The Dictators' Club

Medal of Honor...

Six years into the so-called "war on terror", the USA continued to hold hundreds of people in indefinite military detention without charge or trial in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, in addition to the thousands held in Iraq.

In late April, ... President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa — Zimbabwe's influential neighbor — addressed a four-page letter to President Bush. Rather than coordinating strategy to end Zimbabwe's nightmare, Mbeki criticized the United States, in a text packed with exclamation points, for taking sides against President Robert Mugabe's government and disrespecting the views of the Zimbabwean people. "He said it was not our business," recalls one American official, and "to butt out, that Africa belongs to him." Adds another official, "Mbeki lost it; it was outrageous."

[...]

South Africa increasingly requires a new foreign policy category: the rogue democracy. Along with China and Russia, South Africa makes the United Nations impotent. Along with Saudi Arabia and Sudan, it undermines the global human rights movement. South Africa remains an example of freedom — while devaluing and undermining the freedom of others. It is the product of a conscience it does not display.

Zimbabwe is the most pressing case in point — reflecting a political argument within South Africa and a broader philosophical debate.

[...]

And this debate is clarifying a question across southern Africa: Did revolutionary parties in the region fight for liberation or for liberty? If merely for liberation from Western imperialism, then aging despots and oppressive ruling parties have a claim to power. But if for liberty, those who work for freedom in Zimbabwe must also have their day.

So far, South Africa — of all places — sides with the despots.

Washington Post | The Despots' Democracy

Reports of the existence of such a letter surfaced in the Washington Post (May 28 2008) column by Michael Gerson headlined "The Despots' Democracy". The dispatch and receipt of this letter has been confirmed by the United States Embassy in Pretoria, but knowledge of its existence has been denied by the South African President's spokesman.

I believe it is in the best interests of South Africa's battered international image and the restoration of our President's position as an impartial mediator in Zimbabwe that he both release the letter and elaborate on its contents and intentions and context.

It is with deep dismay that we note that the columnist, Michael Gerson, concludes that "South Africa — of all places — sides with the despots."

PoliticsWeb | Leon calls on Mbeki to release letter to Bush

DA Foreign Affairs spokesperson Tony "Soprano" Leon, fresh from a stint at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government (which counts PNAC co-founder and Weekly Standard editor Bill "the Bloody" Kristol among its notable professors) virtually replicates the above in his letter to President Mbeki, requesting that he make public and elaborate on his letter to George Bush.

However, absent from Leon's letter to the president is the last paragraph above, i.e. his apparent deep concern at Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson's conclusion that, as a newly categorised "rogue democracy", we are now acting in concert with Russia and China to subvert the U.N. by siding "... with the despots."

Leon, who ran the DA into the ground before Helen Zille resuscitated it, threatens again to rise to new lows in subverting our already fragile democracy. Riding on the vapid shirttails of Gerson's egregious warmongering is about as low as even he can go.

No doubt, many South Africans will read The Despots' Democracy as a serious piece by one of the Western World's most reputable papers. It's a con. Worse, it's a con paid for by American taxpayers and, as part of a broader offensive on detractors, budgeted for by their venal administration.

Michael Gerson is no respected journalist. Recruited by Machiavellian maestro Karl Rove and credited with originating the "smoking gun", "mushroom cloud", and "axis of evil" metaphors that led to a million Iraqi deaths, Mr. Compassionate Conservatism was a speechwriter and White House senior policy and strategy advisor for George W. Bush for seven years — from 1999 to 2006.

He bailed within weeks of Scott McClellan. You do remember Scott McClellan, don't you. Since then, Gerson has written for Newsweek and, from 2007, for The Washington Post.

A Christian Zionist voted ninth among "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals In America" by Time (shading Billy Graham, he is described as "The President's Spiritual Scribe"), Gerson's resume includes a stint as senior policy advisor at the notoriously right-wing Heritage Foundation.

Today, he is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), home to many of the power elite now manufacturing consent for war with Iran.

Not all favor Gerson. "No one doubts that he did his job exceptionally well", wrote Ramesh Ponnuru of Gerson's time within Bush's inner circle. Ponnuru is a seriously twisted senior editor for National Review whose articles have appeared in neo-fascist publications including The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and The New Republic. However, of Gerson's columns for the Washington Post, Ponnuru makes a point with which I might find myself in agreement were it not delivered from a quarter antithetical to balance and sanity:

"In Gerson’s columns, what is most important for the country to do is stand for the right moral position; actually accomplishing something is secondary. That would require empiricism, which is nearly absent from those columns."


All things considered...

In July, President George W. Bush gave the green light for the CIA's programme of secret detention and interrogation to continue. One in a long list of unlawful policies adopted by the administration as part of the "war on terror", the President's re-authorization of this programme was a clear rejection of the principles underlying the UDHR. Indeed, President Bush issued his executive order a year after two UN treaty-monitoring bodies told the US government in no uncertain terms that secret detention violates the USA's international obligations.

Not that a lack of empiricism would worry someone like Tony Leon. He appears to march in ideological lockstep with Michael Gerson. Nor should playing fast and loose with innuendo and "smear" concern Gerson or Leon. They are, in more ways than one, bagmen for the steel-eyed cynics driving the CFR. Their job is to deliver copy to the mainstream media that fits the CFR agenda.

The U.S. press, spineless-but-profitable lackeys of the military-industrial complex against which Eisenhower warned and on which the U.S. economy is based, will publish it. Remember Judith Miller? The so-called journalist whose New York Times pieces were scripted by Dick Cheney's office in the run up to the illegal invasion and obliteration of Iraq (one million dead, one million maimed, and four million internal and external refugees)?

How does Gerson's article, which echoes former Office of Force Transformation supremo Tom Barnett's The Americans Have Landed, fit the U.S. administration's plans for Southern Africa?

In line with the U.S.'s increasingly aggressive approach to securing Africa's resources through an AFRICOM networking from its freshly bunkered embassies and consulates, Gerson recently spent time in the region and he would surely have consulted with CFR international affairs fellow Michelle D. Gavin.

Gavin's October 2007 CFR Center for Preventive Action Special Report titled "Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe" notes that "South Africa’s influence as a leader in the global south and importance as a partner in counterterrorism efforts, make the U.S.-South Africa relationship among the most important in the region."

She goes on to offer insight (albeit superficial) into how the U.S. plans to use the Zimbabwean crisis to "... improve a somewhat strained relationship with South Africa".

Behind the fatuous language of human rights and favoring words such as "seize", "encourage", and "hasten", Gavin warns "... policymakers and advocates should recognize that the United States probably cannot compel President Mugabe and his loyalists to step aside ..." and explores ways to oust him by other means, i.e. through prescription to SADC and South Africa.

Or, as Gavin puts it, to "... hasten constructive forms of potential political change by affecting the calculus of those who are in a position to trigger a transition."

Before asking "What's wrong with a concern for human rights in Zimbabwe?", read the 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture issued last week by the Inspector General of the U.S. Justice Department.

South Africa's president is an obstacle to U.S. expansionism in the region. While the CFR would welcome any movement of refugees from South Africa back to Zimbabwe, our facilitating China's shipment of arms to that country probably constituted a grievous, punishable error (the SAS Drakensberg is capable of abeam and astern RAS).

Noting that "... years of on-again, off-again attempts by President Mbeki to pursue his preferred approach of 'quiet diplomacy' have yielded no improvements on the ground... ", Gavin proposes 'Exposing External Support' as a Recommendation For U.S. Policy.

Behind the implicit threat of a media onslaught similar to the 'Free Tibet' campaign launched by the CIA against China, i.e. "... South Africa has no interest in seeing some version of the China Olympics/Darfur campaign being waged in conjunction with the 2010 World Cup ..." she suggests:

More naming and shaming of external supporters, and more serious efforts to put the Zimbabwe issue on the agenda at high-level meetings with governments providing direct support to Mugabe, could help increase the costs of assisting President Mugabe such that they exceed the already-dubious benefits. For example, press reports suggesting that governments in Equatorial Guinea and Angola are helping to prop up the Mugabe regime deserve more attention."

Hence the Washington Post's publication of The Despots' Democracy earlier this week. It forms a shot across the bows of a South African ship of state sailing in waters over which the Americans want sovereignty.

No matter that they belong to us.

I'll say it again. Michael Gerson is no respected journalist. Like Michelle Gavin, he is a propagandist working for the Council on Foreign Relations. And that casts anything he might write in a decidedly shady light.

His article has little to do with Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki, and human rights. It has everything to do with South Africa, the United States, and the future of our continent.

Thabo Mbeki knows this. Tony Leon obviously does not and should, like George W Bush, butt out.

Habeas corpus — the right to have a judge rule on the lawfulness of one's detention — is a fundamental principle of the rule of law. Detainees in US custody who have been denied recourse to this procedure have been subjected to enforced disappearance, secret detention and transfer, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and unfair trial procedures. Sixty years after the UDHR, such policies and practices are an affront to the world it envisaged.

Amnesty International Report 2008

Reading
• U.S. Department of Justice | A Review of the FBI's Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq
• Council on Foreign Relations | Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
• Council on Foreign Relations | A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa
• Chatham House | Zimbabwe's Future
• Heritage Foundation | Annual Report 2007
• Morgan Tsvangirai | Letter to Thabo Mbeki

The report assailed the moral leadership of the United States, saying that, as "the world's most powerful state" it "sets the standard for government behavior globally." But, Amnesty International said, the United States had "distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law."

International Herald Tribune | Amnesty International report assails U.S.

Note: I can't fault the CFR for their assessment of South Africa's general education and intelligence levels. The number of numbskulls that have fallen for this cheap piece of propaganda is truly frightening. Divide and Rule's stocks are riding high. Discernment's have dropped through the floor.

One wag over at The Times suggests the U.S. Department of State releases Mbeki's letter to the media. This is what it, or an office in the Bush administration, has done. With many of its members working in government, the Council on Foreign Relations' ties with the State Department have been especially strong for seventy years.

Recently, it has become uncommonly common practice — contrary to internationally accepted diplomatic protocols, for administration officials to 'feed' (rather than the now euphemistic 'leak') misinformation and disinformation through the think-tank industry to its media flunkies.

Although Lewis 'Scooter' Libby took the rap (if not the fall) for Valerie Plame's CIA cover being purposefully 'leaked' to nail her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, the order came directly from Rove or Cheney. People cannot seem to wrap their heads around the fact that these people are scum, i.e. that American politicians and power brokers have no class, style, or sophistication.

They are however, cunning, and South Africans find it as difficult to appreciate their use of think tanks to originate and give effect to state strategy through the abuse of public and private social or civil instruments.

South Africa's Katrina

International observers who took the AIDS policy fiasco, the African National Congress (ANC) succession turmoil, the Scorpions saga, and the Eskom debacle more or less in their stride are finding the xenophobic violence to be one crisis too many. ... In its most gloomy analysis of the future of SA in many years, the Financial Times has observed that "scenes so reminiscent of township violence in the 1980s could yet see South Africans turning on one another".

Business Day | Dam wall has broken as gloom floods global reporting on SA

If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break | If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break | Some of these people don't know which road to take

Peter (the Other), bless his sailor's heart, expresses concern for our safety. We couldn't be safer — well, we could be, but that would take several years' blogging to explain. Reading Peter's comment and having read Anthony Butler's article in Business Day, I couldn't help but think of our catastrophic homegrown nightmare as being akin to the U.S.'s experience of Hurricane Katrina.



Foreseen, too little was done. When it hit, the walls broke and an unsuspecting citizenry was swamped. Many immediately sought profit from others' misfortune and looting and rape took hold.

Blaming the victims for their predicament, central government's response was, to put it graciously, callous in the extreme. When, after weeks, it eventually feigned concern and deigned to provide extremely limited assistance, these proved woefully inadequate and did little or nothing to alleviate the plight of the affected.

Amid scenes of racism and racial stereotyping, the military moved in while tens of thousands lost everything with no hope of recompense and many died needless, cruel deaths. The lame-duck president and his lickspittles came in for a tongue-lashing. Being frontmen for a voracious, self-enriching elite, there was little the mealy-mouthed puppets could do but echo — to frequently embarrassing effect, the dictates of the vested interests pulling their strings.

The Blame Game saw the buck being passed faster than a lander approaching Mars and the state, refusing to acknowledge fault, learned nothing from the disaster. Response plans proved useless and eventually local government was left to bungle the job absolutely.



NGOs, churches, charities, and volunteers working under dangerous conditions did what they could to feed the homeless and avoid outbreaks of disease. Neighbouring states were inundated by desperate refugees and, in the flurry of reports attending the catastrophe, a national asset contributing to the economy and providing work was lost.

While the president's administration will be remembered worldwide for failing its people in their time of need, it is the increasingly frustrated victims who will continue to carry the cost of rebuilding. And yes, it is expected to happen again.

New Orleans or Reiger Park? Take your pick.

Some people on the road carryin' everything that they own | Some people on the road carryin' everything they own | Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones

Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie | When The Levee Breaks

Kansas Joe wrote that song in 1929. Go figure...

Where The Dead Have No Name

Photo: Simphiwe Nkwali - Avusa

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched | With faces hidden while the walls were tightening | As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain | Dissolved into the bells of the lightning | Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake | Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked | Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake | An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

As police and journalists got to the scene, the smell from the human pyre stung their nostrils.

Then they saw the burning man, his hands reaching out. Police and journalists stared incredulously.

From a distance, it looked like a pile of bedding that had been set alight. Then a head peered through the top of the fiery mattress.

Incredibly, arms flailed weakly from the inferno. Not a scream. Not a whisper. Not a word.

"He's still alive!"

"Get the fire extinguisher! The fire extinguisher!" the cops shouted to those inside the armoured vehicle.

An officer braved the flames, pulling at the burning orange-and-white blanket wrapped around the man's torso.

The blanket came away to show pieces of wood with blackened nails lying over the man's lower body.

Still, the silent man reached out - the movements even slower.

Within reach lay two pieces of bloodied concrete.

Beyond the smoke and flames crackling away, not a sound - not a soul stirred at the usually busy intersection.

The flaming man rocked slowly from side to side.

The Star | Fanning the flames of hate

He was burned alive; his final agonies splashed across television screens and the front pages of newspapers around the world.

But nearly six days later the charred corpse of the man who was burned to death in Reiger Park's Ramaphosa squatter camp on Sunday lies nameless in the Germiston mortuary.

If nobody comes forward to claim the body, he will be cremated: the nameless victim of nameless killers.

Police say 42 people were killed in 11 days of carnage that began on May 11. But there are suggestions the figure could rise.

So far police have failed to identify a single one of the dead. Were they South African, Mozambican, Zimbabwean or Angolan? No one can say.

Beeld | No name - just a horror image


Photo: Simphiwe Nkwali - Avusa

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail | The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder | That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze | Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder | Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind | Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind | An' the unpawned painter behind his rightful time | An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Most call it "xenophobic violence", but it has less to do with South Africans' propensity to indulge their xenophobic tendencies than it does with what a sane few have identified as its cause, i.e. poverty. In the past few months, the prices of credit, fuel, cooking oil, fish oil, rice, corn, maize meal, grain, bread, milk, and everything else people need to sustain life have skyrocketed to sustain a plummeting dollar.

As the wealthy now flee the dollar to speculate wildly on commodities and oil futures, so the cost of living soars. Our unemployment rate, officially 23 percent, is closer to 40 percent. Ten percent of the population take more than 50 percent of our distributable income while the poorest 40 percent are left to scrabble on less than seven percent.

Eskom threatens a 60 to 70 percent increase [5MB pdf] in electricity tariffs. Commenting on this particular piece of contrived chicanery, Cape Town Councillor Louise Muller told the Nersa public hearings in Pretoria on Friday that a R190 000 household would face an increase of R102,56, a R3,5-million household could expect an 18.2 percent increase (R367), while a R830 000 household could face a 26.4 percent increase (R155).

"It's absolutely phenomenal," she commented.

What?

I find the quoted income figures 'absolutely phenomenal'. Who earns this money? Yes, it is true that R190 000 would allow a household to eke out a rented approximation of a middle-class existence but, being a blue-collar type paid to do highly-skilled knowledge work, I'd not be able to do that without assistance. Who can? And how can these people be expected to know what it is to deal in Rands and Cents — where a loaf of bread at R7,50 is around R5,00 too much?

Income disparity has transcended absurdity in South Africa. It is now downright criminal. These people cannot earn such money. Like the looters now ravaging our country's townships, they are — in the face of widespread, debilitating poverty, taking it from others and feeding crime so well looters wield golf clubs rather than sticks.

We're an extremely poor country with a small economy reliant in large part on the now-ravaged mining and tourism industries (remember, 40 percent struggle by on seven percent of our distributable income). Apartheid education and training, replicated in the pathetic excuse for an education system we now suffer, ensures and perpetuates our people's deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing in the face of well-educated Francophone and Zimbabwean immigrants.

Hopelessness set in when the hollow political promises of houses and 'a better life for all' were tossed out of the window with the ANC's and Trevor Manuel's adoption of the neo-liberal GEAR in 1996. Forsaking our short-lived RDP, which would've given us a shot at socio-economic justice, has proved our great mistake. A free-market economy can flourish only where there is wealth, productivity, and employment. How the hell was (or is) one supposed to supposed to gestate, hatch, and fly in an economically globalized South Africa?

Reversing GEAR and its consequences remains our greatest obstacle to real national economic growth rather than short-term profit taking by the Rainbow Chickens now ruling the roost. Only then will we start to deconstruct our negative images of myriad Others, lose our sense of rootless insularity and self-entitlement, and become more than refugees in our own country.

The figures quoted above by Councillor Muller apply to fewer than ten percent of our population. The rest, as they do without medical cover, insurances, death benefits, etc. will do without electricity and revert to burning whatever they can lay their hands on.

Hell, people are starving to death in the Mother City.

In Cape Town's wealthier suburbs — wherein hides the R1m-R3m per annum set, I find names springing to mind all the time: Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Honda, Land Rover, etc. In our poorer suburbs and townships, such names mean little or nothing and are worth less. I'm not surprised for it's in our poorer areas that it's deemed better to suffer dignity and no name than a name with no dignity.

More, I'm not surprised "...police have failed to identify a single one of the dead." Why should they have been able to do so? These people are from another country in more ways than one. They live in a place in which our elites do not. It's called South Africa.

Welcome to it.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales | For the disrobed faceless forms of no position | Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts | All down in taken-for-granted situations | Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute | Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute | For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit | An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Bob Dylan | Chimes of Freedom

Note: Beyond the overkill, the media is doing its job. Here, Justine Gerardy of the Independent Group offers a penetrating, no-holds barred analysis, Tutu told you so, Mr President.

The Trouble with The Times...

... lies in its readership, particularly most of those who comment online — defacing well-written, hard-hitting articles to such an extent their message is lost.

Given its tabloid style and tendency to "sensationalize", it's bound to attract all and sundry — particularly from the small elite able to afford connectivity, and needs to exercise greater vigilance over its comments feature. To now, and unlike international media publications that appear free of this scourge, it has not done so.

I'll not link to this paper again until it more actively moderates the hate speech of its commenters.

It seems South Africans generally comprise an insecure, fear-filled bunch of imbeciles capable only of whining about amorphous or nebulous others. In the context of our current dilemma, their stupidity is less than welcome.

Little wonder that, in the eyes of the world — and our own, we suck.

On Wednesday night, after a week-and-a-half of mayhem in our cities, President Thabo Mbeki deployed the SA National Defence Force to help police stop South Africans killing foreigners.

Then he left the country.

The Times | Mr President: Please stand down now

Our Clockwork Orange?

In an interview with The Sunday Independent, Ronnie Kasrils, the minister of intelligence, conceded that talk of "sinister forces" and "orchestration" had been "misguided" and that "socioeconomic" factors were clearly at the root of the attacks on Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and other Africans.

"Some of us were clearly caught out. Anyhow, I accept that we have had a spontaneous outburst of xenophobia here - and I don't know why people have trouble with that word: it's accurate for what's going on. I liken it to the anti-Indian mayhem that erupted in Durban in 1947.

"The trigger there was that a little boy allegedly stole an orange from an Indian trader, who then slapped the boy in the face. And those were times when food prices had just gone up and people were suffering economic pressure. The same as now.

"You can't divorce what's happening with food prices, for example, from the present anger. Nor can you divorce all the other economic and financial factors and policies. I accept that the squatter camps are tinder boxes just waiting to explode."

Sunday Independent | Ethnic cleansing, SA style

Minister of National Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, the cogs of whose mind I have watched grinding exceedingly slow over many years, has awoken from the coma in which our leaders have been trapped these past few weeks. As government blindly rounds on the National Intelligence Agency for not predicting the outbreak of violence countrywide, our Mr. Charmed and Dangerous, for whom I hold an enduringly soft spot — it was he who was unjustly blamed for the massacre following a showdown with the Butcher of Bisho Oupa Gqozo in 1992, speaks truth to a power only now sending its ministers and populists into townships to address people with whom they have long lost touch.

Tonight, on Africa Day, our humiliated president, Thabo Mbeki, addresses the nation...

Ho hum... as noted here earlier, a day late and a billion dollars short.

Cape Refugee Assistance Contact Numbers from 567CapeTalk

Xenophobic attacks have spread to parts of Cape Town leaving thousands without shelter and in need of food, blankets and clothing. Relief organisation have began requesting assistance in suppling enough aid to assist the people affected. If you can assist, please contact the drop off centre nearest you from the list below.

The list is being updated regularly by the City's Disaster Management team.

Cape Town erupts

Reports of attacks on foreign nationals, be they refugees, immigrants, or illegal aliens continue to flood local radio station 567CapeTalk.

Shops and homes in townships across the Peninsula are being looted by gangs of youths followed by mobs including women with babies on their backs and kids in school uniform.

The violence, born of the desperation articulated in the post below, spread like wildfire to leave tens of thousands endangered, understaffed police overwhelmed, and the main refugee centre at Killarney Race Track in dire need of tents. Churches, NGOs, civic organizations, and businesses are gathering foodstuffs, clothing, and money and have set up collection points across Cape Town.

Those targeted by the violence, representing most sub-Saharan countries and having lost most of their possessions, are leaving trouble spots in droves.

A Langa resident phoned in to tell of two Somali shops looted earlier by a relatively small gang. He was sitting across the road from the shops. Asked why, if the gang was small, local residents did not point them out to the police, he asked where the cops were. He wasn't expecting to see them any time soon.

Not a minute later, when a motorist who'd just dropped off a worker in Khayalitsha phoned in to report a mob beating on the doors of a container shop dealing in cell phone repairs and parts — he suspected the shopkeeper was locked inside, all talk show host John Maytham could do was ask him to call the police.

I hope the shopkeeper got out of there alive.

A hungry country is an angry country.

IOL | Let Them Eat Cake

And so it goes... and so it will continue to go... for a while. Then there'll be a lull. People will assist our diminished population of foreigners until they tire of them or the next round of attacks start. South African shops and more established suburbs will eventually be included in such attacks.

Prices will continue to rise, certain areas will become no-go zones, and the central city will eventually see violence and looting. In each instance, too little will be done, too late. Or, paradoxically but just as disastrously, too much will be done too precipitously.

Why? Because, in one way or another, most South Africans feel gypped by an incompetent government, a usurious business sector, and indifferent neighbours. Much like today’s looters, they want those running South Africa to feel the pinch as badly as they do.

Until we concretely address this underlying feeling of having been 'left behind' and until we realise that all of us have already failed, our circumstances will continue to mirror our helpless rage.

In short, South Africans need food, shelter, leadership, and hope. And we need these things now.

Last night's unrest in Du Noon near Table View spread to other parts of Cape Town today, with youths looting shops and hundreds of foreigners fleeing their homes under police escort.

Hot spots today included Du Noon and a nearby informal settlement Joe Slovo, Masiphumelele near Noordhoek, Lwandle and Nomzamo near Strand, and Philippi.

Houses were reported to be burning in Khayelitsha at the time of going to press at noon.

In Lwandle and Nomzamo, there was looting at spaza shops at 8am, local police inspector Olebogeng Tawana confirmed. A few people were arrested and patrols were continuing in the trading areas.

Today's incidents follow a wave of violence in Du Noon overnight that left a Somali man dead, others injured, hundreds displaced and many shops looted.

Police were deployed in the hot spots: last night 35 people were arrested and 10 more were rounded up today.

Cheers and jeers rang out in the streets of Du Noon this morning as police escorted foreigners out of the area.

[...]

There was also looting, stone-throwing and burning of tyres in Masiphumelele as police worked into the early hours to bring the attacks under control.

"We sent transport to Masiphumelele to evacuate people. But we do not encourage self-evacuation," said Rasool.

A force of 200 policeman was sent to Du Noon, while about 180 police officers were deployed to the Knysna area. Police were also sent to other hotspot areas, said Rasool.

"But there is no reason to call the army out of the barracks. Residents in Du Noon told me that if police had not acted swiftly, there would have been murders," he said.

Stones were also thrown at the homes of foreigners in Nyanga, forcing women to flee to the police station, while people in Khayelitsha, Philippi and Kuils River sought refuge at local police stations.

The police today confirmed that a Somali had been killed. Rasool said the man had apparently tried to escape the violence and had crashed his car. He also said that a South African shopkeeper was shot and wounded by another shopkeeper in Du Noon.

Cape Argus

The Cost of Living

To express the critical importance of Africa to ourselves, both black and white, we should say that we are either African or we are nothing.

Thabo Mbeki [May 2001]

Neoliberal globalization has impoverished us at an escalating pace for decades but, with the launch of our latest spectator sport, it has evolved into something more ghastly than food riots, political repression, or natural disaster. The army's deployment may bring about a lull, but this previously hidden or inadmissible nightmare is not going to go away. We've entered an utterly predictable, horrific phase in our war against the poor — a phase vaguely familiar and glimpsed briefly in a time and place to which all South Africans swore they'd never return.

Citizens of a world gone wrong — evident in my finding sound reportage in Time, CNN, and The Christian Science Monitor, it is our global future and we cannot avoid it. This time round though, the 'haves' are expressing moral indignation and outrage.

Why? Like it or not, they comprise our "third force" and their obfuscatory babble fans the flames, keeping the 'have nots' at each others' throats.

The question on everybody's minds is: Will the actively indigent destroy each other before turning on their oppressors?

No. Divide and rule always works...but it does so only for a time.



South Africa needs to send out a strong message that an irrational prejudice and hostility towards non-nationals is not acceptable under any circumstances. Criminal behaviour towards foreigners cannot be tolerated in a democratic society.

Human Rights Commission [October 1998]

We've heard all the old phrases, now unforgivably tired or trite: "xenophobia", "legacy of apartheid", "could not have been foreseen", etc. Rubbish. True only in some ways, these terms of expedience cloak lies and blindness in most.

More, Canal du Mozambique reporting the SAS Drakensberg refueling the An Yue Jiang, thereby enabling the shipment of arms previously denied to Harare, puts an altogether grotesque, cynical, and unfortunately believable spin on the recent past.

I'm unable to write much of this latest unfolding in our tale of terror. It's too depressing and I've found the sense of foreboding and imminence in which it has been enveloped as stifling as a lead blanket. Like any new dread, it wells from a memory older than time.

For the moment though, I have managed to extricate myself from the mundane banality accompanying the genesis of our New Normal to find the sound of my own voice. Looking at these images and remembering Lee Kyung Hae at Cancun and Chris Gueffroy's body lying in the East German border strip, I pity those among us unable or unwilling to see in them both our poverty and our 'poverty beyond poverty'.

Never mind our thirty-year long 'flight of skills' — even our refugees are now emigrating.



“They came at night, trying to kill us, with people pointing out, ‘this one is a foreigner and this one is not’. It was a very cruel and ugly hatred.”

Charles Mannyike [May 2008]

Indeed. We will one day boil the rich and burn their fat. Unfortunately and like us, they will blaze only briefly or, worse, blaze not at all. And we who remain to gnaw their bones will again nurse memories of events we could not have foreseen.

Finally, some images — the media really went to the townships on this one, didn't they?



• The Times | Flames of Hate
• BBC | In pictures: Johannesburg violence
• New York Times | Clashes Escalate in South Africa
• Monsters and Critics | South Africa: Rioting and Violence
• iafrica.com | Xenophobia in images

"These acts of xenophobia are as unforgivable as they are unacceptable in a civilised society, especially that the perpetrators are South Africans, who owe the freedom they are enjoying, to the support the African countries, including Zimbabwe, gave the South African freedom fighters during the struggle to bring about that freedom."

Smuts Ngonyama [2001]

Note: South Africa ranks 116 out of 140 countries in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Peace rankings. Compounding and feeding violence, food import costs to the world's poorest nations are set to rise by 40 per cent in 2008. The overall cost of food is set to rise by 53 per cent from 2007 says the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

We'll build a world of our own, that no one else will share | All our sorrows we'll leave far behind us there | And I know that you'll find, there'll be peace of mind | When we live in a world of our own.

The Seekers | A World Of Our Own

350

350?

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, et al | Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?


Ya think?

Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [pdf] last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late [pdf]. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." ... It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they're supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way we made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.

Bill McKibben | The World at 350: A Last Chance for Civilization


Honestly?

Some of my colleagues are getting into recycling. I'm not. As usual, I have my own views on the subject. Park all cars, ground all planes, and turn off those stinking power stations. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and leave me alone. Simple really. So, when Tom Engelhardt posted Bill McKibben's The World at 350: A Last Chance for Civilization, I felt that most glorious of sensations, i.e. affirmation.

It does wonders for one's self-esteem, you know? But for more on that, you'd have to speak to Father Christopher.


I don't.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control. Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years. ... Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group on impacts, said: "Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it."

Guardian | World CO2 levels at record high, scientists warn

Anyway, this 350 gig is the real deal and I'm posting it because... I feel I oughta. I mean, it's not like I believe we're going to do any of this shit. It promises a future but, really, there's no money in it. And for that reason, I don't see catastrophe being averted.

Face it. People are dumb and greedy and such traits preclude radical change. Because this is so, we're toast.

When you really think about it, history is humanity. It's common enough to talk about some historical figure or failed experiment being swept into the "dustbin of history," but what if all history and that dustbin, too, go… well, where? What are we, really, without our records? Once we pass beyond them, beyond all the experience we've collected, written down, and archived since those first scratches went on clay tablets in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates — now being stripped of their cultural patrimony — at least two unanswerable questions arise. Once history has been left in the dust, where are we? — and, who are we?

Tom Engelhardt | Bill McKibben, The Defining Moment for Climate Change

I told you, Tom. Toast.

Once an Empire

Jaded glory...

Another American humiliation. The Shia gunmen who drove past my apartment in west Beirut yesterday afternoon were hooting their horns, making V-signs, leaning out of the windows of SUVs with their rifles in the air, proving to the Muslims of the capital that the elected government of Lebanon has lost. ... No, this is not a civil war. Nor is it a coup d'etat, though it meets some of the criteria. It is part of the war against America in the Middle East. The Hizbollah "must stop sowing trouble," the White House said rather meekly. Yes, like the Taliban. And al-Qa'ida. And the Iraqi insurgents. And Hamas. And who else?

Robert Fisk | Hizbollah rules west Beirut in Iran's proxy war with US


... and an Empire on blocks

There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action. The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation.

The American Conservative | War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think

I've just noted, on the wall of the Nautilus building alongside the above ship — click to enlarge, that a graffiti artist has scrawled "VietNam". To what end, I've no idea. Ain't globalization a wonderful thing?

Spreading democracy...

...across the street.

News people and editors were more courageous during the Vietnam War. What are they afraid of now?

Who can forget the shocking picture of the little Vietnamese girl running down a road, aflame from a napalm attack?

And who can forget the picture of South Vietnamese Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan putting a gun to the temple of a young member of the Viet Cong and executing him on a Saigon street?

I don’t remember any American outcry against the media for showing the horror of war when those photographs were published. Were we braver then? Or maybe more conscience stricken?

Seattle Post Intelligencer | People Can Handle the Truth About War

From the wells of disappointment | Where the women kneel to pray | For the grace of God in the desert here | And the desert far away: | Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Leonard Cohen | Democracy

Cape Wolf Packs

Cape Point Radar Station pillbox

"By late 1942, with shipping losses on the increase, some of the promised Allied radar equipment finally began to arrive. One of the great wartime secrets, the revolutionary cavity magnetron, was at the heart of two new 10 cm CD (coastal defence) radars in octagonal wooden structures which had been obtained with Schonland's influence. These were Type NT 273-S and had been made for the Royal Navy. Their small parabolic aerials projected a very narrow radar beam which was ideal for detecting U-boat conning towers and sometimes even their periscopes. One of these sets was erected on Signal Hill and the other one at Cape Point."

"He was worried about the submarine danger off Cape Point and wanted to know if we could not improve our cover. I told him we had a set in store but the site would not be ready for some time. We discussed possible improvisations and to cut a long story short with his energetic support we had a 273s working at Cape Point within two weeks and it ran there for about a year before the proper site at Rooikrans was ready."

The South African Military History Society


Cape Point lighthouse replica

During WWII, Cape Town was strategically well-placed to serve the allied forces fighting in Europe and in the East. U-boat wolf packs hunted the merchant marine convoys and troop ships that would fill Table Bay and, following a tradition established two hundred years earlier, the Cape bristled with listening posts and defensive emplacements.

Most people believe the radar station built at Cape Point by the South African Engineer Corps (SAEC) to have been an extremely small building and, with this perception seldom corrected, miss its ruins — which sprawl across the cape.

Lady Liberty

ARA Libertad

ARA Libertad (Q-2) is a tall ship which serves as a school ship in the Argentine Navy. She was built in the 1950s at the Rio Santiago shipyards near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her maiden voyage was in 1962, and she continues to be a school ship with yearly instruction voyages for the graduating naval cadets.

She has just finished (April 2007) undergoing a general overhaul which includes the addition of facilities for female cadets and crew in line with current diversity policies in the Navy and the updating of the engines and navigation technology.

She participated in the celebrations of the United States Bicentennial on July 4, 1976 by sailing in parade, with many other tall ships from all over the world, on the Hudson River, in front of New York City in what was called Operation Sail.

Wikipedia | ARA Libertad (Q-2)

Shared histories...