4 Bones and Counting

I am amazed at the amount of time that has elapsed since I started this blog in a tea shop in south Delhi four years ago today.  Last year I thought it unnecessary to even mark the third bone.

Since Delhi this blog has become a proud member of the Aboriginal News Group (ANG) and I count the Angryindian and Sina (my co-editors at ANG) as two of the most inspirational and committed struggle folk I know.

Please allow me to share a few user statistics behind this blog.  

The blog averages about 120 hits a day.  Since February 3, 2007, there have been 77.477 hits in total according to Clustermaps.

The vast majority of readers are in the US, followed by South Africa, the UK, India and Germany.

These are the top 5 of the most read/viewed blog entries over the last 6 months according to Blogger:

1. African American Women on NBC News (November 27, 2007) - 428 pageviews

2. Fun and Lynching (June 13, 2007) - 330 pageviews

3. Pedal Voyeurism (June 11, 2007) - 291 pageviews 

4. Eid Mubarak (September 21, 2009) - 265 pageviews

5. Remembering the Soweto Riots (June 16, 2008) - 264 pageviews

 My friend and fellow blogger Dade Carriega of the excellent blog "Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing" is the third most popular spot to re-direct reader traffic here (from May 2010 till now).

It strikes me funny that the top three most read/viewed posts are from 2007 when I was in Portland, Oregon, for six months before returning to my hometown of Kimberley in South Africa.

The Pedal Voyeurism post touched a raw nerve among the white bicycle devotees (and a few others) and still does.  The post led to someone starting a blog for the sole purpose of dissing my thinking and rounding the delusional into pedal power consensus.

My friend and fellow blogger, Eugene of  "Pudgy Indian 3", put the final exclamation mark on the Pedal Voyeurism post and the furor when he wrote a comment here in July 2006:

Bicyclists, like vegans, seem to get this attitude of "holiness" by simply riding a bike or not eating meat. In my activism, I have had to face off with MANY vegans who were holier than me because I eat meat. But, as I pointed out to them; "Being vegan doesn't make you holy, it only makes you vegan." Being a bicyclist doesn't make you holy, it only makes you a bicyclist.

Eugene's words of deconstruction are profound for many reasons.  I remain in awe of his no-nonsense style of blogging.

In the four years of writing here I still believe that this blog, and blogging, is not real struggle.  To pose as if blogging on a capitalist tool like Blogger is struggle, or revolutionary, is delusional.

When I write here I remind myself that this is just a blog.  Still, I represent and believe what I write here and for that reason I do not hide who I am.

In the four years I have written from India, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico, the US, and now South Africa.

At each stop the issues have been about social and political justice.  In this time I have also thought a lot about identity in the post-apartheid era.

The issues of black identity and black struggle have mostly dominated the 46 bones that count my life.

In the last couple of years the focus on black struggle and identity has lost its weight for me.  It was inevitable in the sense that being black and in struggle is not a fact but a construction or a framework.

I have been moved and my politics advanced.

I recognize that among the oppressors are prominent black faces aligned with class interests that cut across continents and ages, races, genders, and sexual orientations.

Their recall of being black and blackness is duplicitous and meant just to amass wealth and power over all else like those who came before and the others who come before and on and on.

Changing times have impacted largely on the need to re-frame resistance and it is for this reason that being black and in struggle is not my priority reference and definitely not an accurate descriptor of my struggle activism and thinking anymore.

In a sense this 'arrival' is consistent with what I have developed in my academic work over the years.  I have argued that the notion of making race irrelevant to struggle must begin with resisting whiteness.

That much has not changed.

What has changed is the racial-class make-up of whiteness and its power arrangements.  Inside whiteness race is a relevant trading scheme meant to express interests and to configure power.

Whiteness is still about domination and thievery and oppression.  Only now, powerful black and brown and Other faces have been admitted to make whiteness, as an ideological value system, universal in its dominance.

In the last year or so I have met many black powerful and influential people alongside the 'garden variety'.

What has struck me is that some of the strongest adherents to whiteness are black people who will be severely offended to be called white or the fruit variety thereof (coconut).

In a Gramscian sense, whiteness is the uber ideology.  The common sense toward 'greater wealth and happiness.'

This universal 'truism' is imbibed without historical interrogation and context and at the "end of the day" it is hard to tell a black oppressor from a white oppressor for the values they espouse are the same.

In this frame, being black and protesting an authentic blackness is contrived for among those who suffer the death knell of drones from above and those who eat destructively manufactured foods from Monsanto are not drawn together by skins.

The oppressed are more complex than the binary of race that has delivered Mandela and Obama to the power positions they occupy inside the value system of whiteness.

I now understand what Frantz Fanon meant when he said: "I have seen the future of the black man and it is white."

For too long these words smelled of defeat and pessimism I wanted to believe did not exist.

But it does exist in ideology and in structure.

I hope to expand my thinking here and to use this platform to speak without guarded academic jargon (as best I can).  And I will hear criticism of all kinds except that which espouses racist violence and directs personal attacks.

Thank you for reading.

Here's to the next bone ... of contention that is ;0)

Onward!

Road Rage? Just Lob a Grenade To Clear the Way!

Only in South Africa, perhaps?

A man lobbed a grenade into a group of people who were blocking the road.  The man, a police officer, will appear in court on charges of attempted murder.

It is unclear where he got the grenade from.  I heard a supervisor of his talk about his demeanor and the grenade.

According to the supervisor he is a nice guy.  A regular dude who was in possession of a grenade (illegally) and made a bad choice.

Huh?

My head hurts.  A man was killed as a result of the grenade and the fool made a bad choice?

Damn.  What next hey?

Read the short news brief here.

More Blacks in Jail In England and Wales than in the US

by Randeep Rameesh
The Guardian
October 11, 2010

The proportion of black people in prison in England and Wales is higher than in the United States, a landmark report released today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission reveals.

The commission's first triennial report into the subject, How Fair is Britain, shows that the proportion of people of African-Caribbean and African descent incarcerated here is almost seven times greater to their share of the population. In the United States, the proportion of black prisoners to population is about four times greater.

The report, which aims to set out how to measure "fairness" in Britain, says that ethnic minorities are "substantially over-represented in the custodial system". It suggests many of those jailed have "mental health issues, learning disabilities, have been in care or experienced abuse".

Experts and politicians said over-representation of black men was a result of decades of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system and an overly punitive approach to penal affairs.

"People will be and should be shocked by this data," said Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust. "We have a tendency to say we are better than the US, but we have not got prison right."

Lyon said that although there had been "numerous efforts to address racism in the prison system … we have yet to get a better relationship between justice authorities and black communities. Instead we have ended up with mistrust breeding mistrust."

Read the rest of this Guardian article  here.

Also see the How Fair is Britain report here.

So What Exactly Do You Consider Yourself?

HR: "How do I put this diplomatically?  Ummmm ... we have equity targets and need to know ... errrr ... well, we need to know what you consider yourself to be."

Me:  "What do you mean?  I don't consider anything.  I am as I appear."

HR: "I appreciate that but we have an equity audit and the government needs to know.  Do you consider yourself Indian or coloured?"

Me: *incredulous blank stare*

HR: "I was asked to put this question to you because we are not sure what to put you down as.  You may look Indian but then coloured people can look Indian."

Me: "During apartheid my race was defined for me.  My sister was given an Indian identity number and I was given a Cape Malay identity number.  But this government does not have a category for being abused into race categories, right?  Or being made to be between races by the old oppressive population registration laws."

HR: "No they don't.  So would you say you are coloured then?"

Me: "No I would not say I am coloured even though up until I was sixteen I grew up in what was a coloured suburb.  My dad who was registered Indian was arrested one night for being an Indian and living in a coloured house.  It was ugly.  My mother's uncle who was registered as a 'Cape Malay' turned him into the police after a family dispute over where my great-grandmother who was said to be Cape Malay should live."

HR: "That must have been a strange night.  So what exactly do you consider yourself?  We have a deadline to meet and we must show proof that we are meeting our equity targets."

Me: *Shaking my head in disbelief*  "It is funny that this process of re-racialisation is so important to our black government now that we are supposedly free.  So really all that is needed is for me to acquiesce to pressure and collapse my being and the struggles that were fought to bring me this far into an apartheid derived racial box."

HR: "These things are funny I know.  We put people into boxes I know.  We all have to live with things as they are.  Even when we don't like what it says or means."

Me: "Yeah and we do so even now that apartheid is over.  We free but we still racially contain ourselves in the nonsense that betrayed our humanity.  Is there a category there to explain that I lived in the US for 26 years?  And in that time I was Greek, Mexican, Arab, black, and whatever else anyone wanted me to be. At least in the US I could always opt out and just tick 'other' when my race or identity was queried."

HR: *puzzled stare*  "Ummm no there is no such category for living in America or outside South Africa but they do provide a box that says 'other'."

Me: "I know that is what I ticked when I started the HR registration process when I entered here 3 months ago.  I thought that would be enough."

Hr: "I know you did.  That is why we called this meeting to talk to you about what you put down.  We have to meet equity requirements and the government is strict about how people are classified so we need to be certain that what you indicated falls inside of the racial classifications made available to us."

Me: *We going nowhere stare*

HR: "So Ridwan, what exactly do you consider yourself?  What should I put down or do you need more time to think about it?  Please.  We are expected to file our report in two days."

Me: "I guess the whole spiel about being a nonracial country is just politics hey?  Perhaps like for outside consumption.  Or, since we are mostly folks who are not white here at the job maybe the government is really trying to make sure that white people are receiving fair treatment."

HR: "No not really.  We are just doing our jobs and need to know for record purposes.  So what should I put down?"

Me: "Well I guess 'Cape Malay' like my mother and her ancestors were defined by the whites.  And Indian too 'cause my dad's people, who are my people too, are from India about hundred and fifty years ago.  My dad never made it to India and no-one in India knew him before he passed but he was classified 'Indian'.  My mother is not even sure why she was classified as 'Cape Malay' because she was born in Port Elizabeth and she has never even met anyone who is really Malay but she knows a few aunties in Athlone who could pass for being 'Cape Malay' ... "

HR: "There is no Cape Malay category.  Just Indian or coloured.  Should I say coloured?"

Me: "So my mother's people have disappeared?  All those folks from District Six and Malay Camp in Kimberley do not exist in the new South Africa?"

HR: "Not really.  Most of those people just choose the 'coloured' category because it is easier for record purposes."

Me: "So coloured is a catch-all group for those who do not belong.  Not white enough for the apartheid whites and not black enough for the post-apartheid blacks.  This is indeed a strange time hey?  I barely existed in race terms before 1994 and now I find out that my entire being is e-raced by the need to put me into an equity target, or rather trap as I see it.

HR: "I guess we should just say coloured and see what happens."

Me: "I am not coloured and never have I ever been coloured.  Not for the white massa or the black massa that wants to define me as an equity target.  Is there a Muslim category because that would solve it all?"

HR: "You know there is not."

(Please God, take me to another space.  I'm about done here.)

Onward!

US Agency Exploited Guatemalans for Lethal Medical Tests

By Rafael Azul
wsws.org
October 5, 2010

The exposure of a 64-year-old secret study conducted in Guatemala on human subjects by the US Public Health Service has created an international uproar, forcing the US government to issue a belated apology.

The criminal experiment was brought to light last May in a paper presented by Wellesley University professor Susan Reverby to a conference in Minnesota. The New York Times published an article based on the paper last Friday. It is to be formally published this January.

The 29-page paper provides details of a secret experiment on Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers and mental patients by doctors employed by the US Public Health Service (PHS). In all, some 696 individuals were infected with gonorrhea, chancroid and syphilis, without their consent or knowledge. The experiment was part of a study on the evolution of these diseases and on the effects of penicillin in preventing, rather than curing, the disease. That study was never published, although some of its results did appear in other scientific papers.

Of the 497 infected with syphilis, 332 were treated at least partially and 85 appear to have been fully treated. However, 71 died during the studies.

Though not infected with syphilis, also conscripted for the experiment were nearly 400 orphan children whose ages ranged between 6 and 16 years, who were used to perfect the blood-testing procedures.

Blood drawn at Tuskegee

Reverby, found out about this secret study while researching another infamous syphilis experiment involving 399 black sharecroppers in Tuskegee, Alabama. That study, which began in 1931 and ended in 1972, was also carried out by the PHS. The participants were never informed that they had the venereal disease, nor were they treated for it. Many of them infected their wives and had children born with congenital syphilis. The Tuskegee experiment appears to have involved black men who had already contracted syphilis.

Not so the Guatemalan experiment. In that case, the researchers systematically infected their victims, at first by providing them with prostitutes who had also been deliberately infected by the researchers. When that proved inefficient, they directly exposed them to the germs of the venereal disease through abrasions on their genitals, and on their skin, and through injection. Shortly after contracting the disease, the victims were treated with penicillin.

According to Reverby’s report, the appearance of penicillin and other antibiotics and their early effectiveness, worried some researchers that syphilis and other infectious diseases would be wiped out before they could be thoroughly studied. The Guatemalan experiment was an extension of a similar experiment in which so-called volunteers at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana were infected with gonorrhea.

According to Reverby, Guatemala was chosen because it was a country where syphilis was less common than in the American South. The country was also virtually ruled by the United Fruit Company, and it had a Public Health Service that was willing to comply with the study in return for much needed medical supplies.

Furthermore it was alleged that the venereal disease affected highland Mayan Indians in a less virulent ways than it affected other Guatemalans. Reverby suggests that such racial pretexts are common when experimenters intend to target some oppressed population. A similar racial pretext was used in the Tuskegee trials.

The Guatemalan experiment took place between 1946 and 1948, years that coincided with the famous “Doctors’ trial” at Nuremberg that indicted 23 German doctors for engaging in experiments on thousands of concentration camp inmates; most of the victims were Jews, Poles, Roma, and Russians. Sixteen doctors were found guilty, seven of whom were hung. As a result of the trial, an international code of medical ethics was developed, the Nuremberg Code, which demands that any experimentation on humans be done only with informed consent and be medically useful.

The significance of the Doctors’ Trial was not lost on some of the PHS researchers. Dr. Cutler’s boss, a PHS physician whose name was R.C. Arnold, is said to have been troubled by the experimentation on the mentally ill, due to the fact that they could not give consent that “some goody organization” could find out and “raise a lot of smoke”.

Later on, the US doctor who led the Guatemalan experiment, Dr. John Cutler, a veteran of the Terre Haute study, also participated in the Tuskegee experiment. Joining the PHS in this study were the National Institute of Health and the Pan American Health Organization, at the time virtually a branch of the PHS, writes Reverby. Cutler died, unrepentant, in 2003.

During these years, the US government was actively destabilizing the Guatemalan regime of President Juan José Arevalo, whom the Truman administration accused of communism. The Arevalo government had succeeded the brutal dictatorship of Jorge Ubico, who ruled Guatemala with an iron fist, with US backing, between 1931 and 1944. In 1954, the CIA overthrew Arevalo’s successor, Jacobo Arbenz, and installed a government, that, much like Ubico’s, proceeded to rule Guatemala with brutal methods in the service of the banana companies.

The New York Times’ publication of Reverby’s findings set off quick reactions by the State Department and White House.

In a joint statement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said: “We deeply regret that it happened and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices.” Both officials promised that they would initiate a thorough investigation on this matter. Obama also called Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom to apologize.

The Guatemalan syphilis trial, however, exposes a practice of shady drug and medical trials that continue to this day, underscoring the cynicism of the US government’s apology.

The regret expressed by Clinton and Sebelius notwithstanding, unethical human experimentation in the United States did not stop with the Guatemalan or Tuskegee trials. Since the 1950s, cities such as San Francisco, have been sprayed with bacteria; as have the rapid transit systems in New York and Chicago. Between 1950 and 1972 mentally disabled children were intentionally infected with hepatitis. In addition, people have been unknowingly exposed to radioactive iodine, plutonium and other radioactive elements.

The use of impoverished people in colonial and semi colonial nations for drug trials is on the rise. Pharmaceutical companies routinely turn to countries such as Nigeria and South Africa for drug trials that would be illegal in the US. Often these populations are left to their own devices at the end of the trial or if things go wrong.

According to a study conducted by the Tufts Center for Drug Development, in 1997 the US conducted 5 percent of clinical studies outside of the United States and Western Europe, but by 2007 the share had increased to 29 percent.

In 2008 in Argentina, for example, 12 children died after they were used in a study of a new flu drug by the GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical company that involved thousands of impoverished children across South and Central America. None of the trials took place in Europe or the United States, due to high cost and more stringent standards. According to media reports, parents of some of the children said that they either had no idea that they were part of a drug test, or that they had been coerced into participating.

Article Credit 

Picture Credit

Development as Oppression

If you read nothing else on The Commonwealth Games in Delhi read  P.K. Vijayan's "The World Of The Games: Warring Illusions" in Countercurrents.org (October 3, 2010).

It is a powerful and admirable argument against the colonial/class mentality that produces spectacles like the Games.

Vijayan writes:

A ‘world class city’ is coming up in India today, in the capital, where Delhi used to be. It will last from the 1st of October to the 15th of October, after which it will vanish as ephemerally as it will appear ...

During the period when the ‘world class city’ replaces Delhi, there will be only one ‘class’ that will occupy the space of the city – or rather two: the small but infinitely more powerful one of the ruling elite; and the much larger one of the middle class – multi-layered and heterogeneous in so many ways, but tragically homogenized by the blinkers of patriotism and paradoxically, also by the hunger to be part of a mythical ‘world class’. 

To become a "world class" city the poor are being shuffled and shut out from India's 'proud moment'.  Their place is a hindrance.  Their condition is an illiteracy of things marked by class.

Their rights in the Indian democracy are being made irrelevant.  The ruling elite know better.  The capitalist class and its global reach are overriding the constitutional right to matter and to exist.

How does a state that boasts to all who will listen about its democratic freedoms and the size of its constituencies trample on the rights of the poor, the marginal, in this manner?

How does a democratic state ban the poor from being in their own space(s)?

Vijayan writes:

... we didn’t need a dictatorship or an authoritarian regime to have these gross violations of democratic rights happen under our very noses: they happened precisely because we live in a purported ‘democracy’. But this ‘democracy’, which is in reality nothing more than a sort of extended oligarchy, ensures that the benefits of its democratic principles remain confined to the ruling elite, and to some extent, and in a much more diluted form, to the Great Indian Middle Class. The elite use the powers vested in them by this ‘democratic’ system to garner and accumulate wealth, not just for themselves but for their partners in the broad alliance that gives the impression of ‘democracy’. This mutual support system is what will ensure that the guilty in the Games scam-iana will never be brought to book ...

In this ‘democracy’, our elected representatives and their appointed officers tell us that it is in our interests that our democratic rights are being violated, and we paradoxically accept it  because we believe that our representatives, being products of the democratic system, represent democracy itself. Even when it is patently clear that they do not, we cannot conceive of their being anything but democratic, because to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge the systemic failure of this ‘democracy’. It would be to acknowledge that we are victims of the same system that we routinely participate in, that is used to routinely victimize the millions below us – Us, the Great Indian Middle Class – a process of victimization that at once defines Us and that we thrive on, indeed are dependent on ...

But this is the price we are being told to pay for participation in the ‘world class city’ – and we are willing to pay it because, on the one hand, of course, we get to be, for two weeks, citizens of a ‘developed world’, and on the other, it is nothing compared to the violence perpetrated – in our name and by us – on the rest of the populace of the country. Farmers dying by the hundreds of thousands because of the depredations of agricultural corporations that we own, or work in, or get dividend-profits from, will be cynically portrayed as ‘suicides-for-money’; tribals battling the established nexus between the government and big mining corporations, that is rendering them destitute in the millions in the process of capturing their lands, will be cynically portrayed as Maoist terrorists, and systematically crushed; tax-sops to the tune of several lakhs of crores will be proudly proffered to dollar billionaire industrial giants, but loan-waivers of a few thousand crores to peasants across the country will be bitterly resented; workers agitating against appalling working conditions and demanding no more than marginal increase in wages are berated for their greed and thrashed by an ever-willing police; the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy continue to remain beggars for our democratic favours, long after our ‘democratic’ system, with our silent collusion, allowed the villains of the piece to go practically scott-free – and so on.

Predatory capitalism, parasite capitalism, crony capitalism – call it what you will, it is thriving in our very real world, because that world is not the ‘world class’ world that we would like to imagine it as, but a deeply feudal, profoundly colonized, underdeveloped-in-every-sense world of caste-, class-, ethnic-, religious and gender-violence. The Great Indian Middle Class sits on the skin of this world – predatory, parasite, crony – like a hallucinating bug, insulated from the actuality of this world by its hallucinations, protected from its violences – however fragilely – by the chains of ‘democracy’ that bind this world and hold it tightly in place.

Save for a word here or there you can cut and paste this critique into the FIFA spectacle that invaded South Africa.

How sad it is that despite the yellowing of our independent constitutions and the tides of elite spittle that falls on the floors of our respective parliaments we remain, still, so utterly colonised.

Fanon called it right.

Onward!

The Un-Common Wealth Games Begin: Incredible India, It Stinks

By Partha Banerjee

October 3, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Jim Yardley writes in New York Times today: As Global Games Begin, India Hopes for Chance to Save National Pride. Wrong title, Mr. Yardley. India doesn't hope to save national pride: it's the violent, corrupt and inefficient people on top who're trying to save their national power, with help from corporate media -- Indian and international. It's shameful.

This is a quick summary of the so-called Commonwealth Games, 2010. (1) Rounding up and jailing of poor people with their children off Delhi's streets; (2) massive corruption of the ruling Congress leaders who allegedly stole millions of dollars by doling out big corporate contracts with outrageously inflated prices; (3) major failing to meet important deadlines causing international derision; (4) paying 15-20 cents or less per hour (and working them 12-14 hours a day) to the thousands of workers, and falsely promising them housing, health care, child care, education, etc.; (5) creating an oppressive and unsafe work climate where at least 40 workers have died from on-the-job injuries, etc. while working on the Games sites; (6) organizers rampantly used child labor; (7) the govt. shut down schools, colleges and govt. offices for the games with no make-up time for lost studies or work -- unprecedented in modern world history; (8) major construction debacles including the road bridge collapse in Delhi last week; (9) historic number of international athletes pulling out of the games; (10) massive arrogance of the Congress govt, International Olympic Committee and Commonwealth Games executives who took millions of dollars, yet didn't deliver.

Other than some no-name, local, grassroots groups, international human rights bodies or the United Nations did not produce any audible screams against such rights and justice violations (bizarre, because the big-name groups in particular wouldn't miss any opportunity to raise hell on other politically expedient lapses in select places across the globe.)

The entire cost that has nothing to do with welfare of the ordinary people (totaling billions of dollars) has been and will be dumped on the broken backs of the average and poor Indian citizens who couldn't care less about the Games; their lives will not change a bit after the fiasco is all over. Mr. Yardley, you might challenge the status quo the Games' sponsor corporations and their trustee governments are perpetuating. That's the real problem big media need to address.

And we're not even talking about the painful and pathetic legacy of the Commonwealth hegemony. As if two hundred years of looting a once-prosperous country and leaving a torn, bloody, violent and impoverished three pieces of land with carefully chosen cronies weren't enough.

If anything, the British Queen and her administration owe a long-overdue apology with major reparation to the one billion-plus people they tyrannized in South Asia. That would be a real good start. Everything else falls short.

***Partha Banerjee is a New York-based human rights and media activist. He teaches at Empire State College. Email: banerjee2000@hotmail.com***

Comment: I was living and working in India around the time the Common Wealth Games was being touted as India's moment to shine.  From mid-2006 through early 2007 I saw public billboards and TV advertisements heralding the Games in 2010.

What was conspicuously absent was even a hint of discussion among Indians.  I can't recall any conversation over 7 months where the Games was discussed or even mentioned.  Even my doctoral students at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi were silent on the Games and its prospects.

Banerjee is right to say that the Games mean nothing to the vast majority of Indians.  These Games, like the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, represent an old colonisation with a late capitalist twist.

India, like South Africa, spent many many billions to host a sporting spectacle that is far removed from its urgent developmental needs.

Instead of showing people-centered development of the sustainable kind the Games like the World Cup are hollow self-enrichment schemes for the ruling and business elite.

The average citizen, working or not, does not count in this equation.

After the Games are done and the fanfare is lost to history the poor will still be poor and perhaps even poorer for having hoped that their lives would be made better.

Like in South Africa, huge stadia will stand empty just like the promises of the leadership who will have moved on to the next enrichment scheme.

It is a scam no doubt.

Here in South Africa the development thinkers and their pundits are lamenting the loss of 'national unity' that was supposedly experienced during FIFA's rule in South Africa.

What happened?  Why are the whites and blacks back to not getting along?  Where is our South African spirit?

Well, if you recover the $3billion plus that was spent to host that FIFA induced monstrosity you may find some more South African spirit.  Otherwise, we are just left holding the crumbs and hoping against hope that things will get better somehow.

India will be doing the same in just a few weeks.

And we are not free.  Not even close.

Onward!

The Trouble with the Roma: At the Margins of Europe

The Independent (London)
October 4, 2010

Europe's most persecuted minority has become the subject of increasingly draconian laws. But recent treatment of the Roma shames our continent, argues Peter Popham.

This Thursday, in a hall in the Council of Europe's headquarters in Strasbourg, a group of academics, government advisers and gypsy representatives will get together to discuss the next steps in a pan-European project entitled "The Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005 to 2015".  The idea of the "decade", according to its authors, is to "improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of Roma". The next phase will see Romanies stepping forward in museums and other institutions in Britain, Greece, Germany and Slovenia and talking about their culture, "getting people to talk to them and get to know them, to get rid of some of the fear," as one of the organisers puts it.

It's a low-key initiative, very modestly funded – but it has attained a new importance. Thanks to France's President Sarkozy and his policy of targeting their communities for repatriation, gypsies suddenly find themselves at the centre of European debate. How did this come about?

Roma after an eviction in Paris

Gypsies have been at the margin of European affairs ever since they arrived from India nearly a millennium ago. They have no claims on territory, have never started a war, are far from homogeneous and have produced few figures who bulk large in our history books. In the past they were usually in motion, trundling around the edges of European history, earning a living in the nooks and crannies of society, fortune telling, basket weaving, horse trading, dealing in scrap metal. They might be seen as people of doubtful honesty, capable of sly tricks, or seductively wild, depending on circumstance, but whatever they were it was of fleeting importance. They had their world, we, the gaje (non-Romanies), had ours. 

Just as only a few Romanies have been feted as culture heroes in the gaje world, few have become notorious. Their crimes were of a scale with the rest of their low-key, inconspicuous lives, picking pockets being the most obvious. But now Sarkozy in France and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Italy would have us believe that the Roma community as a group represents a security threat so grave that it demands the removal of its members en masse. One is reminded of the Criminal Tribes Act passed by the British in India in 1871, which stigmatised 161 communities there as "born criminals". A recent study concluded that the Act was a result of "profound ignorance of India's social structure and cultural institutions". 

Read the rest of the article here.

Onward!

Credits

The Existential Lifespan of White Victimisation in South Africa

It should hardly come as a surprise to anyone living in South Africa that the myth of a racially reconciled nation is a lot of insidious hogwash.

The truth is that South Africa is a racist cesspool replete with the usual historical aggressors and victims that characterise the binary of racialised oppression.

If you doubt the veracity of my opinion please take a casual gander at what goes for reader commentary underneath articles that are racially contentious, or even just suggestive of race/racism, on sites like News24 or the Times Online.

This morning I began reading an article on News24 knowing that the race commentary to follow would be painful but mostly annoying to read.

The article is entitled "We won't rent to blacks - landlady" and it tells of a black woman who was turned away from renting a cottage because the white landlady claims her white neighbours might object.

The comments that followed describe the general idiocy that is at root in race relations in South Africa but it also captures, again, the manner in which white South Africans posture themselves as race victims in the post-apartheid era.

Here are a few definitive gems to chew on: 

• Sam (2010/10/01 12:40:16 PM).  Its her property, she may have whoever she wants staying there.  

• Joe (2010/10/01 12:41:15 PM). Errm. If I apply for a job I get told sorry you cannot get the job because you are not black! How is that any different?   

• OB1 (2010/10/01 12:57:39 PM). "sorry, we're not going to hire you cos you're white." "Sorry you cannot study medicine at this university cos you're white" "Sorry, you can't play for/coach/manage this sports team cos you're white"  Cry me a river, white ppl are discriminated to every day in every sphere!  Besides black ppl in general (not all) are notoriously bad tenants, I've had personal experience...missed rental payments, they don't look after the place, they make noise, and bring all sorts of hangers on, then you struggle to evict them when the situation becomes intolerable. 

• vaughn (2010/10/01 01:01:38 PM) Just imagine how whites feel everyday when they are told they cannot get a particualr (sic) job because of the color of their skin. It must feel even worse because that means they cannot even earn money to pay rent with.

What amazes me is the denial at play in these four selections.  And be sure there are many more that illustrate my overall point.

Sixteen years into the post era and many whites have conveniently forgotten that their very place here is stamped by the Affirmative Action of apartheid.

Most whites, it seems, are more comfortable critiquing current Affirmative Action policies than questioning their past and its relationship, in structural terms, to the 'new' country.

If we take a sober look at white life in the post era it is easy to recognize that it is the most privileged of all other so called population groups.

White men are still overrepresented in the employment tables across the board.

White women are an Affirmative Action category in South Africa and their presence in employment tables rivals that of their male counterparts.

So what to make of all this white victimisation then?

To start we must contextualise white victimisation in its arrogance to press a unique place for whites among others in South Africa and beyond.

Inside this complex blacks are inferior and cast as incompetent and out to steal the fruits whites have cultivated anywhere and throughout time.

This delusion is at the base of white identity and serves the purpose of framing whiteness as a survival agenda against the "onslaught" of the bestial black/Other.

Nothing new here.

Apartheid rationalised white privilege and the place of whites in the induced hierarchy of race and, white victimisation is the outgrowth of that thinking and strategy.

White victimisation cannot disappear because the fault-lines of whiteness are permanent in these terms.

In consequence then, whites are victims of whiteness and not any contrived onslaught by the generalised Other be it black, blue or red.

Please do not read beyond my intention here.

Unlike Tom at the University of the Free State, I am not a race denialist.  My aim is not to plea that the category of race be discarded or conveniently blended into politicised multiculturalism.

What to do about race as a concept of rule and identity is a related conversation but not the purpose here.

Race and racism won't just disappear because some good folk among the delusional want to construct a place of grey.

Life is more complicated than that liberal nonsense even though Tom and I may even agree that the concept of race has no relevance in biology.

Still, as it stands now and until that momentous event that will change race conceptualisations, white victimisation is a manner of expressing white superiority if even couched in the doom and gloom of now being oppressed by blacks.

And strikingly, it is here to stay in large part thanks to the non-racial nonsense of St. Mandela and his nationalist hitmen.

What an existential continuum hey?

Onward!

Robert Sobukwe's Grave Vandalised

I read this morning that the grave of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, the founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress, was vandalised or rather desecrated (for those of us who revere his teachings and historical memory).

Robert Sobukwe's grave in Graff-Reinet

I am greatly saddened to know about this.

I can only imagine the anguish and pain this horrendous act has caused for Prof's wife, Veronica Sobukwe.

Dini Sobukwe, Prof's son, told the Dispatch Online that this was the third act of vandalism directed at his father's grave.

It is not known if the vandalism is a political stunt or just a random act.

I suspect the former. Why would anyone just push over the headstone of Robert Sobukwe?

Whatever the reason though, his soul is among the great ancestors who look over our troubled nation.

When I close my eyes I can still see his warm smile and hear his infectious laughter booming from the kitchen at number 11.

And, when I listen really closely it is as if I can hear him say:"Don't worry Ridi their actions do not direct us."

Sobukwe is not his grave by any stretch of the imagination. Nonetheless, disrespecting his grave is a grievous insult to a man who loved this African soil more than anyone I have known or anyone I know about.

May the "son of the soil" rest in peace despite.

Until that day.

Onward!

Credits

More Varsities Check Israel Links

by Davud Macfarlan
Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg)
Oct 01 2010 09:47

Major South African universities began looking into their own ties with Israeli universities within hours of the University of Johannesburg's (UJ) decision on Wednesday night to terminate its links with Ben-Gurion University unless it fulfils, within six months, two conditions UJ has specified.

After the Mail & Guardian's report last week that Unisa vice-chancellor Barney Pityana had signed a petition calling on UJ to sever all ties with Ben-Gurion, three more varsity heads added their names: Saleem Badat (Rhodes), Derrick Swartz (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) and Dan Ncayiyana (former vice-chancellor of what is now the Durban University of Technology).

They joined about 250 signatories to the petition, launched last month, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, poet Antjie Krog, law professor John Dugard, writer Breyten Breytenbach and sociologist Ran Greenstein.

'No formal links'
 
Wits University vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa told the M&G he was not aware of "any formal links -- a memorandum of understanding [MoU] -- between Wits and Israeli universities".

And "the issue -- whether or not we should enter into such agreements -- hasn't come up over the past 10 years that I’ve been at Wits”, he said.

Three hours later, Wits spokesperson Shirona Patel said she had searched the university's database and could confirm that it "has no formal ties with any Israeli university, according to our database".

The University of Cape Town followed suit shortly afterwards: "There are no institution-level partnerships with Israeli universities," said spokesperson Mologadi Makwela.

He added that "Professor Milton Shain of the UCT Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research has indicated that there are no formal links with any Israeli universities."

All 23 vice-chancellors will receive the UJ senate's resolution, said Duma Malaza, the chief executive officer of the varsity heads' representative body, Higher Education South Africa (Hesa). "It is likely that the next meetings of Hesa's executive committee on October 7 and board on October 27 will ... reflect on this issue," he added.

Conditions to be met
 
The UJ's senate decided that its formal links with Ben-Gurion will "automatically lapse on April 1" next year if the Israeli university does not meet two conditions:

• That their MoU "be amended to include Palestinian universities chosen with the direct involvement of UJ. These universities are to be consulted on the terms of the amended MoU and UJ will consider their views"; and
•  That UJ "will not engage in any activities with [Ben-Gurion] that have direct or indirect military implications; this [is] to be monitored by UJ's senate academic freedom committee".

The MoU in question was signed in August last year, and objections to it reached the UJ senate in May, when UJ research professor Steven Friedman presented the case of those calling for a complete severing of ties with Ben-Gurion.

The senate also heard that this MoU resuscitated apartheid-era agreements between Ben-Gurion and the UJ's predecessor, the Rand Afrikaans University.

Professor Adam Habib

The senate delegated the matter to a nine-member subcommittee, headed by deputy vice-chancellor Adam Habib. Wednesday's senate meeting debated its report for more than four hours.

The petition launched after the May senate deliberations highlights Ben-Gurion’s ties with the Israeli Defence Force and says Israeli universities "produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation".

This -- the "Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories" -- has had a "disastrous effect on access to education for Palestinians", the petition reads.

Historic decision
 
Habib told the M&G that the senate decision was "historic for two reasons": "it is informed by the principle of solidarity with the oppressed" and it "creates an enabling environment for reconciliation and human dignity".

Its historic significance was deepened by two further considerations, he added.

"The decision has been reached not by a university's executive fiat but by a senate, the body that represents academics," he said, saying this would empower academics in a global tertiary climate of university corporate managerialism.

And he could think of no university in the United States or in Britain whose senate had made any such decision in relation to Israeli institutions, despite many such calls from academics there, he said.

Friedman said: "The decision is a breakthrough for those who think there should be no collaboration with Israeli institutions that undermine human rights."

On other local universities, he said he did not know of specific links with Israel but had "a strong expectation this will be raised at Hesa".

Amos Drory, the Ben-Gurion vice-president who signed the MoU with UJ, told the M&G that "the news about the UJ senate decision has reached us on the eve of the Jewish holiday".

"We will not be able to prepare our response immediately. As soon as the holiday is over, we will consider our options and reply to UJ in due course," Drory said.

On Thursday afternoon responses were received from:

• The senate decision is still to be ratified by UJ's council. Habib said he expects this to be done on a round-robin basis among council members during the next two weeks.
• The University of KwaZulu-Natal, which "does not have a Memorandum of Understanding with Ben-Gurion University in Israel. We have 181 agreements in 44 countries of which 65 are active," said Nomonde Mbadi, director of corporate relations.
• The University of Pretoria, which "has no overarching institutional agreements with any university in Israel", said Nicolize Mulder, media liaison officer. Tukkies "has noted the decision taken by the senate of the University of Johannesburg".
• Stellenbosch University, which "does not have any formal partnerships with universities in Israel", said Martin Viljoen, senior media liaison officer. 

The senate decision is still to be ratified by UJ's council. Habib said he expects this to be done on a round-robin basis among council members during the next two weeks. 

Comment: Excellent developments and it shows that South Africa can still lead the way despite the weak-kneed national political leadership who have seemingly forgotten their struggle origins.

I wonder what the word from Tom at the University of the Free State state will be?  Bet Jonathan Jansen is praying that his institution has no ties to Israeli universities.

Onward!


Credits

Court Hears of U.S. Unit Killing Afghan Civilians at Random

by William Yardley
New York Times
September 27, 2010

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — Members of an American Army unit consumed with drug use randomly chose Afghan civilians to kill and then failed to report the abuses out of fear they would suffer retaliation from their commander, according to testimony in military court here on Monday.

The testimony, in a hearing to determine whether one of those soldiers, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, would face a court-martial and a possible death sentence, came the same day that a videotape in the case was leaked showing Specialist Morlock talking to investigators about the killings in gruesome detail with no apparent emotion.

Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock

Top Army officials worry that the case against Specialist Morlock and four other soldiers accused in the killings of three Afghan civilians will undermine efforts to build relationships with Afghans in the war against the Taliban.

The soldiers are accused of possessing dismembered body parts, including fingers and a skull, and collecting photographs of dead Afghans. Some images show soldiers posing with the dead. As many as 70 images are believed to be in evidence.

Some of the soldiers have said in court documents that they were forced to participate in the killings by a supervisor, Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who is also accused in the killings. All five defendants have said they are not guilty.

In one incident, Specialist Morlock recounted in the video, he described Sergeant Gibbs identifying for no apparent reason an Afghan civilian in a village, then directing Specialist Morlock and another soldier to fire on the man after Sergeant Gibbs lobbed a grenade in his direction.

“He kind of placed me and Winfield off over here so we had a clean line of sight for this guy and, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, popped it, throws the grenade, and tells me and Winfield: ‘All right, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy,’ ” Specialist Morlock said in the video.

Referring to the Afghan, the investigator asked: “Did you see him present any weapons? Was he aggressive toward you at all?”

Specialist Morlock replied: “No, not at all. Nothing. He wasn’t a threat.”

As Monday’s hearing was getting under way, CNN and ABC News broadcast the video. In the CNN clip and the ABC clip, Specialist Morlock, speaking in a near monotone, looks like a teenager recounting a story to his parents.

Read the rest of this article here.

Comment: Imperialism is a terminal mental disease.

Credits

Peru wants its treasures back

News24
September 28, 2010

Lima -Peru's President Alan Garcia vowed Monday to use every corner of the world he visits to publicly press US-based Yale University to return thousands of treasures from Machu Picchu it took 99 years ago.

"I won't stop talking each and every day until July 7 2011, wherever I might happen to be... to demand what belongs to Peru," Garcia said during a cultural event.

Garcia called on the Ivy League university to return before that date more than 46 000 artifacts American explorer Hiram Bingham took from the World Heritage Site high in the Andes mountains.

"We won't let July 7 slip by because it's a dividing line: either we come together in understanding the integrity of Machu Picchu or we simply have to characterise (the university) as a treasure pillager," said the president.

Machu Picchu

A previous effort at an amicable settlement ended in failure in 2007, and legal measures reportedly have been filed since in a bid to have the artifacts returned.

Bingham was a professor at Yale when he re-discovered in 1911 Machu Picchu, a 15th century Inca citadel perched 2 500 meters up in the mountains near Cuzco that has become Peru's crown tourist jewel.

Peru argues that Bingham helped bring 46 332 artifacts from the site back to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut between 1911 and 1916. Many of the items are stored at the school's Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Peru had authorised the transport of the items to Yale for examination and scientific study for a period of 18 months, but the agreement was not respected by the university.

"One hundred years is more than enough to study those archaeological pieces," said Garcia.

Bingham is widely credited with bringing Machu Picchu to world attention, but many historians agree that Peruvian Agustin Lizarraga had discovered the complex in 1902, nine years before Bingham.

With 2 200 visitors a day, Machu Picchu is one of the most visited sites in Latin America.

Yale says on its website it has "legal title" to the Peru artifacts but that it is open to an "amicable settlement". The university also contends that of the objects, "none are unique or one-of-a-kind".- AFP

Comment: "Legal title" to artifacts that predate the US?

Beneath the tussle about who owns these artifacts is another compelling story of how knowledge is constructed and for what purposes.

The claim to 'discovery' must be balanced against the discourse of whiteness and its need to control how knowledge is constructed and for what purposes.

In the words of Midnight Oil in 1987 we should all be saying:

"It belongs to them .... (so) give it back ..."

Onward!

Serengeti Road Will Be Built

News24.com
2010-09-26 20:25

Dar Es Salaam - Tanzania's president said on Saturday construction of a controversial two-lane road through the UN-listed Serengeti national park will go ahead as it will not disturb the ecosystem.

"All precautions have been taken to make sure that the wildlife is not affected," Jakaya Kikwete was quoted as saying by state-owned media as telling election campaign rallies in Ngorongoro and Serengeti districts.

Kikwete, who is seeking re-election for a second and final five tear term, was responding to local and foreign activists who oppose the project on grounds that it would scare away animals.

"What I can assure the activists is that the Serengeti shall not die and the proposed road has many social and economic advantages to the people in Mara and Arusha regions," he told residents of the Mto wa Mbu area.

On Thursday, the Tanzanian government announced they have formed a team to study the impact of the project, but that it had not changed its position on the construction of the road.

Some local environmentalists say a paved road through Mikumi National Park in central Tanzania has led to the death of many animals that are hit by vehicles despite speed bumps.

Some 27 biodiversity experts recently warned in the science journal Nature, that the proposed Serengeti highway would destroy one of the world's last great wildlife sanctuaries.

Rushing to the area

"The road will cause an environmental disaster," the experts said, urging the government to look at an alternative route that runs far south of the UN-listed site.

The planned road slashes right across the annual migratory route taken by 1.3 million wildebeest, part of the last great mass movements of animals.

The wildebeest play a vital role in a fragile ecosystem, maintaining the vitality of Serengeti's grasslands and sustaining threatened predators such as lions, cheetahs and wild dogs, they said.

Kikwete has repeatedly defended the planned road, saying the stretch crossed by migrating animals will be gravelled rather than paved with the aim of reducing speed. Sceptics say lorries will speed even on gravel.

The president has also argued that the road will improve transportation and boost economic activity for people living close to the park.

Tanzanian media have reported people rushing to the area to put up buildings and plant crops in the hope of being compensated when construction starts.- AFP

Comment: This is a very disturbing story. How can Kikwete even think of such a thing? There must be a ton of money to be made by developing this road.

Is there no end to the greed of capitalist development?

Cutting the Serengeti in half with a damn road for trucks and cars is about the dumbest thing I've read for a very long time.

It is a tragedy unfolding.

Onward!

"Israeli Ties: A Chance To Do The Right Thing" by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Times Live (South Africa)
Sep 26, 2010 12:00 AM

The University of Johannesburg's Senate will next week meet to decide whether to end its relationship with an Israeli institution, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, on the grounds of that university's active support for and involvement in the Israeli military. Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports the move. He explains why.

"The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own.

We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice." - (Nelson Mandela, December 4, 1997)

Struggles for freedom and justices are fraught with huge moral dilemmas. How can we commit ourselves to virtue - before its political triumph - when such commitment may lead to ostracism from our political allies and even our closest partners and friends? Are we willing to speak out for justice when the moral choice that we make for an oppressed community may invite phone calls from the powerful or when possible research funding will be withdrawn from us? When we say "Never again!" do we mean "Never again!", or do we mean "Never again to us!"?

Our responses to these questions are an indication of whether we are really interested in human rights and justice or whether our commitment is simply to secure a few deals for ourselves, our communities and our institutions - but in the process walking over our ideals even while we claim we are on our way to achieving them?

The issue of a principled commitment to justice lies at the heart of responses to the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is the absence of such a commitment that enables many to turn a blind eye to it.

Consider for a moment the numerous honorary doctorates that Nelson Mandela and I have received from universities across the globe. During the years of apartheid many of these same universities denied tenure to faculty who were "too political" because of their commitment to the struggle against apartheid. They refused to divest from South Africa because "it will hurt the blacks" (investing in apartheid South Africa was not seen as a political act; divesting was).

Let this inconsistency please not be the case with support for the Palestinians in their struggle against occupation.

I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. I say, "Why are our memories so short?" Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their own previous humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?

Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about all the downtrodden?

Together with the peace-loving peoples of this Earth, I condemn any form of violence - but surely we must recognise that people caged in, starved and stripped of their essential material and political rights must resist their Pharaoh? Surely resistance also makes us human? Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

South African universities with their own long and complex histories of both support for apartheid and resistance to it should know something about the value of this nonviolent option.

The University of Johannesburg has a chance to do the right thing, at a time when it is unsexy. I have time and time again said that we do not want to hurt the Jewish people gratuitously and, despite our deep responsibility to honour the memory of the Holocaust and to ensure it never happens again (to anyone), this must not allow us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians today.

I support the petition by some of the most prominent South African academics who call on the University of Johannesburg to terminate its agreement with Ben-Gurion University in Israel (BGU). These petitioners note that: "All scholarly work takes place within larger social contexts - particularly in institutions committed to social transformation. South African institutions are under an obligation to revisit relationships forged during the apartheid era with other institutions that turned a blind eye to racial oppression in the name of 'purely scholarly' or 'scientific work'." It can never be business as usual.

Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli defence forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation. For example, BGU offers a fast-tracked programme of training to Israeli Air Force pilots.

In the past few years, we have been watching with delight UJ's transformation from the Rand Afrikaans University, with all its scientific achievements but also ugly ideological commitments. We look forward to an ongoing principled transformation. We don't want UJ to wait until others' victories have been achieved before offering honorary doctorates to the Palestinian Mandelas or Tutus in 20 years' time.

For background information on the call for an academic boycott see the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Story Credit