Widening Gyre - Vol 7 Issue 1 2012

Volume 7 Issue 1

ctglobalist.com

The Cape Town

Globalist U C T’s st udent int er nat ional af fairs mag a z i n e

The Widening Gyre 1

The Cape Town Globalist

2012

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senegal

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nuclear iran

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solar flares

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yeats

18% do not have proper

20% do not have proper

95% do not have stocked

92% do not have

access to electricity

laboratories

2

access to water

stocked libraries

90% do not have stocked computer centres

17% do not have

sports facilities

march 2012

Contents

Editor-in-Chief Anneke Rautenbach Deputy Editor Amy Thornton Content Editors Chris Clark Chantal d’Offay Olivia Walton Layout Editor Nic Botha Layout Team Sarah Thomas Daniel Rautenbach CTG President Carissa Cupido Pictures Editor Cristina Stefan Marketing Chantel Clark Finance Kennedy Kitheka Heike Victor Contributors Rob Attwell Gregory Bakker Max Bassler Dela Gwala Zerene Haddad Daniel Hartford Matthew Koehorst Liam Kruger Amber Kriel Paul Mesarcik Melissa Newham Michelle October Frank Petousis Anton Taylor Fergus Turner Lori-Rae van Laren Joseph Weinberg The Cape Town Globalist is published four times a year by students at the University of Cape Town. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Cape Town Globalist, the publication sponsors, the University of Cape Town, or Global21.

If you would like to contact the CTG, please email ctglobalist@gmail.com The Cape Town Globalist

Appetisers

The Widening Gyre

6

News bites

18

The Centre cannot hold

Tidbits you may have missed

The end of democracy and free market capitalism?

8

Global coversations Q&A with Jane Bussmann

9

Armchair Globalist SOPA, PIPA and ACTA

21

The Tipping Point

When urbanisation reaches its limit

22

Keep calm and ignore Iran Why a nuclear-armed Iran is not the end of the world

News

24

10

A place in the sun

26

No seed, no cycle

The Taliban’s new office in Qatar

Getting to the core of the food crisis

11

Shit happens, thank god The biogas energy solution in South Africa

Mexican Wave

Mexico’s rapidly spreading drug war

12

Is the Arab Spring spreading to Senegal?

Vive le revolution?

14

Word from Syria

The blood-dimmed tide

Contributions 16

Global21 Contributions from the oxonian Globalist and Toronto Globalist

Art, Science and Philosophy 27

Solar flares kick up a storm

28

The Widening Gyre

29

Rob Attwell looks at the recent space storm Liam Kruger on Yeats and his apocalyptic gyres

Don’t panic, it’s just panarchy Matthew Koehorst discusses panarchy

Curtain Call 30

The Sunday demons of the Carte Blanche apocalyse Anton Taylor offloads 3

Cover: Daniel Rautenbach. The image depicts an Ouroboros (Greek), an ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail, representing life, death and eternal return.

The Cape Town Globalist is a member of

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march 2012

Editorial Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world WB Yeats, The Second Coming Image by James Honnibol

T

ake a look at what you’re holding. Not the content, but the paper. Rub your fingers over the glossy sheen. Smell the ink. Check the staples. About six hundred years ago, this would change the world forever. In Europe, the advent of the printing press, and its later industrialisation in the nineteenth century, meant a heightened cultural self-awareness, a spread of revolutionary ideas, higher literacy rates and the emergence of a middle class. Feudalism released its grip and chaos took over: with one slash of the guillotine, church and state were separated in a bloody battle of ideals. Certainly this intense state of redefinition would have felt like the end of the world – because the world could talk, its ruptures felt.

It is no coincidence that the word ‘apocalypse’ not only means the end of the world, but also ‘revelation’ – knowledge gained, questions answered, ignorance abolished. Papers printed.

Since then, to borrow our in-house philosopher’s analogy, the roller coaster of Western civilisation has carried us steadily upward on a trajectory that has felt something like success. But it has stalled (or madly accelerated – sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference) and we find ourselves on the precipice of something terrifying. We’ve shifted gears – with the advent of social media, every individual is a republic, a brand and a media powerhouse.

‘The people of the world see each other,’ says Invisible Children, whose viral appeal could not be a more apt illustration of the universal yearning for authority, guidance, simplicity and a discourse of dichotomies with which we (the ‘good guys’) can point to the ‘bad guy’ and eliminate him. Yet the criticism that has emerged in the wake of their video has exposed its irony and the opacity of 21st century ethics, and has destabilised the idea that the internet can bring us anywhere closer to the ‘truth’.

(In any case, if history has taught us anything it is that we should be alarmed by images of row upon row of uniformed youths.)

Once again, everything is under scrutiny – we investigate the traditional models of democracy and free market capitalism. Since the end of the Cold War, they have been clinging to their titles as victors of the West as tightly as Assad is clinging to Syria. Meanwhile, the masses grow restless. Elsewhere, despots are falling like dominoes and debt is tearing the world apart. Authority is dissolving; chaos and insecurity rule once more. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. No wonder it feels like the end of the world.

Where information flows freely, we despair. Quite ironically, the enlightenment has brought about a sense of darkness.

Yet, we cannot do without it. Allowing governments to control our information such as with the proposed SOPA, PIPA and ACTA or, more locally, the Protection of Information Bill, would surely be a regressive move toward autocracy. While Carte Blanche on a Sunday night might make us want to kill ourselves, we will defend to the death its right to exist. Right?

‘What now?’ is the question. The good news is that this feeling is nothing new. To quote the New York Times’ movie critic, AO Scott: ‘the world is always falling down. The news is always very sad. The time is always late. But the fruit is always ripe.’

The fruit is always ripe for change and innovation. We look at whether the food and energy crises are quite so dystopian: in South Africa, the cyclical system of biogas for which waste is utilised to create alternative energy is becoming quite a success story. More sustainable, polycultural methods of food production and permaculture are also being advocated universally. A call for a return to basics is being heeded.

Our philosophy feature looks at panarchy, a complex systems analysis explaining their cyclical nature. Once the resources of a system are exhausted, according to panarchy it will be forced into a period of ‘intense and fundamental’ change – something we are on the brink of experiencing worldwide.

So, read at leisure, secure in the knowledge that the world will (probably) not end this year. There is no atomic bomb about to blast you, no solar flares about to zap you – you will not die of debt, dictators or slouching beasts. But do not doubt that it is changing.

Everything will be alright in the end – and if it’s not, it’s not the end.

Happy reading,

Anneke Rautenbach

Editor-in-Chief

The Cape Town Globalist

5

News bites The vote to Damascus

The UN Security Council failed to pass a resolution condemning the violence in Syria and demanding that President Bashar Assad yield some of his power, after Russia and China vetoed the motion on February 4th. This is despite a death toll of seven thousand and the support of the Arab League for the resolution.

In response to the failed vote, Syrian government forces lashed out at protestors and rebels in Homs by firing rockets and heavy weaponry.

Russia has been a long-time supporter of Syria and views the country as its last outpost of influence in an increasingly Western-backed Middle East. China remains a staunch supporter of sovereignty. South Africa has voted in favour of the resolution after abstaining from voting on a similar resolution in October last year.

Somalian famine declared ‘over’

The first famine of the 21st century, striking Somalia in July last year, has been declared by the UN as ‘over’. The famine is estimated to have claimed eighty thousand lives. This announcement might be seen as pre-emptive, considering that one in three people (2.3 million) still needs emergency assistance. The Shabab, a militia affiliated with al-Qaeda, controls most of the country – including the majority of arable land, which has been affected by the drought, unpredictable weather patterns and Shababfueled unrest. The famine has been largely ignored by mainstream media. Aid efforts have been obstructed by the Shabab, which possibly also explains the lax media coverage.

6

dystopi

Infernal prison conditions On the 15th of February, a fire in a prison in Comayagua, Honduras, killed three hundred and fifty inmates. Rescuers were unable to save the prisoners as they could not find guards with keys to the cells. The security problem has been exacerbated as most of the surviving five hundred inmates escaped. The event put a spotlight on the horrific conditions in Honduras’ jails, specifically the overcrowding due to a sluggish judicial system. The cause of the fire remains unclear, but suggestions range from an inmate igniting his mattress, a fight between inmates or an electrical fault.

26

number of miles wide of asteroid Eros, most likely earth-impacter

99 million

average number of people affected per year by floods in the past ten years

26 000

the sun aligns with the equator of the Milky Way once every 26000 years and will occur this year on the Summer/Winter Solstice 21/12/2012

21/12/2012

day the Mayan Long Count Calendar comes to an end

Greek tragedy Athens has seen yet another eruption of violence as the Greek parliament passed another austerity package on the 13th February.

This was to satisfy demands from the EU and the IMF and to court a second bail-out worth $170b (approximately R1300b).The austerity measures include 15 000 public sector job cuts, a liberalisation of the labour laws and a lowering of the minimum wage by 20% . The bail-out will be delivered in segments, depending on the consistency of the reforms made to the beleaguered economy. German officials voiced their concerns that Greek politicians would not stick to the reforms after the upcoming elections in April and demanded more accountability.

Test tube burger

In a scientific move that has been applauded by environmentalists worldwide, Dr. Mark Post, based at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, is working towards creating the first laboratory-grown burger. The focus of the experiment is to create beef burgers from stem cells, and Post hopes to have created a complete burger by October 2012. The project aims to create a significant reduction in the number of cattle farmed for meat, thereby making a dent in a major contributor to greenhouse emissions. It is further encouraged by the fact that beef is one of the most inefficient meats to farm – the food that cows require far outweighs that which they yield for human consumption, and over 70% of our agricultural capacity is used to farm livestock for meat. Dr. Post has expressed his desire for celebrity chef Hesther Blumenthal to cook his first complete burger.

march 2012

appetisers appetisers

an data

226 408

‘Advocates of awesome’ number killed in the 2004 South Asian tsunami

100 million

a collision of Eros with Earth is predicted to release energy equivalent to this number of megatons of TNT

50

megatons of TNT, the explosive yield of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated

50 184

average number of people killed per year by earthquakes in the past ten years - the most deadly disaster

Reaching more than 100 million views in six days, ‘Kony2012’, a 29 minute video created by the organisation, Invisible Children, has become the most viral in history, according to a study. The study, done by online third-party measurement firm, Visible Measures, judged the pace of the ‘Kony2012’ campaign video against other record-setting viral videos such as Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’, and ‘David after the Dentist’. The video advocates a worldwide awareness of the crimes of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, as well as US military intervention in Uganda. The video has been met with widespread criticism, specifically targeted at its premises and timing, as well as the financial practices and political ties of the organisation.

Crunch time for Kosovo Uncovering the Shining Path

Serbs living in the four-year-old country of Kosovo responded to a referendum on 14-15th February organised by the four northern (predominantly Serbian) municipalities. The referendum asked ‘Do you accept the institutions of Kosovo?’ Unsurprisingly, the majority voted that they do not recognise the institutions of the young nation, as most Serbians still do not recognise Kosovo’s sovereignty. The state, run by a mainly Albanian government, is still politically and geographically split along ethnic lines. Serbs in northern Kosovo barely recognise it, treating it as an extension of Serbia to the extent that it is home to many Serbian political parties. The government of Kosovo has vehemently denounced the results of the referendum. The president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, also condemned the results in an effort to strengthen Serbia’s candidacy for the EU (twenty two EU countries recognise Kosovo).

The Cape Town Globalist

Peru celebrated a victory when government forces captured the leader of the Shining Path guerillas, Florindo Flores Hala, on February 12th. The Shining Path guerillas are a Maoist group of terrorists that have been causing violence in the country since the 1980s. Successive Peruvian presidents have made an effort to eradicate the group and it is has thus been substantially weakened over the past twenty years. Hala’s fragment was based in the north.

However, a more formidable group involved in the drug trade is organised in the south central jungle. This section, led by Víctor Quispe ‘Comrade José’ Palomino and his brothers, has proved more tenacious in their resistance against government forces.

Faster than the Speed of Light

In September last year, Italian researchers controversially claimed to have observed particles called ‘neutrinos’ travel faster than light.

The initial reaction in the science world was to suggest experimental error because, if the result is valid, it effectively goes against Einstein’s theory of relativity. This theory denies that particles that have mass, like neutrinos, can travel faster than light. So far, suggested errors include mistakes in aligning the GPS signals used to synchronise the clocks that measured the speed of the neutrinos. A particle-physics lab outside Chicago is attempting to verify the results by imitating the Italian experiment and hope to have answers later this year.

A symbolic scorecard

Zambia won the African Cup of Nations for the first time on 12th February. The Zambians were seen as the underdogs in the tournament and faced powerful Côte d’Ivoire in the final race for the title. The Zambian team dedicated their victory to the Zambian national team of 1993, who perished as their airplane crashed into the sea. The airplane had just taken off from Libreville for a World Cup qualifier match in Senegal. Fittingly, the final this year was held in Libreville.

anneke rautenbach & Amy thornton Photographs courtesy of wikimedia commons Statistics courtesy of http://2012apocalypse.net and www.mg.co.za

7

appetisers

Q&A

Jane Bussmann is a rare breed: a British comedy writer (best known for South Park, Smack the Pony and Brass Eye) turned political activist. In 2009, she made waves with her strangely hilarious book The Worst Date Ever Or How it Took a Comedy Writer to Expose Africa’s Secret War, an account of a career-

Jane Bussmann

Image courtesy of Marc Smith

with

changing misadventure in Uganda that caused her to stumble upon the disaster left in Kony’s wake.

Using the power of comedy, she created a one-woman roadshow, ‘Bussmann’s Holiday’, (on show in Cape Town last year) to raise awareness of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s actions in the region. The Cape Town Globalist chatted to her about Invisible Children’s ‘Kony2012’ campaign.

Your cellphone number says you’re in Kenya.

What are you doing over there?

Hiding. I was trying to have a midlife crisis but I got too busy.

You must be bombarded with questions right now. Where do you stand in terms of the ‘Kony2012’ campaign?

The campaign is a work of genius. The fact that it has reached one hundred million people in six days is staggering – this thing has been going on for twenty six years and no one has paid attention. I have been working to create awareness about the same thing for six years and haven’t been nearly as successful. Never mind Invisible Children – it doesn’t matter if Pinky and Perky made this video; the point is people are paying attention to the issues, and people are starting to ask questions – and this shows the intelligence behind its creation.

What do you make of the criticism that the video has oversimplified the problem – reducing it to terms understandable (quite literally) to a five-year-old?

Look, the fact that you have managed to recognise that it has been oversimplified means that you and many others like you are clever enough to see that this is not all there is to the problem. You have gone out of your way to find out more. Perhaps there are hordes of stupid people who are blindly accepting the video as the whole truth but I’ve never met them. The point is, we should not get so bogged down with aimlessly criticising Invisible Children 8

that we start to ignore the issue at hand – it’s like the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. Good or bad – this is publicity for something that has desperately needed publicity for twenty six years. If to make caring about what happens in Uganda ‘cool’ is the way to do it, then so be it. And now Invisible Children has reached the level of public wanking cool – this is great. I think everyone should go out and have a big wank on April 20th.

What about the video’s advocation of American military intervention in Uganda? Countless critics have pointed out the malpractice of Museveni’s government and have caught onto the idea that the failure to capture Kony may have been intentional, something you have also been vocal about. Is it wise to align ourselves with such a government and would American military intervention not do more harm than good?

The American government has been paying Museveni lots of money to catch Kony for years – no wonder he hasn’t done it yet. The reason they have been reluctant to criticise his failure is that he is a useful ally; he has conveniently been sending troops to Somalia, where the US needs them. But now they have a bigger concern – the people who put them in office are putting pressure on them to make sure Kony is arrested. And as soon as this interest trumps the other, action is guaranteed. I think at this stage any foreign intervention is important because where there is intervention there is attention, and the Ugandan military is bent, period. The spotlight is on the military for the first time ever not to be shit.

The organisation has been heavily criticised for their apparent ‘white saviour’s complex’, and the video for flat-out ignoring the efforts made by local initiatives to restore peace to the region. Apparently the situation has greatly improved in the last six years.

Everyone who I have spoken to whose kids have been kidnapped by the LRA has said the same thing – not ‘I wish these whites would f*** off ’, but ‘why is the international community not doing more?’ Yes, the situation has improved – the LRA are down to two hundred and fifty five fighters now, apparently, but they have been down to lower before and have always managed to regenerate. Perhaps local initiatives have improved the situation but the situation has not improved for the kid who’s just been kidnapped. We need more.

But do you think this focus on one man, Joseph Kony, is the answer? Do you think his arrest will solve the problem?

I think Kony should be arrested because he is a criminal. It’s as simple as that. Yes he has people working for him, and there are billions of little rebel groups committing similar crimes all over the world, but his arrest will at least begin to shine a light on these issues. His arrest will mean the beginning of peace talks that will start to solve the problem, because anyone is more likely to talk peace with a gun to his head.

Anneke Rautenbach

is an Honours student in English Literature

march 2012

Noose on the Net

appetisers

SOPA, PIPA and ACTA may sound like three clumsy bears from a children’s bedtime story, but in reality they have teeth - sharp ones. the armchair globalist explains.

A

bill is passing its way through US congress, receiving both criticism and acclaim. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), authored by congress representative Lamar Smith, is a Hollywood-backed copyright law. Proponents call it a response to the rampant infringement of copyright laws online. It is fiercely supported and sponsored by the US music and film industries for obvious reasons.

SOPA along with its senate version , PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), is all about extending the reach of American law enforcement deep into cyberspace and enabling the US to thwart foreign offending websites.

ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is a multinational treaty to protect intellectual property by curbing the flow of goods like pirated media and generic medicine.

It takes the form of creating an entire legal framework for the internet to be monitored by a multinational forum.

SOPA will take effect by allowing copyright holders and the US Department of Justice to obtain court orders against offending websites, labeled ‘rogue sites’ by the bill and defined as: foreign websites that directly support or provide the means for the streaming and torrenting of media without the consent of the copyright holder of said media.

No direct enforcement of orders can be served to foreign websites outside of US jurisdiction. Therefore, orders are handed to search engine companies, Internet Service Providers, advertising networks, and payment facilities.

Advertising networks would be ordered to discontinue dealing with offending sites and payment facilities are ordered to block any money going to or from sites. Service providers and ISP companies would have to comply within five days or be prepared to lodge a defense in court. Foreign site owners, though, will not have the chance to challenge the order, i.e. they are penalised indirectly.

SOPA provides a means for foreign websites in regions without stringent copyright law to be indirectly punished

by US unilateral action. But is it justifiable that the US may have censoring powers over the web? ISPs are served the court orders and infringing foreign sites all but disappear.

The bill has highlighted the debate between the legislative trend to compromise fundamental freedoms in favour of more rigorous regulation. SOPA is also feared to be indicative of where legislation concerning the net may be headed, the legitimacy and form of which is another debate in itself.

Intellectual property does require a degree of protection and this is SOPA’s advantage. Internet users may lament the potential harm done to torrent and streaming sites (ThePirateBay, etc.) but it is undeniable that virulent piracy online does inflict damage on media industries and is at some level detrimental to emerging creative media artists, film industries and the like. Supporters will emphasise the industry’s plea for protection and insist that SOPA

The Cape Town Globalist

will become the vanguard for the creative and innovative channels on the web.

On the other hand, opponents of the legislation will cite that SOPA would: 1.

2.

3.

Threaten free speech and innovation online by opening up channels for authorities to impose penalties on legitimate sites that advocate and publish transparent information; particularly if the information is damaging to those authorities Start an online censorship trend endangering whistle-blowers and other free speech actions Stymie internet creativity and the concept of the internet as a public creative forum for expression.

The above criticisms are championed by the likes of Google, Mozilla, AOL, Facebook, Reddit and other online companies arguing that legislation like SOPA will compromise internet freedom and the integrity of the web as an unpoliced and globally objective stage.

is it justifiable that the US may have censoring powers over the web?

On the 18th of January organised virtual protests surprised congress. Wikipedia blacked out their site, publicising a plea for the public to put pressure on congress; Google put a black censorship blot over its colorful letters and pleaded with the public to not allow the censorship of the web. Physical marches and protests were also held in several US cities.

Smith, the bill’s author, knew the controversy that would ensue with the publicising of SOPA, but he could not have predicted the dynamic social dialogue it has provoked, or the organised opposition from online companies and millions of net users. There is a growing worry expressed by opponents of SOPA regarding the act as a deliberate step toward a regulated, censored internet.

Transparent and unbiased news could come under threat in the future.

The widespread public opposition meeting SOPA and other similar online-related legislation combined with the debate over freedoms versus intellectual property security is symptomatic of the broader struggle over civil liberties and the compromise of democratic principles. It is indicative of the polarisation and frictions of dissonant interests exhibited at all levels of contemporary society, cyberspace included. CTG

fergus turner

is a third-year student majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Spanish.

9

A Place in the Sun

news

Could a new Taliban office in Qatar lead to considerably warmer relations with the United States?

Michelle October investigates.

W

hisper it quietly, but it could just be the biggest step forward since the very advent of the War on Terror: following rumours that tentative talks between the various relative parties had already begun, the Taliban announced on the 3rd of January this year that it has agreed to open an office in sunny Qatar.

The location was a favourite for its Swiss-like neutrality in the conflict.

The new home away from home would help open negotiations between the US, Afghanistan and the Taliban that could ultimately end in a peaceful diplomatic accord between the three parties. Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a statement that a ‘preliminary understanding’ had been reached to have a ‘political office’ in Qatar ‘for negotiations with the international community’.

The location was a favourite for its Swiss-like neutrality in the conflict

Image courtesy of wikimedia commons

michelle october

is a third-year student majoring in Screenwriting.

10

Adding weight to this theory, an unsigned letter, seemingly from Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was sent to Obama’s office prior to the 3rd of January announcement.

This letter expressed the desire to engage in negotiations, on the condition that the Obama administration releases high-ranking Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. This was the first apparent indication of a genuine interest in peaceful negotiations by any party within the senior Taliban leadership.

Not surprisingly, the news has received mixed reactions. The Afghan administration is unhappy with the Taliban’s statement, given that it left out any mention of talks with them personally, and only sought to address the US and the international community. In turn, the Taliban view the Afghan administration as a puppet used by the US and the West to advance its own aims.

Puppet or not, the Afghanistan government has announced that it will only consent to the negotiations with the Taliban should they be on Afghan terms. It remains wary of Pakistani influence in the process, fearing that the inclusion of Pakistan would aid in pushing the Taliban agenda. This could be detrimental to Afghanistan’s recent tentative progress in human rights - a key concern for the young and fragile Afghan government.

So, with the apparent onset of preliminary negotiations set to be between the US and Taliban officials alone, the government is understandably feeling a little left out.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s own relationship with the US remains rocky at best. Pakistan has often been accused by

the US of accommodating Taliban members, most notably the Taliban fugitive leader himself, Mullah Omar. But the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, has remained steadfast, if a little evasive, on this issue: “I am not an authority on where Mullah Omar is, but I do know that Pakistani authorities do not know where Mullah Omar is”.

Khar has also said that the Pakistani government seeks minimal involvement in the talks with the Taliban, and is supportive of Afghanistan’s decisions, should they be made rationally.

As it stands, even the potential release of prisoners from Guantanamo, seemingly so central to the negotiation process, is a tenuous issue, given the National Defence Authorisation Act voted into Congress in December last year.

The Act states that transfers from Guantanamo Bay are banned unless the Defence Secretary approves the move.

This can only be done on the condition that those released will not return to acts of terrorism. How this condition could ever be guaranteed with regards to Taliban members is hard to say.

All of this comes at an interesting time for the US, given the upcoming elections.

Former EU envoy to Afghanistan, Michael Semple believes that the US has the opportunity to end the war this year, if they act briskly to release Guantanamo prisoners: ‘It is realistic to think there could be a ceasefire in 2012,’ he said. Such an outcome could mean significant popularity gains for the Obama administration, as they look ahead to the 2012 campaign and their hopes of re-election.

But other analysts remain wary of the negotiations, citing differences in Taliban and American policy that could stall progress for many more years to come. While the US seeks to end the end the war by 2013, the Taliban troops show no sign of departure.

For the moment, there remains a strong American presence in Afghanistan with the persistent hope of overwhelming Taliban troops and forcing them out of Afghanistan altogether. This will undoubtedly be a tricky topic for the negotiating table, given that the Taliban policy is to maintain a stronghold in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the US hopes to negotiate ceasefire zones, and is only willing to release certain Taliban members from Guantanamo.

Overall, there are worrying doubts as to the Taliban’s true objectives in any talks. It remains to be seen whether so-called peace talks are purely a bargaining effort for the release of Taliban prisoners, or whether a genuine effort is being made on the part of the Taliban to end the bloody 11-year conflict in Afghanistan. To quote those wise, longhaired rockers, Extreme: ‘more than words’ will be required from the Taliban in the coming months. CTG

march 2012

news

Mexican Wave Chris Clark looks at how the ripple effect of Mexico’s ongoing drug war is reaching Europe and even Africa.

I

n 2005, I spent some months backpacking through Mexico. I had been warned against the dangers of Mexico City and the occasional banditry on the roads, but felt safe and relaxed throughout most of my trip, oblivious to what was happening beneath the surface all around me.

One day walking through Acapulco, I heard a cacophony of police sirens and noticed a crowd quickly forming around a government building just ahead of me.

I joined the crowd and followed their eyes up the steps of the building. In front of the entrance were six severed heads in a line on the concrete, staring blankly out into the crowd. There was a moment of stunned silence. Then some began to scream and cry, or fell to their knees in prayer. Some vomited. Others turned away and closed their eyes, trying to shut it all out.

They call it the balloon effect. Push down hard on one part of a balloon and another part will instantly increase in size, the air from the flattened side having just moved elsewhere.

Thanks largely to a diligent government and a ruthless combined Latin American military police force, Colombia’s once infamous cartels and drug-funded militias have been increasingly starved of air.

But whilst Colombia cleaned up its act, the drug trade, like a sneaky tax evader, simply packed up and moved to a more accommodating climate in Mexico.

When Felipe Calderon was elected as Mexican president in 2006, he launched an all-guns-blazing attack on Mexico’s swelling drug problem, backed by a $1.5 billion pledge of US aid. However, said drug ‘problem’ soon exploded into a full-scale drug war.

Today, as the cartels not only continue to fight over turf but increasingly target civilians too (journalists, activists, judges and lawyers among them), the death toll has risen to around 40 000 since 2005, making Mexico statistically as dangerous as Afghanistan. In the town of Juarez, the murder rate is more than 200 per 100 000 residents, making it the most dangerous city in the world (sorry Jo’Burg).

As well as commonplace beheadings and bodies found hanging from motorway overpasses, last year several mass graves were discovered across northern Mexico, compared by some human rights advocates to the Balkans’ killing fields of the 1990s.

Amid the carnage, the Mexican cartels are raking in around $30 billion a year.

At the heart of the problem are the police force and an impotent judicial system. Billions of dollars per year are paid in bribes to corrupt police and other officials and 95% of violent crimes in Mexico remain unsolved. Police are poorly paid and badly trained and often join the force

The Cape Town Globalist

merely because it is a prime recruiting pool for the cartels.

Furthermore, there have been reports from Human Rights Watch that the Mexican police, army and navy have all been responsible for torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and systematic cover-ups of all of the above.

So where do the rest of us fit into all this?

The US is a primary fuel source for the drug trade with its insatiable hunger for illegal narcotics, said to be worth $65 million annually. The majority of weapons that the cartels use to keep the fires of war burning are also acquired in the US thanks to lax gun laws.

In front of the entrance were six severed heads in a line on the concrete, staring blankly out into the crowd On top of throwing billions of dollars haplessly at Calderon’s flawed offensive, the US has tried to impose sanctions on and ‘blacklist’ Mexican companies and individuals believed to be connected to cartels. However, local authorities have no power to freeze a company or individual’s assets merely because they appear on a US ‘blacklist’. Many of those ‘blacklisted’ continue their business unabated within the safety of Mexico’s borders.

In recent years there has been increasing attention paid to the trafficking of drugs through West and North Africa to reach the growing and highly profitable European market. The cartels are enticed by the lack of state control over large swathes of war-torn countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone and, especially, Guinea Bissau, which has become known as Africa’s first ‘narco-state’. In such corruptionriddled areas, the cartels can operate largely unchecked.

The United Nations has said that around 30% of cocaine that enters Europe passes through Africa.

Despite recent high profile arrests, such as that of the prominent Sinaloa cartel’s main enforcer, Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, Calderon’s offensive continues to be widely discredited as counterproductive and generally inadequate for the increasingly international nature of the cartels.

So what is to be done?

On top of fixing the broken judicial system and reining in the police at home, many Latin American ex-politicos and celebrated writers like Mario Vargas Llosa have called for the international legalisation of cocaine. The question is: will those in power heed their calls, or will they be too high to care? CTG

Image courtesy of US Federal Agency DEA

Chris Clark

is a second-year student majoring in English and History.

11

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révolution?

Vive la

12

Senegal has long been lauded as a democratic success story, but the announcement that the incumbent president, Abdoulaye Wade, is to run for a third term in office has caused a surge of violent protest in this small West African state. Is this the knock-on effect of the Arab Spring in Senegal? Daniel Hartford reports from the streets of Dakar.

‘M

on ami, mon ami, mon ami!’ The panicked tone was different to the usual drawl of the curio sellers and street con-artists, so I braved a glimpse at the friendly assailant. ‘No photo! Sortie!’ (exit).

Dressed in a full body riot police uniform, and with an equally uncompromising look on his face, he gestured at the retreat I was meant to beat.

Considering the events of the previous few days, the mounting anger in the air and the sting of teargas, I followed his instruction. A few steps later, life passed by as usual on the dust-washed streets of Dakar - businessmen having a quick lunch of omelettes and baguettes at

“There is corruption and powerful people that will have problems if he is not president. The youth want something new” a street stall, old women roasting peanuts in pans full of sand and eager salesmen promoting the latest All Stars.

None seemed phased by the back-and-forth battle behind them.

Tensions rose in Senegal following the February 2012 announcement that Abdoulaye Wade, the incumbent Senegalese president, was deemed eligible to run for a third term in the presidential elections, having served the

extent of the constitutionally legal two terms. The octogenarian leader, who appointed the lead judge of the legal council tasked with evaluating his candidacy, has argued that since the two term limit was only implemented during his presidency, it does not apply to him and thus, he is eligible to run as a candidate in 2012. The news has been received with dismay by an international community which has long praised Senegal for being the only West African democracy never to suffer a coup post independence.

The French foreign minister encouraged Senegal’s younger generation to take power. This suggestion was angrily dismissed by the Wade government, but such pronouncements did not deter students of Cheikh Anta DIOP University of Dakar (UCAD). Fighting in the capital had been isolated over the previous few days, but had gradually begun escalating with the election fast approaching on the 26th of February. A visit to the university campus a day after a student was killed in clashes with riot police revealed the anger and resentment amongst the youth. Lamine G, an English major, laid out the issues: ‘Abdoulaye Wade is too old. Education and health are bad and people are dying of hunger. There is corruption and powerful people that will have problems if he is not president. The youth want something new.’ But a solution is hard to find, and many of those who voiced grievances regarding the Wade government nevertheless felt ambivalent about the alternatives. ‘Youssou N’dour!

Ha! He must stay with playing the music but not with politics,’ laughed Lamine.

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N’dour, the world renowned Senegalese musician, has been a vocal member of the opposition condemning Wade’s candidacy. He has since been excluded from running in the election by the same legal council that approved Wade’s third term bid. N’dour’s appearance at an opposition march on Monday the 6th of February nearly ended in violence as riot police intercepted the protest in downtown Dakar. Despite being excluded from the election, his presence enlivened a sea of people who joined in a chorus of ‘Youssou, Youssou!’ Opposition favourites Macky Sall and Idrissa Seck echo N’dour’s pronouncements: they are also loosely aligned with the banner of M-23, an opposition umbrella group formed after an antiWade riot on June 23rd last year. But Lamine G shook his head skeptically as he predicted the opposition’s failure.

Greed has poisoned the movement and sowed division amongst its leaders, he told me.

‘Ca va bien?’ I enquired of the taxi driver.

‘Oui, oui!’

Leaving the university, the taxi driver’s reply came with a hint of distracted concern while the radio rapidly reported in a tongue I don’t understand. The distant bangs confirmed my suspicions. I enquired about the manifestacion (riot).

‘Oui, oui, c’est pas bon’ (yes, yes, it’s not good). Begrudgingly, a change of destination was granted and the bangs became louder as the taxi rattled through the suburb of Fass. Traffic thickened as the road ahead was closed. ‘Bon, merci,’ and a concerned wish of good luck as I disembarked. Stones, rubble and the smoldering wiry corpses of burned tyres marked the wake of the passing conflict. The road turned and revealed the battle ahead.

Students lined the outer corridors of their residence, hurling rocks at the kevlar-clad men below who retaliated with rounds of teargas blasted into the building. It was a surreal scene that followed an almost pre-determined cat-and-mouse format with no side willing to suffer any casualties. Any attempts I made at photographing students were met with a hail of rocks and angry gestures. I’d hardly had a chance when my uniformed friend chased me off and I was forced to seek a back entrance to the residence.

The entrance was guarded and it seemed that access was only granted to those who part with a cadeau (gift). Thierno, a passing student, reluctantly humoured my butchered French, and after presenting my Sud-Africain heritage, Madiba’s legacy afforded me all access. The building was rectangular with a courtyard in the middle.

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A production line ensured that those on the frontline were always armed as students dug up rocks and ferried them to the periphery. We followed a box of rocks to the upper levels and were greeted by echoing shouts and the hiss of teargas canisters. Thierno kept close, vouching for the tubab (whitey) above the din as my camera and I received interrogatory attention.

It’s tempting to interpret the Wade Degage (Wade get out) graffiti and the shouts of ‘revolution’ as the first ripples of the Arab Spring reaching the 90% Islamic population. But such an analysis may prove too simplistic in Senegal with its history of relative stability and progressive constitutional foundations. Unlike pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Libya, whose people placed no confidence in their brutal dictatorships, Senegalese people have some faith in achieving change within the boundaries of due process in their budding democracy.

It was a surreal scene that followed an almost pre-determined cat-and-mouse format with no side willing to suffer any casualties.

What the Arab Spring and the Dakar protests seem to have in common, however, is a growing sense of mass discontent among the youth, with leaders who are reluctant to relinquish power when their time is up. The notion of indispensible leaders is not foreign to the postcolonial African story – in fact, it has become intrinsic to the continent. The events of Polokwane 2007 during which Thabo Mbeki attempted to extend his stay in power were a timely reminder to our own leaders that they are not indispensible. At the time of writing, Wade’s 34.8% vote in the first round of the elections fell short of the outright majority he needed to avoid a second round of voting.

All indicators point towards the opposition now uniting behind Macky Sall. Perhaps, in this case, the intentions of the youth are finally being realised.

Thierno and I sauntered off from the university and into the suburbs of Dakar. The dust was settling and the relaxed sellers of coffee and oranges slowed down our hurried pace. The contrasting scenes verified the isolated nature of the conflict, illustrating how small-scale the resistance is, despite what many protestors would have us believe. But isolated as the conflict may be, the message is broad and clear – Senegal and Africa are tiring of their big men. CTG

Images courtesy of Daniel Hartford

Daniel Hartford is a third-year student majoring in Politics and Xhosa.

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the

blood-dimmed tide

A divided Syria is struggling to stay afloat in the face of the incessantly violent oppression of the Assad regime.

Zerene Haddad reports from Aleppo.

S

yria. The name alone indulges the senses. Not too long ago, it beckoned seductively - the allure of a place so old, yet so alive; a place of ancient civilisations and street-smart Arabic; of wizened old ladies, and flashy young men keen to seduce. Nowadays, it’s a collection of grisly YouTube videos, frantic tweets and Al Jazeera trying to re-word the same headlines time and again. Syria is drowning.

even without the political splits, Syria’s general population is a motley collection of different religions, sects, ethnic backgrounds and tribal affiliations How is it that this ‘blood-dimmed tide’ has been loosed upon the Syrian people with such ease? In the face of twelve months of protests, stubborn resistance and an increase in armed retaliation, the fact that the government is still standing is slightly baffling. It didn’t take this long in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya.

The nature of the Syrian opposition plays a role in this. Although the opposition has coalesced into a more unified body in recent months, it remains afflicted by the gap between those who are abroad, sitting comfortably 14

around meeting tables, and those on the ground in Syria.

There are divisions on the issue of foreign intervention, and on civil disobedience or militarising as a way forward.

It bears remembering here that, even without the political splits, Syria’s general population is a motley collection of different religions, sects, ethnic backgrounds and tribal affiliations.

Overall, the inability of the opposition to clearly unite and define themselves has played into the hands of the Assad regime. Many Syrians have remained loyal to the regime only because they feel that the opposition doesn’t represent them or could successfully govern, given their fragmentary nature. Add to that forty years of the same ruling family and the thought of sudden change can be unnerving.

A dinner a few months ago in Aleppo was attended by a wealthy Syrian who had recently returned from Paris.

‘It’s not that I’m against change in Syria. . . I just don’t want instability,’ he quipped. But by its very definition, if Syria is to see change, there has to be some instability.

Geopolitically, Syria is of extreme importance, and the reason why no one has raised a hue and cry over the Assad regime before, is because it’s helped keep the region stable. As a result, despite western isolation, Syria still boasts the unswerving support of Iran, and Iranianbacked Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dishevelled Iraq to the east is also unlikely to put a foot wrong against whoever holds power in Syria, because of the significant amount

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of Iraqi refugees residing inside Syria. As the British Independent’s foreign correspondent Robert Fisk points out, ‘from the border of Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, Assad has a straight line of alliances which should prevent, at least, his economic collapse.’

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council (SNC), desperate to be recognised as the transitional government, is based outside of Syria and comprises of leaders who haven’t been in Syria for many years. As a result, Tariq* opines, ‘locally, people seem to forget that it is impossible to canvas opinions on the ground, and only focus on the concept that the opposition abroad doesn’t represent us.’

Part of the issue is that the frightened religious and ethnic minorities, who up until now were protected by the regime, have been paralysed by fear through the state media. As a result, all they see as an alternative to Assad’s rule is a radical Islamist wave sweeping through their beloved Syria, and butchering them as it does so. Rafik, a Syrian from a minority community, reckons that ‘the regime is exploiting the fact that the opposition is divided. It is also using methods of horror and terror against the people to make sure that those who are not content but still inactive stay in their homes.’

As the Arab League (and the recently formed and ironically named ‘Friends of Syria’) stumble around Tunis and Cairo debating measures to stem the rising blood tide, the deaths keep rolling in. The Arab League, who until last year were more reminiscent of an antiquated gentlemen’s club than an effective political body, are still shuffling around and making damning statements on the ‘official’, but what they are up to behind the scenes is harder to discern and rumours abound.

Another popular recent rumour among those loyal to Assad is that the Free Syrian Army, comprising of defected members of Assad’s army, are being armed by extremist Sunni elements. The Syrian regime was quick to accuse Saudi Arabia of fuelling the uprising, supplying weapons to the fabled “armed terrorists” in an attempt to bring down the Syrian regime and consolidate its own power in the region.

Back in May 2011, the story of ‘armed terrorists’ seemed far-fetched, but fast-forward to today, and they’re more real than imaginary. To say that the uprising is without rogue elements would be naïve. ‘Terrorists’ or not, the feeling for many is that a Saudi-backed militarised wing of the Syrian opposition may not realise the demands of the protesters.

To say that the uprising is without rogue elements would be naïve Originally most protesters did not want any kind of foreign intervention, but as time marches on, more are beginning to seek help from outside. Averse to this, Tariq believes that ‘a deal has to be struck amongst those with influence, and not amongst those in the opposition. If the East can be convinced to stop its support for the government . . . I think that our own army . . . is capable of securing the country.’

Similarly, Rafik believes that the West failed to bring peace to the region several times, so it would be very immature to trust them with the fate of Syria, and that the Arab countries must bring peace and democracy to their own countries first. ‘I think that both are no good for Syria,’ he says.

A year on from the start of the uprising, it’s hard to tell which way Syria is headed, but the feeling of desperation amongst the Syrian population is tangible; daily life is plagued with electricity cuts, a devaluing currency and shortages of commodities. Events are spiralling out of control, and despite the clamour of regional and international political differences that seems to be strangling the people’s will, I can still hear one message rising above all the rest. It hasn’t changed in months: ‘Ash-shaab yureed isqaat a-nizaam!’

‘The people want the fall of the regime!’

Come what may. CTG * Names of Syrian sources have been changed.

Images courtesy of flickr.com/Al-Jazeera & Wikimedia commons

zerene haddad

has an Honours degree in History.

The Cape Town Globalist

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Global21

Bleeding hearts of liberty

E

Image courtesy of Garry Knight/Wikimedia commons

Cornelius Christian

is a writer for the oxonian Globalist.

very generation has struggled against the overwhelming tides of illegitimate authority. From the Hebrews fleeing slavery in Egypt, to women demanding suffrage in recent times, common goals of freedom and democracy have been hard won.

Now the torch of liberty has been passed to this generation, and the clash of the powerless with the powerful has manifested in the form of the Occupy movement.

Their fight is against an international menace that has permeated societies, breaking apart families, destroying the working class, and poisoning the environment: institutionalised economic injustice. Corrupt corporations and governments have tainted the democratic process with lobbying, profligate bailouts, and foreign wars that often predominantly benefit the wealthy.

The Occupy movement is perhaps long overdue. The richest 1% of Americans control 40% of the wealth. Over the past thirty years, real wages have stagnated while top incomes have risen, as the rich steadily steal productivity gains from the working class. The United States’ income inequality now parallels that of totalitarian Iran and oligarchic Russia.

To shallow observers, the Occupy movement appears inchoate in its aims. A walk through Occupy London, for instance, reveals a potpourri of causes: socialism and an-

archism, environmentalism, pacifism, animal rights. There appears no semblance of commonality. But a more careful observer realises that economic injustice underlies many of the societal ills.

Is there any truth then to the media’s caricature of protesters as dim-witted ideologues keen on marijuana and two-cent philosophy? Perhaps, but at least occupiers have, finally, engaged the public in dialogue about the intrinsic links between state and corporate avarice. The first step towards recovery is identifying the problem.

But now protesters must focus on the recovery itself. Socialism is probably not the answer; the class war has already been won by the capitalists. Voters can seek only to make our current system more fair and equitable.

Some elements of the Occupy movement made broadly reasonable demands; an end to corporate welfare programs and hazardous public sector cuts, for instance.

They could also have demanded better financial regulation, tighter limits on corporate lobbying, and a return to the Bretton Woods international monetary system. In short, protesters should call on governments to restore the financial system to its original purpose of lubricating the economy, not destroying it.

Still, the light of liberty flickers on from Cairo to New York. G21

How the internet is changing hate groups

I

Hate crimes by census areas, per 100,000 people.

Graphic by Monika Traikov and Matthew Wall

Brunilda Chimo is a writer for the toronto Globalist.

16

n Canada alone there are at least 75 hate organizations that are using the internet to spread their hatred.

The internet allows for the promulgation of racist views in new and more efficient ways than ever before because it is easily accessible to millions of people. As stated in Margaret Duffy’s book, Web of Hate, ‘there is no question’ that thanks to the internet ‘these groups are reaching people who would never have been exposed otherwise’.

Moreover, it is difficult to censor such material because of the technology it employs and freedom of expression rights guaranteed by the Canadian Constitution.

Youths are especially vulnerable to the messages of hate online. Statistics show that, predictably, teenagers use the internet more than any other age group.

A poll in the US found that 25% of teens have seen hate group websites. So, youths are not only more likely to view these websites because of their greater use of the internet, but many of these hate websites specifically target younger generations because of their vulnerability and impressionable nature.

Hate crime reports suggest a possible a link between

the viewing of hate sites and hate crime occurrences.

Meanwhile, the focus on the younger generation is evident in a survey by the Canadian Centre for Justice, which shows that whilst the average age of men participating in hate crime was around 29.5 years prior to 2001, the present average age is 23.6 years. Also, many studies have found that hate sites have contributed to hate incidents against African Americans, as well as the horrific killings at Columbine High School in 1999 and last year in Norway.

As already mentioned, hate sites are a stable source of racist ideas as they cannot be technologically or legally censored. Hate sites transcend borders and thus cannot be controlled by the Canadian legal system. Even when these sites are Canadian, censoring them is difficult; duplicates are easily created and hate sites can also claim that any attempt at controlling them violates their freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is a cruel irony that a charter supposed to champion Canadian multiculturalism is involuntarily offering a shield for intolerance and hate to hide behind. G21

march 2012

the

Widening Gyre The Centre cannot hold

by Dela Gwala & Lori-rae van Laren

The Tipping Point by amber kriel

Keep calm and ignore Iran by melissa newham

Shit happens, thank god by paul mesarcik & frank petousis

No seed, no cycle by joseph weinberg

27 Town Globalist The Cape

Image courtesy of Shane Shewan The Burj Khalifa under construction in Dubai 17

widening gyre

The

Centre cannot hold

When it comes to the systems on which we have depended since the French Revolution, ‘out with the old and in with the new’ is a trope that surely ushers in chaos and destruction. DELA GWALA and LORI VAN LAREN investigate our political and economic safety blankets – democracy and free market capitalism – and ask whether a new world order is viable – teething issues aside.

‘Nothing calls out for more analysis than talk of freedom, unless perhaps it is the American way of life.’

Ted Honderich

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Images of the protests outside parliament organised by the Right2Know campaign

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n a documentary called After Democracy, a panel of political experts assemble to mull over the possible extinction of the world’s most popular political system.

However, the title of this documentary proves to be false advertising: the threat of autocracy and dictatorship send the seasoned academics back down the road from whence they came. The highly qualified panel seems to draw a blank, their discussion drudges up the countless problems that come with a ‘government for and by the people’. After forty eight minutes of analytical talk, the issues remain. It seems as though the only thing holding Western society together is the assertion that we have yet to find anything better.

Plato, the great grandfather of philosophy, came from the civilisation that invented ‘Democratia’ -- yet considered it a less-than-ideal model for society. For him, democracy hardly functioned, nor did it seem to employ people who could do their jobs sufficiently. He was not alone in questioning the ideology’s capacity to rule. American governments have routinely proclaimed that the US is “the world’s oldest democracy” but the founding fathers of the US constitution would emphatically disagree. In the Federalist Papers, the initiators of the US system attack the

notion of ‘pure democracy’ and instead laid down the foundations for a Republican system. They tacked the dubious label ‘faction’ onto the backs of those in the majority, accusing them of steamrolling over the interests of others.

If making up a vast percentage of the population does not make you politically correct then what does? If democracy is not the yardstick of ethical behaviour then what exactly are we fighting for?

Freedom of speech, freedom of information and freedom of the press have taken a few blows of late. In South Africa, the Protection of Information Bill was passed and parliament turned a deaf ear towards the public outcry.

the only thing holding Western society together is the assertion that we have yet to find anything better ‘The Secrecy Bill,’ as it has been popularly dubbed, incited scores of black-clad protestors to mourn the death of their constitutional rights. Yet parliament is still wondering why it has produced such a large public outcry. At a public hearing about the controversial legislation, the ANC spokeswoman said, “This public interest thing is disturbing”. Grace Boroto’s words were not the only thing thrown at the public for ‘meddling with state affairs’; the entire hearing was an exercise in showing the public who

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widening gyre

really is in charge. Those who wanted to raise concerns were cut short or denied the chance to speak at all. These freedoms are the younger siblings of democracy and this ideological family seems to be under threat.

However, in the USA, two supposedly anti-democratic legislations have had to bow before public protest.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its lesser-known cousin, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), have stalled due to relentless criticism from internet powerhouses (Google and Facebook, among others), coupled with the picketing of the common man. Wikipedia trumpeted its disapproval the loudest with a day-long ‘blackout’ of the online encyclopaedia. Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, went as far as to claim that the people had bucked the system; they had shouted down the malign intent of the mega-corporates and their governmental bed mates. The technocrats may be celebrating a miraculous rescue of democracy but this may prove to be a very shallow victory.

As our anointed technological liberator, the internet seems to wield the democratising sword. Yet, contrary to a much circulated popular belief, tweets and status updates do not change the world. Western media has placed the mantle of revolution onto the shoulders of social media. It has claimed popular protest in countries such as Iran, Tunisia and Egypt as trophies for Facebook and Twitter. What is often ignored is the fact that access to the internet in these countries was limited and civil unrest grew from the mobilised protesters on the ground. In actual fact the internet can bolster the techno-savvy autocrat and stunt social movements. Authoritarian governments are now using Facebook profiles and twitter pages to sift out protestors; online activity has become a convenient hunting ground.

Internet giants like Facebook and Google are not simply the voice of the people - legislation like SOPA and PIPA could jeopardise their business. Yet they are being opposed by another set of industry giants representing their own interests: the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In response, they have thrown their weight behind a gentler piece of legislation called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade

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Act (OPEN). It seems each mega-conglomerate wants their own way, waving their preferred bill around in order to protect their Intellectual Property. The side effect is that public and its opinion is lost in the fray. Ultimately it is not our fight – the cog of capitalism will keep turning despite a public outcry. More than often, it seems that the voice of the people is heard only once every 5 years at the election polls, only to be muted once more.

At the end of the day, government hands are chained to big business. What has happened to democracy? We sold it. It had a very visible price tag that neither you nor I could afford. CTG

I

t’s no secret that capitalism has taken a knock to its confidence recently. Wall Street is occupied, the Eurozone is in a crisis and wealth inequality is on the rise. But there’s a new kind of capitalism in town and governments across the world are backing it.

How is state capitalism any better than the capitalism we already know?

As part of a recent TIME magazine panel discussion, expert economists began to admit that Western-style capitalism may be failing us. It is hard to ignore that under capitalism we are facing the greatest inequity since the Great Depression. The world’s richest countries have increasing inequality and unemployment is a terrifying reality worldwide. It’s not just the experts who have begun to notice the signs of aging capitalism. The protestors on Wall Street and the rioters in Europe and the Arab states have noticed it too.

What is the mighty new challenge to Western capitalism entering the global market? It’s state capitalism.

Unlike the capitalism we know, state capitalism sees the state or government of a country ruling or heavily influencing market activity. While it looks as though it is the next logical step, state capitalism is nothing new. Previously, state-owned companies were features of developing economies and would be closed or privatised as the economy grew. State investment is vital in the beginning

Images courtesy of Retha Fergusson foxeye.co.za

Dela Gwala

is studying International Relations, French and Media.

lori-rae van laren

is a third year student majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

19

widening gyre

phase of new companies as it helps to facilitate growth in small companies and protect ‘baby’ industries.

Now, according to The Economist, state-backed firms make up a third of the emerging world’s foreign direct investment in 2003-2010. State-backed firms are no longer simply a step in the process of becoming a liberal, capitalistic nation; they are part of a new model of governance and economics.

How is state capitalism any better than the capitalism we already know? For the answer to this, we need only turn to the developing world. For emerging economies, state capitalism is a viable way of speeding up development. Companies will take much longer to reach the level of their rivals in developing nations if they are confined to the private sector. China’s implementation of state capitalism is evidence of this. With the help of government money, China has risen (almost) to the top of the economic food chain – and very quickly at that. According to The Economist, China Mobile and National Petroleum Corporation (both state-backed companies) have made over $33 billion. Their profit exceeds the profit made by the 500 most profitable private companies in the country.

Apple began in Steve Jobs’ garage, not in a skyscraper funded by the government

Image courtesy of David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons

20

However, as threatening as State capitalism appears, several glaring weaknesses could prove to be detrimental. For economists such as Ian Bremmer, state capitalism’s flaw is that it is married to autocracy. One simply has to look to the countries that have implemented the system (China, Russia and several Arab states) to see this. The concern is that the system’s primary aim is to eliminate any threat to the political power of the elite rather than to create wealth. State capitalism monopolises power and hence is likely to abuse it. A government in control of market activity is a government in control of information, money, goods and even the flow of ideas.

Robert Lowe portrayed businesses as ‘little republics’ that provide vital checks and balances for governments.

In other words, privately owned businesses are able to keep government accountable and can scrutinise the decisions taken by the ruling party. When the state and companies are one and the same, this watchdog for accountability is removed.

Another potential worry is that the state owned

‘champions’ exhaust resources that could better have been used by other, private companies. Studies show that state owned companies are in fact less efficient than private companies and have a slower growth rate. Moreover, any company not controlled by the government in state capitalist countries will suffer as their counterparts bloom and flourish on state funds. The argument is that the money spent on these few giant companies could instead be providing many entrepreneurs with the capital they desperately need. Many will also argue that it is entrepreneurship, not oversized state-funded companies that will sustain economies. This is because entrepreneurship and small businesses encourage innovation.

Apple began in Steve Jobs’ garage, not in a skyscraper funded by the government.

Despite its faults, what cannot be denied is the fact that state capitalist countries fared the storms of the recession far better than the ‘regular’ capitalist countries.

China, India and Brazil have not suffered in the way that the USA and Eurozone have. State capitalism also appears to be far better at creating employment opportunities than Western-style capitalism is. Admittedly, the jobs created are not as well paid as those created under Western capitalism but the rate at which jobs are created is much higher.

So, does state capitalism have a viable future? Yes, potentially. If politicians can avoid the temptation to use large, state-owned countries as tools to maintain their positions of political power then perhaps the model can work. It is also vital that state-owned businesses are run as businesses, without commercial and social issues being confused. Political decisions must remain political and business-related decisions must remain businessrelated. Singapore, Brazil and Norway all contain helpful and productive elements of state capitalism which provide evidence that state capitalism might just work.

Many are starting to accept that state capitalism is here to stay. Rather than abandoning capitalism altogether, state capitalism provides a new way of looking at the capitalist system and policymakers and investors need to start addressing the way we deal with it.

That being said, it is clear that Western-style capitalism is a fighter. Rubenstein (the managing director of the Carlyle Group), claims that as long as capitalism is able to address the debt problem and make government more efficient, then state capitalism will be nothing more than a passing craze. The capitalism we know has overcome fascism, colonialism, communism as well as its own internal failings in the past. It might just be able to defeat state capitalism too – and the Occupy movement, of course. CTG

march 2012

The Tipping Point

widening gyre

In a world of 7 billion, the modern city puts great strain on its inhabitants and the environment. So is there a future for sustainable urbanisation?

AMBER KRIEL takes a look.

I

n 2008 our world crossed a demographic rubicon: for the first time in history, more people lived in urban areas than in rural ones. On a planet effectively bursting at the seams, where megacities are growing faster than ever before, the question of whether the built environment is sustainable is a pressing one indeed. When it comes to the tipping point, how devastating will our fall be?

Lewis Mumford, an American sociologist and historian, defines a city as ‘above all else a theatre of social action.’ He contends that in order for a city to operate effectively, certain constraints ought to be applied on the population, modern development, and density. However, when taking the unprecedented acceleration of urban growth into consideration, Mumford’s suggestion seems a little idealistic. Not only are the physical forms of urban areas continually being re-shaped by their perpetual expansion, but the living conditions of many of their inhabitants are also altered as we attempt to evolve with these rapid changes.

In recent years, China has seen a massive shift of its population to urban areas, particularly by those who leave rural areas to earn a living in factories. Over half of China's population now lives in urban areas. Historically, Chinese communities were formed by their tradition of rice farming, a sector which underwent active exploitation during the rule of the Communist Party from 1949 onwards.

China has now reached a turning point where metropolitan residents are outweighing rural inhabitants. At the end of 2011, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics affirmed that 51.3% of China’s 1.35 billion people live in urban areas. Three decades ago, the number was significantly smaller: only a fifth of the Chinese population was living in cities. Pursuing industrialisation without urbanisation, the Chinese government took an approach of “leaving the land but not the villages, entering the factories but not cities”. What they failed to realise was that entering the factories entailed entering the cities. Interestingly, compared to the United States, which reached the 50% mark before 1920, and Britain, which reached it in 1851, the relation of urban citizens in China is still considered low for a flourishing economy.

What may prove problematic with mass migration from rural to urban environments is not growth itself, but unplanned growth. In 2001 about 31% of the world’s urban populace, (an estimated 924 million people) was living in slums and impoverished circumstances. In India’s capital city, Delhi, this drastic contrast of urban growth and urban impoverishment has become a serious issue, one which only received broader global attention

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after the release of Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire in 2008. A recent survey has shown that a third of the world’s malnourished children live in India, and more specifically, in India’s urban slums. The idea that the city can offer better living conditions and healthcare only holds true for a privileged minority.

A recent buzzword has been ‘hedonistic sustainability’ Disillusionment with the city and its destructive effects has caused city-dwellers the world over to view rural life through an idealistic lens – for them, living the ‘simple life’ is not only economic, but green. Perhaps there is some truth to this idealism.

Considering the devastating impact that urbanisation has on the natural environment, is it realistic to hope to find an effective solution to minimise the consequences? Living ‘green’ in our current society is largely a condition that only the elite can sustain – even so, some feel it is too much of a compromise of luxury. Can the modern city be redesigned to counter the environmental and social problems it is responsible for producing whilst maintaining the comfortable lives of the rich?

A recent buzzword has been ‘hedonistic sustainability,’ an idealistic yet potentially useful architectural concept developed by Danish super-architect Bjarke Ingels.

During his appearance at the TEDx conference, Ingels shared his points of view by questioning the assumption that in order to live sustainably, one has to give up a luxurious lifestyle.

He combats this misconception with his latest project proposal for 2012: an urban waste-processing power plant in Copenhagen, transformed into a multipurpose urban ski slope. The plant simultaneously produces heat and electricity for 140 000 residences while bathing-suit clad skiers take elevators to the top and ski down the slope. At night, neon CO2 smoke rings illuminate the sky for some ambiance.

This project is certainly ambitious, and it typifies the idealism reserved for First World nations. Yet its value lies in the potential Ingels sees for sustainable building, feeding off the urban elite’s constant need for improved quality of living. While the world could certainly benefit from Ingels’ innovations, megacities will continue to spread like cancers, producing devastating symptoms as long as the capitalist drive is fuelling them.

For now though, let’s go skiing. CTG

Amber Kriel

is a third-year student majoring in Media and Writing, Politics & Afrikaans.

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Keep calm ignore and

iran Iran is a country with outspoken leaders in a volatile region. Its neighbours are its enemies one day and its bed-buddies the next. And it has— we are told—a nuclear programme. This is a bad mix, isn’t it? Maybe not. Melissa Newham reports.

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he idea of an atomic bomb immediately evokes images of mushroom clouds and thoughts of the end of the world. After the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we are correctly unnerved by nuclear technology. In Ahmadinejad’s Iran, the combination of war-like rhetoric and a nuclear program is making the world jumpy: Barack Obama has said that a nuclear Iran would be ‘profoundly destabilizing’ and ‘extraordinarily dangerous’.

the widely-held panic surrounding nuclear materials is unfounded and harmful But is the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran being overblown? In Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda (2009), John Mueller argues that the widely-held panic surrounding nuclear materials is unfounded and harmful. He calls this exaggerated fear of nuclear weapons technology ‘nuclear alarmism’.

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A November 2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has renewed Western suspicions that Iran is pursuing military objectives with its nuclear programme. The report claims to have found credible evidence that Iran has ‘carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device’ and that the project is still up and running.

Iran’s leadership has denounced the IAEA’s findings as biased, unprofessional and politically motivated, claiming that its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity and providing fuel for medical reactors.

Iran has flouted UN Security Council resolutions ordering the state to stop all nuclear activities until its peaceful intentions are guaranteed. Amidst concerns that Iran’s nuclear programme could spark a war with Israel—exacerbated by recent evidence of increase activity at the Fordow underground nuclear facility—the UN, EU and America have imposed economic sanctions. Their effects are being felt. Japan buys much of its oil from Iran; to comply with US sanctions it has had to increase its supply from post-revolution Libya.

So why should we keep calm and carry on? Muel-

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ler points out that efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation such as the anti-proliferation war in Iraq have caused more deaths than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

We should not repeat past mistakes and pursue damaging and unnecessary anti-proliferation action.

The likelihood of Iran developing an actual weapon— something it has not yet done—must also be assessed.

Chief concerns are that Iran would use its weapons to spread the Islamic revolution, support terrorist groups, gain dominance in the Middle East, and spark a cascade of regional nuclear proliferation.

Atomic weapons give a state power: a nuclear arsenal would deter attacks on Iran, its allies and its economic interests. Polls in 2008 showed that the majority of Iranians want their country to develop nuclear energy. So, possession of nuclear weapons would deter Iran’s enemies—real or imagined—and increase national pride.

But the IAEA report finds evidence that Iran has been experimenting with the creation of nuclear weapons, not that it is building an actual warhead.

There are disadvantages to possessing nuclear weapons: tough economic sanctions, war, lethal accidents, and the risk of the weapons falling into the wrong hands.

Arguably, Tehran may stop short of producing an actual weapon and settle for latent capability. The regime may believe that the skill to produce fissile material alone is a sufficient deterrent, making the cost of producing an actual bomb redundant. Likewise, national pride could be swelled by the mere nuclear capacity.

There is fear that if Iran built nuclear weapons it would use them to spread the Islamic revolution. Mueller argues that this is irrational. A nuclear attack on Israel—Iran’s most obvious target—or even the threat of one, would be suicidal. Israel has substantial pre-emptive capability. It is not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is thought to have up to 400 warheads. By the laws of self-preservation, Tehran is unlikely to pick a nuclear fight with Jerusalem. Yet this assumes that states act rationally, something often proved wrong by history.

Alarmists also point out that a nuclear Iran could provide nuclear technology to terrorist groups. Iran has a track record of supporting such organisations, and on occasion using them for its own purposes, notably Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Mueller argues that the prospect of Iran giving Hezbollah nuclear material is far-flung. The sheer power of

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nuclear weapons means that Tehran would be foolish to give an ally over which it holds no guaranteed influence control of such a valuable asset, and consequently control over Iran’s fate. And if Hezbollah did attack Israel with nuclear weapons, Israel would know who had supplied them—and thus where to strike back.

Responding to the anxiety that a nuclear Iran would seize dominance in the Middle East, Mueller stresses the limited influence nuclear weapons have had in the past.

They failed to induce the surrender of Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003. Neither America in 1965 nor China in 1979 managed to defeat the Vietnamese, despite both having nuclear warheads. Just as Israeli nukes have not granted it dominance in the Middle East, a nuclear Iran is unlikely to alter substantially the regional power balance.

efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation such as the anti-proliferation war in Iraq have caused more deaths than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined A final issue raised by nuclear alarmists: neighbours to a nuclear Iran might feel vulnerable and develop or buy nuclear weapons themselves, triggering an avalanche of nuclear proliferation. Analysts are particularly worried about the reactions of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But these countries have put up with a nuclear neighbour—Israel—since 1986 and have been unable or unwilling to respond in kind. Mueller puts his faith in rationality, suggesting that rather than bear the costs themselves, nonnuclear states would seek alliances with nuclear-armed neighbours.

It is uncertain, then, whether Iran will actually create nuclear weapons: and if it did, the consequences may not be as dire as nuclear alarmists believe. This is not to say that a nuclear Iran presents no threat. Tehran could get it wrong and take action that provokes pre-emption. Or— for financial or ideological reasons— certain groups in Iran could use their country’s nuclear power to support terrorist organisations. Ironically Iran’s own leaders and civilians are likely to suffer the most in these scenarios.

The international community should be wary: of nuclear bombs, but also of nuclear alarmism. CTG

Images courtesy of Wikimedia commons

Melissa newham is a third-year student majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

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Shit happens,

thank god

Time is running out for alternative energy solutions and across the globe, panic endures. But the energy crisis does not have to seem quite so apocalyptic. Paul Mesarcik and Frank Petousis explain why biogas is an apt solution in the light of destruction – especially in South Africa.

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veryone has heard about alternative energy.

Solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectricity are being discussed as though they are the sacred remedies to our energy crisis and impending global warming meltdown. The truth is, however good these sources of energy sound in theory, in practice, and especially in South Africa, these technologies still involve inhibitive start-up costs and unjustifiable investments in infrastructure.

The elegance of the biogas system is the way in which it closes the natural cycle that society has blindly deconstructed

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

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It’s quite simple: the whole of Africa produces less than 5% of global carbon emissions, South Africa a percentage of that. We are truly an insignificant blip on the map of environmental threats when compared to the international heavyweights of China, India and the USA. At the same time, we suffer some of the world’s worst cases of poverty and lack of infrastructure. Can we really be expected to invest billions (and it really would cost that much) in solar panels and wind turbines when people don’t have homes or functional schools? Who are these solutions even helping? The reality of our country is that even those fortunate enough to have a roof over their heads of-

ten do not have the power lines to use the energy generated in any case. You may wonder why energy solutions should even be discussed, given that we have so many other headaches.

A fair question though it may be, South Africa simply cannot ignore all matters of energy. The point is that alternative energy should be treated with great sensitivity. Far reaching solutions are needed, ones that step away from the model of centralised energy production. We cannot claim that we are absolved of all responsibility for our actions because we are still developing - the same way an unruly teenager would claim ignorance for his or her actions.

We need energy solutions that can be implemented at a low cost, run by communities, for themselves.

Cue Anaerobic Digestion (AD), a truly sustainable source of energy that could greatly ease the energy crisis in South Africa – using nothing less abundant than waste itself. AD (also known as ‘biogas’) is truly unique. It is both a waste management system and a source of clean energy that has the potential to supply not only energy in the form of gas, but powerful fertiliser too.

Anaerobic Digestion is the breakdown of organic waste in an oxygen-less environment (‘an’ means without, ‘aerobic’ means depending on oxygen or air). A byproduct of this process is methane gas, an incredibly rich source of energy. The process is carried out in a sealed container that, fed with water and organic waste, consistently generates enough methane-rich biogas to power gas stoves, lights, generators and water geysers – essentially

march 2012

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everything that can be powered by Liquid Propane Gas. The waste source can be anything from food scraps to raw sewerage to agricultural waste. It is a great example of a cyclical system: utilising something unwanted to create something desperately needed.

The elegance of the biogas system is the way in which it closes the natural cycle that society has blindly deconstructed. For centuries we have ignored our waste, pumping it into the sea or shamelessly burning it. Biogas utilises the ebb and flow of energy-to-waste, waste-to-energy, to create a neat system with four main benefits: firstly, it challenges us to change our perceptions of waste, reminding us that it can be a valuable resource. The natural by-product of decomposing organic matter is methane gas and it is not difficult to extract.

Furthermore, the natural by-product of an anaerobic digester is nutrient-rich slurry, a water-based fertiliser that once reintroduced into the soil, helps to grow the very same food source that feeds the digester. This slurry can also be further processed using algae tanks, simple reed bed filters or naturally occurring wetlands to reclaim the water used in the process. From this approach we gain a waste management system that simultaneously produces clean water, gas and valuable fertiliser. Biogas has the potential to bring us back to the centre of the widening gyre of our wasteful society.

If the benefits are so obvious, why haven’t these systems been put into effect? The truth is that they have. In China, roughly thirty million households have biogas digesters. The Chinese model has shifted the reliance of rural communities on costly external power sources. This was done through the national implementation of biogas, greatly improving the quality of rural life. The Chinese government released plans and documentation to enable rural communities to construct their own digesters from simple materials. By encouraging families and agricultural communes to band together, the costs of constructing a digester become entirely feasible.

There are many lessons we can learn from China; biogas is not a gas-pipe dream and we have the working models to justify its success. Furthermore, biogas enables

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a country to de-centralise energy production and effect change in the areas that need it most.

We even have working models from which to draw inspiration in our own country. Many household digesters are running successfully right now, and larger scale digesters are being built and commissioned in rural areas. A fine example is the Three Crowns School digester in the Eastern Cape. The installation used sewerage and garden waste from the school to feed the two 6m3 digesters that were designed locally by AGAMA biogas, a Cape Town based energy consultancy at the forefront of local biogas mobilisation.

Biogas has the potential to bring us back to the centre of the widening gyre of our wasteful society.

The gas produced is used to power the school kitchens and the slurry is filtered by algae ponds so that the water can be reused to water the school grounds, the algae itself being used to fertilise the school gardens. These are but the beginnings of the potential South African application of this technology and already the versatility of the system is clear.

As South Africa continues to develop, it is in the perfect position to reconsider its focus with regard to energy production. Fossil fuels are fading, other alternative technologies are less sustainable than they seem and, most pertinently, the needs of a large portion of our country are not even met by the electrical grid, resulting in excess use of kerosene, paraffin and wood-fire.

This is where biogas so effectively fits our country, closing pre-industrial natural cycles and simultaneously producing energy. Though it may seem like the depletion of fossil fuels will leave us with an apocalypse on our hands, all that is necessary for a sustainable turnaround is a slight paradigm shift. The future is hopeful. CTG

Infographic courtesy of Max Basler

Paul Mesarcik & Frank Petousis are fourth-year students in Mechatronic Engineering.

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No seed, no cycle Joseph Weinberg proposes that we investigate our relationship with food and questions whether a return to basics is in order for a food secure future.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

JOSEPH WEINBERG

is an Honours student in Religious Studies.

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onsidering the overwhelming range of products on display on our supermarket shelves, the idea of a food crisis can seem pretty abstract.

However, if we were to investigate this sense of abundance and illusion of choice, we might observe that our existence is swaying precariously, like a drunk on the head of a pin. Or, less loftily, we might observe that even when not on the rise, food prices, both global and domestic, are generally volatile.

At the shopping centre we are physically, intellectually and emotionally detached from the process of food production at the agricultural periphery. We are collectively conned into becoming ‘conveniently’ uninformed.

The notion of convenience is constantly being negotiated and reconstructed according to the spirit of the times.

On one level, the spirit of our times is partially informed by a widespread recognition of the necessity of human sustainability. If the seed is the ultimate symbol of food security, the genetically modified seedless grape is increasingly a symbol of inconvenience, despite being rid of seeds ‘for your convenience’.

The popular interpretation of the nature of the food crisis, as asserted by international financial institutions (IFI) like the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund), is that food prices are increasingly unpredictable. While the instability of the food economy is deeply concerning, it is not the source of the crisis, but a mere symptom.

The World Bank addresses the perceived crisis by pumping billions of dollars into various philanthropic aid schemes aimed at alleviating its effects. By masquerading the symptom as the cause like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, IFIs are actually perpetuating the crisis rather than alleviating it. While potentially well-meaning, they are fundamentally deluded. In reality, the roots of our crisis run much deeper than the food economy. It is our disengagement from the source of our food, our only life line on this planet, which characterises the true nature of the crisis.

Not only have we lost touch, but our agency and control over our own food security is threatened as the seed, the symbolic source of life, is appropriated by multinational corporations. It is conservatively estimated that 47% of the worldwide proprietary seed market is controlled by the top three companies (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta). Furthermore, the top ten companies dominate the market for genetically modified (GM) seeds and chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

A compounding factor is that this corporate usurping of the knowledge of the seed is legitimised through intellectual-property-rights regimes like the Trade Related Intellectual Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Because these patency laws ensure that this knowledge becomes the exclusive property of these corporate monoliths, our food security is ultimately dependent on them, too.

In their 2006 European advertising campaign, Monsanto ominously predicted that by 2030 ‘soil erosion and mineral depletion will exhaust the ground. Lands such as rainforests will be forced into cultivation. Fertiliser, insecticide and herbicide will increase globally’. Nevertheless, they predict a bright future with monoculture and biotechnology as the way forward.

If we are actually to move forward, into a global society that is both food secure and ecologically sustainable, we must dispel the contemporary myth that industrial agriculture is the most efficient method of producing food.

This is a recipe for starving people, not feeding them.

A study comparing polycultures (biodynamic styles of farming) with industrial monocultures found in Richard A. Levins book, The Stolen Harvest, showed that ‘a polyculture system can produce 100 units of food from 5 units of inputs (energy), whereas an industrial system requires 300 units of inputs to produce the same 100 units.

The 295 wasted units could have provided 5900 units of additional food. Thus the industrial system leads to a decline of 5900 units of food. This is a recipe for starving people, not feeding them.’

Our food crisis is complicated by the over-simplification of complex ecological processes. An industrial system based on monocultural principles, supplemented with fertilisers and pesticides to keep crops on life-support before removing one hundred percent of the biomass, will inevitably degrade the natural resource base on which it relies.

Alternatively, there are a variety of highly evolved polycultural approaches to farming that increase yields through ethical principles, actively encouraging biodiversity. Furthermore, a polycultural approach to producing food gradually and systematically builds up the natural resource base by adding more bio-mass than it removes.

In the timeless words of 6th century Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: ‘That the gentle overcomes the strong, this everyone knows yet no-one acts accordingly’.

So, the first challenge in dealing with the food crisis is to peel away the layers of deception that prevent us from engaging with the core of the matter. We must recognise that no crisis exists in isolation from ourselves – we prepare the soil, so to speak, for a crisis of this nature to take root. The Greek definition of ‘apocalypse’ is a ‘lifting of the veil’ – a revelation of that which has been hidden from the majority, within a society dominated by falsehood. In the face of an impending food apocalypse, it is imperative that we acknowledge that we are a part of the problem and inform ourselves accordingly. CTG

march 2012

Solar Flares kick up a Storm

science

Rob Attwell investigates the recent space storm – will we be zapped by apocalyptic death rays this year, or is this just Book-ofRevelations-style fantasy?

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n 2012, when it is all supposed to end, Earth was pummelled by the most extreme solar storm since, well, since the last extreme solar storm in 2003. This could be an ominous foreshadowing of solar related disasters in the not too distant future. Should we believe these crazy Mesoamerican apocalyptic predictions that the world will be inflamed (read blown up0n) by a particularly powerful solar flare? Will the sun shoot out a cosmic death ray and destroy all life on Earth except for, probably, cockroaches, which seem be able to survive anything?

In the early hours of Monday 23 January, NASA observed a gigantic flash associated with an especially powerful solar flare. Solar flares represent a sudden, often violent release of energy from the surface of the sun. These flares shoot out CMEs (clouds of electrons, ions and atoms) which typically reach Earth two to three days after the flare itself has occurred. After all, they have to travel 149, 597, 870.7 kilometres – a rather long journey even if you are going at the speed of light.

On January 23rd, however, the CME sped towards earth at an unprecedented speed, about 4.8 million kilometres per hour, penetrating the atmosphere a mere 35 hours after the solar flare occurred.

When a CME comes into contact with the atmosphere, it disrupts the Earth’s protective magnetic field. This results in geomagnetic storms which can cause beautiful auroras in the far north. Star gazers in Scandinavia, Canada and Alaska reported a surge in northern light activity, with the most brilliant and beautiful showing up on January 24th.

There is more to this than good star gazing. More sinisterly, CMEs can cause electrical disruptions, damage satellites (a particularly problematic effect given that most modern communication technology is reliant on satellites), interfere with GPS, radio frequencies and, in extreme cases, even airline flights.

Solar flares happen when charged particles, mainly electrons accelerated by magnetic reconnection, mix with the medium of plasma – gas that contains charged particles. A distinct phase of matter, it behaves completely differently to gas and is particularly susceptible to electromagnetic fields. Although the causes of flares are agreed upon by scientists, the details associated with these causes remain obscure (and not just because the scientific jargon is so incomprehensible).

They were first observed by Richard Carrington in 1859, who used an unfiltered optical telescope to observe H-alpha wavelengths. However, it was not until the end of

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the Second World War and the advent of Space Exploration that technologies used to observe solar flares became more advanced.

During the Second World War, radar was discovered and not only helped with the war effort, but also led to the development of radioastronomy – the observation of radiological solar emissions. The Space Race and use of more sophisticated telescopes during the Cold War – particularly those capable of recording below the UV wavelength - has been particularly important in the study of this phenomenon.

Will the sun shoot out a cosmic death ray and destroy all life on Earth?

Commenting on the flare in January, Bill Murtagh, senior forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Space Weather Prediction Centre in Boulder, Colorado, said, ‘Because the initial solar flare was measured to be quite strong, it produced a substantial wave of solar radiation, the likes of which has not been seen since October 2003. The solar radiation is currently at strong levels, and [such storms] typically persist for at least a day or two until the entire storm passes Earth.’

Murtagh went on to say that the Weather Prediction Centre had received sporadic reports of radio-communication blackouts in northern latitudes and, consequently, some polar airline flights had to be rerouted.

Solar flare induced destruction is captured in the 2009 film Knowing (starring Nicholas Cage). A mentally deranged girl makes a series of mathematical predictions.

She predicts 9/11 and other disasters based on the date and number of casualties. Her notes end with ‘EE’ – everybody else.

Nicholas Cage, a mathematician, figures out the code and uncovers the apocalyptic truth. Meanwhile, his son is being followed around by a couple of blonde, strangely Aryan-looking aliens.

The film climaxes with Earth’s destruction. The sun does, indeed, shoot off a particularly powerful flare and the audience is dazzled by scenes of exploding cities. Fortunately, the Space Nazis rescue Cage’s son and another female child character and take them off to some new planet, giving the whole thing a somewhat biblical feel.

Seems ridiculous, right? CTG

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

rob attwell

is an Honours student in History.

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arts

The Widening Gyre Liam Kruger reflects on WB Yeats’ prophetic philosophy on cyclical historical change.

Interlocking spirals, automatic writing and rough, slouching beasts: what can we draw from it in 2012?

‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.’

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LIAM KRUGER

is an Honours student in English Literature.

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EXTRACT, ‘The Second Coming’ January 1919

s apocalypses go, Yeats’ is a little anticlimactic.

All the really good religions manage to end the world with frost and fire, giant monsters devouring the sun and mankind being judged, one way or the other; all we get from Yeats is the familiar rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, and the observation that the good don’t do enough. The poem seems to voice nothing quite so much as profound disappointment at some opportunity lost – an Armageddon that could’ve been really good, if we’d just managed to pull it off.

Yeats’ most recent disappointment at the time of writing had been the failure of what had been to him the possibility of an Irish independence from English rule; at the same time, the counter-revolutionaries in Russia with whom Yeats sympathised politically seemed well and truly done for, and the rest of continental Europe, even distant as it was from Yeats’ political theatre in Ireland, hardly offered much about which to be optimistic.

There was a greater disappointment at work for Yeats though, beyond the unsurprising post-war pessimism; Yeats’ personal, messianic philosophy – hinted at by ‘the widening gyre’ in ‘The Second Coming’ that furnishes this edition’s title – had been betrayed. Some pivotal opportunity for the world to attune itself more closely to the cosmos as divined by Yeats in his younger years studying the occult had been missed – so that while, yes, he was writing in a time of weakening empires and new democracies, the new world order was still a slouching, shambling thing as compared to the Second Coming that Yeats had had in mind.

The symbol of two interlocking gyres was employed by Yeats to represent his notion of cyclical historical change, wherein the end of one spiral and beginning of another marked the end and beginning of a new epoch in human history. This was more involved and idealistic than the belief in a cyclical universe espoused by Heraclitus and later Vico – humanity wasn’t going around a centrifuge for Yeats, but was actually headed somewhere. Our failure to get there, to mess about in ‘mere anarchy,’ was what rankled.

Part of the ‘headed somewhere’ required, for Yeats, a shift from Christianity to Paganism – a process which, according to Yeats scholar Terence Brown, amounted to an ‘investment in the potential powers of myth to apprehend and restore spiritual reality in a desacrilised, material age.’

Which, at any rate, brings us neatly to the present. We needn’t take Yeats’ quasi-mystical philosophy too seriously; the invocation of 4,000 year-cycles represented by the 28 phases of the moon, divined through vaguely ridiculous automatic writing sessions with his wife, George, seemed embarrassing even to Yeats when he was compiling the outline of his philosophy in the almost unreadable A Vision. Although it might be worth mentioning that he expected the ‘rough Beast’ to start showing up in Bethlehem around the year 2000. It’d be hitting puberty about now.

Yeats’ anxieties about the years to come proved prophetic, given the kinds of catastrophes the world would throw up in the years following his death in 1939 – but it’s not hard to predict bloodshed. Maybe more familiar to us is the invocation of profound disappointment, even disillusionment with one’s expectations in the face of grim reality; Yeats was as anxious about what the changeable world would bring as we are. Unlike Yeats, though, we’re not standing witness to emerging democracies and fading empires – quite the opposite; empire is reconsolidating itself, albeit in corporate form, and increasingly we’re seeing democratic liberties restricted. The grim outlook might go some way to explain the sustained interest in 2012 as the year of the apocalypse that started off as tongue in cheek but seems less and less ironic the longer it lasts.

What we have in common with Yeats’ is the prevailing uncertainty of the age – the lines ‘Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand’ are uncertain – why else repeat ‘Surely’? – and the benefit of this ambivalent messianism is that there is room for optimism. We don’t know yet what kind of age we’re dealing with, and the only reasonable means of coping with that uncertainty is by keeping an open mind – not the evangelical dogmatism that we’ve seeing an upswing of in recent years. We’re in a state of transition – the outcome of which is left open even by Yeats, who ended his poem with a question – ‘what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’ CTG

march 2012

Don’t Panic, it’s just Panarchy

philosophy

Matthew Koehorst enlightens us about panarchy – a philosophy about the cyclical nature of change.

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t’s the end of the world as we know it. For example, carbon dioxide concentrations -- necessary for the stability of breathable air on Earth -- are fast on the increase. CO2 concentrations are sitting somewhere around 387 parts per million.

That’s higher than it’s been for at least 650 000 years. If CO2 levels ever reach the 550 parts per million mark, (as predicted within the next 50 years) global temperatures will increase by an average of 6 degrees Celsius.

That’s enough to kill off almost every organism that is alive today.

The International Panel of Climate Change has built an irrefutable case that climate change as a result of human activity is a very real threat, and one which will change life on earth as we know it. We seem poised on the brink of some terrifying time in our history. So what now?

If Earth’s delicate balance was a rollercoaster, its ecological and sociological systems would be hovering at the apex of the ride, just before the rapid descent into the unknown (notably, not for the first time). The days of plenty, of a gentle ascent amongst a plethora of resources and opportunities, are diminishing. Practically, it’s happening. Conceptually, it’s difficult to comprehend. Enter the ‘panarchy’.

Panarchy is a theoretical approach to understanding the underlying patterns of immensely complex systems. It considers these systems, whether they be ecological, social, economic or otherwise, and how they function. Put at its simplest, the concept of panarchy seeks to recognise and identify the various phases of a system, how systems interact with one another over time and how the resilience of a system relates to the phase it is in.

The theory claims that complex natural and human systems evolve via never-ending adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring and renewal. Each of these systems is nested in a hierarchy of systems, where they interact with larger, more slowly moving systems and smaller, quickly moving systems.

This diagram represents one complex system and how it functions over time. The four terms indicate key phases of the system over time. The arrows represent speed of change, with longer arrows representing rapid change. The stylised tags on either end show the connection of this system with others located above and below in the hierarchy.

Consider the example of the carbon cycle. Millennia ago, a leaf fell from a tree. The structure of the leaf broke down over time and provided nutrients to the soils on which it landed. Eventually, the leaf became buried by layers of soil - so much so, that it compressed into a dense package of carbon rich material.

That leaf, once part of a cycle of a forest ecosystem, has been converted into a lump of coal, now part of a new

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cycle of human use. Ever since the industrial revolution, the discovery of the usefulness of coal for human productivity and transportation has led to increased extraction of this finite, ancient resource. So, too, for many other crucial elements of today’s society: oil and topsoil spring to mind.

We shouldn’t panic about energy in the future.

As our population grows and our natural resource supplies drop, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to the edge of the unknown. So we begin to conserve and invent. But our system has built-in inertia and it will take time for change to occur. If the change doesn’t happen quickly enough, we’ll be at the mercy of Nature. By relying so much on one system - fossil fuels - it appears we have manufactured our own demise.

Not so fast! Panarchy describes how all systems go through similar phases of rapid growth and decline. Once the resources required for growth are exhausted, the system will be forced into a period of intense, fundamental change. Following this speedy change, or ‘release’, the system will go through a reorganising phase of invention, adaptation and increasing resilience, before the cycle of rapid growth begins again.

It seems obvious that we are at a point where we need to rethink how we harness energy. The point panarchy illustrates is that this at-the-brink condition and process of adjustment is natural; Earth has been reinventing systems like this since time immemorial and we shouldn’t panic about energy in the future.

So, we are waiting for the G-forces of decent to warp our reality, and at the bottom of that freefall lies an opportunity to recreate the way our system functions. By consciously recognising the limits of our growth, we can rethink the way we’re engaging with all the other systems that relate to ours. A change in one system affects them all.

I am looking forward to those moments of adaptation and rigour, where innovation is necessary for survival. CTG

Infographic by Max Basler

matthew koehorst

holds a Bachelor of Social Science in Environmental & Geographical Sciences and Anthropology.

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satire

Sunday demons of the Carte Blanche apocalypse The

Every week, there is a mini apocalypse that occurs within the soul of each of us -- as soon as that theme tune rolls in.

Anton Taylor reflects on the Sunday blues.

E

Illustration by Greg Bakker

ANTON TAYLOR

is an Homours student in English Literature.

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veryone has been talking about the end of the world, the end of an age. Far more depressing, however -- and more relevant to my life -- is the end of a week, ringing in the painful birth of another.

I write this article in a dark place, from a dark time.

Sunday, 10pm. The demons are here. I’ve tried so hard to fight them, to hide from them, to ignore them. But despite my efforts, they have come. They always come.

This affliction of the Sunday blues hasn’t always been with me. In the springtime of my youth, when I had first begun the popular and joyous pastime of binge drinking, there were only a few things I had to worry about: damage to myself and others, fights, accidents, inadvertent gruntlunging, criminal charges, and Steers-induced obesity. This small degree of danger in no way hindered me from throwing myself into my new hobby. Now, however, as I move towards my quarter-life crisis, I face a far greater and more debilitating danger: the demons.

Sunday morning, it starts. I wake up with no memory of the previous night (after a couple of years of bingeing, black outs become increasingly common – honestly, it’s science). This is followed by a frantic scramble for my wallet and Blackberry, and a very necessary assessment of the damage done to my social life and already crumbled sense of self-worth. As one of the world’s worst drunk messengers (really, if there were meetings, I’d attend them) I usually get to scroll through the most cringe-worthy series of ‘I love you’ messages, sent to a variety of girls I have spoken to on about three occasions in my life, as well as an sms from a friend reading something along the lines of ‘you went too far tonight’.

I anxiously cast about for a few hours, trying to find anyone who can shed light on my whereabouts and behaviour of the night before. This anxiety builds up throughout Sunday, creating a crescendo which hits a wonderful peak of bleakness and fear at 7pm, as the Carte Blanche music announces to South Africa that the weekend is finished and that Monday awaits. A Monday that brings work, early wake ups, and a return to a 5fm schedule including self-righteous pseudo-intellectual extraordinaire Gareth Cliff, as well as Grant & Anele presenting what is surely the worst three hours of ‘entertainment’ available in any medium, in any place, in the entire world.

As I reflect on my actions and place in life, I feel the crushing dullness of Monday grabbing at my heart and pulling me down. It is then that Carte Blanche enters with

stories of AIDS babies and wide-scale, country-crippling corruption, successfully crushing the last dregs of happiness in my soul.

If I were ever in a movie and wanted to get into a state of fear and depression (if I were playing Natalie Portman’s character in Black Swan or David Lurie in Disgrace, for example) I’d need only listen to the introductory music of Carte Blanche for a Pavlovian sense of doom and despair to fall upon me. I would definitely get the Oscar. I feel quite sorry for Derek Watts, who despite probably being quite a nice man, I will forever equate with the evil of Voldemort, Bryce Lawrence and that clown with the claws from It.

I feel quite sorry for Derek Watts, who despite probably being quite a nice man, I will forever equate with the evil of Voldemort, Bryce Lawrence and that clown with the claws from It. People tend to worry about me when I talk about the demons, but I assure you, I am fine. It’s a once a week problem, and I’ve realised it’s not as uncommon as one might think. Some call it the blues, others just call it a hangover.

Either way, many people have learned that you simply cannot escape the curse of a Sunday. Perhaps the only known antidote is spooning with someone you like – but I warn you, you must never speak to someone you are interested in but not going out with when you are suffering from the demons. Despite the overwhelming craving for human contact, you must not let potential boyfriends and girlfriends see you on a Sunday. They will smell your desperation and be sickened by how pathetic you are. It’s a human trait to seek out weakness in potential mates, and when the demons are attacking, you really aren’t a good representation of yourself.

I will now retreat to my pillow fortress which I have just finished building. Inside, the warm protection of the wonderfully happy tunes of Glee will serve to keep the demons at bay – for now. But I know they will get me in the end. They always do. CTG

march 2012

The Cape Town

Globalist U C T’s st udent int er nat ional af fairs mag a z i n e

The Cape Town Globalist is created solely by UCT students, who believe that their efforts can count for something in improving minds in society.

We would appreciate financial support in any capacity, and we will make you look good for doing so.

E-mail us at

ctglobalist@gmail.com if interested

Look out for the next edition of The Cape Town Globalist on May 17, 2012

The Cape Town Globalist

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ng The new Spy Bill would undermine democracy by promoting secrecy, erodi accountability in our security cluster, and allowing the Minister to spy on us.

Just as we’ve united to oppose the Secrecy Bill, South Africa must oppose the “General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill” proposed by Siyabonga Cwele, the Minister of State Security.

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1. It would create a centralised security agency by merging the National Intelligence Agency, the South African Secret Service and all other related intelligence bodies. These agencies were split up at the end of Apartheid to create a separation of powers.

3. It would allow the spooks to intercept ‘foreign’ electronic communications (i.e. everything that passes through overseas servers via the internet) without a warrant. This lets government tap into emails, social networks, and even Skype calls without needing permission from a judge.

2. It will make the security services more centralised, more politicised, and more secret -- manipulated by whoever is in power. Part of their new mandate would be to ensure ‘political stability’.

4. It will hands over blanket powers to the Minister of State Security to make appointments, issue security clearances and withhold information. That is, it makes the Minister into Big Brother.

Check out www.r2k.org.za and read the Bill, connect with us on Facebook, and follow @r2kcampaign for updates.

Stop State Secrecy! Let the Truth Be Told! march 2012