A Genocide That Isn’t

Donald Trump did a Zelensky to Cyril Ramaphosa. In a meeting at the Oval Office, the US president berated his South African counterpart with claims of mass murder of white farmers and had the lights dimmed to show a video as proof. Ramaphosa, who had tried to pre-empt a broadside by talking golf, and later to defuse the tension by emphasising the mutual benefits of trade, seemed at a loss as Trump incanted: “Death, death, death.” The backdrop was the suspension of US aid to South Africa and Trump fast-tracking US citizenship for Afrikaners, in an exception to his refugee ban. One clip showed footage of white crosses planted along a rural road that Trump claimed was a burial site of murdered white farmers but was analysed by the New York Times as a protest against farm murders in 2020, the crosses were symbolic and removed later. Ramaphosa admitted that crime was a big problem in his country but police statistics didn’t show any higher incidence of violence against whites. At one point, Trump looked at Elon Musk—of South African origin and a vocal critic of its government who had posted the same video on social media—and said, “This is what Elon wanted.”

Look Who’s Grabbing the Washington Pie

As DOGE ran about cutting and slashing government departments and disappearing their budgets into black holes, Demolition Man and his industry allies appeared to have grabbed bigger and bigger chunks of the DC pie for themselves. “Since January, more than three dozen employees and associates of [Elon] Musk and fellow tech titans Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and Palmer Luckey have been tapped for roles at federal agencies critical to their businesses,” according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. Alarmingly, the “roles put them in departments that oversee, regulate and award business to the four men’s companies… creating a web of potential conflicts that ethics experts call unprecedented.” Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, companies associated with these four men have won “more than a dozen federal contracts totalling about $6 billion”. Musk’s Space X got more than the rest but as the investigation found, the business interests of the four are often intertwined. And covering Tesla, X and other Musk companies, his “network” is inside more than a dozen federal agencies. The question everyone is asking is simple: How can your people staff the very agencies that are meant to regulate you?

Supreme Rage

Technical failures are not good in North Korea. Certainly not when a 5,000-tonne destroyer capable of carrying 70-plus missiles gets its bottom crushed at its launch. Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un called the accident a “criminal act” that “severely damaged the dignity and pride of our nation in an instant” and was the result of “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism.” Kim has given a deadline till next month for the ship to be restored while a plenary meeting will decide the fate of those responsible for the “irresponsible errors”. No prayers for them in an atheist state.

Cyril RamaphosaDonald TrumpgeopoliticalNorth KoreaPeter ThielWashington