SHAWTIE MI WAA KNOW IF YUH EXCHANGE WID SHIRLEY AND YUH GI HIM DI PILL WHILE YOU RUB…MEK YUH FLAMING SUH? IMAGINE IS A NICE DRESS AND YUH STILL NUH CARRY IT OFF…DAT A PEPPA PAN TAP A PEPPA SHAWTIE……….EXPLOSION

Mandela was brutal and unfair – De Klerk
By A Correspondent

Published: April 11, 2012

Comment

South Africa’s last white president FW De Klerk has dismissed the current media hype around anti-Apartheid hero Nelson Mandela saying that the man was often “brutal and unfair”.

Mandela was brutal and unfair – De Klerk
De Klerk questioned why the world has portrayed Nelson Mandela as a ‘saint-like’ figure when in actual fact behind closed doors this was not so,according to him.

De Klerk who though called Mandela a great leader, stated that he does not subscribe to the hagiography around Mandela.

“I do not subscribe to the general hagiography surrounding Mandela. He was by no means the avuncular and saint-like figure so widely depicted today. As a political opponent he could be brutal and quite unfair. During the negotiations and while I served as Deputy President in the Government of National Unity we often had bruising clashes,” he said.

De Klerk attributed the hype around Mandela to mere politicking.

“Such is the nature of politics,” he said.

In his specch, De Klerk yet praised certain attributes of Mandela. He continued:

“However, whenever the situation required it, he was able to rise above the political passions of the moment and join me in hammering out reasonable
compromises that enabled the process to continue. He also had the stature and
the strength to hold his fractious alliance together – even at the most
difficult junctures. The source of his authority, consciously or unconsciously,
was the fact that he was a Xhosa aristocrat – with all the bearing and natural
authority that came with his royal connections.

“However, he is a principled man and a great communicator. Through his natural
charm and consideration he played an indispensible role in promoting
reconciliation and in laying the foundations of our new non-racial nation.

“I believed him when he said on 8 May 1996, after the adoption of our new constitution, that the “founding principles of our constitution are immutable.” He described the constitution as “our national soul, our compact with one another as citizens, underpinned by our highest aspirations and our deepest apprehensions”. He said our pledge is that: “Never and never again shall the laws of our land rend our people apart or legalise their oppression and repression. Together, we shall march, hand-in-hand, to a brighter future.”

De Klerk warned against extremist views by certain members of the ANC who are advocating another political transition apart from the one which transpired in 1994.

“Now, 16 years later there are those in the ANC who are saying that “our national soul, our compact with one another as citizens” was merely a temporary compromise and that it must give way to a second transition based on less
immutable principles.

All of us should reject such thinking with all the resources that we and our constitution provide. But then, that is the other topic that Steven wanted me to address – and which you may explore in the question and answer session.

In the meantime one thing is clear. The great South African socio-political,” he said (ZIMBABWE, ZimEye)

Rubble Reality

by Ron Carlson

Disembarkation from the 747-400 occurred at 5:33 am and now I’m sitting in the exact same seat I occupied ten days ago, and though it feels the same, the surroundings feel different. I’m at the beautiful JFK terminal in New York waiting for a connecting flight back to DFW after a ten-day blitz of the Middle East.

I’m postponing jet lag until I finish this column and get a BLT and a real cup of coffee.

It’s a shame, I’ve concluded, that this thoughtfully designed and beautifully constructed building is just a few years from rubble. It deserves better.

One can’t be moments away from a tour of the ancient world and not be impacted by rubble reality. It’s everywhere. The only sure thing in the cradle of civilization is limestone entropy.

Time, I’ve surmised, makes gravel – here, there, and everywhere. Nothing of earth lasts long.

Now I understand why this structure in which I’m sitting is called “Terminal.” It’s just a matter of time. At least the architects had enough vision to see rubble on the horizon.

I’ve returned from the holy lands with a plethora of emotions and impressions, but none stronger than the ultimate conquest of King Rubble. Acre for acre, no turf in all the world boasts more rubble. It comes in piles, stacks, and tels.

Other corners of the planet collect rubble as well, and though quantities may be similar, no one possesses Israel’s quality. They have noble remains. Zion’s little rocks were once mighty stones, pathways of kings and prophets, palaces of despots and playboys, fortresses of paranoid tyrants, and towers of strength for people whose forefathers and foremothers go back to the beginning. Temples of grandeur and magnificence beyond our contemporary imaginations occupied sacred hills throughout the countryside. But today they are mostly memories and rubble.

Touring Israel presents the modern pilgrim with a host of paradoxes. In many ways, it is an unsettling place, one that produces a litany of conflicts– both external and internal. It is a clash of cultures, religions, philosophies, dreams, boundaries, and rocks. It is an ancient/future struggle that defies definition, no less resolution. It’s like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I went to Israel to see the sites. I left Israel as more than a sightseer.
It is a profound experience to get up front and personal with history unfolding.

The rubble rousers of Israel (I think the technical term is “archaeologist” are doing a magnificent job of restoring ancient realities. Rock by rock they reconstruct the past. With each new stack we learn more about them and us. The rubble speaks, and what it says is that the folks of old were the same as us, only different. For instance, consider the following sites.

There are tels (hills made from centuries of trial civilizations layered one upon another) in Israel that tell us we are all a short-lived experiment. I visited one pile of clay (remember, that in time, everything returns to clay) that archaeologists claim was a series of cities, destroyed and rebuilt 84 times! (Finally, they hired a city planner who declared enough is enough, already!)

Current archaeological digs at Acre by the Sea (Acco) keep turning up new cities buried by newer cities. It seems that the first order of business for a conquering force was to destroy the city and force the former inhabitants to rebuild it to the same specifications, only different, each time with rocks a little worse for wear.

-Ron Carlson