Share now!

 

E-NEWS BULLETIN 23 November 2018 Links to present possibilities

SOUTH AFRICA

amadiba crisis committeeXolobeni community wins the RIGHT TO SAY NO TO MINING

The Umgungundlovu community and the Amadiba Crisis Committee won the court case against DMR and Mr Gwede Mantashe. The judgement declares that it would be unlawful of DMR to grant the mining license before they get the full prior and Informed consent by the community. facebook.com/amadibacrisiscommittee/


 

The End of Despotism

Sikho Luthango of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation discusses “The Implications of the Malendu Constitutional Court Judgement for the “Right to Say No” to Mining.” The South African Constitutional Court delivered a ground-breaking judgment which will have wide-implications for mining affected communities and their “right to say no”. wwmp.org.za/ [384 MB pdf]


agrizziBosasa executive to blow the whistle on corruption

Angelo Agrizzi, the former chief operations officer of the controversial Bosasa group of companies, announced that he will expose “high-level people, government officials as well as public office bearers currently in government positions, parastatals and state-owned enterprises” for their parasitic attachment to the country’s prisons. Bosasa sponsored former president Jacob Zuma’s 73rd birthday party in 2015. news24.com/


es'kiaDecolonising ‘decolonisation’ with Mphahlele

Seemingly decolonial projects repeat colonialist ideas about the inherent differences between black and white; the uniqueness of ‘black culture’ and its supposedly essential traits; and the need to retrieve ‘native’ discourses; forgetting that ‘the native’ comes into being only when the settler arrives. Es’kia Mphahlele confronted such faux radicalism in his critiques of the negritude movement and thus should be a leading light in responses to Afro-pessimism. newframe.com/


matric[listen] The Matric Class of 2018 – what are their job prospects in 2019?

Every year nearly 700,000 high school students write the Matric examination in South Africa. In recent years about 70% of them pass annually. Only 18% of matriculants manage to access tertiary education. That means that over 500,000 matriculants join South Africa’s labour market annually while at the same time over 40% of the adult working population is unemployed and the economy is shedding jobs. Workers on Wednesday this week discusses the challenge of youth unemployment with guests, Noncedo Madubedube (General Secretary of Equal Education) and Professor Rasigan Maharaj (an economist at Tshwane University of Technology).

[watch] Eskom’s payment woes: who should subsidise whom?

Soweto alone owes R15-billion, and its residents consistently resist any attempts to force them to pay their power bills. Can the installation of prepaid meters solve the non-payment problem? Ted Blom from the Energy Expert Coalition and Cleopatra Shezi of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee discuss the issue.

 

INTERNATIONAL

zim public order policeArrest of ZCTU leaders highlights continued repression of trade unions in Zimbabwe

The harassment of trade unionists in Zimbabwe continues despite the promises of the ‘new dispensation’ of President Emmerson Mnangagwa. On 16 November 2018, seven members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) appeared in court to face charges of disruption of public order. Twenty-six others are scheduled to appear in court in Masvingo and Mutare at a later date. wwmp.org.za/elitsha/


tutiWhere is the global outrage at Saudi Arabia’s execution of Tuti Tursilawati?

A 32-year-old domestic worker, mother of one, from Indonesia went to Saudi Arabia to work in a private home. She was sexually abused for months. Finally, in 2010, after nine months of abuse and in self-defense, she killed her abuser when he tried to rape her again. She ran away, was caught and gang raped, and then turned over to police. In 2011, she was found guilty of murder. For seven years, she sat on death row before her execution. Who cares? womeninandbeyond.org/


funeralThousands attend funeral of murdered Turkish trade union leader

The president of Turkey’s DİSK/Lastik- İş union, Abdullah Karacan, was fatally shot during a visit to meet workers at a Goodyear tyre factory. His funeral the next day brought politicians, union leaders and all bereaved together. industriall-union.org/


meenu and krishnaThe Farm Widow: A Suicide and a Life Left Behind

Suicide among small farmers in India has become common, tied to their increasing indebtedness. This long-form article offers an intimate portrait of a farming family trying to survive in these straits. thewire.in/


corbynWhy the Left Should Embrace Brexit

The Left’s anti-Brexit hysteria is based on a mixture of bad economics, flawed understanding of the European Union, and lack of political imagination. Not only is there no reason to believe that Brexit would be an economic apocalypse; more importantly, abandoning the EU provides an opportunity to show that a radical break with neoliberalism, and with the institutions that support it, is possible. jacobinmag.com/


US troopsAmerica has spent $5.9 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia since 2001, a new study says

The figure reflects the cost across the U.S. federal government since the price of war is not borne by the Defense Department alone. The U.S. economy has for this century been a war machine. cnbc.com/

[watch] China Intensifies Crackdown on Marxist Student Activists

Chinese university students, inspired by their studies of Marx, are facing an increasing state crackdown on their movement in support of workers who have been trying to organize technology workers.

[watch] Somalians rally in Paris to protest genocide of their families and communities in Somalia

Over 200 Somalians in Paris protested genocide against their people and the Arabization of their country by jihadists and the Saudi and other reactionary theocratic family regimes in the Middle East. Somalian human rights activist Gaffar Mohammud Saeneen also talked about the effect of the US/French and NATO attack on Libya, which led to the collapse of the country and the transfer of arsenals of weapons to many countries in Africa including Somalia.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Landwestbank-airbnb

airbnb-benefitsAirbnb announced this week that it will remove property listings located in Israeli settlements. The injustice of leases offered to tourists in illegal Israeli settlements was highlighted by Human Rights Watch and Kerem Navot. Visualizing Palestine partnered witht HRW to disseminate the findings via these visualizations.


“With the occupation now in its 51st year, and with no end in near sight, we believe we have a moral duty to state publicly that we will not invest in any company profiting from the occupation.” The decision fits into the church’s history of boycotting the fossil fuel industry, arms companies and apartheid South Africa. middleeasteye.net/


against-canaryThe well-funded reactionary right-wing Internet campaign by “Canary Mission” targeting student activists

In try stem the growth of the international solidarity movement for Palestine, Canary Mission regularly tweets out false accusations that activists are anti-semitic, terrorists, criminal, or even “fake Jews.” These tweets have sometimes gone directly to places of employment where targeted activists work. Canary Mission is nothing short of a modern day blacklist. againstcanarymission.org/


palestine stitch‘Palestinian embroidery is under threat from Israel’

Rajaa Alzeer has been doing Palestinian embroidery for a lifetime, she only stopped when Israeli settlers broke her arms. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented some 100-400 Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank every year since 2012. Each led to Palestinians sustaining injuries to themselves or their property. middleeastmonitor.com/

Local news from Khayelitsha, East London, Port Elizabeth, Alexandra and Orange Farm in English and isiXhosa


Install the Elitsha app for your phone

PHILOSOPHY

intersectionIntersectionality: A Marxist Critique

Intersectionality is less valuable as an explanatory framework than as an ideological reflection of the times. The author argues that although intersectionality can usefully describe the effects of multiple oppressions, it does not offer an adequate explanatory framework for addressing the root causes of social inequality in the capitalist socioeconomic system. blackagendareport.com/

 

ENVIRONMENT

Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem?

Our leaders will tell us that these ideas are not feasible, but what is not feasible is the assumption that we can carry on with the status quo. If we keep pounding on the wedge of inequality and chewing through our living planet, the whole thing is going to implode. The choice is stark, and it seems people are waking up to it in large numbers: Either we evolve into a future beyond capitalism, or we won’t have a future at all. fastcompany.com/


The Big Heat – Earth on the the-big-heatBrink

The new book published by Counterpunch advances the hour on the doomsday clock. Here’s the foreword:

It’s Getting Hot Up In Here
“The world is turning, I hope it don’t turn away.” – Neil Young
When the overnight low (109F in Oman) would be a record high in most places on Earth, you know your planet is in trouble. The evidence of our warming climate is all around us. At times it feels as if our world is unraveling. Ice shelfs melting. Seas rising. Rivers flooding. Wildfires broiling. Hurricanes destroying. Droughts devastating. It’s not as if these events haven’t been around since the dawn of time, but man-made global warming is undoubtedly making matters much, much worse. There’s little hope that we can stem the rising tides and turn back the damage carbon has wrecked on our little blue planet. But there is plenty to keep fighting for.
It doesn’t matter that the odds aren’t in our favor. We’ve all seen the numbers. 2016 was the warmest year on record. 2017 the third warmest. In fact, seventeen of the 18 warmest years on record, ever, have occurred since 2001. NASA predicts that by 2020 global temperatures will have risen more than 1 degree Celsius over the past 140 years. Of course, this is directly correlated to CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels are higher today than at any point in the past 800,000 years, and the rate is going up.
Many climate scientists, including James Hansen, believe the CO2 tipping point is 350ppm. As of April 2018, NASA measured a ratio of 407ppm. Methane isn’t helping matters either. Levels of atmospheric methane have also been rising exponentially. While methane doesn’t stick around as long as carbon dioxide, it’s far better at absorbing heat and is considered 84 times more potent than its carbon brother.
The Earth as we know it, is changing forever. And it’s not just polar bears that are suffering. Coral worldwide is disappearing. Grizzlies are scarce. Salmon aren’t returning to spawn. Antarctic penguins are dying. North Atlantic cod, which have survived decades of over-fishing, are now failing to adapt to their changing ecosystem. Snow leopards, tigers, Green Sea turtles, African elephants and many more are facing extinction as they struggle to survive in their altered environments.
It can feel dire. But the anger and fear climate change evokes must be cultivated into action to fight for what’s remaining. Standing Rock, by all accounts the greatest uprising against the American fossil fuel industry in decades, ought to be a rallying cry for us all. It doesn’t matter if Big Oil sends its goons to crack our skulls, or the Feds put us behind bars. The precedent has been set, and despite setbacks, the fight for Standing Rock, and all that it symbolizes, will continue.
There are still trees to save, oceans to protect, dams to break, bears to defend and the same greedy bastards to defy. Yet, there are plenty of reasons to remain a “half-hearted fanatic” as Edward Abbey once warned, let us not be consumed by it all. While the glaciers may be melting, there are still mountains to climb, rivers to float, beaches to roam and community gardens to tend.
What we’ve attempted to cultivate in this volume of reports, essays, profiles and investigations, is fodder for the soul and cautionary tales of what it means to be an environmentalist in the late stages of capitalism. The point is not to feel overwhelmed by the all the shit, but to be invigorated by it to fight back-to take a stand like our brothers and sisters at Standing Rock.
The world may be changing faster than humans can properly grasp, which only means we must alter our perspective and change our tactics to defend it. In short, it’s time to get radical. counterpunch.org/


eschatalogyClimate change, capitalism and the military

Ever more people are connecting the dots between our economic system and ecological destruction but rarely make the link to militarism and security. As climate change will dramatically increase instability and insecurity, the role of the military in a climate-changed world can no longer be elided. tni.org/

 

Disclaimer:

This newsletter is intended as a special and alternative news, information and knowledge source for all who are interested in issues relevant to promoting political, social and economic equality and the eradication of poverty. The articles contained herein are obtained from various electronic media platforms and do not necessarily reflect the views of WWMP.