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Politics : CONSPIRACY THEORIES -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (210)	9/13/2005 9:08:19 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 418

Re: What we find, for example, is that a black applicant for medical school with a C or D average in Matric is given preference over a white with distinctions and an A average. The said reason is that they want more black doctors, not just South African doctors, but black doctors. Another example is business, where they have published quotas of the number of blacks in relation to whites that must be employed. That's exactly what... ...whites are doing in Europe, the US, Latin America,.... Nothing to write home about! A Belgian case study: fr.groups.yahoo.com Gus

To: sea_urchin who wrote (210)	9/13/2005 9:19:57 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 418

Re: ...the proof of the pudding is in the eating and what we find in SA is virtual collapse of effective service delivery in every government department be it criminal justice, police, health, the military, you name it. Only the tax department works reasonably efficiently. You tell me it's the same in... ...Russia and every Latin American country, from Mexico to Argentina. Oh wait --while we're at it-- the latest from Venezuela --I'm sure it'll strike a chord with you: Troops seize British-owned cattle ranch in Venezuela Jo Tuckman Saturday September 10, 2005 The Guardian Venezuelan troops have reportedly seized a huge British-owned cattle ranch as part of an agrarian reform programme targeting large estates that the government says it wants to redistribute to the poor. Agroflora, a local affiliate of Vestey Group owned by meatpacking tycoon Lord Vestey, said in a statement on Thursday that a convoy of troops and cooperative farmers had arrived at the ranch, which is located in the south-western state of Apure. However, official confirmation of the events could not immediately be obtained. The land redistribution plans are rooted in a new constitution, which was passed soon after President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, and which defines large estates as being "contrary to the social interest". A land reform law was approved in 2001. This authorised expropriation in cases where historical ownership cannot be proved to go back far enough, or when estate owners allow land to lie idle. Two months ago, the national lands institute, a government agency, ruled that the 66,700-acre ranch owned by the Vestey Group in Apure failed on both these considerations. In its statement, quoted by the Associated Press, the company said the property provided pasture for 8,500 cattle, although some of the land was not usable during the rainy season because of flooding. The company has 12 ranches in Venezuela and claims to provide 4% of all the beef consumed in the country. The Apure ranch is one of two properties owned by the group which has been in the eye of the land reform storm for the past year. The other property is another cattle ranch located in the central state of Cojedes. In March, the national land institute ruled that this estate was unlawfully held and underused. At the time, the company blamed the land's under-productivity on the invasion of about 1,000 squatters encouraged by President Chávez's promises to help the many poor in the oil-rich country. The president claims that a high proportion of the largest estates in Venezuela were illegally obtained through corruption, before he took office, and that redistribution will help alleviate poverty and improve productivity. The fear of widespread expropriations helped to unify the anti-Chávez opposition that tried to oust him, first with a coup in 2002 and then with a two-month strike. The president bounced back by winning a referendum on his rule a year ago. Since that time, the land reform process has accelerated with investigations beginning into dozens of large estates across the country. guardian.co.uk

To: sea_urchin who wrote (210)	9/13/2005 10:09:09 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 418

Debunking the... ...The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994). In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004),[], we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead? [...] ncsociology.org [] rowmanlittlefield.com^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742510565