The Greanville Post

The Real Mandela Behind All the Media Noise—a Special Dossier

ACTIVISTS & HEROES, AFRICA, ANTI-CORPORATISM, ANTI-NEOLIBERALISM, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, BOURGEOIS LEFT, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CELEBRITIES, CLASS ANALYSIS, CORPORATE MENTALITY, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, LIBERAL BETRAYALS, MEDIA CRITICISM, PLUTOCRATIC POWER, SOUTH AFRICA 1 Response »

Dec 072013

The case of Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s spiral of corruption and governmental ineptitude after Apartheid formally ended is an excellent example of the limits of revolutionary action and social reconstruction within the permitted economic, military and media boundaries of US-led imperialism. At the moment there’s a lot more heat than light—mawkish heat at that and torrents of crocodile tears—obscuring the process of properly assessing the role and legacy of Mandela, as his figure is instantly canonized by the establishment, especially the liberals, into an apostle of “peace” in the same manner they posthumously transmogrified the legacy of Martin Luther King into a mere symbol lacking true revolutionary content. The evaluations below seek to restore the proper focus. Mandela was a hero but he also made huge mistakes, including what seems now a Faustian bargain with the global status quo. Mandela seemed to walk away from earlier pronouncements (and promises) of setting a course toward socialism. Perhaps this is all the South African situation allowed, given the balance of forces, nationally and internationally, but his embrace of free market capitalism was a wound and a mistake his nation is still paying for.—P. Greanville

Besides the essays in this dossier, please see also: The Mandela Years in Power

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The Mandela Years in Power: The Definitive Analysis

ACTIVISTS & HEROES, AFRICA, ANTI-CORPORATISM, ANTIWAR, BETTER HUMANITY, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE MENTALITY, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, SOUTH AFRICA Comments Off

Dec 062013

Did He Jump or Was He Pushed?

by PATRICK BOND
We wish to thank Counterpunch for this simply superb piece.

The death of Nelson Mandela, at age 95 on 5 December 2013, brings genuine sadness. As his health deteriorated over the past six months, many asked the more durable question: how did he change South Africa? Given how unsatisfactory life is for so many in society, the follow-up question is, how much room was there for Mandela to maneuver? South Africa now lurches from crisis to crisis, and so many of us are tempted to remember the Mandela years – especially the first democratic government – as fundamentally different from the crony-capitalist, corruption-riddled, brutally-securitised, eco-destructive and anti-egalitarian regime we suffer now. But were the seeds of our present political weeds sown earlier? Continue reading »

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The Republicans’ to do list

ABOMINATIONS, AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY, AMERICAN STUDIES, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BOUGHT POLITICIANS & PHONIES, BOURGEOIS VALUES, CLASS ANALYSIS, CONSERVATIVES & REACTION, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, CORPORATE WHORES, RIGHTWING & WACKOS No Responses »

Dec 092013

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Alexander Payne’s Nebraska: How a great many people live today

ARTS & FILM, CLASS ANALYSIS, CULTURE & CRITICISM No Responses »

Dec 092013

By Joanne Laurier, wsws.org

Directed by Alexander Payne; written by Bob Nelson

American filmmaker Alexander Payne’s new work Nebraska, which follows an elderly man in pursuit of an illusory prize, manages to take a sharp-eyed look at how a great many people in the US live at present. Continue reading »

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Prologue: A Conversation with Diane Wakoski About Bay of Angels and Crashing Through Mirrors.”

AMERICAN STUDIES, ARTS & FILM, POETRY No Responses »

Dec 092013

With Gary Corseri

“I had been dreaming a complicated dream about helping poets revise their poems, so that each ending would open like a flower. I was not arguing, but engaged in a rousing discussion.”

–Diane Wakoski (from the Introduction to Bay of Angels)

Intro: I’m sure that any “literary” person, any then-nascent-feminist, any now-graybeard-hippie remembers Diane Wakoski from the 60s/70s when she was “one of the pillars of the Beat Movement” (with Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Corso, Snyder, Denise Levertov, Imamu Baraka, et. al.). And many of us have remained loyal fans–joining new fans–as Diane has continued to track our pulsating Culture in inimitable poetry these past 45 years! Continue reading »

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Lest we forget—How Vietnam Actually Happened

ABOMINATIONS, AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY, AMERICAN STUDIES, ANTI-CORPORATISM, ANTIWAR, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, CORPORATE TELEVISION, CORPORATE WHORES, COUPS & CIVIL WAR, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, IMPERIALISM No Responses »

Dec 092013

Classic Archives: The Gulf of Tonkin con job and other covered up facts by mainstream media and historians

From Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States—

THE IMPOSSIBLE VICTORY: VIETNAM

In the memorable film Coming Home Bruce Dern played a Marine officer haunted by his deeds in Vietnam.

In the film Coming Home Bruce Dern played a Marine officer tormented by what he had done and seen in Vietnam. His conscience would not leave him alone. Imperial wars create countless psychologically wounded people among the empire’s own soldiers.

From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country-and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won. Continue reading »

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Inequality and the fight for socialism

AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY, ANTI-CORPORATISM, BOUGHT POLITICIANS & PHONIES, CLASS COLLABORATION, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, CORPORATE WHORES, DEBASED HUMANITY No Responses »

Dec 092013

Obama’s minimum wage fraud

By Andre Damon, wsws.org

Obama’s regime is making even GW Bush’s own reign of horrors look look. At least the hypocrisy was not so thick.

In the face of plummeting approval ratings and mounting popular opposition, the Obama administration has launched a public relations campaign to present itself as an opponent of inequality.

Speaking Wednesday in Washington, DC, Obama called income inequality the “defining challenge of our time” and declared that “over the course of the next year, and for the rest of my presidency,” the administration would “focus all our efforts” on narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Continue reading »

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TIME magazine weighs in on the hunting issue, disgracefully.

ABOMINATIONS, ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL EXPLOITERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, CULTURE & CRITICISM, DEBASED HUMANITY, ECOANIMAL, MEDIA CRITICISM, MEDIA SCUM, SAVING THE PLANET No Responses »

Dec 092013

This post is the first installment in a series on this issue. Stay tuned.

Cover for the 9 December 2013 issue.

This morning I spent almost two hours trying to fire a note to the editors of TIME magazine without success. I wanted to reply to a piece they ran on Dec. 9th (see cover above), entitled America’s Pest Problem, Why the rules of hunting are about to change, probably one o the most irresponsible articles they have done in decades of highly questionable journalism. The exercise proved to be profoundly frustrating. Continue reading »

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OpEds—UKRAINE DIVIDED BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY, AMERICAN STUDIES, ANTI-CORPORATISM, ANTI-NEOLIBERALISM, BATTLE OF COMMUNICATIONS, BLACK OPS & FALSE FLAGS, BOUGHT POLITICIANS & PHONIES, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CIA / INTEL AGENCIES, CLASS STRUGGLE, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, COUPS & CIVIL WAR, FALSE FLAGS & PROVOCATIONS, IMPERIALISM, MASSIVE CORRUPTION & STUPIDITY, PROPAGANDA, UKRAINE Comments Off

Dec 092013

By Gaither Stewart

In their ignorance about what the capitalist West—especially the US brand of capitalism—truly represents, many Ukrainians only see an instant bridge to affluence in the EU alliance. Also many of the disturbances are doubtless fueled by many undercover agents lavishly organized by Western powers.

[ROME]—The apparent political stalemate in Ukraine today between its East and West reflects the historic divisions of this big country on the borders between Russia to the east and Europe to the west. Both the Russophile President, Viktor Yanukovich and the jailed western-oriented Yulia Tymoshenko have claimed electoral victories a country split down the middle between its eastern and western components. Continue reading »

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Obama’s Prostitution of Democracy

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Dec 082013

Capitalism at a Cross-Roads

by NORMAN POLLACK

I write as a critic of capitalism, something I instinctively felt, compounded by further study, for sixty years, or three-fourths of my life. For those opposed to a global posture of intervention, war, and the broad swath of counterrevolutionary activity, from death squads and assassination to the more deft methods of regime change, such opposition is fully warranted. I place myself among them, and even as a teenager in the late-1940s, it was clear to me that McCarthyism was inextricably linked with foreign-policy aggressiveness and provocation in the Cold War. Continue reading »

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A CEO Who Mattered

AMERICAN STUDIES, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CELEBRITIES, CITIZEN TOOLS Comments Off

Dec 082013

The Jolting Peter Lewis

by RALPH NADER

Insurance, art, architecture, civil liberties, auto safety, think tanks, peace, free thinkers, political candidates, marijuana, his alma mater Princeton University — these and other varied interests drove the inquiring career of the late Peter Lewis, chairman of the board of Progressive Insurance, who passed away at age 80 last month. Continue reading »

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How Homosexuality Became Normalized

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Dec 082013

Psychic Change

by DAVID ROSEN

Much of America’s social life has changed over the last forty years. Perhaps most dramatic, the U.S. has evolved from a nation deeply contesting race relations to one with a mixed-race, African-American president. In the wake of the 1973 Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wadedecision, the Culture Wars rose to a bitter confrontation over values and, while sputtering, persists in a never-ending war against a woman’s right to chose an abortion. Continue reading »

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Did Iran Have to Give Up So Much to Get So Little?

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY, ANNOTATED NEWS, ANTIWAR, CORPORATE OWNED PARTIES, IMPERIALISM, IRAN, THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX, WESTERN EXCEPTIONALISM Comments Off

Dec 082013

Reflections on the Iranian Nuclear Deal

by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani speaks to the media following a visit to the Khomeini mausoleum in Tehran

The (interim) nuclear agreement that was signed on 24 November 2013 by Iran and the so-called P5+1 group in Geneva is questionable on a number of grounds.

The Irony and Absurdity of the Negotiations: When the Guilty Tries the Innocent

The underlying logic for the Iran nuclear negotiations was (and continues to be) altogether preposterous: on one side of the negotiating table sat major nuclear powers who are all in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which requires them to have either dismantled or drastically reduced their nuclear arsenal; on the other side, an NPT–compliant country (Iran) that neither possesses nor pursues nuclear weapons—a fact that is testified to both by the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies. Yet, in an ironically perverse way, the culprits have assumed the role of the police, the prosecutor and the judge, shamelessly persecuting and prosecuting the innocent for no other reason than trying to exercise its NPT-granted right to peaceful nuclear technology. Continue reading »

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They Died for Nothing

ABOMINATIONS, AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, AMERICAN STUDIES, ANTI-CORPORATISM, ANTI-NEOLIBERALISM, ANTIWAR, IMPERIALISM, THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX, WAR CRIMES & CRIMINALS Comments Off

Dec 082013

The Long Nightmare in Afghanistan

by SHELDON RICHMAN, Counterpunch

Last week a remarkable exchange about the future role of the U.S. military in Afghanistan took place on the MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports. In a discussion of the U.S. government’s uncertain negotiations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the continued presence of U.S. troops beyond 2014, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, pointed out that, between the Karzai talks and the negotiations with Afghanistan’s next-door neighbor Iran, the Obama administration has a daunting task. Continue reading »

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