The Israeli parliament has passed a law banning journalists working for the country’s public broadcast authority from expressing their opinions on air.
The law, passed early Thursday in the middle of the night, drew criticism from journalists, who accused the government of trying to stifle dissent.
The law says broadcasts should “avoid one-sidedness, prejudice, expressing personal opinions, giving grades and affixing labels.”
The Israel Press Council urged parliament to cancel the law, saying it violates free speech.
Cabinet Minister Ofir Akunis said the law only applies to newscasts. He told Channel 2 TV that some journalists critical of the government “aren’t being professional and are doing it for political reasons.”
Words declared unacceptable through the campaign include “crazy,” “insane,” “retarded,” “gay,” “tranny,” “gypped,” “jewed”, “illegal alien,” “fag,” “ghetto” and “raghead.” Phrases such as “I want to die” and “that test raped me” are also verboten.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told The College Fix in an email the campaign aims to “address campus climate by helping individuals understand that their words can impact someone and to encourage individuals to commit to creating a positive campus community.”
Students have been asked to sign a pledge to “use inclusive language” and to help their peers “understand the importance of using inclusive language,” according to campaign materials.
Though only in existence for one semester, the Inclusive Language Campaign has maintained a strong presence throughout the university. Students roaming the campus frequently encounter posters of all sizes reminding them: “YOUR WORDS MATTER,” and asking questions such as: “If you knew that I grew up in poverty, would you still call things ‘ghetto’ and ‘ratchet’?”
Representatives of the Inclusive Language Campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The College Fix.
Junior Kidada Malloy, who helps promote the program on campus, told the Michigan Daily the campaign “is a great program because it will improve the day-to-day language of students on campus by providing education around words that are offensive.”
Fitzgerald told The College Fix the university budgeted $16,000 for the campaign. The program comes at a time when the university has raised tuition and fees for the last two consecutive years.
“This program is intended to be educational, not regulatory,” Fitzgerald said of the campaign. “We hope there is only the understanding that we all participate in, and have the power to influence campus culture.”
ILC’s Facebook page includes a variety of inclusion-based material, inspirational quotes, personal stories, and even a video that details how to address a person by the correct pronouns. It operates in conjunction with two other campuswide initiatives, Expect Respect and Change It Up!, both of which emphasize inclusive words in and out of the classroom.
Students living in university housing are urged to take part in a Change It Up! workshop, which “brings bystander intervention skills to first-year housing residents for the purpose of building safe, inclusive, and respectful communities.”
Before and after completing these workshops, students fill out surveys in which they reflect on internal biases that may pose a threat to an “inclusive campus.”
As the Inclusive Language Campaign has enlarged its influence on campus through various kick-off events, interactive programming and provoking visuals, some students have called into question how it reconciles with the university’s policy on free speech, which “encourages open and vigorous discussion and strives to maintain an environment where the free exchange of ideas and opinions can flourish.”
Asked if the campaign stifles free speech, Fitzgerald said “we believe this program has just the opposite effect.”
“We believe it will make discourse more constructive by respecting the views and perspectives of others,” he said. “A campus conversation about the impact of words is good for everyone.”
The University of Maryland launched a similar campaign three years ago that cost $15,000.
Blasphemy and vulgarity must stop was the message from religious leaders at Athlone Stadium, where thousands of Muslims gathered to celebrate the life of Prophet Muhammad.
Dressed in white, young and old, male and female bowed their heads on Sunday and kneeled in prayer.
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille told the audience that the event has been celebrated in South Africa since the 17th century.
“When we are able to witness thousands of people gathering to celebrate an auspicious religious occasion such as today, we feel increasingly confident in our efforts to create spaces for people to express their beliefs.”
She added that all religious movements have an important part to play by decrying the wrongs in society.
“Islam is renowned for the value and importance it places on compassion.
Sheikh Achmat Taheer Mohamed, a lecturer from the Madina Institute and an imam at the Vangate Mosque, said the day was to commemorate, celebrate and remember Prophet Muhammad’s way of life.
“You will never find a Muslim saying or writing anything against any other religion.
“If you have found anything of that kind, you know that it is not Islam, because it is not what is preached by Islam.
“If you look into the history of Islam you will find that there is no such record where Muslims had blasphemed against any other religion.”
He added that cartoons about Prophet Muhammad, such as those featured in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were murdered recently, was only done to aggravate “the masses”.
“We know that whatever cartoon or things that are done is only creating more love and more awareness of Prophet Muhammad.
“When 9/11 took place, people blamed Islam. A cousin of mine who was in the US said when people went to libraries to find copies of the Qur’an they couldn’t find any copies. Why? Because people became curious about what Islam was all about.
“And so, basically, this is an advertisement. We don’t worry about it, don’t get angry about it, we say let them carry on, we need to do what we need to do. We spread the love and we spread the love of Prophet Muhammad.”
Sheikh Abdurahmaan Alexander said he supported freedom of speech.
“In solidarity with 1.7 billion Muslims around the world, we support the freedom of speech, but we do not support blasphemy. We do not support vulgarity, and as they said, ‘I am Charlie’, I’m saying to you in one voice, I am Muhammad.
“We support freedom of speech. We want world peace. Blasphemy and vulgarity must stop.”
Just the other day a gigantic coal silo collapsed, creating Eskom, our state electricity utility’s latest crisis, plunging parts of the country into the dark. Photographs of cracks appearing in the edifice had already been published in January, yet nothing was done to repair it.
These more obvious signs of decay and neglect mask the deeper moral and intellectual corruption gnawing away at South Africa. Somewhere Toynbee speaks about the pain of people born in a more or less normal, productive society having to live through a “time of decadence”. It is certainly painful to witness our country and its institutions collapsing one by one, as the termites slowly devour all of its once-proud institutions.
The schools, the courts, the universities. Our legal system, known as Roman-Dutch law, with all of its age-old principles going back to Roman times. First they abolished Latin, then Afrikaans. I still had both Latin and Afrikaans at school, as well as at university.
That is why I am familiar with the finer nuances of the expression mala fides, or bad faith. In French it is translated as “mauvaise foi” and occurs in common everyday speech, with an even more pronounced meaning conveying dishonesty, trickery and falseness. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous existentialist treatise, Being and Nothingness, a whole chapter is devoted to it. Sartre also talks about the “double negativity” of bad faith:
A man does not lie about what he is ignorant of; he does not lie when he spreads an error of which he himself is the dupe; he does not lie when he is mistaken. The ideal description of the liar would be a cynical consciousness, affirming truth within himself, denying it in his words, and denying that negation as such.
Presumably at some level Pierre de Vos knows that he is in bad faith, but he is so far gone in the kind of “cynical consciousness” that Sartre talks about that he can only “trade in lies”, half-truths, misinterpretations, while serving what he intuits as the Power, the power of political correctness and revolutionary destruction that has South Africa in its grip.
For a professor of law, even if it is constitutional law, which is a more political branch of the law, Pierre de Vos displays a cavalier disregard for evidence or proof. At the outset he simply posits Steve Hofmeyr’s “racist statements” while leaving the reader completely in the dark about what these could be:
Steve Hofmeyr and his supporters claim that a puppet called Chester Missing has infringed on his right to freedom of expression by challenging his racist statements and by challenging his sponsors for supporting his racism.
Now, the R-word has become a kind of nuclear weapon in the hands of the politically correct, with their inquisitors, their rabid thought police sniffing out the latest thoughtcrime in Orwellian parlance. But still, but still – if we have not yet degenerated into some form of Khmer-Rougism, where zeal and a blind, secular faith have replaced all thinking – De Vos could have given us some hint as to the heinous utterances in question?
However, after having stated the accusation without offering any form of description or evidence of the crime, he launches into a whole tirade, a kind of “stairway to heaven” – if you remember the Led Zeppelin song:
There’s a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure ‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings, Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder.
However much you and I may wonder, dear reader, we shall never know what caused the imperious cry of “That’s racist!” to ring out from the throne of the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance all the way down in Cape Town, in the province that is known in Xhosa as iKoloni.
The R-word having all the occult power that it has, one would have thought that it would suffice to cast a spell on Steve Hofmeyr, as in one those computer games such as World of Warcraft, where you may paralyse you opponent by enveloping him in a purple hue, after which he dies and you win. But no, De Vos has even more “powerful medicine” up his sleeve, climbing the stairway to the heaven of political correctness.
Please also note the other introductory remark made by De Vos, speaking about Steve Hofmeyr and the remaining writing, singing, speaking Afrikaner rabble out there:
They do not seem to understand that your right to freedom of expression does not always give you a right to freedom from the consequences of your expression.
His Eminence, the Inquisitor, hath spoken and we had better all beware of using any nuance that might attract the black magic of the R-word. On the other hand, and here is a deep philosophical and legal question: Could a person be innately racist? So that everything that person says – even if he is reciting a recipe for salade niçoise – could be deemed “racist”? As in the computer games, you’ve taken a hit, lost some of your vitality, your “remaining lives” and might soon wither away and die if some powerful opponent targets you with some more “progressive discourse” or whatever hocus pocus is bubbling under the lid of Pierre de Vos’s cauldron.
The other day I actually managed to grasp the “deep structure”, as Chomsky might have said in his more linguistic days, of political correctness. You could also call it the “three semiological codes” – my goodness, this is turning into a real lecture – but then I am speaking to a so-called “professor of constutitional law”, perched upon “the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance”. So my readers might forgive me for lapsing into such an analytical mood.
Political correctness at a certain level is fascinating. Like someone on drugs, those so afflicted are completely enthralled by its hallucinatory power, having a deep physical need for the next fix. But if you step back from it, it is just some chemical that might give you hepatitis from a used needle, and you are not on the stairway to heaven but on a slippery path to Hades where Charon and his dreadful three-headed dog Cerberus await you.
Like any soap opera or cheap crime story, it has a simple logic that the reader decodes while watching or reading it. It happens over and over again, just with different names and settings, a bit like Ground Hog Day. Any politically correct litany usually boils down to the following three elements:
1. I am so clever. It follows that you are a moron.
2. You are racist or a Nazi.
3. I laugh at you.
Pierre de Vos does not keep us in suspense. In his introductory paragraph he already plays the race card (without a shred of evidence, but does it matter if you are on such a hard drug?) and he more subtly informs us that “they do not seem to understand…” which is already short-hand for saying: “But I do! I am an absolute genius! Can you not see the pearls of wisdom dripping from my professorial, divinely politically correct, pen?”
Naturally – and this is where bad faith, mala fides, comes in – Pierre de Vos is arguing, not only for censorship, but for a viciously effective witch hunt and smear campaign against Steve Hofmeyr that will silence him forever and even banish him from society. But he, Pierre – quelle merveille! – really cares about “freedom of expression”:
The protection of freedom of expression is a prerequisite for the proper functioning of a democracy… A world in which books, movies or songs are banned; comedians are censored; prophets, artists, writers or poets jailed; academics gagged; critical voices silenced; or cultural conformity imposed through court orders or threats of violence is a world in which the human dignity of every person is not respected. This is so because our agency as human beings is diminished when we do not have at least the possibility of being exposed to life-changing forms of artistic, religious or intellectual expression.
Blah-blah-blah. Pardon me for another French expression, but then I definitely want to distance me from this ersatz Anglo-supremacist with the Afrikaans surname, De Vos: this is really just what is called la langue de bois. I have a whole book here somewhere on la langue de bois, but for the sake of brevity let me quote you that fount of knowledge, the English Wikipedia:
Wooden language is a literal translation of the French expression langue de bois meaning language that uses vague, ambiguous, abstract or pompous words in order to divert attention from the salient issues. The French phrase became widely used during the 1970s and 1980s, arriving in the language from Russian.
Don’t we understand Professor Pierre de Vos a little bit better now? After all Pierre rhymes with… insincere. And then suddenly, having just persuaded us that he is something of a man of letters who really cares about books, songs, movies, art, and so on, he quite bluntly states that:
“The problem with these lofty-sounding principles is that not all forms of expression have equal value. But it is difficult to distinguish between forms of expression that enhance democratic debate and enrich our lives, and forms of expression that have little or no value or harm people and sabotage democratic debate.”
So now we are getting closer to the totalitarian meat of it: “forms of expression that have little or no value or harm people and sabotage democratic debate”. One wonders what such “forms of expression” could be? During the time of Malema’s “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer” trial in the Equality Court most of the PC brigade was for Malema and against the suppression of the song. In the Johannesburg High Court Mr. Gilbert Marcus, brother of the former Reserve Bank governor, Gill Marcus, argued that singing such a song was exactly the same as singing the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. Or maybe Die Stem? Oh no, scratch that one. Die Stem is subject to… restrictions. In fact, singing Die Stem is, or so we have been assured, racist! Being an ode to the natural beauty of South Africa, you may wonder about that logical connection. But in PC-ville they have already made it. And no-one even cited Adorno or Marcuse in coming to thatconclusion.
I somehow recall having read an essay by Marcuse a long time ago about the dreaded Blut und Boden, “blood and soil”, so anyone developing too great an affinity for the Drakensberg and having a braai under the stars near Louis Trichardt in the Bushveld could be on his way to becoming a fascist or a fully-fledged Nazi. (By the way, the town of Louis Trichardt has only recently been allowed to use its name, after a ten-year court case.)
But it seems that our South African left-wing fanatics are not that sophisticated, even though they consider themselves cultural Marxists, feminists and anti-racists. Apart from the three elements or codes (I’m clever, you’re a racist, I laugh at you), their only real form of logic is quintessentially primitive, based on guilt by association. Die Stem is “associated with apartheid”, therefore it should be taboo. As we shall see in a moment, associative slurring, smearing and innuendo also constitute the stock in trade of Pierre de Vos. Underneath the thin veneer of “constitutional speak or doublespeak”, smoulders an old-fashioned arsenal of witch-hunting techniques. Stigmatise. Point a shaking finger and pronounce in a hoarse voice: “You demon, you!” Or, more “scholarly”: “You racist! You Nazi!”
So De Vos abandons even the pretence of causal logic and ends up creating a few stark and melodramatic propaganda figments. Now, may you ask: What could be worse than being stigmatised as a “racist”? After all, in South Africa we have 77 murders a day and a few thousand instances of rape, which pales in significance next to the odious “racism” associated with singing Die Stem, or worse, even subtly questioning the official interpretation of South African history as being the Manichean tale of evil, exploitative whites and long-suffering, angelic blacks.
If racism is worse than murder or rape “on an industrial scale” as we have it here in South Africa, what could possibly surpass it in mind-numbing evil? Well, there are always child pornography and paedophilia!
As De Vos bids ever higher in his ascent unto the high heavens of PC bliss, or the stinking river Styx, depending on where you stand, he bluntly states:
Very few South Africans will vigorously defend and actively seek to provide a platform for the views of paedophiles who argue for the legalisation of sex with young children. This is so because as a society we have decided that adults who force children to have sex with them harm those children – we do not need further debate on the issue to decide whether this is true or not.
What has paedophilia got to do with singing Die Stem or discussing why black South Africans congregated in certain tribal areas which subsequently became independent or self-ruling homelands under the previous political dispensation? But of course, De Vos wants to create some form of surreal association between Steve Hofmeyr and paedophilia… How nasty can one get? you may ask.
However, for De Vos this is a rather unfortunate use of innuendo, as we associate the anti-apartheid movement rather more with paedophilia than anyone – like Steve Hofmeyr or historian Hermann Giliomee – insisting upon a more rational and historically accurate discussion around the previous South African system.
Although the case against him was withdrawn amid all kinds of pressures, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, founder of the British Anti-Apartheid movement, was once investigated for paedophilia. Two other organisations that were intimately involved in the international campaign against South Africa, punctuated by urban terrorism (car bombs, restaurant bombs), in the 1970s and 1980s, the British Labour Party, not to forget the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), have both been exposed for the involvement of key officials in child sex rings or child rape. In the case of the British Labour Party, which is also “the intellectual home of the South African Left”, it was revealed that Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, then “young left-wingers” but who rose to powerful positions within the Labour Party, actually supported the “Paedophile Information Exchange”, a lobby group campaigning for the legalisation of child sex in Britain. The BBC’s Sir James Wilson Vincent “Jimmy” Savile, OBE, KCSG , 31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011)… an English DJ, television presenter, media personality and charity fundraiser became the subject of a posthumous “sexual abuse scandal”, described thus:
In September and October 2012, almost a year after his death, claims were widely publicised that the radio and television presenter Jimmy Savile had committed sexual abuse, his alleged victims ranging from prepubescent girls and boys to adults. By 11 October 2012 allegations had been made to 13 British police forces, and this led to the setting-up of inquiries into practices at the BBC and within the National Health Service. [Wikipedia]
So it seems, instead of defaming Steve Hofmeyr, as he had intended, Pierre de Vos has actually shone a spotlight on some of the leading lights of the British Left in the 1970s and 1980s when South Africa was brought down for “having the wrong values”. The Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal also nicely revealed the “moral backbone” of the BBC which was so intimately involved in promoting the ANC and SACP as the only possible government for South Africa, with the results that we see around us.
But De Vos does not stop there in his attempts to illustrate just how much free speech, such as that of Steve Hofmeyr, needs to be curtailed. He ultimately (over-)reaches for the Holocaust and Holocaust denial, stating:
Defending free speech is not always value neutral.
The same principle applies to those who deny the Holocaust or argue that the Nazis did a great job by exterminating six million Jews. As a society we have decided that there is no value in debating whether the Holocaust occurred or whether the mass murder of the Jews was a good idea. Why debate something that is so obviously evil – it will just give credence to the disproved and harmful views of a few lunatics?
For someone who pretends to be informed as to the South African constitution and legal precedent, this is the stuff of fantasy. Regardless of the merits of debating whether six million really died, it is simply inaccurate to state that “as a society we have decided that there is no value in debating whether the Holocaust occurred…” There has never been any decision taken about holocaust denial in this country. Until now, holocaust denial has never been an issue in South Africa and, unlike in Western Europe, especially Germany, we have no laws on the statute books prohibiting a discussion of the number of dead in German concentration camps during World War II, including how they happened to die, whether by Zyklon B, typhus or whatever.
I am by no means taking a position on Holocaust denial, but it is theoretically possible for a Holocaust denial conference to be held in South Africa without transgressing any of our laws, including the 1996 constitution. Whereas there are moves afoot to ban Steve Hofmeyr from singing Die Stem or discuss the homelands, where Sol Kerzner’s casinos are still extant in their kitsch, extravagant splendour!
Is it not absurd that, thanks to the zeal and fanaticism of a small group of mainly white liberals and Marxists, we are increasingly finding ourselves in a situation where Afrikaans singers and authors are harassed simply for expressing a fairly innocuous opinion on South African history or singing Afrikaans folk songs that have been part of the popular repertoire for decades? The worrying aspect is that, as the South African system unravels further, the perceived threat to the system from describing empirical conditions in the country will subject one to reprisals, witch hunts, vociferous denunciations and moral hysteria from the disciples of Trevor Huddleston, Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt and the late Sir James Wilson Vincent “Jimmy” Savile.
Underlying the surreal objets trouvés of De Vos’s “legal” imagination is an even more sinister “subconscious association” in the form of the tacit assumption that, in fact, apartheid was tantamount to genocide and a holocaust. If that assumption ever hardened into historical “fact” it would require all whites and Afrikaners to take the vow of silence as some of the more extreme voices in academe (such as Samantha Vice) have already advocated. That would take us from harassment and censorship to the most absolute self-censorship and fear of persecution in terms of German-style “denial” laws.
Not for nothing does Conrad Koch, the puppet master who spews obscenities as readily as his politically correct platitudes, use the term “apartheid denialism” as an excuse or motivation for his harassment of Steve Hofmeyr, in order to sound the death knell of free speech in South Africa.
In a final reductio ad absurdum, De Vos writes:
Besides, no one has a right to make a profit out of his or her bigotry and racism. I have checked the Constitution and can confirm that no such right is contained in it.
This is the ultimate object of a PC vilification campaign, being stabbed to death in the street like Theo van Gogh
So once you have been accused of “bigotry and racism” in the kangaroo court of a few biased cultural-Marxist ideologues, you will no longer be allowed to perform, to publish or to disseminate your opinions. They will simply defame and slander you until you are either reduced to silence or they have simply whipped up enough hatred against you for you to get stabbed in the street as happened to Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands.
Unless we want Roman-Dutch law to go the way of Thandi Modise’s pig farm, we should defend it against the assault of so-called professors of constitutional law.
France is pressing ahead with even greater internet censorship than before, in an attempt to stop the recruitment of Islamic fighters on Facebook and other internet media. Some content may be censored or suppressed in terms of clause 8 of a new law currently before the French Senate. Some commentators have described the law as a serious infringement of individual liberties.
Ten years ago the presence of radical Islam on the internet was limited to about ten highly specialised Salafist websites, as well as videos of Bin Laden or other warriors filmed close up while pronouncing fatwas. Now there are thousands of images, videos and content streaming via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram advocating Jihad and encouraging terrorist candidates to take the next step.
When typing “Jihad beheading” in Google videos, one finds 55 000 answers. It is possible to find within a few minutes the latest edition of the magazine Daqib, the mouthpiece of the Islamic State, comprising 55 pages advocating slavery or showing photos of Kurds executed by Daesh. Many ISIS combatants have quite public Facebook profiles where they post photos in which they pose while brandishing Kalachnikovs and which they use to gain new recruits. The story of Léa, which made the front cover of Le nouvel observatoire magazine last week, is in this respect quite revealing. The young girl of 15 was recruited for committing a bombing in France simply after posting a message saying that she was “feeling depressed”.
‘Radicalisation in the bedroom’
After listening to families of Jihadists who went to fight in Syria, the ministry of the interior noted that everyone told the same story: that of adolescents isolating themselves for hours while watching videos on the internet, radicalised “in the bedroom”. “We realised that most of the profiles of people involved in the Syrian networks are ones without any prior clashes with the law, who are not radicalised in Salafist prayer halls but on the internet and who suddenly appear on our radar screens,” said a source close to the investigation. “The vast majority of the Jihadists have their first physical contact with their recruiters on the Turkish-Syrian border, the rest is simply virtual,” said the official from the place Beauvau (where the interior ministry’s headquarters are situated).
To provoke or defend terrorism is already punishable by law in France, in terms of a law on the freedom of the press going as far back as 1881. The anti-terrorist plan of Bernard Cazeneuve which was voted by the Assemblée in mid-September and presented to the Senate today, is meant to provide new tools for preventing such “radicalisation in the bedroom or in front of the computer screen”.
Making the advocacy of terrorism a criminal offence and banning certain websites
There are two major measures to be taken by France. The first is to make advocacy of terrorism a crime in terms of the law of 29 July 1881 on the freedom of the press and to include it in the new article 421-205 of the French penal code. That will allow for longer bans and bigger fines. Anyone found guilty could be sentenced to seven years imprisonment and a fine of €100 000.
But above all, it will be possible to apply special means to combat cyber Jihad, for example by bugging lines. IT infiltration online without judicial oversight will be authorised.
The most controversial, however, is article 9 of the bill. Characterised by some as an “affront to liberty”, it will allow the blocking of URLs pointing to sites or internet pages where terrorism is advocated, simply on the advice of the police and without any judicial authority. In concrete terms, after a message from the police, a request to ban the site will be sent to the publisher, the host and the service provider of the particular site. If the content is not withdrawn within 24 hours, an administrative authority will be empowered to turn the site off or block it.
Associations defending internet freedom denounce a “draconian law”
If the national commission on information technology and freedom is presented as guardian against possible abuse of the new law, it only has a brief to protect private data and not freedom of expression. Adrienne Charnet, who heads the association Quadrature has denounced the law which according to her is “draconian”. “There are so many barriers to be put in place to avoid abuse that the risk is that we will end up with over-surveillance in society,” she argues. She condemns its “lack of efficiency”: “Anyone who is slightly familiar with the internet could get around these measures.”
“We are aware that it is impossible to suppress the Jihadist propaganda completely but we want to put a few hurdles in the way of its dissemination which is currently limitless,” answers the ministry of the interior. “It should be more difficult for an adolescent to stumble across it.”
Neil Phillips was taken to a police station after posting jokes about Nelson Mandela’s death.
“There was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech?”
Neil Phillips said he was fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed and had his computers seized.
The 44-year-old was held after posting: “My PC takes so long to shut down I’ve decided to call it Nelson Mandela.”
Another read: “Free Mandela – switch the power off.”
But police swooped after a councillor complained over the gags about the former South African leader, who passed away on Thursday, aged 95.
Mr Phillips who insisted he meant no harm, said: “It was an awful experience. I was fingerprinted, they took DNA and my computer.
“It was a couple of jokes, Bernard Manning type,” he added. “There was no hatred. What happened to freedom of speech? I think they over-reacted massively.”
Mr Phillips, who runs Crumbs sandwich shop in Rugeley, Staffordshire, was arrested after complaints by Cllr Tim Jones about the one-liners, aired when the anti-apartheid hero was critically ill.
A spokesman for Staffordshire Police confirmed the arrest and added: “When he answered bail on September 30, he was informed that there would be no further action based on CPS decision of there being insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.”
Yesterday, millions flocked to churches, parks and hills to pay their respects to Mr Mandela, including ex-wife Winnie. – dailystar.co.uk
South Africa’s multiracial and multicultural society is exploding into a never-ending Kulturkampf or American-style culture war. Anti-racists are the new racists, spreading intolerance and even violence ahead of them with a megaphone, figuratively speaking. During the court appearance of a wine farmer, Mr Johnny Burger, the crowd in the Cape had been swept up into a lynch mob threatening to kill him on the spot. Police had to use pepper spray and a stun grenade to disperse them. Shades of the Ku Klux Klan? Except here the Klansmen are anti-racists.
Anti-racist intolerance is growing in leaps and bounds. In another recent incident, it led to the unfortunate resignation from Pretoria University of one of our praag columnists after Dr Piet Croucamp from the University of Johannesburg had accused her of hate speech. As I have commented elsewhere in an Afrikaans column:
“The media group Naspers and a small group of academics acting in bad faith and attacking others in the name of race, mostly for personal reasons, represent a danger to freedom of speech in South Africa.”
This afternoon I got an email from a friend saying that Mr Burger’s case reminded him of the notorius “Black Circuit” of the early nineteenth century. At the time a 1000 Cape farmers had to appear before a roving court to answer to trumped-up charges of murder, rape and assault. In the end, no-one was convicted and it was found that colonial English missionaries had colluded with local Khoi-San tribesmen to falsely accuse farmers of heinous crimes.
Contrary to our law, Mr Burger, accused of assaulting a Coloured child, was presumed guilty until his innocence could be proven. Two days ago, the Cape Times newspaper wrote about the case of Flippie Engelbrecht, the child concerned: “Those who brought the case to court charged that after the assault Engelbrecht had lost his sight, had epileptic fits, and because of this had rolled into a fire and suffered terrible burns, losing his hands.” In yesterday’s Cape Times, headlined Questions surround Flippie’s assault, “new evidence” came to light in the form of medical records showing that Flippie Engelbrecht had reported a “swelling on the side of his face”, which may have been a tumour, causing his epileptic fits and other medical problems. The same medical records contradict some of the dates advanced by the victim. However, in the meantime the wine farmer had committed suicide after his life and his business had been ruined by hysterical anti-racists pursuing him in the media, both traditional and social, led by the radical, Afrikaner-hating ex-lawyer (who was struck off the record as an attorney after dubious business deals and bankruptcy), Carina Papenfus.
So here we have two incidences of whites being subjected to histrionic public campaigns by so-called “liberal” anti-racists whose objectives have more in common with the Spanish Inquisition than with advancing the precepts of liberalism. Freedom of speech and even academic freedom in South Africa have been casualties of these campaigns, not to mention the two white victims, one committing suicide and another resigning her post and leaving the country, presumably for fear of being further persecuted.
Our universities are no longer places of learning but over-politicised shrines to political correctness and obtuse hatreds that are seemingly ignited by throwing a switch.
Volumes have been written on the cultural, linguistic, racial, anthropological, ethnic, ideological and religious divisions of South African society and I do not wish to dwell on the obvious. What concerns me more, is the apparent descent of people with nominal university qualifications into this kind of racial street fighting. They wield race and the word “racist” like a Cape Flats gangster brandishes his knife. Not so long ago, twelve schools had to be closed in that area as a result of gang activity and Mrs Helen Zille, the premier of the Western Cape, was calling for the army to be brought in to stabilise Manenberg.
Yet, ostensibly, we have more to fear from the pseudo-intellectual gangsters than from the drug-dealing, turf-warring criminals of the Cape Flats. Their influence on public discourse is far more insidious and destructive of the last vestiges of civilisation that remain in South Africa. They are intolerant zealots such as are to be found throughout history, wherever religious wars or ethnic conflicts have ignited and blazed.
Except for the Sunday paper Rapport, no-one seems to take Papenfus seriously. She waged a slanderous email and Twitter campaign against the hapless winemaker, apparently threatening and cajoling his customers into ceasing to order from him, with the intention of ruining his business and his life. Ms. Papenfus is a kind of cyber thug that replicates the intimidation tactics of petty gangsters in the public sphere. After all, as any mafioso or racketeer knows, a small business may be ruined by hitting one or two of its weak spots. Although she must have studied at one time for a degree or diploma, she has no intellectual pretensions. Her creed is simple: harass the whites. And being white and Afrikaans herself, but an ANC member, it is a case of être plus royaliste que le roi.
Papenfus is dangerous, but easily understood. The other two zealots who pounced upon the soft-spoken Pretoria woman philosopher, occupy positions of institutional power. Croucamp is a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg in political science and frequently appears on talk shows, both on radio and on television, wearing his trademark blue bandana. Schutte writes a column in the Mail & Guardian newspaper which is also avidly read by the “tenured radicals” at South Africa’s more than twenty universities.
Schutte was due to debate Croucamp’s victim on the topic: “‘Do white people have an obligation to withdraw from the public sphere?’ But as she stated in a subsequent column: “I am obviously not going to validate Louise Mabille’s hate speech by actually debating with her. Rather I will end by saying that she has presented a shining example of how whites should not participate in the public arena. It is a good thing that Louise Mabille has handed in her resignation and that the University of Pretoria has accepted it.”
From Rhodes University, we have already had an opinion by Dr Samantha Vice that all whites, i.e. everyone of European descent, should take some form of vow to remain silent in public. So white guilt leads to the ultimate form of self-censorship, public silence.
Elsewhere, Ms Gillian Schutte describes herself, somewhat pretentiously, as a “feminist-neopagan-post-structuralist-deconstructionist-socialist” and she apparently has a Master’s degree in creative writing from the University of the Witwatersrand.
The one thing we can already deduce is that the mob outside the Cape courtroom who wanted to lynch Mr Burger at least believed in some form of dialogue. They were screaming, hurling abuse and gesticulating. With police intervention and protection, one could still call it communication.
Croucamp and Schutte want to reduce us to silence, however. Theirs is the monologue of totalitarianism, of censorship, of “There is only one truth and it is mine”. They pontificate in the name of power, the corrupt power that is ruling, nay, pillaging, South Africa.
It is therefore ironic that Schutte should describe herself as a “post-structuralist-deconstructionist”. Does she even know what she is referring to? The very basis of any “deconstruction” is the existence of more than one meaning, even the uncertainty, indetermination and radical plurality of meanings. Just over ten years ago a small group of us Afrikaner thinkers had a private seminar with Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales on the boulevard de Raspail in Paris. I remember Derrida as a modest, soft-spoken, amiable figure who reminisced about his single visit to South Africa. He liked Potchefstroom and even told me that “Heidegger would have felt at home there”. Derrida was full of gentle irony, self-doubt and respect for others, even the Other, as he so often termed it in his more political writings.
Schutte, by contrast, is a third-world ideologue, possessed by a terrible certainty. She has more in common with Robert Mugabe or Idi Amin than Jacques Derrida. Like so many others strutting about our campuses today, she has no real culture but the fad of the moment. The more politically correct such fads are, the better. Her meretricious pseudo-intellectualism has all the charm of Winnie Mandela’s expensive sunglasses and jewellery, being the brash expression of a corrupt and power-hungry soul. Ideas are but slogans, brands, to market yourself to another kind of mob to the one that wanted to lynch the Cape winemaker.
I have often thought that South Africa today has much in common with Nero’s Rome. Our country has become murderous, corrupt and decadent. Innocence has died. Approximately a thousand children are raped every day, including babies, and nobody says a word. Or if they broach the subject, they are immediately reduced to silence, given the ritual knife for disembowelling themselves. Schutte’s smug satisfaction (“It is a good thing that Louise Mabille has handed in her resignation and that the University of Pretoria has accepted it”) may be deconstructed to reveal two things: Schadenfreude and a paradoxical expectation of honour in others.
There is no English word for Schadenfreude, hence the German loanword that is universally used. However, the Afrikaans (and Dutch) term leedvermaak expresses the same thing, with a few more connotations (“signifieds” for post-structuralists) thrown in. The other day I tweeted in Afrikaans, something to the effect that leedvermaak is the apotheosis of journalism in South Africa. Vermaak also means entertainment, hence the misery of others, their travails amid hysterical accusations, calumny and vilification provide entertainment. Anti-racist Blitzkrieg, either on the vineyards of the Cape or on the campus of Pretoria University, therefore feeds the sensationalist mainstream media machine, sated on the blood of murder victims.
Celebrity “businessman” Kenny Kunene
Due to the surfeit of murders in South Africa, people are becoming bored with news of another killing, no matter how ruthless and macabre. Celebrity murder, such as the Oscar Pistorius case, is still news, but not even serial killings elicit much attention. In a society as utterly cruel and corrupt as ours, we are in desperate need of frivolity, such as the camp antics of that incorrigible clown in drag, Pieter-Dirk Uys, or Kenny Kunene’s parties where guests eat sushi off the bodies of bikini-clad ladies.
South Africa is profoundly amoral. It lacks a moral or ethical code to define right and wrong. Someone like Baudrillard would say that this “lack”, in a psychoanalytical sense, creates a need for a kind of pseudo-ethics, a moral simulacrum.
This is where anti-racism comes in. Anti-racism is the simulacrum of our lost moral code. It is no coincidence that the objectionable sentence in Louise Mabille’s column contained references to both Calvinism and baby rape, the former marking the overtly Christian morality of the old South Africa and the latter epitomising the radical “freedom from all scruples” that characterises the new South Africa.
In this respect, Gillian Schutte, despite her evidently defective grasp of some basic philosophical and literary concepts, understands the “new amorality” well. In one of her “feminist” videos, a rape victim explains that the “cure” for the shame attached to having been raped, is to join the so-called “slutwalk”, ardently recommended by Ms. Schutte. By self-identifying as a slut, a woman is freed from the fear of rape and “forced sex” as it is euphemistically called. Miracle cures are to be found everywhere in South Africa, peddled by immigrant Nigerian pastors and indigenous witchdoctors alike. Not to forget the infamous “virgin cleansing myth” by which one may be cured of HIV-Aids by raping a virgin, including an infant, and which Louise Mabille alluded to in her column.
Gillian Schutte is also a champion of the word “cunt” which, according to her, should become part of our everyday discourse. As she puts it,
“When women finally reclaim and speak this word, its full potential will be released and women will repossess their collective cunt-power and rise up against misogyny and patriarchy with the absolute intent of ending it.”
Amid the universal amorality and Neronic decadence of South Africa, Schutte is clutching at ethical straws, more precisely: pubic hairs. Instead of simply affirming and enjoying the slutwalk, she opts for the simulacrum of the good, which has now turned out to be the “collective cunt-power” of women.
But there is no “good” anymore. South Africa is really living according to the famous maxim from Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov: “If there is no God, then everything is permitted.” As I intimated the other day, SA really stands for “Sadists’ Apocalypse”. Eighteenth-century French literature, specifically the writings of the Marquis de Sade, is all that we have to remotely begin to understand our baby rapists and farm murderers.
Apart from Gillian Schutte’s “cunt-power”, the other pseudo-morality that people desperately cling to is anti-racism. In our sadistic universe where nothing is wrong, some people imagine that racism is the one remaining sin. You may kill, rape, bribe, lie and steal, more or less with impunity, but uttering the word “Bantu” will earn you the opprobrium of polite society, that society which is now reappropriating the magical power of four-letter words.
The simulacrum of sin is transgression of anti-racist etiquette. That alone awakens some form of long-lost moral response which is delivered with predictable ecclesiastical ritual: denunciation, excommunication, prohibition, censorship. From the TV studio did Schutte, the high priestess of atavistic cunt-power and pagan ritual, deliver her sermon against what Orwell called thoughtcrime: “racist” thoughts and suspicions, including the mere mention of “baby rape”, which is a proven and documented phenomenon in this country.
Did Johnny Burger, the Cape winemaker, commit suicide to save his honour? In a country where “trial by media” and populist passions have come to influence courts and the judicial system, Burger probably correctly surmised that he would not receive a fair trial. His suicide reminds me of the death of the patrician Latin author Petronius who, having got wind of Nero’s henchmen being sent to kill him, preferred taking his own life while drinking wine and having musicians perform for him.
Thanks to Carina Papenfus’s hate campaign, no-one will ever drink Burger’s wine again.
Similarly to Burger, Louise Mabille fell upon her own sword and resigned. Understandably, there is despair and pessimism among the remaining class of thinking people in South Africa. We are outnumbered and outscreamed by those who are playing for the gallery.
However, notwithstanding samurai customs, there are other ways of saving one’s honour. On these shores, we have the example of the bittereinder, of someone fighting to the very, bitter end, against all odds.
Are we ready for that thankless struggle, knowing full well that we shall face calumny all the way? If reason be dead, can thought or the mind still withstand the mob, baying for our blood?
A draft Policy Framework on Combating Hate Crimes, Hate Speech and Unfair Discrimination has been finalised that will introduce the concept of hate crime to South African criminal law, giving effect to international legislation aimed at balancing the right to dignity with the right to free speech. Legalbrief Policy Watch reports that Justice and Constitutional Development Minister announced this yesterday during an address to guests at a discussion panel hosted by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
According to the Minister, the draft framework seeks to address ‘newly-defined hate crimes’ – including hate speech – where there is evidence of a discriminatory motive for targeting characteristics that include but are not limited to race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation. He said that the draft policy framework attempts to define the concept of hate speech in a way that reflects South Africa’s commitment to freedom of expression.
Jeff Radebe, South Africa’s Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development
Acknowledging that people are often victimised despite ‘the presence of the law’, Radebe emphasised the importance of ensuring that hate crime does not spin out of control and lead to anarchy. He also pointed to the need for ordinary South Africans to be educated about the values underpinning the proposed new policy, referring in particular to an ill-conceived perception that foreigners are not entitled to the same rights as South Africans.
Once the draft policy framework has been approved by Cabinet, it will be released for public comment. – Legalbrief Today at legalbrief.co.za
On Sunday morning David Miranda, the partner of Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, was detained as he was passing through Heathrow airport on his way back to Rio de Janeiro, where the couple live. Greenwald is the reporter who has broken most of the stories about state surveillance based on the leaks from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald’s work has undoubtedly been troublesome and embarrassing for western governments. But, as the debate in America and Europe has shown, there is considerable public interest in what his stories have revealed about the right balance between security, civil liberties, freedom of speech and privacy. He has raised acutely disturbing questions about the oversight of intelligence; about the use of closed courts; about the cosy and secret relationship between government and vast corporations; and about the extent to which millions of citizens now routinely have their communications intercepted, collected, analysed and stored.
In this work he is regularly helped by David Miranda. Miranda is not a journalist, but he still plays a valuable role in helping his partner do his journalistic work. Greenwald has his plate full reading and analysing the Snowden material, writing, and handling media and social media requests from around the world. He can certainly use this back-up. That work is immensely complicated by the certainty that it would be highly unadvisable for Greenwald (or any other journalist) to regard any electronic means of communication as safe. The Guardian’s work on the Snowden story has involved many individuals taking a huge number of flights in order to have face-to-face meetings. Not good for the environment, but increasingly the only way to operate. Soon we will be back to pen and paper.
Miranda was held for nine hours under schedule 7 of the UK’s terror laws, which give enormous discretion to stop, search and question people who have no connection with “terror”, as ordinarily understood. Suspects have no right to legal representation and may have their property confiscated for up to seven days. Under this measure – uniquely crafted for ports and airport transit areas – there are none of the checks and balances that apply once someone is in Britain proper. There is no need to arrest or charge anyone and there is no protection for journalists or their material. A transit lounge in Heathrow is a dangerous place to be.
Miranda’s professional status – much hand-wringing about whether or not he’s a proper “journalist – is largely irrelevant in these circumstances. Increasingly, the question about who deserves protection should be less “is this a journalist?” than “is the publication of this material in the public interest?”
The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments – while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden – are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance. That perception is right. Here follows a little background on the considerable obstacles being placed in the way of informing the public about what the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations are up to.
A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.
The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.”
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian’s reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government’s intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?
The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.
Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.
The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like “when”.
We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack. But at least reporters now know to stay away from Heathrow transit lounges.
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My verklaring oor Cancervive
deur Sunette Bridges
Hierdie is seker een van die moeilikste skrywes wat ek nog ooit moes doen. Ek het baie tyd spandeer daaraan om mooi te dink en hard gebid vir leiding oor die saak.
Ek het eergister op FB gemeld dat ek vandag in Naboomspruit optree ten bate van Cancervive. Ek is deur ‘n Boervrou in die gemeenskap genader op die optrede vir haar te doen om te help met die kaartjieverkope. Ek het ingestem om gratis vir haar te gaan optree. Hierdie vrou het self die pad van Kanker gestap en wou graag ‘n bydrae maak om dit vir ander moontlik te maak om behandeling te ontvang. Soos baie van julle seker weet, het my Pa ook Kanker gehad en is dit een van die sake wat ek al vir baie jare met graagte ondersteun.
Gistermiddag het ek ‘n oproep van my kliënt ontvang om my mee te deel dat Cancervive haar versoek het om onmiddelik my optrede vandag te kanselleer omdat hulle nie met my politieke oortuigings vereenselwig wil word nie. Die arme vrou was ongelooflik ontsteld en geweldig bekommerd oor wat sy vandag vir die mense gaan se oor hoekom ek nie by die funksie is nie. Ek was hartseer, maar het vir haar gese dat sy nie bekommerd moet wees nie en dat ek op enige ander datum in die toekoms gratis vir die mense sal kom sing. Ek het die saak daar gelaat.
‘n Rukkie later is ek meegedeel dat die besluit van Cancervive ‘n direkte uitvloeisel is van ‘n e-pos van deur ‘n ene Johan Pienaar aan Cancervive se publisiteitsmaatskappy gestuur is. In die e-pos deel Pienaar Cancervive mee dat hy geskok is om te verneem dat hulle geassosieer word met ‘n RASSIS soos ek wat deur die MRK aangekla word vir rassisme en voeg hy ook by dat hy ontevrede is met die feit dat die funksie in die AP-Kerk in Naboomsptuit se kerksaal gehou word aangesien die ook ‘n Rassistiese instansie is. Cancervive het egter gekies om nie kapsie te maak oor die saal nie, maar wel oor my optrede daar.
Daar is ‘n blad op FB wat jou al vir presies 11 maande ‘n smeerveldtog teen my voer en ek het verneem dat die e-pos op die blad gepubliseer is en hul hul lesers aangemoedig het om ook almal aan Cancervive te skryf om hul te versoek om nie met my te assosieer nie. Enkele lede van die blad het dit ook goedgedink om dieselfde skrywes op Cancervive se FB blad te gaan maak. Cancervive se eerste amptelike reaksie was om die persone mee te deel dat hulle A-polities is en ondersteuning van enigeen verwelkom. Dis nou blykbaar enigeen behalwe ek.
Die spreker van Cancervive het intussen in Naboomsruit opgedaag en dit was aan haar verduidelik dat my kliënt in ‘n reuse verknorsing was agv hul houding jeens my. Die dame, by name Frieda Henning, het my toe gekontak. Sy het vreeslik hard probeer om vir my te verduidelik dat Cancervive nie omgee van watter geloofs- of politiese oortuiging hul bydraers is nie, maar dat my deelname vir hulle in ‘n moeilike posisie plaas. Ek het aan haar verduidelik dat ek reeds ‘n e-pos aan Cancervive oor die situasie gestuur het en dat ek ‘n amptelike verklaring van hulle versoek oor hoekom my optrede gekanselleer is. Cancervive het egter alles in hul vermoeë gedoen om ‘n amptelike uitlating te vermy en my sowaar vesoek om steeds maar die vertoning te kom doen so in die stilligheid sonder dat hulle skriftelik hoef te reageer oor die insident. Dit terwyl hulle personeel reeds e-posse van die Smeerblad se lede geantwoord het waarin hulle die mense meegedeel het dat dit EK was wat my optrede gekanselleer het. Ek stel dit onomwonde dat ek op geen stadium my optrede daar gekanselleer het nie, maar dat die versoek vir my om nie daar te wees nie, ‘n direkte opdrag aan my kliënt van Cancervive af was.
Wat my stomslaan is dat Cancervive blykbaar GEEN probleem het daarmee om WIT mense in Naboomspruit, boonop lede van die APKerk, se geld te vat vir hul organisasie nie, maar nie die rugraat het om ‘n stadpunt in te neem teen ‘n ooglopende kwaadwillige smeerveldtog nie. Ek sou graag die optrede van die Smeerblad se lede as laakbaar wou beskryf, maar dit sou beteken dat ‘n mense beter van hulle sou verwag en dit is nie die geval nie. Wat ek wel laakbaar vind is die optrede van Cancervive.
Op geen stadium het ek navraag gedoen oor wie sou baat by my optrede nie. Vir my het dit oor die SAAK gegaan. Ek het ook besluit om nou eers hierdie skrywe te doen om sodoende nie vir Marinda, my kliënt in Naboomspruit enige skade te berokken of haar funksie in die wiele te ry nie, maar voel dat dit nou belangrik is om ‘n standpunt in te neem teen hierdie organisasie se optrede en die publiek in te lig oor die aangeleentheid. Ons velkleur is verkeerd vir hierdie BEE instansie. Ons politiek is verkeerd vir hierdie BEE instansie, maar duidelik is die kleur van ons geld vir hulle geen probleem nie. Dit is tyd ons ons begin om SLEGS Volkseie aksies te ondersteun en na ons eie mense om moet sien en, soos in die geval van Naspers, moet PRAAT met ons geld!
Die R25 000 wat Cancervive uit Naboomspruit se Blanke mense maak, behoort in totaal aan die gemeenskap terugbetaal te word!
Ek dank die Vader dat ek NIE afhanklik is van my sangloopbaan om te oorleef nie en dat ek dus nooit nodig sal he om my beginsels prys te gee om my siel te verkoop om te oorleef nie.
Hier is die skakel na die fotoalbum met al die detail oor hierdie siek mense se optrede… Sx
Marine Le Pen faces prosecution for comparing Muslim immigration to the Nazi occupation of France after the European Parliament’s legal committee recommended that the nationalist leader be stripped of her immunity.
The full parliament is now expected to formally lift her protection from prosecution as an MEP after a vote on the recommendation on July 3, clearing the way for her to face race hate charges in a French court.
Sajjad Karim, a British Tory MEP on the parliament’s legal affairs committee, voted in favour Ms Le Pen losing her parliamentary immunity.
“There is a red line between freedom of speech and inciting racial hatred,” he said. “I, along with many other MEPs, today voted to drop Ms Le Pen’s immunity and I am confident that the majority of the European Parliament will follow our lead in July.”
French prosecutors asked the EU assembly last November to lift the French National Front leader’s immunity as a lawmaker so she could be prosecuted for remarks likening Islamic prayers to the Nazi occupation.
Ms Le Pen faces charges for comments she made in a speech to National Front supporters in December 2010 when she denounced the holding of Muslim prayers in the streets of France in areas where there are no mosques.
“For those who like to talk about World War II, to talk about occupation, we could talk about, for once, the occupation of our territory. There are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation all the same and it weighs on people,” she said.
She follows in the footsteps of her father Jean Marie, founder of the French National Front, who was stripped of his legal protection as an MEP to face German Holocaust denials charges in 1998, he had previously been convicted of similar charge in France. – Daily Telegraph
Zapiro’s latest cartoon is a “vulgar portrayal” of President Jacob Zuma, lobby group AfriForum said on Monday.
The cartoon was “a vulgar portrayal of the president [and] unproductive and in poor taste.” AfriForum spokesman Ernst Roets said in a statement.
The cartoon by Jonathan Shapiro depicts an erect penis with a showerhead and legs standing before a mirror with an accompanying limerick about Zuma.
It was published in the Mail & Guardian on Friday.
Roets said the cartoon did not contribute towards finding a solution to South Africa’s problems.
“AfriForum is of the opinion that controversial issues in South Africa must be approached constructively and that it does not contribute to finding a solution when other people’s cultures are insulted in the process.”
Roets said although AfriForum supported freedom of speech and artistic experience, this cartoon called into question the matter of dignity.
He suggested artists “evaluate the possible consequences of their work before displaying it to the public”.
On Friday, government called for the removal of the cartoon from the Mail and Guardian website.
Spokesman Jimmy Manyi said the cartoon was a “defamatory attack” on Zuma’s character and violated his rights to dignity as enshrined in the Constitution.
SA Communist Party spokesman Malesela Maleka called it “B-grade schoolboy lavatory stuff, unworthy of a once talented cartoonist and unworthy of a newspaper that pretends to be serious”.
The African National Congress found it ” unacceptable and shocking”, while its Women’s League condemned it.
“The Zapiro cartoons rely on their shock value to make an impact, but calling the president of this great nation a ‘dick’ is unacceptable…” ANC Women’s League spokeswoman Troy Martens said.
Responding to criticism of the cartoon, Shapiro said on Friday the public should have the democratic right to be irreverent about leaders, especially those who “display hypocrisy”.
“My latest cartoon is meant to be scathing but humorous,” he said in an email, issued by his office, to Sapa.
“It’s also serious commentary about a seriously flawed, hypocritical leader.” – Sapa
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