Gone Ballistic

In Davos, Switzerland, at an unelected, unmandated gathering of invited celebrities, President Thabo Mbeki is meeting Bill Gates, Tony Blair and Bono all at once, to discuss poverty. You could say that these are four rich men with this much in common: they all have a b (for boring) in their names. H for hypocrite might have been better. If they are against poverty, then why don’t they join the Communist Party?

They are not against poverty, unless we count their own possible poverty, their imagined future poverty, and their fear of poverty. What they really want is safety for their property. They are afraid that poor people will overwhelm them with violence and take away their property. Thabo Mbeki said as much in Davos. He was shown on SABC television saying it from there.

Mbeki is with Trevor Manuel and Mandisi Mpahlwa. These gentlemen are equally as unmandated in Davos, but just as perfectly representative of the polite aspirant bourgeoisie of South Africa, who are little more than the useful idiots of the real monopoly bourgeoisie.

The true face of monopoly capital in our continent is the US Africa Command (see the linked article by Charles Cobb). Has President Mbeki said anything against it? No he has not. President Mbeki thinks he can ride the Imperialist tiger without being eaten when he gets off its back. Unfortunately not only will he be eaten but so will many others. What awaits is a Faustian hell (see the image above).

Victor Mallet makes a couple of obvious mistakes in his article (below) occasioned by the destruction of a satellite in space by the People’s Republic of China. The first mistake, in the very first line, is that the Chinese rocket that brought down the satellite was a ballistic missile. It was not. A ballistic missile is one that is aimed, not guided, and which follows a trajectory similar to an artillery shell, back to a target on the ground. No, this was a guided missile.

A bigger mistake is the stress by Mallet on geopolitics. There is no such thing as geopolitics. There is only class politics. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism and at the same time, therefore, the most geographically extensive form of class politics. The Chinese are superior in strategy and tactics to the USA because more of them understand class politics. But have the Chinese also made a Faustian bargain with the Imperialist devil? This is the great unknown question of our time.

You may like to read the evidence listed by South African Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad in a very long statement, much of which is devoted to China, made in Pretoria this week and published on the web site of the Department of Foreign Affairs. As usual on the Communist University the URL is given at the end of the document.

The Communist University has its first gathering next Wednesday in the SACP boardroom on the third floor of COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein. SACP National Organiser Solly Mapaila will open the discussion on The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism by Lenin, which is a masterpiece of summarising. In addition, as we always do at the beginning of the year, we will reflect a little on the nature of study itself, using in this case the summary by Dominic Tweedie of Use Your Head, by Tony Buzan. More material on the theory and practice of teaching and learning can be found in the CU section on Critical Pedagogy.

Click on these links:

Pentagon hunkers down in Africa, Charles Cobb, Mail and Guardian (1123 words)

Genius behind the China satellite kill, Victor Mallet, Business Day (897 words)

Briefing by Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad, 24 January 2007 (9661 words)

Buzan, Use Your Head, Tweedie Conspectus (4174 words)

Lenin, 3 Sources and 3 Component parts of Marxism (1838 words)