Jackie Selebi - South Africa's Police Commissioner and friend of the local Mafia

Jackie Selebi, until recent South Africa's Police Commissioner and head of Interpol has been suspended from his day job in South Africa and forced to resign as head of Interpol. The reason for all this? Well, Selebi admitted some time ago to be best friends with a local crime boss (drug trafficer Glen Agliotti), but insisted that this didn't affect his work. At long last, and despite interference by the country's President, Mr Mbeki, the National Prosecuting Authority has decided that it will charge Selebi with corruption and defeating the ends of justice. Even Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's outgoing President, couldn't protect Selebi anylonger. Despite some skirmishing from Selebi's underlings (eg his police arrested a senior member of the team investigating Selebi under drummed up charges that were straight thrown out of court), his day in court is looming - at long last.
I got to be honest, I can't stand Mr Selebi, he's a pompous, clearly inept, deeply overweight civilian with a strong preference for colourful uniforms. I recall like it was yesterday when I sat with him on a panel and he and I started a discussion about corruption in South Africa. His main mode of reasoning was to explain it away by saying that it wouldn't happen if there were not rich white Europeans (Selebi is a racist kinda character who fits well into the new South African dispensation) offering money to corrupt South Africans. I could see that there was actually some truth in this, yet it seemed at the same time plain stupid to suggest that the person who takes the money and allows him or herself to be bought is kind of innocent. It's clear to me now that Selebi might well have had himself in mind when he tried to suggest that it is (as always) the whities fault. Not a big surprise then that his mafia friend turns out to be a white bloke. He very much knew what he was talking about, it seems.
What is remarkable is how long it took to remove this shady character. The same applies to someone less shady but equally incompetent, South Africa's Minister for Health Prevention, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. All of these shenanigans can only be explained by the fact that the country is well and truly a one-party state and anything but a functioning democracy. Nobody really has the power to hold the South African government accountable for its failings, of which widespread corruption is just one.

Land of the free and all...

I don't know what you think about US teenage boys running around in baggy pants usually displaying bits and pieces of their (usually unusually tasteless) underwear (due to the pants hanging sufficiently low at their backsides). Well, for a long time in the land of the free (home of the body bag) there has been debate on rightwing 'news' outlets such as Fox about whether or not something should be done to force such teenagers to pull up their pants so to speak.
Well, our freedom loving and defending neighbours to the south of the Canadian border have decided to take drastic action. In a number of jurisdictions parents (!) can now be send to jail if their kids are found in public with sagging pants.
There are quite a few interesting questions (some serious, some not so serious) that one can ask in this context: a very basic one would be 'what's so terrible about teenagers displaying cloth other than jeans on their backsides'? What exactly is different about that type of cotton compared to other types of cotton? It seems as if in the land of the free government now determines which types of cotton you may show in public as part of your wardrobe, and which types of cotton are so 'no no' that they could get your parents into jail. And, what if a teenage kid wants his parents to get out of his way and into jail? All he needs to do is to buy a pair of loose fitting jeans, let them hang down his bum, and show off his red satin underwear (yes, the one with the disney cartoon on it :). Welcome to the land of the free in action. I wonder whether guys wearing muscle shirts in summer will be next on the jailbird list, or women displaying too much flesh for the liking of the taste police.
The whole point of youth culture has always been to protest against 'grown up', old fogies' mainstream views of the world, tastes, etc. Now this could well take your parents into jail.
Beats me... It's tempting to tell those taste police officers to get a life and get out of other people's pants.