Nic Haralambous published one of Sheena’s fake articles

Posted on April 29th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,910 views

Nic Haralambous, editor of SA Rocks, recently published one of Sheena Gates’ articles which is completely fake.

Her article begins with:

I was leaving for Australia. I had my bags packed, my tickets ready and my family there waiting for me. Then one morning I woke up and thought ‘what the hell am I doing?’. I love Africa. I love my country and its people. There are things in this place that only we could ever understand, such as:

I brought these obvious lies to his attention by posting a comment, but instead of responding, he simply deleted my comment.

Unfortunately, it seems that Sheena Gates, by virtue of her strong personality, has wormed her way into the good books of many South African bloggers and she is abusing their trust by supplying them with lies.

Here is the comment I made on sarocks:

Nic, I submit to you that this story written by Sheena Gates that you published is wholly false.

The entire story rests on whether the reasons Ms Gates has furnished are true or mere embellishments of her creative imagination.

Were her bags really packed? Or is that a fabrication? Did she indeed possess airplane tickets to Australia? Is she in possession of a valid passport? More importantly, did she possess a visa permitting her entry into Australia?

I submit to you that Ms Gates is lacking in at least one of the above requirements. I believe that she does not possess any visa allowing her entry into Australia. That being the case, one can deduce that neither were her bags packed nor is she in possession of airplane tickets.

The rest of her article is fanciful nonsense as can be discerned by most readers.

Ms Gates has expressed diametrically opposite views of South Africa in the past, lamenting the crime and lack of job opportunities here. At the time, she expressed a firm resolve to emigrate to Australia.

Ms Gates writes articles containing superficial nonsense which she often contradicts later.

Ms Gates has previously sought employment on cruise liners, but her application was declined. She has also expressed the firm conviction that she wishes to travel and live and work outside of South Africa.

No doubt the real reasons for her currently choosing to reside in South Africa have absolutely nothing to do with the ridiculous reasons she furnished us with in her article.

I recommend that no-one take Ms Gates’ opinions seriously.

I am one of those old fashioned people who believe that bloggers have the same responsibility to the truth as journalists do. It grieves me when I see people such as Sheena Gates publishing rank absurdities and then managing to rope in someone such as Nic Haralambous who is a journalist himself for The Financial Mail.

I believe that Nic Haralambous owes his readers an apology for his collusion in Ms Gates’ deception.

UPDATE: According to his personal blog, Nic Haralambous has taken up a position with The Mail & Guardian. His last working day with The Financial Mail was May 9 2008. He will start with M&G on May 19.

Some wag, by the name of Wesley, cheekily asked him, "Is it true that you got fired from Financial Mail because you reported on that fake story by Sheena Gates?"

I doubt it.

UPDATE II: Sarah Britten just blogged on Thought Leader that she’s moved to Australia to take up a new position there. At least, we can trust Thought Leader not to publish bullshit.

Tags: Fake blogger, Nic Haralambous, SA Rocks, Sheena Gates
Filed under Nic Haralambous, Sheena Gates | 126 Comments »

Mugabe is out!

Posted on April 27th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,032 views

According to this BBC news report, Zanu-PF has lost the recent elections held in Zimbabwe.

I read many blogs whose authors expressed the rather pessimistic and paranoid opinion that the election recounts were being used to rig the election, but it seems that those fears have turned out to be without substance.

Zanu-PF has lost control of Zimbabwe’s parliament.

This is arguably the most exciting of times for Zimbabwe. The results of the presidential polls are expected by Monday.

What is going to happen next will be very interesting to see.

Tags: MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, Robert Mugabe, Zanu-PF, Zimbabwe
Filed under Africa, Politics | 51 Comments »

Susan Shabangu is my new hero

Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,819 views

Yes, it’s true. I’ve been thinking about what she said and about the various reactions to her, and right now I’m falling on the side of supporting her.

Here, for the first time, in the flesh is an ANC politician who is tough on crime. I think many South Africans had given up on ever experiencing this day, but it has come.

Probably the most controversial thing she said was her urging of policemen to ignore the Constitution of South Africa and just kill the bastards (referring to criminals).

"One-shot one-kill" Shabangu has told the police that they should not worry about firing warning shots anymore.

"Just kill the bastards."

Dammit, you just gotta love the whole concept. Killing criminals is yummy stuff.

But you know, I think we can go even one better than that. We can totally and utterly destroy criminals and dirty deal them all the way down the line. We don’t need to stick to our agreements with them. We can set them up, get them to dance to our tune and then kill them anyway. Just for kicks. Just because we’re pissed. Just because they deserve to die.

Take this article for instance. A gang of thugs attacked a man and his daughter, robbing them and gang-raping the woman. Now one of the young punks, a minor has pleaded guilty, turned state’s witness and is now offering testimony against the rest of his thugs for a reduced sentence. He confesses that he was the first to rape the woman.

Old enough to rape, old enough to die, in my opinion. Sure, tell him he’s got a deal, let him sing, get the convictions on the rest of the thugs and then snuff him anyway. Screw his deal. Screw honouring our word to a criminal thug rapist. Just snuff his ass when we’re done with him. We have no shortage of punk rapists and if we snuff out a couple of thousand maybe the rest of them will think very hard before pulling out their puny penises.

And if not, well we won’t have to think hard before wiping them out. It will have become an automatic reaction by then. See a rapist, shoot a rapist. No arrests. No paperwork. Just one clean kill. And the thanks of your community.

And as for the Constitution and the legality of all this? Like Susan Shabangu says, we ought not to worry about this because that’s her department. She’ll look after all the rules and regulations. The ANC has something like a 73% majority in Parliament which means they can amend the Constitution without obtaining any other political party’s agreement.

I think it could work.

Tags: criminals, one shot one kill, Susan Shabangu
Filed under Crime | 18 Comments »

Ken Follett’s World Without End

Posted on April 17th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,683 views

Click the image to order this great novel from Take2

I recently finished reading all 1111 pages of his latest novel, World Without End (WWE), by the extraordinarily talented British author, Ken Follett. WWE was published on September 18 2007.

Follett became a best selling author at the age of 27 (in 1978) with the publication of the WWII spy thriller novel, Eye of the Needle, which was subsequently made into a film starring Donald Sutherland (father of Keifer Sutherland).

WWE is a sequel to Follett’s wildly popular Pillars of the Earth (POTE) novel which was first published in 1989. POTE was a runaway best seller, and is a brilliant and fascinating read which will hold your attention until the very last page. In fact, you may suffer a mild depression when you come to its end. Nineteen years later, it still sells over 100 000 copies a year.

When I discovered (earlier this year) that Follett had written a sequel to POTE, I was immediately interested in reading it because of the immense enjoyment I had previously derived from reading POTE over 15 years ago. I decided to purchase WWE as a belated birthday gift for my father, knowing that I would get a chance to read it after he was done. I picked up a hardcover copy from Exclusive Books in Constantia Village for R259, which they gift wrapped for me. My father devoured the novel in about two days flat. I still don’t know how he manages to get through books so quickly. It took me well over a week to get through WWE, but then I read every word and savoured each paragraph.

Having finished, my overall impression is that World Without End is not as great a novel as Pillars of the Earth was. It did not satisfy me the way that POTE did. The reason for this is that in the original story about the town of Kingsbridge, most of the problems were external to the town. It was outsiders who caused the problems. In WWE, it is the priors of Kingsbridge who hold back the town’s development and economic prosperity with their self-defeating policies.

Sadly, there are no examples of reconciliation between bitter foes. No characters reform themselves into better people. Ralph, for instance, starts off as a young lad who uncaringly kills a young girl’s three legged dog (charmingly named Hop) with a bow and arrow and by the end of the book has become even more rotten, coercing the same girl (now a married woman with children) into an unwanted sexual relationship with him, and this after he discovers that he has previously fathered a child by her. Nothing softened his venomous attitude as one might have hoped. She kills him. All rather depressing.

WWE is set in the 14th Century which is the time of the advent of the Bubonic plagues which so devastated Europe, culling off over half of all human population in the Old World. Follett conveniently uses the mechanism of the plague to rid himself of (nearly) all his troublesome characters whilst retaining all the best loved ones. There was no tragedy to mourn. In my opinion, Caris Wooler should have died of the plague and an eternally heartbroken Merthin Bridger should have erected his angel (having her face) on top of his spire in loving memory of her. But no-one who died of the plague in WWE was anyone we became particularly attached to. They were all good riddance departures.

Caris is one of the central characters of WWE. After years of uphill struggle against one bloody idiot prior after another, she finally gets to the point of being in charge when she is elected prioress of the nunnery. Shortly thereafter, her efforts to save people from the plague (which had been working) and treat patients effectively in the hospital are defeated by the idiot males in positions of religious authority. It was at this point (and many other times) when I became so frustrated with all the bullshit ignorant politics of the situation that I wanted to bail on the whole town. I wanted her to stand up and shout, “You’re all a bunch of idiots and you can all go to the Devil!” But it didn’t happen. She hung around still. Eventually she resigned from the nunnery and the hospital she had run so competently began to be ignored by the town’s people who came to realise that going there served only to hasten their death from whatever they suffered (or what they contracted from others whilst there).

Towards the end of the book we discover what was in the letter that the young Sir Thomas Langley almost paid with his life to safeguard. It was a fairly huge revelation with massive potential consequences but nothing comes of it. It is buried, its explosive secrets never seeing the light of day. Instead of being published, its secrets are negotiated away in exchange for ridding Kingsbridge of the last of the idiot priors.

Merthin Bridger was another central character and yet, despite his brilliance and competence, he didn’t grab me enough to motivate me to spend time telling you his story. A part of me wanted to tell you the whole story of the book, but I’ve decided that I’d prefer to rather give you these disjointed tastes and impressions of the book in the hopes that you will out and purchase the book and read it for yourself and then return here to give me your opinions.

Despite all my lamentations and frustations with WWE, it was still a good,absorbing and easy read, well worth the purchase price.

Tags: fiction, Ken Follett, Kingsbridge, novel, Pillars of the Earth, World Without End
Filed under Book review, Books | 2 Comments »

Simple Pleasures – Oral and Manual Techniques for Erotic Stimulation DVD by Jonti Searll

Posted on April 1st, 2008 by Richard Catto 6,071 views

Jonti Searll, South Africa’s premier teacher of sexuality and sensuality, is so pleased to announce the release of his new DVD.

Jonti shares with you many techniques that have brought amazing pleasure to so many people.

The Five Sections on the DVD are:

1. An Introduction by Jonti
2. Oral Ecstacy for Her
3. Oral Ecstacy for Him
4. The Pleasure of Your Touch for Her
5. The Pleasure of Your Touch for Him

To order, email or call Jonti on 083 7435 129

Order now and receive some special extra surprises with this DVD.

Tags: Jonti Searll, Sensuality, Sex, Sexuality, Simple Pleasures
Filed under Jonti Searll, Sexuality and Sexuality | 2 Comments »