mandela was the perfect neo-liberal: campaigned on the left, governed on the HARD RIGHT.
Far from presiding over a “post-apartheid” South Africa, the popular-front Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has instituted a neo-apartheid capitalist regime, still subjugating the impoverished black working people in the interests of the same capitalist masters.
http://www.internationalist.org/southafricaminemassacre1208.html
http://roarmag.org/2013/11/south-africa-marikana-anc-poor/
---
i'm not kneejerking. the death of mandela is a good opportunity to draw the world's attention to the fact that, in truth, not much in south africa has actually changed.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/26519
i think this article makes some valid points, but it goes a little too far and in the process exposes the author's reactionary white privilege.
my reading of mandela is essentially that he didn't really know what he was doing. he campaigned from the left based on it's ideals and then found himself in power at the confluence of the collapse of communism and the rise of neo-liberalism. he followed his advisers to the implementation of failed reforms.
i've compared him to trudeau before and will again. people attack trudeau for his economic policies. the truth is trudeau didn't actually understand anything about economics, he was a lawyer with an interest in philosophy, and if you spend some time searching through his biography and reading some of his statements you'll realize he admitted as much. on the one hand, trudeau took power in an economic mess - nixon shock, opec embargo, collapse of keynesian economic theory. even if he did have a clue, the challenges were substantial. he would have had to rely on advice, regardless. and we now know that the experts studying the situation were as flabbergasted as anybody else.
so, trudeau - a social liberal by any concept of the term and one with a background in workplace organizing that ran on an election platform that promised direct democracy - ended up carrying out experiments on behalf of milton friedman. canada liked monetarism before it was cool. and trudeau had no idea what he was implementing.
likewise, when mandela's advisers came to him and presented trickle down as a solution, he went for it because he trusted the advice and believed it was the way forward in a post-communist future. the task, now, is to point out that it failed. there's no need to vilify and no value in it.
---
this article is very similar to points i made elsewhere.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/12/the-two-mandelas/
--
it's hardly a "secret history"; it's available in any encyclopedia, even.
further, when you look at the video, it's not even clear that obama realized what he was doing. it just looks like he's shaking hands on a line. it even looks like he asks raul who he actually is and sort of cringes when he realizes it.
but this puts the silly media response into proper context: you really can't "celebrate the legacy of nelson mandela" WITHOUT shaking castro's hand in some way or another.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/11/the_secret_history_of_how_cuba
Thursday, December 5, 2013
"For the Normans never desired any of the Lombards to win a decisive victory, in case this should be to their disadvantage. But now supporting the one and then aiding the other, they prevented anyone being completely ruined."
as professional soldiers, the normans didn't want to see an end to conflict in italy. that would have been bad for business. every time it looked like one of the princes had an upper hand, they'd bail to join forces with a smaller prince in order to ensure the war didn't end. they'd go back and forth up the countryside, reconquering the same areas over and over again for different princes. nobody really trusted them, but nobody knew how to get rid of them, either - that they were there was a fact of life, and, certainly, nobody wanted to *fight* them.
it's amazing how little things have changed....
this is a good case study, though, in explaining how abolishing the state and maintaining currency exchange will not eliminate war.
as professional soldiers, the normans didn't want to see an end to conflict in italy. that would have been bad for business. every time it looked like one of the princes had an upper hand, they'd bail to join forces with a smaller prince in order to ensure the war didn't end. they'd go back and forth up the countryside, reconquering the same areas over and over again for different princes. nobody really trusted them, but nobody knew how to get rid of them, either - that they were there was a fact of life, and, certainly, nobody wanted to *fight* them.
it's amazing how little things have changed....
this is a good case study, though, in explaining how abolishing the state and maintaining currency exchange will not eliminate war.
on the question of cultural appropriation in the nutcracker suite
has there been a discussion around cultural appropriation and the nutcracker suite? is it even really christmas music?
dunno. but this arrangement for classical guitar is a personal favourite.
dunno. but this arrangement for classical guitar is a personal favourite.
in all truth, the spanish dance sounds like german music. i'll give tchaikovsky free reign with the russian dance. the arabic dance should probably be called the chechen dance or something; it might not sound like something from the heart of the arab world, but russia has a very large muslim population with it's own culture and you can sort of hear a synthesis between russian and muslim ideas in a way that kind of makes sense, if you only assume that the composer had no real understanding of anything south of the caucasus mountains. and, likewise, tchaikovsky's concept of "chinese" probably relates more to mongolian settlement in central russia than to anything legitimately sinic. russian/mongolian as a hybrid culture is also a pretty real thing.
but, i'm missing the point. i don't want to comment on the actual ballet other than to concede any points about trivialization as entirely valid.
the thing is that the composer was probably mostly working with scales, modes and tonalities. we can debate the value of doing so, but starting off on a specific note is said - within western music theory - to have an ethnic character. so, there is a "spanish mode" and an "arabic mode". and there is a real correlation there. that's probably the extent to which tchaikovsky made any attempt to sound genuine.
that's how davis got the name of this jam. it's not spanish in any way, it's just phrygian.
but, i'm missing the point. i don't want to comment on the actual ballet other than to concede any points about trivialization as entirely valid.
the thing is that the composer was probably mostly working with scales, modes and tonalities. we can debate the value of doing so, but starting off on a specific note is said - within western music theory - to have an ethnic character. so, there is a "spanish mode" and an "arabic mode". and there is a real correlation there. that's probably the extent to which tchaikovsky made any attempt to sound genuine.
that's how davis got the name of this jam. it's not spanish in any way, it's just phrygian.
so, i just watched a three hour mit food security symposium and what i learned is that, because meat consumption is correlated with wealth, the best way to promote the shift to vegetarianism is to promote policies that decrease total wealth.
they weren't even asking the right questions. so of course they didn't have any useful answers.
they danced around the climate change issue, but the closest thing to a straight answer i could pull out what was "we find that the greater uncertainty makes it difficult to make predictions, and consequently to plan".
it's fair on some level. but it's not encouraging.
what they're all more concerned about is malthus...
first, i should point out the sarcasm if it's not obvious. to them, the issue is trying to find a way to produce enough livestock to feed 8 billion people. the idea of not producing livestock seems to be outside of the ideas being contemplated.
but, malthus. he thought we'd all starve to death. a simple mathematical model.
it turned out he was wrong, but he was wrong for a specific reason: as quickly as population has risen, and it has risen quickly, technology has simply moved ahead faster: mechanization, refrigeration, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides...
that doesn't mean his model was wrong, it just means he didn't realize how useful oil would be.
of course, there's a cost.
but these guys get that. and now they have the blind faith that malthus was screaming at us all to avoid. technology has been elevated to this sort of religion, defined by some kind of creed of moore's law.
well, i'm willing to listen. skeptical. i mean, it has to burst at some point. tomatoes are finite.
infinite tomato.
anyways, what's your fancy technology that's going to beat the math this time? i'm waiting...
it's....
africa.
no, for real.
africa.
well, ok. africa is huge. makes sense on some level. that's math you have to do with a pen and a paper, not guess in your head - not due to computational complexity, but because the precision of the calculation is important. there is probably lots of arable land in africa, which is a really unfathomably big place. it just might work...
but, you're going to work in the effects of desertification, right?
*crickets*
you're going to make sure there's carbon offsetting from cutting down all those trees, right?
*crickets*
here, in the heart of the empire? we'll be the last to starve.
i'm going to retreat back to my previous suggestion of terraforming mars into a natural strawberryological cycle.
we could promote it by getting strawberry shortcake to do a rendition of "strawberry rain".
no cryptoracism.
"the red planet". wouldn't even create galactic chromopollution.
they weren't even asking the right questions. so of course they didn't have any useful answers.
they danced around the climate change issue, but the closest thing to a straight answer i could pull out what was "we find that the greater uncertainty makes it difficult to make predictions, and consequently to plan".
it's fair on some level. but it's not encouraging.
what they're all more concerned about is malthus...
first, i should point out the sarcasm if it's not obvious. to them, the issue is trying to find a way to produce enough livestock to feed 8 billion people. the idea of not producing livestock seems to be outside of the ideas being contemplated.
but, malthus. he thought we'd all starve to death. a simple mathematical model.
it turned out he was wrong, but he was wrong for a specific reason: as quickly as population has risen, and it has risen quickly, technology has simply moved ahead faster: mechanization, refrigeration, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides...
that doesn't mean his model was wrong, it just means he didn't realize how useful oil would be.
of course, there's a cost.
but these guys get that. and now they have the blind faith that malthus was screaming at us all to avoid. technology has been elevated to this sort of religion, defined by some kind of creed of moore's law.
well, i'm willing to listen. skeptical. i mean, it has to burst at some point. tomatoes are finite.
infinite tomato.
anyways, what's your fancy technology that's going to beat the math this time? i'm waiting...
it's....
africa.
no, for real.
africa.
well, ok. africa is huge. makes sense on some level. that's math you have to do with a pen and a paper, not guess in your head - not due to computational complexity, but because the precision of the calculation is important. there is probably lots of arable land in africa, which is a really unfathomably big place. it just might work...
but, you're going to work in the effects of desertification, right?
*crickets*
you're going to make sure there's carbon offsetting from cutting down all those trees, right?
*crickets*
here, in the heart of the empire? we'll be the last to starve.
i'm going to retreat back to my previous suggestion of terraforming mars into a natural strawberryological cycle.
we could promote it by getting strawberry shortcake to do a rendition of "strawberry rain".
no cryptoracism.
"the red planet". wouldn't even create galactic chromopollution.
the WTO panel found that the FIT program did not qualify as an excluded procurement because, in its opinion, the energy purchased by the Ontario Power Authority was resold on commercial terms by the Government of Ontario and other public hydro entities. The Appellate Body agreed that the program did not benefit from the GATT exemption for procurement but for narrower, more complicated reasons. Their decision hinged on the fact that under the FIT program, the product to which the discriminatory local content requirements applied was generation equipment, while the product actually purchased by the Ontario government was electricity. In the Appellate Body’s view, the domestic content quota could not be said to “govern” the procurement of electricity, and therefore fell outside the scope of the exclusion.
so, if i were running the province, and i wanted to be a smartass, i could suggest that the wto ruling is calling for nationalization of the energy sector.
coal is one thing as there's a major input variable, but if water is publicly owned and wind and sun aren't owned at all i don't see why we should open power plant construction up to the private sector. that is to say that i don't see any reason why the government shouldn't build solar and wind and water plants and run them on cost; i don't see why we should collectively agree to allow somebody to profit off of generation.
it's not about market rules or natural laws, it's just about what one decides is "fair". and, of course, about business controlling government and saying "no, we won't allow this, we can profit off of it.".
i mean, the price of electricity in this theoretical grid doesn't actually measure anything except supply/demand, which is artificially manipulated. it's pretty much just a fiat scheme by a handful of wily business people. and i really don't see why we should pay into it.
there was a big kerfuffle a while back about being taxed for breathing, but we're increasingly getting to the reality where we're paying (quite a bit) for sunlight.
so, if i were running the province, and i wanted to be a smartass, i could suggest that the wto ruling is calling for nationalization of the energy sector.
coal is one thing as there's a major input variable, but if water is publicly owned and wind and sun aren't owned at all i don't see why we should open power plant construction up to the private sector. that is to say that i don't see any reason why the government shouldn't build solar and wind and water plants and run them on cost; i don't see why we should collectively agree to allow somebody to profit off of generation.
it's not about market rules or natural laws, it's just about what one decides is "fair". and, of course, about business controlling government and saying "no, we won't allow this, we can profit off of it.".
i mean, the price of electricity in this theoretical grid doesn't actually measure anything except supply/demand, which is artificially manipulated. it's pretty much just a fiat scheme by a handful of wily business people. and i really don't see why we should pay into it.
there was a big kerfuffle a while back about being taxed for breathing, but we're increasingly getting to the reality where we're paying (quite a bit) for sunlight.
ok, i know that the status quo is frightened of the idea of free food.
and i know that carleton university admin represents the neo-liberal status quo, if not something quite a bit to the right of it. this is the same university that recently named a building after preston manning and has been propping up a student union that wants to shut down it's public interest research group chapter. it wants to market itself as a Conservative Party university.
but connecting these two things into such a brazenly anti-communitarian action is really something else. it's a bunch of kids growing carrots. chill out...
https://www.facebook.com/carletongsa/posts/698143683538835
i realize they don't see it as kids growing carrots, they see it as COMMUNISTS!!!!!111 growing carrots. and they're not wrong, really. but there's a more disturbing undercurrent.
first, the hypocrisy. this is the same administration that will support a "free speech wall". as is usually the case with authority, "free speech" means "sanctioned free speech". and "free food" with a (anarcho-)communist message isn't sanctioned free speech.
there's this tendency to blame the whole thing on an exclusive contract that the school has signed with a big catering company. it seems like a rational explanation. it creates the right boogeyman. but if you spend any time on campus, you'll notice that christian groups (and specifically christian groups) don't have any problems getting an exception to the exclusive contract.
...meaning that you're only allowed to hand out free food at carleton under the condition that the school approves your message, and the message the school approves is essentially thatcherism: free market economics and churches for social work.
it seems like it's not just an explicitly anti-leftist thing. i mean, it's clear that the school doesn't want leftists in the tunnels handing out food, and that's part of it. but it's also clear that if you want to try to do any kind of socially sort of thing that's not specifically connected to christianity, you're going to get harassed. it's a very exclusive message they're pushing, to try not just to decrease the role of leftism but also to increase the role of religion.
it would be scary if it wasn't right out of engels. vulgar marxism to it's absolute extreme.
what these kids might have to start doing is co-opting the church groups. in some sense, that's multi-tasking.
and i know that carleton university admin represents the neo-liberal status quo, if not something quite a bit to the right of it. this is the same university that recently named a building after preston manning and has been propping up a student union that wants to shut down it's public interest research group chapter. it wants to market itself as a Conservative Party university.
but connecting these two things into such a brazenly anti-communitarian action is really something else. it's a bunch of kids growing carrots. chill out...
https://www.facebook.com/carletongsa/posts/698143683538835
i realize they don't see it as kids growing carrots, they see it as COMMUNISTS!!!!!111 growing carrots. and they're not wrong, really. but there's a more disturbing undercurrent.
first, the hypocrisy. this is the same administration that will support a "free speech wall". as is usually the case with authority, "free speech" means "sanctioned free speech". and "free food" with a (anarcho-)communist message isn't sanctioned free speech.
there's this tendency to blame the whole thing on an exclusive contract that the school has signed with a big catering company. it seems like a rational explanation. it creates the right boogeyman. but if you spend any time on campus, you'll notice that christian groups (and specifically christian groups) don't have any problems getting an exception to the exclusive contract.
...meaning that you're only allowed to hand out free food at carleton under the condition that the school approves your message, and the message the school approves is essentially thatcherism: free market economics and churches for social work.
it seems like it's not just an explicitly anti-leftist thing. i mean, it's clear that the school doesn't want leftists in the tunnels handing out food, and that's part of it. but it's also clear that if you want to try to do any kind of socially sort of thing that's not specifically connected to christianity, you're going to get harassed. it's a very exclusive message they're pushing, to try not just to decrease the role of leftism but also to increase the role of religion.
it would be scary if it wasn't right out of engels. vulgar marxism to it's absolute extreme.
what these kids might have to start doing is co-opting the church groups. in some sense, that's multi-tasking.
mandela was the perfect neo-liberal: campaigned on the left, governed on the HARD RIGHT.
Far from presiding over a “post-apartheid” South Africa, the popular-front Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has instituted a neo-apartheid capitalist regime, still subjugating the impoverished black working people in the interests of the same capitalist masters.
http://www.internationalist.org/southafricaminemassacre1208.html
Far from presiding over a “post-apartheid” South Africa, the popular-front Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has instituted a neo-apartheid capitalist regime, still subjugating the impoverished black working people in the interests of the same capitalist masters.
http://www.internationalist.org/southafricaminemassacre1208.html
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