The Roots of ‘Necklacing’: Why White Farmers in Zimbabwe Are Responsible for the Killings in South Africa
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Gary Brecher, AlterNet, August 15, 2008
{snip}
Like a lot of wars, this one was between two groups that lost out in the bigger war. Now they’re forced to fight each other for scraps, while the real bad guys, the British, send camera crews to go “tsk-tsk” at how uncivilized it all is. The way the BBC tells it, this wasn’t even a war, just “riots” by Zulu mobs targeting Zimbabwean immigrants, but it was war. In most places and most times, war isn’t uniformed armies meeting on the field of battle, but mobs looking for people from the enemy tribe to kill. When they find them, they kill them just like the Zulu mobs killed any Zimbabwean immigrant lucky enough to fall into their hands: in the goriest way possible, in order to scare the rest of the enemy tribe off the disputed turf.
{snip} [In] this kind of war, the mob goes out of its way to invent new, horrible ways to kill people. Take necklacing, the favorite lynching method in South Africa for the last few decades. You tie up the victim, douse a car tire with gasoline, wrap it around his neck, and set it on fire. Pretty nasty stuff, but not “crazy” or “senseless.”
The first thing to consider is how something as grim as necklacing got started. Necklacing evolved in the townships as a way of punishing police informers. You have to imagine the situation a little more vividly than most squeamish first-worlders are willing to do: the police and the army have a monopoly on weapons, so the guerrillas—in this case, the ANC—has to rely on its superiority in intelligence, information, secrecy. Ever since Michael Collins taught the Irish to stop trying to fight the British Army and focus on “putting out the eyes” of the occupier by killing his spies, guerrillas have been able to take down militarily superior forces. But this method requires that the guerrillas know everything about the occupiers, and the occupiers know nothing about the guerrillas. Anyone who informs for the police or army is a deadly enemy, and has to be killed in a way that will not only end the immediate threat but terrify anybody else who might be thinking of turning snitch into reconsidering.
And there are always potential snitches around. Again, use your imagination; this stuff isn’t happening in Switzerland but in places where people are very poor and desperate. The police and army aren’t squeamish about putting pressure on potential informants, and they control both rewards—money—and threats, like the power to arrest or “disappear” anybody they want. The pressure to inform is very strong.
Against that, what does the insurgent neighborhood have? It can’t put people in jail, or pass out big wads of cash, or rely on moral force to keep the locals in line. Again, imagine how enemy occupation would play out in the neighborhood where you grew up (if everybody was suddenly poor and terrified). Some families might resist the occupier, but others would be, let’s say, tempted. Others would just be terrorized into collaborating. Either way, they know enough to name names, provide a list that will wipe out the insurgency in your town.
If the neighborhood thinks somebody’s a threat, they have to act fast, and they have to do something so horrible it’ll stick in everybody’s memory. That’s how you get necklacing: the horribleness of the death is the whole point. And what you see with necklacing is that it’s horrible to look at, not just to suffer. There are all sorts of ways to kill people so as to produce horrible pain, but that’s not the main point in this kind of killing. It’s the show that matters. In a lot of necklacings, in fact, the victim was beaten to death or shot, then necklaced. The point was to make a spectacle of them, an example, let everybody see their corpse burning slowly. A whole ritual evolved where everybody took turns bashing the burning body with sticks. It didn’t hurt the victim, who was already dead, but it looked horrific and it forced everybody in the neighborhood to make a demonstration that they were on the insurgents’ side, made them accomplices. Again, it’s not pretty, but it worked; informing got to be much less popular as a career choice in places like Soweto.
OK, you could say, but that’s informants, that’s the ANC; what’s that got to do with Zulu mobs necklacing poor Zimbabwean immigrants? A lot, actually. These Zulu mobs have a simple goal: they want the immigrants out. They don’t have the military power to wipe out large numbers of immigrants; that’s what those nice conventional armies, the ones we like so much, would try to do. They have to use the few hours they have before the army is called in to terrorize large numbers of immigrants by killing a few in a particularly horrible way. In a bizarre way you could even argue that this kind of terror killing is less bloodthirsty than bombing cities, where the goal is to wipe out everybody in the place. No mob hopes to do that. They want to kill a few with maximum exposure, to scare the rest back across the border. That’s why the township mobs fighting the apartheid government were usually tolerant of news crews filming their necklacings: they wanted as much publicity as they could get. They wanted word to get around: “This is what happens to informers.” {snip}
{snip}
A better question to ask would be, what sent so many Zimbabweans fleeing into South Africa, driving wages down and messing up the place? The official answer to that in the Western press is that it’s all the fault of Robert Mugabe, the old ex-guerrilla who runs Zimbabwe. I don’t buy it. Mugabe’s an old fool, an egomaniac, yeah—most of the men who rule countries are. But the damage to Zimbabwe was done a long time ago, and Mugabe’s in trouble with the Western newspapers for trying to fix things. That’s what blows me away: in all this coverage of Zimbabwe, nobody asks simple questions like, “Who owns the farmland, and why?” The situation’s changing fast now, but keep in mind that just ten years ago, 4000 white farmers “owned” three-quarters of all the good land. That’s less than one percent of the country’s population controlling three-quarters of its useful farmland. That’s why Zimbabwe’s a mess. Imagine what this country would look like if there were 300 million Native Americans crowded into shantytowns, with a few thousand European settlers living on huge plantations. That’s the population profile of Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s been taking that land back, and whatever else he’s done, he was in the right. He has the military power, and for all you Christians out there, he has every moral right too, as far as I can see.
After all, what right do those white settlers have to the land? Their great-grandfathers stole it at gunpoint, or got it by dirty tricks, a little over a century ago. {snip}
That’s how a few whites ended up with three-quarters of the decent land. And this didn’t happen in the long-ago far-away time. It was barely over a century ago (1884-1902). So when rightwing papers like the UK Telegraph scream about Mugabe’s land grabs, I have to laugh. {snip}
The Zulus who are necklacing a few poor Zimbabweans now lost out the same way, massacred by British armies using modern weapons in a series of wars a little over a century ago. Until they sent warriors armed with spears up against the redcoats’ repeating rifles, they were one of the great empires of the world, moving south in their own wave of conquest. But like everyone who got in the Empire’s way, they were slaughtered and forced off the good land by the same holier-than-thou white people who stole all the farmland in Zimbabwe. That’s what we have here: two groups of Africans robbed and gutted by the Empire, forced to fight over scraps, while the descendants of the white land thieves still hold all the land and money.
And I’m supposed to blame the Zulu rioters here?
(Posted on August 15, 2008)
Comments
You can’t argue with a bunch of kooks, which is what this Alter Net bunch is, but they have one point substantially wrong — the original white settlers into what is now Zimbabwe didn’t seize land from blacks, because there were hardly any black there. The same is true of what is now called South Africa.
Otherwise, their contention that white people are responsible for a certain mode of black violence because the blacks learned torturous methods from the whites (if it’s true) is like saying that whites are responsible for all libel (written slander) done by blacks because blacks didn’t have any written language before white contact with them.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:05 PM on August 15
Gary Brecher isn’t a scholar of war, he’s a guy who writes from out of his posterior. His biography can be easily found online.
Posted by at 6:32 PM on August 15
So it’s okay for Zulus to build on empire by brute force, but wrong for the British? Interesting concept of morality he’s got there.
Posted by Dwayne O. at 6:34 PM on August 15
You tie up the victim, douse a car tire with gasoline, wrap it around his neck, and set it on fire. Pretty nasty stuff, but not “crazy” or “senseless.”
Well, it all depends on who committed the crime and who’s doing the punishing, doesn’t it? If I black rapist or murderer were getting the same punishment in this country, this same leftist writer would be outraged! “Crazy” and “senseless” is exactly what he would be saying.
Posted by Tim in Indiana at 7:28 PM on August 15
Gary Brecher is another racist Mugabe type. He is a hater and a racist one at that. He is a typical racist who blames the misery of his miserable racist people on the producers.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 7:33 PM on August 15
It would have made a lot more sense if he’d just blamed president Bush.
Posted by at 7:38 PM on August 15
I have to wonder if this guy believes what he writes.
The Zulus were “one of the great empires of the world,” with no agriculture, domesticated animals, housing, hospitals, or medicine.
One thing he does point out is the fear blacks have of snitching to the PO-leece. They all know their neighbors can start an unsubstantiated rumor about them and get them killed, even here in America.
Posted by at 7:41 PM on August 15
Not unlike their cousins in the US they proclaim that whites are responsible for black crime. Clearly this aspect of their personalities is as inherently genetic as their proclivity for violence
Posted by at 7:47 PM on August 15
Brecher is a kook. Obviously, he has never driven across the USA and seen the poverty that still exists in the 21st Century. And these lost souls don’t rape, rob, torture, or murder because of their poverty.
When on Earth are these self-hating whites gonna get their due? Their actions always hurt other innocent whites. They are never the victims of their own stupidity.
Posted by GetBackJack at 9:10 PM on August 15
Brecher writes as The War Nerd and he’s pretty perceptive.
Brecher has summarized his view of modern warfare as follows:
Most wars are asymmetrical / irregular.
In these wars, the guerrillas / irregulars / insurgents do NOT aim for military victory.
You can NOT defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. In fact, they want you to do that.
Hi-tech weaponry is mostly useless in these wars.
“Hearts and Minds,” meaning propaganda and morale, are more important than military superiority.
Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: “my gang yay, your gang boo!” It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics
Posted by at 9:15 PM on August 15
Here’s my question: Would Africa w/o white people also be Africa w/o white aid?
Because if so, let’s go for it. If it means we can stop giving them any money at all, it might just be worth leaving the continent altogether to tender mercies of the dusky natives. My guess is they’ll still be incinerating each other long after the last pale-face has wiped the dust of Africa off his shoes.
Posted by JokingButNot at 9:16 PM on August 15
If they manage to get rid of the last whites, it will simply make it Easier to blame whites for everything. That’s why they are always so obsessed with history. A certain version (and timeline) of it, of course.
Posted by at 10:26 PM on August 15
””“The situation’s changing fast now, but keep in mind that just ten years ago, 4000 white farmers “owned” three-quarters of all the good land. That’s less than one percent of the country’s population controlling three-quarters of its useful farmland. That’s why Zimbabwe’s a mess.”“”
It’s a mess because Mugabe gave the land to his cronies who know nothing about farming. But it really does not matter who owns and farms it. It will never be as productive as before so long as black feet are on the land.
Posted by COI at 11:02 PM on August 15
I love this “That’s less than one percent of the country’s population controlling three-quarters of its useful farmland. “
Paraphrase for a different sector “That’s less than one percent of the country’s population controlling three-quarters of its manufacturing.”
Oddly, as soon as blacks take it over the farmland ceases to be useful. Magick whitey pixie dust maybe?
Posted by at 11:51 PM on August 15
if one reads to comments on alternet, 90% of them slam Brecher for his shoddy ‘journalism’.
Posted by toonces at 1:08 AM on August 16
After all, what right do those white settlers have to the land? Their great-grandfathers stole it at gunpoint, or got it by dirty tricks, a little over a century ago. {snip} That’s how a few whites ended up with three-quarters of the decent land. And this didn’t happen in the long-ago far-away time. It was barely over a century ago (1884-1902). So when rightwing papers like the UK Telegraph scream about Mugabe’s land grabs, I have to laugh. {snip} The Zulus who are necklacing a few poor Zimbabweans now lost out the same way, massacred by British armies using modern weapons in a series of wars a little over a century ago. Until they sent warriors armed with spears up against the redcoats’ repeating rifles, they were one of the great empires of the world, moving south in their own wave of conquest.
So by dirty tricks, the land was taken by whites before the Zulus took it? That’s very nearly self-contradictory.
Yes, before the arrival of the whites, there were a few hunter gatherers, but nobody was actually farming the land. The whites were the first farmers, and they empowered the population to grow by about one hundred times during the twentieth century, and now that they are gone, the population will inexorably nosedive down to levels consistent with an average IQ of about 65.
Whatever horrors the black populace of these countries perpetrate upon themselves, those horrors are only a superficial indicator of the underlying reality of the low IQ of those populations, an underlying reality which Gary Brecher is simply to politically correct and laughably stupid to comprehend.
Posted by at 1:12 AM on August 16
So, someones a thief if he inherited huge estates, which he uses for producing enough food for huge parts of an entire continent, thus avoiding imports from the EU?
It’s like you always have to the context into context (?!), when dealing with non-Europeans. Either something obviously barbaric should just be named for what it is, or either everyone should be given the same benefit of doubt, no matter the culture.
Posted by Wichmann at 3:22 AM on August 16
It has become obvious to me that ethnic Albanians are the real culprits, followed of course by the current inhabitants of Iceland……….
Posted by at 3:27 AM on August 16
As usual, a Western liberal absolves black Africans of all responsibility for their crimes. It’s all the fault of the white man, you see. In this worldview, black Africans are children who can get away with murder (literally) because they will be told it is not their fault. Quite patronizing, when you think about it.
As for the history, prior to the whites coming to the area that became Rhodesia, there was no scientific farming, no industry, no cities (other than the ruins of Zimbabwe). The whites established all these things. For the article to claim that whites “stole” farmland is absurdist when there were no farms in the modern sense.
Let us also note that under white minority rule, the black population of Rhodesia exploded. This was due to white advances in health, science, and food production (those white “owned” farms again). Now that Rhodesia aka Zimbabwe is black majority ruled, the population is reverting to its pre-white status via starvation and emigration and the not too occasional massacre. I’d venture to say that Mugabe has been responsible for more dead Zimbabweans than the British Army ever was.
Until they sent warriors armed with spears up against the redcoats’ repeating rifles, they were one of the great empires of the world, moving south in their own wave of conquest.
The redcoats did not use repeating rifles, at least not in the 1879 Zulu War. The Martini-Henry rifle was a single shot breechloader. While it used a modern cartridge, you had to insert a new round into the breech each time you wanted to fire. See the movie “Zulu”.
Posted by Californian at 3:42 AM on August 16
Oh, well, in a few more decades they’ll be blaming their savagery on the Chinese instead of whites.
But the Chinese won’t care.
Posted by Dwayne O. at 6:47 AM on August 16
Brecher is talking rubbish.
Despite all his fancy language, anti-Britishism etc, the gist of his arguments is just plain wrong.
The facts are these: Formerly Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia) relied on the export earnings of its commercial farm sector for its foreign exchange.Rhodesia’s main export crop was tobacco, which was (and perhaps still is), an extremely lucrative crop, which was best grown on large estates, purely as an industrial cash-crop.Hence the land ownership pattern that asserted itself was domination by a few White farmers.Furthermore, one hundred years ago when White settlement began, the black population of Rhodesia was small, its explosive growth has been recent.
The postion of the White farmers was supposedly guaranteed by the ‘Lancaster House Agreenment’ under which Ian Smith’s Rhodesia (despite suffering stringent sanctions and fighting wars on all fronts was much much more prosperous than Mugabe’s Zimbabwe), gave up the ghost.In the longer term it was envisioned that black Zimbabweans would peacefully ‘buy-back’ the the ‘White owned’ farmland.
For racist reasons, Mugabe reneged on the deal, kicked the Whites out, destroyed the commercial farm sector - and now pays the consequences.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 7:50 AM on August 16
The way I see it the European Caucasians are being cleared out to make way for the communist chinese.
There’s no way all those natural rescources are going to be left untouched.
Posted by TXB at 8:36 AM on August 16
Evidence suggests that Gary Brecher is a sort of amateur-military-history Milli Vanilli. His picture isn’t even real - it’s of some obscure Norwegian punk rock musician. Wickipedia says, No one outside of the eXile has proved any direct interaction with Gary Brecher. Brecher’s reclusive nature and the lack of information about him have raised speculation (e.g. during his email interview with Sailer) that Brecher is a pseudonym for another eXile contributor. The use of invented characters is not unprecedented for the eXile.
It’s possible that “Gary Brecher” is an American ex-pat living in Moscow. Wikipedia also says, Brecher describes himself as a Nationalist “who just wants America to kick ass.” I’ve read several of his columns, and my theory is that Brecher is not intrinsically anti-West or anti-white, but he does enjoy carving out a niche for himself by making unusual observations that counter preconceived notions. I think certain powers that do hate the West and hate whites, seize on these observations, and use them for their own purposes and agendas. “Gary”, happy for any sort of attention at all - is glad to oblige them. That is my take on Gary “Milli Vanilli” Becher.
Posted by HideouslyWhite at 12:25 PM on August 16
I held Gary Brecher in high esteem once because his views on modern conflict are very true. Even the most
advanced of the establishment thinkers on war (Bill Lind,
IMO) could profit from reading Brecher (in fact, Lind does read him).
Another commentator summarized Brecher’s views above. But despite recognizing the tribalism of the world, Brecher still bows to multiculturalism and white dispossession, and he has done it so often that I actually think he does it sincerely. He makes no bones about “picking a side” in his discussion of history, so he often rails against the British and sides with the Turks, or Albanians, or the Dinga, or whomever. It showed Brecher’s childishness that he imagines he has some special relationship with the tribes whose war stories he enjoys. Every episode of his history is an adventure in multi-culturalism because Brecher ‘goes native’ and sides with the more guerrulous nation (as long as they are Asian or AFrican, or defeated Europeans).
Brecher is a pop-tart shock journalist who lacks manhood and revels in war fantasies because his accepted position as a fat loser taught him about sadism and apocalyptic visions and to “hate his life”, basically a Columbine-type revenge complex against his own society. If he had the balls to turn his own critical glance inward on himself, the self-contradictory nature of half of his opinions would be revealed. He is deeply knowledgeable about a lot of modern history (where he isnt, he makes it up), and thrives on drama and cartoon violence ala Rambo. He wants you to think it is something else driving his historical researches, but its pure Rambo fantasy stuff. He’s expanded into cultural and demographic analysis because its just a natural extension of what he was already doing.
He has the sensibility of a 14-year old, and the self-deprecating remarks he throws are intended to shield himself against anyone pointing out his completely unrealistic vicarious self-projections into the role of Ghengis Khan, or Viking Chief, or Shaka Zulu, or whatever great chief Brecher is imagining himself to be (but not really, har har). Because Brecher is simultaneously a fat loser paper-pusher, and a would-be conqueror. Har har, its a joke (but of course, its really not, sadly enough).
I have read him for 3 years, but I wont anymore. I suspect he is actually a pseudonym for that fat idiot -John Dolan who founded eXiLe.
Posted by at 1:08 PM on August 16
Necklacing = just another day in the hood.
It amuses me when white folks twist themselves into pretzels in an effort to explain black behavior. It’s simple: They do what they do because they are what they are. Setting people on fire because you’re pissed off at them is a Black Thang, yo.
Posted by JustPlainMean at 1:12 PM on August 16
Who is this ignorant babbling idiot Brecher, anyway? He clearly knows nothing whatever of the history of Rhodesia and South Africa or the obvious manner in which whites became the developers of the land and its resources.
He evidently connect logically connect the complete disintegration of any coherent social order with the ascension of black rule in Rhodesia (I’ll be goddamned if I’ll call it Zimbabwe). Of course, he might argue that what happened in Rhodesia was some sort of strange aberration rather than the dismal norm in which black rule has destroyed every town, municipality, city, and country in which it’s been imposed. I’d be glad to hear of a single exception to this sociological and cultural fact.
Posted by john at 3:07 PM on August 16
Sounds like another liberal justifying racism against whites instead of dealing with the problem at hand-whites getting killed and discriminated against by blacks. Liberals have a decayed, revenge-minded sense of morality.
Posted by at 3:20 PM on August 16
That’s less than one percent of the country’s population controlling three-quarters of its useful farmland. “
Well, gee, Mr. Brecher, I thought you were in favor of minorities having power. But I guess it depends on the skin color of the minority, rigth? If whites have power, it’s because we stole it. If black have power, it’s called progress.
Posted by at 3:23 PM on August 16
“After all, what right do those white settlers have to the land? Their great-grandfathers stole it at gunpoint, or got it by dirty tricks, a little over a century ago.”
Most of the rest is junk, but this is true. As Samuel Huntington said: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
If we’re ever going to make any progress, we have to confront this reality—every other argument is implicitly rooted in it.
Posted by at 3:29 PM on August 16
Most of the rest is junk, but this is true. As Samuel Huntington said: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
But the non-Westerners run it into the ground once whitey gives it back. That’s an undeniable fact!
Posted by at 5:38 PM on August 16
Author conveniently forgets to add that when white farmers still owned the Zimbabwean land and their farms were functional and gave work to many people, there was no need for Zimbabweans to seek jobs in the South Africa. It’s a rather recent phenomenon.
Posted by EW at 8:03 PM on August 16
I guess those White farmers in formerly White Rhodesia were being racist by settling on and improving agriculturally productive land, instead of being tolerant and settling on the agriculturally worthless land in the expectation of being fair to Black farmers 30 years in the future.
Imagine someone settling the GOOD parts of a country - what gall!
Doubtless Mr. Brecher sets a better example by living in Death Valley, or perhaps the ghettos of Detroit.
Posted by Visine at 9:48 PM on August 16
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
Western explorers may have had guns but they also had the means by which to traverse the world in the first place to ‘win’ it. Other societies had not yet even invented the wheel. Furthermore, whenever I watch old westerns or read about settlers vs indians wars, the Indians alway have guns and ride them around on horseback. Rifles and horses both being imports from the old (white) world. In fact, the horse and the indian are often portrayed in harmony and sympathy as if in an eon-long natural relationship that could never be understood by the white man.
It seems like what we are talking about is a selective view of only certain aspects of history if even correct at all. Why react at all to this version of history when there is so much room to instead tell our own version?
Posted by my favorite color is not in the rainbow at 1:21 AM on August 17
Any farming operation involves lots of land with few people on it. You have a choice, you can farm it and eat, or you can let everyone live on it and starve. Apparently, Mugabe wiould prefer to let everyone starve.
Posted by The Quadfather at 10:27 AM on August 17
I only read as far as :have to rely on superior intelligence, then gave up in disgust. As an old Africa hand, I know only to well that this does not exist. They relied on one thing, and one thing only. Superior breeding. At the start of the apartheid era the white black ratio was 40/60, it is now 1/11. True, the Zulus were a warrior race who had conquered most of the tribes they came across,
but the author fails to mention that when van Riebeck landed at the Cape in 1648 or thereabouts, there were no Zulus in South Africa.
As the whites moved north from the Cape, the blacks moved south from central Africa, when they met, the superior force won. End of history lesson.
Posted by ciccio at 1:57 PM on August 17
Why don’t they contact OPRAH? She is always quick to help anyone who is not white or not an American, even though she would be frying chicken at some fast food place if white female fools didn’t fill her coffer with gold.
Posted by Bo at 2:07 PM on August 17
“….this stuff isn’t happening in Switzerland but in places where people are very poor and desperate.”
Perhaps one reason that such places are so poor and desperate is that they are populated by people who place burning, gasoline doused tires on other people’s heads. Possible? Nah. It must ultimately be the fault of some dead white men.
Gary Brecher usually goes by the moniker “War Nerd” - a white-collar cubical drone who gets his jollies by contemplating the myriad ways that people now kill one another. He is nothing but a semi-professional nihlist.
Posted by S.L. Cain at 2:41 PM on August 17
If you start making the argument that because you can “improve” upon something, you have the right to take it, then you open the door to east Asian domination of the United States, as they have lower crime rates and better educated populations, less inequality, and less inefficiency. Either you believe each race has a right to its own destiny, or you believe in racial supremacy: you can’t straddle the line between them.
Posted by at 3:26 PM on August 17
Mr. Brecher the war nerd comes off like a frat party intellectual, one hand holding a beer while the other one waves wildly as he holds his half drunk audience of three freshmen in a spellbound stupor with his psuedo logical arguments. He needs to turn off his computer and crack a few books.
But it’s probably too late. He is what he is.
Posted by at 6:25 PM on August 17
The War Nerd prides himself on being politically incorrect. However, this article is little more than PC stupidity and White status seeking.
He may not like that Whites took much of the arable land, but even he must know that the vast majority of it was developed by the White settlers, not stolen from hardworking Black farmers.
His attempt to excuse Mugabe is laughable. If White ownership of land explains the starvation in the country, funny how it never occurred under White rule.
Posted by Disgruntled at 7:34 PM on August 17
There are grains of wheat in the chaff. Mr. Brecher points out the the nature of humanity; seeking to expand the territory of your tribe at the expense of rival tribes. The Africans and other tribes understand this all to well. Hammer or anvil? Which will whites choose? Which will you choose?
Posted by at 8:58 PM on August 17
Wow, this is really disturbing. Gary Brecher has gone off the deep end. Is his next article going to be defending suicide bombers in Iraq or Palastine?
After all it’s all the big bad whiteman’s fault that they are killing innocent people.
If Gary thinks that Necklacing is okay, then maybe he should go over there and help them….oh wait, he probably knows that they would necklace him in a heart beat….better fight the bad fight from your cozy home in America.
Posted by at 5:57 PM on August 18
Yes you are supposed to blame the rioters here. It’s not rocket science. See they are the ones putting the burning tires around the necks of their victims; hence the ones to blame. And by the way, a lot of them are alive. I saw one of these on the news and they snatched a woman right out of line and did this to her in front of everyone. She burned to death. It was horrible. Typical African behavior in my view.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 6:47 PM on August 19
We have a saying here in Africa. A bit is lost in translation, but goes something like, “What is the difference between a tourist and a hard-arsed racist………..about three weeks”.
I invite “Mr Brecher” to come and “experience” the Africa he knows so well. I suggest make your trip about four to five weeks long to get the real “feel” of the place.
Posted by at 3:21 AM on August 31