the location of the tools of our enemy lie in us.
Life, in its purest form with its challenges, its joys as they used to be as soon as we were intelligent enough to experience them, all enabling us to thrive in order that we realized and cemented our most basic purpose, its attributes to the culture and or the norms of each of us as a people, all have been altered completely so that there must exist not just fear but failure thereof as well. Little did we know that the method by which this was to be was just a simple [or not so simple] conceptualization? The one that was to change the way we view ourselves and our environment forever or at least to this day. This has not just had potential in each of us to loose or erase our true identity completely, the one thing that is nexus between ourselves today and generations before us. I am talking about the very source of our strength, courage and wit not just to counter challenges, negotiate sharp and at times sudden turns but to subsist and bring longevity to our achievement potential as human beings.
We inadvertently have allowed ourselves to conceive a self destructive idea that yes was in actual fact somewhat an imposition as to it, value on our basics as we know them was attached. This idea that with it, the owner had to establish artificial mechanisms that were to appear to us to be for our own survival and so that while we appreciate having them, they cunningly sought to entangled us in the vine of furthered dispossession, that of our mind, our spirit and our physicality. We, in the current generations existing today were all born in to this concept and therefore could not have been able to escape it as our then new environment was already contaminated with it with a challenge that would assist us to measure it against. We know that this concept is anti-humanist as it brought alive and continued to feed immortality to materialism and all that is attached to it, why? To simply influence the finite human desire so that the craftsmanship of individualism is not just realized but completed and that the cycle repeats itself over and again. This because as human beings we turn not just to own desire, we believe that it is part and parcel of our selfness as individuals.
if you believe that you are a self, if you believe in self nature as being real, as being truly existent, then there has to be desire, because in order for a or to have a self you have to define a self. If you believe in the nature of self, you have to have an underlying belief that self ends here and other begins there. You have to have some conceptualization in your mind about what the self is, because the idea of self cannot exist without some definition. Conceptual proliferation develops, and with that, desire. Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo (Buddha faith)
We need to be able to identify first the immediate enemy, then his instruments of destruction and where they are located. I am saying it is because of desire that money and all other materials that are attached to the same money come alive to coexist with us. I am saying, while desire is unavoidable since one would have come to some level of self realization, its existence within us can successfully rival our longing to consistency serve in our respective faiths and /or beliefs or giving gratitude deities. There is no doubt we are complex creatures and that because of our intellect we are said to be in the driving seat of all life forms as we take the struggle of evolution forward in our own lifetime(s). This comes with a defaulted responsibility of being protectors of the same said life forms with which we share our world. By the same measure we are responsible to the well being and thriving of other human beings we are said to be leading in different areas of demanded by nature on the one hand and our response to such demands on the other.
Our success in sharing the world in the fairest manner with all living organisms is if we are successful in sieving accurately the seeds of bad desire from the good ones. The bad one must be gotten rid of without delay because it objectifies everything in order to satisfy and worship the self, and as it also affixes itself upon the realm of individualism. It is the same which cause us not just to place value but to hunger to take ownership of that same which must stand as an entity for the deserved ones or for all. Capitalism is an enemy of humanity. We must be weary of the forces such as attack on our desires as this will separate us or even cause us to stratify as a people.
Mzolozolo.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
When Can We Be in All This Together? - By Dr Peter Lawrence
The 2007-8 financial and
economic crisis gave the lie
to what had become the
conventional view that neo-liberal
economic policies were the only way
to guarantee growth and stability,
Based on some very simple ideas about
human economic behaviour, they
pushed for policies which reduced the
role of the State in economic activity
and regulation, diminished its welfare
functions, and incentivised private activity
by selling off public enterprises
or sub-contracting these services to the
private sector to encourage competitive
behaviour in their provision, especially
in health and education.
The central idea behind these
policies is the concept of people and
enterprises as self-interested agents
pursuing their own objectives in
competition with others and making
rational choices based on the belief
that they seek to maximise their own
welfare. The assumption is also that
economic growth would ensure that
this need not be a zero-sum game in
which improvement in one individual’s
welfare had to come at the expense
of another; and in any case the State
would ensure that there were safety
nets to prevent people losing out
altogether, albeit that recipients of
state benefits would have to be strictly
monitored to ensure they did not
free ride.
So following the crisis, there were
many calls for a revision of previous
thinking and for new thinking about
economics and policy. The most
common call was for a return to some
kind of Keynesian interventionism with
state investment in capital projects as
a leading strategy, but there were also
calls for more international cooperation
and for a return to mutualism in the
financial sector. The need for a new
paradigm, for a new way of thinking
about the economy and economic
behaviour was patently evident. The
temptation on the progressive left of
the political spectrum was to return
to the old policies of state socialism
honed in a different time in capitalism’s
history and to reject any need for the
Left to adapt to the immense changes
in economy and society in the last
half-century.
The response of the conservative
and social democratic neo-liberal
governments to calls for an alternative
strategy to deal with the effects of the
crisis has been to say that ‘there is
no alternative’, that ‘we are all in this
together’ and that we all have to make
sacrifices. What is evident is that in most
cases some are in it more than others,
with the poor taking proportionately
much more of the sacrifice than the
rich. The Republicans in the US for
instance, want to maintain tax cuts for
the rich while cutting the healthcare
and education budget which partly
helps the poor. In the UK, the coalition
wants to abolish the 50% tax band on
incomes over £150,000, while cutting
health and education expenditure and
social benefits which largely help the
poor. These policies generate a deep
sense of unfairness among those who
feel that they are least able to carry the
burden of cuts. However, fairness is
one concept which is not part of the
framework of neo-liberal economics.
For in its individually orientated
framework it is believed that the rich
create the wealth we all can then enjoy
and to give them the incentive to do
that we should not ask them to pay
more tax, but less, in case they move
abroad and cease to create wealth and
pay the tax they do pay.
Tragedy of the Commons
President Obama’s response to the
Republican Party’s demands, heavily
influenced as these are by the Tea Party
faction, is to argue that the rich can pay
more and are often quite willing to do
so and that tax cuts for the rich and
expenditure cuts for services largely
needed and enjoyed by the poor
are not a fair way to make sacrifices
to cut budget deficits. The idea that
people might also be interested in
making sacrifices to help other people
less fortunate than themselves is one
that has been recognised by those
economists who query rational choice
theory and suggest that there are other
motivations which explain human
behaviour and, within that, economic
behaviour. Significantly the 2008
Nobel Prize in Economics was shared
by Elinor Ostrom for her work on the
governance of common property.
This work offers insights into why and
when collective action and collective
governance work. Her work and that of
her associates presents a challenge to
the prevailing economic ideas based on
self-interested individuals. It suggests
that in particular contexts property
held in common does not induce
behaviours in which participants seek
to maximise their own self-interest and
therefore result in the property being
badly governed – the so-called ‘tragedy
of the commons’.
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ is the
title of an address given by Professor
Garret Hardin, a US biologist, to
the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in 1968.
In it he set out what has become the
orthodox view of human behavior
in circumstances where they have
no apparent individual incentive to
conserve a resource to which they all
have rights. He uses the example of
a piece of common land accessible
to cattle keepers. The benefit to each
cattle keeper of putting one more cow
onto the common land is greater than
the cost to the individual cattle keeper
in overgrazing the land and reducing its
feeding potential. As Hardin puts it:
"Ruin is the destination to
which all men rush, each pursuing
his own best interest in a society
that believes in freedom of the
commons. Freedom in a commons
brings ruin to all."
The first response is to conclude that
replacing common property rights by
private property rights will ensure that
ruin is avoided. A good example of this
has been World Bank policies on land
tenure which have sought to promote
private property rights and, until
recently, to oppose common property
rights both on the grounds of ‘tragedy
of the commons’ type arguments and
more importantly now on the grounds
that private property rights enable
easier access to credit. A second
response is to suggest, as Hardin does,
that such a problem can be overcome
by some external coercive force – the
government for example - regulating
access in such a way as to limit or
even eliminate damage to grazing. The
point that Hardin seeks to make is that
people themselves will not behave in
a way that automatically generates
a rational use of common property
without some coercive force, albeit
one that, in a democracy, is acceptable
and does not impinge too heavily on
individual freedoms.
This argument is one that in a wider
sense is used to explain the collapse of
the Soviet Union and countries with
the same brand of statist socialism,
that is, that people cannot be expected
on their own to subordinate their
individual objectives to those of society
as a whole in the belief that this will
bring the greatest benefit to them
as individuals. The extreme form of
this belief is in that famous dictum of
Margaret Thatcher – ‘there is no such
thing as society’. The value of Ostrom’s
work is that it argues quite the contrary
is possible and that there is empirical
evidence to show that people evolve
ways of interacting which do preserve
the ‘commons’.
Co-operation rather than
Competition
In a paper that surveys the
research that she, in collaborations
with colleagues, have done and will
do, Ostrom reveals that ‘the world
contains multiple types of individuals,
some more willing than others to
initiate reciprocity to achieve the
benefits of collective action’. So for
her, ‘a core question is how potential
co-operators signal one another and
design institutions that reinforce rather
than destroy conditional cooperation’.
This is best explained, she argues, by
evolutionary theory, that is through time
people learn how best to cooperate. It
is not possible to go into all the detail
here, but there are two sorts of
evidence to support the view that
under particular kinds of conditions
people will be prepared to make a
contribution to the cost of a public
good in the knowledge that they will
benefit more from this strategy than
one in which they pay none of the
costs, or a small part of them, in the
expectation that others will pay, or
that they will not need all the potential
benefits. The first kind of evidence is
given from experimental games.
Among other things, it is found that
cooperation is more likely to occur
where people believe others will
cooperate, that the more rounds of a
game that are played and the more the
subjects in the experiment learn how to
cooperate, the more cooperation takes
place and that the availability of some
form of punishment for those who
under-contribute is likely to strengthen
the cooperation of those less inclined
to cooperate at the beginning.
The second kind of evidence is that
coming from field studies from parts of
the world where communal property
rights are dominant, whether they be
rights to fishing grounds, grazing land
or irrigation. Among the major findings
are that self-organisation and drawing
up of rules by the users of a resource
accessed in common works better than
the imposition of rules from an external
agency. Participants in a cooperative
enterprise evolve their own rules,
customs and practices and a trust in
each other through reciprocity which
results in an effective management of
the common resource. Ostrom suggests
that successful common property
organisations need a set of design
rules which involve the participants
constructing and enforcing their own
rules with appropriate punishments
which increase with the seriousness of
the rules breach, clearly state who can
join and leave, and when, and ensure
that costs incurred by members are
proportionately related to the benefits
that they get. So Ostrom’s work suggests that it is
not necessarily the case that what she
calls the ‘rational egoist’ characterises
the nature of all individuals in all
situations, a belief that underpins neoclassical
economic theory. We see
examples of this in various forms of
altruistic behaviour, the most famous
of which is donating blood. Once
we accept that there are contexts
which can be constructed in which
people will act cooperatively rather
than competitively, there is no limit
to the possibilities for collective social
and economic organisation based
on reciprocity and trust. This applies
as much to a fair and progressive
tax system in which everyone pays
according to their ability to pay and
everyone enjoys the same access to
public services regardless of their
means, as it applies to a financial
mutual, or to a producer cooperative,
or to the management of communal
property.
A new economic paradigm
based on assumptions about human
behaviour that go beyond the notion
of the ‘rational egoist’ is badly needed.
There is now a substantial body
of evidence that suggests that new
forms of organisation in which people
cooperate rather than compete,
where dog does not eat dog (a
behaviour that has especially
characterised financial markets), might
more effectively reflect the way people
would prefer to behave. The notion of a
society of individuals each maximising
his/her own utility and by doing so
maximising the wealth of society as a
whole has been seriously challenged
by yet another crisis in which it is clear
that the maximising activities of some
individuals have cost society dear.
There is an alternative.
The Thinker Magazine article
economic crisis gave the lie
to what had become the
conventional view that neo-liberal
economic policies were the only way
to guarantee growth and stability,
Based on some very simple ideas about
human economic behaviour, they
pushed for policies which reduced the
role of the State in economic activity
and regulation, diminished its welfare
functions, and incentivised private activity
by selling off public enterprises
or sub-contracting these services to the
private sector to encourage competitive
behaviour in their provision, especially
in health and education.
The central idea behind these
policies is the concept of people and
enterprises as self-interested agents
pursuing their own objectives in
competition with others and making
rational choices based on the belief
that they seek to maximise their own
welfare. The assumption is also that
economic growth would ensure that
this need not be a zero-sum game in
which improvement in one individual’s
welfare had to come at the expense
of another; and in any case the State
would ensure that there were safety
nets to prevent people losing out
altogether, albeit that recipients of
state benefits would have to be strictly
monitored to ensure they did not
free ride.
So following the crisis, there were
many calls for a revision of previous
thinking and for new thinking about
economics and policy. The most
common call was for a return to some
kind of Keynesian interventionism with
state investment in capital projects as
a leading strategy, but there were also
calls for more international cooperation
and for a return to mutualism in the
financial sector. The need for a new
paradigm, for a new way of thinking
about the economy and economic
behaviour was patently evident. The
temptation on the progressive left of
the political spectrum was to return
to the old policies of state socialism
honed in a different time in capitalism’s
history and to reject any need for the
Left to adapt to the immense changes
in economy and society in the last
half-century.
The response of the conservative
and social democratic neo-liberal
governments to calls for an alternative
strategy to deal with the effects of the
crisis has been to say that ‘there is
no alternative’, that ‘we are all in this
together’ and that we all have to make
sacrifices. What is evident is that in most
cases some are in it more than others,
with the poor taking proportionately
much more of the sacrifice than the
rich. The Republicans in the US for
instance, want to maintain tax cuts for
the rich while cutting the healthcare
and education budget which partly
helps the poor. In the UK, the coalition
wants to abolish the 50% tax band on
incomes over £150,000, while cutting
health and education expenditure and
social benefits which largely help the
poor. These policies generate a deep
sense of unfairness among those who
feel that they are least able to carry the
burden of cuts. However, fairness is
one concept which is not part of the
framework of neo-liberal economics.
For in its individually orientated
framework it is believed that the rich
create the wealth we all can then enjoy
and to give them the incentive to do
that we should not ask them to pay
more tax, but less, in case they move
abroad and cease to create wealth and
pay the tax they do pay.
Tragedy of the Commons
President Obama’s response to the
Republican Party’s demands, heavily
influenced as these are by the Tea Party
faction, is to argue that the rich can pay
more and are often quite willing to do
so and that tax cuts for the rich and
expenditure cuts for services largely
needed and enjoyed by the poor
are not a fair way to make sacrifices
to cut budget deficits. The idea that
people might also be interested in
making sacrifices to help other people
less fortunate than themselves is one
that has been recognised by those
economists who query rational choice
theory and suggest that there are other
motivations which explain human
behaviour and, within that, economic
behaviour. Significantly the 2008
Nobel Prize in Economics was shared
by Elinor Ostrom for her work on the
governance of common property.
This work offers insights into why and
when collective action and collective
governance work. Her work and that of
her associates presents a challenge to
the prevailing economic ideas based on
self-interested individuals. It suggests
that in particular contexts property
held in common does not induce
behaviours in which participants seek
to maximise their own self-interest and
therefore result in the property being
badly governed – the so-called ‘tragedy
of the commons’.
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ is the
title of an address given by Professor
Garret Hardin, a US biologist, to
the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in 1968.
In it he set out what has become the
orthodox view of human behavior
in circumstances where they have
no apparent individual incentive to
conserve a resource to which they all
have rights. He uses the example of
a piece of common land accessible
to cattle keepers. The benefit to each
cattle keeper of putting one more cow
onto the common land is greater than
the cost to the individual cattle keeper
in overgrazing the land and reducing its
feeding potential. As Hardin puts it:
"Ruin is the destination to
which all men rush, each pursuing
his own best interest in a society
that believes in freedom of the
commons. Freedom in a commons
brings ruin to all."
The first response is to conclude that
replacing common property rights by
private property rights will ensure that
ruin is avoided. A good example of this
has been World Bank policies on land
tenure which have sought to promote
private property rights and, until
recently, to oppose common property
rights both on the grounds of ‘tragedy
of the commons’ type arguments and
more importantly now on the grounds
that private property rights enable
easier access to credit. A second
response is to suggest, as Hardin does,
that such a problem can be overcome
by some external coercive force – the
government for example - regulating
access in such a way as to limit or
even eliminate damage to grazing. The
point that Hardin seeks to make is that
people themselves will not behave in
a way that automatically generates
a rational use of common property
without some coercive force, albeit
one that, in a democracy, is acceptable
and does not impinge too heavily on
individual freedoms.
This argument is one that in a wider
sense is used to explain the collapse of
the Soviet Union and countries with
the same brand of statist socialism,
that is, that people cannot be expected
on their own to subordinate their
individual objectives to those of society
as a whole in the belief that this will
bring the greatest benefit to them
as individuals. The extreme form of
this belief is in that famous dictum of
Margaret Thatcher – ‘there is no such
thing as society’. The value of Ostrom’s
work is that it argues quite the contrary
is possible and that there is empirical
evidence to show that people evolve
ways of interacting which do preserve
the ‘commons’.
Co-operation rather than
Competition
In a paper that surveys the
research that she, in collaborations
with colleagues, have done and will
do, Ostrom reveals that ‘the world
contains multiple types of individuals,
some more willing than others to
initiate reciprocity to achieve the
benefits of collective action’. So for
her, ‘a core question is how potential
co-operators signal one another and
design institutions that reinforce rather
than destroy conditional cooperation’.
This is best explained, she argues, by
evolutionary theory, that is through time
people learn how best to cooperate. It
is not possible to go into all the detail
here, but there are two sorts of
evidence to support the view that
under particular kinds of conditions
people will be prepared to make a
contribution to the cost of a public
good in the knowledge that they will
benefit more from this strategy than
one in which they pay none of the
costs, or a small part of them, in the
expectation that others will pay, or
that they will not need all the potential
benefits. The first kind of evidence is
given from experimental games.
Among other things, it is found that
cooperation is more likely to occur
where people believe others will
cooperate, that the more rounds of a
game that are played and the more the
subjects in the experiment learn how to
cooperate, the more cooperation takes
place and that the availability of some
form of punishment for those who
under-contribute is likely to strengthen
the cooperation of those less inclined
to cooperate at the beginning.
The second kind of evidence is that
coming from field studies from parts of
the world where communal property
rights are dominant, whether they be
rights to fishing grounds, grazing land
or irrigation. Among the major findings
are that self-organisation and drawing
up of rules by the users of a resource
accessed in common works better than
the imposition of rules from an external
agency. Participants in a cooperative
enterprise evolve their own rules,
customs and practices and a trust in
each other through reciprocity which
results in an effective management of
the common resource. Ostrom suggests
that successful common property
organisations need a set of design
rules which involve the participants
constructing and enforcing their own
rules with appropriate punishments
which increase with the seriousness of
the rules breach, clearly state who can
join and leave, and when, and ensure
that costs incurred by members are
proportionately related to the benefits
that they get. So Ostrom’s work suggests that it is
not necessarily the case that what she
calls the ‘rational egoist’ characterises
the nature of all individuals in all
situations, a belief that underpins neoclassical
economic theory. We see
examples of this in various forms of
altruistic behaviour, the most famous
of which is donating blood. Once
we accept that there are contexts
which can be constructed in which
people will act cooperatively rather
than competitively, there is no limit
to the possibilities for collective social
and economic organisation based
on reciprocity and trust. This applies
as much to a fair and progressive
tax system in which everyone pays
according to their ability to pay and
everyone enjoys the same access to
public services regardless of their
means, as it applies to a financial
mutual, or to a producer cooperative,
or to the management of communal
property.
A new economic paradigm
based on assumptions about human
behaviour that go beyond the notion
of the ‘rational egoist’ is badly needed.
There is now a substantial body
of evidence that suggests that new
forms of organisation in which people
cooperate rather than compete,
where dog does not eat dog (a
behaviour that has especially
characterised financial markets), might
more effectively reflect the way people
would prefer to behave. The notion of a
society of individuals each maximising
his/her own utility and by doing so
maximising the wealth of society as a
whole has been seriously challenged
by yet another crisis in which it is clear
that the maximising activities of some
individuals have cost society dear.
There is an alternative.
The Thinker Magazine article
Friday, June 24, 2011
Manufacturing Poor People - by globalresearch.ca
Even as the overall population of the world continues to increase, the increase in the number of poor people outstrips that growth. How is this possible? Are the poor simply breeding like rabbits, increasing their numbers geometrically in a suicidal, lemming-like production line of poverty-stricken people? Or are they getting some outside aid in their catastrophic endeavor?
In just the past 50 years, the Rich People of the "First", or Western World have invested heavily, through their banks, industries and other corporations, in the poorest regions of the "Third" World in Africa, Asia and Latin America, home to the majority of the world's poor. Transnational corporations are attracted by the richness of these people's natural resources, the richness of profits off cheap labor, the near total lack of environmental and worker safety regulations and the non-existent benefits for said labor.
U.S. transnationals were given a push toward this pregnant profit source, this attractive and waiting richness, by the U.S. government, which subsidizes (read gives taxpayers' money to) corporations in the form of tax breaks on foreign investment and even helping them to pay their relocation expenses at the expense of not only the taxpayers, but those taxpayers whose jobs are outsourced by this support for global U.S. economic dominance.
Local businesses in the "Third" World are destroyed as U.S. transnationals penetrate and overwhelm their markets like species imported to get rid of pests which turn out to be even bigger pests themselves. Taxpayer-subsidized cartels of transnationals dump their cheap, surplus goods in these countries at below their own cost to undersell local producers, thus forcing them out of business and allowing the U.S. corporations to take over the market. (This is also Wal-Mart's favorite technique for killing the competition in local markets right here in America.)
In the case of Big Agriculture they also take over/expropriate the best pieces of land, monocrop them with products for export, and douse them with oil-based, chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides, destroying the soil. Think Dust Bowl. This leaves less land for use for those run-out-of-business farmers and their families to produce the food to feed the local population, who, along with the displaced farmers, are forced to go to work - for next to nothing - on those monocropped plantations to grow food that will be shipped out of the country or to work in American sub-contracted sweat shop factories. This also forces them to buy what food they can afford from these same Big Ag corporations. This is exactly the same scenario as in the U.S., since the bulk of the U.S. population consists of dependent consumers, unable to feed themselves, who must go to a supermarket to feed off the tit of Big Ag.
Robbing local people of self-sufficiency creates a perfect profit-making mechanism based on a labor market flooded with desperate people who can be herded into a neat, ready-to-use package, labor in a box, in slums and shanty towns which they will leave to slave for token, poverty wages - if they can find work - which are most often in violation of their own countries' minimum wage laws. This is thanks to the overarching authority of Western-created "Free" Trade Agreements enforced by the World Trade Organization in its private, unaccountable courts.
Since the U.S. is one of the few pariah nations which refuses to sign the international convention for the abolishment of child labor and forced labor, Wal-Mart, Disney and J.C. Penny were able to pay eleven cents - 11 cents - an hour in Haiti in 2007. This allows these transnational corporations, not only in the "Third" World, but here in America, to have workers as young as 12 - twelve - sustain high rates of fatalities and injuries while working for less than the minimum wage. Talk about your right to work!
The savings these transnationals - and their shareholders - are able to rack up by exploiting and further impoverishing the people of the "Third" World do not translate into lower prices for the consumers, e.g. people, of the "First", or Western World. Oh no, my pretty! Transnationals don't outsource to save their customers money. They do it to increase their profits and their payouts to shareholders. For instance, children in Indonesia in 1990 made shoes for thirteen cents an hour working a 12-hour day. The shoes cost $2.60 to make. They sold in the United States for $100.
In addition to this slick trick, any U.S. "aid" to these transnationals-impoverished countries comes with stainless steel strings attached. Besides the "aid" money being used to create an infrastructure - ports, railroads, airports, highways, refineries, utilities, etc. - which facilitates the transnationals' ability to make money at the expense of local economies, this "aid" must most often be spent on U.S. goods, thus enriching even more U.S. corporations.
The country receiving "aid" must also give investment preference to even more U.S. corporations. This causes a shift away from products produced locally and toward those imported from the West, creating more debt, dependency and hunger. Further, a lot of this "aid" slips silently into the silken pockets of the local ruling class to buy their complicity and even enlist them in the enforcement of the ongoing heist.
Hand-in-hand with U.S. "aid" comes more "help" from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The financial contributions to those organizations by countries belonging to them determines the weight of their voting power. Since the U.S. is the largest "donor", you can just guess the name of that tune. And, of course, the IMF (International Mother Fuckers) works under a cloak of secrecy (to protect the confidentiality of the donors, dontcha know) enforced by the banks and the treasury organizations of the rich nations who run it.
The World Bank loans money to a poor country to "help" in its development, to build up a part of its economy. "If", and almost certainly when (that's The Plan) the poor country is unable to pay the usurious interest on the loan becayse of declining exports (again, The Plan), the country has to borrow more money in order to service the debt.
The IMF extends more loans, with more of those stainless steel strings more tightly bound around the victim, er, I mean, loan recipient, trussing up the "benefiting" poor nation like a Thanksgiving turkey about to be devoured by the West, The Rich. The country which borrows money from these Fuckers must give tax breaks to Western transnationals. The country must slash wages and refuse to protect local businesses from being ravaged by cheap imports and corporate takeovers.
The country is further strong-armed to sell, at fire sale prices, all its government-owned mines, its railroads, industries and utilities to privately-owned, mostly-foreign corporations. The country must allow its forests to be clearcut and its land to be strip-mined. Money for education, healthcare, food assistance and the transportation infrastructure must be sheared back to service the debt. And the interest on the debt, through the wondrously magical Western miracle of compound interest, keeps growing and growing and growing and growing and on and on and on and on... And all the while, the people of the country are less able to feed themselves, since they are forced to grow cash crops for export to feed that debt service.
This is how the "Third" World is kept in poverty, subjugated to the "First" World, whose people purposefully, premeditatedly impoverish and immiserate the people of the "Third" World via depraved indifference in order to serve the plump, plutocratic pleasure of U.S. transnationals, their shareholders and American consumers. This debt reaches a point where nearly ALL of a country's export earnings go to debt payment, squeezing the economy like a lemon, and the poverty-making snowballs.
And while critics of these "aid" programs, most often faux-progressives, point out that these programs just don't work for "those people", the people of the "Third" World's nations, these same programs continue to receive funding from their adherents precisely because they do work, exactly as they were intended to work, to transfer the rich resources of the poor in the "Third" World to the already wealthy people in the "First" World. What an arrogant and ludicrous appellation is "First" World, self-designated by fatted, rich Western peoples to describe and denigrate the poor people of whom the scaffold supporting the American, and Western, standard of living is built.
This is how the magical, voodoo, trickle down economics of the Friedmans, the Reagans, the Volckers, the Greenspans, the Bushes, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, etc. who prosylitize "free" market theology works. The people of the "Third" World are used as fertilizer to grow the fortunes of the people of the "First", or Western World. They are used like toilet paper, like disposable plastic packaging, like prophylactics (scum bags) and then discarded as if their lives meant nothing more. They are receptacles, vessels in which the rich "create" their "self-made" wealth - do their business - then casually flush these poor people - and their children - out of sight, down the polluted toilet the "First" World has made of our whole world.
Transnational corporations use the U.S. government and corporate lobbyist-written "free" trade policies, which are designed and work very well, to prevent "Third" World nations from ever "developing" sufficiently to become serious trade competitors. And this is because U.S. corporations learned the lesson of the Marshall Plan very well.
After World War II, America's major trade competitors were flattened, economically as well as physically, and America, in all its beneficence and magnanimity, offered money to Europe and Japan so they could rebuild shattered industries and infrastructure by using this "aid" money to purchase American goods and services, profiting hugely in the process. And while Europe and Japan were rebuilding, the U.S. was busy establishing itself as the world's global economic and military behemoth. Following Word War II, and up to the mid-Seventies, the United States experienced the most prosperous period, overall, in its history. And then things began to go south, as former flattened economic competitors began to recover enough to give the behemoth a run for its money, and actually overtaking the once supremely, economically dominant USA.
Well, U.S. transnationals didn't intend to ever let that happen again. There would be no more giving a real leg up to potential competitors. And thus we arrived at where we are today. And, in fact, the ruse works so well, that since the Seventies the plutocracy has been using the very same template here at home, - with an increasingly heavy hand. See U.S. auto workers, healthcare, the bank bailout, foreclosed homes, 600,00 jobs a month jettisoned, the murder of state governments, et al. Who, or what, will be next?
Vi Ransel is a frequent contributor to online political newsletters. She can be reached at rosiesretrocycle@yahoo.com.
In just the past 50 years, the Rich People of the "First", or Western World have invested heavily, through their banks, industries and other corporations, in the poorest regions of the "Third" World in Africa, Asia and Latin America, home to the majority of the world's poor. Transnational corporations are attracted by the richness of these people's natural resources, the richness of profits off cheap labor, the near total lack of environmental and worker safety regulations and the non-existent benefits for said labor.
U.S. transnationals were given a push toward this pregnant profit source, this attractive and waiting richness, by the U.S. government, which subsidizes (read gives taxpayers' money to) corporations in the form of tax breaks on foreign investment and even helping them to pay their relocation expenses at the expense of not only the taxpayers, but those taxpayers whose jobs are outsourced by this support for global U.S. economic dominance.
Local businesses in the "Third" World are destroyed as U.S. transnationals penetrate and overwhelm their markets like species imported to get rid of pests which turn out to be even bigger pests themselves. Taxpayer-subsidized cartels of transnationals dump their cheap, surplus goods in these countries at below their own cost to undersell local producers, thus forcing them out of business and allowing the U.S. corporations to take over the market. (This is also Wal-Mart's favorite technique for killing the competition in local markets right here in America.)
In the case of Big Agriculture they also take over/expropriate the best pieces of land, monocrop them with products for export, and douse them with oil-based, chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides, destroying the soil. Think Dust Bowl. This leaves less land for use for those run-out-of-business farmers and their families to produce the food to feed the local population, who, along with the displaced farmers, are forced to go to work - for next to nothing - on those monocropped plantations to grow food that will be shipped out of the country or to work in American sub-contracted sweat shop factories. This also forces them to buy what food they can afford from these same Big Ag corporations. This is exactly the same scenario as in the U.S., since the bulk of the U.S. population consists of dependent consumers, unable to feed themselves, who must go to a supermarket to feed off the tit of Big Ag.
Robbing local people of self-sufficiency creates a perfect profit-making mechanism based on a labor market flooded with desperate people who can be herded into a neat, ready-to-use package, labor in a box, in slums and shanty towns which they will leave to slave for token, poverty wages - if they can find work - which are most often in violation of their own countries' minimum wage laws. This is thanks to the overarching authority of Western-created "Free" Trade Agreements enforced by the World Trade Organization in its private, unaccountable courts.
Since the U.S. is one of the few pariah nations which refuses to sign the international convention for the abolishment of child labor and forced labor, Wal-Mart, Disney and J.C. Penny were able to pay eleven cents - 11 cents - an hour in Haiti in 2007. This allows these transnational corporations, not only in the "Third" World, but here in America, to have workers as young as 12 - twelve - sustain high rates of fatalities and injuries while working for less than the minimum wage. Talk about your right to work!
The savings these transnationals - and their shareholders - are able to rack up by exploiting and further impoverishing the people of the "Third" World do not translate into lower prices for the consumers, e.g. people, of the "First", or Western World. Oh no, my pretty! Transnationals don't outsource to save their customers money. They do it to increase their profits and their payouts to shareholders. For instance, children in Indonesia in 1990 made shoes for thirteen cents an hour working a 12-hour day. The shoes cost $2.60 to make. They sold in the United States for $100.
In addition to this slick trick, any U.S. "aid" to these transnationals-impoverished countries comes with stainless steel strings attached. Besides the "aid" money being used to create an infrastructure - ports, railroads, airports, highways, refineries, utilities, etc. - which facilitates the transnationals' ability to make money at the expense of local economies, this "aid" must most often be spent on U.S. goods, thus enriching even more U.S. corporations.
The country receiving "aid" must also give investment preference to even more U.S. corporations. This causes a shift away from products produced locally and toward those imported from the West, creating more debt, dependency and hunger. Further, a lot of this "aid" slips silently into the silken pockets of the local ruling class to buy their complicity and even enlist them in the enforcement of the ongoing heist.
Hand-in-hand with U.S. "aid" comes more "help" from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The financial contributions to those organizations by countries belonging to them determines the weight of their voting power. Since the U.S. is the largest "donor", you can just guess the name of that tune. And, of course, the IMF (International Mother Fuckers) works under a cloak of secrecy (to protect the confidentiality of the donors, dontcha know) enforced by the banks and the treasury organizations of the rich nations who run it.
The World Bank loans money to a poor country to "help" in its development, to build up a part of its economy. "If", and almost certainly when (that's The Plan) the poor country is unable to pay the usurious interest on the loan becayse of declining exports (again, The Plan), the country has to borrow more money in order to service the debt.
The IMF extends more loans, with more of those stainless steel strings more tightly bound around the victim, er, I mean, loan recipient, trussing up the "benefiting" poor nation like a Thanksgiving turkey about to be devoured by the West, The Rich. The country which borrows money from these Fuckers must give tax breaks to Western transnationals. The country must slash wages and refuse to protect local businesses from being ravaged by cheap imports and corporate takeovers.
The country is further strong-armed to sell, at fire sale prices, all its government-owned mines, its railroads, industries and utilities to privately-owned, mostly-foreign corporations. The country must allow its forests to be clearcut and its land to be strip-mined. Money for education, healthcare, food assistance and the transportation infrastructure must be sheared back to service the debt. And the interest on the debt, through the wondrously magical Western miracle of compound interest, keeps growing and growing and growing and growing and on and on and on and on... And all the while, the people of the country are less able to feed themselves, since they are forced to grow cash crops for export to feed that debt service.
This is how the "Third" World is kept in poverty, subjugated to the "First" World, whose people purposefully, premeditatedly impoverish and immiserate the people of the "Third" World via depraved indifference in order to serve the plump, plutocratic pleasure of U.S. transnationals, their shareholders and American consumers. This debt reaches a point where nearly ALL of a country's export earnings go to debt payment, squeezing the economy like a lemon, and the poverty-making snowballs.
And while critics of these "aid" programs, most often faux-progressives, point out that these programs just don't work for "those people", the people of the "Third" World's nations, these same programs continue to receive funding from their adherents precisely because they do work, exactly as they were intended to work, to transfer the rich resources of the poor in the "Third" World to the already wealthy people in the "First" World. What an arrogant and ludicrous appellation is "First" World, self-designated by fatted, rich Western peoples to describe and denigrate the poor people of whom the scaffold supporting the American, and Western, standard of living is built.
This is how the magical, voodoo, trickle down economics of the Friedmans, the Reagans, the Volckers, the Greenspans, the Bushes, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, etc. who prosylitize "free" market theology works. The people of the "Third" World are used as fertilizer to grow the fortunes of the people of the "First", or Western World. They are used like toilet paper, like disposable plastic packaging, like prophylactics (scum bags) and then discarded as if their lives meant nothing more. They are receptacles, vessels in which the rich "create" their "self-made" wealth - do their business - then casually flush these poor people - and their children - out of sight, down the polluted toilet the "First" World has made of our whole world.
Transnational corporations use the U.S. government and corporate lobbyist-written "free" trade policies, which are designed and work very well, to prevent "Third" World nations from ever "developing" sufficiently to become serious trade competitors. And this is because U.S. corporations learned the lesson of the Marshall Plan very well.
After World War II, America's major trade competitors were flattened, economically as well as physically, and America, in all its beneficence and magnanimity, offered money to Europe and Japan so they could rebuild shattered industries and infrastructure by using this "aid" money to purchase American goods and services, profiting hugely in the process. And while Europe and Japan were rebuilding, the U.S. was busy establishing itself as the world's global economic and military behemoth. Following Word War II, and up to the mid-Seventies, the United States experienced the most prosperous period, overall, in its history. And then things began to go south, as former flattened economic competitors began to recover enough to give the behemoth a run for its money, and actually overtaking the once supremely, economically dominant USA.
Well, U.S. transnationals didn't intend to ever let that happen again. There would be no more giving a real leg up to potential competitors. And thus we arrived at where we are today. And, in fact, the ruse works so well, that since the Seventies the plutocracy has been using the very same template here at home, - with an increasingly heavy hand. See U.S. auto workers, healthcare, the bank bailout, foreclosed homes, 600,00 jobs a month jettisoned, the murder of state governments, et al. Who, or what, will be next?
Vi Ransel is a frequent contributor to online political newsletters. She can be reached at rosiesretrocycle@yahoo.com.
The greatest depression has only just begun - by globalresearch.ca
The greatest depression in human history is still in its starting stages. What the media and many officials often refer to as the "hangover" from the global financial crisis is in fact the end of the beginning. Originating in 2008, the global economic crisis took the world by storm: banks collapsed, the "too big to fail" became bigger by consolidating the rest, governments bailed out their financial industries, masses of people lost their jobs, the 'developing' world was plunged into a deep systemic crisis, food prices rose, which in time spurred social unrest; and the Western nations that took on the bad debts of the big banks are on the precipice of a great global debt crisis, originating in Europe, hitting Greece and Spain, but destined to consume the industrialized world itself. Though many claim that we are in a "recovery," things could not be further from the truth.
As the mainstream media is finally catching on to the reality of the mirage of the so-called "recovery", reports are surfacing about a dire global economic situation:
"Evidence of a deterioration of global manufacturing growth and renewed weakness in job creation in the United States emerged Wednesday, two reversals that have markets bracing for an economic pause, or worse... Add to that a daunting list of aggravating factors: the continued implosion of the U.S. housing market, an outbreak of worldwide risk aversion, high crude-oil and gas prices pinching consumer demand, further tightening in China and other emerging-market economies, stock market losses, lack of credit growth, the looming end to the Fed’s monetary stimulus, weak business capital spending, and the still-unfolding sovereign debt crisis in Europe."
And now top financial experts are warning of a new financial crisis altogether, since the monstrous derivatives market that played such a nefarious role in the preceding crisis has not been altered, nor have its systemic risks been addressed. The derivatives market - essentially a fictional electronic market of high-stakes gambling - has a value ten times that of the entire global gross national product of the world's countries combined. This market is dominated by hedge funds and the "too big to fail" banks, who in fact created the derivatives trading schemes. As one leading hedge fund manager recently stated, "There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner... because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis." The market for derivatives is somewhere in the realm of $600 trillion.
The most recent publication by Global Research, "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," (Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavni Marshall, editors) examines the true nature of the crisis the world faces; not only its historical origins, but its depth and future repercussions. No other book on the subject takes such a nuanced and multi-faceted approach to examining the global economic crisis. Over a dozen different authors, researchers, economists, academics and former policy-makers contributed to this important book. Included within are: an examination of the history of the central banking system, the emergence and role of neoliberalism, the myth of the "free market", the role of war and empire, the National Security State, the relationship between economic crisis and the militarization of domestic society, global poverty, the food crisis, the roles played by major think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group, the nature of the derivatives market, the uses of the crisis as an "opportunity" to forge ahead with long-held plans for a global central bank, a global currency, and a global government, and much much more.
This book is not merely a history, it is a warning, and its message should be heeded now more than ever. As the crisis continues and deepens, as the wars exapand and multiply, as the very institutions that created the crisis are given more power, and as governments become more repressive and people become more resistant, it is vital for all to know the true nature of the crisis we face, the reality of who caused it, and where it is taking the world.
“This important collection offers the reader a most comprehensive analysis of the various facets – especially the financial, social and military ramifications – from an outstanding list of world-class social thinkers.” -Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
“In-depth investigations of the inner workings of the plutocracy in crisis, presented by some of our best politico-economic analysts. This book should help put to rest the hallucinations of ‘free market’ ideology.” -Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions
“Provides a very readable exposé of a global economic system, manipulated by a handful of extremely powerful economic actors for their own benefit, to enrich a few at the expense of an ever-growing majority.” -David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited
As the mainstream media is finally catching on to the reality of the mirage of the so-called "recovery", reports are surfacing about a dire global economic situation:
"Evidence of a deterioration of global manufacturing growth and renewed weakness in job creation in the United States emerged Wednesday, two reversals that have markets bracing for an economic pause, or worse... Add to that a daunting list of aggravating factors: the continued implosion of the U.S. housing market, an outbreak of worldwide risk aversion, high crude-oil and gas prices pinching consumer demand, further tightening in China and other emerging-market economies, stock market losses, lack of credit growth, the looming end to the Fed’s monetary stimulus, weak business capital spending, and the still-unfolding sovereign debt crisis in Europe."
And now top financial experts are warning of a new financial crisis altogether, since the monstrous derivatives market that played such a nefarious role in the preceding crisis has not been altered, nor have its systemic risks been addressed. The derivatives market - essentially a fictional electronic market of high-stakes gambling - has a value ten times that of the entire global gross national product of the world's countries combined. This market is dominated by hedge funds and the "too big to fail" banks, who in fact created the derivatives trading schemes. As one leading hedge fund manager recently stated, "There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner... because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis." The market for derivatives is somewhere in the realm of $600 trillion.
The most recent publication by Global Research, "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," (Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavni Marshall, editors) examines the true nature of the crisis the world faces; not only its historical origins, but its depth and future repercussions. No other book on the subject takes such a nuanced and multi-faceted approach to examining the global economic crisis. Over a dozen different authors, researchers, economists, academics and former policy-makers contributed to this important book. Included within are: an examination of the history of the central banking system, the emergence and role of neoliberalism, the myth of the "free market", the role of war and empire, the National Security State, the relationship between economic crisis and the militarization of domestic society, global poverty, the food crisis, the roles played by major think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group, the nature of the derivatives market, the uses of the crisis as an "opportunity" to forge ahead with long-held plans for a global central bank, a global currency, and a global government, and much much more.
This book is not merely a history, it is a warning, and its message should be heeded now more than ever. As the crisis continues and deepens, as the wars exapand and multiply, as the very institutions that created the crisis are given more power, and as governments become more repressive and people become more resistant, it is vital for all to know the true nature of the crisis we face, the reality of who caused it, and where it is taking the world.
“This important collection offers the reader a most comprehensive analysis of the various facets – especially the financial, social and military ramifications – from an outstanding list of world-class social thinkers.” -Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
“In-depth investigations of the inner workings of the plutocracy in crisis, presented by some of our best politico-economic analysts. This book should help put to rest the hallucinations of ‘free market’ ideology.” -Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions
“Provides a very readable exposé of a global economic system, manipulated by a handful of extremely powerful economic actors for their own benefit, to enrich a few at the expense of an ever-growing majority.” -David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited
Sunday, November 21, 2010
23182 Siyaxuza
Anyone working in the South African Education context could tell you that our children have horrifyingly sad stories to tell. This post is not about that.
A star not merely rising but soaring and spreading
I want to criticize the media, the president and a whole community of people who have not screamed, shouted and sang the story of Siyabulela Xuza.
Where are the headlines? The television interviews? The conversations about a kid from Umtata who developed rocket fuel! A boy who was snapped up (people I’m talking claimed, lauded and loved) by Harvard.
Yup I wrote rocket fuel. I know, what do we little South Africans know about rocket fuel? Especially a boy running around in short pants! Perhaps that’s why locally he’s so unknown, journalists are intimidated to speak to a smart ass, a real smart ass. Not a bombastic fool heard because they tweet the most or know what to say to get a vote.
He told Clem Sunter that he had been creating small explosions in his mother’s kitchen since he was 12.
“Then I decided to concentrate on a particular project.It was to create an energy-intensive fuel which was safer and more effective than the stuff Nasa uses to propel its rockets into outer space.”
Geez dude.
But let’s face it, it couldn’t have come easy. He comes from Umtata, out of one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. He must have excelled from a very young age because he won a scholarship to attend a top private school in Joburg. Perhaps his situation wasn’t as dire as the majority of our children who go to school hungry, too worn out to write neatly. But let’s hear it for a young man who probably had to overcome stereotyping and will continue to have eyeballs rolled at him for a long time for being the bright black kid from, ummm, what’s that place called, er Umtata.
You think the story ends there right? It doesn’t! This South African guy has impressed NASA so much that they named a frikking constellation after him, it’s called “Siyaxuza” and can be seen near Jupiter if you have a strong enough telescope.
If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know that I don’t swear when I write, at least not that I can remember! But for this hidden story that could bring such inspiration and pride to us…I have to say it – what the fuck?!
I think it’s inexcusable that our local media have not picked this story up yet will analyse the shit out of Idols, like their lives depended upon it. They whine about racism without the realization that they’re demeaning it and turning it into rhetoric. Story angles that contribute to promoting and exalting an egalitarian society are rarely explored. There are white people who still think that black people are intellectually inferior, I know some personally so I can attest to that fact. I have also met black people who feel that they are inferior, not good enough, too black.
So when a story comes along that can make stereo typing look as idiotic as the people who believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and then spat out alive – we need to stop for a few moments and take stock.
But I’ll give him this, he may not have made it to the front page of a local or the 7pm news, but damn, he’s in Wikipedia!
23182 SiyaxuzaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
23182 Siyaxuza is a main belt asteroid with an orbital period of 1465.0080388 days (4.01 years).[1]
The asteroid was discovered on July 23, 2000.
It is named for Siyabulela Lethuxolo Xuza, South African winner of the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23182_Siyaxuza
If the media cannot report on stories that are truly meaningful in the African context – stories that make our children feel like they can own their aspirations and that they can, albeit with difficulty, rise above their circumstances – why should I purchase their products? And what about stories that provoke that level of introspection, where society questions what it values and recognizes?
It’s time the media considered removing themselves from their own angst and start telling stories that are poignant and not sensationalist. It’s time the media started seeing themselves as part of a solution as opposed to an institution that reports on the bad, glorifies the inane and simpers at itself.
It was paradise until one fateful day when I was absent-mindedly mixing up a new concoction. I forgot to turn down the stove setting, and the bubbly mixture changed to a hissing monster, spitting liquid all over the floor. What had been a spotless kitchen was suddenly covered in smoke and sticky rocket fuel. Mother charged into the room. I stuttered, my hands trembled, and I feared what was to come: the yelling of a lifetime.
My eardrums still rang from the scolding when I continued with the experiments, though more cautiously in the garage. What started as mischief grew into a serious four-year science pr
oject that I juggled with demanding school work, rugby games, theater productions, and community service.
Yes, in Africa we produce rocket scientists
Between you and I we can bring this story to the
fore.
Please write something about him, it can
be about how you responded to the news of his
achievements, your views and impressions. Let’s share this magnificent story in the hope that it’s going to bring strength and hope to someone out there. Tell someone this story whilst having a drink or sitting in a taxi. We have to get it out there. South Africans have a better chance if we inspire and support people like this to progress and lead with dignity.
Media loves the tedious tirade from Julius Malema who barely made it through high school.
People with a pathetically low ability to learn and understand the world lead as if they are there to even the score for their own egos. Please let’s phase them out and make way for people like Siyabulela Xuza.
But before we do that, we have to claim him as our own.
Check these links out and please tweet and share them on your facebook profile, email to friends – just spread it and let’s step aside for Siya and fuck the local media!
http://southafricantimes.co.uk/content/saffa-planet-named-after-him
http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2009/August/20090810110401cMretroP0.8228527.html
http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/ln05-25-07/labnews05-25-07.pdf
http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1343&Itemid=199
http://www.mosaiko.gr/3education/my-journey-to-harvard/
Related Articles
A star not merely rising but soaring and spreading
I want to criticize the media, the president and a whole community of people who have not screamed, shouted and sang the story of Siyabulela Xuza.
Where are the headlines? The television interviews? The conversations about a kid from Umtata who developed rocket fuel! A boy who was snapped up (people I’m talking claimed, lauded and loved) by Harvard.
Yup I wrote rocket fuel. I know, what do we little South Africans know about rocket fuel? Especially a boy running around in short pants! Perhaps that’s why locally he’s so unknown, journalists are intimidated to speak to a smart ass, a real smart ass. Not a bombastic fool heard because they tweet the most or know what to say to get a vote.
He told Clem Sunter that he had been creating small explosions in his mother’s kitchen since he was 12.
“Then I decided to concentrate on a particular project.It was to create an energy-intensive fuel which was safer and more effective than the stuff Nasa uses to propel its rockets into outer space.”
Geez dude.
But let’s face it, it couldn’t have come easy. He comes from Umtata, out of one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. He must have excelled from a very young age because he won a scholarship to attend a top private school in Joburg. Perhaps his situation wasn’t as dire as the majority of our children who go to school hungry, too worn out to write neatly. But let’s hear it for a young man who probably had to overcome stereotyping and will continue to have eyeballs rolled at him for a long time for being the bright black kid from, ummm, what’s that place called, er Umtata.
You think the story ends there right? It doesn’t! This South African guy has impressed NASA so much that they named a frikking constellation after him, it’s called “Siyaxuza” and can be seen near Jupiter if you have a strong enough telescope.
If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know that I don’t swear when I write, at least not that I can remember! But for this hidden story that could bring such inspiration and pride to us…I have to say it – what the fuck?!
I think it’s inexcusable that our local media have not picked this story up yet will analyse the shit out of Idols, like their lives depended upon it. They whine about racism without the realization that they’re demeaning it and turning it into rhetoric. Story angles that contribute to promoting and exalting an egalitarian society are rarely explored. There are white people who still think that black people are intellectually inferior, I know some personally so I can attest to that fact. I have also met black people who feel that they are inferior, not good enough, too black.
So when a story comes along that can make stereo typing look as idiotic as the people who believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and then spat out alive – we need to stop for a few moments and take stock.
But I’ll give him this, he may not have made it to the front page of a local or the 7pm news, but damn, he’s in Wikipedia!
23182 SiyaxuzaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
23182 Siyaxuza is a main belt asteroid with an orbital period of 1465.0080388 days (4.01 years).[1]
The asteroid was discovered on July 23, 2000.
It is named for Siyabulela Lethuxolo Xuza, South African winner of the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23182_Siyaxuza
If the media cannot report on stories that are truly meaningful in the African context – stories that make our children feel like they can own their aspirations and that they can, albeit with difficulty, rise above their circumstances – why should I purchase their products? And what about stories that provoke that level of introspection, where society questions what it values and recognizes?
It’s time the media considered removing themselves from their own angst and start telling stories that are poignant and not sensationalist. It’s time the media started seeing themselves as part of a solution as opposed to an institution that reports on the bad, glorifies the inane and simpers at itself.
It was paradise until one fateful day when I was absent-mindedly mixing up a new concoction. I forgot to turn down the stove setting, and the bubbly mixture changed to a hissing monster, spitting liquid all over the floor. What had been a spotless kitchen was suddenly covered in smoke and sticky rocket fuel. Mother charged into the room. I stuttered, my hands trembled, and I feared what was to come: the yelling of a lifetime.
My eardrums still rang from the scolding when I continued with the experiments, though more cautiously in the garage. What started as mischief grew into a serious four-year science pr
oject that I juggled with demanding school work, rugby games, theater productions, and community service.
Yes, in Africa we produce rocket scientists
Between you and I we can bring this story to the
fore.
Please write something about him, it can
be about how you responded to the news of his
achievements, your views and impressions. Let’s share this magnificent story in the hope that it’s going to bring strength and hope to someone out there. Tell someone this story whilst having a drink or sitting in a taxi. We have to get it out there. South Africans have a better chance if we inspire and support people like this to progress and lead with dignity.
Media loves the tedious tirade from Julius Malema who barely made it through high school.
People with a pathetically low ability to learn and understand the world lead as if they are there to even the score for their own egos. Please let’s phase them out and make way for people like Siyabulela Xuza.
But before we do that, we have to claim him as our own.
Check these links out and please tweet and share them on your facebook profile, email to friends – just spread it and let’s step aside for Siya and fuck the local media!
http://southafricantimes.co.uk/content/saffa-planet-named-after-him
http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2009/August/20090810110401cMretroP0.8228527.html
http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/ln05-25-07/labnews05-25-07.pdf
http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1343&Itemid=199
http://www.mosaiko.gr/3education/my-journey-to-harvard/
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Friday, October 8, 2010
A 1st reply from DBN Municipality on the issue raised and posted prior to this
Dear Khoza
Please liaise with the area Councilor-
Xaba Linda Denzel
contact details are
0849646452
Hope to have been of assistance
cj
Thank you
Sizakala
Toll Free No. 0800331011
Please read this confidentiality disclaimer:
http://www.durban.gov.za/durban/e_colophon/edisclaimer
Please liaise with the area Councilor-
Xaba Linda Denzel
contact details are
0849646452
Hope to have been of assistance
cj
Thank you
Sizakala
Toll Free No. 0800331011
Please read this confidentiality disclaimer:
http://www.durban.gov.za/durban/e_colophon/edisclaimer
Thursday, October 7, 2010
[my] First letter to CASAC, KZN HOUSING DPT (jurie.thaver@kznworks.gov.za) and DBN Municipality (sizakala@durban.gov.za)
this posting was updated 24 hours after this letter was sent, no reply had been received from any of the parties above as yet...
Greetings,
I am a resident of KwaMashu in ward 41 who witnesses on daily basis just as other residents of the area, a situation of a family who used to have a dignified house in a row of other houses of the same standard in terms of social class in my township. The house or rather the stand is situated in K section.
There was a programme that ran through out last year probably as a department of housing initiative (not sure of the facts) which saw 4 roomed houses that were at the brink of collapse because the families could not afford to renovate due to stresses of poverty which forced them to always prioritise on the more pressing needs such as food, school requirements and the likes. This particular renovation programme was such that once a house is identified after having been on the register the family will be advised to get alternative accomodation whilst the their house is demolished so that it can be rebuild again. It went like that through out the year in phases that have been disigned and managed by the parties or officials that worked with the Durban municipality, this programmes ran until towards the year end last year and as it was folded the last phase had not been finished completely in that the house of this family had been demolished to the ground and left like that.
The whole of this year that family has been living in a shack made of the fragile asbestos behind the stand of what used to be their house for the whole of this year as we approach its end. Kindly advise if there is anythig at all that can be done as matter of urgency to get this family to own a decent house they once owned, it is a constitutional right and more so because its a house that was taken away from them, it is not their fault that monies ran out of the coffers or wherever the source was, its a human rights matter, I tried to get the ward councillor's email address to find out what has he done with regards to that but i could not on the municipality's website, the page gave me errors.
I hope that you would need to find out more on this family, feel free to contact me.
Thank you.
Kind regards
--
Thobekani Khoza
27832126071/ 27710692930
Ungoti Chronicles
Greetings,
I am a resident of KwaMashu in ward 41 who witnesses on daily basis just as other residents of the area, a situation of a family who used to have a dignified house in a row of other houses of the same standard in terms of social class in my township. The house or rather the stand is situated in K section.
There was a programme that ran through out last year probably as a department of housing initiative (not sure of the facts) which saw 4 roomed houses that were at the brink of collapse because the families could not afford to renovate due to stresses of poverty which forced them to always prioritise on the more pressing needs such as food, school requirements and the likes. This particular renovation programme was such that once a house is identified after having been on the register the family will be advised to get alternative accomodation whilst the their house is demolished so that it can be rebuild again. It went like that through out the year in phases that have been disigned and managed by the parties or officials that worked with the Durban municipality, this programmes ran until towards the year end last year and as it was folded the last phase had not been finished completely in that the house of this family had been demolished to the ground and left like that.
The whole of this year that family has been living in a shack made of the fragile asbestos behind the stand of what used to be their house for the whole of this year as we approach its end. Kindly advise if there is anythig at all that can be done as matter of urgency to get this family to own a decent house they once owned, it is a constitutional right and more so because its a house that was taken away from them, it is not their fault that monies ran out of the coffers or wherever the source was, its a human rights matter, I tried to get the ward councillor's email address to find out what has he done with regards to that but i could not on the municipality's website, the page gave me errors.
I hope that you would need to find out more on this family, feel free to contact me.
Thank you.
Kind regards
--
Thobekani Khoza
27832126071/ 27710692930
Ungoti Chronicles
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