Grant Walliser

The usual partisan articles and rallies have sprung up over the past few weeks regarding Israel’s devastating incursion into Gaza. The well worn labels of “terrorism”, “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” are being thrown around by people desperately trying to swing public perception favourably in one or another direction. Israel has been branded the heartless monster […]

Here is the thing with Mbeki’s fabled “quiet diplomacy”: it has not, does not and will not work. While Mbeki and his simpering entourage of struggle buddies have been donning their Armani suits and hopping north on their private jets for the last few years, Zimbabwe has steadily accelerated into anarchy under their entrusted watch. […]

The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, have done more than just expose the difficulty in containing and responding to global terrorism. They have also exposed a fair amount of limp and shallow journalism, dished up in large swathes by local and international press. Upon hearing about the attacks, my first reaction was to try […]

In the year 75BC, Gaius Julius Caesar, citizen of the great Roman Empire was sailing on a Roman battle trireme in the Mediterranean when pirates attacked the ship. Caesar was captured and ransomed, as was the practice back then. Legend has it that the great man was not impressed when the pirates decided to bill […]

When Georgia invaded South Ossetia on 7 August 2008, very few people had even heard of the place. A month on and the crisis in the breakaway republic is causing a monumental shift in the power play of the worlds greatest nations. It may not be apparent yet but South Ossetia could dramatically change our […]

On the 25 July 2008, the Rosebank and Killarney Gazette published an article about the proposed building of a large mosque in the heart of residential Houghton. The building will house between 1 500 and 2 000 people in prayer and provide for the increasing need for places of worship for Houghton’s Muslim community. Phase […]

While the world watched the opening of the Olympic Games, well prepared and armed Georgian troops invaded and shelled Tskhinvali, the capital of the tiny breakaway republic of South Ossetia, until there was little over 30% of the structures left standing. They executed what has to have been a premeditated attack to coincide with the […]

The Forum of Black Journalists (FBJ) malarkey has recently provided a counter to so–called “white whingeing”. That counter is the emergence and increasing prevalence of “black whinging” and the volume is creeping ever steadily upwards. How rainbow. The recent BJF ruling has been a rallying point; a target in stocks on the village square for […]

When Iraq was invaded in 2003, ostensibly to crush the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and undeniably as a belated form of retribution for the 9/11 attacks, there were those in the western world who felt that it was a plausible response for the acts of terror that had materialised […]