REMEMBRANCE: An Anniversary to Forget

Today is exactly 25 years since the nuclear disaster occurred at Chernobyl in what was then the Soviet Union. Today the surrounding town of Pripyat is a ghost town, as is a 15km (or thereabouts) 'exclusion zone' around the town, so toxic is the environment.

It was late April in 1986 and I remember so well hearing about it on the radio and all over the news. Everyone was talking about it. I remember how we were all glad, downright relieved, in fact, to be living on the southern tip of Africa, far from those clouds bearing toxic elements too awful to contemplate.

'Exclusion zone' - don't you just love the coy language of the psychotic nihilism that is nuclear speak?

'Exclusion' from what? Oh, yes, that's right - life itself.

Chernobyl is a vault of hellish memories, a scar on our collective conscience, a veritable Pandora's box of humanity's depths of possible hell on Earth. It is not the best of who we were, or who we should be.

It's all been said - all the stats, all the stories, all the endless what-ifs. Pity that we STILL haven't reached the never-agains.

After all, the next time some mindless (or bought out) prat tries to convince you of the 'positives' of nuclear power, do be sure to show them the following:










Do you get my point?

RIP Vittorio Arrigoni

I was very saddened to read on Friday about the murder of the Italian peace activist, Vittorio Arrigoni. He was found dead, presumably from either being strangled or hanged, in an abandoned house in Gaza. He had been abducted just one day before. There had already been a Youtube clip showing him blindfolded and bloodied and with one of his captor's hands holding up his face by his hair.




The savages that did this to him are some extreme Islamist group, known as 'Salafist jihadists', and who have already taken responsibility for his murder. May they all rot in their collective little Muslim hell, the bastards.

The referred to him as an 'infidel' and accused Italy of being an 'infidel nation'. Imagine - a word as primitive and medieval as 'infidel' still being used in the 21st century.


This is a man who left his native Italy in 2008 and, under the auspices of the NGO, International Solidarity Movement (ISM), entered Gaza by boat in order to voice his opposition, along with other peace activists, to the illegal and inhumane blockade of Gaza by Israel. I have read that he was very loved within Gaza and had many Palestinian friends and admirers.


And now, in this deepest and most sick of ironies, he gets killed by Palestinian terrorists, a group of fanatics amongst the very people to whom he came to show his most brave solidarity.

Or perhaps masterminded by Mossad? That certainly wouldn't surprise me.


Of course, the Israelis and Jewish/ pro-Israeli online press are milking it hugely for what it's worth. The irony is obviously not lost on them, and it serves only to reinforce their own twisted prejudices about the Palestinians, and make their own perverted country, the perversion known as the State of Israel, somehow the 'winner' in all of this. 'You see - they're barbarians, these Palestinians. They even kill those who come to support them and who hate us," you can almost hear the Zionist press crowing.


Palestinian terrorists, Israeli apartheid state, Zionist apologists - all part of the same, sick festering broth. Bastards, all of them.

I know it's because of his leftwing and anti-Israeli occupation beliefs that I have so much empathy for him. Perhaps it's too because he is an Italian and has the same first name as I.


Whatever his failings and whatever muck people might throw at him, this was no doubt a basically decent, courageous man of conviction who wanted to show his solidarity with the Palestinian people and show his outrage at the state of Israel.

And he dies alone in an abandoned house in this most shocking manner. A brave life cut short far too soon in a far too barbaric manner and already mocked by far too many.

He deserved so much better. May you, a man of peace, rest in eternal peace, Vittorio.

RANT: It's Level 7 in Japan

It's official: the nuclear plant disaster at Fukushima in Japan is being put on a par with Chernobyl, the nuclear disaster that horrified the world back in 1986.

To directly quote the Associated Press:

"Japan raised the severity level of the crisis at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing cumulative radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.



Japanese nuclear regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency — after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.


The new ranking signifies a "major accident" that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA."

Geez, this Fukushima power plant is becoming a real poster child for the nucear energy industry, is it not?

This is the best we can do?


Yet there will be people who will no doubt keep insisting that nuclear power is a viable alternative energy source

Yet there will be people who will no doubt keep insisting that nuclear power plants are fundamentally safe for the environment and to human health

Yet there will be people who will no doubt keep insisting that nuclear is a far better and more practical energy choice than are the likes of wind and solar and wave and other renewable energy sources

Uh huh. And in every single generation there are those that are devious or liars or self-interested or greedy or even simply delusional; those that will stand for anything, even if it is sheer madness to do so. Every. Single. Generation.

And they are damned by history; sadly, often when it is already too late.

Are you listening, George Monbiot and your fellow (demented, stupid, dangerous) nuclear apologists?

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Here's To Yuri Gagarin!

Today is exactly fifty years ago that the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to journey into outer pace. He and the USSR stunned the world when he achieved this on April 12th, 1961.

Gagarin, who became beloved the world over not only for his amazing feat, but also for his easy smile and charming boyishness, was a pioneer like very few seen in the 20th century. I wasn't even born when Yuri did his famous flight, yet I heard so much about him growing up from my elders. There had already been other space-age heroes like the first man to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, or the first men on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but somehow none of them seemed to be recalled so fondly as Yuri Gagarin.

By the way, I thought the banner today on Google especially fitting in its look and design in commemoration of this special date in human history:

Perhaps there was nostalgia for Yuri when I was younger due to the fact that he was killed so tragically in 1968 whilst a pilot in training on a Mig-15 fighter jet. Perhaps it seemed unfair and especially poignant to that generation that this smiling, affable hero of the burgeoning space era had been killed so young.

Be that as it may, Yuri Gagarin will forever be etched in my memory as the first of the known and beloved space heroes. And in this cynical day and age in which heroes seem so few and far between, even non-existent, then his heroism forever etched in black-and-white photos and footage seems even more poignant and resonant.

There were other space heroes, and no doubt many people who made that space flight possible back in April 1961, but none of them could carry it so perfectly on their shoulders as did the wonderful Yuri Gagarin.

I hope you're smiling up in the stars where you belong, Yuri.  

RAVE: The Remarkable Judge Wesley Brown

I came across an amazing story today on Yahoo News! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_old_judge#mwpphu-container about a man who still presides as a District Court judge in Kansas - at the ripe age of 103. Judge Wesley Brown may wheel himself into court, he may have taken on a lighter work load (but only very recently) and he may need to be picked up each day from his assisted living centre, but this remarkable man is still going strong.



In a testament to his sharp mind,  when recently asked in an interview as to when he thought he would retire, he quipped: "As a federal judge, I was appointed for life or good behavior, whichever I lose first", and then added that he would leave the couthouse "Feet first."

Interesting were the comments by other people to the post on Yahoo. Some of them were highly complimentary of a man who still had the energy and wits to continue being a high-ranking judge, whilst others couldn't help take jibes at his age and 'inevitable' senility. Always that cliche of the 'dithering old man (or woman)', just because someone has reached an old age and - heaven forbid - still wants to be active and have interests in life.

Pathetic how ageism continues to be one of the last bastions of fairly accepted prejudices.

I've never understood the need of some to mock the aged that strive to be independent or continue pursuing their passions. Perhaps it's because I grew up with a great-grandmother who would still catch a bus into town when already in her early 80s just to see a movie by herself, or a grandfather who in his late 70s was still enjoying his motorbike and doing breakfast runs with biking buddies young enough to be his great-grandsons. Or my other grandfather who was still working full days as a civil engineer out in the field until literally days before he died of lung cancer in his mid-70s. To have Vovo Joey, Vovo Ruy and Nonno in my life just to show me that, I know I was lucky.   
What I most enjoyed about the article was having confirmation yet again about something I've always very strong about. And the older I get, the more I see it, and the more I believe it: simply, what keeps certain people old and alive and sharp of mind - is nothing more than having interests. Real interests. Even hobbies. But the ones that keep your mind sharp and alert and always learning new things. Coupled, always, with a certain passion for life. Judge Brown, keeps abreast of things on his computer every day. He is 103 and there are people I know forty years his junior that 'freak out' at the idea of using a computer, and even refuse to learn. But he does so. With relish, I am sure.

Even at 103, he still reads vociferously, including enjoying reading semi-pulp mystery and western fiction, which he borrows off one of the court clerks. I love it!

I've always felt that aging need not be something that is horrible and degrading in and of itself. Of course the body becomes weaker and less able and more fraught with disease. I am still young, so I cannot know what that is about. But one can know that to be true of old age. The fact that we age is one of the cruelest fates of the human condition. It is cruelty personified. But there is aging as well as you can and, well, just aging badly.

One cannot discount the misfortune of any terrible affliction or disease that may come along, of course. That too can hit even the most healthy and the most vital. All too often, unfortunately. But I do believe that, with a bit of luck, aging well or aging badly is indeed within our hands.

A man like Judge Brown is not someone I can deride for being an 'old fogey'. How disrespectful. I can have nothing but the greatest of admiration for this man. He no doubt has his frailties due to his age, but there is no denying that this is a man who is aging with the utmost of grace and dignity. Surely that is what it's all about?

Judge Wesley Brown and all like him, even those younger, are what aging should be all about. Especially in this day and age in which youth and perfection have such a powerful and perverse (strangle)hold over society. 

Do you get my point? 

RAVE: Hacking the English Language Can Be Fun!

I've just made my fellow spelling- and grammar-obsessed brethren at the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar my Site of the Day. And with good reason.

Below is their latest post, headlined, "So That's What She Does With the Extra Virgin Olive Oil"



SPOGG's Martha Brockenbrough follows up by commenting (my italics for emphasis:

Thanks to assorted SPOGGers who sent this along, we now know that Rachael Ray is a cannibal. A cannibal who not only gets nutrition from cooking her family and her dog, but also inspiration.


We think we're going to barf right about ... now.

(And yes, this demonstrates why commas are sometimes very necessary. But next time we're hungry, we'll be sure to consult her recipe for cooking family members. Some of our nieces and nephews look delicious.)

More from the site dating back to January of this year (italics and bold for emphasis):

Tales from the Casting Ouch



Our monthly feature, as compiled and commented upon by a genuine Hollywood Actress:




Lets get payed!


Let's get an apostrophe and a spell checker!




You're list of credits.


Please give that apostrophe to the previous guy, and drop the E, because you are wrong.




I've got rythm.


No, no, you don't.




We are an independant movie.


Do you offer pendants? I could use another necklace.



Brilliant stuff.

SITE OF THE DAY: The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar

There's a fantastic blog that I like to visit once in a while, and which always provides a damn good laugh or more. It's at www.grammatically.blogspot.com and is run Martha Brockenbrough under the auspices of the 'Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar', or SPOGG. She's even written a book, "Things That Make Us [sic]", which I simply must get to read when I can.

The entire blog is one scathing, merciless attack after another on advertisers, newspapers, magazines, all media for that matter, or simple ordinary folk who have the affront to maim, hack and basically cripple the English language. It can be whether the offending party (and, let's face it, people who hack the beautiful English language are offensive) left out a word, misspelt a word or mangled grammar in any way, shape or form. 

Or, if they do that which seems to be SPOGG's definite bete noir (it certainly is mine), and use an apostrophe inappropriately.

Ah, yes, I do know what that can do to one.

Why, oh why, must people use the apostrophe with such wild and stupid abandon?!!

Take a big breath, Vittorio...

I can only be thankful for other people who feel the same way that I do, and doubly thankful for a site as witty and unwaivering as that provided by Ms. Brockenbrough and her SPOGG. 

TURNCOAT OF THE YEAR: George Monbiot

Forget being merely the 'Turncoat of the Month', it's only April and yet George Monbiot is already my chosen Turncoat of the Year.

You just have to read my previous post to see just why I'd say that.

I'm quite sure the nuclear industry will make you their Person of the Year, George...

RANT: Monbiot, Mon Cretin

George Monbiot was a man for whom I used to have much respect. A noted environmentalist, a (fairly) witty writer, a leftwing(ish) iconoclast and thorn in the side of conservative Britain, a man with an opinion.

This was a man on our side. The side of those who are left-of-centre (or even more left), who don't worship greed for the sake of greed, who respect the basic tenets of a welfare state. A man who fights to combat climate change and writes a book entitled 'Heat: How To Stop the Planet from Burning".

Hell, this is a man who heads a campaign to have Tony Blair arrested for war crimes! This is definitely my kind of (intellectual) man.

Or so I thought.

Then this guy goes and writes the most preposterous ode to the 'wonders' of nuclear power on his blog, with the highly provocative heading " - http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/. He writes as if nuclear power is the absolute answer after all (shucks, Georgie, thanks for pointing that one out to us lesser beings), citing tedious 'scientific' fact after 'scientific' fact, deluging the reader with these facts in a ploy so typical of anyone trying to oh-so-prove-their-clever-and-so-very-iconoclastic-point.

He apparently makes light of what past nuclear disasters have meant to the environment and human health and, in appallingly poor taste, dismisses by implication what the people of Japan have been going through for the past few weeks.

Even more annoyingly, he writes that nuclear power is just so inevitable, so necessary because, after all, those other poxy, piddling energy sources (you know, clean, renewable, energies) will simply take too much time (boo) and money (hoo) to get right. As if nuclear power was a cynch and so wonderfully cheap.

Then this Turncoat of the Year has the chutzpah to write another nuclear cheerleading article, this time chiding us with "Evidence Meltdown", extolling further the wonder of nuclear power and how utterly misled the green movement has been on the 'exaggerated' health dangers of nuclear energy.

Where does one start?

What about nuclear waste, George? Where the hell does that go, hey? What about the exhorbitant cost of building a new nuclear plant or maintaining an old one? What of the fact that out of a turnover of over $60-billion last year, the Japanese nuclear company, Tepco, was only able to eke out a profit of $1.1-billion? What of the massive government subsidies to the nuclear industry in every single country that has nuclear power plants?

Hey, George? Oh, why bother.

Who is this guy? And what body snatcher from outer space took his mind over to result in this excrutiating volte-face in the past two weeks?

Gone is what I thought of him. He appears to me now as some intellectual who sashays around with his liberal-leaning pontifications in that (barely) liberal-leaning newspaper, The Guardian, and, like some creepy 21st Century Pied Piper, leads those entranced by him down the path of self-doubt, self-recrimination and dubious thought.

Yes, nuclear is an answer! Yes, the green movement has gotten it all wrong with their grubby little 'agendas'! Yes, all those anti-nuclear activists are just misled! George has the answers!

Jesus wept.

Why this? Why nuclear? Why now? 

So I've been thinking, and it can only be this: You, George, are nothing more than an attention-seeking brat. You are a man who is an iconoclast not out of conviction, but sheer ego.

Your agenda is plain to see - pure ego and self-aggrandizement. It is a frankly pathetic agenda, an affliction hardly worthy of someone of your no-doubt excellent, if flawed, intellect.

George Monbiot is no longer someone I can hold up in high esteem. He is no longer someone who's intellect I can trust.

George Monbiot is an enemy in our midst.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Oh-Bama - No Change?

Yesterday ol' Barack Obama publicly announced that he will be running for re-election for US President in 2012...

YAWN

There's a surprise. What did take me by surprise was the news that his election bid was expected to raise up to $1-billion...

$1-BILLION!!!!! 

Then I stopped to think. Why should I be surprised that the man is going to get such an obscene amount of money just to run for President again? Of course he'll raise that type of cash.

Why? Simple. After all that was said and done during his (crappy, lying, cheating, deceiving) campaign back in 2008, he has bent over backwards to facilitate the scheisters and financial terrorists on Wall Street and in corporate America. No wonder they'll flock in their greedy, pilfering, extorting thousands to back his campaign. Hell, he's done as much as any Republic president would've done to ensure that the status quo remains the same in the moral gulag that is Wall Street.  

Yeah, Obama, you huge fricking let-down and weak president, you will get your money and, who knows, maybe even beat those other bastards who have the nerve to have the elephant as their mascot.

So many good, honest, liberal, Bush-hating people have been so disappointed by this man. Oh, boo hoo. What the hell did they expect? An entire (crappy, lying, cheating, deceiving) campaign based on just one lousy word - 'change'? Yeah, right.

You get what you deserve.

You ask anyone who knew me at the time of that election, and they'll tell you I never once fell for the (crappy, lying, cheating, deceiving) crapola that was his campaign. Not once. Change indeed.

And heaven knows we all deserved radical change for the better after eight years of the sheer hell that was George W. Bush as President.

At best Obama was incredibly naive, at worst he was incredibly cynical. Strange thing is that after more than two years in office, that troubling paradox remains true of this man. Either way, it simply isn't good enough.

In the end, this remains the type of option for a great nation like the United States. Pathetic. They deserve better. We all deserve better.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Hating Sarah Palin Is So Easy 2

Here are some more cartoons poking fun at that biggest cartoon of all, Sarah Palin:




Read what?! (Does she even write?)









Too true!











Ya betcha, ya little tyke!







And heaven forbid!

RANT: A 'Perky' Economy?

A headline I recently saw on a newspaper placard whilst driving back from work here in Johannesburg:

"SA Economy Ahead Looks Perky"

Perky?!

I nearly drove into a lamppost as I fumed about that one.

How the hell can the economy of a country have a 'perky' outlook?!

Either the country's economy has a firm set of breasts, which I very much doubt, or this is one ridiculous (ab)use of a word.

According to dictionary.com:

perk·y   /ˈpɜrki/


[pur-kee]
–adjective, perk·i·er, perk·i·est.

jaunty; cheerful; brisk; pert.

So, am I to assume that our local economy is 'jaunty', 'cheerful' and 'brisk'?

Was that the economy I saw walking happily down my street the other day, looking all perky? Jesus wept.

My hate for this type of 'creative' use of words knows no bounds. Yet I am assailed almost every day by newspaper and magazine editors/ writers/ pretentious twats who take words in the English language and then twist (read: defile, corrupt, mangle) them to suit their own lazy needs.

Oh, and by the way, the South African economy is anything but 'perky' at the moment. More like 'clunky'.

RANT: Arrogance Beyond the (Trans)Ocean

At the centre of the ecological and PR nightmare that was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year was BP. It was all BP, BP, BP. But there were other guilty parties in that fiasco of gigantic proportions, one of which was the company leasing out the oil rig and all related equipment, etc, namely Transocean.



Today it emerged that Transocean's top executives received their biggest bonuses to date, to the tune of millions of dollars, on the basis that 2010 was the company's "Best Year in Safety"...yip, that's right, their best year in safety!

Wait, let me get this right - this from a company directly involved in an explosion that killed eleven people, nine of which were Transocean workers, and, thereafter, caused the largest environmental disaster in United States history? And they see fit to give their f*#@ing executives a raise on the basis of that type of performance in safety?!

The catchphrase underneath the corporate logo seems so apt: "Now nothing is beyond your reach". Well, certainly nothing is beyond the reach of a greedy Transocean executive, that's for sure

People may argue that the spill was primarily the issue, and that was an environmental disaster, not a safety one. But the spill was caused by the explosion on the oil rig, which, in turn, killed nine workers. That is most certainly a safety issue. And a safety f*#*-up. Of monumental proportions.

I'm sure the families of the nine men killed in the blast must be real thrilled that the executives at Transocean are getting a big fat pay bonus on the basis of their sterling safety work in 2010. Real thrilled.

There is absolutely no justification for this 'safety-based' performance bonus for these execs. In any way, shape or form.

If anything, it's just in unbelievably bad taste. And, yet again, proves just how arrogant, self-aggrandizing and woefully unethical corporations and their executive spawn can be.

Do these people have no shame?

Or do they hide behind the protective nothingness that is the corporation? Yes, that must be it. Yet again.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Israel, the April Fool

Today it emerged that Israel's infamous band of thugs, Mossad, had kidnapped a Palestinian engineer in Kiev, Ukraine, on suspicion of 'ties to Hamas', and scurried him off back to the Land of Milk and (P)Honey.

That's correct: agents from one country abducted a person in another nation's territory, without the said 'receiving' nation's authorities or secret service even being aware of it.

The Ukrainians must be so chuffed with the Israelis.

And Israel had the cheek to openly admit to it today. Of course. Why shouldn't they? They're a lawless apartheid nation shielded by the United States; the big bully on the block. Their arrogance knows no bounds. Not to mention their chutzpah.

Listening to some of the media, it would seem like the 'fact' that he may (or may not, of course) have ties to Hamas does give Israel some justifiable 'reason' in all of this. You know - Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and Israel has every right to go around kidnapping and maiming and murdering Hamas leaders and supporters on the basis that they're all...well, terrorists. All to defend itself, of course.

Hang on a moment. This all sounds so terribly familiar to me. What could it be? Ah, yes. It's the exact same demented crap that was being spouted by the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980s, as agents of that amoral nation (into which I was born) also went around kidnapping and maiming and murdering members of another terrorist organisation - you know, the ANC. In other countries. All to defend itself, of course.

It's amazing how identical the modi operandi of these apartheid states truly are.

History really does repeat itself, does it not?

It being April 1st, it seemed so fitting that this year's April Fool should be none other than that most schizophrenic and amoral of contemporary nations, the apartheid state of Israel.

Do you get my point?