vent

Came upon this in the line of duty today and couldn’t help but wonder how much our esteemed government is contributing to this madness…

Champagne, lobster and caviar: Robert Mugabe plans binge in land of hunger

It is the 85th birthday of President Mugabe this month and the zealots of his Zanu (PF) party are determined that it should be an occasion that their great leader will never forget.

In recent days they have been out soliciting “donations” from corporate Zimbabwe and have drawn up a wish list that is scarcely credible in a land where seven million citizens survive on international food aid, 94 per cent are jobless and cholera rampages through a population debilitated by hunger.

Birthday list

2,000 bottles of champagne — Moët & Chandon and ’61 Bollinger
500 bottles of whisky — Johnny Walker Blue Label, 22-year-old Chivas
8,000 lobsters
100kg king prawns
3,000 ducks
4,000 portions of caviar
8,000 boxes of Ferrero Rocher
16,000 eggs
3,000 cakes — chocolate and vanilla
4,000 packs of pork sausages
500kg cheese
4,000 packets of crackers

Sounds like quite the feast in the land of the starving…

not to get upset about stuff I read in the line of duty these days, but this made me laugh – helplessly I must add – this morning. I know it’s not nice to wish harm on others, but it really would be rather poetic if this woman… _{[SERENITY NOW]}

Alaska seeks to block U.S. protections for belugas

Five months after suing to keep polar bears off the U.S. threatened species list, Alaska’s government said Wednesday it plans to issue a similar challenge to block federal protections for a struggling population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet, a mature oil-producing basin.

Former vice presidential hopeful Gov. Sarah Palin said the energy-rich state believes the Endangered Species Act protections for belugas announced in October by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are unwarranted. ...

I don’t even pay attention to all the campaigns ran in this country any more… Hollow words spoken by politicians who are rotten to the core.

The year 2009 must become a 365-day campaign of no violence against women and children, President Kgalema Motlanthe said on Wednesday.

“In 1994 we destroyed the edifice of apartheid, in 2009 and beyond we must destroy the cancer of abuse of our women and children,” said Motlanthe at a closing ceremony for the 16 days of no violence against women and children campaign, ...

Hehehe… I’d like to see you try my dear Prez… Not only do you have the backing of a grossly incompetent cabinet, but your successor (for lets face facts here – Jacob Zuma will unfortunately be the next president of South Africa…) has been on trial for rape in the past, and believes Aids can be prevented by taking a shower after having unprotected sex :) WAKE UP!! Can you smell the shit? It’s the cholera infiltrating our country from the North :) But don’t worry – Mugabe has got it all under control now :D

SA’s shocking rape and HIV-Aids statistics

• One in two women have a chance of being raped in their lifetime;
• A woman is raped every 26 seconds in South Africa;
• A woman is killed every six days by her intimate male partner;
• A child is raped every 24 minutes in South Africa;
• Eighty-five percent of rapes are gang rapes. A woman is more likely to be raped by 3 to 30 men than a single rapist;
• For every 400 rapes reported last year, 17 became official cases, one perpetrator was convicted and for every perpetrator convicted, one case docket was lost or sold.
• Forty percent of young men aged 20-29 (most common age of rapists) are infected with HIV-Aids;
• There are 1700 new cases of HIV infection daily.

Last night I was at a loss for words when the conversation drifted in its usual political direction and I learnt that one of my best friends don’t plan on registering to vote next weekend. WTF??? He is one of the most intelligent people I know! Maré and I tried to convince Adriaan that it was crucial to vote; if ever there was a time to make our voices heard, that time was now! But he believes that democracy can’t work in Africa, and that we’ll have to go the way of Zimbabwe before anything will change. I can’t remember when last I was so perplexed…

A few weeks back I was visiting with my brother, and as we sat around the fire that night with some of his friends, they told me that all of them plan on voting in next year’s election, just as they’ve done in the previous one. These are farmers – the people our government go out of their way to make it impossible for to prosper in this country! And yet they’re prepared to go stand in a line and make their voices heard, because they know how important it is.

We live in a country with a free, independent media. We have access to so much information, and then the most educated among us choose not to use it? The mere idea bewilders me!

If you don’t vote you can’t complain. We MUST keep our leaders accountable for their actions!

Yesterday I was sent an article by my friend Manie, posted on the Afrikaans website Praag. The article warns of three dangers facing our country:
1. Military training camps for the ANC youth
2. Hate speech against whites and blacks not seen as loyal to the ANC “cause”, and
3. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens.
The article cited the example of the genocide in Rwanda, and how the conflict there had been the result of years of simmering tension. I read it and immediately sent it off to my colleague Nathan because I thought it was just the usual fear mongering the white minority in this country is so fond of. His response was not exactly what I expected… He sent me the following article – Palin and the dangerous news anti-intellectualism – and told me why.

As some of you may know, our President, Thabo Mbeki, was sacked about a month ago (and quite humiliatingly I might add). He wasn’t the perfect president – I’ll be the first to admit that – but one of the major criticisms against him was that he was “too educated” and unable to communicate his ideas to the masses. (Admittedly, the man does have a Masters Degree in Economics, but I don’t think we should hold that against him…)

While Mbeki has worked to burnish South Africa’s image abroad, he has failed to connect with ordinary citizens back home, analysts say.

In contrast with Zuma’s populist image, Mbeki’s is seen as a distant technocrat, analysts say.

Enter Jacob Zuma, the man of the people… Mr Zuma is the leader of the ruling ANC party in South Africa – a man with a Grade 5 education, whose signature tune at political rallies is Umshini Wami (Zulu for “Bring Me My Machine-Gun”). Mr Zuma has defeated rape charges in the past, and although a ruling was in his favour the other day, chances are good he’ll still face corruption charges in an arms deal scandal in the near future. The uneducated masses love him… Especially Julius Malema, the leader of the ANC Youth League. Malema is famous for his idiotic utterances such as ‘We’ll kill for Zuma’ and ‘Eliminate the opposition’. Mr Zuma seems to approve of this kind of rhetoric – he doesn’t dare criticise this militant young man, unlike others in his party. But this might have backfired… All is not well in ANC country.

In South Africa, the Party of Mandela Faces a Divorce

A few months ago I was visiting my mother, and we were discussing the political situation in the country. It was around the time of the Zimbabwean elections, when we were all hopeful of an end to the cricis that’s been gripping our northern neighbours these past two decades. (One area in which Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” failed miserably, and something I’ll never be able to forgive him for.) I told her we here in South Africa needed a Morgan Tsvangirai – a strong black opposition leader who’ll be able to offer voters an alternative to the ANC, who keeps on promising better lives for all and keeps failing to deliver. And this week, we saw a glimmer of hope in the form of Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota., who had the courage to say what many people have been thinking for a long, long time…

He criticised the new ANC leadership elected in Polokwane in December and specifically party leader Jacob Zuma. “He is the legitimate leader of the ANC. Nevertheless, he is leading the ANC away from its policy,” said Lekota.

He added that the ANC no longer seemed committed to the principles of equality before the law. “Even when we steal money, like any other thief, we will be locked up. If you steal and you are black or white – jail. That is something we must teach now, it doesn’t matter if you are … the leader of the ANC, the law will apply to you,” said Lekota.

Unfortunately, Lekota’s bodyguard was abducted yesterday, and given this warning…

Lekota said the incident appeared to be related to his criticism of the new African National Congress leadership earlier in the week.

“One of the abductors told him, ‘this party you and Lekota want to form, you will form in heaven’.”

This reeks of Malema… But this is Africa, and all is fair in politics and war…

I love the fact that I can, from afar, take a look at the politics in America and see what’s going on there. I wish I could remove the average South African from this country and show them what the hell is going on here…

Palin: the real scandal

She wants to start drilling. She wants to block US moves to list the polar bear as an endangered species. And she has allowed big game hunters to shoot Alaska’s bears and wolves from low-flying planes.

The Palin administration has allowed Chevron to triple the amount of toxic waste it pours into the waters of Cook Inlet. This, even though the number of beluga whales in the bay has collapsed from 1,300 to 350 – the point of extinction – because of pollution and increased ship traffic.

Big game hunters are happy to pay lots of money to shoot wolves and bears from the air. They also chase them across the snow to the point of exhaustion and then land the planes on skis, shooting them from point-blank range. The animals are considered endangered across the “lower 48” states of America, but not Alaska. The hunters keep and sell the animals’ pelts.

Last year, Mrs Palin proposed offering a bounty of $150 per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf’s foreleg as proof of the kill. The measure did not pass. She even spent $400,000 on a state-funded campaign to block attempts to end the hunt.

IS THIS WOMAN FOR REAL???

The Worrying Arctic Ice Situation – Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Today, in the line of duty because unfortunately I HAVE to know everything that’s going on in the world of Big Oil, I read quite a few articles on global warming and how, For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated.

Tonight I phoned my mother in the hope that she would have some uplifting words, and then she mentioned how she’d heard on the radio today that researchers have found polar bear corpses floating in the ocean because they can’t reach ice. Of course my reading all about Sarah Palin and her stance on environmental matters didn’t help the matter…

Some days this job really gets to me… Perhaps we are beyond the turning point. I can’t make sense of what’s going on around me, and I’m not the only one. I feel hopeless when I see the bewilderment in my friends’ eyes.

Around the fire a few weeks ago we were discussing the Mayan End Times Prophecy. Heather didn’t know anything about it; Maré explained. At the end of the story, both of them came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing with the way things were going in the world right now… I was speechless.

I get scared when I look at my little niece and try to imagine the kind of world we’ll be leaving behind for her.

How can I get through days when I can’t get through hours?