Isidingo - The Need

Any hope for Africa got washed down the drain this week as once again the balless "leaders" of the continent failed to rail against the outrageous behaviour of those among them.
First up was the SADC's complete lack of spine, gumption, sense of identity and foresight when they failed to murmur their faintest disapproval of the tyrant president thief of Zimbabwe, Robber Mugabe.
Just days before the conference of Africa's "elite" Mugabe had had his opposition, the elected president Morgan Tsvangirai locked up and beaten within an inch of his life. And the world only knew about Tsvangirai because of his fame. Barely making a blip on international press radar was the death of Gift Tandare and the brutal assault on other MDC party members, along with the constant harassment and beatings of members of the group Women of Zimbabwe or (Woza).
Words can no longer describe the horrors this man visists on his helpless country. But one of the things that gave Zimbabweans any form of hope was that by next year he would have to hold another election, and as he has been the country's only President since its revolution, and he is 83, chances are that he would step down.
But Mugabe is too clever for that. He knows that if he steps down he'll be putting his head into a noose. And well he should. Thousands of people were massacred on his orders. Millions face starvation and beatens and rapes and other forms of torture at the behest of his regime.
So the snake has wrangled another term from his party of frightened little men who do not have what it takes to say "ENOUGH".
After the SADC meeting, where Mugabe was expected to at least be heavily chastised by other African leaders for his flagrant crimes, he says he did not hear a murmur of criticism. That they all got together and agreed it was all the west's fault, and that sanctions against Zimbabwe should be lifted.
These EU and US imposed sanctions affect only Mugabe and his elite by restricting their travel and the flow of their finances.
But the SADC in fact DID call for the lifting of these sanctions.
The swaggering Mugabe told his supporting thugs that he knew about Tsvangirai's beating, and that he approved. "He deserved it," he said.
Can you imagine for just one minute if someone like Tony Blair or George Bush had to say such a thing? They would be impeached before the presses had finished running.
But in Africa, Mugabe is welcomed back to his country by his lackeys.

Not sure about the ins and outs at my favourite white racist website, but I see one of the contributors, Marwinsing had been fired. I thought they had dragged the foul mouthed Knorrig off to the SPCA for some rabies shots at least, as it all seemed too much for Uhuru Guru to deal with people actually debating and talking on his blog. Poor old guy he needed help and gave ops status to The Real Realist, who seemed at first to be a fairly okay kind of person, Marwinsing who also seemed to be fairly okay and the thick-as-camel-pee Knorrig who loves to yap about things he knows nothing about.
It seems the Uhuru Guru went back to his witblitz and boerewors after taking a pounding over his homophobia and using southafricasucks.blogspot.com for his own personal vendetta against gays who in his book are all child molesting criminals responsible for all the crime in South Africa and probably global warming too. To give the old guy his due, he did actually put up the postings of his detractors and as I said, I think he bit off more than he could chew. Blogging, even if you only cut and paste, can sap your time and energy, and being editor/writer/op editor and simple man in the street can be exhausting. On second thoughts maybe he's recovering in one of those happy hospitals where the nice nurses have syringes filled with drugs that make you feel good.
Anyway, with Marwinsing gone (apparently after they "found out something about him" probably that he's Indian or some other such crime) he was jackbooted out. Then Knorrig seemed to be taken off the list too.
I think The Real Realist (yeh right) realised he had too much on his hands as the blog was chugging along at quite a good pace. So Knorrig was reinstated, but with a small "k" for his name. Hmmmmmm some secret message there?
At the end of the day, Once again I am personna non-grata, as TRR's jackboot style of running what used to be a pretty free and open blog, mean that only the noddies (people who nod along in agreement) get their stuff posted. Most of these replies are of course written by TRR himself as can be seen in the style and turn of phrase.
Ultimately what used to be a fairly lively forum for debate (more or less) has been turned into a blocked drain of racism from which the words "LIBERAL, CRAZY, and KAFFIR" are regularly burped. Oh, sorry they have other ways of saying "Kaffir" which they think are oh so clever. Like SOPHISTICATED BLACK GENTLEMAN (even if the perp is eight).
But once again they end up with pie on their faces. Firstly in a crime report about a man who shot and killed a burglar in his home: Oh dear, the police took away the weapon, what to do, what to do, surely this was some evil plot against all white's rights to carry guns and protect themselves. Anyone with any sense would realise that the weapon was now part of the crime scene and that the White shooter would automatically become a murder suspect. This has nothing to do with race, or the change in law. It's basic criminal law. A crime has been comitted -three in fact. One the breaking and entering of the home/ two, the assault, and three the killing of the criminal. They don't take into consideration that the police are only doing their job. That they need to explore all the facets of the case and can't take one man's word just because he is White. Gone are the days when the cops will drag a burglar who had been shot in the back into the house and put a kitchen knife in his hand, then with a nod, wink and tap of the nose, make the man out to be the local hero.
The second instance where their vicious KKK colours show is where according to them, some Danish group wishes to set up rape counselling centres in various townships. Now if there is one thing they hate more than blacks, it's people who would help blacks in any way. These people are lumped together under the dreaded LIBERALS term. We all know that SA is the rape capital of the world, but these white men would rather see nothing done to help the women victims, than let those crazy liberals give them anything. It can well be argued that the rape rate has not increased greatly since the change in government, but merely the reporting of such crime has changed, and the previous regime didn't bother, didn't care to police these areas. Women were not well enough informed of their rights, and with scant policing in townships would often have to see their attackers on the streets because they had little choice of where to go, and the police were too busy protecting the whites from the total onslaught of... er...well just the total onslaught of uppity blacks who might want to use whites only beaches.
As the SA government battles to redress the stupidity of its previous regime the white taxpayer is hurting, make no mistake about it. But what the numpties at WSAS do not grasp is that firstly the infrastructure and services need to be laid on to millions of people simply because the previous regime failed to do this. And secondly the tangled nightmare of SA tax law leaves loopholes for the wealthy whites who can stash their millions overseas, plunder the country of its resources and get away with paying next to nothing in what they should for taxes.
One can tell immediately by the "comments" posted, the intel level of the writers who all nod along together in a constant whine of white angst at losing their advantages of the past. What a pity UG. But, I understand.

Labels: Knorrig, racist, south africa sucks, southafricasucks

As the racist anti-crime sites from South Africa (there are some that are not racist so we need to make the distinction) tear themselves and each other apart, a new blog has sprung up under the title whitebitchfight. I cannot quite fathom the aim of the blog. At first it I thought it was to highlight the divisions among the white right. But then perhaps it was just a spoof, taking the worst quotes often written in the heat of the moment and later regretted, and highlighting them for the rest of the world.
At the end of the day it seems a bad attempt at following the style of Sasha Cohen's Borat, with a character barely able to speak English putting together a number of meaningless quotes because they are taken out of context.
What a yawn.

Mosima Gabriel (Tokyo) Sexwale is living proof of the South African dream.
Trained as a freedom fighter by the Soviet Army he has used his Russian contacts to parlay his business in South Africa into a R1.5billion consortium Mvelephanda Holdings - in only seven years. His empire spans gold, platinum and diamonds on two continents. There is no doubt that the assets were acquired at favourable rates, for Sexwale is a top negotiator and sharp businessman, but there were no government handouts.
He famously once looked at the staff ratio at the head office of Mvela Resources and told his CEO, a white man, that there were too many black staff. “Go and find a white man and employ him, I want diversity in my companies,” he said. http://www.somalilandtimes.net/sl/2005/233/028.shtml

Tokyo, who earned his nickname from his interest in karate, was born born 5 March 1953 ???
In 1977 he was arrested on conspiracy to commit terrorism and sentenced to 15 years on Robben Island. It was there he met his wife, Judy

Mvelephanda. 36% of the company is owned by trusts representing 1,000 former political prisoners, 60,000 former ANC guerilla fighters and their families, impoverished miners and welfare charities.
The remaining equity is owned by Sexwale (35%), management and directors (25%) and an unnamed individual (4%) whose identity has been kept secret. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing-and-markets/article.html?in_article_id=402640&in_page_id=3

"If blacks get hurt, I get hurt. If whites get hurt, that's my wife, and if you harm coloured people, you're looking for my children. Your unity embodies who I am."


BELIEVING IN A JET PLANE

Among the best known is Tokyo Sexwale, the former premier of Gauteng province, now reportedly a billionaire who has acquired three aircraft, including a Lear Jet he bought for his wife on Valentine's Day. Last year alone, black empowerment deals helped create nearly 6,000 millionaires. (August 20, 2006)

San Francisco Chrnoicle
SHADOW OF RAGE
Despite high hopes, South Africa has failed to create a racially blind societyhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/08/20/INGBNKFV2828.DTL

IT SICKENS ME to the pit of my soul when I know that Tokyo Sexwale has 5 Lear Jets , although he swore in 1996 that he'll (as ex-Premier of Gauteng) build 1 million houses!
Knorrig, resident drooling racist on SA Sucks

But no one seems to be able to prove the existence of more than on LearJet in the Sexwale family - the one Tokyo bought for his wife Judy as a Valentine's gift. Knorrig does provide evidence of a Bombardier jet being owned by Sexwale. A two jet family. Hmmm. Let's see if he can find the other three, with some solid evidence.

Just in time to get over the humilliation of scooter's conviction THE GREAT CONFESSION

9/11

The Bali bombings

WTC '93

Daniel Pearl

Plaza Bank .... Wait, WHAT?

# posted by Inkonkoni @ 9:32 AM 4 comments

One of the most popular shows on telly at the moment is 24 in which Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) plays the consummate hero. It's interesting to note that the viewing public gives it a 9.5 out of 10 score. My friends watch it. My girlfriends all want to have Bauer's babies.
I've seen some of it, and I must admit three things.
1. I saw episodes out of order. Our cable provider seems to run two series of the same production simultaneously with copious reruns during the week, so I could watch episode 2 of the first series on say, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and episode 16 of the second series on Monday, Thursday and Sunday. So it was very confusing.
2. I did enjoy what I was able to follow.
3. Then I started to think about it in context of what was happening in the world, particularly in America.

Americans were hurting from the tragedy of 9/11. They wanted revenge - hence the attack on Afghanistan, the round up of suspects through Pakistan and the eventual war on Iraq. And they needed to believe the cause was right and just.
Then the Abu Grahib story broke. It was shameful and humiliating, dragging Americans down to the level of third world dictators.
Shortly after that I did a story on the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. Men held without trial and due process, indefinitely. The basis of the story was that the prisoners were on a hunger strike, and against world medical agreements - to which the US was a signatory, they were being force fed.
Most of the people I spoke to at the time wondered what the big deal was. Allow me to give you an extract of a man's account of force feeding: “About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.
The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the morning and did it all over again,” Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky wrote in the Washington Post, in an article that brings home the horror institutionalised force feeding. Bukovsky spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons where he was regularly force fed after going on a hunger strike.

This was not really what was happening in Gitmo. The pipes they used were smaller. As far as we know noses were not broken. But the general picture is the same, a gross violation of human rights, a torture in its own right, and a violation of medical ethics where doctors are forbidden to perform treatment without a patient's consent.
While doing the story, however, I met a man by the name of Mandouh Habib. He had experienced the loving attention of Gitmo's healers when they force fed him. Before that he had been snatched in Pakistan, rendered through Egypt where he was tortured with electric shocks, beatings and attacked by dogs. He was drugged, and told his wife and children had been raped and murdered. Realising that he was being drugged, he stopped accepting food.
This was Jack Bauer at his best. Doing what had to be done to protect Americans at home. What a hero.
But Habib was never brought to trial. He was never charged. He was and Australian citizen who apparently happened to be on the wrong bus at the wrong time. Today he suffers post traumatic stress and the physical consequences of his torture. No one has apologised or compensated him for his ordeal - but that is another story.
What shows like 24 fail to portray is the realistic consequences of torture. The blood, the vomit, the piss and shit, the broken human beings, many who end up dead, many who are completely innocent, who have nothing to "give" their torturer, those who end up permanently scarred and disabled as a result of torture. That a man hanged by his wrists suffers nerve damage that, depending on the time he spends like that, could be permanent or could result in him losing his hands. A person punched in the kidneys can suffer kidney failure and be on dialysis for the rest of their lives, if they survive.
Jack Bauer and other tough-guy heroes, of course, never tortures the wrong person. And the person they torture always gives them the vital information that allows them to save the day. In the viewers' consciousness the seed is planted that "torture is necessary sometimes, so it's okay".
In fact torture is an extremely unreliable method of extracting information. It assumes the person's guilt, and it assumes they have the information needed.


More often than not torture is used to extract confessions, or as a means of punishment. But any person - even JB himself - would confess to anything, given enough torture.


I don't mind torture as a device in telling the story. But it needs to be done realistically, not portrayed as a means that is justified in the end.

Take a look at some real victims of torture, before and after:

Mel Gibson has refused to make a movie with Idol star Jennifer Hudson because she's black. Most people would find that disgusting. It would be surprising if he ever worked in showbiz again, and quite rightly so. Only it wasn't Gibson and Hudson that were involved in this scenario. It was Denzyl Washington refusing to do a movie with Julia Roberts because she is white.
Oh, that's okay then. How noble of Washington to insist his leading lady be coloured.
When last did you see a movie where the bad guy is Jewish?
Quite frankly I can't recall one. Why is that?
This is not an anti-Semitic rant. I'm just curious as to why this might be. Come to think of it, when last you saw a homosexual being anything but lovable and sensitive?
Why this has suddenly come to my attention is because recently BBC ran a programme called Don't drop the Baby. It was a really interesting premise. The producers had made robotronic babies that worked more or less like real ones. Then they gave the babies to celebrities to look after for a few days and carefully monitored their progress. I can't even remember the names of the celebrities, but one was a gay couple who wanted a child of their own and had obviously read up on the subject. The other was some model who was not interested in children, didn't know a thing about them and was completely useless at anything other than pouting and painting her nails.
And that was it.
There was no heterosexual couple who wanted a baby. No gay men who didn't want a baby. No single woman with a modicum of common sense. Guess which celebrity came off looking like the best choice of parent.
I am sure that there are plenty of gay men out there in stable relationships that would make great parents, but the BBC chose to slant the programme in favour of the gays.
This coupled with a recent report that some homosexual bodies want to pry their way into home school and private schools to ensure that children are not being taught homophobic attitudes made me wonder where we draw the line.


Surely parents have a choice as to what to teach their children. And given that they are going to the trouble to home school their children this in my view gives them more control over what they choose to teach their children.


Those of you who know me know I have little religious affiliation and even less sexual affiliation except for what I believe is sacred - freedom of choice.


There are certain acts, crimes, that cause harm to the community. These include murder, robbery, rape, child molestation, theft, fraud, etc etc. Then there are other things which some people view as criminal which actually do no harm to the community at all. Things like homosexuality and the following of certain religions, abortion, prostitution and drug taking. That is where freedom of choice comes in.


It was the self-styled satanist Anton La Vey (I think) who first coined the creed of "Do what thy wilt"


But it was actually Jesus Christ Himself who said "Do unto others as you would be done by." And that is the basic tenet of most mainstream religions in the world today.


So where, exactly, does this leave society? Very basically if groups of people do things that other groups of people find unacceptable it would lead to a Balkanisation of social groups. Whereas if we respect individual rights - as long as they do not harm anyone - we can all get along just fine.


This kind of thinking is born out in places like Hong Kong. This is where people do have the luxury of choice. If a Muslim woman wears a veil, no one looks twice. If men hold hands in public, no one cares. People here can wear crosses, and put piggy banks on their desks, put up Christmas trees and sing carols, put up Luna New Year symbols and watch lion dances - and no one cares.


This is the year of the Pig. We have an entire Muslim community here, and there was not one peep out of them. Just as the Chinese don't complain when they celebrate Ramadan.


But in protecting what were previously seen as "minority" group rights, we seem to have gone overboard in being PC, to the detriment of what we would term the mainstream.


If God fearing Christians feel that homosexuality is sinful then they have every right to teach that to their children, just as Muslim parents can teach their children that they need to go to Mecca and slaughter a goat to have their sins forgiven.


Certain religions feel that Christmas should not be celebrated - Christians among them I might add. That's all well and good. No one is FORCING them to celebrate it. But for the rest of us they should just get out of the way.


Just as no one is forcing any woman to have an abortion. It's her choice (well, okay, except in China). It's no one else's business, just as what goes on between two consenting adults is no one else's business.


It has, of late, however, become my business.


You see, I'm a white South African. I cannot say that blacks are murdering thieving incompetent animals because that would make me a racist and I would be accused of hate speech and locked up. Just like Mel Gibson could never get away with saying he didn't want to do a part with Jennifer Hudson because she's black.


Yet the Deputy President of South Africa can sing about how he wants to get his gun and shoot the whites - and that's okay. Washington can say he doesn't want to do a love scene with a white woman, and he is applauded. Why is it okay to be racist if you're non-white? Why is it okay to be anti-Christian but not anti-Jewish?


Is that not a form of bigotry in and of itself?


There is a man by the name of Ernst Zundel who has been sentenced to five years in prison. His heinous crime was not robbery or assault or even drunken driving. No, this terrible criminal actually had the temerity to question the "facts" of the holocaust. Shock and horror. He didn't actually commit the holocaust. He just questioned the facts. He's serving time for this way of thinking. Just as David Hicks appears to be serving time in Guantanamo for supporting 9/11. Not committing it, not planning it, just thinking it was a good idea at the time. In which case half the Muslim world and a few others should also be behind bars.


Isn't it time we stopped paying so much attention to minority rights and started worrying about individual rights?