Tag: politics

I wish I hadn’t…

Posted on

To cut a long story slightly shorter: I have been sleeping with the dog.

Not like that. Get out.

But the beagle is very bandaged up and not very mobile. From Wednesday, she’s going to be less bandaged up, but also not very mobile, but that’s another story. Anyway, she’s still trying to navigate the slings and arrows of her current situation, and quite regularly getting herself stuck. Either lying down, sitting down or standing up.

And so, at the moment, I’m spending my nights downstairs on a spare mattress and helping the beagle each time she gets stuck. It happens quite a lot each night.

It’s not been fun, I’ll be honest. My sleep is so disturbed that my smartwatch can’t even detect that it’s happened. Perhaps because it’s not really happening. And so I’ve been grabbing an hour or two’s nap during the day to try and keep myself going.

This morning, I couldn’t do that, because of reasons, and so I sat with the dog and I read the world news.

Dear lord. It’s not pretty out there, is it?

Because of the situation described above, and perhaps because of just a reasonable amount of self-preservation, I haven’t really been keeping too up to date with the situation in the USA. And of course, it’s always difficult to find objective, unbiased views when wanting(?) to learn about these things, because these days, the world is more polarised than a pair of expensive sunglasses.

But it’s easier to make judgements about the rights and wrongs, and about how I feel about what’s going on, when the actual information is coming directly from the goons themselves. In years to come, historians are going to have an absolute field day with all those primary sources.

They really just put it out there, don’t they?

The scary bits for me are twofold. OK, threefold. But the first fold is a fairly obvious one. Still, I guess that it shouldn’t be overlooked.

The fact that the (apparently, potentially) legitimately elected President of the USA is… well… like that.

250 years of democracy and it’s evolved to give us… him? What went wrong?

Obviously, a lot went wrong: there are many, many factors in how this came about, but honestly… what an absolute disaster for the entire world (minus Russia and China, obviously).

Number two – and I use that term with all of its meanings – that they are so open, so brazen, so completely shameless and unabashed about the things that they are doing and the way that they are doing them. Everyone keeps referring to that guy in Germany in the 1930s, and terrifyingly, that’s quite reasonable, but there have been plenty of other examples before and since and none of them have been pleasant, and none of them have worked out well. The thing is that many of those examples weren’t elected: they seized power via non-democratic means and then held on – and on, and on.

This twat won an election (apparently).

And that brings me on to the third fold. His supporters. It’s a cult. It’s just a well-managed cult of frighteningly stupid, easily-led people.
I don’t use the c-word lightly, but if it looks, smells and quacks like a cult… well…

It doesn’t seem to matter how outrageous the claim or the story (or the lie) that is used to justify the action: it’s lapped up like manna from heaven. There is literally not a second given to even contemplate questioning the motive or think critically about the situation.

Orange man good.
Weird – and I mean really weird – billionaire good.

That’s a cult. And it’s running one of the most powerful nations on earth. It’s unbelievable.

Ah Jesus.

I don’t think I’m going to surprise anyone in making the somewhat radical statement that I really don’t think that this is going to end well. And it’s going to be f******g miserable while it gets us there, as well.

I read the news today, oh my.

I wish I hadn’t.

The Drama of The Doomsday Clock

Posted on

It’s 89 seconds to midnight. It’s the closest that humanity has ever been to self-wrought extinction (well, since 1947, anyway). At least, that’s what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is telling us, anyway. They’re the ones that get to inform us about where The Doomsday Clock is sitting this year.

And what exactly is The Doomsday Clock?

The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet.

And look, I get that in a day with 86,400 seconds, being just 89 from complete destruction isn’t a great place to be. But then also, looking at things another way, we started just 420 seconds away from annihilation back in 1947, and we’ve only ever been 17 minutes away at our very safest. And then add to that, the fact that we’ve “only” moved one second towards complete obliteration in this year’s update:

In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, the Science and Security Board sends a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.

Yep. Awful. But then, this also suggests that we could keep going at the frankly horrendous rates of killing each other and destroying the environment that we’ve been working so hard upon for the last 12 months for at least another 88 years, and we’ll still be ok. Just.

See, they’ve gone in all too dramatic, and now they have no wiggle room at all.

If they’d started back in 1947 with an hour instead of seven minutes, it would mostly have been fine. They could have knocked off a few minutes here and there, added on a few when things were looking better. The only issue with this approach would likely have been that people would have looked at the thing and basically not given a toss. So sure, there needed to be a bit of drama in there, I get it.

But they went in too hard, too soon. And now we’re all supposed to be scared over a 1.11% increase in the likelihood of self-inflicted destruction? Nope.

Look at the warnings that The Doomsday Clock is sending us, and look at mankind’s reaction.

I’m calling for a reset of The Doomsday Clock: stick it back to 15 minutes to midnight or something so that we can actually move the hands a significant distance and see where we actually stand when there are important developments one way or the other.

Although, honestly, they’re really only likely to go one way, right?

Because a second here or there is really not going to put us on edge and give us the wake-up call that we so clearly need. In fact, it might take actual planetary ruination before someone important (and no, it won’t be him) pipes up and starts wondering if we should do (or should have done) something to stop it all.

Tick tock.

Tired of…

Posted on

Tired of a few things at the moment.

The impending World War is a bit tiresome. I do hope that it’s not going to affect our football team weekend away towards the end of the month. That would really be adding insult to injury. Imagine society crashing down around us and you didn’t even get the chance to share a few beers with your mates at what looks like a really decent place in the Klein Karoo before it all kicked off.

Tired of the politics in this country. The iffy polices and the usual pre-election promises and lies. Yes, yes, I know that they’re the same thing. Tired of the polarised viewpoints and the unjustified ad hominem attacks on social media. Weary at the people who think that what’s happening on twitter bears any relation to the situation in the real world.

And, related: HOW HAVE WE SUDDENLY GOT SO MUCH ELECTRICITY? Sure, no loadshedding is great and all, but at what cost is this pre-election “normality” coming? Something unsustainable is happening.
More on that in a future post.
Maybe.

Tired of – and a bit bewildered at – this sort of stunt from local news site (the) Daily Maverick:

I recognise the need for journalism, and I recognise the need for a strong and independent media, but 1) Is that really what they are?, and 2) Is this action a bit OTT and a bit drama llama-y?

Mmm.

Tired of being just being tired. I went to bed ridiculously early yesterday evening, and I slept really well. I just could have done with another few hours. I’m sure you recognise the feeling.

Still did much better than this guy though:

Oh why have all the moonbats come back out of the woodwork recently? Was it the eclipse?
So damn exhausting. They’re suddenly everywhere again, including literally shedloads of Americans who think that Cape Town has been washed away by some massive weird tsunami thing that none of us actually in Cape Town, noticed.

And like that guy above whose name was blanked out on this screenshot, but who has clearly risen like Lazarus, if he’s repeatedly had no pulse for 5 minutes at a time.
If resurrection is a side effect of the covid vaccine, then I think we need to know.

There would be many, many implications.

I think I need to sleep on it…

Not what I was going to do

Posted on

I had – I still have – a plan for a “proper” post about politics. But wow. While I’m on the mend from the nastier symptoms of that virus, the brain fog, the breathlessness and the fatigue.

It’s really draining and it’s not prompting me to get involved with anything serious or requiring thought this afternoon. (Breathlessness was not a factor here.)

Do narcoleptics feel tired all the time? Or is it just an “I feel fine zzzzzz” thing? I ask because I am constantly on the cusp of falling asleep today. And the dangers are real: a comfortable couch at the piano lesson. The subdued lighting at tonight’s dodgeball practice.

These things don’t help…

So the political post will wait for another day. Sadly, it’s not time sensitive: politics isn’t going anywhere.

Me? I’m going to bed.

All about “The Shutdown”

Posted on

It was all a bit weird from the start. Populist, vocal, flipflopping political party, known for its publicity stunts and – let’s be honest here – “occasional” forays into violent protest, calls for a day of National Shutdown to end loadshedding and oust the President. But given that their grievances are an ongoing thing, it was odd that they gave us all six or seven weeks notice.

Until you realise that they had chosen the Monday 20th March because it falls in between a weekend and Tuesday 21st March – a public holiday. Schools were closed, many people would have taken one day of leave from work to get an extra long weekend: it would likely be quiet anyway. This did not go unnoticed by some people:

But it did meant that the organisers could easily claim that images of quiet cities and empty streets were down to support for their cause, when actually, a control for their experiment would have yielded much the same result.

And then there were the veiled threats. Shut your business or it might get looted. Shut down your airport – or else:

Hint: Don’t mess with a national keypoint, guys. Silly move.

And many of those businesses (not the airport) won’t be open today Not because they are supporting the protest, but more that that they are terrified of the potential violence that might befall them, should they open. And while the leaders of the party are publicly calling for peaceful protest, the EFF dosen’t have a great record at doing that:

I’m not saying that today’s EFF protests will be/would have been violent. I’m just saying that their history is enough to assume that there’s a fair chance that it won’t all be peaceful. And in the lead up to the protest, over 24,000 tyres (the SA protestors weapon of choice):

were found – many of them sequestered at strategically important localities like major intersections – and removed.

So when journalists report that “street vendors stayed away”, and the EFF supporters claim that shows endorsement for the protest, I’m more willing to believe that it’s just for the vendors’ safety and that of their businesses.

And then there’s the misinformation, because there always is misinformation. Old videos, old pictures, entirely normal traffic jams: the works. Thankfully, all debunked here. But not before they have had millions of impressions on social media.

Oh, and the video of Adderley Street in Cape Town, now supposedly in Pretoria.

Also, it rained in Cape Town this morning. It rained a lot. Now I’ve never been a fan of sports which are stopped by a bit of rain (tennis, padel, cricket etc…). And the rain certainly kept the protest numbers down around here. Much to the amusement of the mayor:

Cheap shot, agreed, but I reckon that he’ll be extremely glad that the weather helped his city out today. And after all the sabre-rattling, intimidation, threats and bravado from the other side, why not push back a little?

It’s 4:30pm now, and there have only been sporadic or unverified (at the time of writing) incidents across the country, thus far. It seemed like a lot of people stayed away from the protests instead of work – there have been a lot of images of tiny groups of red-shirted individuals from various places around the country.

A couple of valid(?) points have been raised though. The sudden availability of police officers to combat any trouble that may arise, when they’re usually nowhere to be found when actual crime happens to actual individuals. That said, I do know that they are working unsustainable shift patterns in many places to have extra numbers on the ground today. Even Struisbaai SAPS has 12 hour shifts going on this weekend, and the EFF only managed 20 votes there in the recent by-election.
And the sudden availability of electricity, as well. Is it really down to hard work and good luck, or can the powers that be actually positively affect loadshedding? And if so, how? Because if so, that’s quite sinister. Why aren’t they doing it all the time? The proof of the pudding here will be what happens tomorrow and the rest of the week.
And finally – why the panic by the government? Lots of police, lots of talk, lots of unnecessary drama:

“Regime change”? “Unconstitutional means”? (Let’s talk about constitutional means after the elections next year.) And the military on standby. Overkill. Sorry – poor choice of words.

All in all, an awful lot of “all mouth, no trousers” again, as it usually is in SA politics.
OK, in worldwide politics, but especially in SA politics.
Still a few hours of the day to go, though. And then the rest of the year.

Anything could happen.

And what’s happening here? Well, I’m going to have a beer, because my fridge hasn’t been shut down.