Wednesday, March 28, 2018

ANC Floats New Deal On Land Expropriation Without Compensation

ANC Floats New Deal On Land Expropriation Without Compensation:
The ANC is trying to provide for land reform without uncompensated expropriation, to ensure that the Constitution does not have to be amended and take the sting out of the party's latest attempt to get more land into black hands.

A parliamentary motion for muscular land expropriation sponsored by the EFF and supported in an amended form by the governing party sailed through the legislature in February and has raised fears about property rights in general.

Since then, the number of sporadic land occupations by poor, homeless and landless South Africans has increased. The seaside town of Hermanus faced an attempted occupation, as did Midrand and other areas in Johannesburg, over the past week.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Book Review: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson | Mere Orthodoxy

Book Review: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson | Mere Orthodoxy:

Before they get carried away, the Christians now tuning into Jordan Peterson need to realize that this man is not the next C.S. Lewis. On the contrary, Jordan Peterson is the man C.S. Lewis warned them about. It’s not that I don’t understand why Christians are attracted to Peterson’s message of personal responsibility, especially as it is addressed to young men. For one thing, everything Alastair Roberts wrote in his recent essay is basically true. Peterson really is an effective communicator (though a better speaker than a writer), who could teach most pastors a thing or two about sermonizing. And Peterson has many admirable personal qualities, especially intellectual virtues but also compassion and a strong sense of justice.

We must end the manipulation of history

We must end the manipulation of history:
Systematic lies and propaganda have colored the Zionist agenda to keep alive the myth of Zionist Israel as a Democracy. Jews-as-victims is hammered in, to include many references to the Nazi Holocaust and quite horrifyingly has twisted, lied and distorted the reality of Zionism, which includes jailors, occupiers, murderers, persecutors, torturers and profoundly fiendish victimizers. The obsessive propaganda reference to Jews as victims has colored many in the older generation of Jews who maintain a strong allegiance to Zionism. In this way, references to the Nazi Holocaust are used to imprint and inflame the fear of a second Holocaust. The identification is as eternal victims destined to be wiped out. This time the perpetrators are “Arabs,” hated would-be destroyers of Israel, sub-human monsters who must be countered or destroyed in order for a Jewish state to be born. Yes, Zionism an ideology of Nationalism and racism has managed to keep the lies alive through domestic intimidation that obscures the violent agenda of genocide that continues to reign.

Friday, March 23, 2018

Jordan Peterson & Fascist�Mysticism | by Pankaj Mishra | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

Jordan Peterson & Fascist�Mysticism | by Pankaj Mishra | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books:
12 Rules for Life is only Peterson’s second book in twenty years. Packaged for people brought up on BuzzFeed listicles, Peterson’s brand of intellectual populism has risen with stunning velocity; and it is boosted, like the political populisms of our time, by predominantly male and frenzied followers, who seem ever-ready to pummel his critics on social media. It is imperative to ask why and how this obscure Canadian academic, who insists that gender and class hierarchies are ordained by nature and validated by science, has suddenly come to be hailed as the West’s most influential public intellectual. For his apotheosis speaks of a crisis that is at least as deep as the one signified by Donald Trump’s unexpected leadership of the free world.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Fox News and Alex Jones could pay for pushing fake news about real people.

Fox News and Alex Jones could pay for pushing fake news about real people.:


It’s been a bad week for white supremacists and fake news. First, Matt Heimbach—the founder of the neo-Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party and a man famous for shoving a black woman at a Donald Trump rally—was arrested for assaulting another woman (his wife). Since Heimbach was also accused of choking the co-founder of the party as part of what seems to be a complicated love rhombus, it now appears the entire group is defunct. Also this week, the Southern Poverty Law Center discovered that the wife of Stewart Rhodes, founder of the alt-right anti-government militia group the Oath Keepers, had filed for a temporary restraining order, claiming her husband was abusive and violent. Alt-right servers are being shut down, as are YouTube channels, albeit too slowly. And Richard Spencer, who was meant to be the alt-right’s palatable offering, has ruefully declared that his white-supremacist rallies—as a result of which at least one woman has been killed—are “not fun anymore.” He says he is considering canceling his whole not-fun, poorly attended speaking tour. He’s also dropping his lawsuits against colleges that had barred him from speaking. Also, he can’t get a lawyer to represent him.
And in a law suit against fake news:


Are lawsuits like the two filed this week attacks on newsgathering in general? Not really, because both suits distinguish between what real media does and what media scams and hatchet jobs do, and how the latter victimizes literal bystanders. As the Gilmore complaint puts it, in describing Alex Jones and his ilk:



Fact-based journalism is essential to our democracy, because it provides citizens with objective, reality-based information on issues of public concern. Defendants are not fact-based journalists. Defendants spread lies to construct false narratives that terrify a gullible audience, all in a desperate attempt to generate revenue and momentum for a hateful agenda. The First Amendment necessarily creates space for democratic debate, but it does not and cannot protect the spread of deliberate lies driven by hate and designed to incite violence against private citizens. In this era of ubiquitous smartphones and social media saturation, ordinary citizens like Mr. Gilmore increasingly find themselves in situations where they capture breaking news and are compelled out of civic duty to share it. The consequences for fulfilling this civic duty cannot include becoming the target of premeditated character assassination, based on lies and carried out by professional conspiracy theorists instrumentalizing their throngs of followers.

Monday, March 05, 2018

Mondli Makhanya: The great land return lie | News24

Mondli Makhanya: The great land return lie | News24:
The ANC has over the past two decades developed comprehensive policies on land reform and restitution and put in place an institutional infrastructure to give effect to these policies. Study after study – including those by the ANC government – have shown that the failure is due to capacity weaknesses, corruption and shoddy implementation, not any constitutional impediment.