Tag: politics

The Merry-Go-Round To Hell

“We’re all doing VR, every time we look at a screen. We have been for decades now. We just do it. We didn’t need the goggles, the gloves. It just happened. VR was an even more specific way we had of telling us where we were going. Without scaring us too much, right? The locative, though, lots of us are already doing it. But you can’t just do the locative with your nervous system. One day, you will. We’ll have internalized the interface. It’ll have evolved to the point where we forget about it. Then you’ll just walk down the street…” He spread his arms, and grinned at her.” ― William Gibson, Spook Country


I recently completed the novel Spook Country by renowned speculative fiction writer William Gibson. Set against the backdrop of the absurd mania of post 9/11 America the novel follows three protagonists: Hollis Henry, Tito, and Milgrim, as their individual paths collide and separate, in an elaborate scheme involving various shadowy individuals.

Reading the book was strange to say the least; it felt like some kind of fever-dream documentary. Part prophetic, part reflection of a bygone era, not so bygone, reading it in the year 2025 was somewhat of a brutal roundhouse kick to the liver in the “history repeats itself” sort of fashion. I’ve been mulling over the vicious repetition of history a lot of late, and I suppose in some ways the book didn’t help in stopping that particular brain itch. It possibly just exacerbated it, and turned it from brain rash to full on boils.

I was around the age of 13 when 9/11 happened and then the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars on Terror. War on Terror here meaning, invade any Middle Eastern country I want, because I can, because I’m America, so fuck you! It was strange then, what with Americans cheering for Iraqi and Afghani blood with an enthusiasm which my teen mind couldn’t really fathom. It was also my first live action war on TV. Exhilarating stuff. Of course the Gulf War had happened as I later learned but I was a toddler then, and probably missed all the exciting mishaps and propaganda for that one. The War on Terror however engrained in my mind, as I watched America flounder about WMDs and Saddam, and later read extensively about how much of a disaster it would become. Describing it in detail is beyond the scope of this essay, so I’ll just leave a nice little link to Cost of War, who’ve researched it extensively, and are a good place to start. I’ll leave a little description here though:

“Costs of War research examines the human toll of U.S. military operations and spending, for U.S. service members, veterans, military contractors, and allies; and for civilians killed and displaced.

An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.”

Moving along, back in good old 2001 we had the dis/advantage of 24 hour news cycle, that ancient nightmare that was to become 24 hour internet access, 24 hour bombardment of endlessly bad shit and live streamed genocide on your phone. I had no idea of what was to come: oh, sweet summer child. After Spook Country, I can’t stop wondering if Gibson knew, or at least had some vague idea of what was to come. He did write the Sprawl Trilogy after all, which seemed to predict the current internet, yet in a seemingly way more fun abstract art style compared to the sterile text and influencer perfect pictures and videos content unpleasantness we’ve all become accustomed to.

As a Global Souther (I’m South African) living under American Hegemony has been particularly garish, inhumane, and barbaric since they dropped that atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Recently I’ve been particularly happy American took little interest in South Africa, other than labeling our Apartheid resistance fighters as, take a guess, terrorists. There have been some shocking sights to behold in countries they took great interest in. The West has been never againing their way through atrocity after atrocity with no end in sight. It’s almost a joke at this stage to think atrocities can be avoided with these people in charge.

So, returning to my brain boils, what has changed since the early 2000s? Does any of this feel different? I’ve been listening to the Blowback Podcast recently as well, you know, just to increase the amount of pus in those brain boils. It relays American Foreign Policy disasters from North Korea, to Cambodia, to my teenage awakening to America’s barbarism in Iraq and Afghanistan. And well, to be honest, it feels like same shit, different day, but now I have a smart phone. While the shadowy world and figures of Gibson’s Spook Country still exist, going about all their heinous activities, we know, or at least those of us willing to look hard enough, know all to much about it. The wizard of Oz isn’t much of a wizard anymore. Honestly I cant tell if it’s the phone, or just being older and better read, but all the propaganda has become increasingly cartoonish. Oh, we had to destroy their entire health infrastructure because Hamas was hiding in tunnels under the hospitals. Right, of course, makes sense. As Bill Burr joked, that’s like your neighbour punches you, then holds up a baby to his face, so you have no other option but to punch him back through the baby. How is this still happening?

How is this all still happening? Being reminded of the 9/11 script, the non-stop lies, the non-stop dehumanizing of Arabs, the Islamophobia, the Iran is seeking nuclear power, sorry, I mean, Iraq is creating WMDs to kill all of America’s friends narratives. Of course, with spurious evidence, I mean, that’s how you justify genocides, sorry I meant Wars on Terror. Watching the state of Israel, America once again, and all the European cronies do this all too familiar jig. This post Oct 7th climate has been enough to make one feel like they’re losing their mind. Literally. Why am I watching this again? I’m so sure I’ve seen this film, and I didn’t enjoy it the first time, not even as a naïve teen.

I’m being shoved right back into that 13 year olds shoes, watching Iraq and Afghanistan get blown to pieces on that 24 hour news cycle parents liked back then, but it feels astronomically worse. Is it the smart phone, or the vicious repetition? Watching children starve to death daily all day. Not just when mommy and daddy put on the news for a bit of an update, but all the time. I can see it all the time. ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

It was all unfolding back then, and there was resistance in the form of protests and so forth. But it was slower. Way slower. FuckIsreal666 on twitter wasn’t debunking American lies mere minutes after the lie was told. We had standards back then. You had to wait a bit before someone proved the politician or IDF spokesperson was bullshitting. The lies have become so monotonous some it’s exhausting to even look at your phone, aka your VR headset where politicians and elites regale you with all kinds of fables a quick google search (fuck Google too by the way, but I digress) can debunk in less than 5 minutes. Researchers come in faster now too, since you can follow them directly on Social Shitty Media. You see it’s debunked by some professor with way too many credentials, then 10 seconds later another lie, from some dickhead that charmed their way into a top political position appears on you feed. Oh, by the way, this is probably why you shouldn’t doomscroll, or maybe you should, who the fuck knows? Knowledge is power allegedly. And on and on we go on this merry go round to hell.

Gibson’s Spook Country almost made me nostalgic for the days of wondering around with a laptop, looking for someone who hadn’t passworded their Wi-Fi, cell phones that simply texted and did phone calls, having to buy a newspaper or turn on the TV to see the news. But I suppose it also made me nauseous, understanding these were the early beginnings of the modern malaise. The novel covers locative art: art bound by a specific geographic position, requiring a VR headset to be visible. Naturally the concept bleeds into GPS coordinates and surveillance, and the entire planet becoming a grid, for our favorite tech bros to exploit for their authoritarian means.

We’d probably drop the headset and just look through our phone camera now for such an experience, at least until we get those smart phone implants or smart glasses. The surveillance capitalists are probably salivating over getting direct data from our human sensory systems so they can sell that data and run it through an algorithm to suggest the next best sight to see to pump up our depleting dopamine hits.

In Spook Country, Hubertus Bigend is one ultra rich, seemingly omnipresent shadow figure affecting Hollis Henry’s need to make money as an ex-musician, turned journalist. He appears just at the right time of her financial desperation. Hollis’ discomfort with Bigend seemingly being omnipresent, obnoxiously so, has become our everyday existence. Bigend feels very much like a early 2000s figure. Limited by the technologies that existed then, that have advanced into something greater, or more perverse.

Bigend requires certain tech to keep track of Hollis. Tech our current tech giants would probably scoff at. Clunky pieces of equipment to track location; we long ago sold our location, and data, and various other things to omnipresent freaks who wouldn’t even bother to give us a job opportunity, as they don’t need us, just our attention and information. Bigend came across archaic in that weird Gibson way, where it was known, but certain developments were needed to flesh out how darkly strange it would become. Indeed, reading Spook Country in the year 2025 was very illuminating. We’re all doing VR now, every time we look at a screen. Everyday we’re sifting through various realities on our devices wondering what’s real.

Is this Burn After Reading?

This December as things slow down a bit for me, I can’t help but feel like I’m in a Coen Brothers film. Most specifically I feel like I’m an extra in Burn After Reading. The end scene below (SPOILER!) feels particularly apt.

“What do we learn Palmer?”

“I don’t know sir.”

“I don’t fucking know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.”

“Yes sir.”

“Fucked if I know what we did.”

“Yes sir, it’s uh, hard to say.”

Is this sounding painfully familiar in the year of our lord, December 2021? One recurring morbid thought I keep having as I attempt to rest, or whatever this weird semi-peaceful malaise I find myself in is, is that we’ve learned nothing. Niks, absolutely fokol. In an extremely fucked and unpleasant way we had this great chance, this immense opportunity. We actually paused capitalism guys. I mean well kind of, but all the lockdowns, all that time to think, people not going into the office, those brief moments some of us had to stop running like a hamster. We managed to tweak the formula a bit and shattered the delusion that is modern day capitalism which we’ll just call post-capitalism.

We all suffered for it, since most rich and powerful people were completely unwilling to go all in, and maybe do something as “crazy” as just pay people to stay at home, but the fact still remains that we got a glimpse behind the curtain that has become our daily lives. And then guess what we did? We threw it all away. Just like that, boom!

The powers that be scrambled back to the “normalcy”. Our reward is the same post-capitalism mess we were in, now with extra steps and stress. It’s really hurting my brain. Jumping through hoops to keep this sinking ship afloat. Going in and out of lockdowns like stuck records to keep things just barely afloat. Forcing people into the office until there’s another wave or variant scare, then sending them back home. Then rinse repeat. Ad nauseam.

We’re in this weird push and pull limbo, and in our lack of decisive action, it somewhat feels like we might have actually made things worse for ourselves. Now we have to deal with the general madness of post-capitalism plus Covid. So it’s like, the Amazon is on fire, there’s doom floods all over the place, you have to keep pushing forward pretending none of its happening, but hey also you’re loosing friends and family to Covid while some anti-vaxxer is yelling at you for how stupid you are for getting vaccinated. Super fun stuff.

I mean, I largely ignored a lot of the travel ban madness for sanity sake, but it’s very telling. Despite Covid clearly showing us how weak we are divided, powerful countries are still clinging to all the old structures. Like let’s whip out the colonialist handbook to deal with this. It’s totally going to work right? If we hoard all the vaccines and travel ban the Global South, everything is going work out great right? We won’t get variant after variant after variant because we’ve made it impossible to reach any kind of collective global vaccine goal. Nope nope. Let’s fuck them on IP while we make them manufacture our excess. This approach has never led to rampant inequality, climate collapse, and constant refugee crisis that keep coming back to bite us in the ass. No not at all.

And all the while we have the billionaires. Those goddamn billionaires mocking our abject misery at every chance they get. While we all collectively lament our trauma, they’re dick fighting over who can colonize space first. And to what end? Apparently to save us since we shat the bed with the planet.

Then there’s our friend Elon Musk. Again, while the rest of us are in and out of hospitals, blowing the last of our savings, barely keeping it together, he’s taken to trolling on Twitter any person who might suggest, that maybe, just maybe maybe maybe fucking MAYBE, there could be a better use of his billions. Somehow the collective suffering of the species has done little to trigger even an ounce of sympathy in the man, who mocked Covid protocols because, “everybody dies“. I mean seriously who the fuck is this guy, Ivan Drago? While Musk dodges tax like a toddler dodges green beans, Marky Mark aka The Zucks announces the Metaverse. Amazing. We can now all escape the misery of our existence matrix-style by trading all our freedoms and information to Zucks Technocracy. This is all going so well I’m in awe.

So, what the fuck did we learn? We definitely didn’t learn not to do it again. I think we learned that, despite not knowing what the fuck we did, we should do it again, and do it even worse this time, as we’ve seemingly realized we can make things worse, and we absolutely must. We’re all the league of morons.

Dilman Dila’s ‘The Trouble With Afrofuturism’

I just read Dilman Dila’s ‘The Trouble with Afrofuturism’ and found it quite poignant. It touches on a number of things that scratch around my mind when I hear the term. Such as, what does it actually mean? Really though? What does it mean? How broad is this thing, and as Dila notes, there’s almost a fanciful, one size fits all approach, where the definition varies according to what the user wants to describe as Afrofuturistic.

Definition arguments aside though Dila’s piece also made me think of the ‘one-way transaction’ style I feel Afrofuturism sometimes falls victim too. These are mostly behind the scenes, niggles, that industry personnel would be aware of, but consumers probably aren’t paying too much attention to.

For example the issue of Lina Iris Viktor, vs Black Panther & Co.  For those unaware, Viktor alleges her artworks were stolen for use in the music video ‘All The Stars’ by Kendrick Lamar and SZA. I would say she has a very strong case here, as she was contacted twice to participate, and declined.

If you’re not schooled on Entertainment Industry Bullshit 101, the general stealing process operates in this manner. First, you, Leviathan Artist Inc. contact lesser known artist and ask them to participate for A. Exposure or B. Peanuts. Said person declines your ridiculous offer, as they actually want to pay the rent, and/or highly value their work (as they should, they made it!). You, Leviathan Artist Inc. then hire other, probably even lessor known artist, and ask them if they can make something ‘similar’, usually taking precaution to remain in the grey area of copyright infringement just in case someone notices. This is mostly to avoid bad publicity. You don’t really have to worry about the legalities as you probably have more lawyers, and you can run a smear campaign claiming the artist is a bitter hater, whose own self-pity and mental illness is the reason they’re suing you. I’m not saying this is what went down in this case, it’s just how it generally goes down.

Anyway, industry politics (bullshit) aside, as noted in the piece:
“In an interview, Ms. Viktor said what matters to her most is the principle, not compensation. “Cultural appropriation is something that continually happens to African-American artists,” she said, “and I want to make a stand.”

Things get very strange here. A team consisting of African-Americans, making a movie that’s supposed to represent black excellence, and Afrofuturism I suppose, rip-off (allegedly…) a British-Liberian’s artwork? I find no better way to describe this scenario other than: a complete mindfuck.

There’s also that slightly colonial smell of claiming intellectual property, and narrative merely because you have the bigger gun. I don’t like that I sometimes observe a weird colonial type thing going on in the creation of Afrofuturist works. I also find myself constantly seeing the “I Have the Bigger Gun” phenomena in the juxtaposition between what African Spec Fic authors (or movie directors in Dila’s case) living in Africa can achieve versus what those living in more developed nations can.

It largely boils down to access: social capital; funds; decent infrastructure. The world has a hierarchy (even with the internet), so on average, there’s generally going to be more infrastructure to take advantage of, off the African continent. It is what it is. There’s just something very painful in that fact. Despite these optimistic Afrofutures (Afrofuturies? Afrofutury? Afrofuture`?) we might like to see, most Africans still have to leave the continent, and access Western infrastructures, in order for those very Afrofutures to reach your computer screen in the first place. It’s a biting irony…

This goes onto Dila’s discussion of the difficulties of imagining and ingesting Utopian Afrofutures when you actually live in Africa. Most of the daily experiences living in Africa are so far removed such Utopian concepts that you find yourself with Schizobrain, walking between fantasy ideals and real world realities. Dystopia might be a dead genre, but dystopia is largely what I see when walking the insanely unequal streets of South Africa, hence why I write a lot of it.

 I’m definitely on the fence about this whole Utopian Afrofuturism thing. I prefer a more Mamdani inspired interpretation. In a post from last year, I noted, contrary to what is often a Black African knee-jerk reaction to decolonization, that Mamdani suggests the future of Africa may not be a revert to traditional beliefs, and a throwing away of all Western influences. Instead he suggests, it may be a convergence of the two, which creates something new and unorthodox.

I feel somewhat the same about Afrofuturism at times. It may also be the South Africa in me, as we’re such a mishmash of Afro and Euro centrism, I find it difficult to turn off that lens. I was also not born in South Africa, so that strange limbo place between African and African diaspora is pretty much my comfort zone.

Either way, I believe a more realistic Afrofuturism might speak to the convergence of our current realities, and how we hope things might be. Maybe an African does create a new amazing technology that defies all expectations, and could save the entire continent, and turn it into a Utopia. But then again, maybe the West steals it from us, with the help of our limp politicians and we reap none of the benefits. Who knows?

 

Police Abuse and PTSD

Short article detailing police abuse during FeesMustFall last year, and resulting PTSD in students.

The article contains links to two documents that are probably well worth a read.

I touched on some of these abuses in a paper I wrote last year, published in The Thinker. The two documents in the article go into greater detail about protest protocol according to South African law, and have witness accounts of events from last year.

My research was largely based on news reporting from independent media, and conflict resolution theory, so there is a bit more meat in these documents from a law, and eye witness perspective.

On The Nature of History, Heritage, and Dicknanigans

Recently, the unstoppably evil sociopathic force that is Jacob Zuma, has had himself memorialized twice, to the applause of faux black excellence, and overblown struggle credentials.

Observing Zuma and his new brand of ANC, recent discussions of history and heritage come to mind. Much like their fore bearers, The National Party (who wrote the book on thumb sucking a new history for political gain) the ‘ANC’, and Zuma, are quite clearly trying to rewrite a contemporary South African history that paints them in a flattering light.

As absurd and depraved as these moves are, they present a great opportunity to reflect on why heritage and history must consistently be brought up, discussed, pondered, reformed, and occasionally re-written in light of new information. An ongoing process that should continue forever. Maybe future African generations will lead #ZumaMustFall movements (wait…hang on…) and opt to erect statues of African leaders with more integrity?

Anyway, many a white conservative (along with their ever annoying sloth shaped familiars, the neo-liberal pacifist) wonder why persons of colour of are so concerned with constantly re-evaluating the popular history, that they were so often haphazardly written out of. Well, here we find an example the white conservative may be able to fathom more easily.

The current corrupt ANC’s attempts at repainting themselves as the “real struggle heroes”, the “returners of land”, and the “slayers of white monopoly capital”, are pretty much the reasons why. Recent ANC history, compared to what the ANC used to be, is embarrassing the say the least. What the current ANC is doing, in how it chooses to socially re-construct South African (and African history) is nothing new, or out of the ordinary. It is pretty much what white supremacists did when they arbitrarily decided that white is right, and thumb sucked a history to go along with it.
Furthermore, Zuma is also illustrating the matter of rich, tasteless, powerful men, memorializing themselves, based on the narratives they decide. Again, a common colonial strategy, that Zuma has shown such a penchant for perpetuating. The man seems to be on a crusade to be the perfect case study for what Fanon and Mamdani have tried to tell us about colonial hangovers. Also, spoiler alert #MugabeDidItFirst.

So how to memorialise the contemporary ANC, and their Supreme Leader Jacob “The Teflon Don” Zuma. Well, definitely no rape charges, avoid any mention of state capture, definitely don’t mention corruption charges. Keep it Disney; just good ol’ stories of ‘the struggle’ blah blah. Probably throw something in there about radical economic transformation, white monopoly capital, and oh, those pesky ‘clever blacks’.

Is this ringing a bell?

The list goes on.

So, I’m sort of hoping this example might resonate more with white conservatives as it fits their general ignorant view that persons of colour are incapable of doing anything right.  Hopefully they can but extend their brains a bit, reflect, realise that many of their white heroes are no better than Zuma, and constructed a bullshit history of their own too? Probably not.

I’m also hoping persons of colour aren’t falling for the same old Dicknanigans that many of our white counterparts have fallen for throughout history, as the ANC is going full-retard with reconstructing their contemporary image. Probably more likely?

Meh, think I’ll just watch Dicknanigans again, and pretend none of this is happening.