Once more with feeling

In the same place where the Peoples' Power Revolution ousted Ferdinand Marcos twenty years ago today, there's turmoil again. Meanne writes:

A state of National Emergency or Proclamation 1017 has been declared by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The emergency rule gives the military and the police the power to arrest and use force against whosoever they perceive as ‘enemies’. There are now threats of more political repression and curtailment of peoples’ rights. And the situation is bound to get worse. Opposition Senator Aquilino Pimentel has called for an emergency session of the Senate to look into the latest actions of Malacanang.

Another group of protestors are currently massing up in Ayala, Makati City as the wave of protests calling for the ouster of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo continues.

Photo credit: Joseph Purugganan. For more, check Manila and Quezon City Indymedia.
http://manila.indymedia.org/
http://qc.indymedia.org/
[Via Meanne].

Cheney's Got A Gun

Good new things on the Ashwin Desai Struggle sub-site, including a recent spat in the pages of the Mail and Guardian here in South Africa, in which Makgoba opines that New Media is the " 'opiate'of the weak and disgruntled forces globally" and Desai responds by comparing the Vice-Chancellor to his aunty Ivy. Plenty worth reading here (scroll to the newest newspaper articles).

Luckily, I can't possibly be weak or disgruntled. I've not been blogging properly for over a week, and have successfully been conducting an off-line life with few withdrawal symptoms. Had I been more addictively online, I'd have noticed that this post didn't quite make it out of the Draft Post folder. It came in last week, following the news of the Vice President of the United States's drunken gun story. Aziz Choudry, comrade, activist, antipodean, and eighties junkie, has offered this hymn:

Cheney's Got A Gun
Cheney's Got A Gun
His dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
What did Harry do?
It's Cheney's last I.O.U.

He had to take him down easy
And put a bullet near his heart
He said 'cause nobody believes me
The man looked like a birdie
He ain't never gonna be the same

(c) Choudry/Aerosmith/Church of England.

Bread & Roses, Batons

A story for another time involves my only trip to Bulawayo, where several men desperately wanted me to be Jewish. In the meantime, more serious things are afoot in Bulawayo. Over 400 women from WOZA - Women of Zimbabwe Arise - were protesting for "Bread And Roses" this Valentine's. The roses, incidentally, symbolising dignity, and bread symbolising bread. And for this, they have been arrested. Read more here.

True or Horseshit?

"for centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, Gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade."

These words, attributed to Ulysses S. Grant, have been bothering me. They seem to have begun life in Andre Gunder Frank's classic "Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America : historical studies of Chile and Brazil". The quote is accompanied by the following parenthesis: "cited in Santos 1959:125 and retranslated from the Spanish by the author". My 1969 edition, enlarged and revised, according to Monthly Review Press, contains no such reference. And, well, I'm not sure where to turn. With the uptick of Monthly Review readers and editors over here at Class Worrier, I thought I'd appeal to you, dear reader. Any thoughts on how to find out whether Grant ever said anything remotely like this?

Trajectories of technology

Props to Brainy. She works with maths and science students of color in the Bay Area, and she has been teaching them how to podcast. BusinessWeek just blogged the project, and it's well worth having a look-see, at Smashcast. It's tremendously heartening to hear the trajectory of the podcasts, from an initial 'hey, shit, we're podcasting', to product reviews for media players, to the racial politics of the Kentucky school system.

Strike struck dumb

We're on strike at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The university is offering a 4% salary increase for staff - not a penny more- but management is taking 12%. Negotiations have deadlocked, and we're taking it to the streets, or as near to them as the restrictive industrial action legislation will allow us to get. We were on strike almost the same time last year - but for the 2006 round, the four unions that represent staff on campus have assured their members that they're not going to sell us out. In 2005, we were on strike for barely a day, after which the ANC instructed NEHAWU and NTESU to settle, which they did. This didn't go down too well with the rank-and-file.. Promises have been made, this time, to bring all decisions to a mass meeting. I'll believe it when I see it.

The biggest source of worry, as ever, is management. Yesterday, we were sent a number of emails about how our strike would disrupt the students (don't we care about students?) and then, Dasarath Chetty, our censorship czar, sent out these velvetted instructions:

Public Affairs and Corporate Communications would like to request that all staff who receive any media query related to the impending industrial action refer these calls to Jennene Singh 260 2386 or Bhekani Dlamini 260 7115. We appreciate your assistance in this regard.
Professor Dasarath Chetty
Executive Director

Like Fight Club, the number one rule about the strike, apparently, is that one doesn't talk about it. Jimi Adesina, one of the continent's most thoughtful and engaged scholars, has written a lacerating response. Read it in full here, and study this example:

I have before me a copy of the ban order that the Government of the Republic of Transkei issued against Clarence Mlamli Makwetu on 7 December 1976; it carried the signature of KW Matanzima. CM Makwetu was asked by Matanzima to "immediately withdraws (sic) together with your wife, children and household effects from the said area in the said district [Tembuland] and proceed to NYANDENI AREA... And there to take up residence at a place to be pointed to you by the Magistrate, Libode." All nice and orderly, isn't it? "Proceed", "take up residence", etc. KW Matanzima could argue that he never used the word "ban" or "restriction", as I suspect you would argue that your e-mail to the staff of UKZN never used the word "gag" or said that UKZN staff could face disciplinary action if they flout your instruction. You could argue that it is an "injunction," an "advice" not an order or even an instruction. But Matanzima fooled no one; neither will you...

Toytowns

These are wonderfully delicate photographs. Trying to understand how it is that they look like pictures of model towns (they're not), the focus, and slight over-exposure certainly help. Mainly, though, I don't think I'd ever thought it possible to see cities at a distance through air this clear. [Via Li. ]

Ashwin Desai Struggle update (for Monthly review readers)

A warm Class Worrier welcome to those who've arrived here via this month's Monthly Review editorial. A timely missive it is too. It has prompted me to deliver on the promise of making a new Ashwin Desai Archive section in the sidebar up there (and also prompted a bit of housekeeping in the list of recommended reading: guess I never got around to adding "Monthly Review" above "New Left Review").

Right. Back to the AD-archive. It's the place to go for the latest information on Ashwin's struggle which, more than ever, is providing occasion for optimism of the will. For the annals of email, transcripts, articles, letters of support, and frequent buffoonery from the management of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, click here.