A gun by any other name...
Gill Gifford
February 26 2008 at 03:10PM
A notice for public comment in this month's Government Gazette proposes that virtually any article regarded as a potential weapon be outlawed.
The notice prohibits people from carrying a "dangerous weapon" in public or a place to which the public has access, as well as the carrying of a replica of a firearm at a gathering or demonstration or political rally or meeting or polling station during an election.
"Objects which are in the opinion of the (Safety and Security) Minister (Charles Nqakula) dangerous weapons" are defined in the document and include BB and airsoft guns, bows and arrows, spear guns, blow pipes and darts, sling shots, swords, etc.
Read the full story in the print edition of The Star on Wednesday (February 27, 2008).
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Monday, 25 February 2008
Brian Cannoo Memorial Run (The Buccaneer)
Date : 2 March
Departure Time : 8:00 am
Start Venue : BJ's Restaurant, Northbound, Midrand.
End Venue : Zwartkops Race Track.
We have permission, but only from BJ's to Zwartkops.
All bikers are invited to join this memorial run, to show our numbers
and also to raise awareness on the roads.
There will be food and drink available at Zwartkops.
A traditional LAST SALUTE will be held at the track.
ONLY street legal bikes, this includes bikes to have legal plates.
NO QUADS or off road bikes or pocket bikes.
JMPD will supply cars and possibly bikes and will escort us to the end of their jurisdiction.
They have also agreed that there will be no cost to Think Bike for their services.
The marshals that use TB plates must carry their legal plates with them
no excuses.
Cars must be at the back of the pack, not interspersed with the bikes.
No excuses.
We thank JMPD for their involvment and common cause.
_______________________________________________________________
Think Bike may thank metro, but i don't.
Departure Time : 8:00 am
Start Venue : BJ's Restaurant, Northbound, Midrand.
End Venue : Zwartkops Race Track.
We have permission, but only from BJ's to Zwartkops.
All bikers are invited to join this memorial run, to show our numbers
and also to raise awareness on the roads.
There will be food and drink available at Zwartkops.
A traditional LAST SALUTE will be held at the track.
ONLY street legal bikes, this includes bikes to have legal plates.
NO QUADS or off road bikes or pocket bikes.
JMPD will supply cars and possibly bikes and will escort us to the end of their jurisdiction.
They have also agreed that there will be no cost to Think Bike for their services.
The marshals that use TB plates must carry their legal plates with them
no excuses.
Cars must be at the back of the pack, not interspersed with the bikes.
No excuses.
We thank JMPD for their involvment and common cause.
_______________________________________________________________
Think Bike may thank metro, but i don't.
TV Licenses
IOL story
"The team can overlay the TV licence database over the suburb/area map and establish exactly which households have TV licences and which don't. They will then also know which households to visit - it's indicated on the map with specific codes.
They are coming for us. I have neither TV nor license ... but i will get a knock on my door soon, almost guarenteed. The little man will want to search my house, look in every cupboard, under every table, behind every curtain.
Something that i must make clear. The TV license has become a really big issue here, something like an extra tax. Old people with nothing more than a TV for company are harrased and bullied into paying this R250 per year fee. This despite the SABC being the state broadcaster, with state funds, and massive advertising revenue.
Probably the biggest reason i got tired of tv was the constant bullshit of advertising. Buy this, want that, get this free. Fuck them. I will not allow them to control my thinking. It was when the kids started singing adverts to me, i think i decided.
TV to us has become you-tube downloads, a miriad of short video clips, from bikes to comedy and other interesting things. Half an hour to an hour, maybe once a week. That plus the occasional kids video, and i love my nature videos too (for the kids).
My gran wants to give us her tv, since she no longer uses it. She believes it will help the kids. I respectfully disagree, and refuse to accept this gift. I feel bad, because i have nothing but love and respect fotr my granny, then i read this and think, a lifetime membership for rubbish implants in my children's brain?
They must come.
"The team can overlay the TV licence database over the suburb/area map and establish exactly which households have TV licences and which don't. They will then also know which households to visit - it's indicated on the map with specific codes.
They are coming for us. I have neither TV nor license ... but i will get a knock on my door soon, almost guarenteed. The little man will want to search my house, look in every cupboard, under every table, behind every curtain.
Something that i must make clear. The TV license has become a really big issue here, something like an extra tax. Old people with nothing more than a TV for company are harrased and bullied into paying this R250 per year fee. This despite the SABC being the state broadcaster, with state funds, and massive advertising revenue.
Probably the biggest reason i got tired of tv was the constant bullshit of advertising. Buy this, want that, get this free. Fuck them. I will not allow them to control my thinking. It was when the kids started singing adverts to me, i think i decided.
TV to us has become you-tube downloads, a miriad of short video clips, from bikes to comedy and other interesting things. Half an hour to an hour, maybe once a week. That plus the occasional kids video, and i love my nature videos too (for the kids).
My gran wants to give us her tv, since she no longer uses it. She believes it will help the kids. I respectfully disagree, and refuse to accept this gift. I feel bad, because i have nothing but love and respect fotr my granny, then i read this and think, a lifetime membership for rubbish implants in my children's brain?
They must come.
It'got FUCKALL to do with colour
Is black SA turning old friends into foes?
February 22 2008 at 03:29PM
By Pius Adesarmi
The letters came within two days of each other. The first was an invitation from Professor Georges Harault, director of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS). Three years after my last visit to South Africa to assess the perception of Francophone African literatures in universities, IFAS was again inviting me as visiting scholar.
The second was from Chris Dunton, the chairperson of the English Department of the National University of Lesotho at Roma. Like Harault, Dunton was inviting me to Lesotho as visiting scholar.
I arranged a few other engagements and braced up for a very engaging psychic reconnection with the African continent.
'Ah, the good old days of apartheid!'
I needed the return to Africa badly. I had been away from the continent for an uncomfortable stretch, carrying out my scholarly labour in the minefield of North American academe, writing Africa "from a rift", as Achille Mbembe would put it. I also needed a reprieve from the oppression of the North American media image of Africa.
The African living here is in constant danger of accepting whatever image of Africa he or she is presented by the media as gospel truth.
In North America, I have been consistently assailed, assaulted, and oppressed with images of Africa traceable to the colonial library: Africa-as-Aids, Africa-as-hunger, Africa-as-civil war, Africa-as-corruption, Africa-as-the-antithesis-of-democracy, Africa-as-everything-we-are-glad-not-to-be.
You get tired of the ritual of explaining to charmingly ignorant interlocutors that there is a fundamental distinction between the Africa they see on CNN and the real Africa.
I also wanted a break from Occidentalism. Fernando Coronil, the scholar who coined this term, uses the concept to account for those discursive, usually innocuous processes through which the West turns difference into hierarchy and reproduces existing asymmetrical power relations. Occidentalism covers all the mundane quotidian events through which the West constantly reminds the immigrant of his otherness, strangeness, and difference.
'Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa'
Departure date finally came around. "Be careful. Urban violence is rife in South Africa," the Nigerian friends who drove me to the airport warned. I shrugged and dismissed their anxiety. There may be violence in South Africa; I certainly was not going to be scared of returning to Africa. I wasn't going to be afraid of black people in Africa.
I arrived in Johannesburg on a cold July morning. A delighted Harault was on hand at the airport to welcome me. We drove straight to the offices of IFAS located in downtown Johannesburg.
Later I announced to Harault that I was going to take a stroll. I was eager to get a feel of the same streets I had seen three years earlier.
Harault's countenance changed. "Be careful. Don't go out there with your wallet. You could get mugged." I assured Harault I would be all right but took the precaution of leaving my valuables in his office.
I started my walk on the busy Bree Street. For someone who had walked the same street three years earlier, I could not help but observe the heavy black presence. Like the Hillbrow area, blacks have taken over downtown Johannesburg.
The official principle of separate development through which racial segregation was enforced under apart-heid seems to have been replaced by what one may call an unofficial principle of voluntary separation.
While separate development instituted an order in which blacks had to move out whenever whites moved in, as was the case in Sophiatown, voluntary separation now induces whites to move out quietly whenever and wherever blacks move in.
In office complexes and shopping malls, one does not fail to notice the ubiquitous "To Let" signs, evidence of white retreat to "safe" areas of the city like Rosebank or back "home" to Britain, Holland, Canada and Australia.
I was about to cross a busy intersection when a street sign told me I was on Fox Street. Fox street! I had heard a lot of terrifying things about that street since my last trip to South Africa. It is said to be one of the most violent streets in Johannesburg. One could get mugged or killed for as little as R100. I looked around me anxiously.
I was surrounded by a sea of inscrutable black faces. I touched my forehead and found out, much to my irritation, that I was perspiring profusely. It was winter in South Africa! And to my utter embarrassment, I discovered that I relaxed and felt safer each time white faces appeared in the crowd. Here was I, a black man, looking anxiously for white faces to feel safe from black violence in an African city!
I reluctantly came to the realisation that I was far more affected by the oppression of the image of "black violence" in South Africa than I had been willing to admit.
The image of the post-apartheid black condition in South Africa always have two constantly-repeated, over-sensationalised buzzwords: mugging, robbery.
That image had quietly slipped into my subconscious and was responsible for my feeling so uneasy amidst my own kind in a busy street in Johannesburg. I hurried back to IFAS.
On hearing that I had arrived in Johannesburg, Professor Harry Garuba came from his base at the University of Cape Town to spend a weekend with me. After a joyful reunion we hit town.
Harry wanted to see downtown Johannesburg. He also needed to go to the Consulate-General of Nigeria in Rosebank.
As we meandered our way through the ever busy Bree Street, Harry could not help observing how filthy downtown Johannesburg had become.
I had made the same disturbing observation myself the day I arrived, but had been reluctant to accept the disturbing fact that decay of public infrastructure seems to be the story in areas of the city inhabited by blacks.
Predominantly black areas have become an eyesore. The beautiful lawns and flowerbeds I noticed in some areas three years earlier now tell sad stories of degradation.
Some of them have become open-air urinals. Harry and I were worried. We tried to place ourselves in the shoes of white South Africans discussing the now filthy streets of Hillbrow and downtown Johannesburg: "Ah, the good old days of apartheid!"
When Harry concluded his business at the Nigerian consulate, we took a bus and headed back to Hrault's residence.
I still don't know what it was about us that gave us away as foreigners but the other passengers, all blacks, lapsed into an uneasy silence as soon as we entered. I looked at the faces around us and thought I saw hostility.
The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Harry confirmed my worst fears when we left the bus. I had just experienced, firsthand, South African xenophobia and I was to experience it again and again throughout my three-month sojourn in that country.
Harry explained to me with the coolness of someone used to it that the black South African passengers on the bus had identified us as makwerekwere, hence the naked hostility.
Makwerekwere is the derogatory term used by black South Africans to describe non-South African blacks. It reminds one of how the ancient Greeks referred to foreigners whose language they did not understand as the Barbaroi.
To the black South African, makwerekwere refers to black immigrants from the rest of Africa, especially Nigerians. I was confounded by the fact that black South Africa had begun to manufacture its own k*****s so soon after apartheid.
As I later discovered after a series of encounters, black South Africans have found an easy explanation for the myriad problems of poverty, housing, transportation, unemployment, crime, violence, decay of public and social infrastructure.
"Ah, the makwerekwere! These Nigerians are all criminals! When they are not busy trafficking drugs, they are taking over our jobs, our houses and, worse, our women.
"All foreigners must leave this country!" What Salman Rushdie refers to as a "demonising process" of the Other is at work here and the consequences are predictably disastrous.
There is so much anger and frustration among the Nigerians I met in South Africa. Most of them have become paranoid, living permanently in fear.
In a discussion with some Nigerian medical doctors in Pretoria, I observed that their anger is directed more at black South African leaders.
"Imagine these South Africans treating us like this. They think apartheid came to an end because they fought in Sharpeville and Soweto. It means Mandela never told them the truth. Mbeki never told them the truth."
The doctors were referring to Nigeria's heavy moral, political, and financial investment in the anti-apartheid struggle.
Nigeria's financial and political commitment to that cause was total and unflinching. In the 1970s and 1980s, the South African freedom struggle was completely woven into Nigeria's national imagery, so much so that a Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, suggested we mobilised "African juju" and other maraboutic forces of African sorcery to attack PW Botha and free our black brothers in South Africa. And he wasn't joking.
Every Nigerian musician, from reggae singers to fuji musicians in the Yoruba tradition, waxed radical anti-apartheid lyrics to energise the 1970s to 1980s. "Who owns the land, who owns the land?
"We want to know who owns Papa's land," crooned Sonny Okosuns. Majek Fashek, the reggae man replied: "Now, now, now, Margaret Thatcher, free Mandela!" Victor Eshiet of The Mandators screamed: "Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa."
Everywhere you turned in the Nigeria of those heady decades, freedom for black South Africans was the dominant national agenda.
Black South Africans, including President Thabo Mbeki, found warmth, hospitality, and friendship during their years of exile in Nigeria. Many black South Africans attended Nigerian universities on Nigerian scholarships.
When it became clear that South African whites, like their European and American kinsmen, were determined to make peaceful change impossible and make violent change inevitable, Nigerians donated money to the armed struggle.
Personally, I recall donating money during special anti-apartheid fundraisers as a high school student in Nigeria.
view of this, the Nigerians I met in South Africa had only two words to describe the attitude of black South Africans to them: collective amnesia.
Prejudice has been the force majeure of so much of human history. Our pantheon of small-minded hate is formidable: Christian prejudice manufactured the unbeliever; Islamic prejudice manufactured the infidel; heterosexual prejudice manufactured the faggot; patriarchal prejudice manufactured the hysteric; European prejudice Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa manufactured the native; American prejudice manufactured the n****r; German prejudice manufactured the Jew; Israeli prejudice manufactured the Araboushim; Afrikaner prejudice manufactured the k****r.
Not to be outdone, black South Africa has manufactured the ma-kwerekwere as her unique post-apartheid contribution to this gory pantheon.
The joy of your instant-mix coffee or your instant-mix powdered milk is the considerable labour and hassle it saves you.
Just pour water, add sugar to taste, and your drink is ready. The makwere-kwere is black South Africa's instant-mix k****r, very easily produced with minimum labour.
Pius Adesanmi is Associate Professor of English and director, Project on New African Literatures (www.projectponal.com) at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
This article was originally published on page 15 of Cape Argus on February 22, 2008
February 22 2008 at 03:29PM
By Pius Adesarmi
The letters came within two days of each other. The first was an invitation from Professor Georges Harault, director of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS). Three years after my last visit to South Africa to assess the perception of Francophone African literatures in universities, IFAS was again inviting me as visiting scholar.
The second was from Chris Dunton, the chairperson of the English Department of the National University of Lesotho at Roma. Like Harault, Dunton was inviting me to Lesotho as visiting scholar.
I arranged a few other engagements and braced up for a very engaging psychic reconnection with the African continent.
'Ah, the good old days of apartheid!'
I needed the return to Africa badly. I had been away from the continent for an uncomfortable stretch, carrying out my scholarly labour in the minefield of North American academe, writing Africa "from a rift", as Achille Mbembe would put it. I also needed a reprieve from the oppression of the North American media image of Africa.
The African living here is in constant danger of accepting whatever image of Africa he or she is presented by the media as gospel truth.
In North America, I have been consistently assailed, assaulted, and oppressed with images of Africa traceable to the colonial library: Africa-as-Aids, Africa-as-hunger, Africa-as-civil war, Africa-as-corruption, Africa-as-the-antithesis-of-democracy, Africa-as-everything-we-are-glad-not-to-be.
You get tired of the ritual of explaining to charmingly ignorant interlocutors that there is a fundamental distinction between the Africa they see on CNN and the real Africa.
I also wanted a break from Occidentalism. Fernando Coronil, the scholar who coined this term, uses the concept to account for those discursive, usually innocuous processes through which the West turns difference into hierarchy and reproduces existing asymmetrical power relations. Occidentalism covers all the mundane quotidian events through which the West constantly reminds the immigrant of his otherness, strangeness, and difference.
'Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa'
Departure date finally came around. "Be careful. Urban violence is rife in South Africa," the Nigerian friends who drove me to the airport warned. I shrugged and dismissed their anxiety. There may be violence in South Africa; I certainly was not going to be scared of returning to Africa. I wasn't going to be afraid of black people in Africa.
I arrived in Johannesburg on a cold July morning. A delighted Harault was on hand at the airport to welcome me. We drove straight to the offices of IFAS located in downtown Johannesburg.
Later I announced to Harault that I was going to take a stroll. I was eager to get a feel of the same streets I had seen three years earlier.
Harault's countenance changed. "Be careful. Don't go out there with your wallet. You could get mugged." I assured Harault I would be all right but took the precaution of leaving my valuables in his office.
I started my walk on the busy Bree Street. For someone who had walked the same street three years earlier, I could not help but observe the heavy black presence. Like the Hillbrow area, blacks have taken over downtown Johannesburg.
The official principle of separate development through which racial segregation was enforced under apart-heid seems to have been replaced by what one may call an unofficial principle of voluntary separation.
While separate development instituted an order in which blacks had to move out whenever whites moved in, as was the case in Sophiatown, voluntary separation now induces whites to move out quietly whenever and wherever blacks move in.
In office complexes and shopping malls, one does not fail to notice the ubiquitous "To Let" signs, evidence of white retreat to "safe" areas of the city like Rosebank or back "home" to Britain, Holland, Canada and Australia.
I was about to cross a busy intersection when a street sign told me I was on Fox Street. Fox street! I had heard a lot of terrifying things about that street since my last trip to South Africa. It is said to be one of the most violent streets in Johannesburg. One could get mugged or killed for as little as R100. I looked around me anxiously.
I was surrounded by a sea of inscrutable black faces. I touched my forehead and found out, much to my irritation, that I was perspiring profusely. It was winter in South Africa! And to my utter embarrassment, I discovered that I relaxed and felt safer each time white faces appeared in the crowd. Here was I, a black man, looking anxiously for white faces to feel safe from black violence in an African city!
I reluctantly came to the realisation that I was far more affected by the oppression of the image of "black violence" in South Africa than I had been willing to admit.
The image of the post-apartheid black condition in South Africa always have two constantly-repeated, over-sensationalised buzzwords: mugging, robbery.
That image had quietly slipped into my subconscious and was responsible for my feeling so uneasy amidst my own kind in a busy street in Johannesburg. I hurried back to IFAS.
On hearing that I had arrived in Johannesburg, Professor Harry Garuba came from his base at the University of Cape Town to spend a weekend with me. After a joyful reunion we hit town.
Harry wanted to see downtown Johannesburg. He also needed to go to the Consulate-General of Nigeria in Rosebank.
As we meandered our way through the ever busy Bree Street, Harry could not help observing how filthy downtown Johannesburg had become.
I had made the same disturbing observation myself the day I arrived, but had been reluctant to accept the disturbing fact that decay of public infrastructure seems to be the story in areas of the city inhabited by blacks.
Predominantly black areas have become an eyesore. The beautiful lawns and flowerbeds I noticed in some areas three years earlier now tell sad stories of degradation.
Some of them have become open-air urinals. Harry and I were worried. We tried to place ourselves in the shoes of white South Africans discussing the now filthy streets of Hillbrow and downtown Johannesburg: "Ah, the good old days of apartheid!"
When Harry concluded his business at the Nigerian consulate, we took a bus and headed back to Hrault's residence.
I still don't know what it was about us that gave us away as foreigners but the other passengers, all blacks, lapsed into an uneasy silence as soon as we entered. I looked at the faces around us and thought I saw hostility.
The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Harry confirmed my worst fears when we left the bus. I had just experienced, firsthand, South African xenophobia and I was to experience it again and again throughout my three-month sojourn in that country.
Harry explained to me with the coolness of someone used to it that the black South African passengers on the bus had identified us as makwerekwere, hence the naked hostility.
Makwerekwere is the derogatory term used by black South Africans to describe non-South African blacks. It reminds one of how the ancient Greeks referred to foreigners whose language they did not understand as the Barbaroi.
To the black South African, makwerekwere refers to black immigrants from the rest of Africa, especially Nigerians. I was confounded by the fact that black South Africa had begun to manufacture its own k*****s so soon after apartheid.
As I later discovered after a series of encounters, black South Africans have found an easy explanation for the myriad problems of poverty, housing, transportation, unemployment, crime, violence, decay of public and social infrastructure.
"Ah, the makwerekwere! These Nigerians are all criminals! When they are not busy trafficking drugs, they are taking over our jobs, our houses and, worse, our women.
"All foreigners must leave this country!" What Salman Rushdie refers to as a "demonising process" of the Other is at work here and the consequences are predictably disastrous.
There is so much anger and frustration among the Nigerians I met in South Africa. Most of them have become paranoid, living permanently in fear.
In a discussion with some Nigerian medical doctors in Pretoria, I observed that their anger is directed more at black South African leaders.
"Imagine these South Africans treating us like this. They think apartheid came to an end because they fought in Sharpeville and Soweto. It means Mandela never told them the truth. Mbeki never told them the truth."
The doctors were referring to Nigeria's heavy moral, political, and financial investment in the anti-apartheid struggle.
Nigeria's financial and political commitment to that cause was total and unflinching. In the 1970s and 1980s, the South African freedom struggle was completely woven into Nigeria's national imagery, so much so that a Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, suggested we mobilised "African juju" and other maraboutic forces of African sorcery to attack PW Botha and free our black brothers in South Africa. And he wasn't joking.
Every Nigerian musician, from reggae singers to fuji musicians in the Yoruba tradition, waxed radical anti-apartheid lyrics to energise the 1970s to 1980s. "Who owns the land, who owns the land?
"We want to know who owns Papa's land," crooned Sonny Okosuns. Majek Fashek, the reggae man replied: "Now, now, now, Margaret Thatcher, free Mandela!" Victor Eshiet of The Mandators screamed: "Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa."
Everywhere you turned in the Nigeria of those heady decades, freedom for black South Africans was the dominant national agenda.
Black South Africans, including President Thabo Mbeki, found warmth, hospitality, and friendship during their years of exile in Nigeria. Many black South Africans attended Nigerian universities on Nigerian scholarships.
When it became clear that South African whites, like their European and American kinsmen, were determined to make peaceful change impossible and make violent change inevitable, Nigerians donated money to the armed struggle.
Personally, I recall donating money during special anti-apartheid fundraisers as a high school student in Nigeria.
view of this, the Nigerians I met in South Africa had only two words to describe the attitude of black South Africans to them: collective amnesia.
Prejudice has been the force majeure of so much of human history. Our pantheon of small-minded hate is formidable: Christian prejudice manufactured the unbeliever; Islamic prejudice manufactured the infidel; heterosexual prejudice manufactured the faggot; patriarchal prejudice manufactured the hysteric; European prejudice Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa manufactured the native; American prejudice manufactured the n****r; German prejudice manufactured the Jew; Israeli prejudice manufactured the Araboushim; Afrikaner prejudice manufactured the k****r.
Not to be outdone, black South Africa has manufactured the ma-kwerekwere as her unique post-apartheid contribution to this gory pantheon.
The joy of your instant-mix coffee or your instant-mix powdered milk is the considerable labour and hassle it saves you.
Just pour water, add sugar to taste, and your drink is ready. The makwere-kwere is black South Africa's instant-mix k****r, very easily produced with minimum labour.
Pius Adesanmi is Associate Professor of English and director, Project on New African Literatures (www.projectponal.com) at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
This article was originally published on page 15 of Cape Argus on February 22, 2008
Friday, 22 February 2008
Sea Fever
I MUST go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
The Poet Laureate Sir John Masefield
___________________________________________________________________
This poem should best be read aloud. If you go to the link, the next poem is cargoes. I memorized it at school, and have never regretted it. Something so poignant about what we value.
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
The Poet Laureate Sir John Masefield
___________________________________________________________________
This poem should best be read aloud. If you go to the link, the next poem is cargoes. I memorized it at school, and have never regretted it. Something so poignant about what we value.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Democracy
Democracy can best be described as 2 wolves and a sheep dicussing what is for dinner - unknown
Democracy is supposed to be the best way of balancing opposing forces. It's also a popularity contest. Someow these 2 ideals are by their very nature incompatible.
We should choose our leaders, and they should act in our interests, and we should all live happily ever after. But no, it doesn't work like that. In america, the money controls both sides, so it's hobsons choice, ie none at all. The money always wins. In south africa, we have the anc, and everyone else. Every 4 years they fabricate another win, and continue to do as they please.
I don't joke about fabricating either, the number of anc votes has been consistent over the last 3 elections, despite massive increases in support for everyone else. The only plausable explanation lies in our open border policy, and the millions of northern africans invading us annually.
As to accountability, there is none. As the text of TIME FOR TRUTH states, several ministers should have been fired, years ago, and yet they hang on to their posts in a similar fashion to royal families. Minister of health, lied about past criminal convictions. Get this: she stole from patients while working as a nurse. Then lied about it to south africa. Mbeki knew, he lied too. She has created policy that kills millions of poor people, while advocating garlic and potatoes. She is a known drinker, and people have lost their jobs over her demands for alcohol IN A HOSPITAL BED. Then she gets a liver transplant. Now an old fat woman who is a drinker would never be allowed a transplant under normal conditions, but we are assured that procedure was followed. Yes, which procedure i wonder? I think it's rather bitter irony that this is the minister of health. Something very Orwellian about this.
Almost as much as the national police commissioner who was also the head of interpol, first admitting to being friends with a known crime boss ... AND SEEING NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! Then the man who got a warrant of arrest against him gets fired, wthin the week, only to have his successor confirm the case! Also (shit i'm NOT making this up) that the president and several cabinet ministers knew full well of the accusations against this chief policeman. Mbeki had stated that nobody had informed him of any wrongdoing, and if they had, he would have taken notice.
A BLATANT LIE.
Ok i'm getting sidetracked here. The anc is the party with most voters. They say ho becomes president. And they are able to approve or deny any parlimentary issues.
They do not listen to anyone else, nor even pretend to.
It takes supreme court orders to get these people to answer parlimentary questions, yet they (again blatantly lie) that the questions had been answered.
I can not even stomach zuma. But it must be said, there is one issue on which we agree. BRING ME MY FUCKING MACHINE GUN. And i don't care what the zulu for that is.
Western civilisation has the advantage of having taken rulers out into the streets, and shot. And despite all else, modern rulers know this, it keeps them getting TOO out of hand. Africa desperately needs that, starting in zim, and working outwards.
Democracy needs that, but they are hardly about to teach it to kids, something they'd be far better knowing than any pledge acknowledging past injustices. What south africa has politically is something europe left behind several centuries ago, and that is tribalism. And the biggest tribe wins,to the detriment of all others.
We (any educated people) try teach them (those that do not know) balance, but sadly africa is too brutal. And the common man is poor, downtrodden and uneducated. This suits the zumas of this world. They know that such people are easy to manipulate, and i know a lot of people who do not understand the concept of secret ballot. What they do understand is their neighbour, who burned to death for having attended an opposition rally. This happens here, and as hards it for you foreigners to conceive of, it is as hard for us to conceive otherwise.
God bless africa. We need it.
Democracy is supposed to be the best way of balancing opposing forces. It's also a popularity contest. Someow these 2 ideals are by their very nature incompatible.
We should choose our leaders, and they should act in our interests, and we should all live happily ever after. But no, it doesn't work like that. In america, the money controls both sides, so it's hobsons choice, ie none at all. The money always wins. In south africa, we have the anc, and everyone else. Every 4 years they fabricate another win, and continue to do as they please.
I don't joke about fabricating either, the number of anc votes has been consistent over the last 3 elections, despite massive increases in support for everyone else. The only plausable explanation lies in our open border policy, and the millions of northern africans invading us annually.
As to accountability, there is none. As the text of TIME FOR TRUTH states, several ministers should have been fired, years ago, and yet they hang on to their posts in a similar fashion to royal families. Minister of health, lied about past criminal convictions. Get this: she stole from patients while working as a nurse. Then lied about it to south africa. Mbeki knew, he lied too. She has created policy that kills millions of poor people, while advocating garlic and potatoes. She is a known drinker, and people have lost their jobs over her demands for alcohol IN A HOSPITAL BED. Then she gets a liver transplant. Now an old fat woman who is a drinker would never be allowed a transplant under normal conditions, but we are assured that procedure was followed. Yes, which procedure i wonder? I think it's rather bitter irony that this is the minister of health. Something very Orwellian about this.
Almost as much as the national police commissioner who was also the head of interpol, first admitting to being friends with a known crime boss ... AND SEEING NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! Then the man who got a warrant of arrest against him gets fired, wthin the week, only to have his successor confirm the case! Also (shit i'm NOT making this up) that the president and several cabinet ministers knew full well of the accusations against this chief policeman. Mbeki had stated that nobody had informed him of any wrongdoing, and if they had, he would have taken notice.
A BLATANT LIE.
Ok i'm getting sidetracked here. The anc is the party with most voters. They say ho becomes president. And they are able to approve or deny any parlimentary issues.
They do not listen to anyone else, nor even pretend to.
It takes supreme court orders to get these people to answer parlimentary questions, yet they (again blatantly lie) that the questions had been answered.
I can not even stomach zuma. But it must be said, there is one issue on which we agree. BRING ME MY FUCKING MACHINE GUN. And i don't care what the zulu for that is.
Western civilisation has the advantage of having taken rulers out into the streets, and shot. And despite all else, modern rulers know this, it keeps them getting TOO out of hand. Africa desperately needs that, starting in zim, and working outwards.
Democracy needs that, but they are hardly about to teach it to kids, something they'd be far better knowing than any pledge acknowledging past injustices. What south africa has politically is something europe left behind several centuries ago, and that is tribalism. And the biggest tribe wins,to the detriment of all others.
We (any educated people) try teach them (those that do not know) balance, but sadly africa is too brutal. And the common man is poor, downtrodden and uneducated. This suits the zumas of this world. They know that such people are easy to manipulate, and i know a lot of people who do not understand the concept of secret ballot. What they do understand is their neighbour, who burned to death for having attended an opposition rally. This happens here, and as hards it for you foreigners to conceive of, it is as hard for us to conceive otherwise.
God bless africa. We need it.
Arbitrary observation.
My blog is going really well, thanks to all who visit. I hope there is something that makes you smile, or think, or cry, when approprate.
I have received more comments on my TIME FOR THE TRUTH post than any other. An urban legend almost already, and in the internet age it's probably been around the world about a zillion times, like superman, undoing history.
The strange thing that i've noticed is this, you post 100 topics, and one will find "favour" with the public. Seldom one you thought would, and often one you feel unimportant.
It happened on Arrive Alive recently (go see, it's on the blogroll) where they discussed the death of some soapie star (i neither watch, nor want a tv). Now arrive alive posts almost daily about road deaths in and around the country, each providing the bare bones of what happened, with information supplied from the medical personnel who where on the scene, and photo's, usually gruesome.
In the carnage that is our road system, where children and adults are killed without prejudice, usually the innocent ones too, and no-one bats a freakin eye, all of a sudden words like "fair" and "justice" and "pay for it" are used.
Jonckie answered VERY well, basically stating that no, we don't know what happened yet, and no, it's not possible, never mind ethical to point fingers.
Either way, people are so bloody small minded sometimes, that the life of an actress means more than a busload of children.
"To summarize the summary of the summary: People are a problem" - Douglas Adams
I have received more comments on my TIME FOR THE TRUTH post than any other. An urban legend almost already, and in the internet age it's probably been around the world about a zillion times, like superman, undoing history.
The strange thing that i've noticed is this, you post 100 topics, and one will find "favour" with the public. Seldom one you thought would, and often one you feel unimportant.
It happened on Arrive Alive recently (go see, it's on the blogroll) where they discussed the death of some soapie star (i neither watch, nor want a tv). Now arrive alive posts almost daily about road deaths in and around the country, each providing the bare bones of what happened, with information supplied from the medical personnel who where on the scene, and photo's, usually gruesome.
In the carnage that is our road system, where children and adults are killed without prejudice, usually the innocent ones too, and no-one bats a freakin eye, all of a sudden words like "fair" and "justice" and "pay for it" are used.
Jonckie answered VERY well, basically stating that no, we don't know what happened yet, and no, it's not possible, never mind ethical to point fingers.
Either way, people are so bloody small minded sometimes, that the life of an actress means more than a busload of children.
"To summarize the summary of the summary: People are a problem" - Douglas Adams
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Kids have PTSD
SA kids 'living in fear'
18/02/2008 12:36 - (SA)
Christel Raubenheimer, Beeld
Pretoria - South Africa is already paying the price of children who live in fear because of crime, or who have already experienced the trauma of crime.
"Our country will still be paying that price for a long time to come. We're not fooling our children. They know what the score is," children's educational psychologist Professor Kobus Maree said on Wednesday.
In one of the latest crime incidents a Grade 7 pupil at Trinity House Preparatory School in Randpark Ridge, 12-year-old Emily Williams died when she was hit by a stray bullet during a gunfight between house robbers and security guards.
A clinical psychologist at the Children's Trauma Clinic in Pretoria, Marita Rademeyer, said research had shown that between 20% and 40% of South African children were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Far-reaching consequences
"Trauma changes a child's brain functions and it has far-reaching consequences."
It can, for example, lead to children struggling to concentrate at school, sleeping badly or being aggressive and fearful.
Maree said most South African children were genuinely traumatised. "They're exposed to events that are way beyond their control. That's the worst. It doesn't surprise me that children develop physical or mental illnesses."
In his view school subjects such as life skills could be a lot more useful in helping children to cope with trauma.
He said schools could use a lot more of this time to discuss trauma.
"If you can verbalise something, it already brings relief. There is no substitute for therapy."
"Don't lie to children. Be brutally honest with them. Tell them about everything that you do to keep them safe, such as closing doors, but that you can't always do it."
"Take precautionary steps and act intelligently. Do whatever is in your power to keep crime away from your doors," Maree advised parents.
He said children were "undeniably fearful", and their childhood years, that were supposed to be carefree, were everything but that.
"It comes to the fore in later years."
Rademeyer said every area of a child's development was influenced by trauma.
"Our land is in deep trouble. As parents we become emotionally blunted, but any trauma is hell on the children. We must encourage them - but not press them - to act out and talk about these events," she said.
The latest available police statistics on child victims of crime, for the period 2005 to 2006, showed that 1 075 children were murder victims.
Of the attempted murders reported, 1 378 were children. In this period nearly 24 000 children were raped.
According to the SA Police Service annual report for that year an unknown number of these crimes were committed during other crime events, such as house robberies, gang fights, taxi violence and the like, and the victims were not necessarily the targets.
_______________________________________________________________
I had hoped to be positive, but something like this catches your attention, and stops you dead. Numbers lie. How to measure fear? While we have not (thank god) been victims of violent crime directly, my kids know all about it, from friends, from papers, for crying out loud they're not stupid, they know.
Krokodil suggested i leave the country and I tend to agree. But god help you if you call me a coward. Or a racist. I am neither.
My children are my flesh, my blood, my air. They deserve more than random brutality. Family of a friend of mine was hijacked recently. The cowardly cnuts put a gun against a babies head. Make no mistake, they would have pulled the trigger.
People in times of WAR suffer PTSD, kids .... who can justify this?
18/02/2008 12:36 - (SA)
Christel Raubenheimer, Beeld
Pretoria - South Africa is already paying the price of children who live in fear because of crime, or who have already experienced the trauma of crime.
"Our country will still be paying that price for a long time to come. We're not fooling our children. They know what the score is," children's educational psychologist Professor Kobus Maree said on Wednesday.
In one of the latest crime incidents a Grade 7 pupil at Trinity House Preparatory School in Randpark Ridge, 12-year-old Emily Williams died when she was hit by a stray bullet during a gunfight between house robbers and security guards.
A clinical psychologist at the Children's Trauma Clinic in Pretoria, Marita Rademeyer, said research had shown that between 20% and 40% of South African children were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Far-reaching consequences
"Trauma changes a child's brain functions and it has far-reaching consequences."
It can, for example, lead to children struggling to concentrate at school, sleeping badly or being aggressive and fearful.
Maree said most South African children were genuinely traumatised. "They're exposed to events that are way beyond their control. That's the worst. It doesn't surprise me that children develop physical or mental illnesses."
In his view school subjects such as life skills could be a lot more useful in helping children to cope with trauma.
He said schools could use a lot more of this time to discuss trauma.
"If you can verbalise something, it already brings relief. There is no substitute for therapy."
"Don't lie to children. Be brutally honest with them. Tell them about everything that you do to keep them safe, such as closing doors, but that you can't always do it."
"Take precautionary steps and act intelligently. Do whatever is in your power to keep crime away from your doors," Maree advised parents.
He said children were "undeniably fearful", and their childhood years, that were supposed to be carefree, were everything but that.
"It comes to the fore in later years."
Rademeyer said every area of a child's development was influenced by trauma.
"Our land is in deep trouble. As parents we become emotionally blunted, but any trauma is hell on the children. We must encourage them - but not press them - to act out and talk about these events," she said.
The latest available police statistics on child victims of crime, for the period 2005 to 2006, showed that 1 075 children were murder victims.
Of the attempted murders reported, 1 378 were children. In this period nearly 24 000 children were raped.
According to the SA Police Service annual report for that year an unknown number of these crimes were committed during other crime events, such as house robberies, gang fights, taxi violence and the like, and the victims were not necessarily the targets.
_______________________________________________________________
I had hoped to be positive, but something like this catches your attention, and stops you dead. Numbers lie. How to measure fear? While we have not (thank god) been victims of violent crime directly, my kids know all about it, from friends, from papers, for crying out loud they're not stupid, they know.
Krokodil suggested i leave the country and I tend to agree. But god help you if you call me a coward. Or a racist. I am neither.
My children are my flesh, my blood, my air. They deserve more than random brutality. Family of a friend of mine was hijacked recently. The cowardly cnuts put a gun against a babies head. Make no mistake, they would have pulled the trigger.
People in times of WAR suffer PTSD, kids .... who can justify this?
Newspaper headline fubars
58 Actual Newspaper Headlines (collected by journalists)
1. Something Went Wrong In Jet Crash, Expert Says
2. Police Begin Campaign To Run Down Jaywalkers
3. Saftey Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted
4. Drunk Gets Nine Months In Violin Case
5. Survivor Of Siamese Twins Joins Parents
6. Farmer Bill Dies In House
7. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
8. Is There A Ring Of Debris Around Uranus?
9. Stud Tires Out
10. Prostitutes Appeal To Pope
11. Panda Mating Fails: Veterinarian Takes Over
12. Soviet Virgin Lands Short Of Goal Again
13. British Left Waffles On Falkland Islands
14. Lung Cancer In Women Mushrooms
15. Eye Drops Off Shelf
16. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
17. Reagan Wins On Budget, But More Lies Ahead
18. Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
19. Shot Off Woman’s Leg Helps Nicklaus to 66
20. Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax
21. Plane Too Close To Ground, Crash Probe Told
22. Miners Refuse to Work After Death
23. Juvenile Court To Try Shooting Defendant
24. Stolen Painting Found By Tree
25. Two Soviet Ships Collide, One Dies
26. Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years In Checkout Counter
27. Killer Sentenced To Die For Second Time In 10 Years
28. Never Withhold Herpes Infection From Loved One
29. Drunken Drivers Paid $1000 in ‘84
30. War Dims Hope For Peace
31. If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last a While
32. Cold Wave Linked To Temperatures
33. Enfields Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
34. Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
35. Deer Kill 17,000
36. Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
37. Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge
38. New Study Of Obesity Looks For Larger Test Group
39. Astronaut Takes Blame For Gas In Spacecraft
40. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
41. Chef Throws His Heart Into Helping Needy
42. Arson Suspect Is Held In Massachusetts Fire
43. British Union Finds Dwarves In Short Supply
44. Ban On Soliciting Dead in Trotwood
45. Lansing Residents Can Drop Off Trees
46. Local High School Dropouts Cut In Half
47. New Vaccine May Contain Rabies
48. Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing
49. Deaf College Opens Doors To Hearing
50. Air Head Fired
51. Steals Clock, Faces Time
52. Prosecutor Releases Probe into Undersheriff
53. Old School Pillars are Replaced By Alumni
54. Bank Drive-In Window Blocked By Board
55. Hospitals are Sued By 7 Foot Doctors
56. Some Pieces Of Rock Hudson Sold At Auction
57. Sex Education Delayed, Teachers Request Training
58. Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
____________________________________________________________
Each and every one of these is a gem, i particulary like the last *evil chuckle*
1. Something Went Wrong In Jet Crash, Expert Says
2. Police Begin Campaign To Run Down Jaywalkers
3. Saftey Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted
4. Drunk Gets Nine Months In Violin Case
5. Survivor Of Siamese Twins Joins Parents
6. Farmer Bill Dies In House
7. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
8. Is There A Ring Of Debris Around Uranus?
9. Stud Tires Out
10. Prostitutes Appeal To Pope
11. Panda Mating Fails: Veterinarian Takes Over
12. Soviet Virgin Lands Short Of Goal Again
13. British Left Waffles On Falkland Islands
14. Lung Cancer In Women Mushrooms
15. Eye Drops Off Shelf
16. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
17. Reagan Wins On Budget, But More Lies Ahead
18. Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
19. Shot Off Woman’s Leg Helps Nicklaus to 66
20. Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax
21. Plane Too Close To Ground, Crash Probe Told
22. Miners Refuse to Work After Death
23. Juvenile Court To Try Shooting Defendant
24. Stolen Painting Found By Tree
25. Two Soviet Ships Collide, One Dies
26. Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years In Checkout Counter
27. Killer Sentenced To Die For Second Time In 10 Years
28. Never Withhold Herpes Infection From Loved One
29. Drunken Drivers Paid $1000 in ‘84
30. War Dims Hope For Peace
31. If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last a While
32. Cold Wave Linked To Temperatures
33. Enfields Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
34. Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
35. Deer Kill 17,000
36. Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
37. Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge
38. New Study Of Obesity Looks For Larger Test Group
39. Astronaut Takes Blame For Gas In Spacecraft
40. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
41. Chef Throws His Heart Into Helping Needy
42. Arson Suspect Is Held In Massachusetts Fire
43. British Union Finds Dwarves In Short Supply
44. Ban On Soliciting Dead in Trotwood
45. Lansing Residents Can Drop Off Trees
46. Local High School Dropouts Cut In Half
47. New Vaccine May Contain Rabies
48. Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing
49. Deaf College Opens Doors To Hearing
50. Air Head Fired
51. Steals Clock, Faces Time
52. Prosecutor Releases Probe into Undersheriff
53. Old School Pillars are Replaced By Alumni
54. Bank Drive-In Window Blocked By Board
55. Hospitals are Sued By 7 Foot Doctors
56. Some Pieces Of Rock Hudson Sold At Auction
57. Sex Education Delayed, Teachers Request Training
58. Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
____________________________________________________________
Each and every one of these is a gem, i particulary like the last *evil chuckle*
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
Wishbone Ash
Wishbone Ash - Throw Down The Sword Lyrics
Throw down the sword,
The fight is done and over,
Neither lost, neither won.
To cast away the fury of the battle
And turn my weary eyes for home.
There were times when I stood at death's own door
Only hoping for an answer.
Throw down the sword,
And leave the glory -
A story time can never change.
To walk the road, the load I have to carry
-
A journey's end, a wounded soul.
There were times when I stood at death's own door
Only searching for an answer.
_____________________________________________________
Not the most inspired video i'll admit, but this band has a certain sound to it that is unique. I have the album "The king Will Come" at home, and few artists leave me feeling as peaceful as this group. Harmonious, melodious, and technically brilliant, one piece took me several listens to work out that it was in fact 2 guitars playing, not just one, in almost perfect union.
Not many have heard of them, but highly recommended if you are into electro rock. Known as pioneers of their sound, this is what i listen to when i need to be calmed.
Monday, 18 February 2008
Buccaneer ... RIP
The world is much poorer. Brian Cannoo, AKA Buccaneer succumbed to injuries received in a motorbike accident over the weekend. No words can atone for the loss of this great man. His legacy will be Think Bike, an organisation dedicated to safety awareness for bikes, and cars alike.
He was known for his big heart, generosity, and strenth. He was passionate about helping people be safer on the roads, educating and helping young riders.
I knew him for only a short time, but am richer for it.
Ride the skyways brother, Godspeed.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Only the strong
Ask yourself where you're
heading for.
Deviate - no need
to conform.
All it takes is some
confidence.
Seize the day, it might not
come again.
Only the strong will survive
Stand tall and never say die
Come out from where you hide
No need to swallow your pride
Only the strong will survive
get up and reach for the sky
Don't wait for no-one and
Don't let your heart be denied
Face the truth and
control your fate.
Set the pace
never hesitate.
All that scares you and
makes you doubt
Break the silence, just
spit it out.
From Yngwe Malmsteen
heading for.
Deviate - no need
to conform.
All it takes is some
confidence.
Seize the day, it might not
come again.
Only the strong will survive
Stand tall and never say die
Come out from where you hide
No need to swallow your pride
Only the strong will survive
get up and reach for the sky
Don't wait for no-one and
Don't let your heart be denied
Face the truth and
control your fate.
Set the pace
never hesitate.
All that scares you and
makes you doubt
Break the silence, just
spit it out.
From Yngwe Malmsteen
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
School pledge
"We the youth of South Africa, recognising the injustices of our past, honour those who suffered and sacrificed for justice and freedom.
"We will respect and protect the dignity of each person, and stand up for justice.
"We sincerely declare that we shall uphold the rights and values of our Constitution and promise to act in accordance with the duties and responsibilities that flow from these rights."
___________________________________________________________________
Oh crap, nowi have to explain to my kids why i will not allow them to say this.
Is it obvious or do i have to explain to you too?
"We will respect and protect the dignity of each person, and stand up for justice.
"We sincerely declare that we shall uphold the rights and values of our Constitution and promise to act in accordance with the duties and responsibilities that flow from these rights."
___________________________________________________________________
Oh crap, nowi have to explain to my kids why i will not allow them to say this.
Is it obvious or do i have to explain to you too?
Luna
Luna is the Latin name of the Earth's Moon (Latin: lūna) as well as the Roman moon goddess Luna. In Greek mythology, Selene "moon" was an archaic lunar deity and the daughter of the titans Hyperion and Theia. In Roman mythology the moon goddess is called Luna, Latin for "moon".
Like most moon deities, Selene plays a fairly large role in her pantheon. However, Selene was eventually largely supplanted by Artemis, and Luna by Diana.
In post-Renaissance art, Selene is generally depicted as a beautiful woman with a pale face, riding a silver chariot pulled by a yoke of oxen or a pair of horses. Often, she has been shown riding a horse or bull, wearing robes and a half-moon on her head and carrying a torch. Essentially, Selene is the moon goddess but is literally defined as 'the moon'
The Roman moon goddess, Luna, had a temple on the Aventine Hill. It was built in the sixth century BC, but was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome during Nero's reign. There was also a temple dedicated to Luna Noctiluca ("Luna that shines by night") on the Palatine Hill. There were festivals in honor of Luna on March 31, August 24 and August 29.
The Moon (Latin: Luna) is Earth's only natural satellite, and is the fifth largest one in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,403 km, which is about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The Moon has a diameter of 3,474 km[8] —slightly more than a quarter that of the Earth, and about two-thirds of the average east–west distance across the United States. This means that the volume of the Moon is about 2 percent that of Earth. The gravitational pull at its surface is about 17 percent of the Earth's. The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth every 27.3 days, and the periodic variations in the geometry of the Earth–Moon–Sun system are responsible for the lunar phases that repeat every 29.5 days.
Lunatic
Lunacy
Loony
Luna
Luna is the Latin name of the Earth's Moon (Latin: lūna) as well as the Roman moon goddess Luna. It may also refer to:
Ghost biker
http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Look/ghost_riderGhost Rider
Worldwide
Words By Patrick James
You might have seen them on your way to work—old bikes spray-painted white, adorned with plaques, and permanently bolted to street signs. These Ghost Bikes are sobering epitaphs for bikers who’ve been hit or killed by automobiles. The first Ghost Bike appeared in St. Louis in 2003, and now the monuments have been erected by cyclist groups in nearly 30 cities around the world, serving as a stark reminder that drivers must share the road with more fragile means of conveyance. "I wish I never had to do another one," explains Ryan Nuckel, who helps create the bikes in New York. "But as long as there’s a need, they'll continue."
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
This is not my writing, however it is certainly brilliant.Monday, 11 February 2008
TIME FOR THE TRUTH
For the past 13 years we have heard how all our problems are the fault of the long since departed apartheid regime.
The ANC spin doctors resort to all sorts of excuses when things go wrong, as they have been doing for the past 10 years.
Now is the time for the truth.
In 1994 the ANC took over a country that was in a healthy state of repair, with an Education system rated one of the top ten in the world.
A Health system that produced pioneers in many fields of medical research and enjoyed the respect of the medical fraternity the world over.
A transportation system that was the envy of the rest of Africa, and a network of roads equal to the best in Europe.
A police force that controlled crime.
A water supply rated one of the cleanest in the world.
What have we now?
An education system rated at the bottom end of a field of 50, with a required pass rate of 33% (the lowest requirement of any system in the world, and still our pupils are unable to achieve this miserable standard).
We have a health system where those in control believe beetroot and garlic will cure AIDS, where babies die in hospitals through lack of knowledge, medication, equipment and efficient care.
Where untrained staff forget to check regularly on patients in serious condition.
We have a Minerals and Energy Minister who suggests that businesses close for certain periods to conserve electricity whilst South Arica suffers power failures, but until very recently continued to supply electrical power to our northern and eastern neighbours.
We have cholera outbreaks because of contaminated water supplies in rural areas.
We have a crime rate which is just about the highest in the world.
We have a government composed of officials under investigation for corruption, theft, fraud, consorting with criminals, drunken driving, speeding and many other forms of law breaking.
Time to tell the truth – the ANC government is incapable of running our country. And their policies border on insanity.
The ANC policy of Affirmative Action has stripped the country of 75% of its skilled population and is responsible for the deprivation of the constitutional and social rights of the white population.
The practice of putting black people in a position way above their ceiling of competence is now showing the inevitable signs of efficiency erosion at all levels. Along with the inevitable rise in prices and lowering of standards of service and living.
The Black Economic Empowerment policy has empowered a certain group of people (all ANC members) at the expense of the entire population. And has cost, and continues to cost, our country billions of rand.
The ANC government officials, both local and national have embarked on a policy of rewarding themselves with excessive salaries, and ridiculous bonuses, for utter inefficiency.
Eskom is another case in point, with an alleged R143 million paid in bonuses, whilst the country suffers an energy crisis due to ignorance and lack of planning. This crisis now threatens the economy of our country.
I am sure many of those who operate a Telkom service have had the pleasure of holding on for 49 minutes when contacting Telkom's help line. (My personal best was 59 minutes on January 26, 2008. I must admit that I was helped after that period, which was a refreshing change).
We have a crime rate that is the envy of the Russian Mafia, who will no doubt soon be relocating to Johannesburg and Cape Town. (The Sicilian Brotherhood are already here it seems, enjoying the friendship of some of our Commissioners and Ministers).
We have roads which, in the rural areas, are slowly crumbling away, if they have not already disintegrated.
We have roads in our towns and cities which have more potholes than a slice of Swiss cheese. We have traffic lights which do not work for at least 2 - 3 days each month.
As a reward for this farcical and criminal inefficiency, the government hands out awards and bonuses to all concerned.
Let's be honest. Several Ministers should have been fired by the President 4 years ago. Those involved in Health, Safety and Security, Education, Home Affairs, Land Affairs, Labour and Minerals and Energy should long since have walked the plank.
The latest madness is to disband the one department that stands between absolute corrupt government and the man in the street, the Scorpions.
In fact our democracy, such as it is, is under severe threat.
We have a former Minister of Defence who bought fighter planes which the airforce did not want, and who, it is alleged by a former ANC Minister, received R39-R50 million for his troubles.
We have two submarines (cost R1.6 billion a piece, it is alleged) which are languishing in Cape Town Harbour as no one can drive them.
We also have a fancy army, which costs millions monthly, with no one to fight. Which is why we have millions unemployed and without shelter.
And 4 million refugees, which we cannot afford to cater for.
But if one criticises the present ANC government, (which should be one’s democratic right), one is labeled 'racist'. But the biggest racists are those who accuse others of racism, and everyone knows where they are.
Let's be honest, tell the truth and declare quite openly, the ANC are incapable of running this country.
The Pied Piper.
The ANC spin doctors resort to all sorts of excuses when things go wrong, as they have been doing for the past 10 years.
Now is the time for the truth.
In 1994 the ANC took over a country that was in a healthy state of repair, with an Education system rated one of the top ten in the world.
A Health system that produced pioneers in many fields of medical research and enjoyed the respect of the medical fraternity the world over.
A transportation system that was the envy of the rest of Africa, and a network of roads equal to the best in Europe.
A police force that controlled crime.
A water supply rated one of the cleanest in the world.
What have we now?
An education system rated at the bottom end of a field of 50, with a required pass rate of 33% (the lowest requirement of any system in the world, and still our pupils are unable to achieve this miserable standard).
We have a health system where those in control believe beetroot and garlic will cure AIDS, where babies die in hospitals through lack of knowledge, medication, equipment and efficient care.
Where untrained staff forget to check regularly on patients in serious condition.
We have a Minerals and Energy Minister who suggests that businesses close for certain periods to conserve electricity whilst South Arica suffers power failures, but until very recently continued to supply electrical power to our northern and eastern neighbours.
We have cholera outbreaks because of contaminated water supplies in rural areas.
We have a crime rate which is just about the highest in the world.
We have a government composed of officials under investigation for corruption, theft, fraud, consorting with criminals, drunken driving, speeding and many other forms of law breaking.
Time to tell the truth – the ANC government is incapable of running our country. And their policies border on insanity.
The ANC policy of Affirmative Action has stripped the country of 75% of its skilled population and is responsible for the deprivation of the constitutional and social rights of the white population.
The practice of putting black people in a position way above their ceiling of competence is now showing the inevitable signs of efficiency erosion at all levels. Along with the inevitable rise in prices and lowering of standards of service and living.
The Black Economic Empowerment policy has empowered a certain group of people (all ANC members) at the expense of the entire population. And has cost, and continues to cost, our country billions of rand.
The ANC government officials, both local and national have embarked on a policy of rewarding themselves with excessive salaries, and ridiculous bonuses, for utter inefficiency.
Eskom is another case in point, with an alleged R143 million paid in bonuses, whilst the country suffers an energy crisis due to ignorance and lack of planning. This crisis now threatens the economy of our country.
I am sure many of those who operate a Telkom service have had the pleasure of holding on for 49 minutes when contacting Telkom's help line. (My personal best was 59 minutes on January 26, 2008. I must admit that I was helped after that period, which was a refreshing change).
We have a crime rate that is the envy of the Russian Mafia, who will no doubt soon be relocating to Johannesburg and Cape Town. (The Sicilian Brotherhood are already here it seems, enjoying the friendship of some of our Commissioners and Ministers).
We have roads which, in the rural areas, are slowly crumbling away, if they have not already disintegrated.
We have roads in our towns and cities which have more potholes than a slice of Swiss cheese. We have traffic lights which do not work for at least 2 - 3 days each month.
As a reward for this farcical and criminal inefficiency, the government hands out awards and bonuses to all concerned.
Let's be honest. Several Ministers should have been fired by the President 4 years ago. Those involved in Health, Safety and Security, Education, Home Affairs, Land Affairs, Labour and Minerals and Energy should long since have walked the plank.
The latest madness is to disband the one department that stands between absolute corrupt government and the man in the street, the Scorpions.
In fact our democracy, such as it is, is under severe threat.
We have a former Minister of Defence who bought fighter planes which the airforce did not want, and who, it is alleged by a former ANC Minister, received R39-R50 million for his troubles.
We have two submarines (cost R1.6 billion a piece, it is alleged) which are languishing in Cape Town Harbour as no one can drive them.
We also have a fancy army, which costs millions monthly, with no one to fight. Which is why we have millions unemployed and without shelter.
And 4 million refugees, which we cannot afford to cater for.
But if one criticises the present ANC government, (which should be one’s democratic right), one is labeled 'racist'. But the biggest racists are those who accuse others of racism, and everyone knows where they are.
Let's be honest, tell the truth and declare quite openly, the ANC are incapable of running this country.
The Pied Piper.
Eskom to get giant candle
Eskom to get giant candle
10/02/2008 17:28 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Freedom Front Plus leader Dr Pieter Mulder will present Eskom management with a huge candle and the FF Plus's database of 1 800 skilled unemployed or under-employed South Africans on Monday.
The ceremony will take place at the main entrance to Eskom headquarters at Megawatt Park, north of Johannesburg, said the FF+.
"The purpose of the ceremony is to convey to Eskom the frustration of members of the public who have been plagued by Eskom's load-shedding practices (often having to settle for candlelight).
"It also is to offer Eskom the services of hundreds of skilled South Africans who would have loved to be employed by them, but for the limitations of affirmative action practices," said the FF+.
___________________________________________________________________________
Ok this IS funny!!!
Since when do electricity suppliers get given CANDLES!!!??? hehehehehe
10/02/2008 17:28 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Freedom Front Plus leader Dr Pieter Mulder will present Eskom management with a huge candle and the FF Plus's database of 1 800 skilled unemployed or under-employed South Africans on Monday.
The ceremony will take place at the main entrance to Eskom headquarters at Megawatt Park, north of Johannesburg, said the FF+.
"The purpose of the ceremony is to convey to Eskom the frustration of members of the public who have been plagued by Eskom's load-shedding practices (often having to settle for candlelight).
"It also is to offer Eskom the services of hundreds of skilled South Africans who would have loved to be employed by them, but for the limitations of affirmative action practices," said the FF+.
___________________________________________________________________________
Ok this IS funny!!!
Since when do electricity suppliers get given CANDLES!!!??? hehehehehe
Lies, damned lies, politics
Mbeki doesn't like Pik's bright idea
Peter Fabricius
February 10 2008 at 01:14PM
Pik Botha, the former foreign minister, has been rebuffed by President Thabo Mbeki in his efforts to persuade the government to set up a high-powered body to manage and monitor infrastructure development and service delivery.
Botha said this week that he hoped that Jacob Zuma, the new ANC president, would be more receptive to his ideas. Botha said he was extremely concerned that the country was heading for a huge infrastructure collapse, not only in electricity but also in water and other services.
Botha said he had met Frank Chikane, Mbeki's director-general, in January 2006 to raise his concerns. He said he had given Chikane a proposal for improving public-service delivery by setting up a central body with the power to monitor it at all levels of government.
"I gave him examples of how black patients were treated dismally at state hospitals. I told him that houses were being allocated to foreign blacks to the detriment of South African blacks."
But he had heard nothing more from Chikane.
Botha was involved in a sharp exchange of correspondence with Mbeki last year, sparked by Botha's criticism of affirmative action and black employment equity, which he believes are causes of the breakdown of government services.
In July, Botha was quoted in the Sunday newspaper Rapport as saying that the ANC had lied to the old National Party about affirmative action during the negotiations for democracy between 1990 and 1994.
Botha was reported to have told a conference of the trade union Solidarity that the National Party would not have agreed to a political settlement with the ANC if it had known that the ANC was going to implement affirmative action in the way it had.
Botha's reported remarks drew a sharp response from Mbeki, who wrote an eight-page letter to him on July 17. Mbeki strongly denied that the ANC had lied about affirmative action during the negotiations.
"We have never hidden our resolve that the new South Africa should 'recognise the injustice of the past', as our constitution says," Mbeki wrote.
"Neither have we been equivocal about our commitment to the view stated in our constitution in the following words: 'to promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination, may be taken..."
Mbeki said that, by agreeing to this clause of the constitution, the old NP had committed itself to eradicating "the deeply entrenched inequalities that centuries of colonialism and apartheid had bequeathed to all of us."
He said the ANC had been under pressure from its constituents to move faster to redress the legacy of inequality.
"We did not do this because we had to address both black and white concerns and interests" but "very few of our white compatriots seem to understand what the ANC has done for many decades and continues to do to this day.
"To present the matter in its most naked form: for decades, to date, because of its commitment to non-racialism, and its love for our country and all its people, the ANC has stood as a buffer between a deeply aggrieved black majority and a white minority that seems mercilessly insensitive to the grievous harm that was done to millions, in its name."
But, Mbeki said, the ANC was now being attacked by Botha and other whites because its "measured pace towards the creation of a non-racial society has not been measured enough!"
In a reply to Mbeki on July 19, Botha denied he had said that the ANC lied to the NP about affirmative action. But he confirmed that he had told the Solidarity meeting on July 13 that, if the ANC had demanded that the Employment Equity Act, and in particular the way it was implemented, be incorporated in the new constitution, the constitution would not have been agreed to.
Botha told Mbeki in the letter: "You know that we could not have agreed and have not agreed to a process based solely on racial demographic representivity.
"Surely you will agree that young white children who were at school in 1990 and who had no connection with apartheid should not be punished for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers?
"I am not advocating the discontinuance of affirmative action, though I feel strongly about announcing a time limit.
"I believe that a thorough analysis should be made as to whether the majority of black people have benefited markedly from the particular way in which affirmative action is applied. Are the disadvantaged not becoming more disadvantaged?
"Why can't we debate adaptations to the current model without being suspected of racist motives?"
Botha complained that many people from elsewhere in Africa who became South African citizens after 1994 were benefiting from black economic empowerment and affirmative action.
Botha attributed much of the blame for the current breakdown in services to affirmative action because "whites who have the skills to manage efficiently electricity production and distribution, sewage systems, roads planning and construction, water supplies and other disciplines are removed and replaced by inexperienced blacks."
The breakdown in service delivery was hurting blacks even more than whites, Botha said. - Foreign Service
This article was originally published on page 4 of Sunday Independent on February 10, 2008
Peter Fabricius
February 10 2008 at 01:14PM
Pik Botha, the former foreign minister, has been rebuffed by President Thabo Mbeki in his efforts to persuade the government to set up a high-powered body to manage and monitor infrastructure development and service delivery.
Botha said this week that he hoped that Jacob Zuma, the new ANC president, would be more receptive to his ideas. Botha said he was extremely concerned that the country was heading for a huge infrastructure collapse, not only in electricity but also in water and other services.
Botha said he had met Frank Chikane, Mbeki's director-general, in January 2006 to raise his concerns. He said he had given Chikane a proposal for improving public-service delivery by setting up a central body with the power to monitor it at all levels of government.
"I gave him examples of how black patients were treated dismally at state hospitals. I told him that houses were being allocated to foreign blacks to the detriment of South African blacks."
But he had heard nothing more from Chikane.
Botha was involved in a sharp exchange of correspondence with Mbeki last year, sparked by Botha's criticism of affirmative action and black employment equity, which he believes are causes of the breakdown of government services.
In July, Botha was quoted in the Sunday newspaper Rapport as saying that the ANC had lied to the old National Party about affirmative action during the negotiations for democracy between 1990 and 1994.
Botha was reported to have told a conference of the trade union Solidarity that the National Party would not have agreed to a political settlement with the ANC if it had known that the ANC was going to implement affirmative action in the way it had.
Botha's reported remarks drew a sharp response from Mbeki, who wrote an eight-page letter to him on July 17. Mbeki strongly denied that the ANC had lied about affirmative action during the negotiations.
"We have never hidden our resolve that the new South Africa should 'recognise the injustice of the past', as our constitution says," Mbeki wrote.
"Neither have we been equivocal about our commitment to the view stated in our constitution in the following words: 'to promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination, may be taken..."
Mbeki said that, by agreeing to this clause of the constitution, the old NP had committed itself to eradicating "the deeply entrenched inequalities that centuries of colonialism and apartheid had bequeathed to all of us."
He said the ANC had been under pressure from its constituents to move faster to redress the legacy of inequality.
"We did not do this because we had to address both black and white concerns and interests" but "very few of our white compatriots seem to understand what the ANC has done for many decades and continues to do to this day.
"To present the matter in its most naked form: for decades, to date, because of its commitment to non-racialism, and its love for our country and all its people, the ANC has stood as a buffer between a deeply aggrieved black majority and a white minority that seems mercilessly insensitive to the grievous harm that was done to millions, in its name."
But, Mbeki said, the ANC was now being attacked by Botha and other whites because its "measured pace towards the creation of a non-racial society has not been measured enough!"
In a reply to Mbeki on July 19, Botha denied he had said that the ANC lied to the NP about affirmative action. But he confirmed that he had told the Solidarity meeting on July 13 that, if the ANC had demanded that the Employment Equity Act, and in particular the way it was implemented, be incorporated in the new constitution, the constitution would not have been agreed to.
Botha told Mbeki in the letter: "You know that we could not have agreed and have not agreed to a process based solely on racial demographic representivity.
"Surely you will agree that young white children who were at school in 1990 and who had no connection with apartheid should not be punished for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers?
"I am not advocating the discontinuance of affirmative action, though I feel strongly about announcing a time limit.
"I believe that a thorough analysis should be made as to whether the majority of black people have benefited markedly from the particular way in which affirmative action is applied. Are the disadvantaged not becoming more disadvantaged?
"Why can't we debate adaptations to the current model without being suspected of racist motives?"
Botha complained that many people from elsewhere in Africa who became South African citizens after 1994 were benefiting from black economic empowerment and affirmative action.
Botha attributed much of the blame for the current breakdown in services to affirmative action because "whites who have the skills to manage efficiently electricity production and distribution, sewage systems, roads planning and construction, water supplies and other disciplines are removed and replaced by inexperienced blacks."
The breakdown in service delivery was hurting blacks even more than whites, Botha said. - Foreign Service
This article was originally published on page 4 of Sunday Independent on February 10, 2008
Friday, 8 February 2008
Metallica - And justice for all
...And Justice for All
(Hetfield,ulrich,hammett)
Halls of Justice Painted Green
Money Talking
Power Wolves Beset Your Door
Hear Them Stalking
Soon You'll Please Their Appetite
They Devour
Hammer of Justice Crushes You
Overpower
The Ultimate in Vanity
Exploiting Their Supremacy
I Can't Believe the Things You Say
I Can't Believe
I Can't Believe the Price You Pay
Nothing Can Save You
Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real
Apathy Their Stepping Stone
So Unfeeling
Hidden Deep Animosity
So Deceiving
Through Your Eyes Their Light Burns
Hoping to Find
Inquisition Sinking You
With Prying Minds
The Ultimate in Vanity
Exploiting Their Supremacy
I Can't Believe the Things You Say
I Can't Believe
I Can't Believe the Price You Pay
Nothing Can Save You
Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real
Lady Justice Has Been Raped
Truth Assassin
Rolls of Red Tape Seal Your Lips
Now You're Done in
Their Money Tips Her Scales Again
Make Your Deal
Just What Is Truth?i Cannot Tell
Cannot Feel
The Ultimate in Vanity
Exploiting Their Supremacy
I Can't Believe the Things You Say
I Can't Believe
I Can't Believe the Price We Pay
Nothing Can Save You
Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real
Metallica Lyrics
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno (1548, Nola – February 17, 1600, Rome) was an Italian philosopher, priest, cosmologist, and occultist. Bruno is known for his mnemonic system based upon organized knowledge and as an early proponent of the idea of an infinite and homogeneous universe. Burnt at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition, Bruno is seen by some as the first "martyr [1] for science."
Quotations
"Firstly, I say that the theories on the movement of the earth and on the immobility of the firmament or sky are by me produced on a reasoned and sure basis, which doesn’t undermine the authority of the Holy Scriptures […]. With regard to the sun, I say that it doesn’t rise or set, nor do we see it rise or set, because, if the earth rotates on his axis, what do we mean by rising and setting ..." -Giordano Bruno, from the Vatican summary of Bruno's trial ([5]).
"I fought, and that's a lot. I thought I could win ... but nature and luck curbed my endeavour. But it's already something that I took up the struggle, because I see that victory is in the hands of Fate. In me was what was possible and what no future century will be able to deny to me: what a winner could give from his own; that I did not fear death, that I did not submit, my face firm, to anyone of my breed; that I preferred courageous death to pavid life." -Giordano Bruno, De Monade
"I cleave the heavens, and soar to the infinite. What others see from afar, I leave far behind me." -Giordano Bruno
"'I have held and hold souls to be immortal speaking as a Catholic, they do not pass from body to body, but go to Paradise, Purgatory or Hell. But I have reasoned deeply, and, speaking as a philosopher, since the soul is not found without body and yet is not body, it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body. This, if it be not (proved) true seems at least, likely." -Giordano Bruno, Venice Trial
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Monday, 4 February 2008
Eksdom Horoscopes
Your Stars Foretell : By S. Com (The Future Made Clear - dark, but clear-eish)
Aries (Mar 21 - Apr 21) : Things will be pretty dark for you today, unless you remember to buy new torch batteries.
Taurus (Apr 21 - May 21) : You'll probably eat cold, raw food again today. Try to remember to get that gas cylinder filled! Be cheerful, though, and remember that your ancestors lived like this and survived - 25,000 years ago.
Gemini (May 21 - Jun 22) : There will be a programme on TV tonight that you'll love. Bummer that you can't watch it 'cause it's on during your allotted "block" in the Eskom disco derby...
Cancer (Jun 22 - Jul 23) : Thought you were smart buying that generator? But we know you're going to run out of fuel tonight and the nearest working petrol station is 20km away. As you get there, we'll cut their power... Sorry.
Leo (Jul 23 - Aug 24) : Another morning without that essential cup of coffee awaits you... If you make it to 10am we'll reward you with enough power to make some, but by then you'll probably have killed 3 people and severely injured a 4th. (Don't worry, though. This is the New SA - you'll probably get away with it.)
Virgo (Aug 24- Sep 23) : Not for very much longer... What else is there to do after dark?
Libra (Sep 23 - Oct 23) : Your star-sign stands for fairness and justice. That's why we're going to hit your area with three 2hr outages a day, while the area where your local MP stays will enjoy uninterrupted power throughout.
Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 23) : Your area's assigned outage "block" is from 10:00 to 12:30. Expect the power to go off any time before or after that. And don't think it will only be out for two-and-a-half hours, either.
Sagittarius (Nov 23- Dec 22) : Today you'll buy some food that is apparently within its sell-by date. What you won't realize is that the sell-by date is for food that has been stored in a constantly operating fridge.... Although you'll get severe food poisoning, we think you may survive if you can find an emergency ward that has back-up generators. Good luck!
Capricorn (Dec 22 - Jan 21) : Don't bother to go to work today. During the hours when you actually will have electricity, your network provider will not, so you won't be able to do anything anyway. Stay home and well.... there's not much to do there either, is there?
Aquarius (Jan 21 - Feb 20) : Today you'll get so fed up with our incompetence that you'll decide to emigrate. We regret to inform you that this is no longer possible... The airports have all shut down, because - well think about it! They need electricity to run the place!! You ain't going - nowhere...
Pisces (Feb 20 - Mar 21) : Today all your hopes and dreams will come true. You'll have power during "Days of Our Lives".
If today is your birthday : Use lots and lots of candles on that cake - even if they don't reflect your age. How else are you going to see to open the presents?
_________________________________________________________________________
Ok, i did copy this, care of http://boerejeug.blogspot.com/ who got it from www.Africancrisis.co.za. Jawellnofine. For international visitors, the national power utility is called Eskom, eksdom literally translated is i'm stupid. It's too good to ignore!!!
Friday, 1 February 2008
Real hero ... RIP
Jimmy James, P.O.W. Plotter of Escapes, Is Dead at 92 By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: January 31, 2008
Jimmy James, a British flier in World War II obsessed with escape plots during his five years in German captivity, most prominently the breakout portrayed in the movie “The Great Escape,” died Jan. 18 in Shrewsbury, England. Mr. James, who lived in Ludlow, England, was 92.
His death was confirmed to the BBC and The Birmingham Post by Howard Tuck, a military historian who said he had been working on a book with Mr. James.
On the night of June 5, 1940, Flight Lieutenant James, the co-pilot of a Wellington bomber, was on the way to a mission over Germany when his plane was shot down by antiaircraft fire over the occupied Netherlands. He bailed out about 25 miles south of Rotterdam but was captured and taken to the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft I on the Baltic coast of Germany.
Mr. James made at least seven unsuccessful attempts to tunnel out of that camp. Then he was transferred to Stalag Luft III, about 90 miles southeast of Berlin. By the time he was liberated by American troops in Austria in May 1945, a few days before Germany surrendered, he had tried to escape at least 11 times from P.O.W. camps and a concentration camp and had succeeded twice, only to be recaptured.
“I was just a guy who wanted to get home; I was no hero,” The Birmingham Post quoted Mr. James as saying. But his unrelenting will to be free brought him Britain’s Military Cross for gallantry in 1946.
Mr. James was “one of the last great links with a period of history that continues to exert a fierce grip on the popular imagination,” The Independent newspaper said upon his death.
The most storied escape occurred on the night of March 24, 1944, when 76 Allied prisoners, mostly airmen from Britain and the Commonwealth nations, tunneled out of Stalag Luft III. Mr. James and another prisoner had overseen the hiding of soil displaced by the tunnel digging, supervising its placement underneath seats in the camp’s theater, where the captives had put on shows. Mr. James was the 39th man to escape through the tunnel.
Mr. James could sometimes look back with a wry eye. He once told the BBC about a flier who was annoyed over having been shot down when he had London theater tickets for the next night.
“He’d bought a ticket for ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ in London that was on in the West End,” Mr. James said. “And he was bemoaning this fact when he came into the camp. He said, ‘I bought a ticket for this show,’ and I said: ‘Oh, that’s all right old boy, we’re putting it on next week. You can see it here.’ ”
The breakout, as depicted in the 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen, is remembered for what Mr. James once called “rather Hollywood fantasy” — the McQueen character’s short-lived escape on a motorcycle.
But the real escape became a grim affair. Only 3 of the 76 escapees made it to freedom. Fifty of the 73 men who were recaptured were shot on Hitler’s orders.
Mr. James was recaptured at a German railroad station while fleeing toward the Czech border and was eventually transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In September 1944, he joined several other prisoners of war in escaping from the camp through a 100-foot tunnel they had dug 10 feet below the surface, using a table knife. He fled north, hoping to board a ship for Sweden, but was recaptured once more and later imprisoned at two other concentration camps before being liberated.
Bertram Arthur James, known as Jimmy since his days in military service, was born in India, the son of a tea merchant. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1939 and remained in the military until the 1950s. He later entered the British diplomatic corps, holding posts on the Continent and in Africa.
He is survived by his wife, Madge.
Mr. James told of his experiences in a 1983 memoir, “Moonless Night.” In 2004, he attended a ceremony at the site of Stalag Luft III, now a part of Poland.
“The huts have been razed to the ground but you can see where we dug, the route of the tunnel, and you can still feel the atmosphere of the camp,” he told the BBC then.
“Having lost 50 comrades, ghosts of the past are inevitably going to rise up. I feel a great loss. I never thought that 60 years ago, when I crawled out of the snow, there would be a ceremony in Poland to commemorate the event.”
Thursday, 31 January 2008
The good, the bad, and the fucked
Well now, that's an appropriate heading to start this post.
I don't have anything to say. At least not coherent. I feel sick.
I am sick, i think. Depressed, and all that other psycho babble.
At what point is it ok to give up? I guess the official answer is never, but fuck them. Official answers are always provided by smiling people who are far too clean.
I have come to beleive that life is not worth the living. For anyone. The fact that we keep it up i think is because of the VAST amount of bullshit we feed each other.
On the eve of losing everything, including freedom, people still maintain it can't get any worse, oh chin up silver lining, and all that over-optimistic crap. Tell yourself that and you may even believe it .... don't mean it's true :/
Oh, and if you ever tell someone it can't get worse, go die you retarded moron. It can. It does. The only reason you never hear about it is because once it has, the people it's happened to aren't writing million dollar bestsellers about it. They just die somewhere you never heard of.
I got this dilemma. I need a lawyer. Lawyer costs lots of money. So i need to seel the car. But i need to fix the car first. Which takes money. So i either fix the car, and hope to sell it for lawyer money, or leave the car and spend the money on the lawyer. Car needs fixing either way, just haven't got there yet.
I have a bike too. Honda CB400 i paid R20000 for. Also broken, won't take much money to fix, just time. But fuck, at this point i can't give it away. Everyone's like: Oh what a lovely bike!!! Oh, wanna buy it? No thanks i couldn't .... *sigh*
I think i need a gun. People with guns don't have problems getting money. Neither do lawyers, but a gun won't shoot you in the back.
I don't have anything to say. At least not coherent. I feel sick.
I am sick, i think. Depressed, and all that other psycho babble.
At what point is it ok to give up? I guess the official answer is never, but fuck them. Official answers are always provided by smiling people who are far too clean.
I have come to beleive that life is not worth the living. For anyone. The fact that we keep it up i think is because of the VAST amount of bullshit we feed each other.
On the eve of losing everything, including freedom, people still maintain it can't get any worse, oh chin up silver lining, and all that over-optimistic crap. Tell yourself that and you may even believe it .... don't mean it's true :/
Oh, and if you ever tell someone it can't get worse, go die you retarded moron. It can. It does. The only reason you never hear about it is because once it has, the people it's happened to aren't writing million dollar bestsellers about it. They just die somewhere you never heard of.
I got this dilemma. I need a lawyer. Lawyer costs lots of money. So i need to seel the car. But i need to fix the car first. Which takes money. So i either fix the car, and hope to sell it for lawyer money, or leave the car and spend the money on the lawyer. Car needs fixing either way, just haven't got there yet.
I have a bike too. Honda CB400 i paid R20000 for. Also broken, won't take much money to fix, just time. But fuck, at this point i can't give it away. Everyone's like: Oh what a lovely bike!!! Oh, wanna buy it? No thanks i couldn't .... *sigh*
I think i need a gun. People with guns don't have problems getting money. Neither do lawyers, but a gun won't shoot you in the back.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
My wife
A few days ago i was reading the media and found 2 stories.
In one, some kids had played with the controls of an onlocked bakkie, released the handbrake and it rolled forward, killing a schoolgirl. In the second story, 2 girls had died on their first day of school, when they went to the toilets, and they collapsed on them, drowning them in an open sewer.
I think the second story is worse, both from the tragedy perspective, and the fact that people could and should be held liable.
The first story got picked up by the media, the second vanished.
Well the media have our story, and so things shall go as they will. I don't know if it is good or bad, but any publicity is good, i'm told.
2 crimes were committed, 1 at the licensing dept, in which my wife has been implicated, the second is at FLORIDA SAPS (may they all burn in hell). As to the first, she has been charged with fraud, the wrong charge any way you cut it. Fraud is by natre a crime for financial gain, and since a license document has zero value, fraud cannot be used. Second, fraud indicates INTENT, now if someone had committed a crime, they WOULD NOT walk in several months later and produce a document they KNEW to be fraudulent. That negates the intent.
The police deliberately denied her the opportunity to get bail, it's as if they decided to fuck her up legally. They have 48 hours within which they have to charge the person. But after getting all the relevant info at the time of the arrest, they decided to investigate before charging. Since when????
You charge, then investigate, the reasons given ranged from "jurisdiction" to "needing to investigate" to "we cannot find a person to charge".
The cells are filthy, i could smell it from 10 meters away. She is a stable tax paying citizen, with fixed residential address and job. She's a IT and operations manager for a call centre, hardly a streetwalker. The police (goddam their souls) are cowardly cunts. The head honcho looked like crap, everything the police should not be. Big smelly gum chewing black guy, fat too. Attitude dripping, completely dishevelled, HE decided that viv should stay put, against all principles of the constitution. Brainless little dung beetles police are, running around in other people's shit and thinking they are the kings of shit, they really think that.
Let me be clear, even if viv had bought the license, she should not have been treated in that manner. But sadly, those who bought their livcense and paid EXTRA now have a job well done, those that try follow the system .... well yar. This is the reason people buy their licenses. Viv went 3 times. The first she failed (unfairly she thought) the secod time she was ill, and despite having paid deposit, they refused to rebook her. Now this. South africans, buy your licenses, your hard cash will ensure correct documentation, god know the license dept won't.
Now she can't drive anywhere, she had to drive through a roadblock this morning, and even though they told her to pull off, she drove away. The alternative would have been re-arrest, and another day in cells. She has to get to work, already the sloth brained jewish asshole boss is already getting prissy. Fuck him. Where is humanity?
FOR FUCK SAKES where is innocent until proven guilty? She was treated as guilty from the start. No question, no doubt in anyone's mind. The judge did not even ask for bail. That alone tells me she should not have been held.
I dunno. We're all scared, hurt, confused, tramatised, angry, and just plain depressed. From here on, everything needs money. This time for the lawyers doctors shrinks etc that all hang around these cases. We don't have money, ergo chances are we will not even get justice in the courts. Pay your bribes south africa, or we will arrest you.
*sigh*
In one, some kids had played with the controls of an onlocked bakkie, released the handbrake and it rolled forward, killing a schoolgirl. In the second story, 2 girls had died on their first day of school, when they went to the toilets, and they collapsed on them, drowning them in an open sewer.
I think the second story is worse, both from the tragedy perspective, and the fact that people could and should be held liable.
The first story got picked up by the media, the second vanished.
Well the media have our story, and so things shall go as they will. I don't know if it is good or bad, but any publicity is good, i'm told.
2 crimes were committed, 1 at the licensing dept, in which my wife has been implicated, the second is at FLORIDA SAPS (may they all burn in hell). As to the first, she has been charged with fraud, the wrong charge any way you cut it. Fraud is by natre a crime for financial gain, and since a license document has zero value, fraud cannot be used. Second, fraud indicates INTENT, now if someone had committed a crime, they WOULD NOT walk in several months later and produce a document they KNEW to be fraudulent. That negates the intent.
The police deliberately denied her the opportunity to get bail, it's as if they decided to fuck her up legally. They have 48 hours within which they have to charge the person. But after getting all the relevant info at the time of the arrest, they decided to investigate before charging. Since when????
You charge, then investigate, the reasons given ranged from "jurisdiction" to "needing to investigate" to "we cannot find a person to charge".
The cells are filthy, i could smell it from 10 meters away. She is a stable tax paying citizen, with fixed residential address and job. She's a IT and operations manager for a call centre, hardly a streetwalker. The police (goddam their souls) are cowardly cunts. The head honcho looked like crap, everything the police should not be. Big smelly gum chewing black guy, fat too. Attitude dripping, completely dishevelled, HE decided that viv should stay put, against all principles of the constitution. Brainless little dung beetles police are, running around in other people's shit and thinking they are the kings of shit, they really think that.
Let me be clear, even if viv had bought the license, she should not have been treated in that manner. But sadly, those who bought their livcense and paid EXTRA now have a job well done, those that try follow the system .... well yar. This is the reason people buy their licenses. Viv went 3 times. The first she failed (unfairly she thought) the secod time she was ill, and despite having paid deposit, they refused to rebook her. Now this. South africans, buy your licenses, your hard cash will ensure correct documentation, god know the license dept won't.
Now she can't drive anywhere, she had to drive through a roadblock this morning, and even though they told her to pull off, she drove away. The alternative would have been re-arrest, and another day in cells. She has to get to work, already the sloth brained jewish asshole boss is already getting prissy. Fuck him. Where is humanity?
FOR FUCK SAKES where is innocent until proven guilty? She was treated as guilty from the start. No question, no doubt in anyone's mind. The judge did not even ask for bail. That alone tells me she should not have been held.
I dunno. We're all scared, hurt, confused, tramatised, angry, and just plain depressed. From here on, everything needs money. This time for the lawyers doctors shrinks etc that all hang around these cases. We don't have money, ergo chances are we will not even get justice in the courts. Pay your bribes south africa, or we will arrest you.
*sigh*
Mom's fake-licence horror
Anna Cox
January 29 2008 at 05:14AM
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A young mother was locked up overnight in a filthy, blood-spattered police cell after she was accused of being in possession of a false driving licence.
Vivienne Midlane, who vigorously denies the allegation of fraud, has described her experience as a nightmare.
Even though her lawyer tried to have her released on bail, police allegedly refused to charge her until the next morning.
Her children - aged 10, eight and two - were distressed because they had to spend the night without their mother.
'It was very traumatic and scary'
They had been left in the care of a domestic worker while Midlane's husband David spent the day desperately trying to get her out of jail.
"The kids were traumatised," the mother said.
"I got a call from my son's headmaster on Friday after I was released, asking what was going on because the child was distressed, telling them his mom was in jail."
And, bitterly for Midlane, she saw in her 30th birthday behind bars.
She said her troubles began last week when she went to apply for a duplicate driving licence.
'I don't know how this is going to end'
"I got my licence last February at the Langlaagte testing station. I went through a driving instructor, who gave me eight lessons.
"He helped me book the test because I couldn't get an appointment myself, and he took me for the test.
"It was during the time that eNaTIS was not up and running properly.
"I went through all the procedures, took my test and passed it, and was issued with a licence.
"I thought everything was in order until I lost the licence in December.
"My baby had got hold of my purse and scattered all its contents throughout the house. We searched high and low but could not find the licence."
When she went to apply for a duplicate, Midlane was surprised there was no record on the system of her having a driving licence.
"They told me that my name was not on the computer - only my learner's was there.
"It said I was licensed to drive but did not have the details and number of my licence.
"Officials said I should not worry, as this happened often."
Then Midlane remembered she had an expired temporary licence in her bag. She handed it to the official, thinking it could help them trace the original.
"Next thing, I was told it was a fake and I was escorted into a back office, and the police were called in to arrest me," she said.
This was the start of an ordeal which would last 24 hours.
Midlane was taken to Florida police station at 2.30pm and treated "very badly".
The police refused to charge her, and she was detained in the cells for hours without food or water.
"The cells were filthy. There was stale food all over. There was blood on the walls. There were two polystyrene cups covered with blood, so I could not get water to drink."
Her lawyer arrived. He too was unable to get her charged so that she could apply for bail.
The mother spent the night sitting in a corner of the cell because the thin mattresses were so dirty.
Her lawyer managed to get a blanket, some juice and some grapes to her - but only with difficulty.
The next morning, two female officers interrogated her, saying they had proof that she had bought her licence.
"It was very traumatic and scary," said Midlane. "I did everything by the book.
"It was later found that the serial number of my temporary licence belonged to a batch that was sent to Bhisho (in the Eastern Cape).
"No one seems to have answers and it is going to be up to me to prove that I did not buy it. I don't know how I am going to do that. I don't have receipts because I had to hand them over when the bookings were made."
Midlane now has to appear in court on February 28 to face fraud charges.
"It's going to cost a fortune in lawyers' fees and stress. I am scared. I have done nothing wrong.
"If I had a fake licence, I would hardly have handed it over. I don't know how this is going to end."
Midlane plans to take legal action against the testing centre and police because she was arrested and held without being charged.
Wayne Minnaar, spokesperson for the Joburg metro police, said several things could have gone wrong that would need to be investigated. It was possible that the driving instructor had committed the fraud, or a cashier or the woman herself, he said.
This article was originally published on page 1 of The Star on January 29, 2008
Anna Cox
January 29 2008 at 05:14AM
Submit your comment
A young mother was locked up overnight in a filthy, blood-spattered police cell after she was accused of being in possession of a false driving licence.
Vivienne Midlane, who vigorously denies the allegation of fraud, has described her experience as a nightmare.
Even though her lawyer tried to have her released on bail, police allegedly refused to charge her until the next morning.
Her children - aged 10, eight and two - were distressed because they had to spend the night without their mother.
'It was very traumatic and scary'
They had been left in the care of a domestic worker while Midlane's husband David spent the day desperately trying to get her out of jail.
"The kids were traumatised," the mother said.
"I got a call from my son's headmaster on Friday after I was released, asking what was going on because the child was distressed, telling them his mom was in jail."
And, bitterly for Midlane, she saw in her 30th birthday behind bars.
She said her troubles began last week when she went to apply for a duplicate driving licence.
'I don't know how this is going to end'
"I got my licence last February at the Langlaagte testing station. I went through a driving instructor, who gave me eight lessons.
"He helped me book the test because I couldn't get an appointment myself, and he took me for the test.
"It was during the time that eNaTIS was not up and running properly.
"I went through all the procedures, took my test and passed it, and was issued with a licence.
"I thought everything was in order until I lost the licence in December.
"My baby had got hold of my purse and scattered all its contents throughout the house. We searched high and low but could not find the licence."
When she went to apply for a duplicate, Midlane was surprised there was no record on the system of her having a driving licence.
"They told me that my name was not on the computer - only my learner's was there.
"It said I was licensed to drive but did not have the details and number of my licence.
"Officials said I should not worry, as this happened often."
Then Midlane remembered she had an expired temporary licence in her bag. She handed it to the official, thinking it could help them trace the original.
"Next thing, I was told it was a fake and I was escorted into a back office, and the police were called in to arrest me," she said.
This was the start of an ordeal which would last 24 hours.
Midlane was taken to Florida police station at 2.30pm and treated "very badly".
The police refused to charge her, and she was detained in the cells for hours without food or water.
"The cells were filthy. There was stale food all over. There was blood on the walls. There were two polystyrene cups covered with blood, so I could not get water to drink."
Her lawyer arrived. He too was unable to get her charged so that she could apply for bail.
The mother spent the night sitting in a corner of the cell because the thin mattresses were so dirty.
Her lawyer managed to get a blanket, some juice and some grapes to her - but only with difficulty.
The next morning, two female officers interrogated her, saying they had proof that she had bought her licence.
"It was very traumatic and scary," said Midlane. "I did everything by the book.
"It was later found that the serial number of my temporary licence belonged to a batch that was sent to Bhisho (in the Eastern Cape).
"No one seems to have answers and it is going to be up to me to prove that I did not buy it. I don't know how I am going to do that. I don't have receipts because I had to hand them over when the bookings were made."
Midlane now has to appear in court on February 28 to face fraud charges.
"It's going to cost a fortune in lawyers' fees and stress. I am scared. I have done nothing wrong.
"If I had a fake licence, I would hardly have handed it over. I don't know how this is going to end."
Midlane plans to take legal action against the testing centre and police because she was arrested and held without being charged.
Wayne Minnaar, spokesperson for the Joburg metro police, said several things could have gone wrong that would need to be investigated. It was possible that the driving instructor had committed the fraud, or a cashier or the woman herself, he said.
This article was originally published on page 1 of The Star on January 29, 2008
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Real story, real pain, real injustice.
This happened this week to my wife and i, i think it is worth sharing.
On thursday, we went to sort some official stuff out, including replacing my wife's license card, which had gone missing, we assume the baby got it, alhough we have looked everywhere without luck.
After being told that they had no record of her, she produced the origional temp license, outdated of course, but evidence that she had a license. At that point it was declared that the license was a fake, and the police were called, and she was arrested. It seems that the blank temp copy had origionally been stolen in Bisho. This was around 2 PM.
From there, they took her to Florida SAPS. Some paperwork was completed, and she was taken to the cells. At 4 my brother who is a lawyer arrived at the station, and attempted to get clarity on the situation, and apply for bail. From that point on, nothing happened. All that was lacking was for her to be charged with a crime, or released pending investigation. Only the arresting officer or a detective could charge her, the arresting officer had gone home, and Florida SAPS apparently has no resident detective. We called every single number on the walls, for the station commisioner to the detective on duty (none) and every other "help number" available. Every person we spoke with admitted that the situation seemed unreasonable, and that they would get back to us, no-one did, and after trying some numbers again, they just rang out.
A detective who was at the station was asked to assist, but declined due to "jurisdiction". Eventually at about 11 PM, a detective arrived to assess the situation, and after conferring with someone on the telephone, advised that she would not charge her, and that she would be held pending investigation in the morning.
When morning came, this detective went around collecting evidence, and by 2PM we were in front of a judge, who released her without needing bail. She has been charged with fraud, which i believe legally is the incorrect charge.
There are many questions about how this came about, very few that i can answer, all i can do is assess the facts:
1) At some point at Langlaagte testing station, illegalities occured.
2) My wife was unwittingly a victim of these crimes.
3) She was arrested and held without being charged overnight, without the option of gaining bail.
4) The police used the jackboot of justice on her, utterly merciless, and treated her as if she was guilty.
Now we are finding the best lawyers, my brother's law firm has already pledged to assist us, i believe this will eventually go away afetr a lot of money.
Whatever the outcome of the trial, we are suiing just about everyone involved, because of the way this has been handled. My wife is not a criminal, and in fact is a very soft person. The trauma inflicted by the police is inhuman. The first thing that was given her was coffee the next morning, despite having been in custody since 2 the previous day. The at various points denied her food, drink and blankets, and even denied her lawyer permission to see her. The captain (a woman) at the police station refused to speak to him, in front of all in the charge office. Vivienne could not even drink water, because there was blood on the cup. There was blood everywhere apparently, and she could see evidence on the walls of where people had their heads smashed against the walls, the bloodmarks were everywhere she looked. While we were at the station, they ignorwed her completely, but apparently after we left, they opened the door and checked on her every half hour. She thought they were bneing nice, but since she was alone i think they were keeping her from any sleep, not that she would have anyway.
The next person i was denied permission to see her, and did not until the court appearance.
I could rail on more, so much so bad, so many things that were done wrong. I really need to thank the TB people who assisted, calling and visiting while were were trying to get her out. We are both aso traumatised by this, but could not have got through without phenomenal support from family and friends.
By the way, my wife turned 30, yesterday in that blood stained cell. It was her birthday.
On thursday, we went to sort some official stuff out, including replacing my wife's license card, which had gone missing, we assume the baby got it, alhough we have looked everywhere without luck.
After being told that they had no record of her, she produced the origional temp license, outdated of course, but evidence that she had a license. At that point it was declared that the license was a fake, and the police were called, and she was arrested. It seems that the blank temp copy had origionally been stolen in Bisho. This was around 2 PM.
From there, they took her to Florida SAPS. Some paperwork was completed, and she was taken to the cells. At 4 my brother who is a lawyer arrived at the station, and attempted to get clarity on the situation, and apply for bail. From that point on, nothing happened. All that was lacking was for her to be charged with a crime, or released pending investigation. Only the arresting officer or a detective could charge her, the arresting officer had gone home, and Florida SAPS apparently has no resident detective. We called every single number on the walls, for the station commisioner to the detective on duty (none) and every other "help number" available. Every person we spoke with admitted that the situation seemed unreasonable, and that they would get back to us, no-one did, and after trying some numbers again, they just rang out.
A detective who was at the station was asked to assist, but declined due to "jurisdiction". Eventually at about 11 PM, a detective arrived to assess the situation, and after conferring with someone on the telephone, advised that she would not charge her, and that she would be held pending investigation in the morning.
When morning came, this detective went around collecting evidence, and by 2PM we were in front of a judge, who released her without needing bail. She has been charged with fraud, which i believe legally is the incorrect charge.
There are many questions about how this came about, very few that i can answer, all i can do is assess the facts:
1) At some point at Langlaagte testing station, illegalities occured.
2) My wife was unwittingly a victim of these crimes.
3) She was arrested and held without being charged overnight, without the option of gaining bail.
4) The police used the jackboot of justice on her, utterly merciless, and treated her as if she was guilty.
Now we are finding the best lawyers, my brother's law firm has already pledged to assist us, i believe this will eventually go away afetr a lot of money.
Whatever the outcome of the trial, we are suiing just about everyone involved, because of the way this has been handled. My wife is not a criminal, and in fact is a very soft person. The trauma inflicted by the police is inhuman. The first thing that was given her was coffee the next morning, despite having been in custody since 2 the previous day. The at various points denied her food, drink and blankets, and even denied her lawyer permission to see her. The captain (a woman) at the police station refused to speak to him, in front of all in the charge office. Vivienne could not even drink water, because there was blood on the cup. There was blood everywhere apparently, and she could see evidence on the walls of where people had their heads smashed against the walls, the bloodmarks were everywhere she looked. While we were at the station, they ignorwed her completely, but apparently after we left, they opened the door and checked on her every half hour. She thought they were bneing nice, but since she was alone i think they were keeping her from any sleep, not that she would have anyway.
The next person i was denied permission to see her, and did not until the court appearance.
I could rail on more, so much so bad, so many things that were done wrong. I really need to thank the TB people who assisted, calling and visiting while were were trying to get her out. We are both aso traumatised by this, but could not have got through without phenomenal support from family and friends.
By the way, my wife turned 30, yesterday in that blood stained cell. It was her birthday.
Monday, 21 January 2008
Fuckin Eskom
You know, this is why living in bananaville sux. You wake up in the morning and basially get told, if you use the electricity you're going to use it's going to mean we will fine you. WTF.
Ok, so loadshedding pissed everyone off, so they are saying, take an average, and that's all you're allowed. So they arte going to fine people for using more electricity. Fuck them. You know, it's almost like they have a plan, but not really. All that is happening is they are making mo money, for NOT delivering a service.
Oh sorry Mr Jones, we know you PAID for the slr super duper, but we only have the econocrap, but um, we're not refunding the extra. See how long it would take for slr maker to go under. People wouldn't.
Welcome to the new south africa, you're fucked now.
You know, this is why living in bananaville sux. You wake up in the morning and basially get told, if you use the electricity you're going to use it's going to mean we will fine you. WTF.
Ok, so loadshedding pissed everyone off, so they are saying, take an average, and that's all you're allowed. So they arte going to fine people for using more electricity. Fuck them. You know, it's almost like they have a plan, but not really. All that is happening is they are making mo money, for NOT delivering a service.
Oh sorry Mr Jones, we know you PAID for the slr super duper, but we only have the econocrap, but um, we're not refunding the extra. See how long it would take for slr maker to go under. People wouldn't.
Welcome to the new south africa, you're fucked now.
Friday, 18 January 2008
Electricity
Power alert
They state: Electricity usage is increasing rapidly. Please assist us by switching off all appliances, geysers and stoves, except the TV and essential lights.
Um .... except the tv???
So south africa, fuck your food, your bathing, your swimming pool, your washine machines, your electric fence, electric gate and all those other household maintainance items, sit back and watch the crap the government wants you to see?
Or am i over reacting????
I also notice that there is no online information for johannesburg .... that is pathetic .... they also said no area will be down for more than 2 hours per day, but now it as become 2 hours at a time ...
Plus it seems that Zimbabwe gets electricity 24/7, but does not even pay for it ?!?!
I'm a rational person ... but i'm seriously losing my grip on reality.
They state: Electricity usage is increasing rapidly. Please assist us by switching off all appliances, geysers and stoves, except the TV and essential lights.
Um .... except the tv???
So south africa, fuck your food, your bathing, your swimming pool, your washine machines, your electric fence, electric gate and all those other household maintainance items, sit back and watch the crap the government wants you to see?
Or am i over reacting????
I also notice that there is no online information for johannesburg .... that is pathetic .... they also said no area will be down for more than 2 hours per day, but now it as become 2 hours at a time ...
Plus it seems that Zimbabwe gets electricity 24/7, but does not even pay for it ?!?!
I'm a rational person ... but i'm seriously losing my grip on reality.
Migration migraine
By Cees Bruggemans, Chief Economist FNB
17 January 2008
South Africa has known many invasions.
Most of South Africa's early history probably saw many unrecorded migrations.
More recent arrivals include the modern waves of incoming Bantu pastoralists some two millennia ago. After a long interval these were followed by waves of White settlers, Dutch, German and French, at first from small beginnings in the 17th century, then followed by more ambitious English invasions in the 19th century.
The Dutch brought Malays to the Cape. The English brought indentured Indians to Natal, although some of such migrants came under their own steam.
Indeed, over the past 150 years marking the period of our development into a modern mining, urban industrial and then post-industrial society, the arrivals have been from everywhere, mainly from all over Africa, Europe and English-speaking settler countries. Latin America, the Middle East and most of Asia other than India have contributed little, although Chinese arrivals have been increasing of late.
If this, roughly, is a pen sketch of the immigrations that have created a polyglot nation in Southern Africa, there also have been many outward migrations.
An early Black movement happened during Shaka's time, when Mzilikazi absconded to the north, populating today's western Zimbabwe. Even earlier, in the Western part of the country, some of the dispersing Koisan also moved north.
White South Africans have been moving away from these shores from their earliest beginnings. Often this has just been a matter of failed migration. Traditionally, many arrivals never find their feet, and when the means exist people do tend to move away again quite quickly.
Of course, in many instances such means don't exist, cutting off all escape routes once having migrated, though sometimes this factor only applies on a generation basis (a subsequent generation having acquired new means and belatedly deciding to move away).
Other instances of outward migration are of a different push-and-pull variety. A foreign posting here may have only been temporary (it even applied to Van Riebeeck), other parts of the world ultimately offering more interesting challenges. But this also often applied to the offspring of long-term immigrants, who may have found their talents better deployed at a global level, or simply feeling a closer affiliation with the source culture, a pull that may ultimately be very powerful.
Disagreement with authority, as much Dutch as English, Zulu, Afrikaner and ANC, has been another reason pushing people offshore.
Mzilikazi's move can be so interpreted, followed within a decade by the Afrikaner Great Trek trying to escape British authority. Following the Boer War, some Afrikaners didn't want to stay, a few even emigrating to Argentina.
The 1948 change in government, and the apartheid regime that then followed, for decades pushed people off-shore, many dissident English and a few Afrikaners, and Black, Coloured and Indian exiles. This has been more a process of decades rather than an event, but a drain nonetheless.
But the net effect of all these migrations, inward and outward, has been the same. Mostly vigorous, talented people came and left. Their arrival was mostly a huge gain, their departure mostly a huge loss to this country, a brain drain as it is to any country experiencing such losses.
It is on this score that the past two decades come into focus, bearing in mind these earlier episodes.
By 1990, South Africa had created a modern post-industrial urban setting, even as a majority of its people was still mired in dismal poverty and rural underdevelopment.
Social engineering (apartheid) distorted allocation of scarce labour skills and talent. In addition, the quality of education offered to the majority of the population left much to be desired, given modern development ambitions.
The coming of the 1994 political watershed had many consequences. A hugely beneficial one was the freeing up of society, encouraging a better allocation of scarce skills and talent. But back-to-back there was a new preferment. And marking the change was much trepidation about the long-term future, at least among some.
Just as much as the coming of the English in 1806 would lead within a generation to the Great Trek (things moved more slowly then), and the coming of Afrikaner nationalists in 1948 was a signal for some English-speakers to call it a day, just so 1994's political upheaval initiated an immediate response, also because the means today are so much more accommodating than they were then.
The outward wave that got underway in the 1990s was fed by many considerations. There was political trepidation as to future realities. But close on its heels was a new discrimination, not unlike the early 1800s, early 1900s or early 1950s, sometimes pushing people out of work or preventing their natural progressing in favour of others newly affirmed.
But in the decade from the mid-1990s two more factors were to feature prominently in pushing people of all hues offshore. The one was virulent, violent crime. The other was deteriorating public services, in particular education and health care.
These were again big erosions of talented people this country could hardly afford to lose, given our development ambitions.
Our economic revival post-1994 was at first slow in taking hold, but from 2003 onward it became spectacular, yet it ultimately did not stem the steady loss of talent.
How else to explain 40 000 South Africans whooping it up in Dubai today, entirely a modern day phenomenon, or the security personnel making a living in Iraq or the steady erosion to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, America, Western Europe?
All of that is bad enough, when considering an economy with enormous development challenges, yet with its skilled labour pool stretched to the limit. And this with an education system 14 years after apartheid ended still delivering only 15% university exemptions in its annual school cohort attempting matric (itself only half its age cohort, the other half having mostly dropped out earlier at primary school level).
Yet recent weeks may well have seen yet another outward push forming, one we can't afford yet may not be able to prevent.
In recent weeks, there has been much speculation about the direction future economic policy could be taking. Not everyone will be welcoming such possible future changes with equal enthusiasm. This Christmas, in many a family setting, there may have been intense discussion as to what this means and where this may lead. Remembrances of Christmases past these past two centuries?
It certainly didn't help that the policy choices of the past two decades then also came to a head in a wave of electricity blackouts.
If the coast was more spared than Johannesburg over this festive season (last year it was the Cape, remember), and many revelers refused to even think about politics, preferring instead to recharge the batteries in weeks of relaxation, reality dawned quick enough in the opening weeks of January.
The return to work didn't only coincide with judicial spectacles or the worsening traffic congestion. It specifically was put under the whip of daily electricity interruptions.
Most urban South Africans run small businesses, or work for an employer. They all are dependent on electricity, from the petrol attendant to the seamstress and the computer user. Cut the juice and you cut the lifeblood of a modern economy.
The doubts as to where all this is leading must have multiplied greatly in recent weeks, especially after announcements suggesting that electricity interruptions will be with us for at least ten years.
One can buy expensive diesel generators and sun roof panels all you want, but that won't plug all the leaks.
The greatest frustration can be observed in the traffic. Here are all these people, with every modern communication gadget that money can buy, in their sometimes truly fancy cars, all reduced to immobility.
Good manners go out of the window, two weeks into the New Year. Traversing an intersection without working traffic lights has become a daunting gauntlet. Who has the greater bravura in challenging the other drivers?
Priorities, clearly, need some brushing up, as well as organizing for disaster, as much among the victims as among those serving us.
Eskom was prevented from building new power stations for many years, though asking to be allowed to do so. Affirmative action policies have often led to the loss of skilled labour, especially in the public sector.
Unless the economy were to shrink 5% or 10% shortly, the shortage of electricity is going to remain a reality for as many years as what it will take authority to boost generating capacity to sufficient levels once again.
The cost and inconvenience could be substantial.
For some, this may just not be worth it. Talent is in huge demand worldwide. South Africa can hardly afford losing even a single set of skills, never mind hundreds of thousands. Yet the drain could well swell anew in coming years.
One hopes the new political leadership will take cognisance of these worrying tendencies. Only paying attention to the education system won't be good enough. Like the electricity grid, it may take decades to get right.
More fundamentally, we need better allocation of scarce labour talent, and giving it a reason to stay on, even in these trying times.
Indeed, where is the sense of more Cuban, Tunisian and Indian medical personnel, if our own want to decamp wholesale? And that applies just as much to good teachers, accountants, engineers, plumbers, electricians, computer specialists, lawyers, marketers, even civil servants and municipal workers.
We need more encouragement for talent to stay, rather than dreaming up new schemes that will induce them to leave even faster than what they are already doing.
17 January 2008
South Africa has known many invasions.
Most of South Africa's early history probably saw many unrecorded migrations.
More recent arrivals include the modern waves of incoming Bantu pastoralists some two millennia ago. After a long interval these were followed by waves of White settlers, Dutch, German and French, at first from small beginnings in the 17th century, then followed by more ambitious English invasions in the 19th century.
The Dutch brought Malays to the Cape. The English brought indentured Indians to Natal, although some of such migrants came under their own steam.
Indeed, over the past 150 years marking the period of our development into a modern mining, urban industrial and then post-industrial society, the arrivals have been from everywhere, mainly from all over Africa, Europe and English-speaking settler countries. Latin America, the Middle East and most of Asia other than India have contributed little, although Chinese arrivals have been increasing of late.
If this, roughly, is a pen sketch of the immigrations that have created a polyglot nation in Southern Africa, there also have been many outward migrations.
An early Black movement happened during Shaka's time, when Mzilikazi absconded to the north, populating today's western Zimbabwe. Even earlier, in the Western part of the country, some of the dispersing Koisan also moved north.
White South Africans have been moving away from these shores from their earliest beginnings. Often this has just been a matter of failed migration. Traditionally, many arrivals never find their feet, and when the means exist people do tend to move away again quite quickly.
Of course, in many instances such means don't exist, cutting off all escape routes once having migrated, though sometimes this factor only applies on a generation basis (a subsequent generation having acquired new means and belatedly deciding to move away).
Other instances of outward migration are of a different push-and-pull variety. A foreign posting here may have only been temporary (it even applied to Van Riebeeck), other parts of the world ultimately offering more interesting challenges. But this also often applied to the offspring of long-term immigrants, who may have found their talents better deployed at a global level, or simply feeling a closer affiliation with the source culture, a pull that may ultimately be very powerful.
Disagreement with authority, as much Dutch as English, Zulu, Afrikaner and ANC, has been another reason pushing people offshore.
Mzilikazi's move can be so interpreted, followed within a decade by the Afrikaner Great Trek trying to escape British authority. Following the Boer War, some Afrikaners didn't want to stay, a few even emigrating to Argentina.
The 1948 change in government, and the apartheid regime that then followed, for decades pushed people off-shore, many dissident English and a few Afrikaners, and Black, Coloured and Indian exiles. This has been more a process of decades rather than an event, but a drain nonetheless.
But the net effect of all these migrations, inward and outward, has been the same. Mostly vigorous, talented people came and left. Their arrival was mostly a huge gain, their departure mostly a huge loss to this country, a brain drain as it is to any country experiencing such losses.
It is on this score that the past two decades come into focus, bearing in mind these earlier episodes.
By 1990, South Africa had created a modern post-industrial urban setting, even as a majority of its people was still mired in dismal poverty and rural underdevelopment.
Social engineering (apartheid) distorted allocation of scarce labour skills and talent. In addition, the quality of education offered to the majority of the population left much to be desired, given modern development ambitions.
The coming of the 1994 political watershed had many consequences. A hugely beneficial one was the freeing up of society, encouraging a better allocation of scarce skills and talent. But back-to-back there was a new preferment. And marking the change was much trepidation about the long-term future, at least among some.
Just as much as the coming of the English in 1806 would lead within a generation to the Great Trek (things moved more slowly then), and the coming of Afrikaner nationalists in 1948 was a signal for some English-speakers to call it a day, just so 1994's political upheaval initiated an immediate response, also because the means today are so much more accommodating than they were then.
The outward wave that got underway in the 1990s was fed by many considerations. There was political trepidation as to future realities. But close on its heels was a new discrimination, not unlike the early 1800s, early 1900s or early 1950s, sometimes pushing people out of work or preventing their natural progressing in favour of others newly affirmed.
But in the decade from the mid-1990s two more factors were to feature prominently in pushing people of all hues offshore. The one was virulent, violent crime. The other was deteriorating public services, in particular education and health care.
These were again big erosions of talented people this country could hardly afford to lose, given our development ambitions.
Our economic revival post-1994 was at first slow in taking hold, but from 2003 onward it became spectacular, yet it ultimately did not stem the steady loss of talent.
How else to explain 40 000 South Africans whooping it up in Dubai today, entirely a modern day phenomenon, or the security personnel making a living in Iraq or the steady erosion to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, America, Western Europe?
All of that is bad enough, when considering an economy with enormous development challenges, yet with its skilled labour pool stretched to the limit. And this with an education system 14 years after apartheid ended still delivering only 15% university exemptions in its annual school cohort attempting matric (itself only half its age cohort, the other half having mostly dropped out earlier at primary school level).
Yet recent weeks may well have seen yet another outward push forming, one we can't afford yet may not be able to prevent.
In recent weeks, there has been much speculation about the direction future economic policy could be taking. Not everyone will be welcoming such possible future changes with equal enthusiasm. This Christmas, in many a family setting, there may have been intense discussion as to what this means and where this may lead. Remembrances of Christmases past these past two centuries?
It certainly didn't help that the policy choices of the past two decades then also came to a head in a wave of electricity blackouts.
If the coast was more spared than Johannesburg over this festive season (last year it was the Cape, remember), and many revelers refused to even think about politics, preferring instead to recharge the batteries in weeks of relaxation, reality dawned quick enough in the opening weeks of January.
The return to work didn't only coincide with judicial spectacles or the worsening traffic congestion. It specifically was put under the whip of daily electricity interruptions.
Most urban South Africans run small businesses, or work for an employer. They all are dependent on electricity, from the petrol attendant to the seamstress and the computer user. Cut the juice and you cut the lifeblood of a modern economy.
The doubts as to where all this is leading must have multiplied greatly in recent weeks, especially after announcements suggesting that electricity interruptions will be with us for at least ten years.
One can buy expensive diesel generators and sun roof panels all you want, but that won't plug all the leaks.
The greatest frustration can be observed in the traffic. Here are all these people, with every modern communication gadget that money can buy, in their sometimes truly fancy cars, all reduced to immobility.
Good manners go out of the window, two weeks into the New Year. Traversing an intersection without working traffic lights has become a daunting gauntlet. Who has the greater bravura in challenging the other drivers?
Priorities, clearly, need some brushing up, as well as organizing for disaster, as much among the victims as among those serving us.
Eskom was prevented from building new power stations for many years, though asking to be allowed to do so. Affirmative action policies have often led to the loss of skilled labour, especially in the public sector.
Unless the economy were to shrink 5% or 10% shortly, the shortage of electricity is going to remain a reality for as many years as what it will take authority to boost generating capacity to sufficient levels once again.
The cost and inconvenience could be substantial.
For some, this may just not be worth it. Talent is in huge demand worldwide. South Africa can hardly afford losing even a single set of skills, never mind hundreds of thousands. Yet the drain could well swell anew in coming years.
One hopes the new political leadership will take cognisance of these worrying tendencies. Only paying attention to the education system won't be good enough. Like the electricity grid, it may take decades to get right.
More fundamentally, we need better allocation of scarce labour talent, and giving it a reason to stay on, even in these trying times.
Indeed, where is the sense of more Cuban, Tunisian and Indian medical personnel, if our own want to decamp wholesale? And that applies just as much to good teachers, accountants, engineers, plumbers, electricians, computer specialists, lawyers, marketers, even civil servants and municipal workers.
We need more encouragement for talent to stay, rather than dreaming up new schemes that will induce them to leave even faster than what they are already doing.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
New post ... post ... bugger they don't work either
Load shedding, a politically correct way of saying we fucked up, now deal with no power at home work or anywhere in between.
Just checking the news quickly, and i see:
http://www.news24.com/News24/On_this_day/On_this_day/0,,2-1602-1492_2253338,00.html
http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/default/display_article.aspx?Nav=ns&ArticleID=1518-25_2253492
Both articles on how other countries have had power problems too. So THEY (media) are saying it's ok folks. Deal with it.
Myself and everyone else am tired of this. Total utter absolute entropy. Happening really fast (in the historical sense). It's not only about power, but this is just so .... descriptive of the problem. To give an idea, traffic lights are out, so what is usually an hour plus (!) commute to work (for most), has now become 2 hours. Oh, and home again. You have to spend the time at work, but half that time you cannot work, so in half the usual time you have to do all the work. Whatever may be said, bosses don't give a rat's ass about your problems, of which power is but one.
Once you have finished a crappy day at the office, and sit in 2 hour traffic jams, you get home and guess what? No hot water to bath / shower, no hot water for coffee, no stove for supper, no lights, no music, etc.
Now we all know life ain't a bunch of roses even at the best of times, but now most people have just been pissed on. People are more stressed, tired, EVERYTHING takes more energy and time. But there is no payback anywhere. Not like you can even get an electricity discount ... you pay 100% for electricity maybe 10% of the useful time.
Because let's face it, it doesn't matter if power goes at while you're asleep or at work, you only want it for that silly in between time, you know, YOUR time. The only fucking time YOU have.
Already i can feel the roads tightening up, as people can't quite deal with the agony of sitting in traffic waiting to get to problems. Already i've had people trying to ride into me, for fun it seemed. You take where you get i guess :/
*sigh*
At the height of the greatest civilisation ever, we watch it unravel. And no, i'm not optimistic. In 1994, this WAS a first rate infrastructure, it was. It needed to be grown and shared more evenly yes, but the foundation was good. No longer. This is only the tip of the iceberg, many more things are breaking down as well, sewerage farms, storm drains, water purification plants, and everything else that is govt controlled.
The police and courts are hopelessly bogged down, and it isn't even the newsworthy items, it's all those poor people you never hear of. Mothers stealing food for their children going to university, fathers selling ganja (marijuana) for an income. Children stealing shoes for their siblings (i am not making this up).
Again, i started this post trying to be happy, but you look around and it hits you, the complete insanity of it.
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