Homoeopathy explained
Perhaps I was mistaken. Everything I had read and heard of homoeopathy led me to believe it was just a pile of rotten excrement passing itself off as a “science”. I’ve even blogged about it in disparaging tones (here, here, here and here).
But I’ve had the scales pulled from my eyes. The truth of the matter has finally been revealed. Dr Charlene Werner has skillfully pulled all the strands of modern physics together, the bits that us mere mortals cannot hope to fully understand (like General Relativity and String Theory) and shown how this advanced physics underpins the great science of homoeopathy. It’s also fascinating to hear that there’s so little mass in the universe that one can, for all practical homoeopathic purposes, simply ignore the M in E = MC2. One lives and learns.
What’s more, did you know that 70% of how you physically function is through “the vision system”? It must be true. Dr Werner has a whole website dedicated to this.
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Tuesday’s Tune: Berkeley Girl
Paul Simon’s “travelling companion” is no longer nine years old. He’s now 36, and has just released his eponymous début solo album, Harper Simon. And it’s very enjoyable.
Simon – whose mother is Paul’s first wife, Peggy Harper – will of course have to live in the shadow of his musical giant of a father. Yet he seems to have emerged as a talented poetic songsmith in his own right. His songs have an authentic, yet somewhat respectful retro sound. This is due in no small measure to the amazing team (dubbed the “Nashville A Team”) he assembled to record this album in Nashville, Los Angeles and New York. It includes legendary producer Bob Johnston and musicians from every era since the 1950’s. He was also joined by his friend Sean Lennon and of course his Dad.
Some of his songs, such as the exquisite Wishes and Stars, display a style surely learnt at his father’s knee. The song featured here, the romantic Berkeley Girl is far more Dylan than Simon (Paul).
(Thanks Phlatt)
Marietta Theunissen exploits the vulnerable
The last time I heard of clairvoyant Marietta Theunissen she was assisting the infamous Danie Krügel in the predictably futile hunt for the van Rooyen victims. In the Carte Blanche programme that brought them all together, she stated that she had communicated with the girls in the spirit world. Of course she had.
Marietta Theunissen
Their very public failure of course had no effect on their renown. She popped up on Radio 702 this morning promoting her latest psychic show. She then took a number of calls from listeners. I usually don’t listen to such garbage but I was interested to follow her technique. She pretty much models herself on Sylvia Brown, so beloved by Larry King and other US television talkshow hosts.
It’s classic cold reading – in a flood of words. A caller would ask a question, such as: “I need advice on whether I should move from Cape Town to Johannesburg”. Now it doesn’t take a seasoned pro to come up with a string of intelligent guesses of what her concerns might be. Why would she want to live in Johannesburg? Why would she want to stay in Cape Town? So she delivers a couple of “readings” that are open to confirmation and in no time at all can fairly confidently dish out advice.
The station was flooded with callers (all women, as it turns out), most of whom were clearly in pain and extremely vulnerable. And this is where the problem arises; her act is no longer just amusing entertainment: it moves into the dangerous area of giving uninformed, completely incorrect and possibly dangerous advice to gullible people.
One caller was concerned about the death of a relative. Theunissen immediately went down the suicide track – which is logical – and assured the caller that it wasn’t suicide. She weaselled out the caller’s fear that dead person had been poisoned – even though an autopsy had shown he had had a heart attack. No, declared Theunissen – she “saw” chemicals in the body and he probably had been poisoned.
How can this possibly help this distressed person? She is going to take this pronouncement from a scam artist – that can’t possibly know anything at all about the case – and carry it around with her for the rest of her life. And who knows how she will use it.
She strongly advised another caller to stop taking anti-depressants because they block the ability for spiritual feeling. She is giving serious medical advice to an anonymous voice on the other end of a phone line! This is a very malicious scheme.
But she not only exploits the vulnerable with the baseless nonsense she sprouts: she’s not shy in depleting their bank accounts either. Here are her rates taken from her website:
Half an hour Telephonic Consultations R 1300
Psychic Marathon (Face to Face consultations) R 1000… Special days only!! [Fully booked for 2009]
Want your own Private Group Session for your Family and Friends….? Marietta and Julia will come to your house…
R 750pp includes a Reading for each person and a BIORES treatment! (min 7 people)
Marietta also does special House Cleansing for people who have unwelcome energies…and want to attract luck, happiness and harmony!
R 1000 per house! [Only available in 2010]
15 Minute Face to face appointments R 750 pp for 15 minute sessions [fully booked for 2009]
Cold reading is not a particularly difficult skill to acquire. Just read Michael Shermer’s account of his highly successful novice cold readings. Just learn the basic technique and you’re good to go.
The cold reader’s bible is Ian Rowland’s The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading.
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The left-wing coup consolidates
While South Africans manically debate who should be the next soccer coach leading up to the 2010 World Cup, their country is silently falling into the hands of an unelected communist cabal.
It’s all falling into place for the Marxists, Trotskyites, Stalinists and other tendencies within Cosatu and the SACP who now effectively govern South Africa. The sop to realism that was placing the respected Trevor Manuel in a central planning position, is over. Manuel has been removed from a central planning role and is no longer in the “economics cluster”. His right-hand-man and director general Joel Netshitenzhe has resigned. The ascendency of Ebrahim Patel and Cosatu continues apace.
My suspicion that Manuel had seen the writing on the wall were first raised when he uncharacteristically splurged on a R1.2 million BMW 7-series vehicle. Why not? Everyone else is doing it and he would no longer need to lead by example.
When Manuel resigned as finance minister it caused chaos in the financial markets. Keeping Manuel in a central planning role in the presidency kept the markets quiet. But he knew it was going to be tough going. When he branded business as cowards for not standing up to labour, it was clearly a cry for help to his party. The left has targeted him unrelentingly with shrill and vicious personal attacks.
I hope I am mistaken, but I think Manuel has given up the fight and has ceded the policy-making and control of the economy to the communists. He knows that the average South African cares far more about soccer than their future under a communist regime.
Tuesday’s Tune: The Knife
I spent a somewhat challenging day on Saturday when I attended the annual Jo’burg Day music festival with my family and a couple of teenaged friends. The sun blazed unforgivingly to a soundtrack of what amounted to pop karaoke. Then it clouded over and rained. And rained. I was greatly relieved when the kids asked when we were going.
But then, my cold, miserable daughter and her even more miserable friend vetoed any plans of beating a hasty retreat: Zebra & Giraffe had appeared. And I could see why; good sound, good writing, good performance.
Z&G is Greg Carlin. Yes, there was a full band performing, but Carlin is the self-contained creative force behind the band. He made his debut album, Collected Memories, virtually unassisted. It’s electronic rock that’s got a vaguely 80’s feel to it when – Carlin was probably still in nappies.
Every girl in the audience was mouthing the words to every song in their set, but it was The Knife that seemed to get the biggest response.
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The Workers Socialist Republic of South Africa?
As pointed out before, the South African government is being taken over by a cabal of far-left communists. I used to say “communists and trade-unionists” but that isn’t necessary since Cosatu, the trade union movement, is a self-declared communist organisation, urging its members to join, and it requires its leaders to be card-carrying members of the SACP.
Of course, the Communist Party is pretty much in the driving seat with its senior leaders all in the government or running the ruling Party. This has all the hallmarks of a silent coup: an unelected body now holds effective control of South Africa. Cosatu is less well represented, but has the “street muscle” to enforce its views on a sympathetic and beholden ANC leadership.
I have heard a number of pundits in the media that Cosatu is just a bunch of uneducated and unsophisticated thugs that will easily be sidestepped by the ANC. The SACP are described as a group of committed, smart activists who get things done. The message is that they might be irritating but these organisations shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Well let’s look at some of the resolutions passed (pdf) at the recent Cosatu 10th Nation Congress.
Among the short-to-medium term demands:
1. Immediately, nationalize the major means of production.
…
4. Centralise the major means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
5. Create a workers bank to concentrate all pension and provident funds, medical aids funds and
union investments into a single bank.
…
7. Begin restructuring the state – executive, judiciary and parliament – in the interests of the
working class.
8. Abolish labour broking.
9. Abolish retrenchments.
10. Workers takeover of companies threatened with closures because of the collapse of the
neoliberal paradigm of global capitalism.
In short, destroy the economy, loot its assets and deny poor people access to casual jobs. But that’s only for starters. Long-term demands are:
1. Abolish bourgeois private property.
2. Nationalise, socialise and democratise all key strategic means of production in South Africa
such as land, water, minerals, mines, banks, oil companies, shipyards, telecommunications,
transport, food, housing, etc, etc, etc.
3. Concentrate all credit and the power to make money in the hands of the state.
4. Abolish the bourgeoisie executive, parliamentary and justice system, and replace them with
working class state structures.
5. Abolish the distinction between former white suburbs and shacks and townships, and between
rural areas and urban areas.
6. Everyone to enjoy the right to work, housing, education, health and a healthy environment.
7. Everyone to work.
So, reduce the country to a smoking communist ruin, and then force legions of slaves to toil since there will be no incentive remaining to voluntarily do so.
The fact that this stuff has never worked – anywhere, ever – doesn’t seem to bother these megalomaniacs. Ironically, one of the first things such a government will do is to outlaw trades union! This has happened wherever a communist regime has seized power.
Ebrahim Patel
Cosatu is a radical organisation with very radical aims. Its champion in government, economic development minister Ebrahim Patel, is well qualified for the position. This wild-eyed ultra-leftist is particularly oblivious to the consequences of his idealogical actions: as general secretary of the trade union SACTWU he virtually single-handedly caused the almost total destruction of the textile industry in the Western Cape. You wouldn’t want this character anywhere near any enterprise, but Cosatu want him to displace one of the only reasonable people left in the government, Trevor Manuel.
Virtually no defence of Manuel has come from the ANC. They might be uneasy but I think they realise that game is up and the party has fallen into the hands of the communists while they had their snouts deep in the trough of public funds.
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Tuesday’s Tune: All The Young Dudes
My son was obsessively listening to Green Day’s 21 Guns the other day. I was obsessively trying to recall the song it reminded me of. Two-and-a-bit plays later and I was able to irritate the lad with a now-I’ll-play-you-a-SONG interruption. He reluctantly agreed that yes, 21 Guns sounds a lot like All The Young Dudes.
All The Young Dudes was a big hit for British glam rock band Mott the Hoople. Only ever flirting with success, they were on the verge of breaking up in 1971 when David Bowie persuaded them to give it another go and offered his services to produce a new album. He also offered a few songs, among them Suffragette City and Drive-In Saturday. But they decided on All The Young Dudes, and in the summer of 1972 it became the band’s breakthrough hit – in both the US and UK. The album, also named All The Young Dudes, was likewise a hit.
This explicitly gay song became an anthem for the glam rock era. As such it was a fitting song to feature in The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness, held at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1992. David Bowie was joined on the stage by Ian Hunter, Mott’s lead singer to do a powerful perfomance of this great song.
Can’t write about Mo Shaik
I was sickened by Zuma’s appointment of Mo Shaik. I was going to write about it, but it would just make my blood pressure spike. So I’ll let Nic Borain not write about it.
However, Mo(e) has inspired me to do a bit of pictorial commentary:
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ANCs fascist attack on democracy and the poor
I admit with some embarrassment that the story of the of the vicious attack on shack-dwellers by the ANC in Durban didn’t initially grab my attention. I can perhaps blame this on that apart from a few opinion pieces, it was largely ignored by the mainstream press. But this is a story that should be ringing alarm-bells for all South Africans. ANC thugs – aided and abetted by the police and ruling ANC officials – attacked a peaceful community, destroying homes and killing at least three people.
Their crime? Members of this community belonged to an independent organisation – crucially not ANC-aligned – which actively campaigs for better housing, sanitation, healthcare and education, to be provided on terms favourable to its members. The organisation is called Abahlali baseMjondolo, and the settlement is Kennedy Road in Durban. Abahlali has successfully fought for its member’s rights – all the way to the Constitutional Court. This has clearly irked the notoriously anti-poor ANC ruling elite who would much rather divert development funds to their own bank accounts.
On the night of 26th September, a heavily armed gang launched a surprise, unprovoked attack on the settlement. They destroyed everything they could while calling on Zulu’s to identify and spare themselves. This ethnic rampage resulted in at least three – many reports have it at eight – deaths. This murderous spree went ahead with the connivance of the police who refused to intervene. The only activity the police undertook was to arrest eight Abahlali leaders!
Watch this video: it’s a heartbreaking tale of repression:
The ANC, in a display of unbridled arrogance and cynicism, held a sham reconciliation meeting – attended solely by ANC activists. They then complained loudly when the Abahlali leaders – in hiding for their lives – did not attend. They spent their time heaping abuse on the movement and blaming them for everything. ANC Councillor Nigel Gumede left no doubt that this was a case of Zulu vs Pondo:
He added a dash of tribal hatred, saying that “in our [presumably Zulu] culture, this [Mfene] dance is associated with muthi” (witchcraft) and needed to be investigated.
Still the community remains under attack. There is nothing covert about it: the ANC is sending a strong message that anyone not actively supporting them is their deadly enemy and will be destroyed. Here are the reasons given for a planned attack on Sunday night:
A decision has been taken to demolish two more shacks after the meeting. These shacks both belong to AbM members – they are both women. The decision has been justified on the grounds that:1. They are known AbM activists.
2. They failed to attend today’s meeting.
3. They failed to accept pressure to board the ANC buses to protest for denial of bail at the bail hearing for the Kennedy 8.
Zuma, of course has not said a word. This tacit support for pro-Party fascist thugs – in the mould of the Nazi Brownshirts and Zanu-PF youth militia – must be taken very seriously.
Please sign this petition to ask Zuma to intervene.
Related article:
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Tuesday’s Tune: Shiver
While working with a random playlist bubbling in the background, Howe Gelb’s Shiver slithered into my conciousness. I hadn’t heard it in years and was left wondering why. Its simple, folksy melody – with a hook that would make any songwriter jealous – just draws you in and demands that you listen to Chore Of Enchantment a few more times. This album came out under the band name of Giant Sand, one of Gelb’s ever changing vehicles for his prolific songwriting.
It also forced me to get hold of the latest Giant Sand album, proVISIONS. Any fan of Gelb, Giant Sand and his “side projects” (OP8, Calexico, The Friends of Dean Martinez and The Band of Blacky Ranchette) will not be disappointed at all.
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