I am reading an editorial piece from the City Press 31 December 2006 [the matric picture must change]. In this piece the writer bewails the fact that in the recent matric exams the children of the new ruling class, whom he/she refers to as 'African' do not make a serious demographic dent in the Honours roll of Matric results. This class you will remember was the first post '94 class; everyone free to learn and achieve.
Also in front of me is a copy of my letter that was published in the Star newspaper on the 16th February 1990. It was headlined 'Campaigners for liberation before education have won.'
So my first thought is that the writer has become confused, he/she has completely ignored the impressive achievement by some 320,000 so-called 'African' candidates and is either being disingenuous or has completely forgotten what it was that motivated that drive to ungovernability that characterised the closing days of the Apartheid era - liberation came before education, in fact before everything and focussing on education was only something that came later.
So to become almost irrational over the outcome now because 'your guys' feature disproportionately in the top hundred whatever achievers is incongruent and will send out a confusing message to those who are working hard at the lower levels and who will only start to reveal themselves in 2008 which will be when the new [you mustn't call it matric] 'School leaving certificate for grade twelve' becomes de rigeur. [I'm sure we will continue to have the 'honours roll' though.]
Presumably the writer must have sat reading [as I did] the page after page of non-'African' examination 'winners' and has allowed a latent rage to whiplash through his writing. One senses the irony in the use of the word 'African': the exclusiveness that is the latent hallmark of the counter-racist cycle that we are moving through presently, and I regret that this sense of self-hatred motivating the tone of the article is so harsh. Primarily his/her tone does a great disservice to the vast majority of real winners in the examination: the plus minus 320,000 so-called 'African' kids who passed the exam-The first generation of freedom's children to have been allowed to prepare for the matric all the way from grade one..
There was a time when so called 'Afrikaner white' kids were excoriated because they were outnumbered by the Anglo's and other hated minority kids in the hit parades of winners back in the fifties and sixties. Eventually the annual 'Hot shot' page in the annual Star newspaper edition of the results [which as you know can cost up to fifty bucks a copy in some outlying parts of the province] began to represent almost disproportionately the so-called Afrikaner demographic in the results.
The same will happen in the future with so-called African kids, subject to a couple of caveats which may mar the result- may, not will. Nonetheless if we ignore them they wont go away.
The first caveat is that there are hordes of clever, sharp, intuitive and hungry so-called 'African' kids in our schools. However far too many will not stay the journey- How many so-called 'African' kids finished in 2006 out of the number that started in 1995, twelve years ago? That as Mr Levitt would have it is the real question. How many of our half- starved, intellectually under-nourished, work ethic deprived, under resourced, dysfunctional family structured learners made it to the final leg out of the huge number of starters. Was it 320,000 out of three million? I suspect the answer if anyone is capable of accessing it will be disappointing beyond belief and the editor's due apology to the vast mass of the 66,6% 'passees' who are demographically representative of his chosen group is more than due: for those who got through are the toughest of the tough and will go far in life.
A second caveat would be regarding motivation and incentives. Mr Steven Levitt whose book Freakonomics was gifted to me over Christmas has proved hugely entertaining. Mr Levitt is an economist who mines data with surprising outcomes. He mines micro data and proposes ideas that are astounding and can find the data to reinforce an hypothesis and turn it into a dramatically [often uncomfortable] revealing theory.
Mr Levitt's hidden strength is that he operates in an environment where information is accessible whereas our circumstances are slightly more obdurate. So at this stage we can ask the question and pose it with some sub-sets of questions.It is doubtful that we can get answers. Mr Levitt's concern is always with that of incentives, and how they prompt action or inaction..
Does the growing real state of discrimination against so called 'white' children, that was the subject of a balloon release demonstration by hundreds of so-called 'white' matriculants on the Day of the Vow last year in Tshwane, have a distorting effect on the outcomes of the exams by altering the incentive structures we traditionally associate with the pursuit of excellence?
Real or imagined discrimination is occurring on a no longer so-covert basis and therefore for many formerly advantaged kids the only way to get higher education if your family is cash strapped is through being the absolute best there is at something.
Conversely every dark kid who has grown up in the school system over the past decade knows that they don't have to do as well as the so-called whiteys to get trophies [assuming of course that they are in the declining proportions of schools that have any so-called white kids in them, at all]. Everyone has [regrettably] become accustomed to giving the first prize all too often to guys who came somewhere lower down in the pecking order, where they may have been first among the previously dispossessed. There is always a universal sigh of relief when, as frequently does occur, the best person is also the 'right' person. All too often though covert acts of 'fairness', prompted by the new demands for redress, when tagged on to the old liberation before education ethic, have possibly created a new non-work ethic for an increasingly visible group. [I apologise to my more sensitive readers for proposing a most insensitive albeit real topic]
It could be that the majority, new, ruling class are experiencing on mass the core problem that affected the old 'white' education system. The proliferation of non-functional so-called 'white' kids in the formerly 'privileged' school system was so high by the 1980's that embarrassed education authorities introduced a third class level of 'matric' [called lower grade] so that so many of those who knew they were going to get a 'free ride' because they were part of the 'ruling' elite could pretend that they 'had' a matric. [The system 'worked' by the way- very few citizens are aware of the differences between the various classes of matric- unlike employers who are most aware all too frequently, often after having learned the hard way but the military got the matriculants they craved.] It has now been done away with-one reason why the pass rate now seems so much lower than then, when you more or less had to apply in writing to fail the examination.
Frankly, my impression, comparing the matric papers that my youngest daughter wrote and has just passed now in 2006, with some old papers that I found, written by my eldest daughter in Matric '97, is that the standard of performance required now seems much tougher than it was then, notwithstanding the blather from the traditionalists. In other words a huge number of so-called 'African' children could well have passed a tougher exam than would have been written in the past when they weren't allowed to write it. And they should have had credit for it instead of some whine about how there weren't enough of the right darkies in the top end of the 'hit parade'.
I think that the editorial writer in the City Press misses the real issue from the exams, in his disingenuous rumination over the absence of smiling happy so-called 'African' faces from the top table. He dismissively discards the declining pass rate- and that is a real problem; one that hides what may be something even more serious..
A declining pass rate implies various things: It could be that the attention formerly given to matriculants [generally] is, possibly, losing focus. Teachers/educators [or to give them their new name: classroom managers] are so caught up with the avalanche of paper being thrust their way that the kids are just supposed to learn for themselves, which 66.6% have obviously been doing: but that doesn't happen without motivation.
There are persistent reports in the press of unrest conditions in large numbers of schools. Head teachers have lost their hire and fire authority, and work conditions in many schools are below par. There is also not much that can be done to drive a worker employed by head office and imposed on one. In fact according to press reports in the Daily Sun, a number of school heads have committed suicide this past year in despair over the mess they had chosen for their careers. School murders have hit the headlines more frequently this past year than in times past- school unrest is on a rising curve it seems. And the pass rate is in decline. The powerful message to all too many kids over the past decade has been that only schmucks are swots and getting ahead has more to do with who you know, and are: than with what you know or how clever you are. The point is made so often that it has become a cliché that connections will always trump skill, knowledge and, definitely, hard work.
Part of the [valid] mythmaking of the Apartheid years concerned the alleged thirst of so-called 'African' children for knowledge. The great game referred to in my letter to the Star of the 16th February 1990, [when the subject matter of the post matric editorial was the same cliché that we have just had from the editor of City press in 2006,] was that one called 'Liberation before education'. So then you went to school and caused chaos.
Could it be that too many of our young lads have a liberation ethic [which, remember, was deliberately the opposite of work ethic?] I have met many young so-called 'African' students over the past years who tell me they are despised and spat upon in traditional working class residential neighbourhoods for being 'model C kids', 'coconuts' black on the outside and white on the inside, trying to be clever like a 'whitey'. Has the past come in to play catch up, in a way we didn't anticipate?
Perhaps the season for this game has not run its course. Perhaps there are many whose eyes were opened by that campaign that have never seen fit to return to that immense and so-discredited 'hard work' ethic so beloved of our mythmakers.. And it was hard work- When I observed the amount of input my own child put in last year to get the results she got I am so glad for her sake that its over. Perhaps Ms Winfrey's new school for deserving so-called 'black' girls will pave the way to so-called 'African' success on the Hit parade in a future annual Star review of results.
In his obsession with racial balance the City Press editor didn't notice, did he/she, that not only were so-called 'African' children disproportionately under-represented on the Hit Parade, according to their level of demographic distribution, but that there were also far fewer boys up there than girls. Has anyone analysed the gap in results to establish whether the declining performance from a high of 73% in 03 to the present 66.6% [pass rate] in 06 results from fewer and fewer Boys making the final cut- I would suggest this to be possible. I also suspect that we may be more than disturbed by what we find out
Cheers.
May your 007 be shaken, stirred and congenially cool.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Saddam Hussein: May the universe piss on your eyeballs.
I am not a proponent of the death penalty. It isn't that I don't believe that the ultimate sanction is inappropriate for criminals who murder their victims I would happily see them all boiled in oil in the ways of my ancestors but rather that my reasoning for opposing the death penalty lies outside the overt world of crime and punishment. I don't believe that the State should have the right to murder its citizens.
My reasoning is thus in the same field of concern as that which prompted the famous American second amendment: the right to bear arms which has taken on a special poignancy as its 'Taliban' president has motivated the rapid post 9/11 drift to a form of Taliban America. The organised State functioning as oppressor is the greatest enemy of individual liberty- the seed for development- and therefore we can never allow the State to kill anyone other than in active self-defence.
Nonetheless I found myself taking the view common to many other of my class of wishy washy liberals, i.e: Thank goodness someone has the death penalty for that arch scumbag Saddam Hussein. For him I make-a-da exception. As the public leading representative of the State he committed untold acts of misery against the common citizen and was the source of premature death for, conceivably, millions.
He gave us an opportunity to remove him when he made his general threats of mass murder [again, after again and again] against his neighbours and other citizens of more remote regions and it was in his case apposite that he should experience that which he so gratuitously meted out to others.
I suspect I would make a similar exception for Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong il, Pol Pot and any other semi-human being who abuses their governance mandate and violates the rights of their citizens in pursuit of some or other ideological, self-serving mission resulting in misery, death and destruction for, again, untold millions.
Notwithstanding this impulse and desire however I do not believe that Saddam Hussein should have been dealt with the way he has been, although I can appreciate the need for expediency. As a casual reader following the trial reports in our local press [as well as being bathed in counter propaganda from the global mass media who increasingly seem to be acting in some outlandish form of concert for such overtly competitive institutions] I wouldn't say that the Iraqi justice system inspired me.
On one level we could all say that he was lucky to get any trial. There were flaws it's true and if we set aside our near fanatical pickiness approach over points of law, to rationalise anything we deem not to our liking, then even that simulated 'kangaroo' court was better than a bullet to the brain at three am in a dark place with no opportunity to discover why.
On the other hand we can see it as an opportunity lost. I have pondered for some years on this conundrum. How do we give apt punishment for acts of supreme evil- the unwarranted killing of human beings being one- while at the same time denying the organised State the right to exact retribution through use of the ultimate sanction, to exact what is most often a political revenge.
My preference under these circumstances would be for what I have called [elsewhere] the 'Socratic solution'. You may recollect that Socrates was charged with 'Impiety'- that is, he was charged with teaching the young how to protest against the excesses of the ruling classes- not something that should ever be a crime; since those who govern must accept that reasoned and sometimes vociferous opposition to their governance is a right. In one of those bizarre quirks of human behaviour Socrates was apparently found guilty by a small minority of the Athenian Senate [plus minus 2500 years ago], but was subsequently sentenced to death by an overwhelming majority of the Senate, indicating, to Robert Heller in particular, that human beings behave in a most peculiar way.
There are those who argue that the composition of the Senate was not the same on the second occasion when the form of sentence was voted; but nonetheless it has always seemed an ironic record that people who may not have found him guilty on the first round of voting, should nonetheless have subsequently voted for his death. There are others who argue that the speech he made in his 'defence' prior to the vote on sentencing, so enraged even the most docile members of the Senate that they were bound to vote for the death penalty.
In the event the condemned person [in the ancient Athenian State] was always given an option: they could choose exile and life banishment, which by the standards of the time was tantamount to death or they could choose suicide, by poison [hemlock]. Socrates chose death by poisoning, and thereby gained a level of immortality.
By choosing to die at his own hand the State was thus absolved of any guilt, and therefore no person's hands are washed in blood, and the State does not get an unhealthy taste for it. In our contempory sense the law would suggest that the requirement that a human should choose to self immolate could construe cruel and unusual punishment and I would agree with this possibility, and therefore would suggest, as the Athenians did, that a 'banishment' option would be expedient.
Undoubtedly in a globalising world banishment becomes a problematic issue short of
shooting the fellow off into space. In my story, the Azanian Konfederacy- the
history of Corinth Starr, the Elder, I invented the 'Virtuality game'
as my preferred solution to the problem of banishing or exiling the kind of scumbags
typified by the late Saddam [aka SHHhhh] [see 'The Azanian Konfederacy' in
Google.] I think this Virtuality Game will become the place into which the
condemmed will be strapped for eternity unless they choose death by self immolation.
There would be intervention points for those who chose the Game: at six months,
sixty months, six hundred months or so on- with a quicker death option at each
point.
In the case of the late Saddam since this preferred solution was not available and the court as representative of an enraged populace chose to execute him then I fail to understand why it had to be done in such a secretive and apparently inhumane way- a way guaranteed to create enemies of the State- not only of some groups within the State. .
In their furtive, almost superstitious, dread of the Evil powers of SHHH-. They rushed to stamp him out: filled with fear and loathing; and they missed the point-. It would have been a wonderful salutary lesson, to have him publicly excoriated; With careful attention to detail and the attention of the world's media with advertising rights to Freedom and Human Rights his despatch could have been made a far more salutary lesson to the other scumbags out there terrorising their citizens before the cameras of an impotent world.
The late Rumanian dictator with the Emelda Marcos clone wife, both with unspellable names, was furtively knocked off in an even more secretive execution, and it didn't do anything to deter more of these pestilential maniacs from seizing control of at least a dozen countries now.
His death could have been far more efficiently used for instance than the humiliating end to Mussolini who you will remember was captured by Italian citizens and summarily executed and hung upside down in a village square: where all and sundry pissed on him- but alas there were no naughty cell phone records of that time for all the world to see and chortle over and for despots to cringe over. The release of dishonourable footage of the entire event regarding Saddam's despatch, only serves to reinforce all the reasons why the State should never have the right to kill anyone. When a despot is despatched then it should be for the people themselves to see to the despatch in public and on the Internet.
I do feel therefore that a case for the public stoning to death [a barbaric Islamic favourite for such, as adulterous wives.] by an assemblage of widows could have been made for Saddam Hussein since it was deemed necessary to use the death sentence. [and don't write in and tell me that hanging is/was the only legal method. The man/monster was tried under laws that didn't exist when he was the dictator and were controversially, made retrospective according to some commentators. If they could do that they could also have altered the form of the execution.] Hanging is for ordinary decent criminals not for those who more resembled Dracula than a human.
So if we had to have this scurrilous execution[and I repeat that I do not support the use of a death penalty] they could have had him running stark naked around a well-guarded town square while a hail of stones whacked into him, starting with little stones and working up to bigger stones and then to cannonball sized lumps of rock and full-on boulders to smash and crush and ultimately stamp him out of life while we the planetary audience could have been watching the whole thing on close up reversible slo mo.. Thereafter the entire assemblage of aggrieved women could have gone and pissed on him to the extent of justifying a final verdict of death by drowning as was customary amongst the Ndebele for rape convictions. Thus he could have been both simultaneously eliminated from decent society and justly humiliated for his crimes against our entire species. That was the opportunity we missed since it was necessary to martyr the man through what reeks of underhand chicanery.
I would have preferred to wrap him into a virtual reality nightmare fed on a constant drip and locked on constant replay with variations like an endless eternal groundhog day that always ends in terror and horror and then starts again, for the next forty or fifty years. Perhaps for his executioners the true punishment is to end the game altogether.
May his soul [assuming there is such a thing and that he had one] rot in eternal hell [assuming there is such a place]. May the universe piss on his eyeballs- or in the immortal words of the great Bard- Fuck him.
My reasoning is thus in the same field of concern as that which prompted the famous American second amendment: the right to bear arms which has taken on a special poignancy as its 'Taliban' president has motivated the rapid post 9/11 drift to a form of Taliban America. The organised State functioning as oppressor is the greatest enemy of individual liberty- the seed for development- and therefore we can never allow the State to kill anyone other than in active self-defence.
Nonetheless I found myself taking the view common to many other of my class of wishy washy liberals, i.e: Thank goodness someone has the death penalty for that arch scumbag Saddam Hussein. For him I make-a-da exception. As the public leading representative of the State he committed untold acts of misery against the common citizen and was the source of premature death for, conceivably, millions.
He gave us an opportunity to remove him when he made his general threats of mass murder [again, after again and again] against his neighbours and other citizens of more remote regions and it was in his case apposite that he should experience that which he so gratuitously meted out to others.
I suspect I would make a similar exception for Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong il, Pol Pot and any other semi-human being who abuses their governance mandate and violates the rights of their citizens in pursuit of some or other ideological, self-serving mission resulting in misery, death and destruction for, again, untold millions.
Notwithstanding this impulse and desire however I do not believe that Saddam Hussein should have been dealt with the way he has been, although I can appreciate the need for expediency. As a casual reader following the trial reports in our local press [as well as being bathed in counter propaganda from the global mass media who increasingly seem to be acting in some outlandish form of concert for such overtly competitive institutions] I wouldn't say that the Iraqi justice system inspired me.
On one level we could all say that he was lucky to get any trial. There were flaws it's true and if we set aside our near fanatical pickiness approach over points of law, to rationalise anything we deem not to our liking, then even that simulated 'kangaroo' court was better than a bullet to the brain at three am in a dark place with no opportunity to discover why.
On the other hand we can see it as an opportunity lost. I have pondered for some years on this conundrum. How do we give apt punishment for acts of supreme evil- the unwarranted killing of human beings being one- while at the same time denying the organised State the right to exact retribution through use of the ultimate sanction, to exact what is most often a political revenge.
My preference under these circumstances would be for what I have called [elsewhere] the 'Socratic solution'. You may recollect that Socrates was charged with 'Impiety'- that is, he was charged with teaching the young how to protest against the excesses of the ruling classes- not something that should ever be a crime; since those who govern must accept that reasoned and sometimes vociferous opposition to their governance is a right. In one of those bizarre quirks of human behaviour Socrates was apparently found guilty by a small minority of the Athenian Senate [plus minus 2500 years ago], but was subsequently sentenced to death by an overwhelming majority of the Senate, indicating, to Robert Heller in particular, that human beings behave in a most peculiar way.
There are those who argue that the composition of the Senate was not the same on the second occasion when the form of sentence was voted; but nonetheless it has always seemed an ironic record that people who may not have found him guilty on the first round of voting, should nonetheless have subsequently voted for his death. There are others who argue that the speech he made in his 'defence' prior to the vote on sentencing, so enraged even the most docile members of the Senate that they were bound to vote for the death penalty.
In the event the condemned person [in the ancient Athenian State] was always given an option: they could choose exile and life banishment, which by the standards of the time was tantamount to death or they could choose suicide, by poison [hemlock]. Socrates chose death by poisoning, and thereby gained a level of immortality.
By choosing to die at his own hand the State was thus absolved of any guilt, and therefore no person's hands are washed in blood, and the State does not get an unhealthy taste for it. In our contempory sense the law would suggest that the requirement that a human should choose to self immolate could construe cruel and unusual punishment and I would agree with this possibility, and therefore would suggest, as the Athenians did, that a 'banishment' option would be expedient.
Undoubtedly in a globalising world banishment becomes a problematic issue short of
shooting the fellow off into space. In my story, the Azanian Konfederacy- the
history of Corinth Starr, the Elder, I invented the 'Virtuality game'
as my preferred solution to the problem of banishing or exiling the kind of scumbags
typified by the late Saddam [aka SHHhhh] [see 'The Azanian Konfederacy' in
Google.] I think this Virtuality Game will become the place into which the
condemmed will be strapped for eternity unless they choose death by self immolation.
There would be intervention points for those who chose the Game: at six months,
sixty months, six hundred months or so on- with a quicker death option at each
point.
In the case of the late Saddam since this preferred solution was not available and the court as representative of an enraged populace chose to execute him then I fail to understand why it had to be done in such a secretive and apparently inhumane way- a way guaranteed to create enemies of the State- not only of some groups within the State. .
In their furtive, almost superstitious, dread of the Evil powers of SHHH-. They rushed to stamp him out: filled with fear and loathing; and they missed the point-. It would have been a wonderful salutary lesson, to have him publicly excoriated; With careful attention to detail and the attention of the world's media with advertising rights to Freedom and Human Rights his despatch could have been made a far more salutary lesson to the other scumbags out there terrorising their citizens before the cameras of an impotent world.
The late Rumanian dictator with the Emelda Marcos clone wife, both with unspellable names, was furtively knocked off in an even more secretive execution, and it didn't do anything to deter more of these pestilential maniacs from seizing control of at least a dozen countries now.
His death could have been far more efficiently used for instance than the humiliating end to Mussolini who you will remember was captured by Italian citizens and summarily executed and hung upside down in a village square: where all and sundry pissed on him- but alas there were no naughty cell phone records of that time for all the world to see and chortle over and for despots to cringe over. The release of dishonourable footage of the entire event regarding Saddam's despatch, only serves to reinforce all the reasons why the State should never have the right to kill anyone. When a despot is despatched then it should be for the people themselves to see to the despatch in public and on the Internet.
I do feel therefore that a case for the public stoning to death [a barbaric Islamic favourite for such, as adulterous wives.] by an assemblage of widows could have been made for Saddam Hussein since it was deemed necessary to use the death sentence. [and don't write in and tell me that hanging is/was the only legal method. The man/monster was tried under laws that didn't exist when he was the dictator and were controversially, made retrospective according to some commentators. If they could do that they could also have altered the form of the execution.] Hanging is for ordinary decent criminals not for those who more resembled Dracula than a human.
So if we had to have this scurrilous execution[and I repeat that I do not support the use of a death penalty] they could have had him running stark naked around a well-guarded town square while a hail of stones whacked into him, starting with little stones and working up to bigger stones and then to cannonball sized lumps of rock and full-on boulders to smash and crush and ultimately stamp him out of life while we the planetary audience could have been watching the whole thing on close up reversible slo mo.. Thereafter the entire assemblage of aggrieved women could have gone and pissed on him to the extent of justifying a final verdict of death by drowning as was customary amongst the Ndebele for rape convictions. Thus he could have been both simultaneously eliminated from decent society and justly humiliated for his crimes against our entire species. That was the opportunity we missed since it was necessary to martyr the man through what reeks of underhand chicanery.
I would have preferred to wrap him into a virtual reality nightmare fed on a constant drip and locked on constant replay with variations like an endless eternal groundhog day that always ends in terror and horror and then starts again, for the next forty or fifty years. Perhaps for his executioners the true punishment is to end the game altogether.
May his soul [assuming there is such a thing and that he had one] rot in eternal hell [assuming there is such a place]. May the universe piss on his eyeballs- or in the immortal words of the great Bard- Fuck him.
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