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POPSKill the bastards! After urging the police to shoot to kill, Deputy Minister of Safety and Security has now advised ordinary citizens to do the same if they are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them.
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POPSDorothy Day's diaries published Dorothy Day's diaries are to be published. They were sealed for 25 years after her death in 1980, and should provide an interesting insight into her life and ministry. Dorothy Day was a Catholic anarcho-pacifist, and is a good illustration of the principle that theological conservatism leads to political liberalism, and vice versa.
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POPSStorm in an aluminium smelter Valli Moosa, the chairman of the Eskom board, and former Minister of Environmental Affairs, said at a meeting last night that South Africa would not have a power crisis if there were no big aluminium smelters, but said that this as a sensitive matter, as the row between Standard Bank and BHP Billiton shows.
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POPSSchadenfreude? For the last three months South Africans have been complaining about Eskom's failures in planning and bad management, as if it is the only organisation to suffer from such incompetence, and as if South Africa is the only country to suffer from such misfortunes. So perhaps there was a certain sense of relief, not to mention malicious glee, to see that British Airways seems to be unable to organise a piss up in a brewery. And there was the gent of Sky News muttering at 20 minute intervals about the damage it was doing to "brand UK". At least we're not alone.
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POPSThe Archbishop and the Beast There's been a sudden increase of blogging about liberation theology since Barack Obama's pastor hit the headlines. It has brought forth some very strange comments and perceptions, such as that those, who like Archbishop Romero were crushed by the power of the state for opposing the abuse of power actually supported what they opposed.
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POPSWitchcraft-related crimes
The recent arrest and appearance in court of three men accused of ritual killings in the Eastern Cape has highlighted the problem of so-called muti murders, one of which is that they are rarely highlighted. In another country one or two murders would be sensational. Eighteen murders in a small town within a few months should rival the Virginia Tech killings in the USA for newsworthiness -- at least in South Africa. But no, things like the Virginia Tech killings got more coverage in the South African media than serial killings in our own back yard. Why is this? Is it because many of the Virginia Tech victims were white, and the Mzamba victims were black? Are deaths of white people more newsworthy than the deaths of black people? And what happens to these case? So often it is reported that someone has been murdered, and that muti killing is suspected, and then no more is heard. If someone charged, that may be reported, and no more is heard. Is anyone ever convicted?
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POPSLiberation theology I never thought I'd ever see eye-to-eye with a US Southern Baptist. This one's rhetoric almost convinces me, but not quite.
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POPSPeace symbol - 50 years on Jerry Horton's now-famous peace symbol is 50 years old. It's first public appearance was at the Aldermaston March in 1958, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to protest against nuclear weapons. Later it was widened to a general peace symbol, and not simply against nuclear weapons, and has been used by people protesting against wars in general, such as the Vietnam War and the current Iraqi-American War.
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POPSThe martyrdom of the Iraqi Church Let this be a kind of postscript to the Blogswarm post of the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraqui-American War, to which there is no end in sight. Did the neocons think about this when they unleashed the dogs of war in Iraq? Do they care?
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POPSRacial integration through social engineering? Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa's urban residential areas remain almost as segregated as before. Now the eThekwini Municipality plans to change that -- by allocating housing on racial lines.
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POPSThe Gaza bombshell The hypocrisy of the USA is astounding. It recognises the "independence" of Kosovo led by the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army), yet encourages boycotts of Hamas-led Gaza. It complains about genocide in Darfur, yet stands idly by while Israil rains cluster bombs on the children of Lebanon.
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POPSDual therapy for HIV babies OK The Department of Health has given the go ahead to use dual therapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. And it's about time too! For people infected with HIV, treatment cannot cure -- it can only retard the progress of the disease. The treatment of babies, however, is a direct intervention to reduce transmission, and the more new infections we can prevent, the better.
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POPSBritish double standards on WMD and terrorists The recebnt revelations about British double standards on the question of WMD in the Middle East also highlights other double standards as well -- denouncing Hamas as "terrorists", but recognising the UDI by the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army).
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POPSDisingenuous "fact" file on Kosovo "Peace talks in France failed and in March 1999 NATO started bombing to force Serbia to withdraw." What's hidden in that bland statement is that the reason that peace talks failed was the intransigence of Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, who was determined to have a war.
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POPSBush Recognizes Kosovo's Independence So who's a "surrender monkey" now? Recognition of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence shows quite clearly that terrorism pays, and leaves the "War on Terror" in tatters.
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POPSKosovo UDI This reminds me of nothing so much as Ian Smiths unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia on 11 November 1965 - right down to Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which was adopted as the national anthem of Smith's Rhodesia. And the assurances of ethnic justice can be trusted just as much as Smtih's.
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POPSImagine no religion! Imagine no religion! Enver Hoxha did, and for 27 years worked to turn what he imagined into reality. From 1967 to 1991 Albania was the first (and only) atheist state in the world. It actually doesn't take much imagination. We don't need to imagine no religion We just need to look at the history books.
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POPSStyle and substance Apart from this paragraph, there is very little in this article that I agree with. But this sentence captures my disquiet about Barack Obama. A couple of months ago a British commentator remarked that if Obama became US president, it would be a presidency of style rather than substance. A British commentator (I can't remember if it was the same one) said exactly the same about Jacob Zuma. Zuma attracte support from a conglomeration of disparate interests who were dissatisfied with the status quo, and that made Zuma "electable". And the same thing seems to be happening with Obama. But if either becomes president, which of their supporters' interests will prevail. Change can be for the better, or for the worse, but which way will it go?
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POPSRemoving the state from Dr Rowan Williams Church, State, Law and the Enlightenment: I think that this article is rather condescending, and demeaning of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in suggesting that he did not know what can of worms he was opening in his discussion of Sharia law in Britain. I don't think he is that thick. As the article does point out, however, he has questioned one of the core assumptions of modernity -- that "religion" (itself a "modern" concept) belongs exclusively to the private sphere. In doing so, it seems, he has thought the unthinkable, spoken the unspeakable, and questioned the unquestionable. Nasty man -- a bit like Galileo and Copernicus, perhaps, except that he's questioning the secular authorities rather than the ecclesiastical ones. Though I don't agree with everything in Janet Daley's article, I think it's worth reading because she does put her finger on the main issue raised by the Archbishop.
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POPSSA police arrest 1,500 in church The South African Police now seem to be playing a game of "blame the victim" was we are seeing scenes that we have not seen since aparthneid ended in 1994. The government has watched as Zimbabwe turns into a fascist dictatorship and hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured into South Africa. The SA government has said very little to the government that has driven them out, but instead treasts the refugees almost as badly as they are treated at home. During the South African liberation struggle South African exiles found homes in neighbouring countries, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mocambique, as well as places further away such as Britain, Sweden and other European countries. Yet now when we have our freedom and others flee to us for asylum, we persecute them,
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POPSElectricity not being exported, says Eskom Eskom says that electricity is not being exported to neighbouring countries when there is no surplus. But isn't it a bit late for President Thabo Mbeki to be meeting with Eskom management to ascertain the extent of the problem? According to Cosatu, it was President Thabo Mbeki himself who opposed Eskom's plans to expand its generating capacity.
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POPSANC's Thatcherism responsible for Eskom load shedding -- Cosatu Cosatu has drawn attention to one aspect of the electricity supply crisis that hasn't received much attention in the media. Cosatu does not blame Eskom management, but the government's mania for privatisation. And if that is true, then the heads have already rolled -- at the ANC conference in December. And then it is just a question whether wiser heads replace them.
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POPSTweins separated at birth marry Adoption is not as secret as it used to be, so there is less likelihood of this happening than it was 30-40 years ago, but the right iof children to know the identity of their biological parents needs to be protected.
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