This podcast is mostly about China and it’s interaction with Africa, but also touches on other topics – not least SA’s current woes with the electricity blackouts.

I just love the ‘ya’s'! Lekker old school SA.

The energy problem is a huge one in SA, and one which needs to be dealt with quickly and effectively to limit the fallout. Much easier said than done, given that additional megawatts take time to bring online. See more here

Tony Budden of Hemporium, a South African company that specializes in the multifarious products that can be made from hemp, talks about the environmental, nutritional, industrial, social and spiritual benefits of using hemp to provide us with almost all of our everyday products. These range from biodegradable plastics, detergents, composites that are stronger than steel yet lighter, finest quality paper, foods, textiles and many more.

He explains how the crop is a natural pest deterrent and requires no pesticides and very little fertiliser (natural please) and delves into the controversial history of the plant revealing many important truths of the nature of our global economic systems. A must see for South African’s that love South Africa!

from SABC3: ‘Free Spirit’

Every year I remember having sun-blisters on my back because there was no need for a wetsuit at Plett (when you were a Capie). And then there were the balmy evenings starting at the Formosa with a couple of Springboks (mint liqueur submerged in a pint of beer), followed by the Cave and their dark ‘n dingy dancefloor, where the chances were only a leeeetle less than 50/50 of finding someone to share the boardbag for the evening. Geesus was that so long ago? I suppose it was more than 10 years, but well less than 20!!

Oooohh How those times have changed! I was gobsmacked when I saw these pics taken in MAY this year!! We would have frozen our balangs off. If the boere didn’t get us the cold certainly would have – this is not the kind of weather conducive to convincing young girls that the board-bag was the place to be after some hot action on the dancefloor at the Cave!!

I spent 5 of the last 10 years in London, and mates there now tell me I missed the boat – they’ve been enjoying the warmest summer in recorded history. Peachy weather all the time. Godamit, I remember summers that lasted less than a couple of weeks!!

We better get used to it people – times they are a’changin and you can bet that eeejits like Howard and Dubya aren’t gonna spell it out for us!! There are whole cities being abandoned in the Pacific and these fukwits will never admit the urgency. We have to make a noise as individuals.

Insist on carbon-neutral food, events, products – do what you can as an individual. We really can, by doing
something
anything

Without a name; an unseen face

and knowing not your time nor place

Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn,

I met you first last Tuesday morn.

A wise friend introduced us two,

and through his shining point of view

I saw a day which you would see;

A day for you, and not for me.

Knowing you has changed my thinking

for I never had an inkling

That perhaps the things I do

might someday, somehow, threaten you.

Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son

I’m afraid I’ve just begun

To think of you and of your good,

Though always having known I should.

Begin I will to weigh the cost

of what I squander; what is lost

If ever I forget that you

will someday come to live here too.

Glenn Thomas, © 1996

No matter how far down the wrong path you travel, turn back! We’re currently emitting 30 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. The earth can only assimilate 2 billion. Kyoto attempts to address some of our wrongdoings – but is just a rounding error of what we need to do. And yet we can’t even do that. Capitalism seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s not sustainable. Howard has now bought into climate change – only because his re-election depends on it. So he’s going to do what’s required – but not at the cost of coal-miner’s jobs or the economy!! How do we get here? How do we get to the position where people like Bush and Howard are our leaders? Are we idiots? That’s not to say that their opposition/replacements will be any better. They’re all self-interested politicians, with short-termist views incongruent with what our children’s children want from them. Admittedly, this is merely a rant and not a solution – required solutions are too radical for us to comprehend as a general populace – we are sheep and need to be led. Please George Bush, show us the way, oh wise man.

What’s happening is nothing less than a “total breakdown of society”, says the website This is Zimbabwe. Life expectancy has plummeted to 34 years for women and 37 years for men (and this was in 2004), there is increasingly blatant use of torture tactics by Mugabe’s thugs, inflation started last year at 585% and ended 2006 at almost double that figure, infrastructure is crumbling and Harare’s water supply is polluted. Meanwhile, says the website, “Zimbabwe is being looted and pillaged by its rulers. They access fuel at the official price of $400-odd per litre, and run thriving businesses selling the same fuel back to the public or the industrial sector at five or six or seven times that amount. They pocket the difference, and term it profit, when its real name is theft.”

A Zimbabwean blogger writes:
Yesterday we had a power cut in our shopping centre from about 9am until 10pm. Not being one to sit in a slump I took myself off to do some local area research. What I discovered:
- the optician across the road has ancient dusty sunglasses on sale for about Z$149 000 a pair and that next door to them
- Kenge gourmet sandwiches are selling for Z$10 000 bucks a bap.
As I wandered through the shopping centre the contents of a letter I received the day before came to mind.
I am a male adult aged 48 years. Presently I am a pensioner getting a paltry sum of Z$13 000/month pension. I worked in the Police for a period of 27 years having joined in January 1977 in the then British South Africa Police. Please help me.
This human disaster is matched by a political disaster. Mugabe has moved next year’s presidential election to 2010.

Writes Jonathan Moyo in the Zimbabwe Independent:
Now that the Zimbabwean crisis has undeniably reached its tipping point with catastrophic failure looming on the horizon as everything for everyone everywhere across the country begins to rot or collapse beyond repair, it is alarming to observe that President Robert Mugabe remains doggedly in hot pursuit of a reckless three-pronged strategy to keep himself in power beyond 2008 without having to face the electorate ever again.

What influence is Australia attempting to bring to bear on its wayward fellow Commonwealth member? Is Zimbabwe little more to our Prime Minister than an underperforming test cricket minnow?

seen on Crikey!