About a year ago there was this product called ‘power balance’. I’m sure you remember it, you probably bought one but are too ashamed to admit it now aren’t you?

Well the story of this piece of rubber, made in China and slapped with a hologram sticker, was that it improved everything from your golf swing to your sex life.

Now seeing as both of those are relatively sublime for me (*tips hat to the people who said my last post was narcissistic*) I couldn’t understand how people didn’t realize this was the greatest con the world had ever seen!! It was a piece of rubber that friends bought, then more friends bought, people got them for xmas, gave them to bosses and bought them branded to rejuvenate corporate cultures – you ALL feel like F*@KING IDIOTS now don’t you!

You see this power balance arm band turned out to be exactly what it always was from the start – a piece of rubber made from a mold in China for 3 cents and sold for a packet.

This is kind of how I feel about the Facebook IPO.

I’ve had friends scrambling to try get their piece of the pie that will make them a fortune overnight, I’ve heard stories of Bono making more money off the initial listing than he has off music and while I know that this little website has changed the world forever I think that it’ll be the next power balance given time.

Yes, people will make FORTUNES of this (they did on PB as well), and yes it will take MUCH LONGER to implode than PB, BUT the principle is the same. You see a good marketing strat combined with public appreciation and a simple demonstration (in FBs case it’s the numbers) means that everyone jumps very quickly onto the bandwagon.

You see the FB numbers look outrageously good. Millions of photos, gazillions of likes and trillions of users which makes it as easy to sell to marketers as TIC on the Cape Flats. The truth is though if you ask any marketer what exactly the impact of their FB campaigns are they will have very little REAL idea, yeah they’ll argue it got views and clicks and likes but how many of the FB junkies actually went out and bought something, or at worst did the brand even spike on their overloaded GEN X,Y or Millennial brains? Marketers however will defend this to the absolute death for one reason and one reason alone, EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT and if everyone’s doing it, you don’t want to be the idiot who stands alone, instead you’d rather stand in a crowd of idiots hoping you’re all right!

At some point, someone is going to realize that the website, that by population is the third largest country in the world yet makes less money per person that a Starbucks cashier, is actually the biggest most impressive scam yet. It is nothing more than a nifty place to cyber stalk hot women, inflate your ego by pretending to have millions of friends and to tell as many people as possible when you finally emerge from the horse shit that is your life.

The IPO will go ahead and like most other fads it will be MASSIVE but do yourself a favour, don’t get caught up in the bullshit of it all, don’t praise it as a new religion and don’t worship its god Zuckerberg as if he’s anything more than a geek who got lucky. The candle which is FACEBOOK’s life is burning bright and strong but it will go out and when it does there will be a lot of people left in darkness!

Don’t be a sheep! Live, enjoy, appreciate success but never EVER follow blindly!

I may be a little biased due to the fact that this little bastard cost the last African team left in the 2010 soccer world cup their spot because, let’s be honest here, he’s a fucking cheat! I hated him when Manchester United threatened to sign him and I hated him the most when his cheating antics landed themselves at Anfield (a club I respect tremendously – even more so under ‘King Kenny’)

The fact is the man is a VERY good footballer and I suppose as the season went on a bit I started to hate him less for being a cheat and more because of his and Liverpool’s new found success (if you are a football fan you will understand this is a normal and very acceptable hatred of other teams players)

Then one fine winters day Suarez came to Manchester and without question racially abused Patrice Evra (a guy who at his worst is a tough no nonsense footballer) over and over again – the cheating hatred began to come back. Over the coming days video evidence proved the abuse and Suarez was given an eight match ban!

In support his fellow players decided to warm up in Suarez shirts I support of this now proven Nazi! (even King Kenny who I’ve downgraded to a Nazi SS footsoldier)

What I cannot understand is why and how firstly this kind of racism is allowed in football, this coming from me, who wrote an article in ‘defense’ of Sepp Blatters so called racist remarks, and secondly how teammates of this idiot can come out in support of someone who was PROVEN guilty!

Liverpool has been an amazing club for me over the years. It’s had the same tradition, passion, heart and players that I’ve grown to love about the English Premier Leagues great old clubs and this event and more importantly the way the team and club handled it has really put them into a new realm of darkness for me. I understand supporting your players no matter what, but, there really are better ways of handling a situation like this!

Suarez is and always has lived on the edge of the law with football and for top flight players I guess that’s sadly become the norm but to be a proven racist should really mean he now must become a pariah (Darren Scott must have his hands in the air somewhere asking how come he was so vehemently outcast)

This last week saw, probably one of the most controversial things happen to a South African citizen outside of our borders in a long time – Janice Linden was put to death in the People’s Republic of China (in SA you can get shot and killed no prob – it’s just outside our borders we have an issue its seems) for trafficking TIK, of all bloody drugs, three years ago.

The public outcry has been immense. Why didn’t our government intervene? Why didn’t they stop this? This is a human rights violation – where was the UN? The list of questions as to who or what should have been done goes on and on and I suppose if you are a human rights activist I can kind of understand your perspective – I don’t think anyone should be able to decide if someone’s life can be taken from them for whatever reason.

Or do I?

If we look at the world around us, we bitch about human rights but it seems to be more of a reason for us to feel good about ourselves than anything else. We live in a world where human rights are butchered into tiny pieces in pretty much every society across the globe and we want to save a women’s life that was going to pollute thousands of people’s lives with TIK!

Have we lost all shape and form of moral compass?

This person was going to let one of the worst drugs be sold to children across China and we want to blame their government for killing her? If my kids (well my unborn or illegitimate ones at least) were one of her customers I would have killed her myself.

So much bad happens in this world as it currently stands, can we afford to be so lenient on people who want to make it worse just because she wanted to make a quick buck while the rest of us have to battle through life earning it piece by piece.

Talk to me about human rights for a drug dealer when women who are raped, murdered and tortured in the middle east comes to an end, when genocide and child soldiers torn from theirs families in Africa stops and when dictators stop destroying countries by oppressing and massacring their own people. Don’t cry at our government to intervene with their biggest trade partner in the world to ask for mercy for a TIK peddling fiend! WE HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS!

Now I see every person who thinks I’m being harsh stumble across the words ‘trade partner’ and say “you see they did it for the money”. Now, YOU IDIOTS, if you are a reader you understand my view of our relationship with China (yes – I agreed with locking the Dalai Lama out to make them happy) so if you think I’m going to back down over this you must be buying some of this chicks TIK!

The bottom line is we cry about human rights about someone poisoning the fabric of society yet we go on living in our houses and crinkle our noses at dinner parties saying just how terrible those Chinese are – I say thank goodness someone has the balls to do the right thing.

They run a country that works, end of story, and the reason is they do not have time or effort to care when there should be no leniency given. They make decisions based on fact and in this instance they were absolutely spot-on!

You are just too scared to say it – the world is better off without one more drug dealer!

So finally, today the world has someone to point the finger at for the death of the most talented musician in a generation.

BUT, is it fair?

Since his death we have been scrambling to find some sort of closure and someone to blame for taking the King of Pop so soon and Conrad Murray was the perfect candidate. I mean, he was found guilty in the court of public opinion months ago and the trial was merely a formality really. The dude never stood a chance!

Leading the charge with pitchforks and torches was of course MJ’s family and why shouldn’t they be this evil Dr Kevorkian had stolen their precious Michael, oh the grand canyon of irony. These precious people who sat in the courthouse crying and screaming at the accused about how he had murdered their boy had absconded ALL responsibility for why the man needed rucksacks full of drugs to get some sleep!

I don’t absolve the doctor completely let’s be fair now – he was a fucking idiot after all, he was greedy, he was sloppy, he was arrogant and he was stupid but tell me ANY of these are out of place in any office in Wall Street over the last 5 years? I don’t see any of those ‘summer in the Hamptons’ bastards getting metaphorically lynched by the world? In fact I don’t see any of them in jail for crimes that financially crippled half the world. Justice system? Give me a fucking break people!

Murray was the man’s private in house doctor and he was begged by MJ to give him something to make him sleep. It’s not Murrays fault the only thing that could get the pop star to sleep was a rather strong horse tranquilizer and I really don’t think it’s his fault he gave it to him. Michael was clearly in pain, he was clearly in need of help and his doctor decided to give him what he wanted to ‘help’ him.

If we find a heroin junkie in an ally with his brains blown all over the wall we don’t go out to try prove the guy who sold him the gun is actually a murderer! WE say sad tragedy and MOVE ON! But for, arguably, the globes biggest musical star we needed more – we needed a reason to hold someone responsible, sadly as people when we are sad and frustrated that’s what we generally do and Murray was the easy way out!

The miserable fact is, the reason MJ needed these swimming pools of sedatives were the exact same idiots looking for justice. We know his family as a whole are mildly psychotic and as individuals are downright unplayable! We know his father used to beat the family for most of their lives while in between making them perform relentlessly like circus monkeys for cash.

We know that his mother pushed all of them to their limits as kids when they should have been out kicking a ball and enjoying the freedom that being a child is supposed to be. MJ was a performing genius from so young and for so long that we saw the damage it did to him – he was bombarded with publicity so much that lets be fair he was slightly bonkers.

His family was at the front of every queue for handouts, collaborations and constantly pushing and pulling him in every direction – no wonder the man spent his life paying a doctor a fortune to drug him, if I had his kind of money I’d do the same and I can barely say I’ve dealt with what he had.

At the end of the day the world was heartbroken when we lost MJ for many important reasons but do we really believe it’s fair to send another man to jail for four years because of he gave a neurotic paranoid and sleep deprived pop star some drugs to let him have a few moments of peace and because Murrays own stupidity – I’m not sure we should!

We were sad, angry and shocked and our behavior reminded me of an old story of how you catch a crocodile – you find a lizard and then beat it until it admits it’s a crocodile – Murray was our lizard!

Let me just clearly state before we start I DON’T GIVE F#@K who this podgy brain dead women fornicates with on / off camera, dates, marries, divorces and the same for her podgier sister and her prettier but more brain dead sister – everyone clear.

Now that I have that out of the way, the below photo is Kim Kardashian laughing AT YOU!

Why, you dare say? Well quite simply because you and your magazine and TV guzzling face continues to make her rich (look she was rich before so you are not a complete moron but you are supporting the habit so you deserve a beating, albeit only verbal!)

I hear you uttering “How?” knowing in the back of your mind you are somehow to blame – well here’s how you idiots! KK, who is basically on a reality show ALL the time (even outside of her stupid shows with her mother and sisters et al). In fact she and a whole host of precious little beauties (Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and the list goes on but the IQ remains close to ZERO!) have managed to successfully turn their lives into reality shows.

However KK must be the smartest of all cause she has tricked millions of people into believing it’s actually real, in fact all of you stayed glued to E watching her ‘relationship’ with some dude (I’m not sure who he is but I’m sure he is in pro sports) unfold and then you went out and bought this!

Then, bless their hearts, OMG they are getting married so you went out and bought a few more . . .

Then sadness, I can’t believe it, she’s already unhappy AND. YOU. BOUGHT. MORE!

And finally, shock, out of nowhere they are getting divorced and STILL YOU IGNORAMUS BOUGHT MORE!!

I hope you see what I’m getting at here?

SHE MADE IT ALL UP! You see because I’m guessing she realized after her last ‘relationship’ with what was no doubt another pro athlete, that this is big business. So if just dating a famous guy is huge business then MARRYING one must be even more . . . and my god she was absolutely right!

E news made a fortune, People magazine’s photos and expo on the wedding made a fortune, I’m sure HELLO or OK got in there somewhere and made a fortune and last of all KIM K Made a fortune from all of them (I’m not sure if the players in this theory are correct but they are the usual suspect, if it wasn’t them you can just sub in the names of the magazines sitting in your home currently with her fat face plastered all over the covers!)

You know who didn’t make a fortune?

YOU!

You lost money!

You gave it away so fast you can’t even remember how many hours you spent watching this crap or how much money you spent buying these mags but the fact remains YOU got poor while everyone else got rich.

Now do me a favour and go back to the first photo of Kim K and you tell me HONESTLY . . . is she laughing at you?

You need to understand two things about my family, firstly we hate to lose! Plain and simple we battle to accept defeat in any form (in fact I’ve failed to write anything on the Boks because the anger wells up too fast and strong) and second we hate being ‘cheated’ out of a win even more!

This is the note I got from my brother who lives on an island in Thailand after the loss with the simple words as a subject I’m STILL ANGRY!

I thought it was a dream this morning, when I woke up, still hazy. This was not some ‘run of the mill,’ petty unfairness, the trickery of school children, a parking ticket, or a passing over; this was a travesty, a mythical deception, a monumental injustice – Brutus slaying Caesar, Jacob deceiving Esau, another Bush being elected to the White House; it was as if Dolos the Greek God of craftiness, treachery and guile was honing his skills at Wellington Regional Stadium in New Zealand yesterday, and his target was the Springboks; just because. I thought as much when I woke up; an impossible fairy tale.

It was the same as my dream in the reports, when I checked the Internet. Australia 11 South Africa 9 – a perverse reversed distress call.

Reality bites, sure, okay, we all know that – but NOT that HARD!

Denial turned to anger. It’s hard to swallow, losing to Australia anytime, never mind LIKE THAT, in a World Cup Quarter Final. This loss covers like an unrepentant fog; it lingers like a fart in a closed, hot, and stuck elevator; it hurts like a kick, with a lead boot, in the balls.

At half time it was Australia 8 South Africa 3, inconceivably if you watched, and had your eyes open. Australia’s points were scored with disdain to conventional rugby wisdom and logic; they were nothing less than miracle points, a try from a mistaken turn over, and a penalty for South African hands supposedly in at the breakdown; fate has nothing if not a sense of irony. It was a tough ask to come back from there. I never gave the Springboks much hope of answering. They did in the second half; they came out like fire and burnt their way back. It was ball in the hand charge the bulkhead type stuff. We won lineouts, and scrums, and attacked, and ran, and scrapped; no respite, no rest, no little grubber kicks to the corner, just wave upon wave of green and gold thunder, hearts on sleeves. This is the Australian team that recently won the Tri Nations. For most of the the second half, they looked exactly the children they are, standing like Goo Goo Dolls, throwing themselves wherever they could, punch drunk, distressed – almost imbecilic. No doubt, they were up against it, that was some of the finest, and most exciting rugby I have ever seen a Springbok team play. It ought to have been, it’s the most capped side in World Cup history. It’s a team full of warriors. It’s a team full of Legends. It showed. They did not let up, not for one second.

We went ahead, deservedly I thought: South Africa 9 Australia 8.

Yes…Now…Score. I’m not sure what kept us out after that, I’m not really sure what kept us out before that; a little knock, a fifty fifty not to hand, an illegal pilfer at the breakdown, a gust of wind, some dark magic sorcery, GOD?

Then ‘another dubious decision’, as a New Zealand writer put it, and a penalty. It’s almost the only time the Aussies touched the ball in the second half, that penalty. ‘Not like this,’ I said, when that little blond faced kid kicked it over. Australia 11 South Africa 9, and that’s how it ended, I don’t know how.

‘Sometimes shit happens that doesn’t make sense,’ said Edward, an Englishman and regular at the Green Man Pub in Phuket where I was watching, as the Aussies celebrated, ‘that’s sports.’ Not gravity defying shit, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t talk, I was too gutted. I can imagine what it must be like for the Springboks. They were there, on that field; they played what we all watched – an annihilation, and now they are coming home. Australia played rugby from minute 11 to minute 17, the rest of the time they just tried to get in the way; tenaciously, I’ll admit. They survived at the breakdown, like rats, cockroaches, and small infestations of some stinking thing; a disease…I go too far, sorry, the bile rose again. It’s just a game, but anyone who loves South Africa, and rugby knows it is more than that.

There is no moral victory over Australia. We lost, and that is it, better to accept, and move on. ‘Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve,’ my mother always says.

The Coach has resigned. It was his only move, the last World Cup, when the team won the whole thing, SARFU or SARU, whatever the paper shufflers are now called, fired him. Must be nice for the Coach to go out on the same day as John Smit, and Victor Matfield; that’s got to make one feel powerful. Man I’m going to miss those guys standing in the tunnel, they’re not irreplaceable, no one is, but it’s close.

Over the next couple of days, the papers might point some fingers, allude to some nonsense, talk about youth, and age, wonder about game plans, some of our own (ego’s, past players, those not a part of it) might take a couple of cheap shots at the players of this team.

Don’t you do it!

Don’t you forget!

In this team were the winners of one Rugby World Cup; two out of South Africa’s three Tri Nations Championships; and all three of South Africa’s Super Rugby Championships. This team has three times been named the IRB World Team of the year. There was nothing old, or tired, or derelict about this team. On the day they were ferocious, they were consistent, they were warriors, they were as good as I’ve ever seen them play,as good as I’ve ever seen any Springbok team play. They were almost perfect. Since early 2004 this team has taken South Africa to the top of world rugby, a place we always laid claim, but never before belonged. For me it’s the greatest rugby team South Africa has ever had. It’s possibly the greatest the rugby world has ever seen. It’s a team full of names we will all remember for a long time. I never thought there was honour in losing, today I think differently.

Hail to all of you, Springboks of Rugby World Cup 2011 from the Beautiful South. I can always find fault, but I can’t fault you. You were magnificent.

PS: I wish I could be there to greet this team when they get home. I hope those who can be there turn up. I think the team might like that. I think after all the good times, they deserve it.

Thanks Paul

This post is not about readers or comment, its about being able to offer some thanks and some praise in my own personal way to a man i have the highest admiration for and who’s life has tragically ended.

It’s strange to have formed such a complete opinion of another person without ever having met them. This is (I can’t bring myself to say ‘was’ yet) the case with Steve Jobs. I’ve come to realize this in the past daywhile reading the tributes, the letters and the well wishes for Steve and his family.

I’m no Apple junkie, not that I don’t buy every new toy that they make purely because I feel cooler just playing with it, but generally they end up lying around the house after a while (all of em except the iPod – they either live on or get lost cause every time I get a new one it’s like a tenth of the size of the last one!)

THE IPOD EVOLUTION

So, I didn’t ‘drink the cool aid’ and I wouldn’t follow the man off a cliff HOWEVER I have probably listened to every talk he ever gave, read anything he ever wrote or was written about him and sat like a spell bound kid for every hour I sat doing so! Steve was just special like that. He could create things that people hadn’t even thought of yet. He was the absolute epitome of a man who didn’t exist to win, but rather to win by such a margin that the opposition felt insulted for taking part in the same race. He was the Michael Jordan, the Tiger Woods, and the Lionel Messi of whatever he put his mind to and while most people know and love him for his contributions through Apple, the most impressive stuff was before.

BOY GENIUS about to change the world!

In May 1985, Steve was essentially ousted from the company he helped create, to be blunt. Most people would have been devastated, spending the rest of their lives seeking some sort of retribution. He merely dusted himself off, picked up his bike, got back on and started racing a new race, as if all along he knew this was part of the plan. He started a company called NeXT developing technologies (most of which are used in Apple products today). From NeXT to Pixar where he gave the world a new (well not new but basically revolutionized) medium for animated full length movies. What I’ve summed up in two sentences most men would not come close to accomplishing in 10 lifetimes, Steve did it in a matter of years.

When the Apple board basically came crawling back, Steve regained his rightful place at the head of the company he once fashioned but this time he was not in it to compete with the world, he was in it to obliterate them. Consumers like me and you were merely the beneficiaries of the bi-products we know as Macs, iPhones, iPod’s & iPad’s. Steve managed to make us all feel like kids on xmas morning when he got up onto stage and he knew exactly how to work it, he was perhaps one of the greatest communicators of ideas (while actually removing your credit card to purchase them simultaneously) I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing and like any legend of his time he will not be replaced easily if at all.

It was almost as if Steve held on to see one last launch, one last glint of excitement in everyone’s eyes before he passed away – hopefully he felt at ease with who he had left his magnificent legacy to.

The world has no idea what it loses when it loses a true visionary. The graph of human progression angles ever so slightly lower now, we may still get there but certainly not as fast as if we had Steve steering the ship. The world is a poorer place without a man like Steve Jobs, but unlike most, he left us a legacy that’s in almost every man woman and child’s hands, ears and desks. So often he gave us a gift of the future but without him the portal seems to be closed and we will have to be content with mere mortals and average progression for a while.

I will leave you with a clip you have probably seen, if you haven’t however, I assure you, listening to this man tell his ‘simple’ story to a graduating Harvard class will make you truly understand why today, the whole world should mourn the loss of a modern day legend!

There’s a town in Japan called Taiji where every year thousands of dolphins are herded into a closed bay. Some are abducted to spend the rest of their lives performing tricks in aquariums across the globe for the entertainment of stupid people. Those that don’t make the cut, get cut. They’re taken into a cove and brutally stabbed to death. The water turns from blue to red while injured animals try in vain to escape. Instead of a path to the open ocean they’re met with nets, boats, harpoons and ultimately a slow and painful death. This was the horror that the documentary, The Cove, was based on.

The dolphins end up being a source of meat for many people and in the process a source a huge amounts of mercury. Poison. I have no sympathy for these people. What’s also odd, and perhaps linked to the fact that mercury causes brain damage is the view that dolphins are a pest because they eat large amounts of fish, depleting fish stocks for human consumption. They’re dolphins for fuck’s sake! – they eat fish in what should be a balanced ecosystem. We are the ones depleting fish stocks.

The reason for this post is that tomorrow, the beginning of September, is when this barbaric event begins. It makes me angry and I’m not sure what I can do about it. You may feel the same way, so get angry, make a noise, donate, volunteer if you can, but do something. I hope that one day we can look back at this as one of those absurd things people used to do. Not because there aren’t anymore dolphins but because there’s a greater empathy for all life.

Join the awareness on Facebook or follow on Twitter

So what’s my story?

Well really I’m not sure, I wasn’t a massive Amy fan while she was alive and I certainly am not rushing out to buy up as much AW merchandise as I can now that she’s dead but after the brain dead comments that filled social media like “She should have gone to rehab” and “She should have said YES YES YES!” I thought it responsible to write this!

Genius seldom comes along in this world, in fact I’ve been up close and personal with it only a handful of times in my life. Genius is limitless and cannot be held back. When you encounter it you are blown away by the sheer possibility that lies within that person. You feed off their energy like a never ending battery and your own possibilities start to feel endless. You are inspired merely being in the same room as it.

That’s my definition of genius, that’s my experience with genius!

Most genius (creative that is) is tortured genius, it battles to come to terms with its time and its place in this very ‘left brain’ world and as a result far too often it ends long before it reaches its full potential!

Amy Winehouse was a genius. She was one of the most talented singer-songwriters we have ever seen or heard and song after song she blew us away. As I said I was never the biggest AW fan but even I could admit she had one of the most talented musical minds and one of the most soulful, powerful and moving voices I have ever heard.

Her tortured soul could no better be seen by a simple Google images search and the revelation of the many faces of Amy!

This is true tortured genius and these are the faces of an artist battling to express herself in a world that hunts talents, exposes it and exploits it for any scrap of gain possible while concurrently destroying it!

Love her or hate her,  (yes it’s a shit cliché) you have to acknowledge her talent, you have to accept the world is a less talented place without her and most importantly don’t show your stupidity by adding your brainless comments to a social media world for you and your friends to giggle at.

No one’s death should be laughed at, least of all someone who has added more to the world than 90% of humanity ever will.

Just sit back and listen to these two clips of a simple singer sitting on a couch with an instrument, creating magic!

I waited a few days to let the death of this man settle with me to try and work out how it has affected me, us maybe, before writing this.

It may sound selfish to you but perhaps read it first before passing judgment as you may agree.

Kader Asmal was an incredible man, of that there is no question. He fought for human rights his entire life and when he finally achieved the goal of disbanding the apartheid system (of course not alone but certainly involved) he joined both the ANC exec and the government.

From this point he continued to fight for justice in every sphere he could influence whether it is educational, environmental or other. Finally, he left parliament under protest when The Scorpions were disbanded (which by the way wreaked of corruption like four week old sardines under a car seat!)

Now if you want a tribute to the man there are far greater people in far more impressive positions to do that than I and they have, rightly so, so I won’t.

What I have been thinking however, is that with the death of each one of these inspirational beacons of light I fear that we slip further and further into the darkness (if you want to know what the darkness is see below – only Zaprio’s genius can express this well enough!)

I fear that the old guard who fought for right and wrong is now either dying off at a rapid rate or is unable to assert dominance over the circus performers that we find in charge today.

Kadar Asmal was a great man (read his wiki page if you don’t fully understand this) but more than that he was one part of a generation fighting for honesty, justice and truth and as this generation disappears I am petrified we will be left with only greed, corruption and decay as we have seen happen to so many African countries.

How many TRULY GREAT men are left to fight?

I hope and I wish this is not the case but from what I can see we are destined for Animal Farm!

Rest in Peace Sir, you and the values you stood for mean far more than you will know and the world is truly worse off without your strength!

Isn’t it a little strange that we need a license to drive a car, to own a gun, to practice certain professions, to sell booze and many, many other less important things, and yet we’re allowed to breed at will. Is the point of a license not to regulate something that has a potentially harmful effect on the individual and those around them, making sure they’re competent to perform the relevant action. Then why, in one of the most important and influential action that we as animals can do, are *insert any person who is stupid, abusive, can’t afford to support a child etc.* allowed to breed.

And if you believe that the right of the individual to breed is a fundamental right that trumps the collective rights of humanity I would suggest that you insert your name between the asterisks above. You may wonder why I’m ranting about this, but it’s because I came across this today, and it just made me realise how many people aren’t up for the job…

A young mother smoked 3,500 cigarettes while pregnant – claiming it was good for her baby.

While she was pregnant Miss Wilcox told BBC3’s Misbehaving Mums To Be: ‘It’s making the baby use its heart on its own in the first place, so that when it comes out, it’s going to be able to do them (sic) things by itself.

Read the rest.

There’s an incredible story of an ocean that was created in the desert. It’s a story that shows how much impact humans can have, how opportunistic we can be, how badly we can fail and ultimately how fragile our existence is. It’s interesting and crazy and rather depressing. Some may find it beautiful. Watch it and see.

Anyone find the crazy religious dude’s work rather ironic?

Thanks Ingy

I remember this day clearly, and in fact most people who I speak to about it do too. I was at varsity  at the time and so was (as usual) in my local bar having a few beers and playing some pool when the scrambled message that a bomb had gone off in the WTC went around. TVs went on everywhere and we quite literally stood silently and watched the second plane hit!

It was devastating and terrorizing at the same time because i knew that life would be different from now. I didn’t know how it would be, who was responsible and what effect it would have on me but I knew everything would change and that’s maybe more the pain I felt than anything.

I had no friends or relatives in the building (I had phoned all of them immediately and there was mad panic as the networks were down but finally all my New Yorkers were accounted for) and so I could empathise with those who lost loved ones but it really didn’t affect me first hand which I suppose has allowed me to be somewhat of a sceptic in the so called ‘war on terror’ and the subsequent ones that followed.

Now almost ten years later (almost ten as well since Bush pronounced mission accomplished) and we need to take stock of what has happened.

Trillions of dollars spent and wasted on a war that still is meaningless (is it WMDs, is it Saddam, is it terrorists and for South Africans is it the rooi gevaar?)

Thousands of men, women, children’s, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives and fiancées lives uprooted and destroyed on both sides of the war

Countries left in ruin

Aggression between cultures at a self destructive high

A world that is far less safe than its ever been

So I ask you after you have read these points and tried to grasp the magnitude of how many lives this so called RETRIBUTION has affected – how on earth can you condone scenes like these?

Scenes of jubilation after a man was hunted down and murdered in his bed – I don’t care how sinister the human being was perceived to be I cannot understand how joy like this can be expressed of such hideous crimes against humanity have been committed on both sides in the name of war.

These people who quietly laid wreaths and said prayers for people they lost have my absolute respect and sorrow. They have suffered for a decade and finally have some closure – that I understand. That they are owed. But its these people who understand how heavy the weight of loss is, they understand that one life does not bring another back but at least they can finally perhaps start to move on – for these people I mourn.

I am saddened to see the level to which humanity has stooped in the last decade in the name of freedom or patriotism. Atrocities that we would not ordinarily tolerate have now become the norm because a few power hungry madmen happened to stumble across the perfect platform for their narcissism (Dick Cheney I’m looking at you).

As my brother has said to me before we may see a time in our lives when George Bush will be tried for crimes against humanity and after seeing the last weeks events and celebrations there is a part of me that agrees that this should happen.

It saddens me that I live in a world where we celebrate the death of another human being rather than quietly reflecting on another life lost in this mad world we all share!

As always incredible images at BOSTON BIG PICTURE

So Osama’s been killed. Apparently at least, but we’re not here to get into conspiracy theories. We’re here to ask how it is that we’ve got to a point where millions of people celebrate killing? Sure, the guy did some pretty horrendous things and in the eyes of some was considered pure evil (what exactly is “evil” anyway?), but does it warrant hordes of people gathering to wave flags and chant “USA” as if they’ve won some big contest?

How does this:

create this reaction?

A family member wrote something on the topic:

This morning I received an email letter from a dear friend, Anne, in Johannesburg who has just completed her fourth treatment for cancer – each time a different cancer.

As I listened to the news of Osama Bin Laden this morning and heard the response of the American public, I thought about the metaphor of cancer. Through all of Anne’s surgeries, I do not recall us “celebrating or being jubilant” over the loss of part of her body that had succumbed to cancer. I remember us rejoicing that she was alive, had courage and had hope, that she was willing to do whatever it took to get aware, to see connections, to bring the unconscious to consciousness, to work to create peace and healing in her body. But we did not feel “relief,” we were not “glad,” we were not “happy” that her breasts had to be removed because for some deep and unknown reason their cells had started growing in an out of control and destructive way. We grieved the loss of parts of her body and searched for underlying causes and did everything we could to find ways to heal the rest of her body.

In the same way, I find it vulgar and offensive to be “jubilant, celebrating, happy” that a part of the world’s body, humanities body, was surgically removed, so to speak. Osama Bin Ladin was certainly cancerous to the body of humanity – I have no qualms saying this. However, the deep hidden causes that gave rise to his out of control and destructive behavior is not know to me. I grieve the loss of potential, of human life – his and all those he destroyed. I am saddened to think of how broken and hurt he was internally to have projected so much hatred and anger on to others and created so much hurt, pain and fear in the world. Sometimes it is necessary to remove a diseased organ – this is tragic, not something to celebrate.

And as we well know with cancer, we can remove diseased organs, but more often than not the cancer reappears somewhere else unless there is radical life style change, insight and deep inner work. And even then it is often not enough… I fear for our world. There are thousands of Bin Ladens to take his place. Perhaps we need to start listening to the symptoms instead of trying to get rid of them and pretending there is not a cause. Like killing Bin Laden, removing the organ does not guarantee health or wellness – it is merely treating the symptom, not the underlying cause.

Until we get to the cause, then nothing has really happened to make our world a safer place. In fact, tonight I feel less safe than before, but this time as a result of the attitudes and stated beliefs of vengeance that are clearly evidenced in people celebrating Bin Laden’s death.

Have we not progressed in consciousness beyond the middle ages when people showed up with picnic baskets to watch and cheer on as people were executed, hung drawn and quartered and their bodies were put on display? Can we allow ourselves to feel the pain of our diseased humanity and learn to heal ourselves, find a cure, before we destroy ourselves. Can we learn by asking deeper questions and finding deeper answers than the surgeons knife and the assassins guns. This is not healing -nor is it justice. True justice seeks reconciliation and healing, not revenge.

Thanks to Lyndall Johnson for the message

We posted a video a while ago of a Minister (Government not religious) of an African country holding a press conference about gay people. Now if you haven’t seen it, watch it! Watch it now because you will absolutely and up on the floor killing yourself laughing! You will laugh every time you see it and each time it will get funnier, until you stop laughing.

Because when you stop laughing you’ll realise how frightening it is, how scary it is that leaders of countries can firstly be this uneducated and secondly wield so much power that they can make people illegal for sexual orientation.

Now I know this is not unheard of. But let’s be fair its 2011! 2011 people! Haven’t we moved on, I mean isn’t the world liberal enough for an idiot like this to be beaten globally as soon as he posts a video like this – evidentially not!

I’m not sure if this is the same country but just for a minute after you have stopped laughing, think that this is an actual newspaper article in an actual country – that’s terrifying!