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Showing posts from October, 2019

Helen Zille breaks the DA

When I heard Herman Mashaba resigned from the DA attributing Helen Zille's election as FedEx chair and the conservative faction behind her (the majority of DA members that voted for Zille after her sudden candidature), I said another resignation, especially by a senior black member, would put the nail in their coffin of any hope they had to still be an effective party and opposition, particular for black votes that ironically Zille's win scuttled. (Talking about confused, as eNCA's headline on Mashaba's resignation said, 'shooting themselves in the foot'.) Over the past couple of days I said Zille's win was a huge mistake, that her alleged "strategic and organisational" brilliance was overstated, that she made the blunders that led to DA where it's now and she shouldn't be there (check my comments). I said her running was opportunistic, egotistical (with Zuma and Malema she has the biggest ego of all local politicians) and an indication ...

Climate change, Greta Thunberg and toxic conservative white male patriachy

Over the past two weeks I've commented on conservative white males' violent reaction to climate change, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests and teen activist Greta Thunberg. On October 14 IRR fellow John Kane-Berman (JKB), who also contributes to the right-wing site Politicsweb (disclosure: I contributed to PW until our paths diverged), wrote on their site The Daily Friend that the international media's " Covering Climate Now" campaign is "propaganda, not journalism ". I commented, but the site was revised this week and comments have been removed, an odd decision for a group that claims to defend- "the true champions" - liberal values. I said the overwhelming consensus is human-caused climate change is known with empirical certainty. NASA (JKB and IRR have heard of them, right?) states "97% of actively published climate scientists agree humans are causing global warming and climate change . Most of the leading science organizat...