More on Mueller’s folly: Rick Gates’ testimony

The New Neo Posted on by

I know I’ve already written recently about the Manafort trial and Rick Gates’s testimony but I feel the urge to link to this post by streiff at RedState because it contains some tweets with details of the courtroom shenanigans that are mind-bogglingly awful, even knowing what we already know about Gates. He’s one of those people of whom you can safely assume that every word out of his mouth is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

And yet, he’s not just the star witness for the prosecution, he’s apparently the only evidence they’ve got. [ADDITION: to clarify—the only evidence for Manafort’s state of mind, that is, which is a vital element of the charges. There is certainly evidence of financial wrongdoing, but it is Gates who provides the necessary evidence of Gates’ awareness and intent.]

Let that sink in: the only evidence [clarification: of Manafort’s state of mind] is the testimony of this incredibly mendacious person who’s been embezzling from Manafort and is testifying in order to substantially lighten his own sentence.

Manafort may be guilty as the day is long (I have no idea if he is or isn’t), but on the basis of this trial he should be freed and receive an abject apology from Mueller.

That won’t happen, of course.

If you follow that link and read the trajectory of the trial and the testimony of Gates, it is an admission of financial crime after financial crime, fraud after fraud, and lie after lie (including lies to the investigators). A regular sociopath of the finance world (which is perhaps, unfortunately, not altogether unusual). He also can’t seem to recall much of anything till he’s confronted with his own prior statements to authorities. What a witness, what a guy.

Here’s one of my favorite parts, if “favorite” is the right word:

This guy gives corruption a bad name.

[NOTE: Although I used the term “Mueller’s folly” in the title of this post, that doesn’t mean I’m saying Mueller will lose the case. I’m saying the case is so bad he should lose it.]

[ADDENDUM: In a somewhat related Mueller matter, Rudy Giuliani hints that America will soon discover some bombshell information about the collusion investigation that will completely discredit it and Mueller in a major way. I have my doubts; we’ve heard that sort of thing before.]

[ADDENDUM II: Whatever happens in this Virgina-based case against Manafort—the tax fraud and bank fraud case—there is a second case Mueller has planned for him, concentrating on money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent, and due to take place in DC. This post is about the present case only.]

Facts vs. feelings: “Sarah Jeong’s tweets and blog posts are just a marker of the world we already live in”…

The New Neo Posted on by

…writes Heather Mac Donald in National Review. Mac Donald also points out that Jeong holds opinions on white people that are typical of what passes for thought in academia these days. They are not unusual at all:

…[Jeong’s] tweets are not imitative of anything other than the ideology that now rules the higher-education establishment, including UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School, both of which Jeong attended. And that ideology is taking over non-academic institutions, whether in journalism, publishing, the tech sector, or the rest of corporate America. Sarah Jeong’s tweets and blog posts are just a marker of the world we already live in.

The key features of Jeong’s worldview are an obsession with whiteness and its alleged sins; a commitment to the claim that we live in a rape culture; and a sneering contempt for objectivity and truth-seeking. These are central tenets of academic victimology. From the moment freshmen arrive on a college campus, they are inundated by the message that they are either the bearers of white privilege or its victims. College presidents and the metastasizing diversity bureaucracy teach students to see racism where none exists, preposterously accusing their own institutions of systemic bias.

It’s all “whiteness studies” all the time now. That’s hyperbole, of course, but not by all that much.

Mac Donald discusses something else that I haven’t seen talked about much before in regard to Jeong’s oeuvre:

Jeong’s magnum opus of academic victimology is a long 2014 blog post on the Rolling Stone campus-rape hoax. Written after the Rolling Stone had retracted its sensational and wholly fictional story on a gruesome fraternity rape at the University of Virginia, Jeong’s post tortuously and often incoherently explains why it is imperative to continue believing the pseudo-victim, Jackie. The effort to discredit the Rolling Stone story (a process otherwise known as belated fact-checking) represents the patriarchy’s campaign to deny the existence of rape culture, she writes.

The credo of the campus rape movement is: “Believe unconditionally,” as New York University’s Wellness Exchange puts it. Jeong takes that credo to heart. “The more I see these ‘inconsistencies’ and ‘discrepancies’ [in the Rolling Stone story] touted as evidence of falsehood, the more convinced I am that Jackie is not lying,” Jeong writes. She sneers at such “mundanities” as dates and times that refute Jackie’s narrative, a remarkable stance, one might think, for a journalist.

Not to mention a journalist for the NY Times. That’s a bit of sarcasm on my part, because unfortunately the Times has a history of ignoring (that’s a kind word for it) a great many inconvenient facts, if said facts refute their narrative.

Jeong will fit right in. I cannot imagine that the people at the Times who hired her didn’t see a long blog post of hers, if that post is still up there.

After I wrote that, I decided to try a little harder to find it. It’s been deleted, but someone archived it here, so you can read it if you’re interested. I was interested. Jeong’s basic point is that she believes Jackie on some gut level despite everything; and that gut feelings like hers trump evidence (she doesn’t deal with the evidence that Jackie had fabricated her own cellphone texts from a fictional boyfriend and invented the rape to make a guy she had a crush on jealous, but in all fairness to Jeong, when she wrote that article I don’t think those facts had yet been revealed, although plenty else had been revealed to discredit Jackie’s claims).

The sad thing is that belief in guts over evidence is by no means an idiosyncrasy of Jeong’s. As Mac Donald correctly points out, it’s rampant in academia and is not at all unusual in journalism. But one of the things in Jeong’s essay that especially caught my attention was this statement (recall as you read it that Jeong is a graduate of Harvard Law):

In law school, after all, we learned that due process is what we get in lieu of justice. And what’s due process besides a series of rules that are meant to keep things as predictable as fucking possible?

Ah, so that’s what they’re teaching at Harvard Law these days. When I was in law school—in the Dark Ages—we learned that due process is a series of rules meant to get as close to achieving actual justice as we can in a world that can never really achieve it entirely. Due process protects every single one of us, including Sarah Jeong (I’ll refrain here from bringing up the Devil Speech from “A Man For All Seasons” once again). But thanks to postmodernism and in particular something called Critical Legal Studies—which started taking over law schools not too long after I left law school—we have an army of Sarah Jeong’s out there ready to tell us all what’s really what.

I first noticed something very very strange happening in academia when I went back there nearly thirty years ago, after a pause of nearly thirty years. I could not ignore what I saw; things had not gotten quite as extreme as they are now, but they were far more than halfway there. The younger students who were half my age were so different in their focus, so steeped in the idea that they were all victims or perpetrators or potential victims or perpetrators of sexual harassment or racism (or of just a word or two that didn’t quite sit well with them or someone else and therefore had to be eradicated and the perpetrator punished) that I did not recognize it as the world I knew.

Nor did it seem like a world that was going to lead to a better world. Not at all.

Would you believe Rick Gates?

The New Neo Posted on by

I certainly wouldn’t—not unless there was convincing corroborating evidence of the truth of what he is saying.

And really, that wouldn’t be believing Gates—it would be believing the corroborating evidence.

Here’s the situation as it now stands:

Manafort’s former business associate and star witness for the prosecution…Gates testified that Manafort “was good at knowing where the money was and how to spend it.”

[Judge] Ellis interjected, saying, “he wasn’t that great at it” if Gates was able to steal money from Manafort without him noticing.

Gates has testified he embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort when he was working for him. He said the extra cash was used for “bonus money” and “family money” to pay off an American Express credit card – without Manafort’s knowledge.

Mueller dropped numerous bank and tax fraud charges against Gates after he struck a plea deal and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Prosecutors earlier had suggested they might not call Gates to the stand, but Ellis told them they “can’t prove conspiracy without him.”

And IMHO they can’t prove anything with him, except what a smarmy rat he is.

Gates and Manafort were both indicted in October 2017 on charges related to their consulting work with pro-Russian political figures in Ukraine. Additional charges were filed in District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on February 21, 2018, however these charges were withdrawn on February 27, 2018, without prejudice, as agreed to in his plea bargain with Robert S. Mueller III.

Talk about motives for lying! And it’s ironic that, in this particular case, the witness has to also admit he defrauded the person he’s testifying against. Thus, he implicates himself in order to exonerate himself in terms of the length of the prison term he might face.

When I say “smarmy rat,” that’s hardly hyperbole:

During the trial, Gates testified that he and Manafort carried out an elaborate offshore tax-evasion and bank fraud scheme using offshore shell companies and bank accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the United Kingdom to funnel millions of dollars from their political consulting work in Ukraine. Gates admitted to concealing the accounts and the income from U.S. tax authorities by disguising the income as loans by falsifying bank loan documents. During testimony, Gates also admitted that he embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort, some of which was used to fund an extramarital affair conducted out of high-end hotels and a secret apartment he kept in London where he often stayed while en-route to Kiev on business trips. Manafort’s defense attorney, Kevin Downing, accused Gates of embezzling millions of dollars from his former boss, a much higher amount than Gates later admitted to during testimony. Under cross examination, Gates also admitted to a previous extramarital relationship approximately a decade ago that involved first-class flights and trysts in luxury hotels, but denied that this affair was funded with money stolen from Manafort.[

But hey, we should trust his testimony implicating Manafort, right?

It’s hard to make me feel sorry for Manafort, but this just might do it.

I’ve heard rumors like this for decades

The New Neo Posted on by

This one may even be true:

Two completely drug-resistant versions of the venereal disease [gonorrhoea] have been found and identified – with fears rampant unprotected sex could rigger an epidemic.

Doctors have been unable to treat patients with antibiotic ceftriaxone and azithromycin.

And sufferers have been left with a gonorrhoea – also known as the clap – infection that causes extreme pain during urination.

Australia’s federal government has issued a report warning of the risk of the “continuing threat of antimicrobial resistance by dangerous bacteria”.

Officials added another five strains of gonorrhoea have been found which have “high level resistance” to treatments.

Scary.

Microbes and antibiotics have been at war ever since the invention of the drugs, and resistance is one of the main weapons in the kit of the bacteria.

There’s also this, which doesn’t surprise me in the least:

A common ingredient in toothpaste and hand wash could be contributing to antibiotic resistance, according to University of Queensland research.

A study led by Dr Jianhua Guo from UQ’s Advanced Water Management Centre focused on triclosan, a compound used in more than 2000 personal care products.

Dr Guo said while it was well-known the overuse and misuse of antibiotics could create ‘superbugs’, researchers were unaware that other chemicals could also induce antibiotic resistance until now.

“Wastewater from residential areas has similar or even higher levels of antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes compared to hospitals, where you would expect greater antibiotic concentrations,” he said.

Triclosan is banned in the US:

The antibacterial compound triclosan, already banned in the U.S. from consumer soaps, will no longer be allowed in antiseptic products used in hospitals and other health care settings. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration on Dec. 20 [2017] deemed triclosan and 23 other antiseptic ingredients to not be generally recognized as safe and effective.

“There was a lack of sufficient safety and efficacy data” for the 24 affected chemicals, explains FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

I remember years ago when these antibacterial soaps came into vogue. I was suspicious of them from the start, because it seemed to me to be (quite literally) overkill. Washing hands properly gets rid of some surface bacteria, but the idea that in normal life our hands can ever be especially free of bacteria seemed preposterous.

And how many people don’t wash their hands at all after using the toilet? Plenty (you can look it up). But when they do wash their hands and use these particular agents, I am pretty sure their hands are repopulated quite quickly.

And it stands to reason there would be some sort of bacterial resistance developing to these chemicals. That’s the nature of the struggle for existence, and bacteria have such a short life and exist in such huge quantities that natural selection can operate to allow the most resistant to survive.

And then, on to the next weapon in our arsenal.

Interpreting special elections is not an easy task

The New Neo Posted on by

There was another special election yesterday, this time for the US House member from the 12th District of Ohio. At this moment, Republican Troy Balderson retains a very narrow lead. But, consistent with other special elections since the 2016 regular election, the news was far from good for the GOP because even the victories have been way closer than one might expect in these areas:

Consider contests in Kansas, Georgia, Montana and South Carolina. Democrats came close to winning them all – but didn’t. Democrats finally won a special election on GOP turf in late March. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., emerged victorious – but barely.

In other words, Democrats are making things close lots of places that shouldn’t be close. That bodes well in the midterms as Democrats need to flip 23 seats to claim control of the House. But Democrats cannot continue to repeatedly make races close and lose. That’s certainly not a recipe for victory in the House.

I’ve heard a lot of explanations. They may even be true. One is that these are called special elections for a reason; turnout is generally low, and that means that the more enthusiastic motivated party will do better. Democrats are highly motivated, to say the least.

But I’m not sure why Republicans aren’t similarly motivated. Trump’s popularity is very high among GOP voters, for example, and I can’t imagine that they don’t realize they have to keep the House for his agenda to have even a chance to be realized. I think the explanation may be a combination of the long-standing hatred of the GOPe, which I often see in blog comments (particularly at certain blogs), and perhaps the less-than-charismatic personality of many Republican nominees. People vote with their politics, but a magnetic personality can go far, too, just on the strength of that (they don’t call it a “winning” personality for nothing).

And then there are the Independents. They may have been the most influenced by the propaganda put out by our friends in the MSM, and are therefore leaning Democratic.

The article I linked earlier in this post goes on to analyze what the Democrats have to do to get control of the House in November, something I consider a very real possibility (of course, I tend to be a pessimist):

But for O’Connor to knock out Balderson means the Democrat needs to win just a few more votes in rural parts of the district.

This is something Democrats need in districts across the board this fall if there is to be any chance of a “blue wave.” Democrats appear to show more traction in these regions. But is it enough? Not yet.

Here’s something else we learned: President Trump makes a difference in these races…on both sides of the ledger. If Balderson’s lead holds, one could plausibly argue that Mr. Trump’s campaign rally in Newark, OH over the weekend may have been just enough to propel the Republican candidate to victory.

But “Trumpism” cuts two ways. This seat should have never been anywhere on the radar for the Democrats. Republicans may have had to pour millions of dollars into this contest just to hold the seat – for a few months. President George W. Bush won the district by 36 points in 2000. The President carried the same district by a little more than half as much two years ago.

President Trump certainly energizes some Republicans and gets them to the polls. But the President’s presence also electrifies Democrats and even swing voters. That induces them to support Democratic candidates. That could be a big liability for Republicans in any district which has a chance of electing a Democrat this fall. However, the prevailing question is whether Mr. Trump’s aura simply boosts Democratic voting or if it helps fuel Democratic wins?

That question will not be answered until Election Day, 2018.

(I guess this means I need to start a new category on my sidebar for Election 2018.)

There are hailstorms, and then there’s this hailstorm

The New Neo Posted on by

Two animals were actually killed and people were injured in a hailstorm yesterday at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs:

Five injured people were taken to a hospital and nine more were treated on the scene and released, said Brian Vaughan, public information officer and fire captain for Colorado Springs Fire Department.

A 13-year-old caped vulture named Motswari was killed in the storm along with a 4-year-old Muscovy duck known as Daisy, Koch said. A third animal — a vulture — was initially reported dead, but later turned out to be severely injured.

The zoo is now closed, assessing the damage.

I was in a hailstorm the other day but I was sitting in a car. There were tornado warnings at the time—we have them now and then in New England. The hail was the size not of golfballs but of blueberries, and because my older car had been pock-marked from another hailstorm long ago I was worried more about my vehicle than anything else.

This Colorado storm must have been pretty frightening, though:

Freedom of speech is under attack from the big cybertech companies

The New Neo Posted on by

As Glenn Reynolds writes:

Note that I say “free speech” and not “First Amendment.” The First Amendment only limits government, but “free speech” is — or at least until very recently was — a broader social value in favor of not shutting people up just because we don’t like their ideas or politics. As for the “private companies can do what they want,” well, that’s not the law, or the custom, and hasn’t been for a long time. It’s especially not true where the companies have, as these companies have, affirmatively represented to users and shareholders that they don’t discriminate based on viewpoints.

It’s a tricky question, because although I do believe that shutting down speech—even “hate speech”—cuts into the free flow of ideas so vital to liberty, I also believe in private companies having the right to control what appears on their site. Just as an example, I ban people and/or erase comments that I find especially offensive (not just somewhat offensive). I have no obligation to provide a platform for garbage.

But this seems like an ominous development. Roger Simon describes it:

I’ve spent about ten minutes of my life on InfoWars [note from Neo: that’s about 10 minutes more than I’ve spent there] and think Alex Jones is a boring blowhard of little interest except to those who want to spend their lives worrying about whether there was a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll.

Nevertheless, the group censorship of Mr. Jones, led by our friends in Cupertino, the makers of the ubiquitous iPhone…is one of the scarier developments of our time, if not potentially the scariest.

Apple is one hypocritical organization banning the puny Jones. They — the first trillion-dollar company — are the people who are genuflecting to the Chinese, kowtowing (that is definitely the proper word) to Xi Jinping and Co., and making all kinds of accommodations to that totalitarian regime for access to their giant market.

From Glenn Reynolds again:

(1) This is absolutely the first stage in a coordinated plan to deplatform everyone on the right. It’s not really about Alex Jones at all. (2) Aside from its free-speech implications, which are serious indeed, this also looks like an antitrust violation: Media companies, which compete with Jones for eyeballs, colluded to get other media companies to shut him down. Were I Jones, I’d file an antitrust suit. This is more than arguably conspiracy in restraint of trade (and possibly a conspiracy to deprive him of civil rights).

And from Roger Simon again:

…[W]hat Apple is doing picking on the basically irrelevant Jones is a form of corporate virtual signaling, a particularly dangerous form if you believe in the Bill of Rights.

Yes, I know they’re a private company not subject to government restrictions, but they are bigger, richer, and more powerful than almost every government on the planet, maybe more, which leads me to their noxious and equally powerful comrade-in-tech-arms…. FACEBOOK.

The Internet behemoth — lest they be humiliated, I suppose, and not seen as politically incorrect — immediately followed in Apple’s footsteps, deleting all things Jones. They were joined rapidly by half a dozen others including Google and, bizarrely, Spotify. Did anyone have Alex Jones on his playlist?

But remarkably, only a few days before, Facebook’s founder, my fellow Jew (yes, it’s relevant) Mark Zuckerberg, had announced he was allowing Holocaust deniers on FB. From CNET:

He said content from Holocaust deniers should not be taken down from the platform because “I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong,” he said.

“It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent,” he continued. “I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly.”

Yes, it’s hard to impugn intent. Maybe the intent of all these social media powers is perfectly great. “Intent” usually is. That’s why we tend to focus on process, the rule of law, and the defense of the freedom of speech even of those with whom we disagree. Tyrannies always cite their own good intent, as well. No one (or very few people) ever said “I’m going to censor that person, or I’m going to jail that person without due process, because I have bad intentions towards them.”

[NOTE: I’m writing this post rather quickly because the power company just kindly called with a recorded message saying that in a couple of minutes they’ll be turning off the power for about an hour. And here I was just about to do my laundry!]

[ADDENDUM: Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy believes that the survival of our democracy depends on these bannings:

This from a US senator? I think maybe the word “democracy” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. By the way, I wonder why he didn’t use the word “republic” instead (that’s sarcasm on my part; I certainly know why he didn’t).]

[ADDENDUM: Double standards. Of course.]

#WalkAway: apostasy and shunning

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed this phenomenon a while ago—in fact, it’s was one of the things that first caused me to start blogging. But in general it is my perception that it’s gotten worse over the years in terms of its degree and the number of people it involves.

The woman in the following video describes the situation I’m talking about quite well. The whole thing is worth watching (it’s not long, either), but the part I’m referring to starts around 1:33:

The blog category label I gave to this post is “Leaving the circle: political apostasy.” The word “apostasy” was chosen deliberately many years ago, when I first set up the categories, although it may seem like it’s an inappropriate term for politics because it ordinarily refers to leaving a religion. But “apostasy” can certainly be used for politics, too, and especially for the “shunning” (another word often used in a religious context) of those who leave the fold of liberalism and/or leftism.

Here’s the definition of “shunning”:

Shunning can be the act of social rejection, or emotional distance. In a religious context, shunning is a formal decision by a denomination or a congregation to cease interaction with an individual or a group, and follows a particular set of rules. It differs from, but may be associated with, excommunication.

Social rejection occurs when a person or group deliberately avoids association with, and habitually keeps away from an individual or group. This can be a formal decision by a group, or a less formal group action which will spread to all members of the group as a form of solidarity. It is a sanction against association, often associated with religious groups and other tightly knit organizations and communities. Targets of shunning can include persons who have been labeled as apostates, whistleblowers, dissidents, strikebreakers, or anyone the group perceives as a threat or source of conflict.

It’s exceedingly painful, and it’s meant to be.

As Zimbabwe goes, so goes South Africa?

The New Neo Posted on by

Whatever the reasons, it’s dangerous for governments to confiscate the land of citizens without compensation, as the leading party of South Africa is now poised to do.

Their reasons reflect the complex history of South Africa, a place where black people (historically around 75% to 80% of the population) were forbidden to own land in most of the country for a long time. When apartheid ended in 1994, which is now almost 25 years ago, the policy changed:

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC [African National Congress, the ruling party] has followed a “willing-seller, willing-buyer” model under which the government buys white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks. Progress has been slow…

Based on a survey of title deeds, the government says blacks own four percent of private land, and only eight percent of farmland has been transferred to black hands, well short of a target of 30 percent that was meant to have been reached in 2014.

AgriSA, a farm industry group, says 27 percent of farmland is in black hands. Its figure includes state land and plots tilled by black subsistence farmers in the old homelands.

That 1994 policy was equitable because both buyer and seller had to acquiesce, and the owners of the land were compensated. But “progress” has been too slow for many people in South Africa, and the ANC—which had until now refused to change the policy—is running scared and fears it might lose power. So it has caved on the issue.

More:

The 17 million people who reside in the former [black] homelands, a third of the population, are mostly subsistence farmers working tiny plots on communal land.

Critics of ANC land policy say that instead of seizing farmland from whites, such households should be given title deeds, turning millions into property owners. Reformers in the ANC have signaled their support for such a policy.

Seems like a better way to go about it than seizing people’s land.

The big question is whether the country will turn into Zimbabwe:

Analysts say South Africa is unlikely to follow the route of Zimbabwe, where the chaotic and violent seizure of white-owned farms under former president Robert Mugabe triggered economic collapse.

Ramaphosa has repeatedly said the policy will be implemented in a way that does not threaten food security or economic growth. ANC officials have said unused land will be the main target.

Governments say a lot of things. But once you go down this path it can have ripple effects that “analysts” don’t always foresee. For example, why would anyone invest in South Africa if it’s seen as risky? The South African currency fell after the announcement, and the bond market weakened.

Also, when you read the words of leaders of the more radical party, the [EFF], it is not reassuring, either about the financial future of South Africa or about the situation not escalating in a Zimbabwe-type direction:

There have been concerns among South Africa’s white minority that the motion will encourage attacks on farmers, and the EFF’s leader Julius Malema has previously been convicted of hate speech for singing anti-white songs like “Shoot the Boer [Farmer]”…

“In this process, white people ought to accept the crime of apartheid and colonisation and how these crimes impacted on black people,” Mr Ndlozi said. Whites could “show remorse by ceding land they inherited through anti-black racist dispossession”, he suggested, adding: “Justice leads to reconciliation.”

“Justice”—for example, the “justice” in the US known as affirmative action—does not always lead to reconciliation. The people who own the South African farms now have certainly benefited from what happened in the past—the exclusion of black people from land ownership in most of the country, among other rights that were denied—but the present-day farmers were for the most part not the perpetrators of apartheid and they are the legal owners of their land. What’s more, they have skills in developing and tending that land:

“If you take away those role players and replace them with people that have no knowledge, have no experience, we are going to produce a lot less,” South African farmer Jannie Myburgh told RT’s Paula Slier. “And if we produce less food, the food prices will go up, and that will harm the people that are on the bottom of the food chain.”

The history of South Africa is tremendously complex, with many ethnic groups involved. Learning about it is slow going, but suffice to say that the problems there defy easy answers.

Lots of discord has been going on for quite some time in South Africa over these issues:

Ever since the Dutch colonialist Jan van Riebeeck first set his clogs on the shores of southern Africa in 1652, the issue of land ownership has been a cause of conflict — a stark, tense thread running throughout the tapestry of South Africa’s history.

Van Riebeeck, an employee of the VOC (Dutch East India Company), was sent to the Cape to establish a refreshment station for passing VOC ships.

The Dutch settlement was immediately at odds with locals: the pastoral Khoikhoi, and later the foraging San.

Through impositions of Western-style bureaucracy by the Dutch and a series of wars, the Europeans gained control of large swathes of fertile Cape land.

The arrival of the British in 1795, followed 25 years later by the first of the 1820 Settlers, only worsened the situation as the 4000 mainly artisanal British workers were granted land for farms in the Eastern Cape.

That’s how it started, and then:

The most severe insult yet came with the passing of the Natives Land Act in 1913, which restricted black property ownership to just 7 per cent of the land of South Africa.

Although this amount was later increased to 13 per cent, the land black people were allowed to own was restricted to rural “native reserves”.

But the real question is: what now? The country is a powder keg, and the specter of Zimbabwe looms as a dire warning:

Within 24 hours of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe’s announcement of a similar policy in 1997, the local currency was devalued more than 50% beginning a hyper-inflation of the nation’s currency.

Initially, the land expropriation program was a victory for ordinary citizens, Zimbabweans would pay dearly for it through eight years of economic decline that led to job losses. Zimbabwean economist, Eddie Cross estimated that the country lost $20 billion dollars in export revenues, food aid imports and economic growth.

Now, the Zimbabwean government is going back to correct its mistake. The government has established a compensation committee under its land acquisition act to allow for dispossessed white, former commercial farmers to be compensated for land seized 18 years ago, according to Quartz.

You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. The only question is how best to go forward. South Africa is in trouble, and has been for a long, long time.