September 29th, 2006
In a statement released on the internet from Osama Bin Laden, he said that:
“It is a fundamental principle of any democracy that the people choose their leaders, and as such, approve and are party to the actions of their elected leaders… By electing these leaders, the American people have given their consent to the incarceration of the Palestinian people, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the slaughter of the children of Iraq. This is why the American people are not innocent. The American people are active members in all these crimes”
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Religion, War on Terror | No Comments »
September 28th, 2006
Like many whites in South Africa, we had a maid from the moment we moved into our new house near Pinetown, Durban in around 1989 or so. Roughly 8% of South Africa’s workforce are thought to be domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are now earning R1000 or less per month (2003 figures). As late as 1999, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) estimated that the average wage for domestic workers was between R369 and R549. The large domestic labour force reflects both South Africa’s apartheid past and its current struggle with job creation, poverty and unemployment, where “Between 1994 and 2003, unemployment rose by 153 percent [and] is still 115 percent higher than it was in 1994.”
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Health, Politics, Ramblings | No Comments »
September 28th, 2006
A new addition to the site: lowfatbrains’ mind, which is basically my own little store that I set up on Amazon using their new aStore feature available for their associates. If you go and have a look, it opens a new window (it seems their iframe code doesn’t fit in nicely with my site; it’s still in beta, so maybe that’ll change in future) and you’ll get a list of my featured books. At the moment they only allow nine books to be displayed, with no ability to add books to categories or sub-categories, so I’ll try and change the featured page on a fairly regular basis.
Site Announcements | No Comments »
September 27th, 2006
Some recovered history here, one of my favourite pieces: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It’s nothing “new” if you follow these things, but it’s worth writing down. Anyway, the “official” doctrine for many years had it that the USSR invaded long before the CIA began funding their opponents that later went on to become the Taliban. In fact, the CIA’s own website still refers to the invasion as being an “intelligence failure”: “Earlier intelligence reports on activities by the Soviet military units had not been accompanied by warnings that this activity might indicate Moscow’s intent to launch a major military intervention.”
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Foreign Policy, History | No Comments »
