ARS NOTORIA

SACP Political Bureau Statement, 29 June 2010 WELL DONE SOUTH AFRICA! The Political Bureau of the SACP held its scheduled monthly meeting in Johannesburg yesterday, June 28th. The meeting of the PB afforded the leadership of the SACP with an opportunity to evaluate the ongoing organisational and campaigning work of the SACP since our special national congress in December last year, and to discuss progress within our ANC-led alliance following a series of Alliance Political Council meetings as well as bilaterals. Also on the agenda of the PB was a “half-time” evaluation of SA’s hosting of the soccer World Cup. At a time when many other political formations are in decline and are showing serious signs of factional degeneration, the SACP’s unity and membership continues to grow significantly. Current membership stands at over 105,000, making us by far the second-largest political party in SA, after our ally the ANC. Our membership growth is directly linked to our community-based ac...

State and Revolution, Part 4                                                                                                                               Housing, Democracy, Communism This fourth chapter of Lenin’s “The State and Revolution” (linked below) presents a study circle with a problem.  As short as it is, yet there is too much in this chapter to discuss in a 1½ hou...

John Hall in Natal sends this link to cheer up all South African supporters SA - It doesn't matter!

Thanks to Dan Pearce and Paul Bassett Davies My thanks to Dan Pearce and Paul Basset Davies on behalf of the ARS NOTORIA blog. The 'Champagne - Cava' episode was the last episode of Chilling. I am really going to miss that deep down chuckle Chilling gave me when Dan published it. I'm sure we all will. I got hooked on Dan's comics, like others, when reading his strip Depression . It speaks to the raddled old git in all of us. When you read that strip there is an immediate recognition of the circumstances and the roll of events as they play out from one panel into another, from one strip to another. The familiar made fresh. I can't understand why Dan and Paul aren't on the back of a daily paper. It shocks me to the core that they are not. Once again, thank you for letting us chill with you both, Dan and paul. By the way, the pizza episode was my favourite.

The body of Jose Saramago, Nobel prize-winning Portuguese novelist, arrived back in his homeland on Saturday from the Spanish island of Lanzarote for his funeral in Lisbon. by Bill Benfield, Morning Star, Monday June 21 Mr Saramago won the 1998 Nobel literature prize. His work was internationally admired for its clarity of its ideas despite a complex prose style. He died aged 87 on Friday after a long illness, an outspoken man who moved to the Canary Islands after a public spat in 1992 with the Portuguese government, which he accused of censorship. Read the rest of this story at:  http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/91777

The Paris Commune, 1871 This is the third part of Lenin’s “Generic Course” on The State and Revolution. It is devoted to the Paris Commune [pictured in the photograph, above, and memorialised in Soviet artwork, below] and to the lessons that Karl Marx in particular drew from that experience. Marx’s work “ The Civil War in France ” was written during, and immediately after, the events of early 1871 in Paris. Lenin’s summary of Marx, as usual, is brief. It misses very little and cannot easily be beaten, but Lenin’s summary itself has its highlights and these are what we will note here. The first is where Lenin notes that Marx would have made a correction to the Communist Manifesto of 1848 on the basis of the experience of the Paris Commune. In 1871 Marx wrote:  “…the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes” -  by which he meant that proletariat had to  "to smash the bureaucratic-military machine...

Russel Howard insulted Bishop Tutu calling him: "as mad as a rat's arse" Bishop Desmond Tutu is a South African hero and an internationally respected figure. If he was being joyful and exuberant at the opening ceremony, who is Russel Howard to insult Tutu and call him "as mad as a rat's arse" Furthermore, his caricature of  Obama as a 'jive' African American answering Cameron on the phone was clearly racist stereotyping and not funny in the least. Howard looked wired and out of touch. Does he think that coming out with stereotypes about African Americans and calling a hero like Tutu 'as mad as a rat's...' funny? If you at the BBC are chuckling then I am not chuckling with you. I think you should be ashamed of yourselves for broadcasting such utter shite and expecting us to laugh at it. Moreover, it was an editing decision to leave the insult to Bishop Tutu in, so programme editors share the blame with Howard. If you think mock...

The Saudi referee is giving free kick after free kick to France against Mexico. It looks as if he's been knobbled. If I was the Mexican coach I would definitely put in a complaint to FIFA. It's scandalous!!!! On the other hand he's just given a penalty to Mexico. Maybe not. I take it back. Actually, one of my former students was the Saudi FIFA represenative. I wonder what he has to say about this referee. The referee was given a push by FIFA to officiate. If you read this, let us  know Mohammed.

Commentary on the football in this month's South African world cup has been drowned out by an ominous sound – the droning roar of the dreaded Vuvuzela! by JAMES TWEEDIE The media opinion columns and comment boards have been buzzing with debate about the “attack of the killer bees” sound of the mass-produced metre-long plastic horns with which every football fan in South Africa is now armed. There is nothing at all new about fans making noise at football matches. Wooden rattles have been replaced by compressed air horns. Entire brass bands with drums and cymbals are commonly seen at international fixtures. The origin of the Vuvuzela is uncertain. A similar instrument called a  corneta  has been commonplace at football grounds across South America since the 1970s. The vuvuzela appeared in South Africa in the 1990s, originally made from tin or aluminium. But, according to Wikipedia, veteran Kaizer Chiefs F.C. fan Freddie "Saddam" Maake claims to have invented the vuvuzela as...

Is it healthy, sometimes, to hate? I was sitting with Mom in Matumi by the fire and Mike was with us and Mike was telling us how he forgave his stepmother while she was dying and he felt liberated by it. While she died he prayed and in praying and forgiving he was released. At this point, Mom broke in. 'Do you think I forgive the Nazis for what they did to my grandmother? Do you think I forgive the people who jailed me and who jailed and murdered our friends?' Very angry now, she said. 'Sometimes it's healthy to hate.' And she turned to me and said. 'What do you think love?' And she waited, a little apprehensively, for my response. Now Mike and I have a close relationship. He has taught me so much over the course of my life, though our meetings have been few and far between. But I looked at Mom and said: 'Yes, Mom, I agree with you, sometimes it is healthy to hate. And since then I have been thinking about what she said. Hugh Masekela int...