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  • 7 Ways to Help You Manage Your Blood Sugar Levels

    7 Ways to Help You Manage Your Blood Sugar Levels

    The sugar in our blood is essential as it serves as food for our body’s cells. The cells in our body, which makes up the structure of our organs – heart, brain, liver, blood vessels, skin, etc. These important organs will not be able to function properly if they are deprived of the necessary energy which comes in the form of blood sugar, or blood glucose.

    However, people should not desire for high amounts of blood glucose; conversely, they should not desire for low blood glucose either. Having high amounts of blood sugar in the blood, a condition known as hyperglycemia, can lead to diseases, such as Diabetes Mellitus, that may cause the development of other diseases. Low levels of blood sugar, or hypoglycaemia, can lead to comatose and seizures, since the brain is deprived of its much-needed energy, which in turn can lead to death.

    Blood glucose levels that are within the normal range is the most desirable. The normal blood glucose level is 64.8 to 104.4 mg/dL. For an average human, blood sugar rises after taking regular meals (to about 135 to 140mg/dL) and this is considered as normal. It is not really difficult to control one’s blood glucose levels, especially if one is not suffering from the hereditary elements of diabetes. All one has to do is take note of the following guidelines:

    • Monitor your Carbohydrate IntakeCarbohydrate is one of the major food nutrients essential to the human body. Carbohydrates, when broken down into functional elements in the digestive tract, turn into glucose. Glucose is the one that is being used by the cells for energy.  A human being needs to eat, since food is necessary for the repair of the body’s cells and for energy. If a normal person binge on food, especially carbohydrates, the body will just store the extra amounts of broken-down carbohydrates, glucose, and keep on maintaining the normal blood levels through the functions of insulin. But there are times when the insulin cannot anymore perform what it supposed to do. If the pancreas produces less insulin, blood glucose cannot be broken down into energy. Glucose will accumulate in the blood and will cause conditions that will result to a disease called Diabetes Mellitus. If someone is experiencing problems with insulin, or if someone is susceptible to insulin problems, like an inherited diabetic problem, it is necessary to monitor one’s intake of carbohydrates, to reduce the amounts of glucose in the blood.
    • Increase Fiber IntakeFiber is actually a carbohydrate; but unlike the usual carbohydrate, fiber is not broken down into glucose, therefore it can help in controlling the levels of blood glucose in the body. Fiber can be found in vegetables, fruits, and whole grain products. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, results showed that people who ate at least 50 grams of fiber daily were able to control their blood sugar compared to those who have less fiber in their diet. Having a diet rich in fiber can help in managing blood sugar levels. Research shows that having 20-35 grams of fiber in the diet per day is effective in lowering blood sugar and in reducing the tendencies of having adult-onset Diabetes Mellitus.
    • Indulge in moderate, regular exerciseWhen a person exercises, there is more energy needed by the body. Because energy is the result of breaking down of glucose with the help of insulin, glucose decreases when there is increased consumption of energy through physical activities. When a person engages in moderate, regular exercises, the body will be trained to utilize a constant amount of glucose, with the constant release of insulin by the pancreas that is essential for energy consumption. This will in turn allow the body to manage blood glucose well.
    • Test your Blood Glucose Levels After a Strenuous ActivityParticularly for those who have problems with glucose utilization and insulin production, it is important to constantly monitor blood glucose levels after every strenuous exercise. Since high energy is released by the body during this activity, there is a tendency for blood sugar to decrease to a level that is not enough for a person to function properly. Signs that a person is experiencing hypoglycaemia are feelings of body tremors, irritability, restlessness, extreme hunger and excessive sweating. When blood sugar levels goes lower than the normal range, make sure that quick sugar is within reach. Fruit, juice, hard candy or glucose tablets are good sources of quick sugar.

    • Bananas are Great and Healthy Means to Balance Blood Sugar Levels

      For those experiencing constant low blood sugar, it is recommended that one consume 15 to 20 grams of sugar or carbohydrates to boost ones energy. Among foods that can help in boosting energy but with a lower glycemic index, is banana. Glycemic index is a measurement of the effects of blood sugar after ingesting carbohydrates. High glycemic index foods are those foods that scores from 70 and above. But banana’s glycemic index ranges from 42-51. Snacking on bananas will help in the regulation of blood sugar while at the same time providing the necessary amounts of protein, fiber, vitamins and potassium.

    • Manage your Stress LevelsWhen there is stress, the tendency of the body is to activate the fight and flight response through the sympathetic nervous system. With stress, the heart will pump more blood to supply oxygen to vital organs, the lungs will expand for more air, the blood vessels dilate pushing more blood into the major organs, and the liver that stores glucose to convert it into glycogen will revert back the process so that the major organs will have enough energy to keep on functioning. This means that if stress is increased, blood glucose will also increase since the liver goes into the process called glycogenesis and glycogenolysis. The more stress the person experiences, the higher their blood sugar will be. Because it is impossible to remove stress, a person must learn to manage stress instead; this way, blood glucose level is also controlled.
    • Quit smokingThe study published in 1936 in Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that smoking cigarettes can actually raise the level of a person’s blood sugar. 30 minutes after cigarette smoking, the blood sugar levels of a person would always come down to normal. A research study made in South Korea also shows that those who are smoking have low levels of adiponectin, hormones that has anti-inflammatory and insulin-sensitizing effect. This means that if there are high levels of adiponectin in the body, insulin is more sensitive which could bring about lowered blood sugar levels. With decreased adiponectin due to smoking, blood sugar levels will increase. It is therefore recommended that one stop smoking to control increasing blood sugar.
    Written by Frank Mangano  
    Saturday, 23 July 2011 21:17

    7 Ways to Help You Manage Your Blood Sugar Levels

  • Speech by F W De Klerk to the Adele Searll ladies 100 Club: 1 June 2011

     

    SOUTH AFRICA 2011: THE BALANCE BETWEEN FAILURE AND SUCCESS  

    It is a great pleasure for me to address this gathering of Cape Town’s most influential women leaders. The venue is also splendid. I always enjoy returning to the Mount Nelson – which is one of our most venerable and elegant hotels.

    Most of us will also agree that no matter how far – or how often – we travel it is very difficult to find a city that is as beautiful as Cape Town. I travel a great deal and firmly believe that this is the best place in the world in which to live.

    There is so much of which we South Africans can be justifiably proud:

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    The resilience of our young democracy has once again been illustrated by last month’s successful municipal elections. The elections were free and fair and were preceded by vigorous political debate. Sadly, the great majority of South Africans still voted according to their race. However, there are heartening signs that significant numbers have decided to break racial ranks by voting according to their values and their perceptions of the performance of the contending parties.

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    The sound macro-economic policies that Trevor Manuel has implemented have brought us sustained economic growth that was only briefly interrupted by the recent global economic downturn.

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    Most countries would envy the fact that our public debt is less than 36% of GDP – and external debt is only 16% of GDP.

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    We have the 24th largest economy in the world. We produce more than 30% of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa with only 6.5% of its population.

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    Our natural resources are legendary – including gold and diamonds, platinum group metals and abundant and inexpensive coal.

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    Nevertheless, tourism now contributes 8.3% of GDP – considerably more than mining. We have superb game parks, mountains and beach resorts. Cape Town is one of the world’s premier destinations with great facilities including three of the world’s top 100 restaurants.

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    Automobile production now contributes almost as much to GDP as mining. In 2008 we produced 600 000 vehicles of which 170 000 were exported.

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    Government has made great progress in improving the lives of millions of South Africans. It has built 4 million houses and had brought electricity and sanitation to more than 72% of our homes.

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    According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report our auditing and reporting standards and regulation of securities exchanges are the best in the world. We are also in the top seven with regard to the soundness of our banks, financial services and the efficacy of corporate boards. The Report also gives us high marks for the quality of our management schools, our anti-monopoly policy and local supplier quality.

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    South Africa has resumed its position as a respected and influential member of the international community – and has become a member of the exclusive BRICSA group.

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    The magnificent success of the 2010 FIFA World Cup has shown the world what glories we South Africans can achieve when we all work together.However, there are many things of which we are not so proud.

    We see them in the daily barrage of press reports about corruption, crime, incompetence and divisive racial politics.

    Unfortunately, we are becoming so conditioned by such reports that our responses have been deadened. Developments, that in other countries would lead to the fall of governments, are routinely brushed aside by South Africans as being just more of the same old tiresome thing. Among many of us there is a feeling of disempowerment – and almost of detachment.

    My message to you today is that we have a Constitution that empowers all of us. We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into a situation where we no longer respond to situations that are constitutionally, morally and politically unacceptable.

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    It is unacceptable to sing songs calling for the shooting of anyone. The historical context is irrelevant. It would be equally unacceptable for Afrikaners to sing Boer War songs calling on people to shoot the English – or for Americans to sing World War II songs about killing Japanese people. It is incomprehensible that the government of a non-racial democracy continues to support this song.

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    It is unacceptable for Julius Malema to call whites criminals – and to add that they should be treated as criminals and that their land should be seized without compensation. It is even more unacceptable for President Zuma to sit on the same platform, smiling, while Malema, as a key office bearer in the ANC, makes such racist comments. Malema’s behaviour is irreconcilable with the Constitution that the President has sworn an oath to uphold.

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    It is unacceptable for the Judicial Services Commission to ignore unambiguous constitutional requirements regarding the manner in which it should be constituted – and then to refuse to fill vacancies on the Cape bench, despite the availability of eminently fit and proper candidates, simply because they happen to be white.

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    It is unacceptable for COSATU and the SACP to set as their mid-term vision the utterly unconstitutional goal of “worker hegemony in all sectors of the state and society.”

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    it is unacceptable for Gugile Nkwinti, our Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, to declare in Parliament last year that all “colonial struggles are about two things: repossession of the land and the centrality of the indigenous population.” Just think for a moment about the implications of this statement. He is actually saying that

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    the colonial struggle is not yet over;

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    whites are colonialists whose land must be repossessed;

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    only South Africans who are ‘indigenous’ should be regarded as being central to our society. People from minority communities must presumably be content with a peripheral or second-class status.Can one imagine the outcry that would rightly ensue if a member of the United States government were to call for the re-establishment of the centrality of the white majority?

    Much of the legislation that is currently before Parliament is equally unacceptable:

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    Although the Protection of Information Bill has been improved, it will, as things stood a few days ago, still inhibit journalists from publishing stories on corruption and incompetence,

    based on leaked government information. They will still not be able to make use of a public interest defence and will still be liable to long terms of imprisonment without the option of a fine. Officials in more than 1 000 state organs will still be able to classify any documents that they think will affect ‘national security’ and the state itself will still be the arbiter in the process.

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    The Land Tenure Security Bill is equally problematic. It will create unlimited rights for farm workers to build communities, graze animals and cultivate crops on the farms where they work. At the same time it will impose unlimited obligations on farmers to provide land, services and training to farm workers. Ironically, it will also weaken the tenancy rights of farm workers.

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    The Labour Relations Amendment Bill is intended to end the practice of labour brokering and contract employment in our economy. Employers will be forced to convert the 3,7 million contract jobs in the economy to permanent jobs. Estimates are that they would re-employ no more than 60% of those involved – which would result in the loss of 1,5 million jobs at the very time when President Zuma has quite rightly identified job creation as our main national priority.One could mention many other unacceptable aspects of our society:

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    the parlous state of our education and health systems;

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    unsustainable levels of unemployment;

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    the failure of half of our municipalities;

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    the deplorable levels of crime;

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    the inefficiency of most government departments; and

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    recurrent reports of endemic corruption and incompetence.Unfortunately, South Africans are in danger of allowing this dismal litany to pummel them into accepting the unacceptable as part of the daily reality of their new society. They must not do so.

    The fulcrum on which South Africa’s future will pivot is our Constitution. It is a carefully balanced document that represents an historic compromise between all the significant sectors of our society. It makes provision for a fully democratic society; it is based on the rule of law; it protects the fundamental rights of all our citizens; it entrenches our language and cultural rights; it envisages a society based on equality and human dignity. It is a transformative document that rightly rejects the status quo. If we can maintain this excellent Constitution I am confident that our future will be secure.

    I believe that we are approaching a pivotal point in our history where all South Africans of goodwill, regardless of their race, circumstances or political affiliation will have to rally around the constitutional rights, values and vision upon which our new non-racial democracy has been established.

    The country is balanced between success and failure. If the forces of history come down on the side of constitutional values we can all look forward to a positive future. However, if the balance tips against the constitution, the consequences for all South Africans could be very dire.

    The main force seeking to disturb the constitutional balance is the ANC’s National Democratic Revolution.

    According to the ANC’s Strategy and Tactics analysis, the establishment of our non-racial constitutional democracy in 1994 was not the end of the liberation struggle – but only a beach-head on the way to the ultimate goals of the revolution.

     

    In the ANC’s own words

    “…The notion that South Africans embraced and made up (after the 1994 settlement), and thus erased the root causes of previous conflict, is thoroughly misleading. April 1994 was neither the beginning nor the end of history. The essential contradictions spawned by the system of apartheid colonialism were as much prevalent the day after the inauguration of the new government as they were the day before.”

    The ANC admits that it had to make painful compromises in the constitutional negotiations because of the then prevailing balance of forces between it and the former government. Its first priority was accordingly to shift the balance of forces in its favour by seizing what it calls the levers of state power. The levers of state power include “the legislatures, the executives, the public service, the security forces, the judiciary, parastatals, the public broadcaster, and so on.”

    Developments during the past 17 years have shown that this is not just empty rhetoric. Assisted by its unconstitutional use of cadre deployment, the ANC has taken vigorous steps to take over – or to try to take over – all these institutions. In the process it is obliterating the constitutional borders between the party and the state; it is undermining the independence of key constitutional institutions; and it is opening the way to large-scale corruption and government impunity.

    The ultimate goal of the NDR is a ‘non-racial democracy’ – in which all aspects of control, ownership, management and employment in the state, private and non-governmental sectors will broadly mirror the demographic composition of South Africa’s population.

    Like the communist ideal of the ‘classless society’, the non-racial democracy has a superficial appeal – but is equally unattainable in practice.

    Closer examination reveals that demographic representivity would simply result in racial domination – what the ANC calls “African hegemony” – in every facet of the government, society and the economy. To achieve its goal of eliminating what the ANC regards as “apartheid property relations” the NDR would require massive and forced redistribution of property and wealth from the white minority to the black majority. It would also require the disemployment of large numbers of people from minority communities.

    Whites, Coloureds and Asians would be corralled into demographic pens in all aspects of their economic and professional lives according to the percentage of the population they represent. The prospects of South African citizens would once again be determined by the colour of their skins – and not by their skills, their contribution to the economy or by what Martin Luther King called the content of their character.

    Nearly all of the unacceptable developments that I have listed – including Malema’s inflammatory rhetoric, the JSC’s behaviour; Gugile Nkwinti’s land reform proposals, cadre deployment, the failure of municipalities and government departments – can be traced back, directly or indirectly, to the NDR’s corrosive and unconstitutional ideology.

    The NDR is, in essence, the continuation of the ANC’s pre-1994 revolutionary struggle against segments of our population based primarily on their race.

    Let me put it plainly:

    Achievement of the NDR’s goals as expounded in the ANC’s Strategy and Tactics documents would end any prospect for racial harmony in South Africa. It would destroy the basis for national unity that we created in 1994; it would lead to national disintegration; to the loss of hundreds of thousands of people with indispensible skills and to the collapse of Africa’s largest and most sophisticated economy.

    None of this is necessary.

    No reasonable South African would question the need to promote genuine equality; to achieve fair and sustainable land reform; and to remove any barriers that might remain to black advancement in the economy or in any other sector of our national life. We would, however, disagree fundamentally with the ANC on the manner in which we should achieve these objectives.

    South Africans urgently need to speak to one another and to the government on the best ways of achieving these goals.

    Such a dialogue is necessary because many ANC members truly believe the myths and historic distortions that underlie the NDR. They really think that the NDR will build ‘a society based on the best in human civilisation in terms of political and human freedoms, socio-economic rights, value systems and identity”. Black intellectuals sincerely propound ideas that

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    blacks cannot be racists;

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    the land that whites occupy was ‘stolen’ from the blacks – even it was purchased after 1994; and that

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    white wealth was acquired solely – or primarily – through the exploitation of blacks.We need to talk with one another in the frank and constructive way that we did during the negotiations of the early 1990s.

    At the same time it is essential for all people of goodwill to oppose the threats that the NDR poses to our constitutional accord.

    The main safeguards against the further erosion of the Constitution lie in

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    the genuine support for the Constitution that still exists among many principled ANC members;

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    the Government’s reluctance to alienate international opinion and foreign investors by breaching global governance and economic policy norms;

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    our Courts, which are for the most part still courageously free and fair; and,

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    finally, in South Africa’s free media, civil society institutions and opposition parties.The media and civil society have an impressive track record in defence of the Constitution:

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    the TAC successfully pressured the Government to change its disastrous approach to AIDS;

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    in 2006 civil society persuaded the Mbeki presidency to withdraw the Constitution 14th Amendment Bill that would have seriously undermined the independence of the judiciary;

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    in 2008 civil society actions led the government to shelve an expropriation bill that would have made it possible for government to expropriate property without payment of court-approved compensation;

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    currently, civil society and the media are combating the Protection of Information Bill and proposals for a Media Appeals Tribunal;

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    a single citizen, Hugh Glenister, succeeded in the Constitutional Court in having the government’s abolition of the Scorpions declared illegal;

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    I am confident that civil society together with NEDLAC will be able to stop, or greatly ameliorate, the worst excesses in the labour and land reform bills that are currently before Parliament.But it will not be an easy process. The defence of liberty has always been a hard and difficult struggle.

    The media, civil society and opposition parties will need all the support they can get from people of goodwill inside South Africa and in the international community to continue to play their role.

    My message to the Adele Searll Ladies Club is this:

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    Do not regard today’s lunch as just another item in your busy calendars;

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    Do not accept developments in South Africa that would be unacceptable in any other genuine democracy in the world;

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    Think about – and actively support – other, much more effective, ways of promoting genuine equality, non-racialism and a better life for all our people;

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    Consider the concrete steps that you can take to support the work of NGOs – like our own Centre for Constitutional Rights – that are fighting night and day to protect our Constitution – and your own fundamental rights.I can assure you that your future happiness, prosperity and security – and the future of everyone in this country – depend on it.

  • South Africa: Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

    South Africa: Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

    Moeletsi Mbeki - South African Author, political commentator and entrepreneur
    Moeletsi Mbeki – South African Author, political commentator and entrepreneur

    I can predict when South Africa’s “Tunisia Day” will arrive.

    Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded.For South Africa, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China’s current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of South Africa’s minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes.

    The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkerings with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed.

    A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. In the civil war that ensued, 200000 people were killed.

    The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse.

    • Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the ANC came to power;
    • In 2007, South Africa became a net food importer for the first time in its history;
    • The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to the loss of 600000 farm workers’ jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and
    • The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor people into SA, which has led to conflicts between South Africa’s poor and foreign African migrants.

    What should the ANC have done, or be doing?

    The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what South Africa’s strengths were; identified what South Africa’s weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses.

    A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time — even an hour a week — to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels.

    What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA’s strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE).

    BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country. It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business’s interests in the upper echelons of government. Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations.

    Let’s see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE.

    The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in South Africa. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business.

    The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates. That was the design of the big conglomerates.

    Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates.

    But what is wrong with protecting South Africa’s conglomerates?

    Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy.

    • The economy has a strong built-in dependence on cheap labour;
    • It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary resources;
    • It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our general population;
    • It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic solutions; and
    • It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large, marginalised underclass.

    Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in South Africa but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates.

    The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos.

    My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in South Africa — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground.

    But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates.

    The third worrying trend is that the ANC-controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed.

    What is the state distributing? It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor. This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in South Africa. This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment.

    So what is the correct road South Africa should be travelling?

    We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for South Africa today. The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for South Africa or for many parts of the world. Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors.

    CLICK – Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing

    Mbeki is the author of Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing. This article forms part of a series on transformation supplied by the Centre for Development and Enterprise.

     

    South Africa

  • Siyabulela Xuza-His Story Has Really Just Begun

    Siyabulela Xuza- His Story Has Really Just Begun

    Siyabulela Xuza

    Siyabulela Xuza’s story has really just begun. He is merely twenty years old and already has created an international stir. When he was eighteen years old and in Matric, he won two grand awards at the 58th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair which was held in New Mexico.

    His awards were in the Energy and Transportation category, and his project was a revolutionary cheaper rocket fuel. He is quoted as saying that when he discovered the amount of money spent on rocket fuels which could be better spent on other projects such as AIDS/HIV research, he decided to figure out a way to make them cheaper. In return for this innovative thinking not only did he win at the Fair but the Nasa-affiliated Lincoln Laboratory named a minor planet after him. Planet 23182 discovered in 2000 -just around the time Xuza became serious about rocketry- is now known as Siyaxuza and is found in the main asteroid belt near Jupiter with an orbital period of 4, 01 years.

    Xuza’s love for science started in 1994 in Umtata where he remembers following a Cessna plane which was dropping off election pamphlets. From there he began to build rockets in his mother’s kitchen and remembers once mixing the fuel incorrectly and having a mini-explosion which thankfully caused no real damage but did cause a mess.

    From there his family moved to Johannesburg where he attained a scholarship to attend St. John’s College where his love for science was further nurtured. With the guidance of teachers he built the Phoenix; a rocket which reached the height of 1 220 metres. This was done in 2003. He was fourteen at the time and with this achievement he won the Eskom National Science Expo as well as breaking the South African Amateur Altitude Record.

    After matriculating, Xuza went on to study chemical engineering at the University Of Cape Town, until he received the news that he had been granted a bursary to study at Harvard.

    While he studies science he says he wants to further grow in other respects. In his own words, “I’m learning to speak Mandarin, which keeps me up in the wee hours. I believe the relationship between China and SA will grow and would like to be able to facilitate communication between both countries in the area of energy. I want to be multi dimensional: educated in the West with strong African roots but with a clear understanding of the East.”

    Siyabulela Xuza is truly an African Renaissance man, educating himself in natural and social sciences and with a positive outlook on the impact himself and his generation will have upon the world and South Africa.

  • Nassim Haramein – Sacred Geometry & Unified Fields

    Nassim Haramein – Sacred Geometry & Unified Fields

    Physicist Nassim Haramein presents new concepts explaining how we are all interconnected and can access infinite knowledge.

  • Helen Zille-DA the new UDF

    Helen Zille-DA the new UDF

    Helen Zille’s letter to City Press editor Ferial Haffajee on News24 raises interesting new possibilities for the DA. Zille writes, “The DA is the new UDF.”

    The letter is a response to a News24 column (“How the ANC lost the coloured and Indian vote”) by Haffajee, a former Mail & Guardian editor. In her piece, Haffajee explains that many people who have been loyal to the ANC and the UDF are now alienated by its apparent abandonment of non-racialism. The very divisive language of race that the ANC challenged has now made its way into its everyday discourse. At the moment many newspapers, along with the ANC, are talking about the party’s loss of the “minority vote”.

    Haffajee makes sense of this about-turn on the part of the ANC by making the following assertion: “The ANC brought the ideology of minority and majority into its mainstream thinking when it assimilated the Nationalists like Marthinus van Schalkwyk into its fold. It co-opted the coloured and Indian nationalists too (people we had regarded as sell-outs), all of whom brought this dangerous ideology of difference right into the non-racial heart of the party.”

    Zille’s timing could not be better. “The ANC has now become a racial-nationalist party,” she says in her reply to Haffajee. It is true. If remarks by Julius Malema, Jimmy Manyi and the late Blackman Ngoro (remember him?) are anything to go by, ethno-nationalism certainly seems to have reared its ugly head in the party over the last few years. Criticism of BEE and over-the-top displays of wealth on the part of the new black elite minority also does very little to shift negative perceptions of the party. The irony is rich for those who grew up on the writings of Frantz Fanon. Fanon has lots to say about the rise of ethno-nationalism as a device of control for the rising black elite minority in post-colonial African states. The Afrikaans press is also beginning to see parallels between the ANC and the NP in the 80s.

    Helen Zille goes on to say: “The DA is the new UDF.

    We are the most non-racial party South Africa has ever had. We never once used or exacerbated racial divisions in this campaign, even though we could have, for short-sighted purposes of maximising our vote.” The party certainly did position itself as racially inclusive, notwithstanding the fact that Zille’s cabinet is far from representative in terms of race and gender.

    What is worth noting here is that Zille is not saying that the DA is like the UDF on the score of racial inclusivity. She is saying it is the new UDF. Optimistically, I am going to interpret this as an assertion that the DA has reinvented itself. It has broken with its past as the party of those who voted for the National Party and, by implication, supported apartheid. To paraphrase her, the ANC has betrayed its own history and the DA is going to fill that vacuum.

    Some critics would say that Zille is opportunistically appropriating the Struggle and the legacy of Nelson Mandela in order to score more votes for the DA. I am not going to pursue that argument because it would be very easy to invoke racial binaries and generate more racially divisive thinking. I am interested in what Zille’s claim potentially means for the DA.

    If the DA is going to be the new UDF, if it is going to build a truly inclusive party and live up to the ideals of the Struggle, it should do what the UDF did in 1983: adopt the Freedom Charter. The DA would then truly reinvent itself.

    The part of the Freedom Charter that inspired so many of us in the 80s was the following:

    “THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE COUNTRY’S WEALTH!

    • The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
    • The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and the monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
    • All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people;
    • All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.”

    If the DA is going to live up to its assertion that it is the UDF, then it should put its money where its mouth is. So many young people sacrificed their blood, their innocence and their idealism to make the Freedom Charter a reality. Instead, their blood gave us Gear, Asgisa, the failure of the RDP and the murder of Andries Tatane at one of many service-delivery protests in SA.

    Their sacrifice gave us a macro-economic policy so neo-liberal that it got the thumbs up from the IMF and the DA alike. The uneasiness of the markets when Mandela spoke of delivering on the promises of the Freedom Charter (specifically, nationalisation) upon his release from prison was forgotten by the time our new finance minister took office and steered us in the direction of the “free” market.

    If the DA is going to claim the history of the UDF and the struggles of so many ordinary people in the mass democratic movement, then it should be prepared to make the kinds of sacrifices that were made by those people. If it wants to claim that it has broken with its racially divisive past, then it should take a long and hard look at its own neo-liberal economic policies.

    Race is the red herring, as always. It is economic policies that determine the extent of the growing racialised class divide. The real way to build an inclusive society is to ensure that all people are involved in securing social justice. You cannot leave it to the market to generate a better life for all. You cannot leave it to cadre deployment. And you certainly cannot leave it to “speak left, act right” politicians — whether they are from the DA or the ANC.

    Zille, now is the time to become the UDF. Now is the time. I dare you

  • Ron Pearson’s Big Breed Theory

    Summary of Ron Pearson’s Big Breed Theory

    In order to understand how Ron Pearson’s work can explain psychic phenomena we must first look at his theory for how the Universe began.

    The current Big Bang theory, whereby the Universe was created from out of a massive explosion, contains some major flaws and inconsistencies. The biggest of these is something called the cosmological constant.

    This cosmological constant is a mathematical figure that arose from the failure to explain how this initial explosion could be shut off. It predicts an expansion of the Universe that is many billions of times too high. The figure was needed to give space an inbuilt tendency to expand in order to overcome the natural tendency for it to collapse due all the matter in it and its gravitational pull. Now that we know that the Universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, this constant is exceptionally large and cosmologists have all but chosen to ignore it. They have also ignored evidence that some stars seem to be older than the age of the Universe itself. The Big Bang has been estimated to be around 12 billion years old and some stars seem to be much older. Something is clearly not quite right.

    In the light of these and other flaws, Ron Pearson, with his background as a University lecturer on Thermodynamics and fluid mechanics decided that a new theory was needed. At the heart of the original theory was one of the biggest dilemmas facing physicists today – How to combine the mathematics of Quantum physics and those of Relativity. This is what Ron has sought to conquer.

    Quantum theory is essentially about the movement of things on the extremely small atomic scale. Things at this size seem to move in random and indeterminate ways. Relativity on the other hand is Einstein’s theory for how things move on the very large scale. On this scale objects move in a much more predictable manner like planets orbiting the Sun.

    For over 80 years Mathematicians have assumed that Einstein was right because nearly all subsequent observations have matched his theories. So in those 80 years they have all attempted to redefine quantum theory so that it could include relativity and especially general relativity, which is Einstein’s theory of gravity. Unfortunately they have not succeeded in doing this and in the process have spent billions of pounds of taxpayers money.

    Ron however decided to accept the excellent maths found in quantum theory and to go back and revisit Einstein’s work. If Ron’s theory could also match up with the same observational data that had seemed to confirm Einstein’s theories, then his theory could also be valid. If it also contained no flaws or inconsistencies then it could even become a better theory. Interestingly enough Ron found that Einstein’s well known formula of E=MC2 could be derived from Newtonian Mechanics without reference to relativity but it now showed that matter was really made out of energy. In Ron’s theory this is exactly what happens.

    This thought that Relativity might be totally wrong may seem heretical to modern day cosmologists but even Einstein, on his 70th birthday, wrote to a friend saying that he was not at all confident that his work would stand the test of time and that he might have been on the wrong track after all.

    Ron went back to the physics of Sir Isaac Newton and applied what he called ‘Conceptual Logic’ to the problem. After many years and long hours of work he finally came up with a new theory that matched all of Relativity’s observational data and also contained no internal flaws. To do this though he had to be highly controversial. He chucked out Relativity altogether. There was no curved space-time. There were no multi dimensional universes and there was no constant speed of light.

    His theory begins with two forms of energy called positive and negative primaries. These he likens to the Yin and the Yang found in Eastern philosophy. Like the old theory before the Big Bang, these are created from a Zero state of Energy. Negative Energy, although mainly unheard of, was not new. It was something that was first proposed by Paul Dirac, a Cambridge Maths Professor. It was discarded shortly afterwards however possibly because it didn’t fit in with Einstein’s relativity. This problem though doesn’t arise now.

    Ron found negative mass and energy needed to exist to permit a universe to arise in such a way as to eliminate the problem of the cosmological constant. The secret of the success in his new theory is found in the way these two opposite energies collide with each other.

    When pairs of primaries collide Ron found that the laws of mechanics predicted that each partner would, in general, gain energy of its own kind. There is nothing strange about the behaviour of negative energies or masses on their own. Neither is there with positive kinds on their own. However it is the mixing of the two kinds of primary that causes the new strange effects to arise. For centuries it has been accepted that ‘energy can neither be created or destroyed’. When positive and negative energies coexist, however, this has to be revised to read ‘energy can only be created or destroyed in equal and opposite amounts’. Both creation and annihilation are now permitted but another law of motion has to be applied to find which possibility is selected under the conditions being studied. This is known as the need to conserve momentum. (Momentum is obtained by multiplying the mass of an object with its velocity).

    To understand this, one can begin to imagine two billiard balls colliding off centre. We all know that the two balls move off in a predictable sideways and diagonal manner. When ordinary billiard balls collide each has its momentum, measured in the original directions of motion, drastically changed and no energy change overall can arise.

    This however does not occur when one of the primaries carries negative momentum. When the same angle of collision occurs the two balls move off in the same sideways direction! When these balls of opposite energy collide, neither can alter their momentum as measured in the original directions. However, scattering collisions add extra transverse momenta in such a way that they balance. This means that each partner will gain momentum of its own kind and this cannot occur without associated increases of energy. This energy must appear from nothing! Ron calls this a ‘breeding’ of the energies.

    Both velocity and momentum can be represented on a diagram by ‘vectors’. These are lines of a length proportional to speed or mass times speed respectively and drawn in the direction of motion of the object being represented, as shown in Figure 1.

    Positive and Negative Primaries

    Figure 1. The Collision of Positive and Negative Primaries

    1.

    Positive and Negative Primaries travel towards each other off centre.

    2.

    Collision occurs.

    3.

    Both primaries move off to the same side! Therefore a sideways momentum has been added from nothing.

    4.

    Positive and negative momentum are both conserved and the additional transverse momenta (PR+ & PR-) balance each other out.

    5.

    The opposing directions of the transverse momenta (PR- and PR+) require associated transverse velocities (VR- & VR+) to be added in the same sideways direction.

    As a consequence of repeated collisions, energy is annihilated in some cases, but overall there is a net increase. This goes on and levels increase until a critical density level is reached. It is at this point that annihilation can also occur and a solid filament of energy is produced where the primaries are in the process of mutual annihilation. These are surrounded by regions where energies are still being created by collision-breeding.

    Annihilation does not totally cancel the creation going on so a tiny net creation remains everywhere in space. It is this that explains the continuing expansion of the Universe at an ever-accelerating rate. New galaxies need to be created near to the outer regions of space all the time. It seems likely these are the intense gamma ray bursts that happen about once per day.

    With this basis of expansion, Ron has estimated the Universe’s more exact age to be around 100 Billion years old. Well old enough for the oldest stars observed to have had time to form.

    All this breeding and production of filaments continues to produce a three-dimensional filamentous grid structure. This is similar to the brains ‘neural network’ of brain cells. Energy can now travel in waves down the filaments that are in turn either connected or unconnected to further filaments at their ends. With open and closed connections, a vast switching system resulted that, like super computers, developed the characteristics of consciousness and intelligence.

    Ron calls this the i-ther, an intelligent form of background medium. In the past, background mediums like the solid Ether, have been dismissed by physicists as relativity and observational data didn’t allow for their existence. Now however, Ron with his strong background in fluid mechanics made a great leap of intuition. He considered that the i-ther must behave like a superfluid in vapour form. A superfluid, like liquid helium, exhibits completely frictionless characteristics permitting unrestricted flow through the grid of the filaments. This now allows the past observational data to coexist comfortably with his new theory.

    The waves generated by the action of the filaments move through the fluid and are identified as ‘quantum waves’ of the i-ther. These were then used to produce particles of matter. Ron envisaged that these interacting waves were producing spikes of intense energy rather like interacting ripples on a pond produce spikes of water. These spikes of energy created the impression of matter particles like electrons. These would occur in a sequence in time but not always in the same location. Once particles had been created, the conventional physics of today could then go on to explain the rest of the creation of the stars and the planets in the Universe.

    What is of interest to us in our quest to understand psychic phenomena is that these particles of matter will have specific frequencies and will only appear real to us on our particular frequency of matter. With several possible frequencies of quantum wave, several matter systems could arise all from the same underlying grid. It is this grid and its primaries that are the only real thing in the Universe. All of these matter systems are illusory constructs made up by the i-ther. The system we live in just seems real to us.

    With all this creation of matter what results is a net positive balance of energies within matter itself, like the stars and the planets, and these are surrounded by haloes of net negative energy.

    The waves that produce matter also produce long range gradients that makes the i-ther seem more compressed near large objects. Negative pressures follow these same gradients and produce a buoyancy type of force on any matter. This is the mechanism of the gravitational force according to the ‘quantum wave theory of gravity’. This effect exactly matches the observational data used to previously prove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Now they can also prove Ron’s theories. Ron’s theories though also have the added benefit of doing away with the ridiculous cosmological constant.

    With this basic understanding of his work, we can now go on to explain subjects like survival after death. As subjects of matter ourselves, we experience the world around us as real. However matter is composed of mainly space with subatomic particles like electrons in between. What we see as real is actually just the illusion of matter created by the filamentous grid and the i-ther at that particular frequency. Our minds are not brain function, they are isolated regions of the i-ther itself, the seats of consciousness.

    Perceptual barriers have evolved in our heads to stop us being harmed by the incredible computing power and knowledge of the i-ther. However when we die, our matter system ceases and our minds, which in Ron’s theory are completely separate from our brains, live on within the i-ther and interact with some new construct of matter system at a different frequency. This would explain all the evidence found showing that we survive after death.

    In the same way the i-.ther and its 3-D filamentous grid can also explain how healers heal people. It would appear that a healer has less of a perceptual barrier in their heads and can communicate more directly with the Universal consciousness. As the i-ther constructs matter and as it has huge computational power and memory, it could easily be programmed to reconstruct a persons matter system in a more effective and healthy manner. Healers may also get help in doing this by working alongside people on different matter systems with different wavelengths. Together, their ability to tap into the programming power of the grid, and the overlying i-ther, could enable a person to become a new and better matter system. This could even happen over a long distance.

    The speed of propagation of information is no longer limited, as in relativity, by the speed of light. Indeed it can travel instantly along the filaments. With two people being able to lower and focus their perceptual grid barriers, telepathy could result. The better people are at lowering their inhibitory barriers, the more psychic they are and the better they could be at it. Ron has already shown that it might be possible to communicate at speeds of ten times the currently considered constant speed of light via the fluid alone.

    Mind over matter, like bending spoons, can also be explained with Ron’s theory. As the grid creates matter as an illusion, tapping into the grid by lowering our barriers should allow us to recreate this illusion. Of course this then appears to us as real.

    As with all good theorists, Ron has devised eight experiments that can be easily undertaken that will prove or disprove his theory. The cheapest of these costs around £15,000 (way beyond Ron’s budget) and others involve experiments done in space. It is now only a matter of time before the world will know if he is right. If he is, and at the moment it is looking odds on, he will severely upset the scientific establishment. To be a true scientist is to be truth seeker, unfortunately positions of power and the fear of peer review close the minds that once were previously open. In the years that Ron has been trying to put forward his theories for discussion and publication he has witnessed all these things. Finding no one daring to publish his papers in this country, Ron has had to address his scientific audience in Europe and Russia. Here his theories were given time and print and it was here that he received great accolades for them. For now though it is up to you to draw your own conclusions.

    Thanks to – Rory MacDonald

  • Paraprosdokians – A What ??

    Paraprosdokians

    A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax.

    1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

    2. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

    3. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

    4. If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

    5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

    6. War does not determine who is right -only who is left.

    7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

    8. Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

    9. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

    10. How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a camp fire?

    11. Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

    12. I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay cheques.

    13. Whenever I fill in an application, in the part that says “In an emergency, notify:” I put “Doctor”.

    14. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

    15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

    16. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive more that once.

    17. The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

    18. Hospitality: Making your guests feel like they’re at home, even if you wish they were.

    19. I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

    20. There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t get away.

    21. Always take life with a grain of salt, plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.

    22. When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

    23. You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

    24. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

  • Choosing The Right Place To Live Ain’t Easy These Days!

     Very interesting stats.

    Economic instability, political instability and social instability are the least of my worries, its geophysical instability that really bothers me!, a returning South African (from Brisbane) joked as he celebrated his return at a Homecoming Revolution event recently.
    So what is happening to the so-called Brain Drain in SA? Are we still leaking talent, or has the hole been plugged, and is talent beginning to return ‘home’.
    Some background that is influencing ‘mobility’
    • Clem Sunter talks of the dramatically changing ‘world order’ and how this is impacting the views of young talented people and their ‘nest building’ decisions. “Essentially there is a growing difference in the economic prospects of the developing vs the developed world. The economic growth prospects for Asia (+/- 5%), Africa (+/- 5%) and South America (+/-5%) are significantly greater than that of Europe, UK and USA (+/- 1.7%) … this is good for SA. Using a soccer analogy of the Premier League, Second League and Failed State, SA is part of the premier league of the world’s top 57 nations, we have previously moved from 33rd to 52nd and we are now on our way back at 44th. I think that after the success of the World Cup we could well emerge back into the lower 30s.”
    • In the Global Competitiveness Report our Brain Drain positioning has moved from 60th to 40th where 1 is no brain drain at all.
    • Many of South Africa’s eminent removal companies tell of a significant shift in mobility. “On the South / North route for every one family going approximately three are returning, even on the South / South route (mostly Oz and NZ) more are returning than are going!”
    Homecoming Revolution findings
    The Homecoming Revolution, (a non-profit organisation founded in 2003 by advertising agency morrisjones & co and sponsored by First National Bank) has seen an increase in traffic to its site and a shift in attitude towards South Africa. They attribute this shift to an increase in awareness of the country and what it has to offer. Much is credited to South Africa’s international exposure during the 2010 World Cup as well as its inclusion in BRICS and a sharper focus on developing countries.
    Brigitte Lightfoot, MD explains: “We have seen a 137% year-on-year increase in the number of visits to our blog (http://www.homecomingrevolution.co.za/blog) from February 2010 to February 2011, compared to the same period in the previous year. An increase in traffic from secondary markets like Australia, Canada and Ireland indicates that more South Africans living in these countries are considering a return home and are looking to connect with others who have already made the move back to South Africa’’.
    Tyron Whitley, who runs a car import agency in South Africa, has seen a similar trend evident among returning expats. “Since August 2010 we have seen a 30% increase in the number of South Africans wishing to ship their vehicles back to South Africa. The majority of the returnees are leaving the UK and we have some from Australia and Dubai. The common trend amongst the returnees is that they are aged between 30 and 40, have young families, and are looking for a better standard of living for their children. They are finding the UK economy a strain, which is the final push they require to make the decision to return to SA. I would say the majority have been in the UK for 10 years or more. On the work front a good number of the returnees are looking to start their own business or have managed to get inter-company transfers’’.
    The results of a recent online poll conducted by the Homecoming Revolution reveal that 43% of their social networking group’s members are planning to return to South Africa this year, while 30% have already moved back home.
    Susan Fouche, head of human resources at a Cape Town-based firm has worked with The Homecoming Revolution to source a senior candidate. She explains “we most certainly met and interviewed candidates whom the traditional methods of recruitment would not have delivered. We saw a broad range of candidates, some very senior and those who fall into the middle to senior management category. These candidates all have something in common: their desire to return to South Africa at some point and the global experience that they will be ploughing back. It was interesting to see that some of the applicants are from Cape Town, and that they have been informed by relatives or friends about the vacancy.’’
    Bruce Good, a South African who has returned to Cape Town after eight years away, confirms the sentiment amongst so many South African expats in the UK: “Whilst I really love the UK , and all that it offers, I felt that in my role in the city I was an insignificant cog in a massively productive machine. I remember reading a quote along the lines of ’for every professional person who moves to SA, 11 jobs are created – both directly and indirectly’. That had a huge impact on me and I longed to have a greater impact on my surrounds than I had in London. In many respects, both business and personal, it is easier to assimilate and ‘excel’ in your country of birth. The commonality between business colleagues and associates goes a long way to forging strong bonds and, ultimately, success.’’
    Global Shift
    There is ample evidence to suggest that Generation Y is very mobile (those born in the late 80’s). The UK reports having lost 5m ‘young people’ over the last 10 years because they are disillusioned with the deterioration of the UK ‘identity and way of life’ and the lack of job opportunities. Australia reports the loss of 2m young people who seek my dynamic opportunities elsewhere.
    That young people are on the move there is no doubt, but the lure of the civilised West, the developed world, with their stale economies and increasingly limited opportunities, is rapidly giving way to decisions that embrace dynamic opportunity, less complicated lifestyle choices, meaningful self-worth and the ability to make a social contribution………….and maybe, just maybe, a preference for geophysical stability!

    Stuart Pennington

  • Human Polar Bear Goes Head To Head With Shell

    Below the video is the content of a short speech given on Friday night in Cape Town by Lewis Gordon Pugh OIG (a.k.a. the Human Polar Bear) about the proposed fracking for gas in the Karoo, by Shell. He received a sustained standing ovation !

    Ladies and gentlemen, thank for the opportunity to address you. My name is Lewis Pugh.
    This evening, I want to take you back to the early 1990’s in this country. You may remember them well.

    Nelson Mandela had been released. There was euphoria in the air. However, there was also widespread violence and deep fear. This country teetered on the brink of a civil war. But somehow, somehow, we averted it. It was a miracle!

    And it happened because we had incredible leaders. Leaders who sought calm.. Leaders who had vision. So in spite of all the violence, they sat down and negotiated a New Constitution.

    I will never forget holding the Constitution in my hands for the first time.
    I was a young law student at the University of Cape Town. This was the cement that brought peace to our land. This was the document, which held our country together. The rights contained herein, made us one.

    I remember thinking to myself – never again will the Rights of South Africans be trampled upon.

    Now every one of us – every man and every women – black, white, coloured, Indian, believer and non believer – has the right to vote. We all have the Right to Life. And our children have the right to a basic education. These rights are enshrined in our Constitution.

    These rights were the dreams of Oliver Tambo. These rights were the dreams of Nelson Mandela. These rights were the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi, of Desmond Tutu and of Molly Blackburn. These rights were our dreams.

    People fought and died so that we could enjoy these rights today.
    Also enshrined in our Constitution, is the Right to a Healthy Environment and the Right to Water. Our Constitution states that we have the Right to have our environment protected for the benefit of our generation and for the benefit of future generations.

    Fellow South Africans, let us not dishonour these rights. Let us not dishonour those men and women who fought and died for these rights. Let us not allow corporate greed to disrespect our Constitution and desecrate our environment.

    Never, ever did I think that there would be a debate in this arid country about which was more important ¬ gas or water. We can survive without gas…. We cannot live without water.

    If we damage our limited water supply ¬ and fracking will do just that we will have conflict again here in South Africa. Look around the world. Wherever you damage the environment you have conflict.

    Fellow South Africans, we have had enough conflict in this land ¬ now is the time for peace.

    A few months ago I gave a speech with former President of Costa Rica. Afterwards I asked him “Mr President, how do you balance the demands of development against the need to protect the environment?”

    He looked at me and said : “It is not a balancing act. It is a simple business decision. If we cut down our forests in Costa Rica to satisfy a timber company, what will be left for our future?”

    But he pointed out : “It is also a moral decision. It would be morally wrong to chop down our forests and leave nothing for my children and my grandchildren.”

    Ladies and gentlemen, that is what is at stake here today: Our children’s future. And that of our children s children.

    There may be gas beneath our ground in the Karoo. But are we prepared to destroy our environment for 5 to 10 years worth of fossil fuel and further damage our climate?

    Yes, people will be employed ¬ but for a short while. And when the drilling is over, and Shell have packed their bags and disappeared, then what? Who will be there to clean up? And what jobs will our children be able to eke out?

    Now Shell will tell you that their intentions are honourable. That fracking in the Karoo will not damage our environment. That they will not contaminate our precious water. That they will bring jobs to South Africa.

    That gas is clean and green. And that they will help secure our energy supplies.

    When I hear this I have one burning question. Why should we trust them? Africa is to Shell what the Gulf of Mexico is to BP.

    Shell, you have a shocking record here in Africa. Just look at your operations in Nigeria. You have spilt more than 9 million barrels of crude oil into the Niger Delta. That’s twice the amount of oil that BP spilt into the Gulf of Mexico.

    You were found guilty of bribing Nigerian officials ¬ and to make the case go away in America – you paid an admission of guilt fine of US$48 million.

    And to top it all, you stand accused of being complicit in the execution of Nigeria’s leading environmental campaigner ¬ Ken Saro-Wira and 8 other activists.

    If you were innocent, why did you pay US$15.5 million to the widows and children to settle the case out of Court?

    Shell, the path you want us to take us down is not sustainable. I have visited the Arctic for 7 summers in a row. I have seen the tundra thawing.

    I have seen the retreating glaciers. And I have seen the melting sea ice. And I have seen the impact of global warming from the Himalayas all the way down to the low-lying Maldive Islands. Wherever I go ¬ I see it.

    Now is the time for change. We cannot drill our way out of the energy crisis. The era of fossil fuels is over. We must invest in renewable energy. And we must not delay!

    Shell, we look to the north of our continent and we see how people got tired of political tyranny. We have watched as despots, who have ruled ruthlessly year after year, have been toppled in a matter of weeks.

    We too are tired. Tired of corporate tyranny. Tired of your short term, unsustainable practices.

    We watched as Dr Ian Player, a game ranger from Natal, and his friends, took on Rio Tinto (one of the biggest mining companies in the world) and won.

    And we watched as young activists from across Europe, brought you down to your knees, when you tried to dump an enormous oil rig into the North Sea.

    Shell, we do not want our Karoo to become another Niger Delta.

    Do not underestimate us. Goliath can be brought down. We are proud of what we have achieved in this young democracy ¬ and we are not about to let your company come in and destroy it.

    So let this be a Call to Arms to everyone across South Africa, who is sitting in the shadow of Goliath: Stand up and demand these fundamental human rights promised to you by our Constitution. Use your voices – tweet, blog, petition, rally the weight of your neighbours and of people in power.

    Let us speak out from every hilltop. Let us not go quietly into this bleak future.
    Let me end off by saying this – You have lit a fire in our bellies, which no man or woman can extinguish. And if we need to, we will take this fight all the way from your petrol pumps to the very highest Court in this land. We will take this fight from the farms and towns of the Karoo to the streets of London and Amsterdam. And we will take this fight to every one of your shareholders. And I have no doubt, that in the end, good will triumph over evil.

  • The Difference Between http:/// and https://

    What is the difference between http and https ?

    The main difference between http:/// and https:// is  all about keeping you secure.

    HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.
    The S (big surprise) stands for “Secure”

    If you visit a website or web page, and look at the address in the web browser, it will likely begin with the following: http://
    This means that the website is talking to your browser using the regular ‘unsecured language.

    In other words, it is possible for someone to “eavesdrop” on your computer’s conversation with the website.

    If you fill out a form on the website, someone might see the information you send to that site.
    This is why you never ever enter your credit card number in an http website!
    But if the web address begins with https://  that means your computer is talking to the website in a secure code that no one can eavesdrop on.

    You understand why this is so important and may save you a lot of grief, right?

    If a website ever asks you to enter your credit card information, you should automatically look to see if the web address begins with https://
    If it doesn’t, You should NEVER enter sensitive information….such as a credit card number.

    Safe browsing friends.

    Martin

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