Posted inNews/Politics

It’s a con-spiracy

Jewish people around the world must, for the first time in the face of a global crisis, be smiling. For once they are not to blame and not even the nuttiest conspiracy theorist can draw a pretty little line between the Jews, China, bats and a global pandemic. But then, nutty doesn’t even begin to […]

Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGeneralNews/Politics

Why Americans should vote Democratic in the mid-term elections tomorrow

The American midterm elections – halfway through the American president’s term, where voters decide on their representatives in the two houses of American ‘democratic’ government, Congress and the Senate (as well as on some state governors) – take place tomorrow, on 6 November 2018, and all indications are that these will be the most significant […]

Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGender violenceGeneralHealthNews/Politics

The battle for America’s soul is also the battle for the world’s soul

Watching the tragicomedy playing itself out in America around the determined attempt on the part of Trump and the Republicans on the Senate, to appoint Brett Kavanaugh as lifetime judge on the panel of judges of the US Supreme Court, I had the uncanny feeling that this showdown between the forces of retrogressive neoconservatism and […]

Posted inEqualityGeneralHealthMediaNews/Politics

The American fascist, the Canadian activist and the French poststructuralist

In the Preface to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s major work, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, 1983, p. xii) Michel Foucault — another formidable post-structuralist thinker — makes the following observation in his brilliant characterisation of the book, where he lists the hostile forces targeted by Deleuze and Guattari: Last but not […]

Posted inGeneralMediaNews/Politics

On politicians without humour

In John Fowles’s novel, Daniel Martin (Triad Grafton, 1978), there is a wonderfully revealing passage as far as humourless politicians are concerned – the type that justifiably comprises the butt of comedians’ jokes. Dan and Jane (an old friend and one-time lover who accompanies him on a work-related trip to Egypt) are at a dinner-party […]

Posted inBusinessEnvironmentNews/Politics

Is it time to boycott the US?

After multiple delays, and the building up of a twisted reality television-like suspense, Donald Trump has finally announced that he will take America out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Among all the fluster of his presidency, this may be one of Trump’s most consequential decisions, and the one with the most long-lasting negative, if not […]

Posted inBusinessGender violenceGeneralMediaNews/Politics

A South African link to Trump’s inner circle

People are trying to figure out Donald Trump’s real agenda. There are big clues in the people around him. Trump appointed Steve Bannon as his campaign manager last year and Bannon is now his chief political advisor and strategist. Bannon is a multi-talented (journalist, naval officer, investment banker and Hollywood producer) white nationalist Islamophobe who […]