I have Conquered

I made it today.

 It was kind of made for me by something in a small local e-Mag called the Daily Maverick. They deserve and get the recognition.

 It jumped out from the daily quote just below the headline of yesterday’s edition but I only got to read it just now.

 Commence quote:

“This man has conquered the world! What have you done?”

The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, ‘I have conquered the need to conquer the world’.”
Steven Pressfield, historian and all-round fantastic writer. It’s Friday, don’t try and take over the world. That’s a Monday kind of task.

Ends Quote.

The Maverick is worth reading for its wide coverage of events of the day and reflections of history affecting current events. It covers politics for all tastes, which is a rare achievement in a World of partisan divisions. Research is of a high standard; it covers major sport events, a daily cartoon by Jerm and even gives you a short glimpse of weather conditions around the World for the day.

 It’s almost two hours after midnight. I have conquered and hope to keep it that way. Good night Folks.

Greece the EU the WORLD and the ugly TRUTH about MONEY

Read this:

 http://www.fin24.com/Companies/Financial-Services/ECB-prepares-for-a-Greece-exit-from-eurozone-20150220

When love goes out the back door divorce discussions soon end up in fights about money. It can get bad between husband and wife; with so many partners sharing and sleeping around in the EU brothel it may get real messy.

It may even end up worse than the mess we have in South Africa right now.

But don’t you oh great World out there think that you will escape the wrath of the poor.

I have read a number of the prophecies of doom and more often than not had to laugh. Most times they are really nothing but hidden efforts to lure the uninformed into “escape routes” in which the ignorant will lose their money in any event, most times faster than in what they warn you against.

The ugly truth is that almost the entire World Financial System is bankrupt, except maybe [please note the maybe] China and Russia. Yes you may laugh this one off. Most countries are over populated and, again with the exception of China and Russia, are divided within themselves.

In the entire rest of the World financial wizards have convinced governments that the solution is to spend and consume. That is the way to go, they say, and countries where they don’t even have the logistics to get basic foodstuff to the homes of the poor have taken to consumption with glee and enthusiasm.

Now laugh this one off too if you wish.

Greece is sitting with all the aces and all the trump cards. See, they have nothing to lose.

Frau Merkel may just be the first to make one wrong move and the House of cards [computer chip money really] will fall and be blown away by the wind.

 All the money going through the Stock Exchanges of the World isn’t worth a handful of computer chips.

 ikejakson@gmail.com

Mandela’s Church Street Bomb

Guerrilla warfare, as fought by the Boers one century ago, is recognized internationally as the honourable defence by disciplined fighters against a superior, armed enemy. The Boers attacked classical military targets, even though outnumbered most of the time by overwhelming numbers. The so-called ‘freedom fighters’ of Southern Africa, however, be they Frelimo, Zanu, Swapo or the ANC/Communist Mkonto e Sizwe (MK), very seldom attacked anything resembling a military target, – on the contrary, they specialized in the callous bombing of Wimpy Bars, the cowardly laying of landmines on farm roads, the barbarian ‘necklacing’ of defenceless township dwellers, and even the brutal torture of their own dissident comrades. What makes these atrocities more despicable is that some of the organizations actually signed the Geneva Protocols, which explicitly forbid this kind of terror and cruel intimidation. Serious students who wish to get an unbiased and balanced picture of the kind of terrorist ‘war’ fought by terrorist organisations like the ANC/SACP, the PAC and others should read the book The Other Side of the Story by Herman Stadtler, Sigma Press, ISBN 0-620-21100-8.
The Church Street bombing was a car bomb attack on 20 May 1983 by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress, in the South African capital Pretoria. The bombing killed 19 and wounded more than 200, and was one of the largest attacks engaged in by the ANC during its armed struggle against apartheid. The attack consisted of a car bomb set off outside the Nedbank Square building on Church Street at 4:30pm on a Friday. The target was South African Air Force (SAAF) headquarters, but as the bomb was set to go off at the height of rush hour, those killed and wounded included civilians. The bomb went off ten minutes earlier than planned, killing two ANC operatives in the vehicle, Freddie Shangwe and Ezekial Maseko. At least 20 ambulances took the dead and wounded to hospital.

1983: Car bomb in South Africa kills 16
BBC: On This Day
20 May 1983

At least 16 people have been killed and more than 130 people injured in a car bomb explosion in South Africa’s capital city, Pretoria.
The explosion happened outside the Nedbank Square building on Church Street at about 1630 hours – the height of the city’s rush hour.
More than 20 ambulances attended the scene and took the dead and injured to three hospitals in and around Pretoria.
Police sealed off the surrounding area with a barbed-wire fence as emergency personnel sifted through the rubble looking for bodies.
Bomb disposal experts were called to the scene to search for a possible second bomb.
The outlawed anti-apartheid group the African National Congress has been blamed for the attack.

A huge pall of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air as debris and bodies were strewn around the scene of the explosion.
It is understood the bomb had been placed in a blue Alfa Romeo car outside the multi-storey building, which houses the South African air force headquarters.
It exploded at the height of the city’s rush-hour as hundreds of people were leaving work for the weekend.
Glass and metal were catapulted into the air as shop-fronts and windows were blown out.
Many passers-by had limbs amputated by the flying debris. Others bled to death.
South Africa’s Minister for Law and Order, Louis le Grange, who visited the scene immediately, blamed the attack on the ANC.
He said: “I have no doubt who is responsible for this despicable attack.”
He said the explosion was the “biggest and ugliest” terrorist incident since anti-government violence began in South Africa 20 years ago.
He added: “Most of the victims were civilians, but some were air force personnel in uniform, black and white. Quite a number of those killed were black.
The ANC is committed to overthrowing the minority white government.

Oliver Tambo, who is the organisation’s acting president while its senior figure, Nelson Mandela, is in prison, said the Nedbank Square building was a legitimate target, although he did not admit carrying out the attack.
General Mike Gedenhuys, Police Commissioner, said: “Many of the victims are so badly mutilated they have not yet been identified.”
General Magnus Malan, South African’s defence minister, described the explosion as a “cowardly, criminal deed in the Communist war being raged against South Africa”.
He said more than 40,000 civilians had died as a result of terrorism in the past five years in Africa and 83,000 armed men had died.
South Africa has nearly five million whites, 21 million blacks, nearly one million Indians and about 2.5 million people of mixed race.
The government’s apartheid system denies citizenship rights to black people except in 10 remote homelands.
The ANC has warned it intends to step up its campaign to bring an end to white minority rule.
» » » » [BBC] [Bomb Photos: Kerkstraatbom]

 

Greece

 

Greece is an old Country. That’s point one that you have to remind yourself of when you read about the present day Greece and the EU stand-off.

There are nine more points:

Point 2 = ditto

Points 3 to 10: same as points 1 and 2.

Now you read a modern day comparison between Greece and Germany by Leopold Scholtz, the latter whom I regard as the only modern writer sufficiently experienced to write about these matters. Here is the link:

http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Greece-is-no-Germany-20150212

Then you have to read this:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010

It’s a little long [measuring 54 pages in size 18 Verdana for my eye] but worth it. You will also have a good few laughs of joy; it is extremely well written.

Lastly, what with all the hullabaloo about the EU, Russia and Germany, just take the globe and see whether you can locate Turkey and Cyprus in relationship to Greece on the map of our old World.

 Then sit down and think. Think about your home country wherever you may live and think about the above. Figure out what you gotta do back home before you speak about Greece, Russia, Turkey and the EU.

 ikejakson@gmail.com

The Lost Generation 1994 to 2014

Read this and cry:

 http://www.fin24.com/BizNews/Search-Reshaping-the-world-as-we-know-it-20150206

 I fully understand that I may end up a lone voice against popular opinion but somebody must say this. These young people will be entering the workplace with an enormous disadvantage not having any knowledge of the World before the Internet. There is a lot more to the world than the Internet; we can only hope that they work that out fast and learn about that World first.

 So many of them are now at the stage where they know everything. Will they be the parents of the next lost generation? I fear for the worst.

Of all the Stupid things people do, Hi-Tech takes the lead

 

 

Midnight will find me on my keyboard tonight.

I am cheesed off, mad as hell, disgusted with modern finance and economic experts; darn I will be 75 years old and I have seen it all. Large companies are now run by computer chips operated by young snot-nosed kids that know everything about hi-tech but not a thing about the foundation of business requirements, except maybe one guy at Standard Bank South Africa.

I am going to try and find him/her if he/she does indeed exist. This Post is my starting point

I have been up a few times during the night but the idea to do this got me out of bed.

The year ahead will be a tough one for the World. It will be a Year to Remember for many; some hard decisions will have to be made by Mankind. I am only mentioning that in passing; today it must wait for when it comes.

Let me get back to Standard Bank.

It has been the only decent Bank in South Africa for a long time. There has been one other one not to bad but I found them involved with a scumbag firm of CFD Traders a while ago and wrote them off too; the others I won’t touch with a bargepole.

Standard Bank remained a pillar of light in the gloom; they had their ups and downs; their customer fees are way out of line by now but they still maintained a small number of old timers in their branch offices you can go in and talk too; very few indeed, but you could find one when you needed one.

That was still the case a while ago before they jumped on the high hi-tech wagon. In their favor I have to add that they didn’t cast all human brains out like most of the competition but hi-tech started taking control and they started to become like the others, well almost as bad. It did remain possible to find a common sense soul when you really need him/her; that was so until about two weeks ago.

That night when I logged in the computer screen told me my browser is out of date and I must upgrade it. Being not fully run by hi-tech yet there was an almost invisible screen option to “upgrade later” in the middle near the top of the screen and I pressed it.

Up jumped a new screen telling me how retarded I am for still sitting with this old browser and that, yes I may now [having pressed the button that I will upgrade later] proceed with my old version but I won’t have such a unique and pleasurable experience of modern browsing as with this new wonder now on offer to which I must press for the immediate upgrade.

I ignored the bull and pressed to continue. You won’t believe this; the old system had been removed and I had to work through a kinder-garden version of a thirty year old computer effort just to get my account balance, but that was not all. Last Thursday, January 29^th I needed to pay a beneficiary and with great trepidation logged on. The empty screen only informed me that it is indeed a Standard Bank web page but nothing else. There was no old or new program. I blew my top, found an old Standard Bank IT Support email address in my WAB and sent them this email:

From me

To: Standard Bank On-Line Support
Account Number: ***stars in here for security
My Branch name
Branch Code ***stars in here for security
I am now so sick and tired of Standard bank I can scream or hope somebody drops a massive bomb on your offices to wipe you out.
Don’t you people do any market research and ask customers what they need. My connection and Internet banking has now been working for years but you suddenly without consulting me want to force me to upgrade my browser.  My old browser works well on everything else and I need an upgraded browser like I need a hole in the head.  Until this morning it worked though if I press the button not to upgrade now or upgrade later it won’t move.
Get my system running or go take you bank and jump in a lake?    Don’t you big money guys understand that you have thousands of little clients each paying his R43 per month for two or three transactions, never bothers you or exceeds his limits but can’t just go and buy a new computer every time the young idiots in IT wants to prove why you have to keep them working there.
Fix my computer.  I have been happy with the old browser and the way it worked.  Run it parallel the way it worked in the past.  Jeez, don’t you guys know about parallel runs no more?
Let me know what in hell you decide.  I need to pay a beneficiary his money.
**** my name for security
my email address for security

**** for my tele no for security

I then CC copied my email to the media and an entire bunch of my friends and for some or other reason probably due to my frustration and excitement also a copy to the Western Cape Government.

Would you believe it? I don’t have much faith in governments but this one Province happened to be controlled by an opposition Party I sometimes vote for and because a friend who is our city council alderman asked me to support him. Well, the only reply I got to my tirade was a nice friendly letter from the Western Cape Government advising me that I probably need to write to Standard Bank and proceeded to give my all the contact details that I may need of them as well as her full contact details as representative of the Western Cape Government. Do you know any computer hi-tech ignoramus that can write an email’ well, I have never met one.

What a pleasant surprise when I logged into Standard this morning? My old outdated browser page was back; it’s now running parallel and I don’t have to press any “upgrade later” button; that has been removed as well.

It’s now past midnight Friday, February 06, 2015 12:39 AM out our way.

I am going to try and get this Post in and will then with the aid of the link try to locate the one remaining guy with common sense at Standard Bank to thank him and wish him/her well on the road of sanity.

 ikejakson@gmail.com