...I'd bet on 50/50%.

South African middle-distance sensation Caster Semenya was at the centre of an inquiry on Tuesday due to concerns about whether she is a male or female.

The 18-year-old has emerged in recent months as a top 800 metres runner, and won her semi-final in commanding fashion at Berlin's Olympic Stadium on Monday night, eliminating Kenya's Olympic champion Pamela Jelimo along the way.

But the South African's physique and powerful style have sparked speculation in recent months that she might not be entirely female. IAAF rules state that competitors must be entirely female to compete in women's races but some people are born with a mixture of chromosomes and display both male and female characteristics.

The world athletics governing body, the IAAF, has conducted a series of tests on the South African, including physical checks and genetic screening.


I guess we'll learn soon. If (s)he is allowed to keep running, then everything is all right. If (s)he's 'advised' to quit her/his career, then let his/her little secret remain for him/herself. ;-)

Reminding of this brilliant 1999 documentary by John Pilger. Every single minute of this 50-minute movie is soaked with meaning.

John Pilger had been banned from South Africa for his reporting during the apartheid era. On his return 30 years later with Alan Lowery, he described the extraordinary generosity of a liberated people, but asked who are the true beneficiaries of a democracy - the black majority or the white minority? He also digs to the bottom of the current situation. Although made 10 years ago, the film turned out to be prophetic.

The movie also shows a great part of the reasons why I have chosen the path that I am walking now, and why I do what I do these days. I have explained much of it here and here, so I will not expand more on the topic right now. The movie says it all.

And finally, let me quote my father.
"It took a generation to defeat white supremacy, if it'll take another one to defeat black totalitarianism, you'd better be ready to go for it."

I'll paraphrase. It is not just totalitarianism that should be uprooted. It is oligarchy, kleptocracy, and social corruption. One person cannot change much, but an ocean consists of many drops. And oceanic tidal waves tend to break levees.

The struggle has not ended.

'Nuff said.

Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages

Wikimedia says: "The purpose of the project is not participation."

One factor is that many topics already have been written about.

Another is the plethora of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring order to its unruly universe -- particularly to reduce infighting among contributors about write-ups of controversial subjects and polarizing figures.


I'd add a third one...

Wiki is great if you want to know if the world is flat or round, or any other information on which there is a 100 per cent consensus.

But issues that are contentious are heavily censored and those who disagree with the official version are labeled with the usual tags: "Conspiracy Theorist", "Denier", "Dissident", "Anti-Semite", etc.

There is also widespread use of phrases "Respected Historians/Scientists". These are of course those who agree with the "Official version".

It is, more or less, a propaganda site.

This is the 4/4 part of the essay on faith.


Why Do We Believe?

In most cases, the reason for faith is that a person feels much more comfortable when having faith in an assertion which he accepts as fact in defiance of all logic. Here I will not dig too much into the reasons for believing in love, friendship and justice (a generalized classification of the types of faith was made in the previous part). The above faith is not essentially faith as such, but a phraseological unit which rather declares a hope/wish for a world dominated by love, friendship and justice. Similar, let us call them 'poetical' constructs, have no pretence beyond just expressing a personal attitude of the believer on a given issue, which in most cases is associated to a certain emotional state, or an appeal, rather than true faith. Some of the specific reasons for which a person devotes himself to religious faith will be examined below. These are associated to the type of faith which implies not only an appeal for a certain moral (the world would have been a much better place if religion was doing only this), but also a firm conviction that a set of unproven assertions are actually an absolute truth.

Similarly to an insane person who in most cases is unable to realize his own insanity, the religious believer could not recognize on his own the reasons for which he has been tricked into believing in absurd declarations, accepting them as ultimate truth. An external and objectively and rationally thinking person is needed for that, someone who could analyze the act of faith, as the insane person would need a psychiatrist.

Throughout many of my conversations on this topic, I have reached the following rational reasons for which a person could devote himself to the religious faith.

( Why Do We Believe? )

(Of course, a large part of my own blog will be dedicated to the comedy which starts when the above-mentioned ignorant people suddenly turn into knowleable authority in cosmology, physics, biochemistry, evolution, paleontology, geology... and meanwhile, they start supporting their theses with scientific evidence).

The above list of reasons for believing is certainly far from being exhaustive, so I may continue adding more examples here.

Russia tops Pricewaterhouse global fraud survey

* Russia fraud at 71 pct, 12 percentage points up from 2007
* Asset misappropriation, corruption most common fraud

* More fraud expected in economic downturn

Russia has the world's most fraudulent economy and attempts to stamp out white-collar crime have done little to stop its spread during the global financial downturn, PricewaterhouseCoopers [PWC.UL] said in a survey. Seventy-one percent of Russian respondents to PwC's global economic crime survey said they had been subject to economic crime in the past year, more than in next-ranked South Africa, Kenya, Canada and Mexico.

What? We're only second?? I guess we'll have to work even harder...

Glyn Ford, a former Labour MEP, told Al Jazeera that building a political presence in Europe was one of the challenges a new president would face.

"Europe is bigger than the United States, its richer than the United States, it gives more to the developing world than the United States by far. But we don’t actually have the political presence," he said. "Now how do you develop that political presence?"

Experts have said the president should be a technocrat who can provide unity and build consensus among the EU's main institutions - the council of nations for the 27 member states, the European Commission and the European parliament.

The EU president will be selected today out of the many candidates. That'll happen on a 3-hour lunch around a table hosting the most influential politicians of Europe. Typical.

Imagine a conversation between the new EU president and the US president. The US leader proposes to his European colleague the adoption of a common position on the situation in ... say, DR Congo (also recently discussed here). Or if you like, Afghanistan (LOL, very chewed lately), or Somalia, Iran, Belarus, you name it. "Sure thing", the new EU leader says, "but let me have a few consultations first". Then he hangs up and goes on a phone spree, making at least 27 other phone calls, possibly in several languages. An apocalyptic effort, isn't it?

[discuss here]

...it's always fun to see them humiliated like that.

South Africa Destroys England In Cricket

• Cook fined for slow over rate

• South Africa v England: as it happened

• Ashes are not 'crown jewels' yet, says Clarke

A comment of mine which I'd like to underline. Concerning Afghanistan.

Now, as I was reading this, I almost feel for the western democratizators. They're oh so good and clean, and Karzai is soooo bad. Poor things. :-)

Beside his presence on the membership records of various western corporations, he's also present on the records of CIA. As are many of the Talibans who are also, oh so bad, a creation of CIA, the Pakistani services and the Soviet occupation. Afghan orphans are taught in the madrassa schools of Pakistan, later to become Talibans.

The present occupation is no better than the Soviet one, only the killings are performed in a more technological way (sometimes). Preferably with drones without pilots. But this one is much more harmful to the Afghanis at least for one reason - the over-production of opium and respectively heroine. Let me remind you that after every bloody mission for 'democratization', if the climate permits, there's always a boom in the production of opium and other drugs. One of the most famous examples is the production in the Golden Triangle, aka Vietnam War.

Technically, the solution for Afghanistan is insultingly simple. Dozens of agricultural planes stuffed to the roof with thousands of tonnes of herbicides. Sprinkle the poppy fields at once, and next year it'll be super-unprofitable to invest in anything remotely related to opium.

This gets me back to the topic. Who's actually benefiting from the drugs production? Is it the Afghani peasants? No way. Certainly, they manage to make ends meet so-so, similarly to the Colombian peasants. Is it the local drug feudals? OK, they're doing pretty good everywhere around the world. But if you really look deep, who's the organizer and the main profiteer from this global logistical operation called drug trafficking? The circle has narrowed down, hasn't it? And who enters the spotlight? You guessed right - aggressor #1 using the mask of democratizator #1 in the world. Why doesn't any of those inspection authorities ever check what's being transported in those huge transportation military planes which are flying to Turkey and the US bases in the former Soviet Central Asia? That's the place where the opium becomes heroine.

And Karzai is really the perfect guy for the job.

I don't see a change coming to Afghanistan. Neither today, nor in a year, nor in a decade.

(comment here)

Addendum:

Selling western-style kleptodemocracy through penis-shaped bombs pooped by war planes has almost invariably lead to even bigger trouble than a few guys with turbans sitting in the government of the poorest country in the world. And, while in the more 'diluted' regions such as Palestine, Lebanon, etc, the locals have been very familiar with that game for centuries, still nothing but more trouble is what one could expect.

The story is well-known and rehearsed over countless times. We seem to love repetition (only in our case it's not the mother of learning). In 1973, the US brought down what came closest to a king, and tried to invent kleptodemocracy, Orient-style. They duly did that, after which they crapped all over the place; in their turn the Rushkies jumped in to save the turbans from capitalism - didn't work again - then the Shrub (whose memory apparently spans no more than 6 months) decided to re-discover Afghanistan, so now you have the same old troubles, Vietnam-style. Because while Vietnam wanted to kick the kleptodemocratizators back into where they had come from (which they duly did), Afghanistan ensures its bread and butter through export of heroine. Very cheap and very high quality heroine...

(comment here)