It is with great interest I been following the Obama news ... what actually gets to me is the " America's first black President " thing ... why the white / black thing ??
Hey in the pages of my book he's just another american who caught the right wave and yes landed the presidency .. yes the american folk put him there cos maybe they tired of the usual mistakes of the WASP ( white anglo saxon protestant) presidents of past ... cos yes sady so America is in a mess cos of theirGreat over rated " AMERICAN DREAM " ... so yes why not try something different ... ??? why not try a guy that really has to prove himself ..? or yes is going to think differently .. out of the box ?? \
I absolutley abhor this kowtowing to race .. we seen it here .. a good example is Danisa Baloyi .. who was implicated in the Arthur W Brown Fidentia scandal whereby poor miners widows and orphans pension fund was robbed blind ... The dishonourable Mr Brown offered her a directorship of the fidentia trust fund ... clever man ... with her name on board he could convince the pension funds to transfer the monies to them ... meanwhile this woman who originally out of courage and resourcefullnes pulled herself to a position of power eventually had so many directorships ( if i remeber correctly something in the region of 40 + ) that she could not manage let alone know what was going on ... that allowed the dishonourable Brown to rob the funds ... she was a sad victim of the kowtowing .. even herself forgetting where she came from .. elevated to the post of " saint of black empowerment " that power is toxic .. she sadly and courageously eventually admitted that and resigned a lot of her directorships and has yes disapeared of the financial radar to all extents .. sad cos i think she started right .. but yes got led astray ...
I go ack to my fathers words ... " never ever forget where you came from ""
Sorry to say this, but in my eyes just another politician fighting for his own pocket and means to fill his own coffers with hard earned tax payers money. All promises and no delivery. They are all just the same all over the world, no matter what skin colour of political party they belong to....
My next page in the book ... lets wait and see ... its all interesting .. only prob is the .. well i said it all before ... they must just get on with it without all the hype ..
I think Obamamania may die down fast if he does perform miracles which seems to be the expectation. I caught a bit of the We Are One concert on MNET the other night what a self-congratulating, we are the greatest nation on earth bunch of drivel! All these stars who are suddenly Obama supporters - would love to get a sneak peek at their votes during the elections. It's rather a pity because the yanks I met in the States aere really down-to-earth nice people in general. It's their media and politicians that suck and of course their tourists outside the US.
It's their media and politicians that suck and of course their tourists outside the US.
WELL SAID CHERRY sorriso2
I think that initially this guy is full of good intentions...but give it a month or so and the wheel will turn......... all politicians are the same, regardless of the colour of their skins...... :nono1:
I am still a huge Obam fan and I found his speech to be practical and rather heartwarming yesterday. Bet Dubya was squirming though.
What no-one should forget is that although he is the leader of the US; American politics have a very strong history of big business and self-interest lobbyists who persuade (buy?) senators and congressmen/women to support their causes/bills and the president doesn't always get to veto bills he doesn't like. Pragmatism is the order of the day - like it or not.
I hope not to be proved wrong but I think Obama will remain a man of integrrity and humility.
Lets throw some more wood on the fire and see what kind of debate we can create....
Heard this before ...any comments?
"Nostradamus made the prediction and is said that Nostradamus predicted Obama is the Antichrist. I have not formed an opinion but clink on to the link for more info.Here are two of Nostradamus Quatrains:
243
The great empire will be torn from limb,
The all-powerful one for more than four hundred years:
Great power given to the dark one from slaves come,
The Aryana will not be satisfied thereby.
Century II, Quatrain 62
"Mabus then will soon die, there will come Of people and beasts a horrible rout:
Then suddenly one will see vengeance,
Hundred, hand, thirst, hunger when the comet will run."
Nostradamus prophesized the name of the antichrist is "Mabus." This can relate to why Obama is the antichrist. If you write obama+bush, you get obamabush. Obviously, if Obama were defeated, then this prediction by Nostradamus would be less credible. You decide! Fact, Fiction or a bunch of crap.
A little more disturbing about this theory is that Raymond Edwin "Ray" Mabus, Jr. (born October 11, 1948) is an American business and political leader. Based in Mississippi, he works on international business matters, is involved in political campaigns.
In May 2007, he endorsed U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, for president, and is serving as a senior adviser to the campaign. Look this man up for yourself on Wikipedia. This theory is pretty scary for this sort of thing.
Another interesting theory. Remember the Maya's, that ancient civilization that lived in the Mesoamerica's since 2,600 BC. The Maya's had an extremely complicated method of keeping track of time, based on three separate calendars. The most important, most encompassing of these calendars holds the `Long Count': the period from the beginning until the end of time. And on December 21st 2012, the Long Count expires. It will be point zero. Time will be up for the Universe. It will be, literally, the end of days. It would also be the end of Barack Obama's four-year term. Sounds like it is a bunch of crap but...is it?"
Very very interesting.... also got something similar, but was not as daring as you to post it here, Mike!
Yes, would sure be good to see all the response .....
Er! Uhm, not my words, but I do remember the words being said before, I was always fascinated by Nostradamus and have a book of his at home.....
I know - also have a Nostrodamus book as well as one of Siener van Rensburg. Lot of interesting stuff..
Who was the siener who said that a tidal wave was going to hit the west coast?
I think that was old Siender van Rensburg as well....
Yep! thats the bloke..... still waiting for that wave to hit, took my surfboard out and polished it..... waited a whole week for boggerall....... image04
Dont bother too much with the nostradamus .. trying to read it gives me a headache ... whatever the future is so be it ... it all goes in cycles ... up down .. evil wins .. then goodness overwhelms the evil etc .. wherever i am when whatever happens I just hope my guardian angels are around .. we could attach the antichrist to so many people currently holding power ..
I thought that my high school principal was the 3rd antichrist..... image14
You did not go close enough to the beach, Mike! Remember last year when the waves went over that wall in the mine... ?
ha ha
@ Mike .. Now you remind me of calvin and hobbes ... disturbed child that you are ... In fact I remind myself of calvin and Hobbes ... pleasantly disturbed child that i am ...
Hey all,
I thought we here in New Zealand were insular but I'm struck by the amount of navel-gazing on this thread.
Does anyone agree that as far as real earthshaking news is concerned we can't ignore the elephant in the room: Gaza?
This is the worst ethnic cleansing since the days of the Soviet Union yet how much balanced coverage do you see on telly or in your local press? The answer is none. Most of us are so woefully uninformed that we still use the word "terrorist" when talking about the Palestinians, not knowing we've been sucked into a massive propaganda exercise.
The following videos are powerful stuff, particularly the one headed: "Beautiful Lady". Sorry I can't give you live links as all HTML on this site is scrubbed from text (very careful guy, Michael). However, you can cut and paste or save to a separate file and reformat.
A caution: don't bother opening them if you want to hold on to your opinions. At the very least these urls will shake them up a bit.
Regards,
Bob.
Sir Gerald Kaufmann
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8&eurl=http://whatreallyhappened.com/
George Galloway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIpvrOJQ0J0&feature=related
CNN Who broke the ceasefire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KntmpoRXFX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfFMZ7Y-s_c&eurl=http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Beautiful Lady
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rCBJjCiLGc&eurl=http://whatreallyhappened.com/node?page=3
Navel Gazing ?? quite an expression .. Yes Gaza is indeed an Elephant in a room .. ethnic cleansing .. eye for eye .. tooth for tooth .. ?? i'm so right and you so wrong .. whose land is this land .. who has ultimate brthright ?? propoganda from both sides .. whose side do we take ?? What does America have to do with it ?? what can they really do about it sems to be the issue put forward here .. ?? all questions with no real answers ... only when the people directly , and I mean the people staying and fighting in that much fought over piece of the world , the people on the ground .. when they remove hatred from their hearts , when they stop dehumanising the enemy ... it seems in so many cases around the world that no amount of peace brokering seems to help .. no matter how much peacekeeping forces are put in .. when an eye for eye tooth for tooth mentality exists and is virtually bred into the young generations and thereby perpetuated .. how does one stop it ?? Sure there is theory that powerful business lobby in america covertly supports Israel .. equally so that islamic militants are behind the scenes and planting the poisonous seeds ...
So theres hatred ingrained and theres people with either economic or religious power taking advantage .. ??
Matters not what ... they are both wrong .. both sides are wrong .. all in the whole mess are wrong .. in simple terms , they should not be fighting ....
This isn't "Mad Bob" Sandy, or is it???
Nope this Bob is sane and yes he reminded us of a catch 22 situation thats currently difficult to resolve unless all concerned can put self interest on the shelf and cleanse their hearts of hatred ..
Hi Sandy,
Thanks for that post but have to disagree with your view that the Israeli/Palestinian clash is a complex situation that has been going on since forever.
It devolves down to one single issue: who owns the land?
That too is easy to decide. If you are a property owner you will have no difficulty with the concept that the land belongs to those whose names are on the title deeds.
The core dispute is simply this. Around 80% of the land upon which the State of Israel stands is owned by Palestinians. This claim is supported by U.N. Resolution 194 which is re-stated by them every year.
In 60 years, Israel has done nothing to address this claim - not one single solitary statement even acknowledging such a claim exists except the canard that the Palestinians "abandoned" their land.
Despite the fact that this lie is unsupported by evidence and is thoroughly debunked by Israel's own Historians, the contention itself is not acceptable. The right of return or compensation as noted in U.N. Resolution 194 and the Declaration of Human Rights remains valid whatever circumstances caused the exodus.
Nearly one million Palestinians were terrorized off their land and made refugees in late 1947 and 1948. Most were expelled from their villages before Israel was declared a State. These facts are not in dispute. To ascribe a religious motive to this conflict is either mischievous or simply uninformed.
One simple fact should disprove the "religious war" thesis. Up until the 1920s when the Zionist land-grab began, there were ten Palestinians for every single Jew living in the Holy Land. These Jews lived in security despite the overwhelming number of non-Jews surrounding them.
Gaza is a tiny sliver of land on the coast, smaller in area than Metropolitan Cape Town. It has a population of 1.5m people, most of them refugees. Firing artillery into this area is like shooting fish in a barrel.
The excuse for the "war" was that Hamas broke the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel. Firstly, no rockets landed on Israel. They all struck occupied Palestinian land. Secondly, Hamas did not fire the rockets. They were fired by groups funded by the U.S. Thirdly, Israel broke the ceasefire from its inception by blockading all supplies, including water, at the borders. Finally, unable to provoke retaliation, IDF soldiers entered Gaza and killed six people.
The reality is that the present obcenity is simply another chapter in the long, weary atrocity of ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing since the arrival of Zionist settlers in Palestine in the late 1920s. If Israeli aggression can frighten the Palestinians out of Gaza then the "abandoned" land can be incorporated into the Zionist state and another fraction of Eretz (Greater) Israel can be realised.
Whew! Didn't intend to go on at such length. The subject just ran away with me.
Thanks again for your post.
Best wishes,
Bob.
Bob ,, thanks for that informed article .. and yes the history .. sounds tragic indeed .. suppose a lot of us look at things farther afield very briefly / simplistically or with limited information .. in essence there be enough going on here on the tip of africa to keep our attention ( our form of navel gazing ?? )
Hi again Sandy,
Thanks for your good wishes. It occurred to me that in case a few of the readers of my previous post feel they should be dismiss it as antii-semitic drivel I need to add a few points.
In discussing Israel I'm careful to use the term "Zionist" on the basis that not all Jews are Zionists though Zionists claim to represent all Jews.
Up until a few years ago I, like most westerners, had a kneejerk tendency to think in pro-Zionist terms. The Zionist incursion of two years ago into Lebananon changed all that, Firstly it involved me in hot debate with a well-informed source on the question. He demolished my pro-Zionist ideas and sent me back to the drawing board to do some basic research.
The results were shattering. All my dearly held views were kicked to pieces. It took many months to figure out how to evaluate the material. Finally, on the grounds that I've always found Jews to be the most self-critical of people - I have rellies in Israel - I decided that I would use only Jewish and Israeli sources. That too was an eye-opener, particularly the B'Tselem website based in Tel Aviv. Take a look at it, you may get a surprise. On second thoughts don't - as I found to my cost, it will do your head in.
Regards,
Bob.
Quote from: Bob on February 09, 2009, 12:20:39 AM
Secondly, Hamas did not fire the rockets. They were fired by groups funded by the U.S.
Bob, we are under the impression that Hamas did indeed fire rockets and that they were funded by Iran using Syria as a proxy......
How do you back up your statement?
Mike I must admit .. its all so confusing .. look at any situation where there is a disagreement ?? there are two sides to the story .. each side will believe they are right even divinely so ... depends who you listen to at the time .. I state that in my book each sides story has merit .. however those merits do not justify throwing bombs at each other .. thats a product of ingrained hatred ..
I leave you with a comment on history .. how it can be written and re written .. SA pre 1994 and now SA post 1994 ?? each writing and subsequent re writing has vested interests at heart ... target .. the young impressionable minds ..
I will quote carefully .. fertile grounds in which to plant seeds of dislike , superiority , hatred etc ..
I get Bob's Point about the land being Arab land, but how far back does one have to go to draw the line, even before biblical times that corner of this planet was in strife, why should it change now....
A truth there Mike ... simply stated ... for me better to stand back and try be impartial and not take up either cause's side ,, cos I state it again they both in the wrong .. and yes will write the history and present happenings each to suit their own agenda ...
Hi Mike, Sandy et al,
Are you seriously interested in the sources of the Middle East conflict? That's a pertinent question and I'd be interested in hearing a yea or nay.
To enlarge: I had the same Judeo-Christian upbringing as most of you and the same ingrained beliefs about the Promised Land and the Chosen People and even have relatives in Israel. In fact my wife and I after a visit there just after the '73 war stayed with them on their delightful kibbutz - hard won from the desert they told us - and were were so taken with it all we even toyed with notions of selling up back in SA and settling there.
How then did I come to have such a change of head space?
It's too long a story but in my last post I'd thought to simply give a brief background, supply a few urls and let anyone interested pursue their own research. I still think that's the preferable way. However, if anyone puts up a hand for more info I'm happy to supply it. Be aware it could make your head hurt and hopefully be injurious to your prejudices.
Nothing in my posts should be seen as anti-semitic. There is a clear distinction between Zionists, those running Israel, and Jews. All Zionists claim to be Jews. Not all Jews wish to be associated with Zionism.
To answer the question of possible source bias, I use mainly Zionist, Jewish and British sources.
As for the concept that it is none of our business and best left to those concerned to sort out perhaps I should point to history and say that idea left us with our pants down at the beginning of WWII, the Americans out on a limb at Pearl Harbour, again at 9/11 and all of us each time we travel by air (I can remember when there were no security checks at airports and no need to spend billions to keep us all in fear). In short, only the uniformed masses can be taken in by fascism. When you understand the causes, you know the remedy.
Regards,
Bob.
Hmmm, rereading that makes me sound like some boring old ranter or aging nutcase. Aging I'll put my hand up for; nutcase only when I can't find dark chocolate and, I'm told, boring on the subject of single malts but then she's prejudiced, she'd rather drink it than hear about it.
Mmm .. think a nay will do .. not that I'm prejudiced or influenced by a Judeo christian upbringing and the promised land theory ( another ' inspired " man written book of history that can be used to suit agenda) and after watching the yootube again , I will just stick to my original belief of that I think both sides are not entirely in the right and both are in the wrong for all the fighting and loss of life ... and yes dont want mind blown open , got enough playing out here on the tip of africa that is mindblowing and very relevant to our secure future ... A neighbouring country on point of collapse ... a corrupt clown who wants to become our next leader and drag this beautiful country down ... and we can play the same theme .. who does this country belong to ?? the settlers or the indiginous folk ?? am I a settler or indigenous after all I was born here ?? who is indiginous ,,, 2nd generation 3rd 4th ? are aliens those that are here 1st time .?? are you dark enough for that cushy job or a wad of free or massively discounted shares in a company ,, african enough to deserve a place in the sun ?? too light skinned , too much mixed blood ?? . whats next ? the old Nat pencil test in reverse next on the list of criteria ? .. accused of being eurocentric/western when it suits the agenda meanwhile the luxuries and lifestyle of euro/western are avidly pursued ??
more likely to pop a blood vessel than blow the mind ...
My belief is that all prejudices put aside , there is a place in the sun for all providing they contributing to the wellbeing and stability of a country .
Sigh ............
Hi Sandy,
Thanks for that obviously heart-felt post. Your last two lines said it all.
I could not agree more.
Regards,
Bob.
Hi Bob .. Mark Tilbury sends regards ...
Hi Sandy,
Mark Tilbury? Very familiar name but my aging grey cells must be failing me, can't recall a face. Ask him for a few more details so that I can place him e.g. time in O'mund etc.
Thanks,
Bob.
Nope not from O,mund he's my nieces husband ( daughter of my brother Peter ) he went to NZ for about 7 months a few years ago to try secure a job ,, got relatives there and relevant qualifications but it all came to naught ,, so he had to come back to SA ...
Hi Sandy,
Mark Tilbury, very familiar but still can't fit a face to the name. I think I'll go for a brain cell checkup.
Regards,
Bob.