New Zealand: " With the jester on the sidelines in a cast "

Keeping Stock blogs .

David Cunliffe has a bit of a dilemma here. Labour has clearly selected a candidate for Rangitata who has extreme views about the Prime Minister, which he is not shy in putting into the public domain. That in itself is a recipe for catastrophe.

But by pledging a campaign focusing on policies rather than personalities, David Cunliffe has painted himself into a corner here. Either he throws the Sledge Pledge out the window and endorses a candidate with clear anti-Semitic views, or he is forced to order that the candidate be deselected. Whichever path he chooses, it's yet another distraction Labour could do without.

Yesterday Labour's Big Red Positive Bus was rolled out in downtown Auckland. Today however, a wheel has fallen of the Bus of Positivity.


FOOTNOTE: If you don't get the anti-Semitism here, this may help you.

If Gibson is still a Labour candidate when the sun that will soon rise over NZ set's again I will be astonished.  It matters not, tonight Labour lost the election. There is no way I will cast a party vote for a party that fields such  a candidate. Keeping Stock further reports in the comments 

"Quite so QH - he's apologised for the "Shylock" reference, claiming ignorance of Shylock being derogatory and anti-Semitic. But interestingly, he hasn't apologised for any of the rest of his angry rant.

David Cunliffe has every right to be incandescent with anger; Steve Gibson has taken the gloss of Labour's campaign launch yesterday."

"...claiming ignorance of Shylock being derogatory..."   

Yes well one of course look at the ... sorry is this clown really  the candidate ? "

DR Congo: Hilarious...M23 reduced to Facebook threats.

All Africa reports

Congo-Kinshasa: Rebel Leader Makes Death Threats Towards Journalist Online

                                          Colonel Vianney Kazarama

Journalist in Danger (JED) is extremely upset over death threats made by Mr. Vianney Kazarama - spokesperson for the M23 rebel group - towards a journalist in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Marne Levine, Facebook’s VP of Global Public Policy makes it fairly clear what the Facebook policy with regard to death threats online is. 

" We prohibit content deemed to be directly harmful, but allow content that is offensive or controversial. We define harmful content as anything organizing real world violence, theft, or property destruction, or that directly inflicts emotional distress on a specific private individual."

I would think the first thing to do is draw the fools remarks to the attention of Facebook and ask that his account be closed. His Facebook account is here. I might even make a complaint myself. Mind you I can't find the offending piece but I am assured that nothing ever really goes away so I am sure it will be traceable. I noticed that he also seems to recieve a few death threats as well.

 "...son of a bitch, tutsi uncircumcised, thief.We will exterminate."

And that is of course at least half of the problem that the people of the Great Lakes Region face. The pointless stupid racism that pervades attitudes and leads to killings on an extraordinary stage, all most all of them, quite arbitrary.

 

On 1 September 2013, Vianney Kazarama published a menacing message on Facebook, without stating the name of the targeted journalist. Here's an excerpt of the original message in Swahili: "Kuko mupasha habari moya wa Goma amesahu kazi yake anaanza pana habari za bongo. Asiwe na shaka mumasaha kidogo tutafanya kakitendo kadogo kenye katamufurahisha sana. Wandugu wa penzi katamihumisha rohoo, lakini sisi kama jeshi tunajuwa nini tunafanya... "

The message translates into the following: "There's a journalist in Goma who has forgotten how to do his job by spreading false information. But he shouldn't worry, because very soon, we will do a little something that will make him very happy. Dear beloved brothers, this will shock you, but as an army, we know what we're doing... "

I am probably not one of the beloved brothers he refers to I concede but never the less I am more than a little surprised that he seems to think M23 know what they are doing. I guess getting scores of your militia killed and retreating in total disarray is a valid tactical response but boasting about it as if it was part of the greater plan seems a bit weird.  

According to research carried out by JED, this message was posted after Thomas Kubuya - a journalist for the private, Goma-based Virunga Business Radio (VBR) - posted information on Facebook about safety issues in eastern DRC.

I am feeling a little bit left out at the moment, I have been calling M23 murderous thugs and serial rapists for quite sometime. I have yet to receive a death threat. I might have to post a link to this on his Facebook page but that will of course necessitate delaying my complaint to Facebook. The agony of choice.

Contacted by JED, Thomas Kubuya said "It was shortly after I published my post, titled 'Kibumba: Who does the truce benefit?' on Facebook, that Mr. Kazarama targeted me without explicitly naming me. Regardless of whether it is about me or another journalist, it's not up to Colonel Kazarama to shut us up; our profession requires us to publish information that is completely true and objective."

Actually the Colonel's ability to carry out his threat I suspect is somewhere between nil and a snowballs chance in hell. His medium term future is probably a cell in the Hague or an eternity watching the daisies grow from underneath.     

JED vehemently condemns and denounces the threats made against this media worker, who did nothing more than exercise his freedom of expression in publishing an intellectual analysis on a social network.

JED should grow some balls and do something concrete rather than issue pointless press releases.

JED asks Mr. Vianney Kazarama of the M23 to take back his remarks, and asks all of the armed groups operating in eastern DRC to scrupulously respect freedom of the press and freedom of expression in all of the areas under their control.

JED will hold the M23 and its leaders responsible for any violent act that could put media professionals' lives in danger in eastern DRC.

I very much doubt that threat is going to achieve anything either maybe they should send Kazarama a face book death threat.    

Greece: The rise of the racists. Golden Dawn

4 News ( Greece ) reports

Standing up to Golden Dawn in Greece

                                                                      Michael Chege

The economic crisis in Greece has led to a rise in support for the far-right Golden Dawn and an increase in racist attacks. Jamal Osman talks to one man who is fighting back.

Michael Chege and his friends patrol their neighbourhood in Athens, Greece, most nights. After many encounters with the neo-Nazi group, Golden Dawn, they set up their own brigade, nicknamed the Black Panthers.They want to protect themselves from the fascists who are targeting people who are not ethnic Greeks.

It is hard to support vigilantism but there seem to be few alternatives available.

Since the economic crisis tore Greece apart, people have been trying to find someone to blame. Some blame immigrants for the high unemployment and crime. Racist attacks against immigrants have been rising steadily. In the last year alone, more than 150 racist attacks were recorded by police, but most go unreported.


Finding someone to blame.


" As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year." Vanity Fair


The Greeks and only the Greeks are to blame.
 

Greece is a gateway to Europe and many immigrants travel there as an entry point in the hope of reaching the richer nations on the continent.
Newly arrived immigrants, who do not speak the language or have proper documentation, live in fear. But Michael and his friends are taking on the extremists.

'We will exterminate them'

"I'm not afraid of this neo-Nazi, stupid, idiotic group," he told me. "In WW2, they were crushed. In WW3, we will exterminate them out of the face of the earth.

Actually understandable on one level but not very helpful.

"I am a member of the Black Panthers and everybody knows that. So I am giving them (Golden Dawn) a straight warning - don't mess with black people, anyhow. And I mean it."

Members of the Black Panthers rescue each other if one is attacked. Using mobile phones with instant messaging and social media, their response is swift. "It has turned our lives better, at least in our neighbourhood," Michael told me.
Michael arrived in Greece from Kenya at eight months. Although he has lived there for 28 years, he is treated as a new immigrant. Police stop him on a regular basis to check his identification papers. So he has to carry a bag full of documents to prove that he is legal in the country.

Whilst Golden Dawn Shower  ( R18 link ) are the face of the problem it would seem to run far deeper. Incidentally probably more information than you need.

" The golden shower was a practice already in place in ancient Greece (One also wonders if there are practices that were not already in place in ancient Greece.) And did you know that the prostitutes of ancient Greece (at least those who practiced this kind of game) had prohibition of eating asparagus because of the bad taste that it gives to the urine "

For immigrants, the situation in Greece is worsening. They accuse the Greek police of harassment. I joined one of the many police patrols as they rounded up immigrants.

We came across drug users but the police did not bother to chase them after they ran away, but carried on arresting immigrants, which seemed a more important job than dealing with drug users. Thousands of immigrants are languishing in detention centres.

Australia should be thinking about this.

'Get respect'

Growing up in Greece, as the only black child in his school, he had to fight every day to "get respect" from fellow pupils. He took up martial arts at the age of seven and has been doing it since then. That gave him the confidence to confront people like Golden Dawn members.

".. he had to fight every day to "get respect"..". From a New Zealand perspective this seems unlikely. I have discussed it with a Rwandan friend with a school age kid here and he can only recount one instance with his son that he puts down to bullying and nothing to do with racism. 

One of his latest encounters happened while he was on a bus in the city. Two men with "a neo-Nazi look" entered the bus. Some of the passengers were signalling to Michael, telling him to "leave, run or get down", but he defied it. One of the techniques he learnt in his martial arts lessons was that "when you see a danger, you don't wait, you go for it and push out".

..."a neo-Nazi look"..  I have no idea what he means. There is an irony here. Getting into a fight with someone because of perceived look is bloody stupid.

Although the fight inside the bus was "really hard", Michael left the scene with minor injuries. He said: "It is not the first time and certainly not the last time … if you need respect, you must earn it".

I would personally try and make sure it was the last time. Violence never works long term.

'Cannibals'

A day later, on live television, he challenged the Golden Dawn leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, who thinks Africans are cannibals. In the television debate, Michaloliakos said: "The pygmies are boiled and eaten by other blacks in Africa … and they're considered special too."

Nikos Michaloliakos is a fuckwit.

Nikos Michaloliakos told Greece's Mega TV channel in an interview shown Sunday that "there were no gas chambers and ovens [crematoria] in Auschwitz," said the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, or KIS.


But when Michael asked him whether he had ever been to Africa to witness that, the far-right leader replied: "No, I only read about it in newspapers, I know what I've read in newspapers." Consequently, the Golden Dawn media wing made a video mocking Michael.

Yes.... an old newspaper man, many years ago told me the only thing you can trust in a newspaper is the date and I have seen many papers get that wrong.

Michael says it is unfortunate to be a "stranger in your own land". Greece, where he spent all his life, is the only place he knows. But as a father, it is no longer about him. He does not want his children to experience the same abuses he has. So he wants to raise them in Kenya, where they will not be treated as foreigners.
 
But for now, while Michael and his gangs continue to guard the neighbourhood, thousands of immigrants are facing uncertainties.

Hat Tip Rosebell Kagumire on Facebook.

South Africa: More bat shit crazy

The Times live ( Zimbabwe ) reports

We do employ white people: Woolworths

Woolworths did employ white people, contrary to media reports stating otherwise, its said in the advertisement, published in the City Press, Rapport and Sunday Times newspapers.

"Over the past few days, many things have been said about our recruitment practises -- specifically, that we don't employ white people. That is simply not true.

"Woolworths does employ white people. We employ women and men of all races -- white, black, coloured, Indian, as well as people with disabilities, and we will continue to do so."

I missed this and it actually looks like a bit of a beat up by reactionary white South African's to an industrial event, that said the whole event was an exercise in stupidity.

Trade union Solidarity began a campaign against the retailer on Wednesday to get it to retract job advertisements it believed discriminated against whites

Solidarity had sent Woolworths a letter on Tuesday demanding that advertisements exclusively open to "African blacks" or "Africans, coloureds and Indians", be modified so people of all races could be considered.

General secretary Dirk Hermann said the Woolworths' advertisements constituted unfair race discrimination.

In the advertisement on Sunday, Woolworths said there were certain areas of its business which were seriously under represented.

It was in these areas that Woolworths was looking for candidates from certain groups.

On the face of it yes it was a bloody stupid but if it was a genuine effort to get a balanced work force then it is hardly racism. Woolworths is a large enough organisation to have jknown better. It should probably be fined for a breach in advertising standards. 

"Because like all of South Africa's major companies, we're committed to transformation," it said in the advertisement.

Woolworths is also embroiled in another labour controversy over contracts.

On August 27, it said no retrenchments were taking place after it was reported that 593 employees faced early retirement or retrenchment if they did not sign new contracts.

However, the company said it was merely seeking to transfer about three percent of its staff on old contracts to a new system requiring them to work weekends.

If staff did not want to work under the new contract, they could leave with a voluntary severance payment, or take early retirement if they qualified.

It said about 80 percent of the affected employees had accepted one of the voluntary options proposed, while one percent had not.

The SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union, which said the offer was to the detriment of workers' rights, said 177 workers were being retrenched.

The two issues seem to be seperate although there is an understandable fear that people are being forced to sign unfavourable contracts or threatened with redundancy and replaced with new black / coloured employees. That of course would be increadably discriminatory to all races.

Racist, Sexist, Stupid - Republican

From Stuff

Donald Trump wants to make a deal with President Barack Obama.

If Obama releases his college and passport records by the end of October, the New York real estate mogul and reality show host says he will contribute US$5 million (NZ$6.09m) to a charity of the president's choice.

Trump made the offer early today (NZ time) in a video posted to his Twitter account. He called Obama "the least transparent president in the history of this country," and said that by taking the deal Obama would satisfy voters' questions about his past.

Trump drew broad publicity last year for questioning whether Obama was born in the US and eligible to be president. Obama later released his long-form birth certificate showing that he was born in Hawaii in 1961.

More from Stuff 

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock is standing by his statement that when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape "that's something God intended..... - a day after a television ad featuring the former Massachusetts governor supporting the GOP Senate candidate began airing in Indiana" 

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realise that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," 

From Balloon 

" The Funniest Thing I Heard Post Debate

By John Cole October 23rd, 2012

Was sitting here with my friend and said “Let’s check out the hive mind.” So we switched to Fox, and caught Sean Hannity talking to Ed Gillespie, and Hannity was apparently doing push back on the devastating Obama zinger about horses and bayonets, and said, and I am not fucking making this up:

“Some of our troops rode horses in Afghanistan and the Marines still carry bayonets. Maybe someone should tell the President how the military actually works.”

Yes, Petunia. A couple hundred special forces guys rode horses in Afghanistan, basically because you can’t take an M1A2 or Hummer up the Khyber pass. Likewise, the Marines do still do carry bayonets (as does the Army!), but I don’t recall the last bayonet charge. The number of combat troops carrying bayonets is a small fraction than the 3.5 million grunts we had in WW1 wearing pith helmets and dying in bayonet charges and mustard gas. Likewise, there were tens of thousands of horses in WW1 in combat, there were a few in Afhanistan.

These people are just insane."

From Pine View

Pretty much every intolerant asshole in the country has moved to the Republican Party, if they weren’t already there. The only exceptions are a few holier-than-thou progressives who can’t enjoy one moment of life if even one person is going hungry.

With that lone exception, all the prudes and bigots and tsk-tskers and money-grubbers and polluters and religious freaks and misogynists and fraudsters and warmongers have aligned with the conservative movement.

Yankee Republicanism is dead. All we have is the reactionary right aligned with a bunch a greedheads. You won’t find an inch of daylight between Pat Robertson and Mitt Romney or Mitt Romney and Paul Wolfowitz or Grover Norquist and Mitt Romney. We have the worst of all worlds.

From Peking Duck

" Robbing from the poor to give to the rich. That about sums them up.

I’ve refrained from posting on US politics because it is simply too depressing. Watching nutty conservatives transform the once sane if misguided Republican Party into an Ayn Rand-worshipping club of ueber-rich white men — and seeing so many Americans get on board donning their Tea Part costumes — has been a jaw-dropping spectacle."

From No Minister A New Zealand blog proving that racist and stupid are not exclusively American and right wing insanity is universal.

I wonder how many black Americans with no jobs, no incomes, no homes, no food and no hope might reflect that their forbears were immensely better off.  They had jobs, for a start.  They had homes, they had food.  While they didn't have 'freedom' as we know it, it's fair to say most American slave owners treated their people reasonably.

Bein' back on de plantation in good old Virginny might be a damned sight better than some drug ridden hell hole in back street Chicago.

I rest my case.

DR Congo Racist and Bat shit crazy.

Democracy Chronicles reports

Former Congolese MP Imprisoned Following Allegations of Nationality Fraud

Former DR Congo white parliamentarian found guilty of nationality fraud

A former opposition member of the Democratic Republic of Congo's parliament, born to European parents, has been found guilty of fraudulently claiming nationality, one of his lawyers said Saturday.

Yeah ? Maybe the courts might want to have a look at the definition of nationality and more particularly country of origin. 

A court in Kinshasa sentenced Pierre-Jacques Chalupa, 64, who was naturalised Congolese in 1999 and was the only white parliamentarian elected in 2006, to four years in prison for fraud and use of forged documents giving him DRC nationality.

What a fucking joke. Nothing like an independent judiciary. 

He has already served almost nine months and his trial ended in early August, his lawyer Jean-Marie Kabengela told AFP.

He said he had expected an acquittal as there was no reliable basis to the facts.

Chalupa was in born in Uvira, in Sud-Kivu in the east of the country, to a Greek mother and Portuguese father.

The BBC 2006

Although you don't see the candidates themselves here in Kinshasa, you see their faces everywhere you go. Banners and posters splashed across walls provide a new dress for the city.

Among the many candidates, Pierre Jacques Chalupa sticks out as the only white face.
His mother was originally from Greece and came to DR Congo during the war in Europe. His father, however, was born here, in Boma, before even the Belgians came to the country.
As a result, says Mr Chalupa, he feels good. His slogan, 'Pourquoi pas' asks 'Why shouldn't he?'
It arose after he was subjected to some racist taunts several months ago.
Some Congolese, he says, would spot him in town and tell him to go back to his own country, that he wasn't needed in theirs. But, he says, he chose to ignore them and continue his campaign. Why not?
After all he was born here and his family's been here for a very long time. So why not, indeed?

And what does it say that since then, his compatriots have begun referring to all Europeans by the nickname, affectionate or otherwise, of "Pourquoi pas?"

From the same BBC article

President Kabila gave a short speech in East Africa's Kiswahili language, saying he had come home - his family comes from Katanga province.

Mr Kabila is not normally recognised as being a good public speaker but he seemed to relax in this speech, showing his human side.

For the first time, his new wife, accompanied him on a public engagement and was presented to his "Katangese brothers".

He also promised to repair the road from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa and made two rare public mentions of his father, ex-President Laurent Kabila.

"I promised to reunify the country. Done. I promise to hold elections. Done in five days. That's why I ask you to vote massively for me on Sunday."

Well thats a bloody fail. Maybe President Kabila has failed to notice what is happening in the eastern DR Congo.

Both lived in DR Congo and he spent his boyhood in Kinshasa. After studying architecture in Brussels he went returned and made a career in publicity.

So born in the Congo educated in Belgium at a tertiary level and returned to serve in the country of his birth.

Chalupa did not stand again in 2011 but backed Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the main opposition party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), who rejected the outcome of the election and declared himself president.

Chaqlupa was jailed after the poll and accused of fraud in the use of documents to acquire DRC nationality, a voter's card and a passport.

His lawyer said it was odd that a member of the public should be found guilty over documents delivered by the authorities when he was in no position to judge whether they were genuine or not.

This stinks. Racism stinks regardless of who practices it.

"It is a heavy and unjustified sentence which can only be justified by his political position," Kabengela said.

"It is a settling of political scores, we plan to appeal to the supreme court."

Why bother, cut a deal and run. Oh yeah all you Francophony Summit delegates why not apply a bit of pressure. In fact why don't you call Kabila for the incompetent bastard that he is.

Hat Tip Alex

No Minister. The racist NZ blog

No Minister is centre right NZ blog that has several excellent bloggers and one awful one going under the pseudonym of Adolf. Adolf blogged

 Slow Joe

" When Slow Joe Biden made his now infamous gaffe about 'y'all back in chains' he might have forgotten a little history.

I wonder how many black Americans with no jobs, no incomes, no homes, no food and no hope might reflect that their forbears were immensely better off.  They had jobs, for a start.  They had homes, they had food.  While they didn't have 'freedom' as we know it, it's fair to say most American slave owners treated their people reasonably.

Bein' back on de plantation in good old Virginny might be a damned sight better than some drug ridden hell hole in back street Chicago."

One of his fellow No Minister bloggers commented 

Barnsley Bill said...

Adolf, I sincerely hope you were pissed when you wrote this post.

Not your finest internet moment.

Adolf's response.

Adolf Fiinkensein said...

Barnsley

No, not at all. Just a little hint that slavery under Obama for many of those poor black bastards is worse than slavery under the cotton growers was for many of the said black bastards' forebears.

Suggest you have a look at some figures for rape, murder, assault etc among blacks.
They've just swapped a white Massa for a black one.

In an other comment he said.

" Lost your objectivity, have you? I did not recommend a return to slavery. I merely remarked that the 

slaves of 150 or so years a go had a better quality of life than do many of America's modern day Blacks."

Adolf is a racist prick his post and comments are offensive.  He has spent the best part of 4 years referring too President Obama as the " Black Arsed Jackass  " I am guessing he finds this hilariously funny and still needs 10 minutes to recover his breath from laughing after he writes it in his hate filled posts. That anyone could suggest being a slave 150 years ago is preferable to and gives you a better quality of life than today is astonishing.

" Black bastards " says it all. New Zealand doesn't have a large black community however my partner is a member  of that community as indeed am I. 

If you are judged by the company you keep then maybe the No Minister bloggers  might want to think about their lowest common denominator.

For the record I have a lot of respect for the other bloggers at No Minister despite  ideological

differences. 

And I always thought of them as the lucky country

From today's NZHerald

" Indians get lesson on 'dumb' Aussies

Australia is the world's "dumbest continent" where people "drink constantly" and are "quite racist", according to training at Indian call centres.

Staff are taught "how to act Australian" and are told to "speak slowly" because Australians tend to be technologically "backwards".

They are also warned that Australians are "touchy" about their pets and their preferred term for Indians is "brown bastards".

The revelations appeared in an article in the US news magazine motherjones.com, which also refers to the British as sarcastic and Americans as shouty and "free with their anger".

Perhaps mercifully, there is no reference to New Zealanders.

Journalist Andrew Marantz spent weeks training in India at the Delhi Call Centre. "For three weeks, a culture trainer will teach us conversational skills, Australian pop culture, and the terms of the mobile phone contracts we'll be peddling," he writes.

The training programme taught employees about conversational skills and Australian pop culture in the hope that they would build a rapport with the person they were trying to sell to.

In "dissecting" the Australian psyche in 20 minutes, the teacher told the class, "Just stating the facts, guys: Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently, so speak slowly.

"Technologically speaking, they're somewhat backward, as well. The average person's mobile would be no better than, say, a Nokia 3110 classic" - a reference to a phone released four years ago.

That revelation "drew scoffs from around the room".

"Australians drink constantly," the teacher warned. "If you call on a Friday night, they'll be smashed - every time. And don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals."

When one student asked what kind of people lived in Australia, the teacher replied: "They are quite racist. They do not like Indians. Their preferred term for us is ... 'brown bastards'."

Actually I think it says more about some Indian attitudes than it does about most Australians. The last time I hit an Indian help desk was when my old Dell Computer decided to display horizontally rather than the more conventional vertical manner that I was used to.

After going through all the rigmarole of serial numbers etc. I was told the machine was out of warranty but because he was a good guy he was going to help me anyway. Whilst waiting for the solution I decided that religion  cricket would be a great subject to chat about. After a few minutes in which I had been doing most of the talking I discovered I had met India's only cricket atheist. I can't remember  his words but they were quite indignant.