Wow, you must read this. It scares me. Courtesy Vhata.

I had the pleasure of watching Paul Bremmer being interviewed on CNN earlier this morning. For those of you that don't remember, Paul was put in charge of the temporary government after America trashed Iraq. Paul made three interesting statements; he insisted that there were WMDs in Iraq and that there were clear links between Al-Qaeda and Saddam and that the insurgents wanted to re-install an oppresive dictatorship.

You see, all insurgents basically want to install oppresive facist regiemes. Like those terrorists n South Africa who wanted to install that facist communist government. Beware die swart gevaar!

But, his first point was the most fun, he gave two powerful reasons as to why there are WMDs. First, nobody has proven they weren't taken to Syria. Ha! This is aking to saying "I will only believe you if you eliminate every other possibility, including that the nukes were hidden in cheese blocks and exported to the moon!" The next reason gave me a better insight into how Paul lives with himself. He said "Who would know better than someone who lead 15 000 americans in a search for them!" The implicit premise here is that if you look for something it must be there, the alternative would be that Paul would have to realise he had wasted his time and been complicit in a corrupt invasion resulting in many deaths and the destruction of a country.

Nobody wants to be Skeletor. In truth few are commited to evil, rather their sense of righteousness blinds them to their deeds.

I almost completely agree with something posted on commentry.co.za, I don't check there often, and I generally expect to disagree with their opinion, but not this one:

If we really want to "fix" the Telkom problem, we need radical free market reforms. Here's what needs to happen:

1. Government should sell all its remaining shares in Telkom. That way, they won't have a financial incentive to protect Telkom and ensure that their profits remain as high as possible.
2. Deregulate the market. Abolish the ICASA licensing process. Anyone who has the capital and is willing to take on the risk should be allowed to start their own communications company, regardless of whether they want to sell cellular, landline, or internet connections.
3. Exercise the AT&T option: break up Telkom into about five different companies. The most obvious approach would be to divide them into a long-distance operator, three local operators (centered on Durban, Gauteng and the Western Cape) and a company that controls the SAT-3 submarine cable.

I don't think 'radical free market reforms' are an answer to every underperforming parastatal (and I don't think Laurence does either), I think parastatals can perform a vital role. I would advocate a particularist approach.

I was interested to see how much my political views had changed since I last took this test in November 2004. This is also an example of why the signal to noise ratio on blogs is so horrid.

CorpWatch has a list of the 14 most evil corporations. Their crimes make a very long and varied list. Also worth a read is the 10 Worst Corporations list, although they haven't posted an updated for 2005. Some people have asked why company X or Y isn't on the list; don't think of this as a comprehensive list, this is just CorpWatch's ideas of the worst of them. The 14 corporates, in alphabetical order are:

• Caterpillar
• Chevron
• Coca-Cola
• Dow Chemical
• DynCorp
• Ford Motor Company
• KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root): A Subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation
• Lockheed Martin
• Monsanto
• Nestle USA
• Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International (a.k.a. The Altria Group Inc.)
• Pfizer
• Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux (SLDE) (also know as Ondeo, SITA, Aguas de Illimani)
• Wal-Mart

"You can't fight city hall. Death and taxes. Don't talk about politics or religion. This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda rolling across the picket line. Lay down, GI, lay down, GI! We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now in the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize that we should not allow ourselves to be crammed into this ratmaze. We should not submit to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned about what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life and those that seek to control it even more. I want freedom. That's what I want. And that's what you should want.

It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control: make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have got to realize that we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state.

The 21st Century's gonna be a new century; not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, and classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control. It's gonna be the age of human kind, standing up for something pure, and something right.

What a bunch of garbage: liberal, Democrat, conservative, Republican. It's all there to control you: two sides of the same coin. Two management teams bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery, Incorporated. The truth is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm sick of it, and I'm not going to take a bite out of it. Do you got me?

Resistance is not futile. We're gonna win this thing. Human kind is too good. We're not a bunch of underachievers. We're gonna stand up and we're gonna be human beings. We're gonna get fired up about the real things, the things that matter: Creativity and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit.

Well that's it. That's all I've got to say. It's in your court."

-Alex Jones, from the movie "Waking Life"

Sound clip

"When you see a terrorist, put your fear aside and shoot to kill, son, shoot to kill."

It seems like someone with a mental disorder ran off a plane in the US and got shot to death for it. Some claimed he was shouting about a bomb, although this is not corroborated by eye-witnesses as yet. There was no bomb. Jean Charles de Menezes didn't have a bomb either.

"Daddy, I saw the terrorist and I shot him. I shot him good. You didn't tell me about the blood, all the bloody Daddy."

Yeah! It is about time. The TAC website has the full details, but I am including the info from their latest newsletter here.

I have had this entry in draft for far too long, I have been meaning to finish it, but since that doesn't look like it is happening. Here it is.

Originally written: 2005-07-20 03:14

Recently on commentary.co.za there has been a flurry of pro-sweatshop activity. There has been a lot said and not all of it is in one place. I will attempt to respond to the main points, but please point out if I have missed something.