by davidrobertlewis -

Ukraine: Enter Dugmore & the Tankie Left

TANKIES are leftists who defend Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, but who are otherwise opposed to the use of tanks to resolve disputes. It is a term derived from an earlier generation of Western leftists who backed the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 — and who also defend Russia’s behavior today. It may applied to any situation of paradoxism in political outlook involving the use of state force, such as invasions, pre-emptive strikes and the like.

The ANC’s Cameron Dugmore best epitomises South Africa’s tankie left. In 1987 as UCT SRC president, he appeared on a combined ECC – IDF platform alongside then SAUJS President, Johnathan Handler. It was the first of a large group of 23 objectors, which included Christian pacifists, Jewish and also Atheist objectors

Handler opposed the use of SADF tanks in the townships, but paradoxically supported the IDF and its war in Lebanon. It was the 1982 invasion of Southern Lebanon under direction of then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon  which had lead me to a path of opposition to the use of force by the State of Israel. Of course, I naively assumed at the time, there were parallels between the SADF war in Angola and what was happening in the Middle East (you can read my response to Seth Rogen here).

This week at a combined Russian and South African gathering, hastily called to celebrate apparently ’30 years of solidarity’. Dugmore took issue with the Democratic Alliance (DA) for wanting to light up Cape Town’s public buildings in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. He also attacked what he claimed was the parties ‘refusal to debate issues to do with Palestine’.

That Dugmore shares the Russian autocrats homophobic and misogynistic worldview is not that surprising given Palestinian opposition to LGBTIQ+ rights, and the Tankie left should pause to consider that Putin is admired by Republicans on the far-right, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish.

Russia proceeded to bomb a well-known Holocaust war-memorial yesterday, commemorating Babi Yar, a site where some 150 000 Jewish Ukrainians were massacred.

Many on twitter were quick to point out that Ukraine had also been a part of the USSR, and if anything, South Africa owes the country a debt of gratitude for its support of the anti-apartheid movement.

South Africa itself has ties with the Russian people and the former Soviet Union going back over 70 years and to World War 2 where it fought alongside the allies. The attempt to recast Putin as a contemporary savior figure has been condemned as nothing short of foolish nostalgia, the result of the ANC’s moral agnosticism.

Naledi Pandor for example was quick to jump on the ‘unconscionable racism’ experienced by many Africans attempting to flee Ukraine under martial law amidst unavoidable restrictions on travel — nothing less than ‘supporting evidence’ for Putin’s claim that he was ‘denazifying the country by invading’. (read my previous open letter to the Minister)

Poland for example has a 1 in 10 policy, only letting in 1 Foreigner for every 10 Ukrainian women and children. Africans fared a lot better at the Hungarian border, where unlike Poland, there were no far-right groups objecting to their presence.

Meanwhile a Russian millionaire offered a $1 million bounty for the arrest of Putin, stating: “As an ethnic Russian and a Russia citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia. I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin’s Orda.”

And by that he means to De-Putinise Russia.

Though our own country is a partner in BRICS, (an economic block dreamt up by economists, in the same vein as FAANG, a Wall St acronym), there is little to be gained by equivocating on the issue. The government has been taken to task for being on the ‘side of the oppressor’.

The much-vaunted BRICS bank is bound to come under pressure from economic sanctions, even China has baulked at the prospect of a financial fall-out from Putin’s war, bearing in mind that the Chinese economy has just experienced a major event in the managed deflation of a stupendous property bubble.

President Xi Jinping can ill-afford to bankroll his neighbours war adventure in the Ukraine, and neither is South Africa able to afford the luxury to go it alone so far as international sanctions and pressure on Putin is concerned, –our own sovereign debt and junk rating, must rank high on the agenda of our finance minister.

South Africa chose to abstain from a UN General Assembly vote this week, condemning the Russian invasion. Pretoria may live to regret its lack of action.

Why South Africa should care about Ukraine

by davidrobertlewis -

Send the ‘Groot Boetie’ FPB amendment & copyright bill back to legislators

ONE month ago, the controversial FPB amendment bill was passed by South Africa’s Parliament. It came as a major blow to online content providers battling prior restraint and other apartheid-era laws from a previous period of newsroom censorship, and will ostensibly turn ISPs into cops, tasked with enforcing FPB content classification, and in some instances, even blocking sites.

If it isn’t nipples and journalists that interest the authorities, then it is Hollywood’s copyright regime and our own country’s fair use/fair dealing laws which seemingly protect creators of content.

A related piece of legislation, the copyright law amendment bill, as it stands contradicts public rights protections and seeks to impose institutional copyright on behalf of collecting agencies, even in areas where a permissive licensing system may already be in place. There is a well-funded lobby promoting copyright restrictions and classification, that also wants to remove fair use wording and any public domain permissions. Currently there are not enough checks and balances shoring up legal defenses against prior restraint while promoting freedom of speech, innovation and the reuse of content via permissive licensing.

The anti-piracy lobby group SAFACT has announced plans to block online sites.  Opening the door to politicians who may also want to block sites and target publishers with which they disagree. The vocal religious lobby routinely rails against what they perceive to be the “anything goes society” as do those from the ‘moral majority’ who view porn as the “work of the devil”.

Conservative and Far Left campaigns against porn, hate speech and other ‘social evils’, have invariably resulted in the loss of fundamental freedoms. Acting as a cover for those who seek to limit criticism and public opinion.

The threat of holding ISPS and publishers responsible for users comments was enough to shut down many discus comments sites when the FPB amendment was first announced, effectively destroying the evolution of online letters to the editor and further eroding what freedom remains on the Internet. The emergence of overly broad anti-hate speech legislation hasn’t helped matters either.

The controversy surrounding the X18 age restriction of local film The Wound, the first time a local film has received such a rating in recent memory, is another example of how the FPB will play itself out.

We’ve written about the many problems presented by the FPB and its draconian plans, chief of which is censorship of online content and the erosion of communications and press freedoms guaranteed by our Bill of Rights. Thus the information freedom subsumed under article 16 freedom of expression, and the right to not have the privacy of our communications infringed, under article 14 privacy rights. All drafted following a period in which apartheid censors had gone overboard in their quest to purify political discourse.

You can read some of these articles here:

Stop SA Government Internet Tax & Censorship Plan

Apartheid censor board mooted, targeting online content

South African Cybercrime Bill creates Trial by Hollywood

There is still time to stop the FPB amendment, (and canvass parliament on the Copyright Bill.)

“First, the president can refuse to sign it and send it back to the National Assembly on the point that he thinks it is unconstitutional, or constitutionally problematic. If that doesn’t happen, any MP can ask the Constitutional Court to review it on the point that the amendment is unconstitutional. Finally if it is passed into law, a private citizen or other body could potentially take up legal suit to get the now Act declared unconstitutional.”

by davidrobertlewis -

Open letter to Farid Esack

Dear Farid Esack,

As one of many secular South Africans of Jewish descent who fought against apartheid, and who once believed you to be a comrade, I wish to respond to your latest opinion piece on the subject of the Middle East problem.

Your incoherent ramblings, in which you appear unable to distinguish between religious laws versus ​the ​secular laws of the Republic, speaks to the manner in which you and your associates seek to characterise any person in disagreement as a supporter of the Israeli regime and any person who is not a member of your faith, an infidel.

That both sides have engaged in the kind of venality best ascribed to fascism and dictatorship, and whose supporters are for the main, conservatives, zealots and extremists of various faiths, emboyed by the passions of the multitudes, have left little room for calm and appeals to civil rights​, ​liberties​ and the rule of law​.

Your lack of engagement with those most affected by your campaign of hate over the years,  and your appropriation of the gender debate, is all part and parcel of the historical record of a conflict which can be best described as Injustice versus Injustice.

Far from being a binary conflict between black and white as was the struggle against apartheid, the struggle in the Middle East is unfortunately, an asymmetric, religious assault via proxy over the final status of Jerusalem.

Recent developments have compounded this view. One has merely to examine the embarrassment of the recent conference of Islamic States whose support for the partition of Jerusalem itself, provides a terrible counter-point to the equally embarrassing claim by Israel and the Trump administration to the whole of Jerusalem.

That the right-wing Likud is jumping for joy, while Hamas equivocates, having amended its political programme this year from a war against the Jews, to a war against the Zionists, is par for the course.

Sadly, you seem to forget an inconvenient truth, in Nelson Mandela’s bipartisanship and open support for a secular outcome: “We identify with the PLO because just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination … the support for Yasser Arafat and his struggle does not mean that the ANC has ever doubted the right of Israel to exist as a state, legally. We have stood quite openly and firmly for the right of that state to exist within secure borders​.” (Nelson Mandela on Ted Koppel Show)​

Neither Israelis nor the Palestinians have the support of the United Nations insofar as the 1947 United Nations Plan for Palestine is concerned​.

According to this plan the city would have been placed under an international regime, conferring it a special status due to its shared religious importance. Instead, the dictat and aggression of the Arab League, (a bloc that is far from a having sterling record of support for gender rights), put paid to this position, as has the dic​tat ​and brinkmanship of the equally misogynistic Trump administration, to any hopes for a peaceful outcome along similar lines.

One can only hope that the reality of the final status issues, will galvanise peacebuilders and war resisters on the ground to provide alternatives to the conflict.​

A starting point would be to reject the propaganda emanating from religious scholars and theocrats such as yourself, and instead to embrace open dialogue and reconciliation amongst peoples of different faiths and backgrounds.​

​No to partition, yes to duel, non-binary status for Jerusalem.

Kind regards

David Robert Lewis

(letter unpublished by Cape Times)

by davidrobertlewis -

ISPs refuse to shut down Pirate Bay

INTERNET service providers have refused to cooperate with an entertainment industry group’s demand to shut down The Pirate Bay, Following Friday’s conviction of the four men connected with the popular file sharing site, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry ( IFPI ) is demanding that Pirate Bay website be shut down.

But Internet service providers (ISPs) refuse to cooperate, reports the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

Neither has the judgment slowed down file sharing. Several minutes after the Stockholm District Court delivered the verdict, almost ten billion files were being downloaded.

The ISPs maintain that the ruling doesn’t apply to them.

“In part, this is not a legally binding decision, but above all, this is a judgment against Pirate Bay and nothing that effects any service provider. We will not take any action (to block) the contents if we are not compelled to do so,” Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at Telia Sonera, told Svenska Dagbladet.

Bredbandsbolaget and Com Hem had the same reply. Jon Karlung, managing director of Bahnhofs, said the judgement does not change anything.

“We will not censor sites for our customers; that is not our job. I am against anything that contradicts the principle of a free and open Internet.” SOURCE: http://www.dchublist.com/

by davidrobertlewis -

2010 rights watch – Fifa restricting civil rights

Fifa Stadium restricts civil rights
Fifa Stadium restricts civil rights

A DRACONIAN Cape Town City Bylaw could outlaw indoor gatherings of more than 50 people where microphones, Ipods, and and ghetto blasters are used and if the result is amplified sound , even if the event happens in the comfort of your living room, consider it an offence without a license.


The proposed new bylaw is intended to force events organisers to apply for licenses to host “musicians, poets and entertainers”, while regulating an environment in which businesss-in-exchange-for-favours is the order of the day. The City plans to clean-up the boho inner city strip of Long Street and other entertainment areas, forcing promoters of “educational, cultural and religious events” to give-up a percentage of their takings in exchange for mutually beneficial “partnerships”, and the bylaw has thus set in motion a regulatory mechanism intended to create a “return on investment” from both public and private facilities, and covers outdoor and indoor events of every description in Cape Town.
by davidrobertlewis -

Albert Hofmann, father of LSD, embarks on final trip, age 102, Switzerland

GENEVA: The associated press, Frank Jordans has reported that Albert Hofmann, the father of the vision-producing substance, LSD whose medical discovery inspired — and arguably brought society into the virtual world and computer age — the 1960s hippie generation has become the zippie generation of today – has embarked on his final trip. He was 102.

Hofmann apparently died Tuesday at his home in Burg im Leimental, according to Doris Stuker, a municipal clerk in the village near Basel where Hofmann moved following his retirement in 1971.

For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.

“I produced the substance as a medicine. … It’s not my fault if people abused it,” he once said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

by davidrobertlewis -

Revisiting Sex Work in the light of Capital and the Pleasure Principle.

PROSTITUTION is considered the world’s oldest profession. The entry of which marks the beginnings of capitalism as an ideological construct through which all labour is differentiated.

 It has been argued that women’s work is sex work, and therefore sex workers should be free to charge for their services, and in effect to gain a living wage.

I will argue that far from being an exchange of labour, the sex act is one of the focal points of human existence, and should rather be seen as vital to the well-being of our species, in effect, an important part of the medicamentum through which all of life is constituted and thus stripped of secondary meanings which various philosophical and religious traditions may attribute it. 

While the recognition of the crucial link between the exchange of labour, on the one hand, (for which very little gained), and the pursuit of pleasure on the other (through which most of humanity has been constructed), is an important part of the equation, a just and equitable work week necessarily includes p-leisure –the pursuit of wealth, health and happiness –, there is however something terribly ironic in attributing all acts of p-leisure to the exchange of labour.

by davidrobertlewis -

Electronic Frontier Foundation impotent in Africa

DESPITE claims to promote online freedom, to represent the “public interest” on the internet “when our freedoms in the networked world come under attack,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation started by mavericks Mitch Kapor and John Perry Barlow is impotent when it comes to jurisdictions outside of the territory in which it is based.

A recent complaint about having an online post unilaterally deleted off this very blog, by a host based in South Africa got the following response from Gwen Hinze, EFF International Policy Director: “We are simply not able to provide legal advice outside of the country in which our lawyers are licensed.”

by davidrobertlewis -

Is Ed Young a Satanist?

Latest attempt at publicity

THE pretentious white-boy from Welkom who arrived on the Cape Town art scene during a millennial slump, had very little to show for himself except a big mouth. Young quickly made a name as an infamous rude-boy, whose method of operation was the hackneyed “art attack” involving one or more victims. (As one of his “victims” I believe I can report about such nefarious activities). Not content with sacrificing aesthetics and profit, Young took to bully boy stunts and conning the media into participating in what he called “conceptual art”. In reality Young disliked everything he saw. As columnist Suzy Bell who “bought” Bruce Gordon after being approached by Young in a scheme relates: “The problem with Ed is, he isn’t an artist. Not like Wayne Barker who was rude, had attitude but at the end of the day, produced the goods.”

With little to show for his visual arts degree purchased from Michaelis, Young was forced out of desperation into producing futile and sterile acts. Young even struck up a weird relationship with Ronald Suresh Roberts at the height of the scandal involving Robert’s defamation case against the Sunday Times. Whilst Roberts was being pilloried and depicted as a carpetbagger with his head up our second President’s behind, Ed chose to support Robert’s freedom to be unlikable.

EdSatan
Ed "Belzebub" Young's business card