Rogue trader living in the state thats Palestine

Top of the morning to you my dear ‘brethren’. Had a wee chuckle this Sunday chatting to my moms. So I had a little op last week right, so on Sunday as per usual I go home for the healing magic of Mammas cooking, but I was a wee bit fragile. So I’m done grazing, hop onto the couch moms, on the other side, she looks at me with sad eyes and says “Yaw, eh look at you, get married so someone can take care of you” I say to her moms its not a good enough reason is it? I have coped pretty well on my own through this period, she concedes and then she throws in, “but even though this is not ideal, just you get me a grand child to spoil, I promise you I will help you raise it, they will take care of you and bring you joy blah blah” ☺ just one of those moments…if you know the school my mom comes from, for her to reach this stage where she is not excited about it but willing to consider a child out of wedlock haaa, not that I am going to do it, who woulda thunk…

Anyway on we move…in the last few weeks, 2 things have been weighing on my mind more than all the other stories life throws out there, and really I’d love your thoughts on these.

Sub prime lending, securitisation of toxic debt, reckless lending, you name it its been done, so many people lost their homes. So many big banks collapsed, the central governments of many countries stepped in to bail out the CEO’s of these big banks that went bang, and most of these top CEOs walk away inspite of the pooh they presided over, with a trunk full of gold. But let my brother who I am sure is a British citizen, speculate on the stock market, which I guess is the job of a trader and lose $2,3bn and boom front page news, man gets arrested, life is all but over now and he is only 31. Does anyone know the name of the person who was in charge of the underwriting business unit at Citi Bank, at the time they realized that 60% of their mortgages they bought from over 1600 mortgage companies were toilet? What is the name of the CEOs of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the US government had to raise $182,5bn or so to bail out AIG but who were the guys that caused the fine mess they were in, well not too many of us know their names. But mention the name Kweky Adoboli and the world is like that West African, what was he thinking??? Yet no where near the same sort of head shaking is directed at the architect of this financial crisis that threatens to bring a lot of Europe and the United States to its knees.

So the man did a few trades that went wrong, had it gone right would his name have been plastered all over the papers, chances are not, I doubt that I would hear maverick UBS trader, Kweku Adoboli, earns UBS $2,3bn, hell no it would be UBS had another stellar year in its comeback trail from billions in losses, CEO whoever earns another x hundred million bonus!! Another thing, if you have worked in a bank yeah, there is no way that such a situation should be allowed to happen. When I worked in one yeah, the amounts of hoops you had to jump through and the amount of people that had to cross t’s and dot I’s before a few hundred ZAR could be paid over to anyone was enough to field a rugby team…with reserves. I am no trader, but I am sure that at the close of every day marks to market and reconciliations and closing of positions etc have to be performed and independently audited. People lets be real, I check my bank statement and if R23,57 is incorrectly debited or missing I’d know, so you tell me how does $2,3bn just sommer disappear and no one is none-the-wiser? And these trades spanned a period dating as far back as 2008 or something.

Give me a break will ya…he is not without fault in this, but he is just the fall guy man! I mean after raising money from governments a few years ago how do you now go and say, eish ya boss, our controls, she’s not too big and some bra took us for 2double big ones?

The other thought is this one so Palestine wants to be recognized as its own state. OK I don’t know the history so well. I am not Jewish nor am I Muslim, I am just a guy who has a lot of time on his hands to do a little research, listen to the news and provide some social commentary to which he would like to spark some sort of debate, because I believe that’s the best way for us to SEE each other!! Shana Tova to my Jewish peops too, may it be a prosperous new year!! So for over 50 years or so Palestine has been operating as a properly fractured state almost under Israeli rule. Israel has money, a lot of the western world’s backing and is also under serious threat because parts of the Palestinian and Arab world don’t want to recognize it and want to wipe it off the map…so sad!! What makes it even more sad is if you had to trace back all 3 religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, they are all branches of the same tree…So anyway this whole thing with Palestine wanting to have membership of the UN, reminds me even more of what a farce this UN really is in all honesty. All the other member countries are there but I think there are 5 countries whose opinions really matter, China, Russia, UK, US, France. They can veto any Security Council decision so you tell me whats it all for? UN tells the US don’t go into Iraq they still do and there are no consequences. FARCICAL!!

This whole Israeli-Palestinian impasse is clearly a mess, because if it wasn’t it would have been solved by now. Both sides have their claims, which to them and their supporters may seem to make utmost sense. One side can say we and our camels watching tumble weed fly by for decades, you guys go to Europe, things don’t go so well now you wanna skop us out? Hmm something about this doesn’t make sense…Other side will say we’ve been here forever, not all of us left firstly and secondly Judea…remember it, the historical Jewish land it was right heeerrrreee, we’ve been here as long as you cous!

In 1988 the state of Palestine was declared, but Israel rejected this declaration. It was occupying parts of Palestine since the 6 day war in 1967 and as such it could…because it had big guns too. Israel knows full well that for there to be lasting peace and harmony in the region Palestinians need to be able to govern themselves as a fully recognized state. They need to know that they can trade freely with the rest of the world they don’t have be couped up like pigs in a stye. Buuuuut, how do you get it right though when even the Palestinians themselves are divided, on the one hand there is Hamas that governs the Gaza Strip and on the other Fatah governing the West Bank. Fatah denounced violence and terrorism, hence why most talks are seen to be held with Mahmoud Abbas. Even though Fatah lost the elections to Hamas in 2006 or so, they still have all the military arsenal so they rule the roost, I guess kinda like Israel does over Palestine. Hamas on the other hand have openly and repeatedly stated that they want the state of Israel destroyed, poqaed, dead, kaput. They have shown this to be more than just words too. Hamas and Fatah formed a unity government, but there was spate of bombings and violence in 2007 I think I read, that lead Fatah to expel them from the unity government.

So say Palestine does get recognized as a state yeah so what? Well they have their land, their issue is the ‘illegitimate’ Israeli settlements. Now these settlements will not be destroyed I am sure, so what then, well then there will be some land swaps happening, result…the settlements are legitimized…proper waste of time.

To me whether Palestine is recognized as a state or not is neither here nor there, what the powers that be need to do is stop pu ssy footing around the issue and make some tough decisions, because as it is no solution will ever be reached and who suffers…largely the poor people of Palestine! 50 years of fighting with no end in sight you would think that a leader with foresight from either camp would have stepped to the plate by now and tried to find a lasting solution, because I am sure the average Palestinian and Israeli would not mind living next door to the other one provided there is the basic human elements of trust and respect…it is just that simple, but then again I can see my old man accusing me of trying to use logic to solve an emotive situation. Live and let live that’s what I say!

Birthdays
14th Will, Anoka
15th Gooch
16th Maskew
18th Tahir, Thuli, Chetan
19th Aleya, Naasei
20th Feh
21st Riyad, Mickey Moo, Nats
23rd Kbz, Pali, Si Black
24th Vaughano
25th McLenan
28th Kells and Mohi
29th Eve
30th Brett
1st Oct Herman

And that’s all folks, you all have a pleasant weekend now ya hear

Maximum respect to you all…trust and respect man!

Y

Racism or Victism??

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery none but ourselves can free our minds…” Robert Nesta Marley

I uploaded these words as my status update yesterday and how apt it is today.

Sheesh guys, I have been so struggling with something positive to write man. All around is just negativity, yo, its only when you leave SA and don’t watch the news and come back when you really realize how much negativity surrounds us. There is a great initiative happening in SA this week called the National Book Week which is trying to get more people reading, but do I hear about it emmm nope whats there to write about instead…Lets see Tornados and Hurricanes…ummm naah, Mogoeng Mogoeng circus, Juju’s, in my mind farcical hearing and is stoopid followers throwing stones and bottles in the city centre….ehhh so tired, and my current bugbear, which is NATO and the UN, passing a resolution to bomb/invade a country that isn’t even party to any of their causes nor a member, finance its rebels etc and then they say eish boss this one its not me man, all we did was just protect civilians, who are in a country that doesn’t subscribe to your rules…epic fail… then today I wake up and hear about Darren Scott, waxing lyrical with the k word and everyone is on his case about being a racist. There is also the story about the designer who made some random comments about a Jewish person and an Asian…which somehow only got dubbed an anti-Semitic slur, but that’s a story for another time…

Racism - Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief

Now before I go on lemme just say I don’t know Mr Scott, so he may well be a racist, but based on what I have read thus far and the circumstances surrounding the incident is he a racist?

A man gives another money to help him out. Would a racist want to help out a brudda in need? Ya maybe, cos there were a few banks who could have been run by people who subscribed to the apartheid legacy that used to lend money to bleks…Man doesn’t want to pay me back…repeatedly…I’ll get angry, blaady angry. Short of raising my fists I’d find words that are extremely excruciating to his being. So if I called this bra, a forkin K-word dude, would I be racist? Lets move from race, say 2 fat people were having an argument and the one called the other a fat f**k, would the reaction be different if a thin person, having the same disagreement with a fat person, called a fat person a fat f**k. For example right if a woman and her man are having a fracas he did something terrible to her and she cant beat him up so she decides to call him a short di*k Muthaforker, would that make her a pen isist?

You see in all those instances mentioned, ones ability to be rational is gravely compromised by red mist and as a result your mindset is in fight mode, and in fight mode there is only one winner, so you will say whatever you can to hurt the mofo not so. So you become rude and insulting, but does that make you a racist or a fatist or whatever? I am really not convinced that those words in isolation make a person a racist. To be honest, in my absolutely humble experience, the only time a word has some true deep meaning is if it brings to the fore a deep complex or something that you are not all together comfortable with about yourself not so? For example, if someone called me a fat, bald useless dooooos, right I am a tad podgy at the moment and my forehead is reclaiming some skin at the moment, so now if it bothered me, id be offended not so, if I wanted to blame someone else for my lot in life I’d take it to be offensive, but if I have accepted my fate and either decided to move from where I am to a place of more happiness, I will use those words to harness my pursuit of better things not so?

I think I have said it before, but we as a nation are very sensitive and I guess rightly so coming from the past we have, but are we so sensitive to a point that it clouds our judgment and reason and every disagreement or something done that is not to our liking is dubbed racism. Darren’s words aren’t the issue here I believe, there is a deep set -ism in all of us who live in this country. Class, race, nation, sex we hate each other. We mask it a lot, but man we just have some mad blind hate in this house!

Bottom line is we have to change. And skirting around the issues won’t correct it. A brother walks into a mall with a fine light skinned lass, don’t look at em cos it looks like the set from Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s song Ebony and Ivory, clap cos she is lucky to have landed a fine brother damnit!! ☺

Jokes aside, I consider myself a rather level-headed individual. People from the old school have to understand that its really by God’s grace that this country hasn’t ended up like Zim…yet, BEE, EE, AA, Quota etc. are necessary, one need only just step out and look at the lie of the land and see, worse so if you go to Cape Town. Now I’m not advocating that things should be otherwise….all I’m saying is that things could have been much worse. People cry foul, corruption, this, that and the next, my dear friends, what we are seeing now is but a smidgen of what happened in the past. I was watching Carte Blanche a few weeks back and they were exposing some multi billion rand fraud advocated by the reserve bank of the olds regime, to help fatten the coffers of some bank and in return its shareholders which were Caucasian. The only difference between the corruption of then and now is that now, its reported on freely, tell me which is a better world to live in.

To tell me that BEE, quotas and AA, EE etc should end after 20 yrs, I step back look at the floor, then the sky, then look at you and shake my head. Let me give u paint you a picture, not a Picasso or a Van Gogh, but a Pic-true. Lets use a black’ born-free, kid born in 1994, so currently 17 years old, they should have the freedom of the nation right, ehhh no! Why? You see lets look at the current lie of the land as a gauge right. Father most probably has bantu education as does mother, they probably only recently got running water and a proper roof over their heads, if at all. What they know is what pops and moms taught them, or black and white, both have the old school mentality which they passed on to their kids. A persons formative years are first 8 or so years not so, yes your personality morphs as you grow, but the basis is formed early on. So what do I know….old school ish. Right! Now I am 17, next year its either tertiary education or work. No money for school eish, no job, eish…see where I am getting at. Use the converse a white born-free, moms and pops have tin, kid goes to Saints, Saint Marys, Kes, you name it, lifes still rosy, not so? Finish school, go to varsity easi, finish varsity, moms and pops say, youngster, no job here go to Australia or England, because you can… see what I am saying…

Right, these kids turn 26, get married or pops a little one, what will they teach their kid, mainly what they learnt as a youngster but a whole lot more toned down because we are learning to get along, trust me, it will take at least 3 generations for us to be truly a rainbow nation.

Now for my Africans…The reason why we as Africans are progressing at such a slow pace is largely, not entirely, because we are the architects of our own demise. It takes me a trip to Ghana every so often to be reminded of this. Don’t get me wrong, love the land of my birth, we are definitely progressing, but man there are some things that still baffle me…I digress…We, as Africans, are all too quick to play the role of the victim. Slavery/apartheid came, slavery/apartheid left, it left a massive legacy but so what do we do? Wallow in self-pity? Blame all our ills on the past or take stock realize what an opportunity, no matter how hard lies ahead and make it work for us, using whatever resources we have available to us. Yes I know it’s a theoretical way to approach things, but theory most times can be translated into practice, otherwise why would we have to study books in order to work in this world neh ☺

I know the world has been set up for us as Africans to rely on the west, because they have money! Yes they do, but lets see, as a continent we have all the resources, if I look at England or the states what do they have, yes money, oil, some resources and people but they need us about as much as we need them as a continent not so. I look at this majestic continent of ours, I see trees of green, red roses too…sing it Louis, Silver and gold have I All (none) said he… what don’t we have, yet we dispose of it for a mere pittance. So we can buy it back at a hugely inflated price. (This is proper generalization because as a continent we have had some leaders with some foresight) We live for today, its all about making many quick bucks today and not about tomorrows people how long will they last…(sorry too much singing). I wanna be the only guy on these dusty streets to have a Ferrari California and a big mansion, and helicopter, so the world will know I have landed, how am I going to get it, instead of using the 100million grant to build houses for the poor in my land, I will use 20mil and spend the 80mil on myself. I am dissing my peops, I know, but its because seeing this stuff really does break me.

Lets think about it, are there any derogatory words for caucasians, what hon key, really now?!! There aren’t why, because they were never the victims nor will they ever play that role, but my bruddas, we hear the word co olie, ni**er, ka**ir, gooook, you name it and its like we have been shot and our corpse spat on. Till the day we forget about being a victim and rise up and build and be the boss of something that’s worth boasting about till the day that as a nation our people don’t have to live in tin huts, till the day that a country with much rain isn’t a net importer of basic foodstuffs like rice, till that day peoples, we’ll never be right with ourselves. And when anyone says anything that is adverse to us we will latch on it and squeal like pigs to the slaughter.

I take Jewish people for example, the suffered the holocaust, but them bruddas run this world now. Ok fair enough with utmost respect, the victim card is played to an extent there as well, and I am in no way lessening the atrocities that they had to face as a result of their faith, but what slavery and colonization did to Africans was just as detrimental to the African race, yet the difference is in a relatively short period of time their adversities have been turned into monumentus triumphs. Show me a Jewish person who isn’t economically sound. Why is that, yes they had the assistance of a lot of the world, but they together as a people stood up, stood together, worked hard and achieved what they have and keep achieving.

I am a Ghanaian born, African man living in South Africa, but hell no I am not victim! Emancipate yourself from mental slavery…

I missed a few birthdays in the last 2 months so let me just do for this month thus far and ask for forgiveness to those that I didn’t announce…
Birthdays
3rd Rob Wed, Stu, JC
5th Riba, Smangi
9th TBKaranja, Decs
10th Basquait, Sefa

Maximum respect always, because thats where it starts...

Be the change you want to see...simple

Y