On Tuesday, I watched a video on the deteriorating water situation in the Arabic state of Jordan, which foregrounded to me the imperative, that countries give a central place to essential concerns such as the continued availability of water in their education programmes, from primary school through high school to universities. Unless they pay urgent […]
WAR
Posted inBusiness, Environment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics, Sport, Tech
It is time
The time, in the brief recent history of our country, has come for our country to wade into a foreign conflict, choose a side and fight, using our military, for that side. The time has come for our foreign policy to match our constitutional values, rather than the conflicted and corrupt, reflexive “Friends With All” […]
Posted inEnvironment, General, News/Politics
The follies of humankind, through the eyes of a young girl
In this time of economic and ecological uncertainty, which has, tellingly, given rise to the philosophical genre of “extinction studies” (see http://thoughtleader.co.za/bertolivier/2014/06/30/human-extinction-its-not-just-science-fiction/), it may be wise to remind ourselves that the human folly which has given rise to the fraught state of the present, globally, is nothing new. Human history is littered with such follies, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We shall remember them…or maybe not
9/11. It’s a date seared into the world’s consciousness. Then there is 11/11. Known, variously around the world, as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day, or Veterans Day. Call it what you will. Although it predates the Twin Towers by almost a century, World War 1’s official end – the 11th hour of […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
What ‘war’ means today
When picking up Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin, 2006), again, in the light of recent developments across the globe involving Syria, Isis, Boko Haram and al-Qaeda (to mention only some of the names associated with war), I was struck, anew, by their astute identification […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media
The dream of Jormungand – Japanese anime and wish-fulfilment
The more I see of Japanese anime, the more I am impressed by, and the better I understand the way that many of these popular movies address serious issues. A while ago I wrote on the anime series Psycho-Pass and its pertinence for the question of societal control, and I have just finished watching another […]
Posted inNews/Politics
We will ask questions about CAR
By Ntsako Shivambu I am one of those so-called clever blacks who believe you are a tribalist, a traditionalist and a clueless politician that doesn’t have any leadership skills. But the reason I’m writing this letter is not to talk about that but what you said during the memorial service for the soldiers who died […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The dogs of war
I’m shocked and saddened by the loss of 14 of our soldiers in the Central African Republic. It sounds like the Wild West. And it doesn’t matter how many of “them” our forces killed, it’s all just bullshit. How do 200 of our troops get attacked by a rebel army of some 3 000? And nowhere […]
Posted inNews/Politics
African Union, useful or useless?
By Lindelwe Dube The continent has recently seen an increase in the number of attempted coups. The list includes Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast and now the Central African Republic (CAR). While Africans themselves and the international community may look to the African Union (AU) to facilitate peace and stability, the AU has struggled to fulfil […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why I will not fight for CAR or any other country
Why would they ask me to put on a uniform and go to the heart of Africa to fire high-calibre machine guns and drop bombs on fellow Africans whose leader got into power through a coup and not democratic elections? I will not draw guns and shoot bombs at the sight of marauding African rebel […]
Posted inNews/Politics
US election 2012: Reconstituting a plutocracy
For the first time in more than three decades – since at least the election of Ronald Reagan – I have absolutely no interest in the outcome of the US presidential elections. This decline in interest has to do more with the fact that there is little difference, today, between Republican and Democrat candidates. The […]
Posted inGeneral
Lennon and Laing – kindred spirits
John Lennon and RD Laing – two individuals who worked in entirely different cultural fields; the one a singer, songwriter and pop star, the other a psychiatrist (perhaps experimental psychiatrist), writer and radical thinker of the left. What they had in common, was arguably the fact that they were both utopian visionaries, and both were […]