"Citizen Vigilante" - full movie

Elon Musk liked this so much that he posted it to his account on "X". That's recommendation enough for us! It's all over the Internet now and has received millions of views. If you haven't seen it yet, here `tis!

Don't be surprised if this disappears very quickly. The Alphabet people -- the owners of Google etc, not to be confused with the alphabet people aka LGBTQQSIAYV2Z etc -- are aware that lots of websites are trying to get you to pay to see this film, and the predators do protect their own. However, if Elon Musk can get away with it, why can't Walt?! Let's wait and see.

The truth about Rhodesia - a warning to liberals of the AABC countries

Rhodesia’s story isn't what you've been told! Today, it's barely mentioned at all. You would be hard-pressed to find, in the AABC countries (America, Australia, Britain and Canada), anyone under the age of 60 who could tell you what or where Rhodesia was. 

For 15 years (1965-1980), the world poured its energy into erasing Rhodesia from the map. But once it was gone, silence! Zimbabwe, like so many "decolonised" African nations, soon collapsed into chaos. Under Comrade Robert Mugabe, the dictator who ruled from independence in 1980 until he was deposted in a coup in 2017, and his successor Emmerson "E.D." Mnangagwa, the country was brought to ruin. Watch this video and ask whether the Rhodesians were really the villains history says they were, and what happens if people of that stripe come to power. FAFO!

Walt first visited Rhodesia, as it then was, some 57 years ago. As the narrator of this video says, the handwriting was on the wall, even then. When I returned to live in Zimbabwe (as Rhodesia had been renamed) in the 1990s, there were still many Africans (as black people like to be called) who said that things were better in the days of Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith. 

After independence, Zimbabwe quickly became a basket case, destroyed by the corruption, ignorance and incompetence of the Marxist government of Comrade Mugabe. One of Walt's agents, who left the sinking ship at about the same time, and now resides in the Disunited Kingdom, returned in January to attend to some legal matters. She reports that things have not got any better in the quarter-century since we left. It is not wrong, she says, to regard Zimbabwe as a failed state, which has hit bottom and can never rise again. What a pity.

Reparations? President Trump does the math

Walt guesses you've never heard of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. [Indeed we haven't. Lifetime pct .990. Ed.] Well sir, the UNPFPAD is yet another anti-white, anti-American agency of the Disunited Nations, created to advocate for a "global reparations agenda" to "compensate Africa and the African diaspora for the enduring legacies of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid and genocide between the 16th and the 19th centuries."

Need we add that it has tied itself to the currently fashionable causes espoused by the anti-white left, claiming that "efforts to advance climate action" must be grounded in “racial equity", because "climate justice cannot succeed without addressing historical and structural forms of injustice." Isn't that obvious?

But wait (as Vince Offer used to say) there's more! The UNPFPAD's delusional advocacy has also branched into emerging technology fields like artificial intelligence, where the forum declared only "reparatory justice" could halt "technology-enabled racism." We'll pause here so you can stop ROFL.

Readers whose tax dollars would be spent on reparations if politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom [Isn't he the that used to lead the Tonight Show band? Ed.] get their way will be glad to know that President Trump has called BS on this anti-white nonsense. 

Yesterday, POTUS signed an executive order to pull the US of A out of UNPFPAD. According to Trump administration officials, the racial grievances and "victim based social policies" promoted by the oranization are contrary to the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

Tommy Pigott, principal spokesthingy for the State Department, said "America will no longer lend its credibility to racist organizations. Radical activists who embrace DEI ideology and seek to compel the United States to adopt policies mandating race-based wealth redistribution, in organizations such as the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent will no longer be entertained." He added, "The United States is proudly withdrawing from racist organizations such as this forum."

Thanks to BCF for the tip to this under-reported story. Ed.

ICYMI, Septemer 6th was International Vulture Awareness Day

Walt was unaware of this celebratory occasion, since we receive only sporadically reports from Darkest Africa, where this story originated. Anyway... International Vulture Awareness Day (IVAD) is a campaign aimed at raising awareness about vultures and their critical role in maintaining balance within the ecosystem. 

Vultures provide a vital service by clearing carcasses from the environment, which helps reduce the spread of diseases  Here we see two vultures picking the bones of a dead donkey, once known as the Democratic Party.

According to Benhilda Antonio, a spokesrthingy for BirdLife Zimbabwe, "IVAD is an opportunity to recognise and celebrate nature’s clean-up crew. Without vultures, our environment would be plagued by rotting carcasses, posing a significant risk to human and animal health."

Vultures' stomachs have a pH level that allows them to feed on meat with diseases like rabies and anthrax without getting affected. They can finish a donkey (or other) carcass in a few days due to their feeding frenzies, making them an essential component of ecosystem balance.  However, they are facing numerous threats, including poisoning, electrocution and collision with powerlines. 

Poisoning is a major concern, with intentional poisoning by poachers being a significant threat. Unintentional poisoning also occurs when people poison carcasses to target carnivores that attack their livestock, and vultures end up feeding on the poisoned carcasses.

The illegal trade of vultures and their body parts is also a significant threat. According to Josephine Maringa from the Department of Forest Resources and Wildlife Management at the National University of Science and Technology, "the illegal trade of vultures is driven by belief-based use, with many people believing that vultures have supernatural powers." This has led to the harvest and use of vultures and their body parts without permits, posing a significant threat to vulture populations in Africa.

To contribute to vulture conservation, Ms Antonio emphasises that it is crucial for people to take action. Reporting poisoning cases to relevant authorities is a critical step in preventing further deaths. Additionally, stopping retaliatory killings of carnivores that attack livestock can help reduce the risk of unintentional poisoning. 

People can also play a role by reporting any vulture nests seen in their area and refraining from destroying nests or taking eggs. "Every effort counts," she said, "and collective action can make a significant difference in the long-term survival of vultures."

VIDEO: "Allahu akbar!" in the Horn of Africa

Well, that does it! Somalia is off Walt's bucket list! The Liido Restaurant (pictured) in Mogadishu, the shithole's capital, serves excellent mystery-meat burgers, but enjoying one on the beach could cost you your life. Time for the latest news from Liido Beach, followed by a history lesson.

The news today is that at least 32 people were killed in a suicide attack at the popular beach, carried out by al-Shabaab militants. Hassan Ben-Sober [Ed., please check name], a police spokesthingy, told the meeja that "around 63" people were also wounded, some of them critically.

Video footage showed a number of bodies and injured people in Mogadishu's Abdiaziz district. Al-Shabab controls large parts of southern and central Somalia. The group is affiliated to al-Qaeda and for two decades has waged a brutal insurgency against a government backed by the Disunited Nations.

If you (like 99.99% of Americans) have forgotten about Somalia, let me remind you that the government of William Jefferson Clinton (Democrat) sent American troops there to wage peace in the 1990s as part of a UN snafu known as "Operation Gothic Serpent".

Mogadishu was the site of the infamous "Black Hawk Down Incident", of 3-4 October 1993, part of the Battle of Mogadishu, between forces of the US of A against the forces of the so-called Somali National Alliance (SNA) and armed irregulars. The battle was part of the then two-year-old Somali civil war, just one of the Muslim civil wars in which America has foolishly intervened. 

The UN initially sent troops to alleviate the famine of 1992, but then began trying to restore a central government, establish democracy, yada yada yada. In June of 1993, UN peacekeepers suffered their deadliest day in decades when the Pakistani contingent was attacked while inspecting a SNA weapons storage site. That's what happens when you look into the barrel.

UNOSOM II (the UN task force) blamed SNA leader Mohammed Farah Aidid and launched a manhunt. In July, American forces raided the Abdi House in search of Aidid, killing many elders and prominent members of Aidid's clan. Big mistake, Dr Jones! The raid led many Mogadishu residents to join the fight -- not on "our" side -- and in August, Aidid and the SNA deliberately attacked American personnel for the first time. And that's why slick Willy dispatched Task Force Ranger to sort things out.

On 3 October 1993, US forces planned to seize two of Aidid's top lieutenants during a meeting deep in the city. The raid was only intended to last an hour, but morphed into an overnight standoff and rescue operation extending into the daylight hours of the next day. Here's the trailer for the slightly biased movie version of what happened.

What really happened was this. As the battle progressed (or not), Somali forces used RPGs to shoot down three American Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Two of them crashed deep in hostile territory (read: anywhere in the city). A desperate defence of the two downed helicopters began and fighting lasted through the night to defend the survivors of the crashes. In the morning, a UNOSOM II armored convoy fought their way to the besieged soldiers and withdrew, incurring further casualties but rescuing the survivors.

No battle since the Vietnam War claimed so many American casualties -- 18 dead and 73 wounded. You won't see much about the other forces in the movie, but Malaysian forces suffered one death and seven wounded, and Pakistani forces had two injured. Somali casualties were far higher -- between 133 and 700 dead.

The part that really wasn't a good look for the Clinton government was that, after the battle, dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by enraged Somalis, in full view of a vast [or half-vast. Ed.] TV audience.

The UN gave up on Somalia in 1995, and, as today's news illustrates, the state is now a lawless and dangerous shithole, with no effective government -- a place to be avoided like the plague (which is said to be present there). Fear of another PR disaster kept the US government from increasing its involvement in Somalia and other regions. 

Some students of history (Republicans perhaps) say that what is now called "Somalia Syndrome" influenced the Clinton administration's decision not to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. However, the lesson of Somalia was apparently forgotten when new Muslim civil wars broke out in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

The Great Replacement is a fact... a CANADIAN fact...

and it's too late for you hosers to do anything about it! The damage has already been done by the extreme-woke Liberal government of Justin "Junior" Trudeau. It's all part of the Soros-authored Great Replacement plan, which is now a fait accompli.

So says Canadian advocate and writer Chris George, in "Trudeau Liberals’ immigration policies purposefully altering Canada", posted in the Niagara Independent on 31/5/24. Thanks to Agent 3 for capturing the URL! Let's begin with Mr George's list of disturbing statistics, which the Liberals can no longer conceal. Emphasis and parenthetical comments are Walt's.

The government’s open border policies are changing the ethnic composition of the country. Government data from Statistics Canada and the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada tell us a number of things. 

1. In 2022 and 2023 Canada’s population grew by a record amount, more than one million-plus people each year.

2. In 2022 the country’s population growth rate was 2.7%, which is the highest rate in the world outside African countries. In 2023, it was even higher at 3.2%

3. Canada’s population has not grown at the current pace since the baby boom years in the late 1950s. Almost all (98%) of that growth came from migration.

4. According to the Canadian census, prior to 2015, immigration consisted of 28% coming from the UK/Europe, and today this number is only two per cent [That's right, only 2%.]

5. Today, Canada has the world’s largest intake of Third World migration – mostly from the continent of Africa. Nearly 98% of immigrants now come from India, China, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, and various African countries.  

6. First- and second-generation immigrants now account for 44% of Canada's population, according to the 2021 census. 

7.  On 1 July 2015, Canada’s estimated population was 35,851,800.vOn 16 June 2023, Canada’s population surpassed the 40 million mark. Nine months later, on 28 March 2024, it surpassed 41 million.

The main point of Chris George's well-researched and well-argued article is that the Liberals’ immigration plan comes with an untold cost.

Marc Miller, the minister who's supposedly in charge, has commanded center stage in Ottawa over the past few weeks making a rash of new policy announcements. The changes being made to Canada’s immigration system will make it easier for newcomers to come into the country – seemingly without regard for either the costs to taxpayers or the strain placed on Canadians’ social contract. 

Last week, the government tabled legislation that extends birthright citizenship, allowing Canadians who live abroad to pass down "Canadian citizenship" to their children who may have been born outside the country and live abroad. This allows for a person who never has set foot in Canada to hold Canadian citizenship based on the citizenship of just one of their parents.

Also last week, M Miller announced that the government was increasing the temporary resident visa program for extended Palestinian family members in Gaza from 1000 to 5000 applicants. The special measures allow Gazans [including Hamas jihadis] who have relatives in Canada to move and stay in the country for up to three years.

[But wait, there's more...] M Miller then revealed that the federal cabinet is considering permitting migrants and illegal immigrants currently in Canada to gain permanent residence. This includes migrants without valid documents, including asylum seekers ordered to be deported, as well as former international students whose study permits have expired. This initiative will provide all current illegal immigrants an unconditional free pass. 

These latest policy announcements are an extension of the Trudeau government’s open border approach to attracting increasing numbers of newcomers to Canada. The latest immigration schedule announced in fall 2023 has Canada officially welcoming 485,000 new permanent residents this year, 500,000 in 2025, and another 500,000 in 2026. 

This is less than half the story, though, as government figures reveal 1,160,000 temporary residents came to Canada in the last 18 months and there may be more than 2,200,000 in the country. And in addition to this, Canada has accepted an increasing number of refugees and asylum seekers.

The Liberals’ immigration plan comes with an untold cost. Aside from the increased pressure on Canadians’ housing, health care and social services, which are hard to quantify, there are a host of associated costs required to support the newcomers and their daily living. Taxpayers never get a complete picture of costs, only snippets of details such as: Blacklock’s Reporter reported that room and board for illegal immigrants is costing a daily average of $224 per person, $81,760 per person per year, according to government records. 

Couple that news with the Migrant Rights Network estimating the number of illegals living in Canada could be anywhere between 20,000 to 500,000, and we can factor the annual cost of room and board for illegals from $1.6 billion to $40.5 billion.

Blacklock’s Reporter was the only news source to headline Statistics Canada data that reported in March of 2022 that "more than a third (35%) of government-assisted refugees remain on welfare a decade after landing in Canada."

An analysis of the data showed “higher welfare rates followed landmark 2001 changes to immigration law” when the Trudeau government dropped the requirement for foreigners to show proof of work skills and economic independence. Separate Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada data reveals that "Only 56% of government-assisted refugees were directly participating in the Canadian labour market." [That's government-speak for "only 56% were working or looking for work."]

Credit again goes to Blacklock’s Reporter for publishing government data that revealed, of the 2015 Syrian refugees brought into Canada by the Trudeau Liberals, half the total (50.4%) were still relying on social assistance after five years. Of the 2016 Syrian refugees the government welcomed, seven of ten (69.5%) refugees were still relying on social assistance four years after landing.

As expensive as financially supporting migrants is for taxpayers, Canadians are paying a greater cost with the societal disorder newcomers are bringing onto the streets of Canada’s cities. The Liberals’ commentary around Miller’s announcement regarding bringing thousands from Gaza into the country has been met with grave concerns about Canadians’ security. This has been underlined in the last few days with bullet-ridden schools in Toronto and Montreal, violent protests on campuses, and rallies that display open threatening hate-speech and rallying cries to "globalize the Intifada."

[Yesterday in Toronto, one person was killed and four wounded in a shooting "incident" in the Rexdale "hood". Today the University of Toronto will begin its commencement exercises. Graduands will have to walk around a pro-Hamas "encampment" which has occupied the front campus for weeks, while U of T's admin and police do nothing.]”

It is reasonable for Canadians to fear that the Hamas-supporting newcomers will join the growing street protests and make an already toxic situation worse, leaving all citizens compromised and Canadian Jews in an even more vulnerable position. (Consider why all other countries, including Arab neighbours, keep their borders closed to these people.) 

Just as the Trudeau Liberals remain unfazed by the crises in housing and health care caused in part by the growing numbers of immigrants, they remain unapologetic with their intention to bring more Gazans into Canada. Political pundit Spencer Fernando bluntly assessed, "The Liberals are knowingly importing radicalized anti-Semites, many of whom also despise the Western world and oppose Canadian Values….  If you are someone who loves Canada and believes in Western Values, Marc Miller has chosen to be your Enemy."

The National Citizens Coalition posted on X the following observation: "You don't bring in a million people during a housing shortage crisis, where we don't have enough family doctors, and say you're fixing the problem… For every day that Trudeau and Miller's desperate pivot to unchecked mass immigration grows more reckless, exploitative, and debilitating for generational problems of housing and healthcare, more and more Canadians are realizing they’ve had enough."

Quite apart from the chaos of the Palestinian-Hamas protests, there are daily news stories of around-the-block food bank lines, new tent cities being pitched, carjacking and street crimes, bank foreclosures, and overcrowded and closed ERs. The strain being applied on Canadians' social contract is now palpable.

Miller tells Canadians the government is extending citizenship, permitting illegals to stay in the country, and bringing in more Gazans. He’s signaled there will be more than a million newcomers ushered into the country again this year. Miller reassures us it’s all in the Trudeau Liberals’ immigration plan. 

[Another name for the Liberals' "immigration plan" is "Great Replacement plan". It's the one thing the Trudeau government has done as promised. But the promise wasn't made by Junior. It was made by his father, Emperor Trudeau I, when he seized the reins of power in 1968. "You won't recognize Canada when I'm done with it," was what he said. That one time (only), he wasn't lying.]

Further reading: "Trudeau's mass immigration policies are crushing Canada", by Cory Morgan, in the Western Standard, 2/6/24. 

To blacks fed up with American racism - "Go back to Africa!"

Q. What do Ghana, Rwanda and Liberia have in common... apart from being the kind of African countries sometimes referred to as "shitholes"? 

A. They have all been suggested as good places for African migrants to return to when they say they are unhappy [and/or unwelcome! Ed.] in Europe and/or North America.

Ed. has been doing some research, and discovered a growing GBTA (Go Back To Africa) movement in the US of A. Just over two centuries ago, the movement was spearheaded [Careful. Ed.] by white people who wanted to send slaves back home. Now it's the descendants of slaves who are raising the GBTA petitions. More about that below, but first let's look at where they could go, and ask Thomas Hardy's question: Can you ever go home again? 

Liberia began in the early 19th century as a project of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which believed black people would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States. Between 1822 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, more than 15,000 freed and free-born black people who faced social and legal oppression in the USA, along with 3198 Afro-Caribbeans, relocated to Liberia.

The Liberian constitution and flag were modelled after those of the United States while its capital was named after ACS supporter President James Monroe. The settlers brought their culture and traditions with them, and an "Americo-Liberian" identity soon became dominant in Libria, with the Liberians descended from the ACS immigrants now regarded as somehow superior, like the descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims or the FFVs in America.

Liberia's last 40 years have been marked by political instability and horrific violence rooted in ethnic divisions. In April of 1980, a military coup led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe of the Krahn ethnic group overthrew and killed President William R. Tolbert, Jr, one of the "Americo-Liberians" along with  a majority of Tolbert's cabinet and other Americo-Liberian government officials.

After Liberia adopted a new constitution in 1985, Mr Doe was elected president in subsequent elections that were internationally condemned as fraudulent [unlike the American election of 2020. Ed.] There followed a series of coups and counter-coups until in 1989 a rebel group led by Charles Taylor, launched an insurrection in 1989 triggering the First Liberian Civil War. 

From 1989 to 1997 around 60,000 to 80,000 Liberians died, and, by 1996, around 700,000 others had been displaced into refugee camps in neighboring countries. A peace deal between warring parties was reached in 1995, leading to Mr Taylor's election as president in 1997. Under his leadership, Liberia became internationally known as a pariah state due to its use of blood diamonds and illegal timber exports to fund the Revolutionary United Front in the Sierra Leone Civil War. 

The Second Liberian Civil War began in 1999 when a rebel group based in the northwest of the country, launched an armed insurrection against Charles Taylor. In March 2003, a second rebel group began launching attacks from the southeast. Mr Taylor resigned in August 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria, from where he has been sending letters and emails begging for help in getting his money out. [Ed., you might want to check that last bit.] 

In 2005, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, another Americo-Liberian, was elected president, an office she held until 2017, when a former soccer star, George Weah, was sworn in. He promised to fight corruption, reform the economy, combat illiteracy, and improve living conditions. None of this has happened, as yet, but hey, it's Africa.

Walt told you all ye need to know about Rwanda in "Back to Africa with ye!" - BoJo to asylum-seekers", WWW 14/4/22. It is notorious as the site of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi. Members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. 

Started by Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread throughout the country with shocking speed and brutality, as ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the Hutu Power government to take up arms against their neighbours. A Disunited Nations "peacekeeping" mission, led by a Canadian general, stood idly by. 

By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and 2 million refugees (mainly Hutus) fled Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

Yet now the Rwandan government is happy to accept immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers -- even Hutus -- from any African country. They made a deal with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take back some of the 1000s of bogus refugees crossing the English Channel to seek refuge in Old Blighty. In a speech at the Channel port of Dover, BoJo said, "From today...anyone entering the UK illegally as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1 may now be relocated to Rwanda."

Among the progressive voices decrying the British government's plan to get rid of at least some of the unassimilable black people who have washed up on the shores of the septic ["sceptred", shurely. Ed.] was that of the Washington Post, which is as anti-racist and woke as any newspaper in the world. Yet the same WaPo has now given a goodly amount of op-ed space to an American Woman of Colour named Karen Attiah, for a piece headed "For African Americans tired of U.S. hostility, Ghana is still calling", 18/5/22.

What Ms Appiah suggests is that if African-Americans are fed up with the systemic racism of American society, they might be happier if they move to Ghana! Seriously! I checked the dateline on the article, and it's not April 1st.

The author cites the example of W.E.B. Du Bois, a hero of American Communists, pictured in the article living in Ghana, standing beside his Russian-built Chaika limousine. Just four years after Ghana's independence (before the wheels fell off, see above), Mr Du Bois, then 93, moved to Ghana and became a citizen.

Ms Attiah tells us Mr Du Bois had endured Jim Crow racism, FBI surveillance and the confiscation of his passport, and decided it was enough. He handed White America a scathing resignation notice, in the form of a poem, "Ghana Calls", which is quoted at length.

Ms Attiah concludes that "the truth remains that Black people in the diaspora no longer have to be chained to countries that jail them, kill them and subject them to horrific hate crimes.... To borrow from Maya Angelou, God gave us traveling shoes, and if Black people choose to use them, so be it."

Let me tell you about Ghana. Its history, since gaining independence from Not-so-great Britain in 1967, has rivalled that of Liberial (see above) for coups, civil war, tribal warfare, and barbaric violence. According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, roughly three-quarters of Ghana residents want to immigrate to the USA or Europe. That's why they infest dating and romance websites, looking for gullible westerners from whom they can cadge money or a visa or both.

Ghana is plagued by significant human rights issues, according to the US State Department, including "serious restrictions" on free expression and freedom of assembly [Worse than Canada? Ed.], serious government corruption, "lack of investigation of and accountability" for gender-based violence, crimes against LGBTQ2SI+++ people and those with disabilities, and some of "the worst forms of child labor."

Buggers beware! Ghana is one of 69 nations with active anti-sodomy laws and stipulates a prison term of three years for engaging in homosexual sex. Last year, proposed legislation in the country reiterated a ban on same-sex marriage while prohibiting LGBT indoctrination. [Hmmm. Maybe it's not all bad. Ed.]

The country continues to struggle with economic troubles which were worsened by the recent coronavirus pandemic. Last summer, 1000s of protesters marched in the capital against corruption, poverty and the education system (?) under the slogan "#FixTheCountry". So why does Ms Attiah (and presumably WaPo) recommend it? 

Well, it's all part of the ongoing liberal Democratic campaign to portray the US of A as a systemically racist country. Recently, CNN's "political reporter" (read: propagandist) Malika Henderson, reacting to President Brandon's crocodile-tear-filled speech in Buffalo, said that "white Americans have to come to terms with their racism." 

Last month, loony left 1619 Project creator and professor Nikole Hannah-Jones said she did not know how anyone could argue that the US was not "founded as a racist country." And in March, another WaPo piece accused many Americans of denying and downplaying rampant racism throughout the country, claiming the killers of Ahmaud Arbery "stand in for millions of Americans" nationwide who believe that skin colour deems one "less worthy."

Walt says, if that's how you feel, you're welcome to follow Ms Attiah's suggestion and Go Back To Africa -- Ghana, Rwanda, Liberia, any of those shitholes. I'll help you pack your bags. Don't slam the door on your way out.

UPDATED: Monkeypox: haven't we seen this movie before?

Readers of a certain age [Not you, Jimmy. You're too young. Ed.] will remember HIV/AIDS, the Great Plague sent by God to punish us for the promiscuity and perversions which had become "normal" in the hippy-dippy 60s. The loathsome disease originated in central Africa, and is similar to a simian virus found in chimpanzees. 

The earliest known infection of an identified human being dates back to 1959, found in a plasma sample taken from an adult male living in the Belgian Congo (later Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). It was widely assumed that it was transmitteed by that person, or someone he knew intimately, having sex with a chimp.

In fairness, it's equally possible that transmission occurred when that person ate a chimp, or "bush meat" as it is known in Africa. Or it may have occurred when chimps were used in developing a polio vaccine for humans.

In any case, an African passed on the disease to Gaëtan Dugas, a Canadian flight attendant, who was once regarded as "Patient Zero". M Dugas, who died in 1984 from kidney failure caused by an AIDS-related infection, was very open-minded when it comes to race, and evidently a very active homosexual [A gay flight attendant? Really? Ed.], and was found to payed a role role in a cluster of 40 cases in wait for it... New York and San Francisco. The rest is history.

Fast forward six decades to this spring, when we were alerted by the World Health Organization [WHO? Ed.] to a sudden and dramatic rise in the incidence of monkeypox, a viral disease endemic in central and west Africa. The name comes from the initial discovery of the virus in monkeys in a Danish laboratory in 1958. The first human case was identified in a child in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (again!) in 1970.

According to the United Nations Aids agency (UNAIDS), "a significant proportion" of recent monkeypox cases have been identified among "gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men". But how did it spread to Europe and America so quickly? More than 100 cases of monkeypox have now been reported across Europe, with a handful (so far) in New York and, through an illegal border crossing at Roxham Road QC, to Montréal.

The UK Health Security Agency has said a notable proportion of recent cases in Britain and Europe have been found in gay and bisexual men. Where did they get it? Probably at the Maspalomas Pride Festival held in the Canary Islands between the 5th and 15th of May. The queerfest attracted some 80,000 visitors from Europe and Africa, including many who have since tested positive for the monekypox virus.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects have told the media to STFU about any links between the monkeypox cases and the LGBTQ2S+++ celebrations, warning that "racist, homophobic and irresponsible language is undermining the response to the outbreak, by "reinforce homophobic and racist stereotypes and exacerbating stigma."

Experience shows (the same people are telling us) that Èstigmatising rhetoric can quickly disable evidence-based response by stoking cycles of fear, driving people away from health services, impeding efforts to identify cases and encouraging ineffective, punitive measures." So forget you read this, and stop talking about it, OK?!

Footnote: Smallpox vaccine is said to be 85% effective against monkeypox, so, if you're 60 or under and were never vaccinated against smallpox, book your appointment now. Although, if you're straight, white, and avoid sexual contact with monkeys and other at-risk groups, you'll probably be OK, even without the jab. 

UPDATE ADDED 27/5/22: Canada's Global News reports that monkeypox cases in Canada are suspected to have originated at G.I. Joe's, a Montréal sauna frequented by members of the fudge-packing community. The country's first two cases were reported by Québec public health officials on May 19th. 

Officials say the majority of confirmed cases in the province are tied to men aged between 20 and 30 years, who have had sexual relations with other men. There has been one case in a person under 18.Until now, government officials have steered clear of confirming the origin of the loathesome disease due to "concerns of privacy and stigmatization."

Six things you can do to celebrate Black History Month

Never let it be said that Walt shrank from a challenge! It's still over two weeks to the much-longed-for end of Black History Month, so there's still time to do something to prove that you're woke. Here are six suggestions.

1. Read (and name) a poem by a Black author.

2. Spend a few minutes to learn about Africa, and answer three geographic questions

3. Dance to a Reggae song and list the name

4. Cook an African or Caribbean meal and describe it

5. Have a conversation with a Black co-worker and name them

6. Take a photo of an item in your home that reminds you of Black history and explain why with an accompanying picture.

I didn't make this up all by my(white)self. In fact they are taken from a memorandum sent to employees of the Regional Municipality of Durham (Ontario, Canada) promoting what they called the "Black History Month Scavenger Hunt". Really. 

A day after a copy of the list was circulated on antisocial media by a BLM activist, the usual suspects chimed in with shrieks of "Racist!" and call for "accountability", after regional officials issued the customary fulsome apology.

Shailene Panylo, co-founder of a group styling itself the "Durham Black Accountability Coalition" told Global News, "It was so incredibly shameful that I was as much as in disbelief as… I had to laugh, you have to laugh because how can after so much time, so much effort trying to educate, agitate, create change could something so completely off be put forth as a Black History Month initiative? It simply doesn’t make sense.

"Black History Month has long been an opportunity for non-Black folk to tokenize Black bodies within conversations and space, essentially freeing other people who are non-Black from having to interact with their own learning and unlearning in a way that's truthfully meaningful and would dismantle systems that activities like this only continue to uphold."

In response to the outcry, the Region of Durham tweeted "We hear you" and posted an image of a statement that said, "addressing anti-Black racism is a priority" for the municipality. It said there will be other activities throughout the month for staff to learn about Black history, Black culture and achievements within the Black community.

The statement also said, "Through engaging with the community and Regional staff we acknowledge that mistakes will be made when addressing anti-Black racism. This challenge activity is one of them." Note the use of the passive voice there. That's how you weasel out of saying, "We made a mistake!"

Global News spoke with Chair John Henry [Is he a steel-drivin' man? Ed.] and Regional Municipality of Durham Chief Administrative Officer Elaine Baxter-Trahair to ask about the activity and the details surrounding it. Said the Chair, "Once we found out about it, we were disappointed. We reacted yesterday afternoon. It wasn't something we saw. I'm apologetic for it and we're sorry it has happened."

Following the statement by the Chair, the Table (Ms Baxter-Trahair) said the activity and Black History Month activities were overseen by a "cross-department diverse group of individuals." She went on to describe what happened as, errr, a "misjudgment". "There was [sic] just a couple of misjudgments, so going forward I have to make sure there's the oversight and training in place so the committee can make better decisions."

So everything's OK then, in the Region of Durham. No systemic racism there! And yes, they're just about as woke as can be, although not so woke, of course, as Canuck Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface.

VIDEO: Wm. F. Buckley talks with Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Regular readers of WWW will know that I have an abiding interest in Zimbabwe, a dictatorship in southern Africa which went from being the second-most prosperous on the Dark Continent to what Still-President Trump would now call a "shithole".

I lived and worked in Zimbabwe in the 90s, and could see the handwriting on the wall after the former Big Man, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, decided to pay all his "war veterans" gratuities of Z$50,000 each after they had staged a series of protests, claiming that they had not received the "benefits" of their revolt against the "white settler regime", viz: white cars, white houses and white women.

The unbudgeted payouts saw the Zimbabwe dollar lose its value by 70% in one day -- I remember it well -- and analysts say the move signalled Zimbabwe's well-documented economic collapse. Banknotes were issued in denominations of billions and even trillions of dollars and were literally not worth the paper they were printed on.

The Mugabe government abandoned the "Zimkwacha" because of hyperinflation in 2009 -- 1 US dollar was worth around Z$35 quadrillion at the time -- and started using American dollars and South African rand. 

But I digress. I was about to tell you that when I first went to Africa, there was no Zimbabwe. The country was then known as Rhodesia, a former British colony which declared its independence from No-longer-great Britain on 11 November 1965. I went there about four years later, over five years before William F. Buckley Jr. went there to record this interview with Prime Minister Ian Smith. 

I went to Rhodesia on a fact-finding mission, to see for myself whether the Africans (by which was meant "blacks") were so badly off under white minority rule as was argued by the "progressives" at the United Nations, the World Council of Churches and elsewhere. I concluded that it would be a mistake -- detrimental to the well-being of the Africans -- to overthrow the "white settler government" and impose "majority rule". But it was clear even then, in 1969, that the mistake was going to be made, in the name of "freedom and equality, yada yada yada. The mistake was made, and the result is the shithole that is Zimbabwe today. 

In this interview, recorded in April of 1974, Ian Smith makes the case for the continuation of minority rule until the majority population should be ready to govern themselves. Mr Smith was right, but of course that doesn't matter now, does it. 

One thing to note, at about the 38-minute mark, is that Mr Smith asserts that the black revolutionaries were financed and trained by Communist China. Of course today's China would never do that kind of thing.

Further viewing: Thames Television documentary visit to Rhodesia, June 1975. Includes interview with Ian Smith.  

VIDEO: No face mask, no taxi ride!

De partis infidelibus, Agent 9 has sent us this interesting video. Seems that the rule of "no face mask, no service" applies even to taxis in west Africa.



What's interesting [to the prurient-minded! Ed.] is how the lady manages to divest herself of her undergarments without revealing any naughty bits. But the lesson is clear. You must do as you're told by the elites who govern us. It's for your own good!

Zimbabwe: Bob's not your uncle any more

So, farewell at last, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, former tinpot dictator of what he turned into a shithole country. "Uncle Bob" (as no-one called him, ever) died early today in Singapore at the age of 95.

Most Zimbabweans would say (in whispers, if not out loud) that his death did not come soon enough to save his country from its precipitous descent into chaos and bankruptcy. Your Obdt Servant laboured in Zimbabwe during the late 1990s, trying to help its businesspeople learn modern, Western management techniques. But they couldn't adopt or adapt the things they learned, because they were stymied at every turn by Comrade Bob's Marxist policies, which turned the once-prosperous Rhodesia into an economic basket case.

"Things will be better once Bob goes," people said. But Bob replied, "Handiende!" It means "I will not go!" And he didn't, ruling the country with the proverbial iron fist from its independence in 1980 until, late in 2017, he was finally deposed by Comrade ED [No relation! Ed.] Mnangagwa (pictured below) in a bloodless coup. Since then, things have gotten no better, proving yet again that there is not one country in Africa who leaders -- black or brown -- are capable of managing an economy.

Instead, they rely on massive injections of foreign aid supplied by us chumps in the West, and latterly the Chinese, who still have a lot to learn about Africa, the land of bambazonke. Incompetence and corruption come naturally to African leaders. When mismanagement and kleptomania become too much for even the Swedes and the Brits to stomach (see "Reform or no support, UK tells ED", Zimbabwe Newsday, 6/9/19), the aid money stops flowing and the people starve.

Comrade Bob, who took power after the perfidious Brits sold out their Rhodesian kith and kin in 1980, said more than once that he wanted to rule for life. In that he was typical of the African "Big Man" syndrome, in which the people of shithole countries acquiesced in one-man rule by the likes of Hastings Banda (Malawi), Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (Congo/Zaïre/Congo), Jean-Bédel Bokassa aka Emperor Bokassa I (Central African Republic) and Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi (Libya - not all the Big Men were black Africans). But growing discontent about his government's maladministrationd a military intervention, impeachment proceedings by the parliament and large street demonstrations for his removal.

The November 2017 announcement of Comrade Mugabe's resignation (after he initially ignored escalating calls to quit, and take his lovely and fragrant wife Grace with him) triggered wild celebrations in the streets of the Ha-ha-harare, the fun capital of Africa. Well into the night, cars honked and people danced and sang in a spectacle of free expression that would have been impossible during his years in power and reflected hopes for a better future. But there has been no change for the povo (= poor people) of Zimbabwe, only more of the same, with an even Bigger Man ruling the roost. Prognosis? Dim and getting dimmer. Don't bother to stay tuned.

Further reading: The picture above was scraped from the Associated Press article "A look at the shattered Zimbabwe that Mugabe left behind", as posted on the CTV News site, 6/9/19. Quote from one of the povo: "Life was not that good [under Mugabe], but it was never this bad."

UPDATED - "This is Africa!" - Air Zimbabwe down to one plane

Half a century ago, when new "nations" were being created out of European colonies in Asia and Africa -- "Ready or not, here they come!" -- one of the hallmarks of newfound independence was considered to be a national airline. Even the tiniest shithole had to have a national carrier, usually included in the post-independence deal with the mother country.

So it was with Zimbabwe, when the former Rhodesia was handed over by the perfidious British to the black terrorists led by Robert Mugabe in 1980. The slight difference was that Rhodesia already had a small but functional airline, Air Rhodesia, which had a fleet of about a dozen aircraft including a couple of Viscounts -- lovely old prop jobs -- and even a B707. Like most things run by the "white settler regime", it worked. And it was given, in working order, to Comrade Bob's Marxist government, who painted the planes with red, yellow, green and black stripes and dubbed the "new" airline Air Zimbabwe.

Thanks to the ignorance, incompetence and corruption which bedevil most state-owned enterprises in most African countries, the planes inherited from Air Rhodesia were allowed to fall apart long ago. They were replaced by a succession of other types: B737s, a BAe-146, three Chinese MA-40s, a couple of little Fokkers, and two B767s which, in Walt's daze in Zimbabwe, were the pride of the fleet. One was at the beck and call of Uncle Bob, so effectively out of service, but the rest of us were allowed to fly in the other one, occasionally. Here's a pic I took in 1993 at what used to be called Jan Smuts International Airport, in Johannesburg.

Today, that B767-200ER is the only plane Air Zimbabwe has left, and may be grounded tomorrow or the next day. NewsDay reports that one of its two engines caught fire during a flight from O.R. Tambo International Airport (the new name for "Janny Smuts") to Ha-ha-harare (the fun capital of Zimbabwe) on Sunday evening after developing a fault. According to a state released yesterday, "Air Zimbabwe wishes to inform the public that their Boeing 767-200ER servicing flight UM462 experienced a malfunction in one of its engines, which caused a 'brief' tailpipe fire."

The carrier said the malfunction did not threaten the continuation of the flight or the safety of the crew and passengers on board, and that the aircraft landed safely in Harare at 2035. Air Zimbabwe confirmed that their engineers have started investigations into the incident, but continued, "We regret to inform our valued passengers that this incident may result in a disruption of our normal schedule."

This came barely a day after the same plane was involved in a bird strike incident after take-off at the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport in Bulawayo. The plane, however, landed safely at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in the capital. In March, the struggling national airline said it was using the aircraft, the only one in service, for all its routes. Such is the reality of Zimbabwe today. Mother Africa Wins Again.

UPDATED ADDED 1/5/19 [MAYDAY! MAYDAY! LOL Ed.] - NewsDay reports today that "Beleaguered Air Zimbabwe has bought a new plane, an Embraer ERJ-145, bringing the number of planes owned by the company to two. Air Zimbabwe was put under construction [??? Ed.] in 2018 after it was diagnosed to be a failing parastatal. The new plane is branded Zimbabwe Airways which is the name of a failed airline that was fronted by former President Robert Mugabe's son-in-law, Simba Chikore." Right there, in the last two sentences, is everything you need to know about Zimbabwe and about how things work (or not) in Africa.

VIDEO LINK ADDED 19/6/19: "Air Zimbabwe - The World's Most Dangerous Airline?", the experience of a veteran traveller. Pretty much the way Walt remembers it, having flown in these same planes over 20 years ago.

South Africa "Freedom Day" -- not much to celebrate

Yesterday, black South Africans celebrated the 25th anniversary of "Freedom Day", the day in 1994 when they were allowed to cast ballots in the country's first "one person one vote" election. President Cyril Ramaphosa said, "On this day 25 years ago, we founded a new country defined by the principles of equality, unity, non-racialism and non-sexism. Despite the passage of time, we remember vividly...the exhilaration of seeing nearly 20 million South Africans of all races waiting patiently at polling stations around the country to cast their ballots."

Walt was there at the time -- based in Ha-ha-harare, the fun capital of Zimbabwe -- and remembers opening a book (read: started taking bets) on how long it would take for the most prosperous nation in Africa to regress to levels of poverty and inequality like those of Zimbabwe, the Congo, Sudan and other shithole states of the Dark Continent.

It didn't take that long. Today, widespread poverty and corruption mean that, 25 years after the end of apartheid, many South Africans are still not free. In yesterday's speech, President Ramaphosa praised the work of South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, but said that the country could not be free "when so many live without enough food, without proper shelter, without access to quality health care, without a means to earn a living."

South Africa's black majority were promised that once they were "empowered", they would have white cars, white houses and white women. Pictured above is what they got.

Yesterday, President Ramaphosa (who replaced Jacob Zuma, President No. 3, who was forced out over a string of corruption scandals and a penchant for polygamy) said, "As we celebrate 25 years of democracy, we need to focus all our attention and efforts on ensuring that all South Africans can equally experience the economic and social benefits of freedom."

The reality of post-apartheid South Africa is that any progress made to fulfill the promises made to the country's blacks has been undone in just five short years. Today, South Africa is one of the most consistently unequal countries in the world. More than half the population lives in poverty, while a staggering 27% of people are unemployed. And that's according to the government's statistics, which are believed to be wildly over-optimistic.

Since 2011, three million more South Africans have been pushed below the poverty line, according to a study by the national data agency, Statistics South Africa, released this week. More than 30.4 million South Africans (55.5% of the population) live on less than 992 rand (about $75) per person per month.

Those figures, collected in 2015, are actually more optimistic than numbers from 2006, when two-thirds of South Africans were living in poverty. But it captures the painful one-step-forward, two-steps-backwards dance the country has been engaged in over the last decade trying to improve the lives of its population. In 2006, 28.4% of the country was found to be living in extreme poverty. That number had only inched downwards to 25.2% by 2015.

Those numbers aren't likely to improve. In the last year alone, South Africa has entered recession and seen its sovereign debt rating adjusted to junk status, making life harder for everyone, especially the poor. The national power supplier, Eskom, is effectively bankrupt. With massive power outages threatened, those who can afford to are rushing to buy generators and storage batteries. The "povo" (= truly poor) are buying or making candles.

Because of the seizure of productive white farms (and the murder of the white farmers, detailed previously on WWW), millions of South Africans are now facing "food insecurity" -- shortages of food, hunger, even the prospect of starvation -- the crisis which now besets Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and other black-run states to the north. This in a country which was once a net exporter of foodstuffs.

The reality of post-apartheid South Africa is that the majority of its citizens live in grinding poverty. The full effect of the 2008 global financial crisis, initially hidden by the euphoria and capital injection of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is now being felt. The country has also fallen victim to the sluggish growth seen by other commodities-driven economies, unable to improve on 3.3% growth in 2011, the highest GDP has peaked since the financial crisis.

The real problem, though, is South Africa’s inability to implement its own policies. In other words, the black government is incapable of managing the economy or the country. In 2012, the country launched a "National Development Plan" with much pomp and an explanatory animated video showing how much better life would be once they got organized. (18 years after the end of apartheid, they couldn't blame the whities any more.) But a lack of political will and simple competence have left the plan adrift. By almost all measures, South Africa is going to miss the goals -- reduction of poverty from 39% in 2009 to 0%, and the complete eliminate of hunger, by 2030 -- it set for itself in the plan.

Even the commission tasked with seeing the plan through is frustrated by the lack of government support to do so, despite having an office a few doors down from the president. The group's deputy commissioner told the meeja recently, "We have a plan, we like it very much, we take it to parliament, the whole world praises it... And we are the ones that don't implement it." Nothing more need be said. Mother Africa Wins Again.

VIDEO: Kenyan jihadi blows self into tiny Muslim-bits

If I weren't so damn lazy, I could post a story about Islamic terrorism every day. Right now, somewhere, possibly in your neighbourhood, a demented follower of the Religion of Peace (sic) is getting ready to kill you, and possibly him/herself, by whatever means available -- vehicular homicide, shooting, stabbing or perhaps a suicide bomb. Stories like this have become so routine -- the new norm for our One World -- that Ed. and I have decided to report only the more egregious examples. Like Tuesday's attack on a Nairobi hotel complex.

The DusitD2 complex, situated in Nairobi's well-to-do Westlands neighbourhood, is popular with expats, especially non-Muslim Europeans, or "kafirs", as the Islamists call us. Kenyan police say the attack began with an explosion outside the complex, followed by a suicide blast inside, before armed assailants arrived and opened fire. The first explosion, on the terrace of the hotel's restaurant, was captured on video. CCTV footage just released to local meeja shows the attacker walking calmly to a spot in front of the terrace, waiting a few moments, then blowing himself into Muslimburger. Here it is.



At least two people can be seen passing the assailant, one of them appearing to turn his head to take a close look at him. The assailant stands still in front of the covered terrace for almost a minute, before he blows himself up. Soon after, panicked guests and workers are seen running past the scene.

The militant Islamist group known as Al-Shabaab, which is based in Somalia and allied with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the brazen attack, which claimed the lives of 21 people, plus the five militants killed. Kenyan authorities say all the followers of the Prophet have gone to Paradise and are being serviced by 72 virgins... each. Nothing more to see here folks, nothing to worry about... until next time.

Zimbabwe parliament a model for Africa... and America ???

Comrade ED (Erectile Dysfunction?) Mnangagwa, President of Zimbabwe, listens attentively as the shithole country's parliament discusses how much foreign aid money (Thank you, America!) to pay its members for rubber-stamping whatever acts of profligacy or repression his kleptocratic "government" puts before them. Here is Zimbabwe Newsday's report of their "debate".

Members of Parliament yesterday arm-twisted Finance minister Mthuli Ncube into raising their budgetary allocation by 44% and demanded the latest 4×4 luxury Toyota Land Cruisers, among other perks, despite the government implementing austerity measures to contain its runaway spending. Parliament bid for $163 million in the 2019 budget, but was allocated $101 million.

Yesterday, MPs from across the political divide threatened that they would not pass Ncube’s 2019 National Budget unless they got things their way. After haggling, the MPs eventually settled for $145 million after they demanded that their welfare be improved to equal that of members of the Executive and the Judiciary. They also want Parliament to be equipped with state-of-the-art gyms, vehicles, computers, and other such luxuries.

In his "Austerity for Prosperity" budget, Ncube sought to cap government borrowing, cut spending on flagship projects as command agriculture, end all quasi-fiscal expenditure and limit borrowing from the central bank to 5% of the prior year’s revenue. He also cut salaries for the President and senior government officials by 5% and will fire the nearly 4000 "youth officers" by year-end. Ncube also cut the amount of bonuses paid to civil servants, but the wage bill is still expected to go up by 5% to $4.05 billion in 2019, constituting 61% of total revenue from 73% this year.

The budget, however, piled the weight of austerity and more taxes on the ordinary citizen, who, in addition to the 2% tax on all electronic transactions, will also pay more in excise duty for fuel and cigarettes, while imports of vehicles and other goods is now levied in foreign currency. After getting their demands met, the MPs ignored the debate on the vote of the Public Service Commission, which takes care of the country’s impoverished civil servants, including teachers and doctors, despite doctors being on strike and teachers threatening one.

Norton MP Temba Mliswa (independent), who was instrumental in canvassing MPs to demand good perks, said, "MPs are handicapped and we are talking of only one car, a Land Cruiser, which is the only car good enough for MPs to do their work because the Mazdas and Toyotas we get are not good enough."

Mliswa said MPs were looked down upon because they did not even have iPads, adding that the $75 per diem was a pittance, and needed to be reviewed. Mliswa said the diet of MPs, where they eat a one course meal with a banana or apple for desert, was not proper as other Parliaments had more savoury desserts like trifles and ice cream. "MPs must have world-class gyms and recreational facilities to play golf. MPs must also be given diplomatic passports," Mliswa said.

Mbizo MP Settlement Chikwinya (MDC Alliance) said Parliament was so underfunded to the extent that it relied on development partners to finance the work of its committees. He added there was need to finance constituency information offices for MPs, and employ more staff in Parliament to assist in research and committee businesses.

Zanu PF's Goodlucky Kwaramba said MPs were impoverished as the Ford Ranger vehicles they were given last time were already broken down. Chegutu West MP Dextor Nduna (Zanu PF) said MPs were given fuel coupons in a humiliating manner. Wedza North MP David Musabayana (Zanu PF) said MPs were the poorer cousins of the Executive and Judiciary, to the extent that they begged for fuel coupons at ministers' offices for resale, as well as soliciting for allowances and gifts from organisations that fund parliamentary trips and committees.

Ncube promised that MPs would comparatively [sic] get their vehicles, but said the agreed model was a Toyota Hilux twin cab vehicle. Ncube said he would also look at the issue of pensions for MPs who have served for a term, and also suggested to increase Parliament's budget from $101 million to $120 million. But Binga North MP Prince Dubeko Sibanda (MDC Alliance) said it was not the duty of the Executive to appropriate finances, but Parliament, also adding legislators were not going to allow the budget to pass if it did not increase Parliament’s vote.

Sibanda said the $163 million that Parliament wanted did not even consider inflation. "If the minister does not allocate Parliament what it requests, then he should have his 2019 budget passed elsewhere," Sibanda said. After the increase, there was jubilation in the House, with MPs from across the political divide hugging Ncube.

And they say [you say! Ed.] Africans are incapable of governing themselves. Ha! Methinks there are lessons there for the Congress of the Excited States of America and for Still-President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump threatens a partial shutdown of government -- maybe not such a bad idea? -- unless the latest spending bill includes money for the much-needed wall to keep out the alien hordes. Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted 217-185 for a version of the bill which includes such funding. On Wednesday the Senate passed a different version, with no "wall money". 

As the honourable senators now consider the House version, they would do well to consider the advice of Prince Dubeko Sibanda. Give the President what he wants, but don't be afraid to demand additional tons of pork for yourselves and your families, friends and supporters! It's not just the African way, but the American way too!

Zimbabwe: land of animal lovers

Although it has been 17 years since he lived there, Walt still has contacts in the Land of Bambazonke, aka Zimbabwe, in the southeast part of darkest Africa.

Zimbabwe is full of wildlife. Tourists come from the four corners of the earth to see the animals before they are poached and eaten. The locals -- notice I didn't say "natives" -- are great animal lovers too, as evidenced by a case heard in the court at Marondera this week.

Not pictured above is Tawanda Rangwani, aged 18, of Kuwarega village in Masomera, who pleaded not guilty to a charge of bestiality, after (allegedly) having been caught with his pants down having relations with a neighbour's goat.

The court was told that the complainant Ndaizivei Mero tied her goat to a tree and left it grazing. The accused allegedly untied the goat and took it to a nearby bush where he sexually abused it. He was allegedly caught in the act by another villager, Chamunorwa Mhimha, and fled from the scene. Mr Mhimha pursued the accused and apprehended him before filing a police report.

In his defence, Mr Rangwani said he had been framed. Magistrate Sharon Mashavire will give her judgment on December 4th. The state was represented by Marvelous Machacha, whose name has been entered in Walt's collection of marvelous African monikers.

Book review: "How De Body?", by Teun Voeten

The poke in the ribs to write "War is Africa's natural condition. Can we change that?" (WWW 16/10/18) came from How De Body? (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002), Dutch journalist Teun Voeten's account of his terrifying journey through the very uncivil "civil" war in Sierra Leone (west Africa) in the late 1990s.

"How de body?" is a customary greeting -- like "How's it going?" -- in Krio, the pidjin widely spoken in Sierra Leone. Mr Voeten apparently chose it as the title of his book because the bodies he saw and photographed -- and they were many -- were in pretty bad shape. His powerful photographs speak volumes about the sad state of Sierra Leone  at the turn of the century, and of the nature of Africa itself. As I said yesterday, war is Africa's natural condition.

The purpose of the author's first trip to west Africa, in 1998, was to photograph and write about the child soldiers who were fighting on both sides of the conflict that had raged in Sierra Leone for nearly a decade. Mere boys (and girls too) like this one.

A scrawny kid like this, when carrying a Kalashnikov, can make a pretty big hole in you, and as the clash between the military junta and ECOMOG -- the West African peacekeepers -- raged around him, Mr Voeten was forced to hide in the bush, fearful of being robbed, tortured and/or killed by drug-crazed, gun-toting "soldiers" of either side.

ECOMOG -- the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group -- was a west African multilateral armed force established by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The idea was that separate armies of Africans would work together to make and keep the peace in an African state. ("Nation" is the wrong word to use here. The concept of the nation state doesn't really exist in Africa, divided as it is by tribalism, language and religion.) To no-one's surprise, it didn't work very well, which is why the United Nations eventually felt compelled to involve itself in the conflict.

That didn't work very well either. Mr Voeten tells us that by 2000, "the situation in Sierra Leone...again deteriorated. The 25,000 UN peacekeepers that were stationed in the country...proved to be largely ineffective. Civil war flared up; cease-fires and treaties were broken, and...the fighting has spilled over the border to Guinea and Liberia."

But UN intervention, the globalists and progressives think to this day is better than leaving the Africans to exterminate one another. Hence the UN mission in Mali, which was the subject of yesterday's post.

What's wrong with Africa that bloody conflicts of the kind Teun Voeten saw up close and personal keep recurring? They seem to be unavoidable natural phenomena -- the work of evil "big men", full of ambition and greed, with no moral compass or concept of civilization to guide them. Mr Voeten quotes English cultural anthropologist Paul Richards: "What we are seeing in Sierra Leone is the total collapse of the nation-state. Criminal netyworks rush in to fill the power vacuum, which is an oasis of lawlessness and institutionalized corruption. Those networks have every reason to make sure the state of chaos continues. And vice versa."

Teun Voeten concludes How De Body? by saying that he won't give up on Sierra Leone. "Despite the difficulties," he writes, "I believe there is hope.... Eventually peace will come. ...'We just have to be patient.'"

I understand his feelings. Having lived there for years in the 1990s, I can attest to the saying that Africa gets in your blood ...sometimes literally, but forget about that. It's easy to love the land and the ordinary people, when they are left alone by foreign interventionists and by their own corrupt and cruel leaders.

Where I disagree with Mr Voeten is in thinking that the "big men" will give way to leaders like Nelson Mandela -- he was an exception -- or that the UN and the legions of western do-gooders will ever leave Africans to develop (or not) at their own pace and in their own way. I believe there is no hope for Africa, and that we westerners do Africa and ourselves a disservice by trying to change human nature.

Footnote: The Deutsche Welle website has a report from the World Bank, which sez (headline news!) "Poverty rates remain high in Africa". "Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the overall number of extremely poor people is increasing rather than decreasing, according to the World Bank's latest Poverty and Shared Prosperity report." No kidding! But don't worry. The white folks at the World Bank believe things can be turned around, with their help of course. Just like Teun Voeten.

War is Africa's natural condition. Can we change that?

Since the end of the colonial era, there has always been war in Africa. With one or two exceptions, such as Botswana, you can't point to a map of sub-Saharan Africa without finding a country that has at some point been wracked by riot, revolution, war or even genocide. It's the nature of the people -- emotional, excitable, easily led and predisposed to mindless and horrendous violence. I know it's politically incorrect to say that, but read the histories of Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Moçambique, both Congos, South Africa -- the list goes on -- and see if that's not right. Check out How De Body by Dutch journalist Teun Voeten (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002) for a graphic description of how things were in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. We'll come back to that book in another post.

Right now there's a "civil" war going on in the Congo which was formerly known as Zaïre and has its capital at Kinshasa. The government's writ runs only in the capital region. The rest of the country is divided amongst a number of cruel and evil warlords, fighting for control of the immense mineral wealth that includes "blood diamonds". In spite of the efforts of United Nations "peacekeepers", the Congo has never, repeat never known peace since it was "liberated" from the Belgians.

In west Africa, most of which was (and in some ways still is) run by the French, another "civil" war rages in Mali. What? Never heard of it? If you've ever been told to go to Timbuktu, well, that's in Mali. You could look it up. That war has racial and religious overtones (surprised?) with the Muslim Arab(ish) north pitted against the Christian/animist African (read: black) south. The UN stepped in to referee that vicious conflict a couple of years ago, and so far hasn't had much luck keeping the combatants from each other's throats.

In June of this year, Canada's loopy prime minister Trudeau, in yet another act of virtue-signalling at the expense of his people, sent a couple of hundred Canadian troops to Mali, where Canada has no dog in the fight but is going to jump in anyway. The Canadian contingent consists of a few helicopters and support crews, whose task is to medevac other UN soldiers who get caught in the crossfire. So far they've flown exactly two (2) missions, both on 9/11.

Yesterday Maj-Gen. Dave Fraser (Retd), who led Canada's troops in the ill-fated Afghanistan mission, admitted on CTV's Power Play that the Canuck peacekeeping mission in Mali has "no prospect of immediate success." He told host Don Martin, "The political overtones and what's going on in this country and this mission are ugly. This is not going to be short mission." No kidding!

Although Mr Socks promised that Canadian soldiers and airmen (not many female troops could be persuaded to go) would not be placed in harm's way, since they would only be flying medical evacuation missions and providing support from the skies, the likelihood of some poor non-com coming home in a body bag is increasing, as the security situation in the shithole has deteriorated sharply in recent months. Says the retired general, "It’s as bad, if not worse, than what we experienced in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria."

Continuing in mililtary-speak, Maj-Gen. Fraser said, "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this mission isn’t going in the right direction from a trajectory point of view." He explained that the key issue is a lack of leadership. Despite no-worse-than-usual elections this summer, he said the insurgents are winning the fight on the ground. That's because "Peacekeeping can't be effective without a strong civilian government leadership that’s running the government, that's actually providing oversight for the military and the police forces and that’s not happening fast enough." For "fast enough", read "at all" and that's all ye need to know.

At the end of the day, the general warned, this hurts some people more than others. In a brilliant statement of the obvious, he said, "The local people are the ones who are going to be adversely affected." Can the problem be solved? Yes, says Maj-Gen. Fraser, if the United Nations changes its approach. "The UN's not getting the locals to get the leadership or the women engaged fast enough, and they're going to lose this race." If nothing changes, he said, the situation can only continue to deteriorate. So the answer to Walt's headline question is, errr, probably not. Which begs the question of what we're doing there!

Further reading: "Mal y soit qui Mali pense", 15/1/13. Kudos to Ed. for that brilliant headline, which only a monarchist would get!

RIP V.S. Naipaul: he said what white men couldn't

So, farewell then, V.S. Naipaul -- racist, misanthropist and Nobel Prize winner. Another Trinidadian writer, C.L.R. James, said that his views on the world -- "The world is what it is" -- and its human inhabitants simply reflected "what the whites want to say but dare not." That explains why I, being Whiteman by name and white man in fact, have underlined so many passages in his books, of which I've read (and recommend) almost all.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born five days shy of 86 years ago in Trinidad, a descendant of impoverished Indians shipped to the West Indies as coolies -- bonded labourers. "I was born there, yes," he told an interviewer in 1983. "I thought it was a great mistake." In 1950, Mr Naipaul was awarded a scarce government scholarship to study in Britain, and left his family to study English literature at University College, Oxford. He never really returned.

Mr Naipaul saw himself as a lone, stateless observer, free of ideology, politics and illusion. From his base in England, he travelled for extensive periods to pen journalistic essays and travel books. He flew three times to India, the land of his ancestors, to write about its culture and politics, which he disliked intensely. He spent time in Buenos Aires to write about Eva Peron, the former First Lady of Argentina. And he went to Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia to research and write books about Islam, which he condemned.

That Sir Vidia Naipaul (knighted in 1990) was a great writer -- a master stylist and story-teller with a cold, clear eye for the ironies, tragedies and sufferings of mankind -- is beyond doubt. But he is one of those authors who one either loves or hates. To his detractors, he was essentially political, bearing witness against the post-colonial world with great writing but shielded from criticism by virtue of being "one of them". His many critics called him "troubling", even "bigoted". They saw him as a "hater", a purveyor of stereotypes, wallowing in loathing of the world from which he came.

His supporters, however, found in his fiction merciless comic clarity, and in his travel writing a terrifying honesty. He refused to glamorise or idealise the developing world, but delivered original, scorching critiques, devoid of political correctness. He was fearless and unbiased in his criticism, attacking the cruelty of Islam, the corruption of Africa and the self-inflicted misery he witnessed in the poorest parts of the globe. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk said that Mr Naipaul represented third-world people "not with sugary magic realism but with their demons, their misdeeds and horrors -- which made them less victims and more human."

"There probably has been no imperialism like that of Islam and the Arabs", he once declared. He was scornful of the Caribbean, predicted that Africa would revert to bush (as indeed it has, IMHO) and often veered towards unapologetic misogyny. Indian women, he once wrote, wear a coloured dot on their foreheads to say "My head is empty."

V.S. Naipaul had little time for idealistic westerners who romanticised India and looked to it for a spiritual awakening. In the land of his ancestors, he saw only ugliness and a smug refusal to recognise the horror of the "narrow, broken lanes with green slime in the gutters, the chocked back-to-back houses, the jumble of filth and food and animals and people, the baby in the dust, swollen-bellied, black with flies, but wearing its good-luck amulet."

He was even more contemptuous of Islamic fundamentalism, which he decried long before 9/11 in The Believers (1981). One New York Times writer observed that it bore an antipathy to Islam so naked "that a book taking a comparable view of Christianity or Judaism would have been hard put to find a publisher" in America. An academic, Edward Said, said he found it hard to believe any rational person would attack entire cultures on such a scale.

Sir Vidia Naipaul will be remembered as a magical craftsman of English prose. He leaves behind a complex, challenging library of work which captures the complexities of the modern world in a unique blend of imagination, travel writing and autobiography. RIP.