Many of us hope and hold thumbs that American voters will elect an American as President of America next time round.
We don’t need another foreigner for World President; get one of your own for your country and the World will be happy with y’all.
Rick Perry sounds about right to me.
Shucks, this is good. My email friend [well, one of them] sent me the whole bag of tricks. You gotta see it to believe it.
It starts with an exciting announcement to your email address that you have been selected with thirteen others; each won 1.2 million UK Pounds in cash
You are a Winner
My email friend decided to go along. The scammers take you on a merry ride with affidavits on an impressive letterhead of EQUITY INVESTMENT LIMITED followed by confirmation notices from a very aptly named BANKERS TRUST BANK in the city of Leeds; you start to believe that it may be real.
Then they cover the sting; sorry but they now realize that you live outside the UK and you need a Court paper of some kind; in case that would concern you they there and then offer to get an attorney to handle that for you.
Fine … it’s as if they want to pay you the money ….
There is a last minute hitch; the attorney’s upfront fee is 980 UK Pounds but they send you an example of an affidavit said attorney got for a fellow countryman in January.
You ask whether they can’t take the measly little fee of 980 pence off the 1.2 million bucks [heck, it ain’t even a full 1%, why not do it? No, that would be illegal because your money is already in a South African Bank [they even use the name of a real bank that we all know] [they also send you a certificate from that bank] but it is an escrow account waiting for you to come and get it but escrow accounts are prohibited by law from paying attorney fees.
My friend thanked them for the ride and wished them luck with a real sucker.
Smooth, jukkil stukkil, it is smooth. I wish I can find a way to send you all the stuff from beginning to end.
“This is so American; an email verbatim no editing being circulated in South Africa as we speak. The African author must have been assisted by an American. It may be longish but it’s worth it. Here goes.”
Taxes and Open Road Toll Fees
People should not install the transponders but still use the highways and force the government to issue accounts and summonses to all motorists until such time they drop the prices. The government will be forced to send out millions of accounts every month and they don’t have the manpower to do it. This is the best and easiest way to boycott the system. What is the government going to do about motorists from other neighboring countries that don’t have these transponders?
South Africans are too complacent and its time we fight back. WE have paid for these roads. Now they are also proposing a 1% tax to fund the SABC.
Circulate this to all your friends!!!!!!!!
Has anyone thought just how much tax we are already paying?
a. 35% on your salary
b.14% on everything you buy (bar fresh produce) and services rendered.
c. Carbon tax if you buy a new car (besides the 14% VAT you have to pay)
d. Tax on the fuel you put in your car to run it.
e. Toll on our roads – and for some it is going to come to a whopper of 10% of your salary (If you earn R10 000.00 a R1 000 would go toward tolling if you migrate between PTA and JHB every day.) – Bully to try and pacify me with the idea that I can claim it back from my income tax!!! I have to fork out the money first. Going on holiday to DBN? Remember to save up your R1000.00 for tolling.
To say the least – For every R10.00 you earn, the government is already taking approx R6.00 and still they want more. Are you happy with the R4.00 you are getting?
NICE!!!!!
When are we going to get up and do something about it? Where is all the money going to? It is definitely not being spent on what it should be – our hospitals are in a state of disrepair, our schools in shambles, our roads full of potholes, our water contaminated, sewers not working, left in the dark because Eskom failed to do their upgrades, the poor are poorer still, municipalities on the brink of ollapse, and so the list goes on.
Heard about the youth day celebration that cost R100 million? Mmmm… did you pay for it? Oh yes sir/madam you did! R100 million that could have paid for a couple of things our country needed more. And to put the numbers in perspective:
The next time you hear an SA politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you wanted the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its press releases:
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion Rand ago was only 27 hours and 12 minutes at the rate our SA government is spending it. (a billion rand a day??!!)
Building Permit Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporation Tax
Income Tax
Value Added Tax
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel License Tax
Petrol/Diesel Tax
Hunting License Tax
Luxury Tax
Property Tax
Service charge taxes
Capital gains Tax
Social Security Tax
Securities Transfer Tax
Road Usage Tax
Local Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Worker’s Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Hardly any of these taxes existed 20 years ago…
What happened?
I hope this goes around at least a billion times.
“I only some up. Is this guy annoyed? Isn’t he angry? I hope it reaches at least 68 million Americans [that’s about 53% isn’t it]. Ja Swaer [Aye Yup ole Buddie] en gooi da vi onsie Loepdop.” That’s Dutch for “one for the road.”
Discussing democracy is a risky business fraught with peril and indeed, can be to the detriment of a healthy mind and body.
When did America become a democracy; start guessing and tell me, pray?
An indentured workman [of Caucasian origin, or a white slave if you wish] could not vote until he had worked for years on end to pay his master; then worked to buy his own property to become a land-owner before he could vote, even then as the master wished or instructed him who to vote for. Was that Democratic?
Now we must pause about women; and is that is another story? The Internet is full of it; my eye fell on this one.
http://www.history.com/topics/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage
For them America became a Democratic society in 1920; that is not even one hundred years ago and to this day they have not been able to produce a President.
Will you name a big American Historian for me, please, any name that you like? I always choose James Michener who said America is the oldest Democracy in the World, and he came out with facts on other so-called democracies to prove his point.
But from the point of view of the gentle gender [see previous paragraph] he had it all wrong. Michener [1907 to 1997] missed it by …. A fine one to talk, I should say even though he wrote some of the best books ever and I was a fan.
A blogging buddy name of Jamie MacNab from “ye olde country” loves to quote Socrates who once said: “I don’t know anything but I have a lot of opinions on many things.”
You all know that I am not Socrates and should therefore, realize that I don’t even have opinions on this matter but I do have a lot of questions.
Egypt, they say, is about 7 000 old at this point; it is not only one of the oldest countries whichever way you look at it [America only coming in just over 500 years ago] but they have one of the oldest civilizations, and lived in peace with their neighbors until Democratic America on the brink of bankruptcy and a second civil war decided that Egypt was not sufficiently democratic.
Who is the joker?
Y’all be careful now when you mention democracy, what with legions of new Rulers of politicians and lawyers cum politicos and not even knowing where your incumbent President was born.
Do remember your nineteenth Amendment and be sure to jot down the date. There is an anniversary coming up any day now, and an election next year. Texans love saying to “Remember the Alamo.” America you lovely stupid lovable bunch, remember August 1920. Won’t it be nice to have a lady taking the White House 2012 and all the way through 2020 to celebrate a centenary?
Down with men, I say. Start a revolution! Oops …. that is another word on which I have some opinions.
We must learn not to blame the symptoms of the disease; as in the case of Obama. He merely presents the visible symptoms of a deep founded sickness crippling modern American society and many other societies around the World.
Don’t blame Standard & Poor either; that’s like killing the messenger. My blogger friend the Nimrod of NOLA sent me this link.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiw-china-response-20110807,0,3901161.story
Don’t get upset by a view from China. Read it quietly and think; they are closer to the truth than you realize, and that is assuming that you want the truth. China points to it but refrains from making the final point.
About 130 million voters turned out for election 2008 and 53% of them voted for Obama.
That is the problem! Blame them. Or even better; find out what made them do it and you will be on the way to a solution. There is no other way.
Michael Totten wrote quite an article “7 000 years of oppression” about Egypt for Pajamas Media
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaeltotten/2011/08/04/7000-years-of-oppression/
Am I the only one seeing the lark?
If you lived and went to school in Africa way back sixty years ago history lessons were obligatory, and a real joy it was. Most lessons were about Egypt and its special relationship with Israel and Moses; the Bible was the only handbook most of the time.
But reading Michael I could not recall who lived in Egypt before the oppression started. Who were the oppressors and who were the oppressed? I had to know which of the ten guys [or was it only six} that lived along the Nile at the time or say, the day before the oppression started; who were the baddies and who were the victims?
I started with Google and this is what I found.
The Land of Ancient Egypt and its Rulers
The land we call Ancient Egypt was the narrow strip of fertile land on each side of the River Nile. Where the Nile flows into the Mediterranean Sea it forms a marshy area called the delta, which in Ancient Egyptian times was full of wildlife. This was the Northern boundary of Ancient Egypt. Much further South, upstream, the River Nile flowed through six cataracts, areas of rocks and waterfalls, which made it difficult or impossible to use a boat. The First Cataract was at Aswan, and this formed the Southern boundary of Egypt. The Eastern and Western boundaries of Ancient Egypt were the desert.
From the delta to the First Cataract was more than 1000km but the fertile strip of land on each side of the river was seldom more than a few kilometers wide and all the towns and villages were on the river, so the main way of getting from one town or village to another in Ancient Egypt was by boat. It took about three weeks to travel by boat from one end of Egypt to the other.
The area between the First and Fifth Cataracts is now usually called Nubia, although the Ancient Egyptians called it, among other titles, the Kingdom of Kush. Today Nubia is partly in Egypt and partly in the Republic of the Sudan. Nubia contained lots of gold mines and quarries for the stone needed for building temples, and so the Egyptians tried to conquer or control it, and there were often wars between Egypt and Nubia – sometimes the Egyptians won and sometimes the Nubians won. The Nubians were much darker skinned than the Egyptians which makes it easy to tell the difference between Egyptians and Nubians on Egyptian wall paintings.
Ancient Egypt was divided into two parts: the Southern part was called Upper Egypt and the Northern part, including the delta, Lower Egypt. These names come from the direction in which the River Nile flows, from South to North. The names can be confusing to us because we are used to seeing maps with North at the top, but the Egyptians drew maps to show their country as they would see it looking upstream, with South at the top. So the east bank was on the left and the west bank was on the right. They even used one word to mean both east and left, and of course another word to mean both west and right.
Originally Upper and Lower Egypt had their own Kings. The King of Upper Egypt wore a white crown and the King of Lower Egypt wore a red crown. Then one King of Upper Egypt, whose name was Narmer, became King of both lands. From then onwards the King of Egypt was known as the Ruler of the Two Lands, and often wore a double crown, red and white. When Narmer became Ruler of the Two Lands he took the new name Menes. Menes was the first King of all Egypt and became Ruler of The Two Lands about 2920. Remember that in Ancient Egypt all dates are BCE, so we do not usually need to say so. Remember also that the year 2919 (BCE) comes after the year 2920!
The King of Egypt was an absolute ruler, that is, he had total power over everybody and everything. During the New Kingdom the King of Egypt took the title of Pharaoh (which means Great House in Ancient Egyptian), but today we usually call all the Kings of Ancient Egypt Pharaohs.
We divide what is to many children the most interesting part of Ancient Egyptian history into three Kingdoms, separated by two Intermediate Periods. During the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms most Kings of Egypt ruled in a way which kept stability and order (what the Ancient Egyptians called Ma’at) in the land, but during the First and Second Intermediate Periods the central government was very weak or foreigners ruled the land and Ma’at was absent. Ma’at was very important to the Ancient Egyptians and the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut was accepted as King (she never used the title Queen) because during her reign Ma’at was present.
In 332 Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and Egypt became just a part of the Empire of the Greeks
Founders of Modern Egypt
http://www.egyptgiftshop.com/modern_egypt/muhammad_ali.html
Don’t mess with Egypt
| Muhammad Ali Pasha was born in a town called Kavala in 1769 (currently in modern Greece) in an Albanian family. He was a tobacco merchant before he joined the Ottoman army. After the French occupation of Egypt ended in 1801 he took power to fill the political vacuum and then Ottomans appointed him viceroy of Egypt.
Muhammad Ali spent the first years of his rule fighting attempts to unseat him. In one of the bloodiest events he massacred over 500 Mamluks in the Citadel after inviting them to a celebration where they were trapped and killed by Ali’s soldiers. Mohammad Ali is seen as the founder of modern Egypt. He modernized the army, built military needed factories and ship yards, monopolized Egyptian cotton and used its revenue to finance his projects. He made a deal with the Ottoman sultan that Egypt became independent stays under the rule Muhammad Ali’s family members. Muhammad Ali died in 1849. |
Founders of Ancient Egypt
http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html
The more than 3000 year long history of Ancient Egypt has been divided into 8 or 9 periods, sometimes called Kingdoms. This modern-day division is somewhat arbitrarily based on the country’s unity and wealth and the power of the central government. The Ancient Egyptians themselves did not group their rulers according to such criteria. They rather seem to have developed the notion of dynasties throughout their history. The Palermo Stone simply lists the kings one after the other, without any apparent need of grouping them. The Turin Kinglist, which is more recent, has grouped the kings according to their descendance or origin. Thus, Amenemhat I and his descendants, are described as the kings of Itj-Tawi, the capital whence they ruled. We owe the division into 30 dynasties as we use it now to Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived at the beginning of the Ptolemaic Era. In many cases, however, it is not clear why Manetho has grouped some kings into one dynasty and other kings into another. The 18th Dynasty, for instance, starts with Ahmose, a brother of the last king in Manetho’s 17th Dynasty. Theoritically, Ahmose and Kamose should thus have been grouped in the same dynasty. Thutmosis I, on the other hand, does not appear to have been related to his predecessor, Amenhotep I, but still both kings are grouped in the 18th Dynasty.
Some Egyptologists have attempted to abandon the notions of Kingdoms and dynasties, but for the sake of conformity with most publications dealing with Ancient Egypt, this site will continue using both notions. Visitors may, however, notice that the timeline below and the timescale used throughout The Ancient Egypt Site may be somewhat different from some of the other books or web-sites they have consulted.
Visitors should also be aware that, as is the case with any publication dealing with Ancient Egypt, dates are approximations and should not be taken literally. In many cases it is not known just how long a king may have ruled. Comparing different publications on the hisory and chronology of Ancient Egypt, visitors may notice that one king may be credited with a fairly short reign in one publication and a fairly long in another. This impacts the absolute chronology, that is to say, Egyptian history using our year numbering.
In The Ancient Egypt Site, some dates will be proposed but again, they should only be seen as approximations and not as absolutes. A discussion on the length of the reign of a king may follow and this discussion may show the likelihood that this king reigned longer or shorter than the dates linked to his reign.
It can thus not be stressed enough that the provided dates are just a frame of reference helping readers to gain insight in the sequence of events and occurences and to have an approximate idea of the age of certain monuments and artefacts.
I have not edited any of the aforementioned; it’s a copy and paste job. But I am as baffled as before; reading and understanding Darwinism has never been one of my strong points.
Michael does state it clearly the “days of revolution are not over in Egypt” and that does make sense to me because it is like Rick Perry about Texas, and you all know the Texan saying “Don’t mess with Texas.” Well, leave Egypt alone; it is like Texas a fine old country. “Don’t mess with Egypt” would be a good policy.
The first time was today 54 years ago; so well do I remember it. I was four months from matriculating and life was beckoning.
There have been ups and downs. Kennedy took over and so did Jomo Kenyatta, Patrick Lumumba to kill Moise Tsombie; eventually Mandela was crowned to be followed as was his birthright by Obama.
Screw them all.
Today belongs to me; it is my day and I have decided to do it my way; thanks Frank, that song was good and I shall be singin’ it all day.
To all the young people of 71 out there in the World today; bless you boys and girls, but boys, you be careful of loose women of 45; they aren’t good for you.
Have a great Day. Love you lots.
Jaksonian Philosophy 