SLR: A Robben Island narco-state ambition, all I need is Brett Herron’s support

Key topics:Satire on “international law” and selective outrage in Western politicsMedia and liberal reactions to Maduro’s arrest and US interventionCritique of moral posturing, narco-states, and geopolitical weakness.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Simon Lincoln Reader*.Barely a week into a new year and I’ve decided I’m going to conquer Robben Island. Yes yes awfully sorry about the history and so on and so forth but forgive and forget and by the way: I’ll be cultivating cocaine plants, or poppies, or failing that, I’ll commandeer parts of the former prison into a meth factory.But whatever is produced will be unleashed into the city, chiefly by peddlers positioned at schools attended by prominent politicians’ children, and who will be protected by a network of biker gangs. Once this has been set in motion, I’m going to become pen pals with GOOD’s Brett Herron, because I’ll be guaranteed that no matter how rough it gets out there, my micro-narco-state will always enjoy support from him – something about “international law”. Herron possesses no original ideas, so relies instead on the UK’s network of centrist-dad podcasters who, in concert, all broadcast emergency shows excoriating the US President for an astonishing operation leading to the arrest and rendering the international criminal parading as a leader, Nicholas Maduro. But no sooner was the announcement of Maduro’s capture made when the gun was fired on this race to the bottom of thinking. One former Conservative MP suggested that the US was now an enemy of both the UK and the EU, hinting that NATO’s painfully slow shift toward Russia might be pointing the wrong way (the man’s wife was a beneficiary of the USAID scam, so perhaps his liveliness on the issue could be understood). “International law” is extremely ambiguous. Nobody really knows what it is, how to enforce it – much less how to litigate it. “Potential” breaches of “international law” were supposedly the reasons why the UK volunteered surrender of the Chagos Archipelago last year, handing the island of Mauritius control of a site hosting a US/UK military base capable of servicing nuclear submarines. In scenes that were mostly concealed from the public, the UK’s Attorney General, Richard Hermer, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and a human rights lawyer called Phillipe Sands (all three were at the same chambers and Starmer was previously a human rights lawyer) schemed up capitulation together, ignoring pleas of enraged Chagossians who cannot understand why a country they do not like (Mauritius) will be handed custody. So good in fact are the deal’s finances that the Mauritian government has gifted some tax relief to its citizens.So it stands to reason that the kinds of people squealing “international law” in the wake of the raid are possibly stupid, possibly useless or indeed, minded toward criminality – maybe all three at once. There were suspicions you could extract from listening to an hour’s worth of UK daytime radio the day after Maduro was handed a grey tracksuit – and possibly forced to listen to a children’s audio book read by Hillary Clinton’s beautiful daughter Chelsea on his way to a holding cell. In London, an African gentleman called into Lewis Goodall’s LBC show with the host clearly hoping that the African – Sam – would denounce Trump in the strongest possible terms given his own continent’s legacy of imperialism. “Actually,” Sam started, “if this is what Trump is doing, then I extend an invitation to Africa, because we have very bad people there also impoverishing their people.” Goodall’s furrowed brow betrayed his anxiety: that’s not how you people are supposed to talk. But Sam’s position was clear – Trump has done something against the grain of failing conventional wisdom with all its assumptions. An African counters liberal sensibilities – whilst in the UK – is deeply offensive to those centrist establishment whites, who feel their life’s work is to champion victimhood. Returning to some bare facts may be helpful to some concerned. Maduro was possibly one of the biggest criminals in the world, who’d perverted organs of state into illegal, criminal activities, all the while his economy tanked. Venezuela could once produce 4m barrels of oil a day; currently it does less than a million. When the silly little junket featuring ANC profiles decided to go visit in April 2019, they were not to see that ordinary people faced some of the cruellest choices: eat the family pooch, or starve. The Caracas diet, as it became known, saw most citizens drop between 10 and 15lbs. Then there is the issue of resources. Is Trump stealing the country’s oil? No, he’ll be buying it – something we know as “trade”. Will he impose an imperialist agenda? Unlikely, as the tone of the country’s interim leader and former deputy has shifted quite remarkably in less than a few days to one of possibilities. But our pathetic response, including “international law” is a good illustration of just how emasculated we’ve become – even to issues with clearly defined good and bad measurements. Our DEI-climate-love-is-love stupor has resulted in the development of weak reflexes that don’t bother to examine events in the sort of detail required, but instinctively pursue a grievance dimension, or an opportunity to parade virtue.Perhaps the most telling indictment of liberal politics is that we appear to be governed, and are expected to submit before, something we confess we don’t actually understand. If it was “international law” that permitted the normalization of the narco state, readying millions of defenders to clamber to its defence the moment it was held to account for its documented crimes, then we could do a lot worse than scrapping it and pretending it never existed. .*Simon Lincoln Reader grew up in Cape Town before moving to Johannesburg in 2001, where he was an energy entrepreneur until 2014..*This article was first published by The DailyFriend and is republished with permission.

SLR: A Robben Island narco-state ambition, all I need is Brett Herron’s support

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