And Speaking Of South Africa

…we have this little situation developing in Mandelaland:

Looting broke out in several cities in South Africa this weekend after the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, began serving a 15-month sentence last Thursday for contempt in relation to an investigation of corruption during his tenure.

I should note that Zuma — corruptus maximus  on a continent renowned for its systemic corruption — was convicted of perjury, rather than his extensive and bald-faced plundering of South Africa’s already-straitened treasury.

So why are the Usual Suspects copying their BLM counterparts in the U.S.?

Well, it’s all happening in Kwa-Zulu/Natal, because Zuma is a Zulu, you see, and so why not riot and loot all over his homeland?

Needless to say, just as Baltimore was set on fire after some strung-out Black asshole was killed by cops in Minneapolis, so Natal’s little exercise in ad hoc  property redistribution is spreading outwards, and the boys in Johannesburg aren’t going to be left out of the fun, no sirree.

The background to all of this is actually a combination of two factors:  the grinding poverty that persists in South Africa, and the fact that the hapless and incompetent government has not been able to get even close to vaccinating its people against the Wuhan Menace.  The plague that has ensued has resulted in knee-jerk lockdowns, preventable deaths by the hundreds of thousands, and a deepening of the already-critical economic slump.

The second article on the topic is priceless, and contains this gem:

Perhaps most alarming are reports of ordinary people “forming armed groups to protect businesses, homes in KwaZulu-Natal”, and videos on social media which purport to show armed, ad hoc citizens’ militias and private security out on the streets.

Alarming?  This is Africa, old son.  That’s what you get when you have this situation:

A mosque has also been set on fire in Mayville Durban.
“They were not fighting, they were running for their lives. They were innocent people. We don’t know how they died,” Ismaeel said, alleging that there are “no police” — and indeed that “Police are themselves are targets. You call police they can’t come.”
This squares with reports from Pietermaritzburg, where at least two malls have been looted and one raised [sic] by fire, with the BBC saying that riot police who attempted to disperse looters with rubber bullets were met with live ammunition in return.
Police also came under fire on a freeway near a mall in Durban, where many malls, stores, and at least one factory have been looted, with one officer being hit in the leg.

For some reason, I feel an urge to go to the range

Reaping What Was Sown

Saw this little piece via Insty, and had to laugh:

Worlds are colliding in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Homeless encampments are popping up right outside million-dollar homes.
Michael Beckley is one of a growing number of homeowners who are taking matters into their own hands, trying to keep tents from appearing in the parkways in front of their streets. “It’s brutal, because it will effectively kill the grass. When the first tent showed up here, I fenced it off and said you f—— aren’t coming up here,” Beckley said.
Fences can now be seen roping off parkways throughout the neighborhood. The action is legal, according to the city, because homeowners are required to maintain and care for the parkways adjacent to their homes. Many homeowners are convinced the homeless encampments will lead to a spike in neighborhood crime, especially thefts in the neighborhood.

I don’t know Denver at all, but I’m willing to bet that the Capitol Hill neighborhood votes solidly Democrat/Socialist at every election.  If this is true, then:


Update:  Longtime Reader Tim M grew up in Denver, and agrees with my analysis.

Take A Wild Guess

Read all about it.  Too bad that ordinary Brits aren’t allowed to carry guns over there, because I bet that if they were, not only might this asshole have been stopped more quickly, but a lot more of his type might think twice before getting all Stabby For Allah.

The Sharecropper State

…in which the vast majority of serfs people never actually own anything, but rent everything.  We’ve seen this trend in innocuous stuff, of course, such as in the online music business where the foul recording industry can take (i.e. repossess) music away from purchasers simply by removing it from “The Cloud” and similarly in TV shows and movies, where the equally-foul studios can do likewise.  (Consumers owning the physical media of CDs and DVDs has always been the bane of the respective industries’ profit plans, both because they can’t control “unlicensed” third-party distribution and because once the sale is made, they can’t claw it back.)

According to Big Business, therefore, property is theft (of the products they consider their own, and not the purchasers’), a sentiment which would have made that foul mountebank Proudhon rub his hands with glee — except of course that he wanted “the people” (i.e. the State) to own everything rather than giant corporations (in his time, the Church).

So what’s brought this rant on?  The Germans — or, to be more specific, the German auto industry.  Try this little scenario on for size (courtesy of Insty):

Volkswagen recently announced that it plans on making massive amounts of money by introducing more vehicles with over-the-air updates (OTAs), many of which will be able to store and transfer personal profiles so that users can effectively just rent their vehicles for eternity. Additionally, VW has suggested future models will have ability to lock features (that have already been physically installed) behind a paywall that users can unlock via subscription services — things like heated seats, satellite navigation, or even the vehicles top speed.
“In the future, our customers will buy, lease, share or rent cars just for a weekend, and we can use software to provide them with whatever they need over the air,” VW brand’s sales chief Klaus Zellmer said during an online presentation held on Tuesday. “The ID family has been designed for further development, with OTA updates to improve the software’s performance and tailor it to our customers’ needs.”
Other German automakers have pitched (or introduced) similar concepts over the last few years and it smacks of the terror that is the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” — a plan which envisions a near future were the general populace owns nothing and giant multinational corporations (and their heirs) effectively hold all the cards. It’s the kind of thing one might call you an unhinged conspiracy theorist for believing, until you head over to the WEC’s website to read a dozen or so articles explaining exactly how it’s to be implemented or notice that most Western governments seem to be pushing some variant of the “Build Back Better” campaign. The plot is often the same and hinges upon prioritizing stringent social controls, increased government spending, collaborating with large businesses/banks, and enhanced surveillance in exchange for some vague promises about public safety and environmental reform.

Not content with adding a whole slew of “conveniences” (unnecessary geegaws like remote starting, keyless- and stop-start ignition, “memory” seat adjustment and such) to their cars, said conveniences which simply drive up the cost (and profits) of cars into the fucking stratosphere, these bastards now think they can sell the cows and charge the owners for the milk they draw, ad infinitum.

Yeah, well, maybe not.  I’ve been a lifelong fan of Volkswagen, having owned seven of their various models over the past forty years, but I have to tell you right now:  when it comes time to replace the Tiguan — and it’s going to happen soon — it’s not to a VW dealer I’ll be going.  No way am I going to give them any of my hard-earned dollars to support their evil machinations.  Ditto Mercedes (I’ve been looking at their GLA 250 mini-SUV), or any other car company which wants to initiate a similar program to Volkswagen’s.

Given my age, this will most likely be my last-ever purchase of a new car;  and I was planning on driving it for at least the next decade, or until my brain turns to rice pudding and, not needing a car anymore, I would have to be installed in some care facility which would feed me, wipe my decrepit ass and put up with my incoherent ranting and raving.

But that’s a topic for another time.

In the meantime, I’m going to shop for a new / low-mileage secondhand vehicle, just not of the VW / Mercedes persuasion.

Does anyone know which auto companies don’t plan on this thievery?

Pushing Back

Yesterday, I expressed my consternation at this little event — which took place not a mile from where I am right now, and where I drive through all the time:

In the incident, which occurred last week, BLM marchers illegally blocked a public street, trapping motorists. Such situations have happened across the nation over the past year, often resulting in violence. In the Plano video, one man emerges from his car and yells at the BLM protesters to clear the street. They not only do not clear the street, one of them also brandishes a weapon of some sort at the man. A Plano police officer looks on, does nothing to clear the street, and instead seems to side against the motorist — who is legally in the right.

Looks as though the Plano Police Chief has landed himself in the doodoo with TXAG Paxton: After reviewing the incident, our First Lawyer had this to say:

Reckon it’s time someone got fired — and I’m not talking about Paxton.

Frankly, I don’t care if you think you have to “negotiate with these people” when in fact they are breaking the fucking law.  If I’d parked my car across the intersection and refused to move it, how long do you think it would have taken for the Plano PD to have me in cuffs?  Or, if there were four of us White boys blocking the road with our cars protesting (say) the stolen election of 2020, the fuzz would have descended on us like Genghis Khan, only with better weaponry.  And if one of us had pointed something that looked like a gun — I don’t care whether it was a pepper gun, taser or toy pistol — the cops would have shot his ass dead.

And all of Plano would probably have applauded.

Let me get this straight.  While Plano is more conservative than Dallas, it’s not as conservative as the rest of Texas (thanks to the huge influx of New Yorkers, Californians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis into the area as we’ve become some kind of Mecca [sic]  for the Big Business flight away from, duh, California and the Northeast).  We have a Black mayor, a Black police chief, several Blacks, Chinese and Indians on the city council and school district board, and all the rest of the stuff that has allowed the hallowed “diversity” to flourish, only without any fanfare or box-ticking.

Nevertheless, Plano is still reliably conservative, and up until now, the Police Department has been too, with a strong law-and-order attitude which we citizens of Plano have supported to the hilt.

And now?  A police chief who bleats about “having to negotiate” with violent criminals?  I don’t care if the police are “caught in the middle”;  that’s their fucking job.  They are supposed to be the “thin blue line” between law-abiding citizens and criminal bandits.

Like I said, someone needs to be fired, or else the shit is really going to hit the fan.  Next time, the guy who jumps out of his car and, all by himself, shouts at protesters to clear the street, may well be carrying a handgun, or more.  (There’s a very good reason that our local gun store shelves are empty of both guns and ammunition.)  And if the cop on the scene — or his boss — aligns himself with the criminals, don’t be surprised if he’s treated like one of them, because it’s no less than he deserves.

And if the city cops are unable or unwilling to do their job, Paxton has only to unleash the state police and, gawd help us, the Texas Rangers.  We’re cool with that, I think.

This bullshit has to stop, nipped in the bud right now.  Let’s hope that Paxton gets it done, or there’s going to be a serious shit show.  Plano is not fucking Los Angeles or Chicago or New York;  we’re not even fucking Austin.  And without serious action, the powers that be are going to find that out, big time.