re: "Betting the Farm"

Mark Steyn at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") described what an invasion and occupation looks like.

Money quote(s):

"First, you get some oddly determined visitors and attendant burglaries. Then, the intimidation gets ratcheted up. Your farmhands get beaten. The local authorities take down the details and do nothing. Then you or your wife and kids get beaten, or shot. You sell your land for a fraction of what you would have got a few years earlier. And, if you don’t, you get driven off it anyway. Or killed.

White Rhodesians were the planet’s favorite pariahs for a long time, so nobody cares what happens to them. But it’s strange to see the same scenario starting to play out in the Golden State – and in parts of Arizona, too. Where next? Texas? Border immigration on the scale of the south-west is not about people moving but about borders moving. Less enlightened regions of the world understand this as they understand the sun rising in the morning, but it all seems too complicated for Californian sophisticates." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

You've heard (or read) perhaps the La Raza slogan that goes something like "I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me."

When enough actual border crossers have entered the U.S., our effective borders will shift, as has already begun.

"It certainly seems a safe bet that these trends will not diminish over the course of the next decade in an ever more debt-ridden state ruled by kleptocrat commissars far from the sharp end of their policy consequences. When widespread impoverishment meets demographic transformation, you’re not going to want to be standing anywhere near"

JO - Robert Mugabe, Douglas Chambers and normalising dysfunction

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

Robert Mugabe, Douglas Chambers and normalising dysfunction

CLAUDE ROBINSON

Sunday, July 06, 2008

So much has been written about the murder of Douglas Chambers, I decided I would forego another commentary on the deed and its devastating consequences for his family and friends, the wider Jamaican community and the state that hired him to do the seemingly undoable.

CLAUDE ROBINSON

Instead, I thought of commenting on the re-installation of Robert Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe, after an election that-by all accounts-failed to meet the most basic standards of democracy.The situation in Zimbabwe is distressing for several reasons. For starters, President Mugabe continues to betray the enviable struggle credentials he earned by leading the long and bloody fight to end white minority rule in the former Rhodesia, and for exposing British hypocrisy and doublespeak.

Read the whole article.

Snippet(s):

"The British had promised to mobilise resources to buy back lands that had been handed to the white minority, thus leaving the black majority landless and excluded from the mainstream of an economy dominated by farming of export crops.

The British promise was not realised, thus frustrating the land reform process and the gains of the political liberation process.

This may explain why Mr Mugabe repossessed some of the white-owned farms. It may also explain why it is easy for Mr Mugabe and the leadership in the ZANU-PF to pin the label of British stooge on anyone who opposes him.

But it cannot explain why he has not proceeded with any real reform.

It does not explain why he has systematically used violence and intimidation against political opponents leaving himself open to the charge that his real desire is for one-party rule, by any name."

JG - Zimbabwe, African liberation and decolonisation

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Gleaner

Zimbabwe, African liberation and decolonisation

published: Sunday July 6, 2008

Robert Buddan POLITICS OF OUR TIME

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is faced with sanctions from the west, mediation by Southern Africa and a call for a government of national unity from the African Union. The African Union opposes western sanctions being organised by the French leadership of the European Union (EU) and the American leadership of the UN Security Council with the British in tow.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Mugabe was leader of the liberation movement, Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which had fought for independence against the apartheid-like policies of white-ruled Rhodesia, a country that had relied on the support of apartheid South Africa.

In fact, Zimbabwe's 17-year liberation war paralleled that of South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and both leaderships (Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki) remain close today.

The former Rhodesia became independent as Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980."

&

"Colonisation began when Cecil Rhodes, with the backing of the British, took over land that is now mostly Zimbabwe.

The Shona and Ndebele people fought their first liberation war in 1896/97 to get their land back but white power only grew.

White agriculture flourished and the Shona and Ndebele were shunted off into 'African reserves', the dust bowl of Zimbabwe.

Even when the war for liberation won independence it was a highly compromised independence.

Rhodesia's whites had made up less than five per cent of the population but held 95 per cent of the votes and 70 per cent of the Africans' land.

An agreement for independence reserved as many as one-third of the parliamentary seats for these whites, 20 Assembly seats and 10 seats in the Senate, and whites remained in control of the police, army, air force judiciary and civil service.

Mugabe's liberation government abolished the reserved assembly seats at the first chance in 1987 and the Senate seats in 1990."