stop. It was Hamas that reigned in those clans and violently/robustly crushed their thuggery and clipped most of their wings, ensuring almost complete obedience and compliance with the Islamist group’s rule. Part of Hamas’s popularity in Gaza actually stemmed from the group’s ability to force and institute law and order upon clans due to its iron grip that established a monopoly on violence.
To a Sicilian like me it sounds a lot like a mafia turf wars and it was Hamas ruthlessly ending them that gave them and sustains their mandate among those in Gaza. They are playing Tito over and if they go the various clans will try to assert their authority in their own territories.
He seems to think that the clans are not a good alternative to a foreign Arab force taking over. I suspect he knows a lot more about the subject than I do but I don’t see how such a force doesn’t get co-opted by the various clans seeking control over turf and the literally billions that are going to come in to rebuild once the war is over. I suspect you will see the various commanders getting rich by suppressing some Clans and favoring others or if it’s left to the clans it becomes a vast Mafia like territory with each Clan looking for the maximum piece of the pie involving turf wars and the like, either alternative doesn’t sound good for the people of Gaza.
But then given that the alternative is a fanatical Islamic group like Hamas moving in under Iranian control to wage proxy war against Israel if I’m the Jewish state I’m more than happy enough to let the clans have the place and let the Gazans fight with each other over the coming international gravy train as long as they leave Israel alone thus freeing the Jewish state to give Iran’s other proxy Hezbollah their full undivided attention.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”
Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”
The attacks on Israel in the press, on campus, in large marches and in the arab have one thing in common: The complete lack of reliance on the actual facts on the ground.
No matter what Israel does, no matter how they respond they are accused of genocide and no amount of reality or the pointing out that all of this comes from Hamas not only launching the attacks of Oct 7th but their claim that they intend to repeat said attacks if and when possible.
This brought back to mind a letter I wrote to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit about the Haditha “massacre” before the facts came out and the lawsuit against rep Murtha began and the question: “When will Biden apologize to the Haditha marines?” was asked. The email said:
There is one aspect about Haditha that seems to be ignored by everybody.
Our press and the anti-American left both in this country and outside of it has been reporting “Hadithas” over and over again over the last three years.
Time and time again our friends have accused us of every possible atrocity that there is to the point that internationally people are already able to believe this or the 9/11 stuff or all the rest.
Because of this, internationally it is totally irrelevant if the Marines actually violated the rules of war. Our foes are going to say that we’ve done things if we do them or not, so the only people that it really matters to will be; the people killed (and family) and the people in our own country who support the military.
The real danger is that we who support the war will reach the point that we say “we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep”. At that point the left can celebrate that they have made our military and those who support it the people they claim we are. Once that happens however any compunction about respecting them will be gone, and remember one side is armed and one is not.
That is a fate that I don’t wish on any of us.
You could take out the word “haditha” and replace it with “Genocide” and take out the word “Marines” and replace it with “IDF” and take out the words “anti-American” and replace it with “anti-Semitic” and that paragraph would pretty much hold up.
This leads to the logical question. Since no matter what they do they will be accused of “genocide” why not simply flatten Raffa, slaughter Hamas without mercy or concern for civilian causalities and end the issue once and for all? You would lose the hostages assuming any are actually alive but would likely save the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers who would die by trying to protect a population that wants them and their families dead anyways.
That’s important to remember. The Palestinians of Gaza aren’t upset at the slaughter of Jews, they celebrated it, they’re upset that said slaughter had consequences for them.
That’s the real question: Will Israel eventually decide to treat Hamas & Gazans they same way every other Arab & Muslim leader treats them if they get in the way. The way any other nation would treat a land that attacked them as they did. When will Israel say: ENOUGH! and give notice to the arabs who want to kill them in Gaza, West Bank, Yemen or even Qatar that if they try to kill Jews or finance those who do so, neither they nor their buildings nor their treasure is safe?
I suspect they will not and the reason is the against the wall conundrum and it works like this:
At any given time there are a lot of people who deserve to be put up against the wall, the problem is as soon as you decide to start putting such people up against the wall you invariably turn into the type of person who deserves to be put up against the wall.
Speaking for myself I’d say that cost is too high.
Israel has decided to set a standard that the world is unlikely to follow, but having made that choice there is no point in changing direction now that the war is almost over.
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