The collapse of civilization under black rule
I visited SA both during and after apartheid. During apartheid, Johannesburg was truly a garden city: A most civilized place. No more
Africa’s Richest City Is Crumbling Under Chaos and Corruption. Johannesburg was built on gold. It’s now such a mess that homeless people direct the traffic
Solomon Owa’s fingers work quickly as he speaks over the hum of his sewing machine. That’s because the hum of his sewing machine might stop at any moment. “In a few minutes, the power will go,” he said.
The 51-year-old runs a tailoring business from his garage in Johannesburg. Outages leave him idle for up to 10 hours a day. Surrounded by piles of colorful material, he needs to work while he can.
It’s a rush that South Africans have begrudgingly become accustomed to as they’re forced to use more and more ingenuity to navigate daily life: Charge devices, take a shower before the hot water goes off and leave the house before the traffic lights go out. Schools, hospitals, restaurants and businesses rely on backup generators to keep running. Homeless people guide vehicles through potholed streets for cash.
The continent’s richest city was built on gold, but it’s now defined by chaos, crime and corruption more than ever. It encapsulates the wider collapse of basic services across South Africa. From a broken railway network disrupting trade to archaic sanitation that triggered a recent cholera outbreak near the capital, Pretoria, parts of the country increasingly look like a failing state.
At the heart of the dysfunction in Johannesburg is a governance crisis. Since the country’s governing national party, the African National Congress, lost control of the city in 2016, unstable coalitions have resulted in six mayors in four years. The current leader is a member of a party that holds 1% of the municipality’s 270 seats.
Services and maintenance are the most visible casualty. Then there are the rolling blackouts implemented by Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.
The state-owned power utility, which has become a byword in recent years for South Africa’s troubles, has a fleet of coal-fired power stations that are old, poorly maintained and badly designed. The shutdowns are known locally as “loadshedding” and last for up to four and a half hours at a time.
The country still functions, but the hurdles are getting higher. “We may not be at a point in South Africa where we are a failed state, but we are certainly a failed government,” said Tessa Dooms, director of policy at Rivonia Circle, a non-profit organization whose stated aim is to transform South Africa into a “robust, sustainable democracy.”
“We don’t feel the effects of having a failed state because of other sectors of society continuing to function,” she said. “But we certainly are feeling the effects of failed governance.”
Johannesburg needed 300 billion rand ($16.3 billion) to build new infrastructure — power, water, sanitation — and make repairs, according to former Mayor Mpho Phalatse, who was voted out of office in January. The current administration plans to spend the lion’s share of its latest budget on “sustainable services” to help clear the backlog of improvements.
That’s about 60 billion rand, according to the plan unveiled on June 13 by Dada Morero, another former mayor and now an ANC member of the finance committee. “While we are cognizant of the growing backlogs, we are limited in our ability to respond due to the suppressed revenue performance in recent years,” he said.
Johannesburg became Africa’s richest city thanks to a gold rush that started in the late 19th century and continued through the apartheid era. The metropolis of more than 5 million people then became the economic dynamo of Nelson Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation” and the hope for prosperity that came with it.
Almost half of the population is unemployed and living in poverty. Nationwide, the jobless rate stands at 32.9%. Around 18 million people rely on some form of social aid, which makes the number of beneficiaries twice as many as registered taxpayers.
Meanwhile, crime has proliferated. The once flourishing central business district is an eyesore where derelict buildings are hijacked by criminal syndicates, forcing out major commercial operations from the area. For more petty criminals, in vogue are cables and metals that can be stolen from electricity substations and sold on the black market. Others just try to connect to the grid illegally.
The power cuts make the morning and evening commute an obstacle course as motorists weave around gaping holes, uncovered manholes, unattended sinkholes and exposed power cables. Seeing homeless people in groups of up to 10 control traffic when the lights go out is now a common occurrence.
Given Masiyendi, a self-appointed traffic controller, moved to Johannesburg eight years ago from his village in Venda more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) away. Things didn’t go his way and he found himself on the streets. His latest gig has proven more lucrative than begging.
In the morning, Masiyendi goes to a corner shop where the owner gives him the loadshedding schedule for the day so he can position himself by the traffic lights when they go out.
Motorists embrace the makeshift solution to keep traffic moving, given a trip that should take 15 minutes can end up being two hours. On an average day Masiyendi says he can make up to 300 rand in tips from drivers.
Officials are less happy. “Police have been the most hostile towards us,” said Masiyendi, 32. They get picked up and dumped on the outskirts of the city, he said. “Our only crime is directing traffic.”
The outages also provide the cover of darkness for more serious misdemeanor. In Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, 12 mini local substations costing 700,000 rand each, have had to be replaced in the space of two weeks.
Residents in the suburb of Fleurhof went without power for six days after a transformer was stolen during loadshedding between 10 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. one night. Local resident Sipho Masigo, 45, said he had to rely on a small gas cylinder to heat water and barbecue what they could.
“All of our food for the month was spoilt,” he said on his street near the vandalized electricity station, eerily quiet except for the buzz of a generator coming from the only house with lights. “On day four we had to take out all the meat, braai it, eat it and give the rest away.”
City Power, which procures electricity from Eskom and distributes it in Johannesburg, reckons it lost more than 500 million rand over the past year as a result of materials damaged or stolen during loadshedding. The infrastructure is unable to cope with the surge that comes with the return of power, which damages cables and substations, prolonging darkness for days at a time.
There’s also the question of whether they can get hold of the supply in the first place. “As a business we pay around 19 billion rand to Eskom for electricity annually, but half the time we don’t get that electricity,” said City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena. “It means that we have wasted that money and we are not making any profit.”
Eskom Chairman Mpho Makwana said in an interview with Bloomberg on June 9 that a change in management structure has helped improve performance and blackouts are being reduced.
That’s probably little conciliation to Justice Ikechukwu Oparaugo. His small restaurant in the inner city has been hit by both crime and power outages.
The once lucrative business is now on its last legs because of energy insecurity. Oparaugo, 52, was forced to dismiss half his staff and move to a smaller premises, but he is still losing money. On a day last month, he had cooked 2,000 rand worth of food and sold only a fifth of that. A local gang also demanded that he pay 350 rand a week in protection money.
“In the morning I can no longer start cooking early like I used to because they take electricity,” said Oparaugo, who added that he couldn’t afford to buy a generator or switch to gas like some larger restaurants. “When you wake up, it’s not there.”
A number of business leaders have raised the alarm over the nation’s current trajectory. The central bank estimates that power cuts cost the economy 900 million rand a day and will shave two percentage points off this year’s growth rate.
In recent weeks, they met with President Cyril Ramaphosa and pledged their support in the three critical areas of energy, logistics and law and order, according to Cas Coovadia, chief executive officer of lobby group Business Unity South Africa.
For Solomon Owa, the tailor, it feels like he’s been here before. Now married with two children, he moved to South Africa 23 years ago from Nigeria’s Delta state as the country faced energy insecurity that crippled the economy.
The first sign of decay he noticed was the dirt, how he needed to polish his shoes more often, he said. Then came the rest. “What happens when the lights go out? Vandalizing starts,” he said. “My country went the same way, the same route. After some years, things fall apart. Everything is gone.”
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Flag Day and the New State Religion
Yesterday was Flag Day, an annual occasion to celebrate Old Glory, the Star and Stripes under which men and women of every color and creed have served and for which many have paid the ultimate price. The American flag holds deep and profound meaning for millions of us, and we’re eternally grateful that it still stands for Liberty and justice for all.
That’s why we’re so outraged at how Democrats treat our flag nowadays. Perhaps their apparent contempt for Liberty and anything but two-tiered justice is why they treat it so poorly.
Joe Biden and his party use flags as political agenda rags. For example, Biden orders flags at half-mast every time there’s a politically expedient mass murder, though it is disgraceful to use the flag as emotional manipulation for pushing violations of our Second Amendment rights.
Worse, the display of pride flags from government facilities arguably represents an unconstitutional “establishment of religion.” Doubt that? Replace any of those pride flags at the White House or State Department facilities with a Christian flag and see what happens. Doubt that pride is a cult? Try speaking against the groomers who recruit new disciples in schools.
This past weekend, Biden hosted a pride celebration that predictably devolved into utter debauchery when a social media influencer decided to bear his surgically implanted female breasts on the White House lawn strip club. He supposedly won’t receive any more White House invites, and the administration condemned behavior that “is not reflective of the event,” but it was exactly reflective of the prideful and hyper-sexualized movement Biden and crew were ostentatiously celebrating.
Ask the drag queens Biden and Co. think should be performing in schools.
During that event, two American flags were hung between columns at the White House, and they flanked the new “progress pride flag” — the garish eyesore of a banner that features the typical rainbow and additional colors, from the “transgender” pastels to black and brown to represent only some skin colors and also AIDS victims. It was designed five years ago by a guy who uses “xe/xym” pronouns and calls himself a “queer non-binary celestial object having a human experience.”
Whatever dude.
Many folks argued that Biden’s White House display was a violation of the law. According to U.S. Flag Code §7 (e), “The flag of the United States of America should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags of States or localities or pennants of societies are grouped and displayed from staffs.”
Biden supporters claim “from staffs” is the operative phrase, and they note there was a U.S. flag flying atop the White House. Yet there’s no question the president and his prideful staffers violated the spirit of the law — and spat in the face of veterans and their families — all in service to the gender cult.
“The administration was proud, again, to display the pride flag,” said Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whose only apparent qualification for the post she holds is that she’s a black lesbian represented by that pride flag. She added that she was “certainly not going to get into protocols” regarding the legality of the display.
By contrast, the House, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, honored Flag Day by hanging three American flags between its columns.
The Senate, under Chuck Schumer, was not so patriotic. No flags were displayed outside the Senate side of Congress. Likewise, most of the flags were gone from the White House on Flag Day.
Back to the idea of establishing religion. Yes, the First Amendment begins with some key words — “Congress shall make no law.” Displaying flags at the White House wasn’t based on a law passed by Congress, so no harm, no foul, right?
Not if you compare it to other displays or behavior the Supreme Court has ruled constitute unconstitutionally establishing religion.
We’re not trying to build an ironclad legal case here. We’re just making the argument that the Rainbow Mafia is the vanguard of a cult, and hanging this group’s insignia from government buildings is a bad idea.
The U.S. flag represents our nation and every citizen under its jurisdiction. Pride flags represent maybe 7% of the population and probably considerably less, all based on behavior or orientation. Even if you agree with the Left’s insistence that it’s about identity, not behavior, this is still a tiny minority, and that justification wouldn’t fly in virtually any other circumstance.
The only reason pride flags fly on government buildings is that leftists are religiously devoted to dividing Americans rather than uniting us under our national banner.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/98114
*******************************************************Pride Month and the Left’s Fairytale Villains
Leftists are always the victims in their fairytale about oppression. The latest kerfuffle over “pride” merchandise and marketing is no exception.
Just take a look at the media headlines:
“Target stores in at least five states receive bomb threats over Pride items” —The Hill
“Target stores see more bomb threats over Pride merchandise” —The Washington Post
“Experts warn against canceling Pride campaigns after extremists threaten Target” —ABC News
“How major brands were forced into the conservative plan to target LGBTQ people” —NBC News
To be clear, after some Target stores moved or removed some pride merchandise (some of which was designed by a Satanist and some of which was targeted at small children), prominent Democrats accused the retail giant of “selling out” and the Rainbow Mafia issued bomb threats, causing some stores to temporarily close. This, the Leftmedia propagandists want you to know, is the fault of conservatives.
In The Hill and The Washington Post, you have to read several paragraphs into their respective stories to learn that it was leftists who issued the bomb threats after their headlines implied the opposite. The same goes for ABC:
“Target reported that its employees faced threats over its new Pride collections celebrating the LGBTQ+ community and responded by pulling some of the merchandise that had caused the most ‘significant confrontational behavior’ to protect the safety and wellbeing of its employees.”
What were these threats? Saying mean things like “I won’t buy your products” on Twitter? ABC doesn’t say.
It did, however, report: “Several Targets also received bomb threats over Memorial Day weekend related to the controversy. … The threats reportedly called for the return of LGBTQ+ items to the shelves [emphasis added].”
None of the aforementioned media outlets even hint at the idea that maybe issuing bomb threats is a bad idea, even when their allies do it. In fact, all of them fret over and lecture conservatives for provoking anger.
ABC’s story then immediately quoted an academic “who researches the white nationalist movement.” She thinks “this will embolden alt-right actors.” After that, ABC appealed to an “expert” at the disgraced hate-baiting grift organization known as the Southern Poverty Law Center. He clicks his tongue over the “bigots” who will “feel emboldened” by any company that slightly backs off on pounding pride propaganda.
Again, to be clear, the bigots in his mind aren’t the Rainbow Mafia clowns issuing bomb threats and demanding “inclusive” compliance. The bigots aren’t the social media censors silencing anyone who still believes in basic biology or traditional American values — you know, like Joe Biden did until five minutes ago. No, according to The Narrative, the only villains are conservatives who object to having rainbow garbage shoved in our faces by every corporation and media outlet in the country.
NBC tells us how this game works. “Bud Light and Target were not always political punching bags,” its story begins. “But both companies have been drawn into the center of a long-brewing conservative battle after the brands released campaigns supporting or featuring LGBTQ people.”
Starbucks, says The New Republic, “has banned Pride decorations in stores,” which is “a stunning cave to far-right anti-LGBTQ fury.”
See, here these innocent companies were just minding their own business and trying to “be more inclusive” when suddenly mean conservatives decided to hate them.
Fact-check: It wasn’t conservatives who drew anyone into this battle. It was the Alphabet People compulsively demanding to be celebrated and affirmed every moment of every day all year long. It was companies deciding they’d rather send loud and flamboyant political messages on behalf of 5% of the population than simply sell beer or clothing to every American.
Leftists are virtually always the aggressors in the culture war. Conservatives are merely trying to conserve what nearly everyone agreed was desirable just a few short years ago. For that, we’re labeled “extremists,” “bigots,” and “haters,” even when the Rainbow Mafia is literally issuing bomb threats.
Historically, leftists have been the ones using boycotts to great effect, forcing conformity with their views or destroying businesses that don’t go along. Conservatives are beginning to learn to fight back in the same manner.
That’s why Bud Light sales continue to plummet since partnering with a “transgender” influencer. Sales are down more than a quarter and the brand is no longer the top-selling beer in America.
Millions of Americans don’t hate anyone. We just don’t want our beer, baseball, and bathing suits to have to reflect the sexual decisions of a tiny minority. We hate to be crass, but we just can’t understand why literally everything has to be about affirming someone’s choice of genitals or what they do with those body parts. We don’t get why “inclusivity” means being forced by even conservative news outlets to see pictures of a man flaunting his surgically implanted feminine breasts on the White House lawn.
Forget pride, which is hardly a virtue in any case. Whatever happened to basic decency?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/98089
********************************************************Teen Accuses Doctors Of Madly Rushing Her Into Child Gender Transition
Another detransitioner is suing Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Permanente Medical Group, and the doctors who pushed her along the path to hormonal and surgical transgender procedures.
In a lawsuit filed June 14 in California’s San Joaquin County Superior Court, Kayla Lovdahl and her attorneys with the Center for American Liberty are accusing medical professionals of fast-tracking young Lovdahl through her gender transition, one that she now deeply regrets.
It specifically names medical professionals Lisa Kristine Taylor, Winnie Mao Yiu Tong, Susanne Watson, and Mirna Escalante. Several of these individuals are similarly named in the lawsuits of detransitioners Chloe Cole and Layla Jane, also represented by the Center for American Liberty.
“This case is about a team of doctors,” the lawsuit begins, “who decided to perform a damaging, imitation sex-change experiment on Kayla, then a twelve-year-old vulnerable girl struggling with complex mental health comorbidities, who needed care, attention, and psychotherapy, not cross-sex hormones and mutilating surgery.”
Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and the Permanente Medical Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lovdahl grew up struggling with mental health issues and was eventually exposed to trans-identifying influencers online who pushed her to believe that she was trans. So, Lovdahl told her parents she was a boy, her lawsuit says. Her parents didn’t know what to do and “promptly sought guidance” from doctors (the defendents in the case).
Three individual Kaiser doctors (including Escalante) reportedly advised the young girl’s family that she was too young for hormones. But her family was ultimately referred to Watson, Taylor, and Tong, “who immediately, and negligently, affirmed Kayla’s self-diagnosed transgenderism without adequate psychological evaluation,” “promptly placed her on puberty blockers and testosterone at age 12,” and “performed a double mastectomy within six months at age 13.”
“This all occurred after Dr. Watson determined in a single, 75-minute transition evaluation that Kayla was transgender,” the lawsuit says.
The complaint alleges that Lovdahl’s doctors didn’t question her about the psychological events or comorbidities involved in her belief that she was trans.
Instead, Defendants assumed that Kayla, a twelve-year-old emotionally troubled girl, knew best what she needed to improve her mental health and figuratively handed her the prescription pad. There is no other area of medicine where doctors will surgically remove a perfectly healthy body part and intentionally induce a diseased state of the pituitary gland misfunction based simply on the young adolescent patient’s wishes.
Defendants were horribly, and inexcusably wrong, as Kayla was not transgender and was not a person that any reasonable physician could ascertain would permanently maintain a transgender identity. Consequently, she detransitioned when she was 17 years old, and she eventually started regular psychotherapy sessions for her mental health symptoms, which is the care she should have been receiving all along.
The suit also accuses the medical professionals of failing to properly provide Lovdahl and her family with proper informed consent and properly disclosing the significant health risks associated with a young, biologically female child, taking “off-label puberty blockers and high doses of powerful male hormone drugs.”
The family was also told that her dysphoria wouldn’t resolve unless she chemically or surgically transitioned, and “that she represented a high-risk of suicide unless she transitioned.”
“These were material, false representations,” the suit says. “Defendants’ coercion, concealment, misrepresentations, and manipulation are appalling and represent an egregious breach of the standard of care. This misconduct also constitutes fraud, malice, and oppression.”
Escalante put her on puberty blockers in 2016, causing Lovdahl mood swings and severe hot flashes, her complaint says. Taylor allegedly started her on testosterone in June 2017, at the age of 12.
“Two days later on June 8, 2017, Kayla’s mother reported to Dr. Watson increased anger and frustration and related issues. Her mother expressed concern that this indicates bipolar illness, but said that she thought that it was more likely related to gender dysphoria.”
“Dr. Taylor and Dr. Watson did not evaluate or treat these mood swings. In the next few months, Kayla was seen by about four different mental health providers. Kayla’s mood was noted to be improved at various times, but her preexisting complex array of mental health issues was noted to continue to include suicidal ideation, cutting, anger, depression, mood swings, and related issues,” the suit says. “Kayla was also being forced by her mother to attend pride clinic events, but she didn’t want to do so, and said she didn’t feel ‘pride.’ She expressed this lack of ‘pride’ to her providers.”
Lovdahl, who had never had a sexual relationship before, told doctors at the age of 13 that she didn’t know whether she cared about being a parent in the future. And on Sept. 22, 2017, according to the lawsuit, Tong performed a double mastectomy on her.
When she was 17, Lovdahl began detransitioning. She no longer “identifies” as a man, but because of the hormonal and surgical “treatments” she received, she “now has deep physical and emotional wounds and severe regrets.”
“Defendants were not ‘caring’ for Kayla,” the suit says. “They were experimenting on her.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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