Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Manic Street Preacher With Huge Appetite 'Eats Witches For Breakfast'!


Let me tell you about my morning. 
 
Two things have absolutely pissed me off and ruined my mood for the day. One was more just a case of inconvenience. The other... well, the other was more of a literal slap in the face from both the other people I was surrounded by - and from the officials of SARS itself.

Let me start at the beginning.
 
I went to SARS (the 'tax man' for my non-local friends) at 6:45 am, thinking I'd be near the front of the queue. I was number 6, which is not bad, considering I was number 13 yesterday - but then today we waited and waited and waited and waited ...and waited and waited - watching SARS people to-ing and fro-ing and not actually doing anything much - until 815 am, when a chap eventually turned up to give us our numbers. 
 
That's 2 hours of standing, with no benches, no shelter against inclement weather (which there wasn't, fortunately) and no toilet facilities - and if you leave the queue, you lose your place. Unless you're the sort who just pitches up out of the blue and claims you "were here" two hours ago.
 
Oh, right. You were the invisible man?

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Why I Think Oscar Got Away With Murder


I am not a judge, and in fact I have never been trained in any legal trade. However, I am not stupid. 
 
Perhaps it is because of this, that like many people, I am upset by the recent court fiasco in which former para-Olympian Oscar Pistorius was given a mild slap on the wrist for the death of his girlfriend Reeva. 
 
It weighs heavily on my mind. In fact, the injustice that I feel has been done is quite upsetting to me. Then again, I console myself that in the end, it's not really my problem. After all, I'm okay - I haven't been shot in my own bathroom, and neither am I likely to just go on a shooting spree if I hear things going 'bump' in the night. 

Friday, October 10, 2014

The Memo


An article by a militant fundamentalist "Christian" group misleadingly called "Freedom Of Religion SA", entitled "Christian Leaders Unite to Protect Religious Freedom in SA" states: 
 
"the growing number of cases being opened up against Christians, and lost by them, for trying to live out their beliefs, clearly indicating that religious freedom is already being lost in South Africa." 
 
This statement is not only false, but it is misleading as well. Let me explain why.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Ignorance Prompts Stereotypical Knee-jerk Reactions

[20141004 - 180 with Bob on KAYA FM - "Satanic groups have approached the MEC of Education in Gauteng to suggest that satinism should be offered as a religious subject in schools. Do you think it's a fair request or are we taking our democratic rights too far?"

Minimum Wage = Minimum Worth


Perplexed by the trend lately of grumpy cashiers and unfriendly clerks at convenience stores and fast food restaurants, last evening I picked up a takeaway dinner from a popular chain, and chatted to the lady behind the counter. She'd been on her feet behind the counter serving customers since 12 am. It was 9pm, and she was hungry and tired. When I asked her about staff meals, she told me they don't get those anymore.

That's strange, I thought, when I was at high school I also did the same job part-time and we used to get staff meals - to the point where the smell of that brand would actually put me off eating it for a while - but we got it. Yes, that was 24 years ago - but I was still rather shocked. 

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

In The Name Of Their Differences


Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza "People drink, snack and pose for selfies against a background of explosions as Palestinian death toll mounts in ongoing offensive As the sun begins to sink over the Mediterranean, groups of Israelis gather each evening on hilltops close to the Gaza border to cheer, whoop and whistle as bombs rain down on people in a warzone hell a few miles away. Old sofas, garden chairs, battered car seats and upturned crates provide seating for the spectators. On one hilltop, a swing has been attached to the branches of a pine tree, allowing its occupant to sway gently in the breeze. Some bring bottles of beer or soft drinks and snacks."

How do I feel about this display of callous disregard for human lives? Numb. 
 
I sometimes wonder what the powers-that-were were thinking when they created the state of Israel after WW2... but it can't have been to give the Jewish people a peaceful place to set up their homes, could it?
 
Rather, it seems the Allies seemed to have been looking for a convenient place to just dump a mass of people who'd become something of a knotty problem for the nations who not only hadn't gone to war over anti-Semitism, but were now caught up in dealing with the aftermath of those who'd done what many of them secretly were also not innocent of either. 
 
After all, how many Western and European nations had turned away Jewish refugees from as far back as the 1930s? "Give me your huddled masses, your poor..." Hah! Platitudes on display... window-dressing - but even the USA closed their doors to people facing death under the Nazi jackboot, and was itself rife with anti-Semitism. To think that I grew up being spoon-fed the bullshit story that the USA went to war with Germany over the way they'd treated the Jews? The whole idea makes me sick to the stomach.
 
In order to give an alien nation - a nation with no current claim to a geographic area, someone on that land - people who have settled there thousands of years since it was last a Jewish state, had to be moved aside first... to give them control of the land, someone had to be dispossessed of it first. and as we know all too well in South Africa, the rest as they say, is history.

For decades we have heard about the many wars in which Israel has become embroiled... the 6 Day War for one, not to mention the constant trickle of news about all the internal terrorist attacks: car-bombings, suicide bombers, airline hijackings and the like, the constantly shifting (usually expanding) borders of Israel, and the aggressive expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian settlements - and the constant, annoying, brain-numbing political rhetoric cluttering the TV and print media since I can remember. 
 
According to the USA, Israel can never do any wrong - and I'm not talking about ordinary Jewish people here, I'm talking about the radical, aggressive, violent and ideologically fascist nature of Zionism, which is firmly entrenched in Israeli government and has been since the late 1940s.
 
Always it was 'poor Israel' this, 'poor Israel' that... never a sympathetic ear for the Palestinians who are treated like prisoners in their own native homeland, no time to hear the other side of the story, no objective reporting in the media or in foreign policy, no humanitarian sympathy for the people who inhabited that land for centuries before a bunch of Zionists came along to push and shove them aside without their being consulted, or even involved in how their own lives would be affected by it.
 
It always seemed to me, being a child of the 1980's in South Africa, that the "Christian society" we lived in felt that, being Muslims, the Palestinians somehow deserved the violence and the suffering and whatever Israel did, no matter how inhuman or violent, they were always "in the right" and above criticism. Of course, Israel was a firm supporter of the Apartheid government - in fact, during the arms embargoes of the 1970s, Israel was at one time the only country willing to supply arms to prop up the NP government - as a matter of interest, the R4 and R5 assault rifles still in use by the armed forces of South Africa today were of Israeli origin, the Galil.
 
As a child though I must admit I didn't really know enough about the world to question any of what was going on. Recently in South Africa and abroad, there has been a sudden emergence of concern for the people of Gaza as well - perhaps as a result of the gradual awareness being raised because of the emergence and reach of the internet and social media. Stories of what is really going on in Palestinian experiences are finally starting to leak out beyond Israel's ability to smother them. 
 
To me though, this sudden concern with the welfare of the "other side" is, in my humble opinion, too little, if not a bit too late. But it's also better late than never.

This ongoing human rights disaster is not a new thing - it's been developing over the past six decades - and if Israel's government can't stop in its tracks and recognize that something has to change, the course it's on will result in Israel being equated to the very sort of crimes against humanity that resulted in the Holocaust. But will they? Or will they continue to foster the sort of mindset that results in people treating a nearby bombardment of neighboring civilians, including children, like a soccer match on TV with pizza and a couple of brewskis, and as something to cheer (and jeer) about?
 
People capable of doing that are, to my mind, irretrievably broken - and this too translates pretty damningly to the society they form part of.

In my view, any government whose state is perpetually at war, continues down a path that inflames more war and more strife for its citizens, persecutes people along racial or cultural lines - and remains so for as long as has Israel, is incompetent and unfit - and should resign. 
 
Frankly, I think it's already long past tine for Israel's government to face charges of crimes against humanity at the Hague. Now isn't that ironic?
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If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.


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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.
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Thursday, July 3, 2014

Servamus Sides With SAPS Fraudulent 'Experts' In The Face Of The Obvious

Servamus Magazine, while catering to law enforcement in South Africa, has again advertised their "special community edition" of "Drugs and Occult Related Crime". As expected, it again contains the entirely fraudulent "satanic calendar" and Dracula Sherbet and Heavy Metal is listed as being "Satanic". Seriously, if police officers are still learning this outdated bogus rubbish, the public needs to be concerned.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

RE: 'Harmful religious practice and occult on the rise in SA' by Jerome Cornelius



RE: "Harmful religious practice and occult on the rise in SA" by Jerome Cornelius

The article by Jerome Cornelius on 7 June (http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2014/06/07/harmful-religious-practice-and-occult-on-the-rise-in-sa) is a prime example of hysterical drum-beating propaganda, repeating known falsehoods and baseless accusations against religious minorities and alternative identity groups as though they were true. 

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

School Of Thought


Let's talk about the issue of educating or raising your children within your religion. 

Christians do it. Muslims do it. Jews do it. So do Hindus and Buddhists. 

Each of them has their own private schools, but only Christianity has encroached into PUBLIC schools to the point where you have public schools pushing Christian religion into the school values, ethos and curriculum, paid for by parents AND the state via the tax payer. 

Does this sound fair?