On 12 May 2008, at 2.28pm, an earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale hit the Chinese province of Sichuan. The earthquake, believed by scientists to be 30 times as fierce as the one that hit Kobe in Japan in 1995, released the energy of five atomic bombs combined. More than 40 000 people are confirmed […]
2008
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Telling extremists and rumour-mongers to get knotted
There is nothing like uncertainty and the fears it creates to give credence to extremists and to give their rants more attention than they deserve. South Africa at present is fertile ground for extremists; they’re all running around screeching that the sky is going to fall on our heads, but for radically opposed reasons. The […]
Posted inGeneral
English football roundup: Fifa to introduce quotas?
Sepp Blatter’s latest initiative — to introduce a law whereby clubs must field a quota of at least 6 home grown players has received Fifa’s backing at it’s annual congress in Sydney. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/30/1 This one has also been endorsed by UEFA president Michel Platini, which means that despite the uproar from European clubs, this may […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Is it only me, or does Alec Erwin really think I’m thick?
During my boarding school days, when life in a church-run hostel serving a militarist government school was one of endless authoritarianism, we used to have a stock response to the ludicrous reasonings given for the ludicrous restrictions and punishments foisted upon us: “Do they think we’re thick?” Of course, we had no choice but to […]
Posted inGeneral
Is open source winning ?
In general, open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit.(it.jhu.edu/glossary/mno.html) This is a less-confusing name for what is also called ‘free software’. It describes the development method used for many pieces of software, including the Linux kernel, where the source […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Child victims’ case cries out for Victims Fund
No case illustrates better the pressing need for a fund specifically to compensate and assist victims of crime than that of nine township children, allegedly sexually abused by German immigrant Werner Braun. Braun fled the country via Namibia at the end of 2005 when police investigations got too hot for him, leaving behind a house […]
Posted inGeneral
Amazing Grace Mugabe
I really feel sorry for Mugabe. I mean what is the point of telling your wife something if she’s only going to blab it to the whole world? Yes I know Bob I’ve got the same problem with ‘the government’ (Mrs Traps). You tell them something, swear them to secrecy and they then go and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
I am a South African and I refuse to be ashamed
Of course we cannot feel pride for what we witnessed in Alexandra in the last couple of weeks. Hanging our heads in shame and writing lamentations will not change what has happened. We could express our dissatisfaction at what appeared to be a lack of leadership. We could even say that Thabo Mbeki spoke up […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Delivered, bound hand and foot
In every province of human life, and in that of reporting truthfully principally so, we have a right to demand a living sympathy of mind with mind. It is clearly not only about getting the highest circulation in the media establishment; the press is charged to inform, to entertain, to enlighten and sometimes to swim […]
Posted inGeneral
Yesterday’s WordPress Cape Town meet was huge
If you don’t know what WordPress is yet, just take a look around at the Tech Leader platform and see WordPress in full swing. Tech Leader runs on the wordpress multi-user platform, one of the topics covered(by Ashley Shaw) at the WordPress event I had the pleasure of planning for last night. Close on 40 […]
Posted inGeneral
Religious authoritarianism and social control
While reading Henry Giroux’s book, Against the New Authoritarianism (2005), I recalled Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a riveting narrative of a post-nuclear war regression to a supposedly biblically founded Republic of Gilead in what is now the United States of America. This futuristic dystopia is hierarchically structured and ruthlessly authoritarian, with women and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
“We’re like despised dogs”
Elmy is crying and shaking. She’s a fifty year old Somali woman who lost her children and husband in the civil war that plagued her home country. (For a short overview of the war in Somali watch this Youtube report.) Elmy came to South Africa ten years ago in the hope of forging a new life, but following the xenophobic violence everything she has is gone. Burnt and looted. Like the dream she had for starting over. “I beg President Thabo Mbeki to let me go. This government allowed me to come here. They let me into this country. Now they must please let me go home.”