Daya Naicker, the editor of the radical South African student magazine, Mnyama, has died. Few will have heard of the title, which is the Zulu for Black, and none will have read it in print. The first edition submitted to the authorities at The Island – the University College for Indians housed in a former army barracks in Durban Bay -was promptly banned. Continue reading
Blind faith
Boris Johnson, the latest British prime minister, kissed the Queen’s hand and rushed out to fly the flag outside his new lodgings in Downing Street. “Everyone knows the values that flag represents. It stands for freedom and free speech and habeas corpus and the rule of law and above all it stands for democracy.” If, somewhere in the bowels of Belmarsh, Julian Assange muttered jack shit he would have been entirely correct. Continue reading
Chinaman
I didn’t watch England beat New Zealand and win the Cricket World Cup. For some time now I have maintained an idiosyncratic protest against neoliberal cricket, particularly the strain cultivated in India. In 1992 however in a short film for the BBC I predicted the renaissance of leg spin bowling in England. And I hope the leaders of the Commonwealth meeting in 2013 were entertained by this piece included in the official publication. Continue reading
Exit Notes – bile from the bench
There is a smug claim that camouflages a political economy of exploitation, deception, criminality, plunder and war. It goes like this. Democracy and the rule of law are fundamental to the freedom and sovereignty of the people of the US and the UK. These ideals are zealously guarded by a vigilant press which exposes skulduggery, holds power to account and enables the public to see that justice has been done. Continue reading
Exit Notes – the case of the broken condom
For almost three years neoliberals on both sides of the Atlantic have waged a surreal campaign to dislodge Donald Trump, reverse the Brexit decision and buy time to manage the collapse of capitalism. Resistance is strangled by the politics of identity even as the fiction of democracy and the rule of law dissolves in a reconfigured class and cold war. Continue reading
Yellow Vest Country
The trashing of Greece by the European Commission and Central Bank – in cahoots with the IMF- conveniently disappeared down the collective memory hole of the UK’s political class and media establishment. This is entirely explicable. The brutal rape and ruin of a member state knocks the gloss off cosmopolitan cuddling. Continue reading
The age of treason
MPs in Westminster are treasonously colluding with a foreign power to undermine democracy in Britain. They are cheer-leading a campaign by the Israel lobby to vilify the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, as an anti-Semite. The aim is to prevent the election of a socialist prime minister supportive of Palestinian rights and to neutralise the BDS campaign against Israel. Continue reading
The Indian Question
Unsurprisingly two decades of purified capitalism administered by the African National Congress – with the help of the IMF and World Bank -have done little for South Africa’s poor and dispossessed. Putting it charitably the party was outwitted into giving away control of the economy and enticed into abandoning its faith in socialism. What next? Continue reading
Pink Floyd and thought control
Roger Waters makes a mighty statement in Barcelona about reality, humility and understanding. This piece by Phillip Roddis published in Offguardian should be admired for its virtues by journalists. The rest of us can just be inspired.
Barcelona, Roger Waters, White Helmets
War 111
Full spectrum dominance is dead. On March 1, addressing the Federal Assembly in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin announced Russia had achieved overwhelming military superiority over America. He said the US had wasted trillions of dollars of taxpayers money on defence systems that were useless against a new generation of Russian missiles. The US leadership had irresponsibly rejected overtures to reopen arms limitation talks and it was time to remove the war-mongers. Continue reading
Drowning Witches 