MINING FOR (SMALL) CHANGE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Violence manifests at the South African operations of world Number 3 platinum producer Lonmin, based in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West), raising concerns of deadly unrest flaring again after 44 people were killed this month, many by  police.

Chronic unemployment and massive income disparities threaten social stability in South Africa.

The world's top platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum, receives a demand for a pay increase from its South African workers, while further unrest is reported at Royal Bafokeng Platinum's Rasimone site. 

The strike at Lonmin's Marikana mine drives up platinum prices.

Miners say they will continue to strike until companies give them their pay increase, which mine managers say is impossible because the industry is struggling and cannot afford the 300 percent increase the strikers are demanding.

The protests may spread further if authorities do not deal with the massive and growing inequality gap that has many South Africans feeling they have not benefited in the 18 years since black majority rule replaced a racist white minority government.

Though South Africa is the richest nation in Africa, it still has 25 percent unemployment - nearly 50 per cent among young people.

(Is South Africa really Spain then?)

Protests against shortages of housing, electricity and running water and poor education and health services are an almost daily affair.

That poverty is contrasted by the ostentatious lifestyles of a minority, including a small elite of blacks, who have become multimillionaires, often through corruption related to government tenders.

South African President Zuma visits the troubled Lonmin mine after striking miners heckle a committee of government ministers sent to help the grieving community with identification of bodies of slain miners, burial arrangements and bereavement counselling.

Characterising the problems at the mines as a turf war between unions is an inadequate response to the grim conditions in this sector of the labour market in South Africa.

The price of platinum leaps to its highest level since May, driven by concern about the supply from South Africa, which holds 80% of the known reserves of the metal, used in jewellery and for catalytic converters in cars.

Can the ANC-led government deliver for miners whose labours underground make profits for wealthy global corporations ......

Platinum rose by as much as 1.5% to touch $1 524.29 an ounce.

........  so we can have fancy wedding rings.....

check out this ad

http://www.ernestjones.co.uk/webstore/d/8134979/men%27s+platinum+polished+and+matt+wedding+ring/#BVRRContainer

...... and cleaner emissions from our SUVs?

And the food, comrade. Even in business class.... You saw for yourself this morning. Fried tomatoes! Mushrooms! It's five years since we took over, and they still serve us white food.

And small change for miners.

The Irish Times: newspaper; Dublin; 27.8.2012

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/08/201282765540987613.html

Green Man Flashing; stage-play; Mike van Graan; Junkets; South Africa; 2010

www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter

GOD GOES FOR GOLD

According to The Irish Independent, Katie Taylor, Olympic boxing gold medallist, hangs her favourite psalm - Psalm 18 – on the wall of her gym in Bray (53 degrees North, 6 degrees West).

It contains the words 

It is God that has equipped me with strength, and made my way perfect. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war.

The Olympic champion boxer's invocation of God at the time of her great Olympic triumph heartened theists, particularly Christians, throughout the world.

Letter writer Henry Counihan, from Dublin (53 degrees North, 6 degrees West),  noted that

While the games were taking place approximately 400, 000 people died from hunger in the world.

Is this a problem for Christians like Katie Taylor? 

What is God doing, when allowing/witnessing/enabling/observing hundreds of thousands of his loved ones – equal in His eyes to the marvellous athletes who invoke Him – to grimly perish in want and desperation while abundance is evident all over the globe, particularly in London (51 degrees North, 0 degrees West)?

Is it the case that these 400, 000 are the victors, their challenge to survive the days, months and years of destitution, anguish, pain and malnutrition en route to the white tape of death, their reward a coffin finish and a one-way golden ticket to an after-life of eternal bliss in the presence of the God who allowed/witnessed/enabled/observed their degradation and death?

When it comes to God's work and ways, human language is weak and uncertain. Or bombastic and tortuous.

In this sense, if the desperate are the victors, is Katie Taylor the loser?

Or is the God of gold, frankincense and myrrh simply interested in the gold, never in the silver, bronze, not to mention the brass, tin, lead and ash of the lives of the desperate?

Does any of this present a problem for theists?

The great monotheistic religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – experience vulnerability and threat from non-believers. And also great tensions, often schisms, within. 

For Roman Catholics, abuse of authority, manifest in specific instances of the abuse of children, leads to deep questioning by the faithful. For Anglicans, acts of physical intimacy cause confusion and conflict. Muslim states and citizens struggle with sectarianism across the Arab homelands as Sunni and Shia adherents to the faith come to violence.

And yet sects, Churches, cults, groupings, study groups, madrasi, temples, and missionary projects expand and proliferate across the globe.

At the heart of schemes like this, there's always something of the unreasonable, the explanation of which is that human beings are involved.

Is the particular support God offers to Katie Taylor – including training her hands for war – not offered to other, less successful, boxers whom she defeats?

Or to the 400, 000 cited in Henry Counihan's letter?

And if not, why not?

Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/willie-kealy-katie-taylors-victory-is-a-rare-one-for-simple-faith-3197083.html

The Irish Times: newspaper; Letters to the Editor; 14.8.2012

Canada:  novel; Richard Ford; Bloomsbury; 2012

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WOMEN BOXING WOMEN

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Olympic gold-winning boxers like Katie Taylor complicate the inherently patriarchal world view presented in Joseph Campbell's magisterial work on heroes and myths.

What boons will Katie Taylor bring back to Ireland?

Certainly there is the pleasure in the singular achievement of the athlete. Even non-boxing fans – and boxing is a sport that divides opinion, to the point where some people assert that is not a sport at all – acknowledge the speed, acuity, talent and vigour that come from the innate ability, assiduous training, coaching, practice and dedicated attention that Katie Taylor brings to her life's work.

Her feet are fleet. Her hands are rapid. Her speed-of-thought electrifying. She is super-human in her field. She is a hero.

Will she turn professional now that she has reached the summit of achievement in the amateur version of her sport? Will she take off the protective head-gear, don professional gloves and enter the ring and the contest for money?

The Gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth.

Fabulous forces abound in the nexus between sport and money. Challenges greater than any Katie Taylor has yet encountered. And what boons might she return with? Gold and silver, yes? But how much and at what cost?

There is no significant market for professional women's boxing at present. Have no fear, however, the inclusion of the sport in the Olympics will enable greater exploitation of the talents of women such as Katie Taylor for maximising profit. For men. In a patriarchal world.

As the individual is an organ of society, so is the tribe or city – so is humanity entire – only a phase of the mighty organism of the cosmos.

People in Ireland rejoice at Katie Taylor's success. She is welcomed home with garlands and laurels, cheering and celebration. She lifts people up with her achievements. These are boons.

Is the public spectacle of women boxing women progress? Or is the spectacle of any one, male or female, boxing anyone else regressive?

What heroic impulses are at play in young women and men that drive them to boxing as the form of expression of their human greatness?

Man is that alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in whose image society is to be reformed.

The heroic trials of Katie Taylor, and her triumphs, outscore the patriarchal metaphors we currently use. They are on the ropes and heading for a countdown. 

Not the animal world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but man (present as the metaphoric-heroic woman, Katie Taylor) is now the crucial mystery.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces: book; Joseph Campbell: Princeton University Press; 1949

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JING-O-LYMPICS!

The greatest show on earth continues.

Sport/Commerce. Spectacle/Commerce. Flag-waving/Commerce.

National anthems boom out. Flags are unfurled. Laps of honour are delivered, with national flags draped over exhausted limbs. Tears are shed.

Morrissey, angst-hero singer, formerly with The Smiths,  is not happy.

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism?

Morrissey decries such jingoism.

jingoism: noun: [mass noun] chiefly derogatory; extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy.

Morrissey is pretty miserable about the English royal family too.

As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile, the British media present 24-hour coverage of the 'dazzling royals', laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole.

Is it possible to make a society 'feel fully whole'  in the fractured social environment we experience today? What does Morrissey mean by the phrase 'fully whole?' 

Is it, as some might suggest, pop-culture egotistical claptrap?

Morrissey is not alone in miserableness. The left-leaning English patriot is joined in his miserableness by the right-wing mainstream media who decry certain British medal winners as 'Plastic Brits'. Not authentic or true. Instances: Mo Farrah and Jessica Ennis.

The race for the heart of Britain continues. Athletes from Northern Ireland, competing within Team GB, have to cope with being invisible in the team name and most of the media coverage. They appear to be de facto competing for England, Scotland and Wales.

Is it the case that post-imperialistic nations always manifest these forms of self-loathing?

'Look, we won loads of medals! Aren't we dreadful?'

Or has Morrissey touched a nerve? Apart from the obvious triumph of individual effort by athletes, is the spectacle that is the modern Jing-o-lympics one large, fat and sugar-filled doughnut with a gaping hole in the middle where meaning on the human scale might be?

Meanwhile floods devastate Manila, war rages in Syria and 11 000 private sector jobs (initially supported by public money, no doubt) disappear in Northern Ireland.

Heaven knows I'm miserable now. As Morrissey says.

Oxford On-line Dictionaries

Morrissey quotations: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2155123/London-2012-Olympics-Plastic-Brits-know-words-national-anthem--Charles-van-Commenee.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUjZjyIyNoE