Unspoken Negotiation

There has been an enormous amount of material about rape in the press lately. None of it has been exceptional until yesterday’s article by Nicole Fritz in the Johannesburg Star. See the link below. But in general the South African bourgeois press is descending towards the dreadful low standard of the newspapers owned by Mr Rupert Murdoch in Australia, Britain and the USA. The Sunday Times’ latest lead item was a despicable example of the Murdoch style, sometimes known as “insinuendo” – a toxic fact-free blend of insinuation and innuendo. Linked below is SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande’s response to the Sunday Times’ self-disgrace. Today is the YCL’s Day of Defiance, and launch of the new Defiance Campaign. A fresh, detailed notice has been issued by the YCL about the event, and what it is about. See link. Also today, Cde. Nzimande will address the Soweto Small Business Council. See link. In Gaza the Israelis continue to shell the people and rocket and strafe them from the air. See the linked dispatch from Gaza, below. The Chief Rabbi of South Africa believes this is all right because, he says, the people in Gaza “want to kill all the Jews in the whole world”. So he obviously thinks the Palestinians must be killed led first, but gradually. Actually the Israelis are doing this because they still want more Palestinian land to colonise. But a South African Chief Rabbi can’t say that, can he? The Pope is no better. He could not bring himself to stand up unequivocally for peace, not even on Easter Sunday. Instead he made an ambiguous statement about “honour”. This Pope is worse than his predecessor, and no better than Pius the 12th, who collaborated with the Nazis. In the 1840s Karl Marx called religion “the heart of a heartless world”. It seems as if the heart of religion has been shriveling steadily since Marx’s time, so that by now it has atrophied altogether. To correct yesterday’s typo: South African Freedom Day is April 27th. Links: Sex, perception and reality, Nicole Fritz, Star (909 words) Sunday Times should be ashamed of itself, SACP GS Blade Nzimande (490 words) YCL, National Day of Defiance, Zimbabwe and Khutsong (584 words) SACP GS Cde Nzimande to address Soweto Small Business Council (Notice) In Gaza, Laila El-Haddad, Counterpunch (533 words)