Rhodes, rants & spineless dons............

If there’s one thing that gets right up the British nose it’s insolent foreigners who are no sooner here than they begin to abuse our hospitality by pontificating about our shortcomings and alleged historical crimes.

 

Especially when they are privileged adolescents who have been allowed to attend one of the top three universities in the world using our own money and with nothing to pay.

 

So it is not surprising that when one Ntokozo Qwabe together with Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh had the effrontery to demand the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from Oriel College, his alma mater which had benefitted greatly from his generosity, they quickly discovered that ordure was being dumped on them from a great height.

 

Qwabe is a Rhodes Scholar, using the old boy’s money to insult and abuse him. Sizwe was awarded a scholarship by a foundation of Lord Weidenfield . Both came from South African families of considerable means, although we shall not enquire too closely into how this came about.

 

Their beef against CJR is simple, childishly so.

 

According to them he was a murdering thief who plundered the indigenous population. Unsurprisingly, they have not bothered to establish any facts. They are simply aping the antics of their contemporaries at the University of Cape Town who have succeeded in getting a spineless administration to remove the statue of Rhodes. Seemingly they are unaware (or more likely don’t care for facts)  that UCT is built on land donated by Rhodes for the purpose.

 

There have been no similar demos at Rhodes University or Stellenbosch, or for that matter, the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens nearby also on land donated by CJR. This was the first of its kind in the world to be dedicated to indigenous species.

 

The truth of it is that Rhodes was neither hero nor villain. He was an astonishingly successful entrepreneur who grew into a larger than life figure by creating not just a huge commercial empire but entire countries – Northern and Southern Rhodesia. In doing so he effectively stopped colonial expansion by Portugal, Belgium and the Afrikaners.

 

When the pioneer column entered the country, it was a vast emptiness with a population of no more than 300,000. There were two warring tribal groups, Matabele and Mashona. They were in a state of primitivity, with no written language or even the wheel. There was no commerce, no industry, no education, no medical services, no  law. Everything that exists in modern Zimbabwe was created by the m’sungu.

 

He stole the land, they say. Yet in much of Africa the concept of land ownership did not exist. ‘How can anyone own something given by nature?’ is an attitude  - not an unreasonable one – that is still present in much of African culture. His mining concessions were all negotiated with the chiefs, notably the Rudd Concession with Chief Lobengula. Tribal Trust Areas were created, huge blocks of land forbidden to whites so as to prevent the very land grabs of which Rhodes is now accused

 

‘He was the architect of apartheid, an ideology that drove him to not only steal approximately one million miles of South African land, but to facilitate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of black South Africans’. As South Africans this pair must surely know that apartheid was purely an Afrikaner  construct of the Nationalist Party which introduced the Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act in 1950, the Pass Laws Act of 1952 and the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, but only began to enforce rigid apartheid in the 1960s under Hendrick Verwoerd after South Africa’s ejection from the Commonwealth.

 

As for the ‘million miles of land’ and the ‘hundreds of thousands of deaths’, as Goebbels said ‘The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed’.

 

The Union of South Africa did not even exist during Rhodes’ lifetime. His brief foray into politics was in the Cape Colony. Ironically, it was the Afrikaner who was most discriminated against in the Cape; he was bottom of the heap not least because he had little command of the English language (if he had to make a court appearance his interpreter would have been most likely a bi-lingual Coloured). It was Rhodes as Prime Minister of the Cape who brought in Afrikaans  as a language to be taught in schools.

Racist? "Equal Rights for all Civilized Men South of the Zambesi." "I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour." His words.

We are sked to believe that the BSA Police, established at the time of the pioneer column, murdered 60,000 people. Well, that’s the first anyone has heard of this; perhaps they were thinking of the tens of thousands of Matabele murdered by Mugabe’s 5^th Brigade in the 1980s. The BSAP was a remarkably fine force (60% black). It commanded universal respect. The life of a young patrol officer was alone in the bush with his horse and his rifle. He would not have lasted a day if the locals did not trust him.

 

The truth is the opposite. Rhodes went alone and unarmed into Lobengula’s indaba and negotiated a peace that lasted around sixty years. The BSAP never opened fire from 1892 to  1960; I know because I was in-country when those first shots were fired as a political rally turned into a riot.

 

So to give this some perspective. I suggest that these two youths visit Zimbabwe.

 

In 1980 there were pristine modern cities, some of the best highways, a sophisticated agriculture that was reckoned to be the breadbasket of Southern Africa; modern industry; excellent health care; high-quality education; an efficient public service. In short, all the characteristics of a modern and well-administered country.

 

They will find none of this still exists.

 

The modern cities are now in decay. Roads are pot-holed and often impassable and choked with uncollected garbage. The entire infrastructure is collapsing. There are acute power shortages. There is a serious water crisis in a country where the supply is otherwise prolific.  There has been almost total economic melt-down. Unemployment is the norm. Agriculture has been destroyed by the theft of  white-owned farms sometimes accompanied by the murder of the farmer and the transfer not to farmers but to Mugabe’s cronies.

 

The currency became worthless long ago so Zimbabwe now only deals in hard currency.  Law and order is almost non-existent. Justice? Forget that, too.

 

And what will happen when Mugabe goes? No prizes for guessing that!

 

So take it all in, Qwabe and Mpofu-Walsh.

 

Because you will be looking at the future of your own country, South Africa.

The BBC, Trump and terror..

I went to BBC World TV News last week expecting to see our first spaceman arriving on station, which happened almost exactly at the same time.

 

Was it first up, being  the best ‘good news’ story for a long time?

 

Nope?

 

Was it second? Nope; this was reserved for a piece that was so instantly forgettable that I couldn’t remember it 5 minutes later.

 

It came up half-way through the broadcast as third item. So what came first?

 

It was the closure of 900 schools in Los Angeles, affecting 640,000 pupils. Apparently there was a threat from ISIS. Since nothing happened, the story was of minuscule interest to the British. Even then the Beeb didn’t get the real story; that it was all a hoax that the LAPD fell for, whereas the NYPD didn’t buy a similar ‘threat’.

 

But there is a dimension to this affair which has gone unremarked upon by both the media and the political classes.

 

This was staggering propaganda for ISIS. They now know that they can bring pretty well any major city in the US (and elsewhere) to a standstill with this kind of scam. They have no need to send in  the bombers. Or, indeed, to do anything other than issue the threats. In the course of time the security services will get the message and then ignore future threats.

 

That will be the opportunity for the real thing!

 

And with Trump as a leading GOP contender for POTUS, surely ISIS can scarcely believe their luck.

 

He advocates a total ban on Muslims from entering the USA. That’s 22% of the world’s population. He wants a register of all Muslims, the precedent being Adolf Hitler and the Jews.

 

His military solution is carpet-bombing of ISIS-held areas; too bad about collateral damage. He wants to take reprisals against Muslim families, obviously not being aware that this is a war-crime. He speaks of banning ISIS from the internet, a technical impossibility.

                                                                                                          

Trump has done ISIS’ business for it  by promoting fear amongst ordinary Americans, which, after all, is the primary purpose of terrorism.

 

And it has done a huge favour to ISIS by endorsing its main propaganda hook in Islamic countries. ‘ See how the Crusaders hate you’. ‘See how the Crusaders want to kill your women and children’. ‘See how the Crusaders aim to destroy your cities as they did in the days of our great saviour Saladin, peace and blessings be upon him’.

 

This is all nonsense. It is abundantly obvious that Trump has a single campaign strategy: to say something daily that will keep the other contenders off the front page, however moronic. And he is dragging the other contenders with him on the basis that to stay in the game you have to say something even more outrageous every day.

 

It is blindingly obvious that The Donald simply doesn’t care.

 

But then he never has.

 

America: the way we live now......

After placing their hands on their hearts and swearing not to repeat the cannibalization of presidential nominees the Republicans have done it again. They are at each other’s throats hacking away at whatever real or imagined weaknesses they can find. The top cannibal is decidedly Donald Trump who doesn’t like anybody very much. His latest rant was a promise to go after terrorist’s wives on the grounds that the wives know what their husbands are doing.

 

In response to this type of hype, a major benefactor of Jeb Bush has loudly promised to vote for Hillary Clinton should Trump win the nomination. All the candidates are so full of dirt that nobody has the moral high ground.

Meanwhile, the American public is standing by for the next episode of terror attack. After so many shootings here in the USA whether terror inspired or not, our dear leader and his minions has come down hard in favor of gun control. Ted Cruz, the ultra-conservative Republican candidate from Dallas Texas has his own solution. Namely, more guns in the hands of ‘good guys’ who would act to shoot the ‘bad guys’.

 

Our understanding of human behavior has not progressed beyond Hollywood versions of ‘bad guys’ wearing black hats and looking seriously grumpy. Yet the carnage goes on and on with every expectation of those weekly episodes materializing.

Greater attention has been given by Washington this week to climate change than to the antics of mad Americans and radicalized terrorists. We are told that we need to create a resilient (the latest buzzword) world capable of reacting to human efforts geared toward undoing the environmental damage that we are all so guilty of perpetrating. Simple mention of the term climate change sends everyone on this side of the ocean into hysteria.

 

There has yet to be a rational debate on the issue as the prime movers on the national scene would much prefer to troll for political gain by condemning those responsible for heating up the atmosphere. Like increases in arms and ammunition sales when gun control is mentioned, people in the alternative energy business are flogging their wares every time the subject of global warming arises. And they seem to be making lots of money in the process.

The good news is that Dave Camron got his way to upgrade his airpower against ISIS. Retrospectively, there seems little doubt that he would not have. The campaigning and vote was rather heavily dramatized here in the US. Many observers here believe it only a matter of time before the Western coalition puts some serious boots on the ground. The number of Yank special forces and trainers is creeping upward as is their mandate to engage the enemy under certain conditions.

 

 We are told the ‘bad guys’ are taking to tunnels and caves when the bombs start to fall. There is also news of falling numbers of ISIS recruits and one bright spark noted that these numbers will fall even further with each allied battle victory.

 

Is this the beginning of the end?

Where are all those 'poor' kids?

Did you know that in the UK, there are 2.3 million kids in poverty? Well, the Social Mobility & Child Poverty Commission says so and therefore it must be true.

 

So where are all these waifs and strays; hollowed eyed, malnourished, uneducated? On the Government’s sole measure of poverty, the poverty line is £272 a week. The old age pension is just going up. From £116 a week. They say that one in six children lives in poverty. That means in an average school two whole classes are impoverished.

 

The cost to the tax-payer in the last 7 years of the Labour government was £170 billion. That’s £170,000,000,000. Something wrong here, surely. Shared between 2.3 million kids that looks like an awful lot of mobile phones and burgers. And more than 60% of these pauper children live in homes where at least one person is in full-time employment

 

When internationally-recognised criteria are applied, the findings will be somewhat different.

 

Amongst these criteria are access to safe water and sanitation, availability of medical treatment, adequate housing (not more than 4 people per room), at least six years of education, and acceptable public services.

 

Uppermost is nutrition. A BMI of 16 is the starting point, and height for age, daily calorie intake, and incidence of diet-related conditions such as rickets are measures of poverty.

 

At the same time, the various health authorities are warning of an ‘epidemic’ of obesity in children between 5 and 15 years. By far the biggest group is children in the lowest income families.

 

If you are bemused by all this, you are not alone!

 

 

ISIL: the real strategy..........

The Syria vote in the Commons means an escalation of war in the region; ISIL would be dancing in the streets were it not that dancing is Haram. Their next move will be to provoke a massive influx of ground troops.

 

To understand their perverted strategy, we must exhume 9/11.  Why did a bunch of middle class well-educated Saudis fly fully-loaded airliners into the Twin Towers, killing over 3000 people? A whole catalogue of motives has been promulgated. American support for Israel; the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia; sanctions imposed on Iraq; and a whole raft of others involving somewhat incoherent hatred of the Great Satan.

 

Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam foundation think tank has a convincing take on what motivates jihadism. He maintains that AL Qaeda did not create jihadism; jihadism created Al Qaeda. The jihadist strategy has been to provoke the west into massive retaliation on the fairly sound assumption that the West would eventually become bogged down in interminable and unwinnable conflict.

 

Suddenly, 9/11 comes into focus.

 

The objective was to provoke massive retaliation  that would cost thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars, and eventually such war-weariness that Americans would just want to get the hell out of there. Bin Laden understood too well the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ that followed America’s humiliating defeat and lost its appetite for foreign adventures until the first Gulf war revived its love-affair with ‘boots on the ground’.

 

The strategy succeeded beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams (although he may have got more than he bargained for; it is said that Dubya considered the nuclear option). The outcome was exactly what breeds the ungovernable chaos on which terrorism thrives.

 

AL Qaeda then moves its HQ to Afghanistan, and sure enough, the West took the bait. AQ scarpered after three weeks to Yemen and other remote hell-holes. The allies stayed another 14 years for reasons that have never been properly explained or understood. The allies war-aims thus remain a mystery, but if our leaders had taken time to read ‘The Great Game’ and then understood that war by infidels against Afghans was, and remains,  unwinnable. It will be intriguing to see how ISIS gets on against the Taliban now they have decided to set up a caliphate in Eastern Afghanistan.

 

And so to Libya, where Western intervention in the ejection of Gadhafi left the door wide open for  ISIL in the ensuing chaos. It is now reputed to have 3,000 fighters in Gadhafi’s home town, which is alarmingly close to European entry via Malta.

 

The grand strategy of the jihadis is not to convert the entire world to Islam or even restore Islam to the cultural, financial and military heyday of the Middle Ages, when Damascus, Baghdad, Aleppo and other cities in the Mesopotamia region were the cradles of civilisation.

 

Jihadis wish to restore the caliphate to its status quo ante, to the 9^th Century in which the Quran was to be obeyed literally and all forms of learning were haram (the aim also of Boko Haram which means ‘books forbidden’ i.e. all forms of Western civilisation and learning, with the only education being learning the Quran by heart in madrassas).

 

This means cleansing Islam of all foreign infidels and their institutions, exterminating the ruling families of Saud and others, and toppling all current MENA regimes.

 

It is to be fervently hoped that the West has a sound counter strategy.

 

If not, the world could be facing the fulfilment of the Orwellian prophesy of endless war between West and East – Oceania versus Eurasia.

 

.

 

 

Whereis Dave the Bullingdon Bomber heading?

There is an urgent need for clarity in the Syria imbroglio before the Commons takes its vote. So here is the latest SITREP.

 

The West is fighting Assad who is fighting ISIL who is fighting us, and Turkey is fighting the Kurds who are fighting ISIL, with Russia supporting Assad and our efforts against ISIL   and fighting against Chechnyans who are supporting ISIL. It seems like only yesterday that Dave was hot for bombing Assad; now he wants to bomb ISIL who is bombing Assad.

 

If the aim is to bomb ISIL back to the Stone Age, it’s too late. It is already there.

 

Now that’s clear, there is a key question to be answered before the Commons vote.

 

What vital British interests are involved?

 

Has any MP asked – Mr ‘Compo’ Corbyn for example – and if so what was the PM’s answer?

 

I think we should be told!

 

The difficulty faced by the people is that they have been down this road before. Under Saddam Iraq was stable, if brutal. George Dubya decided to bring down the only non-Islamic regime in the region. Step forward shock and awe! And what became of it at last? Complete disintegration of the state,  mass slaughter, Sunni and Shia resuming their 1000-year old war, and the infection of terrorism.

 

Then to Afghanistan to remove Al Qaeda. This took three weeks and they then decamped to Yemen and other dusty hellholes. The ‘Allies’ stayed fourteen years fighting the Taliban who had never done us any harm. Now we have ISIL fighting the Taliban.

 

And so to Libya, another brutal regime but stable. So we assisted Gadhafi’s departure, leaving another failed state and haven for ISIL who have occupied Gadhafi’s home town only about 80 miles as the stinger flies from Europe.

 

The big question in many British minds will be about who or what comes after Assad if the West maintains its stance that he must go.

 

This in turn raises the issue of post-war political and diplomatic strategy after ISIL is history, and the complexities of geopolitics that seem not to have been addressed at all.

 

It would seem that the first move is the creation of a grand alliance between the UK, France, the US and, most particularly, Russia. It is also worth noting that of the 1000+ deaths from ISIL terrorism almost all victims have been Muslims, and yet there is little sign of any move for a determined co-operative alliance of Muslim nations to wipe out what must be by far the greatest threat to their own stability. A first move should be to take the Assad question off the agenda; his future (if any) is an increasing irrelevance to the main purpose of crushing ISIL totally. It must not merely be defeated; it must be exterminated ruthlessly for fear that it may rise from the dead at some time in the future.

 

No doubt the libertarian/civil rights nexus will make their usual loud noises regardless of the likelihood that this will give aid and comfort to the enemy. At this time, Western public opinion appears to be highly supportive of bombing Syria; in Russia, public opinion is what Putin says it is.

 

Geopolitical solutions will be long term, but they must be radical. There is a once-and-for-all opportunity for the major powers to unravel the artificial boundaries created by the Sykes-Picot deal after WW1.

 

Colonial administrators were adept at drawing straight lines on maps, as in the post-Ottoman carve-up. Inevitably this disregarded sectarian, tribal, and ethnic distinctions. The geopolitical challenge is to rectify this. First. Syria.

 

It is beyond peradventure that this is a failed state that has totally disintegrated. There must be a new creation which will separate as far as is geographically possible, Shia, Sunni, Christian/Maronites and Druze. This might also involve adjustment of Lebanon’s borders. A further move might be to remove Kurdish areas from both Syria and Iraq to create a new Kurdish State, however much squealing from Erdogan (at least the Islamo-Fascist won’t have to worry about publicity at home, having locked up nearly all Turkish hacks).

 

And it is blindingly obvious that Iraq is a basket case; it will never be a functional state without root-and–branch changes that accommodate both Sunni and Shia, and this means a federal structure.

 

The end-game is not pacification of Syria by bombing, or making war, but securing a lasting peace. The option is a lasting turmoil.

There is an urgent need for clarity in the Syria imbroglio before the Commons takes its vote. So here is the latest SITREP.

 

The West is fighting Assad who is fighting ISIL who is fighting us, and Turkey is fighting the Kurds who are fighting ISIL, with Russia supporting Assad and our efforts against ISIL   and fighting against Chechnyans who are supporting ISIL. It seems like only yesterday that Dave was hot for bombing Assad; now he wants to bomb ISIL who is bombing Assad.

 

If the aim is to bomb ISIL back to the Stone Age, it’s too late. It is already there.

 

Now that’s clear, there is a key question to be answered before the Commons vote.

 

What vital British interests are involved?

 

Has any MP asked – Mr ‘Compo’ Corbyn for example – and if so what was the PM’s answer?

 

I think we should be told!

 

The difficulty faced by the people is that they have been down this road before. Under Saddam Iraq was stable, if brutal. George Dubya decided to bring down the only non-Islamic regime in the region. Step forward shock and awe! And what became of it at last? Complete disintegration of the state,  mass slaughter, Sunni and Shia resuming their 1000-year old war, and the infection of terrorism.

 

Then to Afghanistan to remove Al Qaeda. This took three weeks and they then decamped to Yemen and other dusty hellholes. The ‘Allies’ stayed fourteen years fighting the Taliban who had never done us any harm. Now we have ISIL fighting the Taliban.

 

And so to Libya, another brutal regime but stable. So we assisted Gadhafi’s departure, leaving another failed state and haven for ISIL who have occupied Gadhafi’s home town only about 80 miles as the stinger flies from Europe.

 

The big question in many British minds will be about who or what comes after Assad if the West maintains its stance that he must go.

 

This in turn raises the issue of post-war political and diplomatic strategy after ISIL is history, and the complexities of geopolitics that seem not to have been addressed at all.

 

It would seem that the first move is the creation of a grand alliance between the UK, France, the US and, most particularly, Russia. It is also worth noting that of the 1000+ deaths from ISIL terrorism almost all victims have been Muslims, and yet there is little sign of any move for a determined co-operative alliance of Muslim nations to wipe out what must be by far the greatest threat to their own stability. A first move should be to take the Assad question off the agenda; his future (if any) is an increasing irrelevance to the main purpose of crushing ISIL totally. It must not merely be defeated; it must be exterminated ruthlessly for fear that it may rise from the dead at some time in the future.

 

No doubt the libertarian/civil rights nexus will make their usual loud noises regardless of the likelihood that this will give aid and comfort to the enemy. At this time, Western public opinion appears to be highly supportive of bombing Syria; in Russia, public opinion is what Putin says it is.

 

Geopolitical solutions will be long term, but they must be radical. There is a once-and-for-all opportunity for the major powers to unravel the artificial boundaries created by the Sykes-Picot deal after WW1.

 

Colonial administrators were adept at drawing straight lines on maps, as in the post-Ottoman carve-up. Inevitably this disregarded sectarian, tribal, and ethnic distinctions. The geopolitical challenge is to rectify this. First. Syria.

 

It is beyond peradventure that this is a failed state that has totally disintegrated. There must be a new creation which will separate as far as is geographically possible, Shia, Sunni, Christian/Maronites and Druze. This might also involve adjustment of Lebanon’s borders. A further move might be to remove Kurdish areas from both Syria and Iraq to create a new Kurdish State, however much squealing from Erdogan (at least the Islamo-Fascist won’t have to worry about publicity at home, having locked up nearly all Turkish hacks).

 

And it is blindingly obvious that Iraq is a basket case; it will never be a functional state without root-and–branch changes that accommodate both Sunni and Shia, and this means a federal structure.

 

The end-game is not pacification of Syria by bombing, or making war, but securing a lasting peace. The option is a lasting turmoil.