Amateur boat building in South Africa

euh thanks guess a bit too many brandy and coke at the time of writing.

 

taniwha, excellent boats, good site and noble cause...

Having said that, I have to be honest (read rude) and the only reason you got sponsorship for this project, is because all the students are of colour. If you had a prominent number of white faced handicapped/poor students in your program, believe me, not one of the sponsors would have touched your academy. All big companies are "gatkruipers" and like to support anc ideals and affirmative action laws.

Just watch SABC TV programs / ads to see how they force their (anc) racist integration views onto others. Totally oppressive and not a reflection of realism in this country, and the crap will not persuade people to adapt because is forced upon them on TV. In my case with having both satelite TV providers, I - and many others - just switch channels when such crap appears on screen. What a waste of expensive advertising money by advertisers not having people watching the rubbish they dish up....

 

Thank God for satellite TV. Broadcast TV here along with our schools is all riddled with socialistic messages, some subtle and some not, some racial and some not, some anti-Christian. Having said that, I hope SA can learn to live in peace without people being killed or mistreated for their skin color.

White kids deserve kind treatment, too, and should be welcomed to attend the classes in safety.

And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is absolutely wrong in her latest stupid remark about our Constitution being inferior to that of the ANC-led South Africa. And she sits on the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2..._makes_banal_point_destroys_the_republic.html

 

Hi Fanie
My problem is that the kayak had no canvas on it when I got it. When I fetched it, it was lying in the back yard in the weather with nothing protecting the wood. I have no clue how see worthy it was in the first place. The stringers are made of Maranti and the wood just splinters just with trying to get the brass screws out of the ply wood ribs which are delaminating with age and dryness of the wood. I took each rib out one at a time to be able to make new ones but they were so badly made that when I did the lofting it was all over the place. I managed to get drawing from someone in the U.K. on a wooden kayak forum and started building a new one in the holidays but had to abandon the project as my sort cuts to save money did not work out. I should be starting for a second time reasonably soon as time permits. The one picture is of the kayak I have and the other is the new construction.
Regards
Jeff

 

Nowhere did she say the US Constitution is 'inferior' to that of South Africa. She said it isn't necessarily a good idea for the Egyptians to copy it. Instead they should look at other constitutions too, especially newer ones, and draw up their own.

Here's a little on the rest of the interview, that you won't find in right-wing political rags. It puts her remarks back in context, and in perspective.

Here's a wild and crazy idea: maybe the reason our Constitution has lasted so well is because it was written by Americans for Americans, who happen to be immersed in an American culture and American political traditions.

And maybe, just maybe, that doesn't automatically make it the best constitution for everyone else in the world.

edit: Ginsberg also makes this important point during the interview: "Let me say first that a constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom. If the people don't care, then the best constitution in the world won't make any difference. So the spirit of liberty has to be in the population...."

 

Whatever keeps you all from killing each other and trampling human rights. I believe the U.S. Constitution better fills that bill. Troy, I know that, you, as a veteran, swore to defend the Constitution of the United States, did you not? So why denigrate it now?

 

I could take that as a personal insult very easily, Hoyt. What did I say that denigrated the Constitution of the United States of America?

Too many people look at the Constitution like it's there just to list our 'rights,' as though it begins and ends with the Bill of Rights. It doesn't. It lays out the framework for our entire system of government -- one that has worked for 225 years. One reason it still works is because the authors provided a system for modifying and updating it as needed.... and the first change was adding the Bill of Rights, as Amendments One through Ten.

Saying that our model of government, as laid out in our Constitution, might not work as well for Egypt is hardly 'denigrating' that Constitution.

 

It wasn't said to insult, but take it any way you like. The U.S Constitution is far superior to anything the ANC, or the Egyptians, for that matter, can dream up. The words in any governmental framework will all fall prey to the greedy b*****ds who want to hold sway over their fellow humans. Some of us just want to be left alone, not forced to pay the way of lazy a**h***s who take, as opposed to accept from us our money in exchange for political favors, including labor unions or anybody else that fits that description.

 

You lost me. WTF do labor unions have to do with the US Constitution?

Never mind; don't bother to explain. I don't have time to bandy words with you about your fixation on evil unions. I have places to go, things to do, people to see...

But I'll remind you before I go that our Constitution, as originally passed, didn't just protect the right to own slaves. It also gave slave-owners a disproportionate share of political power in Washington, by counting 3/5's of their slaves when apportioning seats in Congress.

I don't know what you'd call that, if it wasn't the words in a governmental framework falling prey to the greedy b*****ds who want to hold sway over their fellow humans....

 

Take it out of context by telling only the part of the story that appears to help your point of view. There is a long story about that 3/5 but you don't want it told or why it came to that. It has been told before but it falls on your ears like a lead bell. You won't hear it or see the light so why should I proclaim it or waste my torch?

http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/44011/14110007/?pg=last

"As we can read, the application of whole and 3/5 is related to the population count, not the indivdual's human worth. Slavery was a social status, a forced social condition that many African Americans had paid their way out of, escaped to non slaveholding states, or were granted freedom by those honest individuals whose conscience realized slavery was wrong. With their freedom papers, they were/are free citizens and carried out their lives as free people who were counted as 1 WHOLE PERSON among the whole number of free persons.

When it came time for electing representatives, for political expedience for both the Liberal Christian Abolitionist North and the pro states-rights for slavery south conservative christian south, counting free African American among the 1 whole persons group was the norm. As for slaves and any other group held in bondage ie white prisoners, according to the US Constitution, such were still referred to as PERSONS, not subhumans as was often argued to be the excuse for racism by the proslavery racist elements.

Teaching our children the TRUTH about the Consitution would aid in decreasing the kinds of alienation still harbored in disenfranchised communities and those that insist on facilitating the lies and errors of racial supremacy which unfortunately remains in the subconscience and values of many conservative Christian groups. It should be noted that those "bound to service for a term of years" were equally treated as slaves or property under those years servitude(This group includes my ancestors). They were called indentured servants. However, their children were taken from them as the very same social conditions that existed in England towards commoners and peasants were imitated and replicated on English, Irish, Asians, Italian, Spanish, Greeks, and any other immigrant."

 

I should update my website since we are in Epping for the last year with mixed students. I hope that fulfills your requirements and you will now send us a donation. And what concerns the sponsors well we get free resin from Cray Valley but that does not pay the bills. So if you know of any gatkruipers they are welcome to contact me.

 

Not gatkruipers but good guys. Try AMT in JHB, Central boating in Cape Town (speak to Rob Sharp) CMH group JHB (big importer and supplier of marine goods over the whole spectrum) and perhaps you can get some more support.

Email me your banking details at wynand@in.com and I will make an EFT donation - not much since I am a pensioner but a token of good faith towards your expenses helping the deaf...

 

Wynand trust me I have tried all those companies (by the way Rob Sharp now works at Abromowitz) Mostly the answer I get is that I should ask the government to finance (which they did several times) The most luck I have had was with Ducth companies, Dutch consulate, German consulates etc if it wasn't for the overseas sponsors we would be nowhere.
I also thought you might like to know how I ended in Khayelitsha and how everything started. I was doing inspections in Pretoria at an inflatable manufacturer, his grandchild was deaf so he employed a lot of deaf employees. He told me it was a shame that these people could not get a chance to properly learn the job, I promised him I would do what I could. Unfortunately I could not do much in Pretoria as I am from Hout Bay. But there is also a Dominican school for the deaf in Hout Bay which I approached with my proposal. So I started collecting funds and once I had enough I went back to the school where they told me that the parents did not want their children to do manual jobs and if I could not give them IT courses instead. I was desperate and started calling around all the schools for the deaf in the WC and the last school I called was in Khayelitsha (yes just like everybody else I was not 100% comfortable with it) but they said they were very glad to accept the offer- And so it is that the anc gatkruipers, affirmative action or whatever you want to call them received an education which the white kids in Hout Bay found below their "level".

Now years later the other deaf institutes have seen the value and so we started in Epping with a mixed group. Or maybe they found out that IT was after all not such a good job

WBBA FNB branche code 204009 Acc 62115722630 the amount does not matter, it is the support that matters.

 

Whitewash it, put it in context, spin it any way you can. The fact of the matter is that the slave-holding southerners got to count three-fifths of an extremely large number of slaves for purposes of apportioning the seats in Congress. That means slave-owning southern whites had a bigger voice in our government per capita than did their non-slave-owning kin up north.

Trying to equate slaves with indentured servants is a red herring. Indentured servitude was for a fixed period, generally three to seven years, not a condition the servants were born into and condemned to face their entire lives. It was often entered into voluntarily by poor immigrants (or arranged by their fathers), as a way to pay their passage across the Atlantic. And although a woman's servitude might be increased to compensate for the productive time lost during her pregnancy, her child wasn't sold as a slave.

You're also throwing up a smokescreen when you talk about freed slaves, or slaves who bought their freedom-- because those lucky ones were an extremely small minority. Especially since slaves had no way of saving up money, unless their owner let them keep part of their earnings. Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker in Washington D.C. is a classic example. Society women paid exorbitant sums for the dresses she designed and sewed, but her owner kept every penny. She only achieved her freedom because her loyal (and politically influential) customers got together, and donated enough money to buy it for her.

And free blacks, even those born free, were often at risk of being kidnapped by slavers, and sold into slavery somewhere else. This was especially true in New York City and Washington D.C. The Siege of Washington, a book I just finished reading, rather casually mentions it as one of the main threats faced by able-bodied free blacks in the nation's capital before the outbreak of the Civil War.

And your link is wrong about slaves and indentured servants being treated equally for population and tax purposes; the author has apparently misunderstood the language.. The Constitution treated indentured servants as whole persons - because after their service was done, they were freed. Most of them became farmers, or farmer's wives. In fact, many of their contracts stipulated that at the end of their servitude they would receive a piece of land from their masters.

Article 1, Section 1.3, Clause 1.3.3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. "other Persons" = slaves.... Free persons explicitly includes those temporarily bound to service, and explicitly excludes Indians. Which probably disappointed some of the western areas with a large Indian population.

By the way, indentured servitude almost ceased to exist in the South after the Revolution, as indentured servants were replaced by black slaves. Rising prices for English servants made the 'rather elastic supply of Africans' comparatively less expensive and more desirable. Black slaves were also easier to keep subjugated than poor whites were.... and commingling white indentured servants with black indentured servants and slaves had led to an alliance between the groups during Bacon's Rebellion. The southern white elites responded by drawing a hard racial line to make sure it didn't happen again.

edit: I think you might want to tread lightly, when it comes to accusing me of not understanding American history (if you did; I'm not sure where the line is between your own words and your quotes). I suspect I've studied it at least as much American history as you have, and probably from less biased sources. I read history books, not political tracts and ideological diatribes.

By the way, here's a very good site on the history of Northern slavery, and how and why it eventually declined. It does a pretty good job of explaining the tangled web of economic interests, politics, religions, personal beliefs, rising criminal rates in some areas from influxes of runaway blacks, black competition for white jobs, etc., that influenced Northern positions on slavery. It's really worth reading.

Interestingly, it says that one of the hotspots of sentiment that slavery should be ended was actually in Virginia at the time of the Constitutional Convention. If the author is right, slavery came very close to being eliminated nationwide at that time, and would probably have died a natural death in a generation or two anyway, had it not been for the invention of the cotton gin. That suddenly made slave labor immensely profitable again....

http://www.slavenorth.com/index.html

 

Good going taniwha.