Kolonization of the Mind

Greetings most excellent and happy listeners and welcome to the random world of the Prekarian Poet Nicholas Jakari. And welcome also, to his tale about Saving… UBI: through a poetic interrogation of how we are kolonizing our own minds… And how can use this understanding to help us on our journey: to that Sci fi world where we all live on credits…

In this podcast I am going to introduce you to an old Utopian idea; now often called UBI, or Universal Basic Income.

This is an idea that the poet Jakari borrowed; and developed, as a fictional solution, to a fictional need: … for a series of stories, he was writing: called, kolektively: the Azanian Quartet…

That was nearly 30 years ago when he started writing “The Jonker Memorandum’, [Now part three of that Quartet. He completed the Jonker in 2010: and started podcasting it in serial form that year…

The Podcast was completed in 84 episodes in 2014… After which he abandoned it
and got on with part 4 of his planned Azanian Quartet. Part two btw is the Ashanti Raider… Available as a serialised tale also on Amazon.

These poetically allegoric tales start against the background of a real revolution, in what was at that time a deeply; offensively unpleasant, fascist part of the world.

The local revolution is [in his fiction]; was also interrupted by a cataclysmic disaster: a real one where we live and an essentially fictitious disastrous, Apocalyptic event… derived in part from a series of exceptional noises.

So he promoted the Jonker Memorandum with the statement … A story about how the world ended: and what happened afterwards…

Now a dozen years later, he been somewhat bemused to discover that a particular feature of his fiction, became, for a time, during the Covid lockdown period: … fact. In his country in the form of a grant; In the Firmian Federal Republic… what came to be called “Biden Bucks”…

Specifically, He refers here to that part of his fiction called: “Basic Pay…” Now being referred to as UBI remember aka Universal Basic Income… and one of the backstories in the Jonker Memorandum… A few footnote episodes in fact.

FX

This phrase, Basic Pay, was the slogan of his fictional Presidential contender in an equally fictional, forthcoming election… in that cyber serial Jonker Memorandum.

She, the story’s shero, Korinth Starr, asserted, as her base line election slogan: Basic Pay was “not a Grant…” i.e.: some form of public largesse… Rather: It was “Ours by Right.” … I.E “Basic pay is not a Grant it is ours by right”

Fx

This btw was a phrase, with which the poet returned from what he considers to have been, a most bizarre, and inexplicable journey. It was a journey of hallucinogenic quality, on an occasion, while undergoing surgery for multiple gunshot wounds… An experience he turned into Part one of his Quartet… That was The Buffalo Hunters… First published in ’96 now available on Amazon.

For reasons he won’t bore you with and probably can’t remember anyway, he chose to set part of his work in an evolving future: in his part of the world: in a time after a fictional global catastrophe.

And to do that he found he had to deal with one question that had been neatly sidestepped, by the many of his favourite, iconic sci fi authors. This was the idea that people in the future simply lived on credits …

Where they came from was never part of any of the stories.

But: Where these credits came from, tormented him while he was otherwise procrastinating, with Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Robert Bester, Ray Bradbury and the whole Hugo awards lists of the 60s.

Doing that: to put off completing his Economics’, term papers…

He never found an explanation back then; and confesses that the best he’s yet heard, is Paul Krugman’s observation that debt is: “Simply money that we owe to ourselves.”

Albeit Spengler of course put it more poetically… “Money is simply a state of mind…”

All Technically true but obviously way more complicated than that.

So why would a rational society choose to create a social network based on Basic Pay and where would the money come from…? Friend David … A serious mathematician, said Asimov was the king of sci fi; and he could invent credits if he wanted to… Stick with the science…

That was just a snazzy way of avoiding the question… I said …

There would have to have been a need… we all agreed.

So back then we agreed we needed a disaster…

Especially when we heard the leading politician, of one of the big finance countries, announcing loudly: back in the 90’s, that such a thing as Basic Pay, would need a global catastrophe for it to happen…

So… in the interests of literary endeavour we went in search of a catastrophe, in 1998…

We found something terribly tasty: and between the Prekarian poet, a shoemaker, a door to door salesman, a mathematician, a chemist, a nuclear physicist, a few geologists; and, ironically, one of the world’s most notorious, wanted hitmen, at that time. He was hiding out in Jozi:, and drinking in one of my then, preferred local pubs [a few years later on, we read in the Citizen newspaper that the fellow was arrested on an International arrest warrant: by Interpol].

That was when we kind of, all figured out, that he was in fact, a genuine: bad guy… and not just some guy who told cool stories in exchange for booze.

Nonetheless between us all we cobbled together a fictional global disaster of such epic proportions, that we could introduce basic pay as a backstory to the main plot…

What one has to do to come up with a few lines of fiction hmmm… You cannot simply make it up it has to be real… even if it is fiction.

Of course for a long time with Basic Pay, it was still financed out of the liabilities side of a balance sheet… which is where it remains to this day… Maybe.

FX Music bridge….

As a writer of fiction, he believes he somehow, serendipitously, slid into a magnificent satori moment back in 2018: when he abruptly figured out: where the solution could perhaps be…

That is:

How to move Basic pay from the liabilities side to the Asset side of a balance sheet.

And the secret he believes, as a writer of fiction, lies somehow, with how we presently value, this wonderful golden mountain that we have somehow created from a pile of detritus: and Accountants aside, haven’t specifically noted…

By this he suggests we are experiencing what some would call “a wonderful piece of collective delusion…”or What a Chinese delegate to the Davos thing a few years back called: “A Grey Rhino”: And hence as a line from the poem at the time goes…: …

“A grey rhino that so completely fills the screen: that nothing else can be seen…”

We are talking about that mysterious word: DATA

FX

The two pieces of poetry that follow result from this a satori type insight. An epiphany if you like… And the poem, “The Kolonization of the Mind” was first used in a blog by me in 2018… and also forms part of the introduction to part 4.2 of my Azanian Quartet fiction series. 4.2 is set in a time after a [fictional] global catastrophe…

So you are reminded that poetry is an allusional art… and metaphors run rampant perhaps… Our first piece is called “The invisible friend that must
Be shown to exist”

For offshore listeners the word Povo in the opening stanza, is a local word, for what Marx called the proletariat: A Roman word for people who have nothing to give but their offspring, and Firmian’s, who are also mentioned, is the poet’s word for a well-known, allegedly declining, superpower…

FX Bells

Hear ye
Hear Ye

Some will strive
To
Achieve
Nietzschean validation – the
Povo*
Will become automatonotik [sic]
Fiddling witheir [sic]
Mobiles
Seeking to affirm their intrin
Sic irrele
Vance.

Nonetheless
Machines don’t buy things!!
They dispense.

So… On what basis should we
Perceive
Value?

Given the thrust of
A digital economy:
In our search for value
That
Konektive
Konstrukt kalled
DATA:
Is the land that must be
Mined for
GOLD.
Peepil have become
Products
To be exploited for their
DATA value.
Should they not
Receive their
Rightful
Fee?

In Gold?
Yeah gold
You say data is
The new gold.
No… I said it was the new land
Waiting to be mined:

For what is in it.

Korektion it is already
prodigiously mined…
Does it pay rent?
Not yet.
Jakari [‘18]
SFX Simply signalling the end… ?

So what does this mean
For the future
Of everything…?
Logically:
The Monetisation of
Humanity
Through data derived
Micropayments.

Mmmm, there’s a scary thought….

Jakari[‘17]

FX Music bridge

The Kolonization of the Mind

FX Music bridge ######

In that place to which we

Are

Evolving [in my fictional world,

Anyway] at

Breakneck speed, a majority of

Ordinary people do not

[Apparently] have the com

Petence to do any

Thing more complex than

Shop: and mutter

OMG.

FX sfx or music mood music

The Mind as the New World

fX Tatara

We are witness now to what will

In decades to come, be seen as

A most momentous butterfly effect

Moment: in

The brief history of Modern

Homo

Sapiens.

The moment we realised that

We were witness to

And participants in: the kolo

Nization of the mind.

When we [some humans] colonized

[Allegedly empty] land

Back in the 15/16th centuries

Assuming everyone already

Living there

To be irrelevant to

Purpose

Mainly because they were

Undocumented, unlettered and

Innumerate

Primitives. Who could be overrun

with the whiff of

gunpowder

We

[The invaders] simply

Appropriated the land and

Its bounty:

As humans had done to

Other humans for many

Thousands of years. This bounty

Became a cost

Free

Windfall

[Almost: unearned].

For instance, plundering

Entire mountains of silver in the

Southern Outer lands

South of Firmia, brought

bounty; from which

Inordinate profits could

Be generated: with little

Or no regard for

The source.

The most fascinating aspect of the recent in

Terrogation of Mr. Z

By the Congress of the

Firmian elites… Senators and

Representatives

Alike

Was the latter persons’ complete incomp

Rehension at the scale of what had

Happened: while they had been busy

Ruminating…. On perennial

Peccadillo’s.

fx

There was a disconcerting sense of

The time machine. Here was

Cortez meeting the

Aztec royalty, who were

Baffled

At this predicted, even

Anticipated, yet

Unexpected

Arrival.

Mysterious people, with

Serious intentions: and powerful,

Inkomprehensible machinery. Then… whoops

Before they could say SH*T!! … They were in

History’s garbage bag.

In effect, the worthy Congresspersons became as

One with the beguiled

“Natives”, of many kolonized lands: faced

With the inkomprehensible.

Therefore, they trotted

Out their

Memes and

Things; and each, thinking ‘stomach’

First, asked all the

Questions regarding the inhe

Rent trivia of Mr.

Z’s offence?

Not one

However, of that

Kolektion of [apparently] f

Undamentally out of touch

Human’s e

Ven got to grips with the

Kore of the

Dilemma: facing their konstituents.

A Chinese participant in a Davos debate

Earlier this year, spoke

Of a Grey Rhino effect, which

He explained represented

“Something so huge it completely

Obscured

The screen”.

The Grey Rhino here is

The word

DATA

And the

Kolonisation of the mind

That it represents.

Naturally the more cynical

Amongst us

May argue that ignoring

The grey rhino is essential to

The continuation

Of their pleasure: which

At heart concerns the Kolonisation

Of the mind.

Of course that would assume they un

Derstood what was happening.

What does this mean?

Simply this.

Using the language of

Mr. Adam Smith…. He,

Famously, of The Wealth

Of Nations… We could say that

Mr. Z

[and

His illustrious peers] are the most

Successful kolonizers of all

Time…well at the moment anyway…

According to

The hype surrounding the man’s

Recent forage around the

Firmian Capitol’ he gains some 25

Billion dollars of

[Profit] annually from

Some 40 Billion $US[Firmian]

Revenue. In a competitive

World of

Razor thin margins that is beyond

HUGE.

The revenue comes from companies

That use the data given

So f

Reely by the b

Illions of

Users of Mr Z’s

‘Machine’.

They use the

Insights the data presents, to target

Prospects for product

Purchases, more efficiently

Than ever previously known.

Inherently, this means that, like

The Konquista

Dors, who found mountains

Of silver back in the 16th

Century; appropriated it from naïve

Possessors: like those

Who purchased Manhattan: for bags of

Beads; and

Achieved great

WEALTH.

Mr. Z [et al] have achieved a similar,

Inherently

‘Unearned income’. They are

The

El Supremo

Rentiers.

When Messrs.’ Smith and

Ricardo talked of ‘Economic

Rent’, they were referring

To this windfall effect

Resulting from control over the product

Of a natural resource.

In this case, data

Emanating from a human

Source: the ultimate in a natural

Resource… of course…

It also took about a hundred and

Fifty years back then: for the penny

To drop too.

We hope the penny will drop

Sooner, for humans

Today or the rest

Of the century could get seriously

Rough: especially for those

Absently

Left behind.

Jerome Powell [chair

Person of the Firmian Federal

Reserve,] admitted

Something in his opening

Salvo with the same group of

Kongresspersons, earlier

This year; [2018].

He dealt with a

Word that had raised some

Kurious questions

Amongst more heterodox

Thinkers.

He said that “The Slack”,

To which he made constant

Reference

When justifying

The kontinuing, no inflation

Trend of the past decade: was the

Availability of, equally kompetent,

labour

Forces:

In a globalized inter

Konekted world: People who would

Work for relatively less money

In spite of allegedly: full employment

Konditions in Firmia.

“The Elliot curve is kracked.” *…

They call…

The mob in here, are all

In thrall to

The slack,” he said: beyond the wall

The

Fifty million people across the

Planet

Living daily off a cyber-planet…

And who

Are an almost infinite

Resource at wage levels below

Those of the Firmian

Norms.

No one

Had ever admitted: that: before:..

Publically… anyway

So in building Fb Mr. Z’s true

genius lay in solving

one of humanity’s greatest

Needs… To be in kontakt

With one’s fellows; and

Through the power of

digitalization he [and all

the rest of the merry

band of tech’ dudes] ‘invented’

The things called

DATA… Symbolically

Packaging James Surowieki’s: “Wisdom

of Crowds”.

The DATA then… has become the new

‘Goldfields’ now; and the

Klondike rush is being relived: as he

Kapitalizes on a window of

Oppor

Tunity by ‘mone

Tizing’ his ‘free” source

Of ‘data’.

And as with the Silver

Exchanges of past time glory

No mention in the exchange pays rent

To the source.

No wonder the planet is all

Messed

Up. And getting

Hotter

By the day

As the greatest beneficiary of “unearned

Income” in history, the

Question the Kongresspersons should

Have been asking, related to that share of

Unearned income [i.e. Economic

Rent] that should be returning

To source, rewarding

Loyalty work

Presently

Given freely: in order

To sustain the virtuous

Circle of e

Xchange

That maintains

Their:

Ability to keep

Feeding

The

Machine

with.

DATA

FX Music

You have been listening to poetic pieces regarding the deeply undervalued and unexplored role of data in the future of human financial matters… These pieces were written by the prekarian poet Nicholas Jakari.

And they all dealt with an issue that is growing more problematic daily, as the Bear’s war in central Groland demonstrates… How does humanity futureproof itself against the coming chills of radical climate adjustments… a mtter rapidly gaining in urgency

And with a fragment of insight with which to tease your mind…

Jakari’s work can not only be found on Spotify but parts 1, 2 and 4.1 of his Azanian Quartet are all available on Amazon Kindle Publishing… As are a range of historically relevant poetry kolektions… compiled over the past half century of living in a brutal place… A dictatorship of the irrational, through two revolutionary insurrectional konflikts… Plus a devastating period of state capture, by Marx’s classic “Dangerous Klass” … Those he warned against in Part 1 of his Manifesto: published in 1848.

Part 3, of his Azanian Quartet, the Jonker Memorandum, will be moving from its present home for the past twelve years to address new listeners at Spotify and Anchor.fm.

And for those curious about this fictional idea, parts 4.2 & 4.3 of his Azanian Quartet are on the production line, for publication by October. They will indicate in their backstories what this revelation, still fictional remember, produced, as an outcome: to satisfy Asimov’s and Co’s positions on reflexive Credits…

We hope that you have enjoyed your time with the Prekarian poet and we look forward to sharing more prekarian economic tales with you…. Next time you drop by….

NJ signing off …

Cheers

FX music out

How a Journey Began

The Great Choral Verse Hang Out Party

Hi readers

While carrying out a long overdue cleansing of the office I have almost lived in, at one end of my home, for more than 30 years; the Empress found the copy I kept, of an article I wrote for, and submitted to, a now long extinct educators journal: for an equally, now long extinct provincial education department [exTED]: for Basic level education.

The article was published by them; and presumably somewhere that is in the disorderly chaos called my office and storerooms, there is a copy somewhere that I was sent…

However. This piece, that I had forgotten all about, represented: now, in retrospect, the beginning of a journey. I have, now, been on the same journey for more than two and a half decades… and I thought it would be an entertaining review: of something we have all forgotten.

And for me it was a reminder of that happiest; of unbelievable joyous bus rides, with 77, seriously diverse 9th grade kids: crammed into a reasonable sized bus…

The original heading for the published article was: “A Report on an experiment in teaching Spoken English in the New Mzanzian [formerly South Afrikan] classroom.”

It was published in 1996 and refers to the post liberation period from 1994. There are some variances to the language since and brief comment on those will be in brackets […] after the original word… Brackets were also used in the original article so those will be designated {*…}.

Now that I have reached a goal, by deadline of mine… To put 15 titles onto Amazon’s Kindle app project: in the 55 months since I stopped doing what I was doing: to do what my ‘bucket list’ told me to do… before the bucket dropped… or my bank balance reached zero…

And of course, as we all know… the list is, in reality, endless… Isn’t it.

So I thought I would share something: about how a journey, for me; got started… eventually… for at least the fourth time … now hectically late in life… After we all got liberated in 1994: And began to live the life we should have….

FX…. This blog will be a podcast @ Jakaripods.com

[Starts here. 1996 Article: remember…For personal history purposes.]


During the past three years, I have been successively, driven out of business by the economic standstill that followed the assassination of Cde. Chris Hani in 1993; and was forced, ultimately, back to the secondary school classroom: by the spectre of encroaching financial catastrophe. [And I had been accepted for a temporary position at a commercial/technical high school that somehow lasted for two years]

I have also during this time, on successive occasions, been mugged, kicked in the head, stabbed, shot {*multiple times} and thrown through a car windscreen at high impact speed.

It has been a singularly unpleasant period.

If, however, I had to choose one positive memorable moment, during this time, I would say unreservedly, that it was October 26th 1995: the eve of my 49th birthday.

On that particular day I took 77, Standard 7 [Now 9th grade] ‘pupils’ [now dekonstrukted to Learners… their functional purpose] to take part in a choral speaking competition festival at Grayston Preparatory School, in Sandton [The ‘larney’ie upmarket, side of town]. It was a culminating event in a two year struggle to find a solution of sorts, to the awesome business of integrating an overwhelming majority, of non English speaking “LEARNERS” into a [now] minority English speaking classroom.

Like many of my colleagues throughout the old TED system in Zone One [aka Gauteng], I found myself in January ’94, almost swamped, by classes that not only doubled in size, but doubled, with people who spoke almost minimal English, and quite frankly did not, and have not, shown the slightest inclination to speak English since.

My problem, like that of most educators I have spoken to this year was “what to do?” With this [unexpected flooding] mob of exuberant, free-spirited and volatile children… [who were products of deliberate withholding of information].

In retrospect I think I had one slight difference in perspective in my favour… [This would be aside from the real fact that English language educator, is not my official, formal, professional competence: which is Economics… Something offered in few secondary institutions… English had to do…

My perspective was assisted however… in that.]

After 17 years in private practice in various facets of the Communications industry; {* time that included more than sixteen thousand accredited hours of adult Training work…} So now I returned to the high school classroom … And was staggered at the apathy and generally indifferent attitude to learning; coupled to the desperate language skills of the television/computer-driven: formerly advantaged {*FA’s} ‘learners’, whom I was required to “teach”. [Into this mix on Day two of the new school year, 1994, new for me as well as for the poured a literal doubling of class ties instantly… as freedom arrived early for the actual event on April 27.].

My FA students, predominantly [what was then, a now discredited A = klevas. B = not so. C = profoundly not so… ] attendees made up in sheer disinterest, for any shortfall the new intake had: in educational background.

The television generation had arrived: and was reinforcing all McLuhan’s favourite hypothesis.

In effect decontextualised information produces decontextualised kids, placed into decontextualised classrooms and fed on a decontextualised diet of random information to produce the indifferent responsiveness of the intellectually homeless.

As a result I wasn’t quite as horrified as most of my colleagues by the rudimentary skills; and so called, ‘educational shortcomings’, of my flood intake of FD’s.
{*Formerly Disadvantaged} when it took place in ’94.

Experience has borne out my initial impression and there are, proportionally as many FD’s in the top ten as there are FA’s in the bottom ten of my various classes. I also now realise too, that there was no truth in the adage:- that in the “Kingdom of the blind the one eyed man [now person] is Ruler: for we are all stumbling about in the dark.

My mission then [and now]: To earn my pittance and generate meaning for my customers {*students} [and now you… my reader/listener]….

Thus I chose to interpret the new Departmental’s “Guidelines for language teaching and learning” with as much latitude that ‘teaching’ in a post-revolutionary environment would allow. And with the approval of my HOD, Sharon Robins, I set up my own “Masakhane” [solidarity slogan] experimental programme with my 9A & B classes. {* I also use the programme with my 9T3’s… who call themselves the Double D’s, and my 11th grade classes but my primary concentration has been with 9A & B.}

Part 1, of the programme involved shifting the classroom into a group structured, learner driven environment using techniques developed over nearly two decades of seminar style teaching/mediation/facilitation in corporate, semi corporate, and other tertiary institutions in places as disparate as Northern Zimbabwe, Southern Malawi, Nigeria [Lagos] Namibia, Botswana and the four corners of the now defunct ‘Union’; The basic theme, as ever, “the strong help the weak”.

Part 2 was, for me, an innovation. Many years of training salespeople, and others who used their voices for a living, persuaded me that i could make no meaningful progress, if i couldn’t get my learners ‘Talking’. Here i felt the guidelines were on my side. Oral work rules.

Notwithstanding that, Oral work came up against certain completely unassailable short term barriers. My Learners had no, [zero ish] [respectable or English language] oral language skills. The FD’s because they had no spoken English, period. My. FA’s because their learning environment has always preached: “Silence is golden” or “Empty vessels make the most noise” and a host of other similar blandishments… that have generally been used to keep people docile.

So this meant that such standby’s as improvisations, and prepared or impromptu speeches proved to be inadequate tools for what I wanted to do.

I decided that the solution lay in using poetry.

Poetry has all the essential ingredients of excellent communication: It can be brief or long. It can be rhymed or free verse. It has rhythm form and structure. And most importantly it can be learned and performed to a prepared standard.

Therefore, for people who cannot speak English{*56 out of 77 in the combined group.} it seemed logical that they should each learn poems: and recite them in orchestrated unison.

Logical to me of course: pointless to them… [all of them… one area in which we had amazing unanimity].

For ten months I cajoled , bullied, ‘schmoozled’ and bribed them into producing reams of poetry. Whatever they chose was okay: ’schmaltzy’ … Patience Strong type, Kardies stuff from PA’s : strident ‘a luta kontinua’ [revolution continues] stuff from the FD’s; and from many of the Double D’s ‘Gangsta rap’ with all their appalling lyrics. {*The Double D’s [9T3] btw [class of 46 persons]: took their name from Danny de Vito’s: “Renaissance Man”; which we watched at their request: after which, they played the “Hamlet Rap”: the film’s high point.}

Then to the grand culmination. A “Festival of Choral Verse Speaking” into which I had entered 9A & B before any of us knew if it was even possible.

“Sir’s Tapped…” I’d hear them say. “Must be all the bullets and the ‘bootings’. And In some ways they were right. I felt ‘tapped’. I was winking in the dark.

For in truth I had never really “done” any choral verse, not in the previous 30 years anyhow. Also in January my body and soul were desperately striving to recover from the effects of multiple gunshot wounds, inflicted in some banal, cliche ‘lets-shoot-someone-for-fun-today’ type Zone One ‘Gangsta Attak’. I was bereft emotionally; my imagination was ragged and I was intellectually at a point way beyond ‘burn out’… I knew only that “They” [a mob of kids…] had arrived in my classroom: and had to be attended to.

They fought me too. “It was boring”… ‘What advantage was there in learning this stuff?” And actually they were right. They had no idea about what I wanted to do. And even for me it was a radical ‘off the wall”’idea. There were no models to copy; and the movement stuff they saw on TV had no context either: for a variety of reasons.

My view was a simple one. You cannot learn a language if you don’t {* or wont} speak it.

So eventually a deal was struck. And it was an equally simple one. Go there. Take part in the competition….Whatever their score out of 100 was, would become their term mark [score] for “oral”.

Of course in our mutual ‘real world’, [as we know ] marks are a reward incentive, for work done and are all that ‘really’ matters.

Democracy also means, first and foremost, that everyone has the right to their opinion: and few people agree with anything said by someone else. In the absence of a model, chaos becomes competitive.

Still, persisted stubbornly. Despairing often. New nightmares came to replace the leering gunmen who have haunted me for the past year…

And in reality we never really got much beyond everyone simply knowing the lines of poetry chosen … “You mean you want us to learn all these lines!!! Why?
And saying them in some kid of semblance of orderly orchestration: saying them either in unison or in parts . This in turn was done at the breakneck speed that came to represent the best compromise between the class ossifying antipathy of the Formerly Advantages segments of the team; who broadly were brought up fervently distrust anything that required thought… and the generally confused state of everyone else from the eastern end of Asia to the same street as the school.

I learned also, that something learned, that needed to be changed, was usually rigidly inflexible… became indelible…. Set in concrete… and could only be altered at the risk of unravelling the whole thing…

Eventually the day arrived at the meticulously manicured Strathavon venue: with its kerbside littered with well heeled metal. Sandton ladies were prepared with delight.

They welcomed us with barely concealed horror…

I felt like Genghis Khan at the head of my horde… a damaged Genghis Khan. I’d wrecked my car in a head-on collision a few days earlier, in a heavy, hail soaked thunderstorm: on a bad piece of roadwork. I hit the windscreen hard enough to break through: when the seatbelt snapped. So I was wandering about Grayston Prep bandaged up: and in a state of semi-concussion.

My colleagues, having sensibly decided the entire venture reeked of insanity, declined: spurned even the thought to accompany me on this bizarre quest… “Take 77. 9th grade kids to Grayston … you must be crazy…!” … In the staffroom there were bristle-ish moments from some who were simply functioning on burned out adrenaline… [So it was just me and the driver of the Putco bus we rented for the journey… there and back…].

My charges too, bristled with class armour; defensively ready to be antagonised. At the slightest slight.

Their world view, was that only ‘swots’; got more than the edge of an E [40-49]. This was reinforced by their competition at the event. The overwhelming picture was that only the swots and the larneys were there… Having taken a good look around they told me; in no uncertain terms that theirs was the only crazy teacher who thought you could learn english by chanting ‘pomes’ in unison.

In the event, they were ultimately overawed. So they did not perform their pieces, with the precision that they had demonstrated in a required performance, for the HOD and the Acting Principal: before we had left for the day..

Nonetheless, neither did they disgrace themselves [or me] either: and they did as well as I had come to accept that they would do…

Then…

An unprecedented event …. [for us]

At various times, during the period of preparation and rehearsal there’d been strikes and ‘toi toi ing ‘, in disapproval, by different groups at different times: over what I was doing. I had to get used to negotiating my way through it all…

Now however, the organisers were running ahead off time: and our involvement was over sooner than scheduled… {Time to go… Oh NO NO NO]

Having been dragged [almost literally] to the drinking trough my ‘mob’ adamantly refused to budge at the allotted time!!! They insisted on seeing more… more more more! [‘Please sir we want some more’ … So: the driver was cool and we stayed]

I was overwhelmed by their sense of revelation: as understanding and comprehension of what we had been striving to achieve, though the exercise, hit them: for the first time… {*The overt objective that is, not my more sneaky developmental objectives…}…

This Aha moment began exploding throughout the gathered rows in the Hall: that we had come to crowd for the event. Team after team flowed using more seasoned perhaps, and {*perhaps more voluntary}. [The way some choose netball]. The impact was tangible with teams producing glorious, stunning performances of such diverse works as “The Hollow Men”, “Sounds of a Cowhide Drum” and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

At the end of each performance my glorious ‘horde’ broke into excited, enthusiastic explorations… Then; When the next performance started… intense silence: quieter than I had… or have, ever been able to achieve….

In the event they scored 74% … And they were no where near the bottom.
They were on a high.
A high equalled only by the high the nation was on: when awe won the rugby World Cup… And we all partied….

I have never known such a trip to equal that ride ‘home’ to Bedford on the bus.

74% was a mindbender … Most could only have dreamed of such a score before that day…

There was no them and us on that bus.

Simply the sounds of every song anyone ever knew amongst them… bearing time with everything they could find that would do… They had learnt the joy of ‘winning’… for that was what they were… united as winners of their own selves…

Years ago a colleague remarked to me that teaching was very much a business of planting ‘time bombs’to go off in people heads: that fire off erratically. I’ll be crunching up the numbers from my ‘masakhane’ programme to see what happened. I am certain already that my original prognosis … That there. Would be an 80% non competence outcome rate amongst the new intake… Now I am certain it will be much lower… Maybe even as low as 30%…

Nonetheless sitting on that bus; them me and the driver, experiencing that bursting awareness of blossoming self-awareness and, more than that: blossoming self-image, I felt a wonderful sense of vindication.

For I saw a whole succession of time bombs go off in one fell swoop: and now I ‘know’ that I found, for that fraction of a moment a route that worked…

The classes now adamant that they want to go back next year: and do better. And now not only those classes , but their friends in classes that didn’t go: who now feel left out: and cheated … Now that they all understand: what it was about.

They want to implement what was experienced that day…. Thereby proving that there is no meaning without context…

Ironically it also demonstrated the truth of my ‘old school’ motto: Carpe Diem: Seize the Day… For what I do not know is whether there will ever be a ‘next year’ either for them of me… Changing conditions mean changes to staff complements and we “temps” will have to go…. So I must regretfully head for new opportunities, which there must be out there; in this new information superhighway. that is coming into existence; satisfied that for me my hypothesis is proven: while for my charges it will remain a seminal event with unimagined effects… [As I hope worked with many of you with whom I worked later…]

Loves ya all

Nicholas

Ps: As I mentioned… That publication was way back in 1996… As i mentioned at the start, it was in many ways the beginning of a new life after the old one had been interrupted… Set me on a journey of discovery… Still unfolding: as with all of us…

Since that time, i have had encounters at different times, with various people who had been in those classes. They all, independently said, that those two classes went on to be, apparently, the most successful national final year, in the, then history of Bedford. And i was always happy to hear that i had played a small part in that journey… They also never did go back for more.

On one occasion a man accompanied by a woman and child approached me, while I was guzzling a smoothie; in company with my now, late mother: and my youngest daughter.

He said his name was Jabulani, and that he would like for his wife, to meet the man, who had changed the whole class that day, was talked about at their reunion: and had been the reason he was now [then] a qualified Chemical Engineer; working in a fast rising career: at one of the region’s biggest chemical companies… And we had a grand reunion…

The old ‘festival of choral verse speaking’ that had been run by Jozi’s guild of speech practitioners, for more than a century, reached its post empire sell by date: and in the spirit of financialisation was deemed appropriate for purpose. It was, maybe, hijacked /purchased/appropriated by the new authorities. Such things were the treasured indulgences of empire… No more.

It turned into a national festival. Organised by an instant new public service provider operation. Arranged as some part of some or other SOE organisation: that always seemed relatively opaque. It instantly had a workforce; who by the nature of organisation purpose required so much new bureaucracy: simply to enter to enter; that within a decade: it had simply seemed to have stopped happening … Certainly no school at which I subsequently worked up to 2018, had the capacity to handle the flood of paperwork… And it gradually disappeared from view… [been submerged…]

Maybe it is still there… or maybe it went bankrupt or became a total sideline, for the new owners:and vanished… I would hope the former…

That is, of course, of no account… Its predecessor served me well while it lasted: and I understand one of my teams, at a different place, won a national title for a performance of the Lewis Carroll set piece for the competition that year: … “Jabberwocky”….

Shades that Orwell Missed

There is a savage irony about the Russian Ukraine conflict.

Russia understood themselves to be indestructible again. They had snatched Crimea, wicked Georgia for some of its terrirtory. Put whoever was stirring in Kazakstan in irons and then decided to annex Ukraine and have found themselves in a bad place.

And much as they want to rant and bluster they are in over their heads and losing troops boats planes and tanks for a minimal gain and have become the worst kids on the block to the world.

Worst of all they seem to have completely missed the extent to which they are putting themselves out of the emerging world game…

In reality they are a one point three trillion dollar economy that has decided to beat up an economy half their size. They have a thirteen trillion dollar economy dodgy neighbour on one side of them that seems to be playing friend with beneifits.

They are issuing threats to Ukraine’s friends who are a military alliance comprising combines eighteen trillion dollar economies… And being disturbingly annoying to the European Union that collectively is slightly bigger than their dodgy neighbour.

And then there is their “big bad wolf” antagonist enemy Firmia… Or if you prefer, USA, that is a twenty three trillion dollar enemy… and there are another fifteen or so trillion on the sidelines… Ultimately it is an unwindable conflict and if it goes nuclear… which is entirely possible then it will be eviscerated… notwithstanding how many nukes it has…

Nukes have never been used and have been waiting years how do they know they will work, will do so in devastating enough single blow that all opposition is overwhelmed immediately and they=re is no counter strike.

Russia winning is a seriously long shot… like betting that Apple [for instance] will close their business for cash shortish reasons… Somehow they missed the bows with their opening shots…

They will lose and the EU will levy charges for the damage. To get away with blowing a place up you need to win… And that means they will need a begging bowl… and people will forget to pay ever if they can be persuaded to carry the war damage costs…

China will retake it stolen urban hangout Now called Vladivostok… and Russia will have internal konfliks that could easily break up the Federation and will prevent it from capitalising on the massive coast line that will be available to them by 2070.

So blind to what is happening Russia is trading a muddy puddle of water within a controlled axis facility to grab a couple of relative fishing towns. that history will demonstrate to become obsolete before a child being born today turns forty… and could be sacrificing the prospective golden nuggets that could Vladivostok in the temperate zone environment many predict for 2070… And quite possibly part of an expending Chinese hegemony.

Analysis Paralysis@SONA

SONA Day 11th Feb 2022:                                                                                    

PrezBlunt                                                                                             
CameToTheHall                                                                                            ShowedUsHisSuitToBe                                                           
MadeHereWithGreenGasToldUsTo
Grow Dope

GrowBoom  
GrowGrass                                                                 

Short summary ends her… Big Story below

Warning: this entire poem is At least 1200 words long. Reading the whole thing could be injurious to your health. You’ve got the message … whatever is left may be long, boring and depressing…. Or maybe not… It could simply be satiric.

[Note: For offshore readers/listeners, a SONA is mnemonic for “State of the Nation Address” and all the Zansi’s’ important people are present there there for the address hoping…}

Why was it written?
I have no idea…
These things happen…  Usually…
a case of “Who cares…” SONA is a routine chore … A ‘Much ado about No Thing’… doing little that anyone remembers next Tuesday.” ]

This time is a somewhat different year tho’…

Last year something seriously bad happened in our country… Zansi, in Southern Afrika. Well many serious things happened, and few have been explained: but this deeply bad thing stood out more:.

Some called it an “Insurrection”; and there has also, never been a coherent explanation about that either … And hundreds of citizens died during that explosion of violent looting…

And it wasn’t the only oddball thing that has happened over the Covid era…

For instance: Fires have been impacting key things, hospitals, universities and now Parliament itself. Fires break out and burn for days; and are blamed on random things like homeless persons who somehow, have cigarette butts, that defy all fire raising logic…

As the ‘House of Assembly’ did last month… when it ‘caught’ fire and burned for days.

So this SONA is happening in the old City ‘Town’ Hall…  

What was it about? We hope you’ll find out.

The economy is stagnant, and simply sliding slowly, inevitably downhill… Some say “back to the more comfortable 19th century” So to use a 19th Century adjective:

“the Economy is in a Parlous Stagnant State”.

Question everyone is asking: “Will this SONA indicate a way forward…?” We will see…

Since stagnant is not the same as standstill: entropy is running wild… And parlous still means what it meant then…

As the Honourable MP General Holomisa, pointed out at least four years back, in a previous SONA …

“We are on the slippery slope…” No akshun since.                         

And so, we have continued downhill….

So this means expectations were up high; that a hugely compromised Prez… hemmed in on all sides by aggrieved power groups, both inside and outside his Party, will deliver some evidence that there is a positive way forward.

The Poet was sceptical and had no expectations at all… Assuming no thing….

Because, as you know, expectations are all too often a formula for disappointment… So…

Our journey starts nearby the City Hall, where occupants of a refreshment room, watch akshun on the TV….

————————0———————–

I’m drinking Koffee.” He said.                                                                                         
This is a Bar not a Koffee                                              
Shop…

I want koffee…                                                                                           
I never said I didn’t                                                        
Want booze…
If I can’t get it, I’ll go some                                                                              
Place where they serve
Both!

Oh. Sorry. Off course.
You can                                                                                   
Have Koffee           
What booze would                
You like?

Kane… I’ll have a bottle…    

                                                                                                   
We haven’t got any Kane.                                                                                                   

So.  You make it diffikult hey…?                                   
First no koffee, now                                                           
No Booze?

So I’ll settle for the koffee.

You have to have booze… to get koffee                                                            

                      
You haven’t got it…                                                       
So you can’t give it to me…

I see.                                                                                                 
Well we’ll meet with                                               
Our                                                                          
Suppliers and see what we can do                              
Before the winter break arrives…

Could I offer you a freshly made sandwich instead?

So we settled for the annual SONAstorm to begin…

————————–0—————————

What is happening?” Asks an insistent journo, outside the City hall.
Everything is sub judice [sub- joo- di-see] says a batonic waggling finger,
from an interrogated attendee: to queries from a gathered crowd of Newspersons…
You will know soon… She adds…
The curtain rises: –
——————0—————–

In The State of the Nation today: Dope rulz.                   
Says Prez.
Was he ‘Blunt’? Ayanda asked                                         
The room?
Who knows?                                                                                                        

                      
“We want to                                                                
Harness the powa                                                                                               
Of                                                                                                            
Industrial hemp                                                     
And Cannabis…”                                                                          
was the Prez prediction for Mzansi
Otherwise                                                                                       
SONA was its usual…                                                                                      

‘Things we gonna do          

                                                                                                   
Someday…’ affair
You know the score                                                              

We always want more….
Dreamy time again…                                

                                                                                                
No real Akshun result .                                           
Behind                                                             
The Glamour;soon overlaid with litanies                           
Of kollapse   

                                                                                                      
And disintegration… And a wondrous sense
of happiness…
It is freedom after all                                                                                                              

                            
THEN: Future tense; it lies ahead: It is not   
NOW              
WE will do things… in

Time to come: is not                                                         Now…                                                               

                                                                                                   
Sporadic applause… rattles the emptiness of                    
the packed old City Hall…  

                                                                                                                      
One clap                                                                       
Two claps                                                                                               
Three claps four  a                                                                  
Few more other claps                                                                
Add up to  min Score                                                                                              
As we   hunker down…          

‘Seven hundred kilometres of rural                                
Roads will be                                                              
Paved’. When?
We  do                                                                                  
Remember where                                                                
They are; and and are
Organising having meetings to
Decide on the criteria we should use to
Define the project concerned and then decide
where                                                                                  
We would be                                                                  
Going to start: before                                                          
We lost our way…                         

                                                                                                 
Three people clap
Yay                               

                                                                                               
We will                                                                                  
All do things                                                                        
And then things are                                                           
Likely to be announced as                                                  
We grasp our      

                                                                                                      
“Rosy nettle…” Yay… yay …yay…?

Quiet crowd… stares… waiting
Starting to notice that the seats are hard.

WE will investigate our                            
Current                                                                   
Journey… He tells us                                                          
Over                                    
Seventy                                                                    
Five Years…                       

                                                                                                              To go!                                     

                                                                                                      
Target of course… much                                                
Sooner, he quickly added, like                                 
Seventy     `                                                                    
Three: to our breath intake
Reaction….
And then for mis-                                                                                          
Direction; said “we shall                                                                                 

                 
Promote the possibilities of                                                
Our                                                                            
Green                                                                          
Hydrogen heritage…”                                                           

Many murmurs… rise in cadence…fall…                                                                                                       
What was this new exciting                                            
Word                                                                                    
We hear?                       

                                                                                                 
Not nasty things we hope                                                                                 

                     
Some pipelines we can                                                    
Grope about with.… for
a while                                                                           
longer… forage for opportunity?                                  

                                                                                             
To take to the future perfect: where                                  
We will take decisive                                                                 
Steps                                                                             

                                             
Again….   

Some of crowd spot the gap                                                   
A small
flurry of delight…   
To be blanketed with trivia

Smug smile … beams out…   

                                                                                                        
Bottom line: “We will do                                          
Wonderful things, this way:                      
Some day, when these                                                     
Plans will build on other                                               
Master plans …”                      

                                                                                              
Not Mistress plans? Note. Nor                             
Madam plans/Bossy plans Even                                                                                    
Person plans
That will…                                                                                         
Encounter; other plans, by other                    
Planners….                                       
To give away the
Miracle of
Free                       
Money….!!!!!!

Then Quickly slide in…                                                     

From our deeply frozen                                                            
Fiscus… He, as quick as breath came ,                                                                                 
Sniffing a mutter about                                       
Unfairness….                                                                     
And more tax…      
Added…                                                                                                     
To be dealt with later…                                                                                       
In the budget speech… Hand waves it away…

Kontention klamps forth in scattered mutters
And then…  

                                                                                                       
A quick return to other                                                           
Less kontentious                                                             
Plans by other                                                    
Planners… Like those bods at
business house B                                                           
Rhyming with knee… Sounding posh     .                                                            

                   
Who made a suit                                                                
That He was
Wearing…?                                                                                               

                       
A suit in chains of pomp and glory… Restrikted kut model

Look at me mommy!                                                         

Yay! Yay! Yay! The Prez has arrived!
The                                                                   
Murmuring crowd shuffled… Glancing                 
Awkwardly around; glancing
glances to see who else is                                                    
Glancing glances…                                                                                          

            
Envy control reigns…

One clap resounds…                                                                                                    

     
The face filled hall where people                                    
hover
in agonising                                                                      
Incredulity…
At the SMART suit???                                                             

Where is this going…                                                          
Why is                                                                                        
NO THING Happening???
Where’s our Bucks???

And.
Where’s our suits???????
And hope they all arrive                                                      
 In                                                                                   
Thirty or Forty                
Minutes…                                                                                    

Oh                                                                                     
Sorry                                                                     

Years   

                                                                                                       
At last… Twelve people clapped                                           
At least                                                                                  
It sounded like it was about twelve                          

Perhaps?

“We are,” Prez announced … Paused… Repeat
“We are now making… Suits…”
Again… quickly… at a gasp WHAT!!!
“Like we once did…”
Quick shift….

“One hundred days!                                                                                                    
We call for                                                                                                  
You to for                                                                           
Get to re                                                                       
Member just how we
Thought about how                                                                  
To Get Things                                                                              
Done                                                                                                         

Before we need another
hundred  Days…”  

                                                                                                      
Bright cheery smile to…                                                                                              
Silence…

To… of course…                                                           
To work out a….?   Casts about…                                                             

                                                         
“National Social Dialogue!…”  He rattled off…                              

As though we all knew                                                     
It was something
known
by                                            
More than few… That has                                                     
In the past been for                                                  
Gotten….

—————0—————–

News reports:            

                                                                                                 
“President ‘mulls’                                                          
 Ending things like                                                                                                         “Disaster State”
And                                                                         
The need to Finalise
our thinking about                                                           
What we
should be doing about                                                               
Extending                                                                                      
Free Money up to the next   
General                                                                        
Consensus survey
In Twenty                                                                      
Four…

Catch them hungry                                                                                         
Catch them                                                                   
Falling….

Mercury reports: Plans Must bring                                                                          
Akshun…

“Surely” … They add. “A plan
with                                                                                                     
Out
Akshun is only                                                                          
Wishful Thinking…
Isn’t it?”

AGAIN!!!                                                                                                     
No, No, No:                                                                            
They cry.                                                                                         
Give 
Us                                                                          
Another moment                                                                                           
Konsequences must be konsidered to           
Apply                                                            
Again                                                                                     
To the things we for                                                 
Got to remember….

So Prez Vows: they say, to                                                                                                     
Akt on things                                                                       
He previously Vowed to be                                                                                     
Akted upon in the                                                             
Last many                                                                                                      

                 
SONA’s
           

Klap Clap Krap

Bonus:                                                                                             
RedTapeIsBad                                                       
WillAppointGroupAddMore                                                 CutSomeBackABitAsWellThen                                                              
We Win

And these warriors of the Kuttings                                                                        
Will assiduously                                                                                  
Eliminate a few                                                                            
Things [AGAIN] that do not get the                                                       
Point…
And add, naturally, new rules of procedure:…

When you say?  How much?                                                                                   

Estimated cost… [of what] will, due to                                         
Fiskal Pressure [a dread disease no doubt]                                  
Add ghastliness: So to do
it [eliminate red tape ?] then             
We shall strive…  

                                                                                                              
And our goal                                                                                           
Will be to finance things…                                                                

[more things/same things?]                                                                    

Through the …… 

[pauses… for fx] Imagine drum roll echoing with joyous favour

Sale of Tea and Sandwiches!!!                                                                             

                     
Which will be                                                             
Announced.                                                                     
Just as soon as they are sufficiently                           
Stale….

Sowetan news avers:                                                                                           

“The High Road for Zansi”             

More Kannabis to be grown                                         
Check your Krop      

And then, in case they knew not how to do this strange thing: a
Previously also                                                     
Unmentioned
“Afrikan Advisory Group”
Will help our people                                                                            

                
Who were never allowed to grow it: since             
 Forever…                                                        
About … [Drum roll]                                                               
How to prepare this… [more drum
roll]                                                                                                
This new found wonder drug  

                                                                                                        
For the                                                                                   

                          
Usual: mere few Billions more…?                                     

From our formerly frozen fiscus… And                               
We will sell more sandwiches!!!
And they shall give the project… Our famous      
Momentum….

Yes, the Presidential SONA was                                         
More than usually blunt at times: and said                  
Finally                                                                           
That :…

“We are looking into the possibility                                             
of evaluating ways                                                                
of improving                                                                  
Schools … Sometime soon…                                                
And…
Supplying Lavatories…”                                                                                    
Because” [enigmatic pause]                                                                             

                           
“Good choices always provide comfort….”
———————————0————————

Meanwhile                                                           
Offshore we live in                                                                      
Orwell’s ‘War of Worlds’ on Morphed out                
Television screens                                                     
Again                                                                                          
As the gift wrap of Eternity                                                                                           Envelopes us in good                                            
Intentions… And the awful Koloniste                       
Klass back in Groland
Face off with                                                                     
Bears…
And Firmia spells out a strategy                                       
that once brought… Pearl Harbour                                                                                                

                       
While back here, the Prez.                                                
Does the finger’s touch thing for left                                
and right                                                                              
fervently wishes for                                                   
Some Antediluvian dinobaby era:                    
 Harry whatsis…An AI Groda[sic]                                        
Wizard entity; to whisk their                                                       
Wands:                                                                                       

                                        
And make it all go away….                                                           

The crowd disperses                                                     
clutters the foyers                                              
mutter expletives                                                                
like virgins despoiled,                                                      
once again
rush to cluster…                                                                      
What the
F*%#!!???!!               

——————-0—————–

Until a moment of routine glazed                       
Konfektion reminds us….                                                                              

                     
We are here…

—————————–0————————–
I’m drinking Koffee.” He said.                                                                                         
This is a Bar not a Koffee                                            
Shop…

I want koffee…                                                                                        
I never said I didn’t                    
Want booze…
If I can’t get it, I’ll go
some                                                                            
Place where they serve both!

Oh.
Sorry.
Off course. You can                                                 
Have Koffee                                                                  
What booze would                                              
You like?

Kane… I’ll have a bottle…                     
We haven’t got any Kane.                                                                                               
So.  You make it diffikult hey…?                                        
First no koffee: now                                                            
No Booze?                                                                                     
So I’ll settle for the koffee.

You have to have booze…                                                                                           
You haven’t got it…                                                                  
So you can’t give it to me…

I see.                                                                                                                                           
Well we’ll meet with          Our                                                                                                  
Suppliers and… And…
And have discussions to                                             
Think about what we can do…                                                 
Before the winter break arrives…  

Would you like a sandwich though?
It is almost stale…They said…                                                                                                              
Twelve people clapped.                                                      
At least                                                                            
They think it was twelve?                                         

Perhaps?

We thought the Prez was blunt again: when                      
He said more thought
was needed on most things…  

Yes. Ok. A sandwich will do… for now. And                                                                                                      
A well decorated; curling beautifully
at the edges, like a
Good, fine bread saamie:,                                                 
Is passed over by                                                                           
The relieved guardians                                                       
At the barely used City Hall: who                                     
Felt well used again… hardly energised                              
As yet another annual SONA                                             
Sandstorm Passed                                                                                            
By….

Jakari ‘22

Welcome Amazon Reader

Firstly, let me welcome Amazon literary searchers to my home warehouse site. My assumption is that you are here because you are part of the small slice of readers who enjoy poetry, or, that you represent the slightly larger slice of readers who are intrigued at the idea of a ‘blood and guts’ tale of murder, intrigue, lust and looting; being presented in a poetic, allegoric: and deeply dekonstrukted format.
 

Secondly, a point I have made before. I do not “choose” to write poetry… Poetry chooses me and has done for more than fifty years… I don’t know why. It simply arrives randomly and demands to be noted down… At first during a childhood in which I hid from reality through performance poetry; and champion competitive storytelling: before I ever read any of the books I list below… Well, excluding James Joyce and Jack Kerouac: both read when i was 14.

I have for the moment, chosen four collections for your consideration….
 

Upfront then, let me say that I am writing mainly for your entertainment… and hopefully to tease your imagination.

Three parts of my ‘Azanian Quartet’ are available for you to access with ease. The first two parts are what I have described above: simple old style crime, blood n guts tales of murder, intrigue, looting, lust and retribution, delivered from, and about a place, where these activities are [and always have been] a normal way of life.

The Buffalo Hunters is a single issue story.
The longer, ‘Ashanti Raider’ has been presented as seven episodes in a serialised form.
 

They are also presented in an allegorical format that strips away many cherished features of narrative prose… while still retaining all the ingredients of a gripping tale.
 

Part Three [online on this site for 12 years now, as a podcast cyber serial], and Part Four [an upcoming attraction] peep into a possible background and future.

The settings are [in part each] after the climate changes that are now operating in full force: have had their unpredictable: but nonetheless inevitable way. And while they involve all the above features: I add to them the dimensions one expects, in what I call “Survival Sci-Fi”. 
 

Because at heart I am a poet; who was formally, in professional, pre-retirement life, a semi reluctant educator in the varied fields of applied economics, that I blended with history; all names and places are wrapped in metaphor.
 

This is mainly because when disaster strikes, our reflexive human instinct is to apportion blame … And one can hardly blame the Planet on which we live; when it doesn’t enjoy the dumber aspects of what we do:  to enjoy the pleasures of life… and jealously guard our advantages.
 

And then of course my use of metaphor is due to habit….

The first half century of my life was lived in a vicious, incompetent and thoroughly nasty, fascist police State… that eventually imploded.

The experience of speaking out clearly in such an environment, was one that brought routine misery in its wake. This blog would be almost endless were I to elucidate on that.

So one developed the habit of hiding one’s thoughts and messages, as much as possible: and old habits die hard, as they say.
 

So this is the only place where you will meet me. I eschew social media. I do this, firstly, because I have come to realise that it is; in its currently monetised form, a more sophisticated version of 19th and 20th century ‘junk mail’:  mediums, with which I had considerable professional familiarity.
 

Secondly I feel that, when [social media] platforms can simply, at a flick of a switch, “cancel” and de-platform , for instance, the President of the world’s biggest current Empire, someone with 75 million followers… then there is no point in building readership in somebody else’s turf, over which I have pretty zero control. At 75 years, I have no time to be, nor interest in: being ‘cancelled’.
 

So welcome to my world. Take a chance on what a poet who has justifiable reasons for describing himself as a Prekarian poet writes; and feel free to express your view in the manner Amazon gives you….

It is enough for me that I have written. I have no control over the outcome

To date no one has ever told me they dislike what I write, even though some have threatened me with death for saying things they didn’t want to hear… Presumably because the words echoed truths they preferred to keep hidden.
 

Buy, read, enjoy.
 
**************************
 

PS:   I note from my perusing of other’s works, that it is fashionable to list those writers whose work has had an influence on them.
 

Since I am 75 and wake up each day amazed that I am still here. I am putting as much of my life’s work up on Amazon as I can, while I am still around to do it. To rephrase what John Lennon famously said: “Life was what happened while one was fooling around with other plans”. I have collected some 10,000 plus books in my personal library over a lifetime: and all have had something that I took from them. I shall not, however, list them all….

I will simply name the most significant authors, for this purpose here, in the order in which I thought about them. There are many, many others who are not perhaps relevant here; but have been important.
 

Some [below] impacted on my philosophy; while others impacted on how I chose to write stories… which I discovered to be more difficult, than simply telling them for competitions, or to sell things.
 

Friedrich Nietzsche… Who taught us to take control of our own lives. [My collection ‘Rehearsing Nietzsche’ was based on a year playing the role of that great philosopher for the International Nietzsche Convention in 2000 CE.]. Others:

Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfred Bester, Frank Herbert, Camille Paglia. Hannah Arendt.

Thomas Stearns Eliot, Robert Frost, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. William Shakespeare… [My role as Mark Anthony, for instance, was recorded for a Canadian Television program in 1978… And my performance as Tybalt,[1976] caused a stir; mostly when my epee flew from my hand, on ‘dying’, and stuck into the floor between the feet of a Rebel Prime Minister of a Rebel country, seated in the front row of the theatre… So beginning an unpopularity that contributed to my Shona name: Jakari.

Later my Sundown Theatre Company’s production of a politically ‘correct’ version of Othello; with “first time in Afrika” appropriately colour coded principal players: won best production and best actor for 1978, and further affirmed my unpopularity with the Prime Minister.].

Continuing….

Jack Kerouac [Hanif Kureishi advised that Kerouac should never be read by anyone over 30… I read The Dharma Bums at 14… and later understood Kureishi’s admonition. Too late though. The damage had been done.].
James Joyce, Gunter Grass, Stieg Larson [and his various successors] Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Peter Hoeg, Umberto Eco, Carl Hiaasen, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus.

Tom Stoppard [Best actor award, me: playing Aston in “The Caretaker”] Andrea Dworkin, Richard Dawkins.
 

Among many writers from Afrika: JM Coetzee, Herman Charles Bosman, Charles Van Onselen, Breyten Breytenbach, N.P. Van Wyk Louw, Ingrid Jonker [in whose honour I named ‘The Jonker Memorandum’a Podcast cyber serial on this NicholasJakari website since 2010], Athol Fugard, Credo Mutwa, Wole Soyinka

[I also produced and directed Soyinka’s ‘Kongi’s Harvest’ in a theatrical performance in 1979. The production contributed to my unpopularity with an incoming and upcoming “Kongi”… type Diktator: Robert [Bob the Roz] Mugabe. And Jakari was born.

Kongi was the last overtly political play to be produced in Zimbabwe for more than 35 years.
 

As I said I have more than 10,000 books in my library and have read many more than that.
 

Enjoy my work, as I have enjoyed and learned from others.
 

Cheers.

The Great Reveal

First Blog 2021 2020 The Great Reveal
I wish all my readers a more successful year than 2020 was allowed to be… We have all learned many things: and must now put them to use.

It was also a year of many firsts, not only for me, but for almost everyone on the planet… for there are few places that have not been impacted by Covid-19. The most important first, for those of us who live in the more competitive parts, of global societies: it was the great reveal… All debt and no savings in pursuit of the financialised grail, left us [at too many National levels] high and dry, as public health systems buckled: under the unplanned for assault by nature, at its most vindictive.

And we are still no more than half way through this catastrophe. Financial systems fall apart due to the vanishing of hundreds of millions of marginal customers; yet stock markets plunge upwards at multiples more reminiscent of Japan 1980’s that anything seriously good… The promise of a sluice way of free money to the fortunate… and the horror of Depression for the GiG workers and the broad service sector… until?

So for all of us it this was the first of Firsts: the fundamental ineptitude and incompetence of the historical governance struktures. They had grown fat on decades of good living; that had corroded old rules and agreements: with the result that an outcome is in play that will change all our existences, in this simulation model we are entering… For never was Dylan more spot on with “The Times They are a Changing”.

I think of it as a SciFi year… I write Sci Fi crime adventure action stories against a backdrop that includes an idea called Basic Pay; or Universal Basic Income: as some others call it… Basic Pay is an idea that percolates, especially, in the footnote episodes in the series called The Jonker Memorandum. I took Asimov and Co’s “Credits”: and gave them some economic substance. I was writing what I believed to be fiction… : And here it is in real life … Wow!

Hence: SciFi year.

The closing argument over the two thousand dollars was deeply satisfying… Now we have to convince those converts how it can be paid for.

So with the change of guard immanent at the [so-called] White House… recently the scene of action more reminiscent of 1789 than 2021… The Global chess board is once again in play after a four-year delay… and many players have shown their hands … What hand will the former Senator from the tax haven First State of Delaware play… And let me say that this bloggist wishes him a long life to repair that which needs repair…

To close

This, shorter than standard for a blog of mine [new year’s resolution. After 21 months of writing 22 syllable poems every day… I am going to keep blogs to 500 words and so this is already too long.

Earlier above I spoke of nature at its most vindictive… For me nature was also a great reveal this past year; when first, huge parts of Siberia caught fire: and then later maybe somewhere else in Siberia, a 40,000-year-old Rhino was apparently un permafrosted.

Now, by way of relevant meaningful digression; some forty years ago this bloggist was escorted by security from the great hall at the university in what was then then not yet called Zimbabwe in 1979…

My crime, from the audience perspective … university students… was to point out, that trustable reports suggested that while the Soviet Union had some impressive space achievements they did not
somehow have the technology to dig through some sixty metres of permafrost to get the oil beneath it… So I gave them ten years before they imploded… The crowd were enraged and with chairs flying I left… The rest is history.

Now some mere four decades later… frozen territory that stood the test of time for forty thousand years has melted sufficient for such a reveal: as a forty-thousand-year old creature.

So if the planet is melting so much that Siberia is not only melting; but catching fire [along with other [places that have never known fire]. Then what if the long frozen highlands of Tibet, being mined for water by the occupiers of Tibet; and sent through tunnels north: inadvertently moved some ancient virus, that had on completion of Gaia’s last hit job been deep frozen… forty millennia back.

That’s the quick version … For your further entertainment here is a cluster of 22 syllable poems to close off on that topic
WhatIf: Fake News alert

SoHere
IsSomeNewsI
MadeUpWhatIfTheCo
RonaVirusIsAPlagueWrought
InAn

CientPre
BiblikalTime
ThatWreakedItsTollAndThen
WasDeepFrozenUntilThePla
NetWarms

UpMore
ThanRequiredIce
HasMeltedRiversRun
AndTunnelsSpunToMoveWater
Around

FromHigh
ErUpSouthTo
DrierDownNorthToFeed
DesertSandsWhereNothingGrowsBut
Peepil

YetBats
LiveInTunnels
FeedOnPassingNibbles
OfFleetFlawedFoodIngestCarrion
FromIce

SetFree
FromMeltingAn
CientFroZenLakesAndBats
InTurnIngestedBySnakesThen
Humans

AndLo
InTheWaysOf
NatureAVirusIs
RebornStartsItsPointNoPointBut
KlenZing
Jakari[‘20]

End of Invented News Story folks
Be well and safe until next we pass thru. Loves ya all
Nicholas

SouthernNotes: ThucididesRulz

“YouCan’t

TakeThe TrainTo

BoAnymore”SaysIt

IsFollyToPermitFreedom

For All

TaBle

SetForLunchMil

TonRegretsOverLoad

JM”DownPlonkWhileTheFedGoes

Modern

HongKong”s

DayIsDoneA

NewColdWarHasJustBe

GunModernMonetaryTheory

HasWon

Jakari[July2020]

The opening lines are taken from Chapter12: “The Vicious Circle”… See: “WhyNationsFail” Daron Acemoglu+JR… Bo being the, once ‘end of the line’, for the railway going through Mendeland in Sierra Leone. It was destroyed deliberately to limit the development of political rivals. And in China political rivalry amongst the cities is allegedly intense… Total kontrol means just that. Keep the lid on tight… Too many people were obviously made nervous by what happened last year in HK.

The rest of the XapZi indicates the poet’s interpretation, of the reasoning behind “Mainland’s/Beijing’s control obsession… And was written in response to Mainland China taking effektive kontrol of HongKong this past week… [Now to be known as HonkKonk].

The takeover should not be a surprise: it is one of the planks, in the Thoughts of Chairman Ji, published a year or two back. And there has never been a better moment to strike. Britain is impotent… And is ‘cut loose’, no longer linked to EU, which could be big enough, to prove worrisome. The former Lessee it is an aging toothless bulldog that is barely capable of running itself… The deathrate in care homes from CV-19 has been horrendous; and the “Amiable Rotter” [Johnson] hasn’t been himself since his own dip into the hellish world represented by Covert-19… So the place is being run by a shadow man.

Thus the ‘hijack’ of an agreement, made, obviously, not in ‘good’ faith: one step two step… The tactic repeats an ancient mantra… You are distrakted… You are sick… Now is my chance to kill you and take your stuff: For me…

So the chance has been taken. They don’t come often so wait is not an option.There will be “disappearances”. Not yet. This is not time to use the Tong approach, presented with such careful braggadacio… during a seriously bruising, deeply lively, Hardtalk session on the BBC currently. Mr Ronnie Tong, revealed deeply felt rage. No now would be time for more Yin.

They would appear to have violated a treaty. It was a post kolonial game. They don’t really have to care. Nonetheless they are agressively defensive… There is a curious loss of face here and there is rage to contain it.

They are also used to getting their own way… with a billion plus subjects. Plus they know they have the [so-called] West over the proverbial barrel…. In many different ways… So they have taken a fateful step… It is a long time since a world leader took such a step… It is a step with confused outcomes.

In practical terms: no one is going to fight over Hong Kong. There may be some compromised whining at the UN. There will be some tut tutting; and a few deeply watered down resolutions will hit the veto button: and life will go on. The media will move elsewhere and so will the money… Honk Konk’s day is done…
Money needs freedom: to work its magic…

So who is going to blink…? No one.

The people who own/manage all the ‘money’, in the Casino that is the world economy, don’t fare well under the Koronoptikon strukture of the super surveillance State… and will slowly slip away… Then there is a reality: growth on the exponential scale of the past decade is already history… At rekord zero oriented interest rates for at least the next decade consi=olidation was inevitable… a world on margin already can only push the margins into ever more vapourous territory.

There will of course be a shell to be watch, but freedom has its own demands… Money is not ‘real’. In modern form it is all digital… and as Spengler put it: Money is a ‘way of thought’. There are no vaults of gold and silver for the Chinese Party heirachy to ‘obtain’. … Only digitalia in the form of noughts and ones. These will vanish into the dark night: when danger threatens… And it has no longer threatened: but “Become and set”… to use yet another Spenglerian phrase.

China has an amazing track rekord with the Chinese. Their Utilitarian based philosophy has permitted most of a billion people to have been uplifted. They have created the greatest comeback in economic history. Routinely though, success breeds arrogance: and entitlement. Mr Tong presented this with deep contempt.

Their hypothesis is [presumably] that they will gamble on the greed of the wealthy, in HongKong; and the compliance of the pacified ‘masses’ now atomised through lockdown…. And the probability is that they will be korekt to do so…

Hong Kong will however, more probably become the first Financial Detroit of the 21st Century… It will merge as a suburban part of a massive Pearl River Delta Kolektive. It wont happen tomorrow; in the same way that the first ‘disappearances’ wont… well not the noticeable ones anyway.

Nonetheless both are now set onto an inexorable path. A path that allegedly seeks the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people… Are slaves happier then: than free people?

The greater folly: Mainland China does not actually need two State Controlled Financial centres… in the same way that the USA doesn’t need two [relatively] free market NewYorks. In the ideological view HonkKonk served a useful historikal purpose,. That purpose is effektively rendered obsolete now: notwithstanding the ‘Systems’ stated resistance to reality currently. And the obsolescence has as much to do with the ‘Western’ [repeat] response formula for handling the Covid economic meltdown… 2008 on bloated Steroids.

Then “They” [Central Banks] used a radikal interpretation of a competing ekonomic hypothesis, called Modern Monetary Theory… It is really how the world sort of toddled along for the centuries before Capitalism evolved… and until recently was barely ever mentioned… so it seems to be reworked Modern.

So while the real world outside China is immobilised the dragon steps out of its lair… to sniff the air: rancid with Covid inadeqacy.

The purpose of the State is to serve the people who vote it into existence. A State whose prime legitimacy lies in its coercive power, is therefore not ‘for the people by the people…”: even if it is avowedly “For the People” and notwithstanding their track record: of scintillating success. They are tacitly, in defensive mode, having grasped noThing: in what could become an appalling mis-step… Or perhaps not. We shall see.

So HK becomes a 21st century sacrificial offerning… dead meat waiting for the freezer. Shanghai rulz. Maybe. Money needs to be free to grow, so Honk Konk: is history from July1. [It was already considered history back in 1980… Hence Dubai…] Whether the currently obsessive State will be content with the outcome is moot… We are often dissatisfied with the reality presented by what what we dream of when it finally arrives. A different Bo is testimony to how the complex incentivisers can also just go… deeply awry.

Regrettably: ideology generally trumps reasoned sanity… [Even he does it without]

Nonetheless: China does seemingly hold all the cards. Well, presently anyway. And there are no other cards too evident. It will be interesting to see whether the great New York Windbag can manage anything more than huff and puff. Perhaps sensibly he is at work on his re-elektion bid… And if the Chinese want to get funny over one of their pawns then… then chill… He is looking a bit punchy.

Perhaps the Chinese leadership envisages a looming konflict, after the present Kontest between Bad and Badder among the Firmians runs out. Then they have to face down whichever team wins. Bit of Khrushchev revival method acting koming up at the UN. So they are closing a link: acknowledging that an historical tipping point moment has arrived… Thucidides rulz

In which case it is a move worthy of LaoTse.

Enjoy

Jakari[July2020]

*Koronoptikon [ex Economist]… a variation on Panopticon [ask Google.] Describes the evolution of the Surveillance State; the magnitude of which has become apparent, noted, particularly, but not exclusively, with China’s response to the plague that has engulfed the planet.
* Other Bo: Bo Xilai… Rising star in the Communist Party… fell from grace in a stunning fall via a factional konflikt exacerbated with murder and a list of other bad things.

Tangible Liability

Tangible Liability

Social/ SilenceOnKey/ TopiksAnOldMemik/ HabitWeMustNowGraspOrFace/ TheEnd

Ten weeks ago who would have said that the unemployment rate in the world’s biggest economy would have gone from ‘brag rights’ lowest level in 70 years: to worst level on record. Thus we are introduced to some massive damage to the world’s progress, as we survey the liaility cost of a predictable problem.

Costs you will remember make that liability tangible

The Tangible Liability inherent in under-investment securing our position in the multiverse of imaginary wealth and prosperity that we call a global economy: has revealed the myth of our brave new world.

Ironically, a bookkeeping rule prevents us from going some considerable way to solving the most problematic part of the catastrophe we currently face… the disappearance of consumption expenditure when people have no work..

The rule requires that certain classes of Assets reflected on a business’s financial records, most specifically on the Balance Sheet; may only be recorded at a nominal and prudent value because they are INTANGIBLE Assets.The value cannot be measured.

One such INTANGIBLE asset is called DATA.

So a business may have a million dollars’ worth of bath plugs on its books at a value that can be measured: e.g. 10 bath plugs to the Dollar= tangible asset

On the other hand, the brand name of the business may be famous, like Perrier once was; yet the value as an “intangible Asset” as reflected on the balance sheets, is normally modest: relative to the turnover of the business. Its value became noticeable when some bad news killed a multi-billion dollar business in hours.

Value here is abstract and basically non-measurable… other than through proxy formulas that often themselves are no more than attitude surveys. Or when the shit hits the fan.

So when value is abstract the rules of the Basle Agreements on Accounting standards require, reasonably, that the value be a prudent assessment: erring on conservative.

Thus; along with such quaint ideas as Goodwill, and Brand Identity: Data takes its place in the ranks of intangibility. Apparently: In practice DATA ranks generally low; often at almost absurdly low numbers, in the books of the standard tech or less tech business.

Check Facebook for instance. It beautifully exploits its vast data holdings to produce 29 Billion dollars[US] of income… But the data itself doesn’t even get a mention in the balance sheet. Presumably it is there somewhere: but not noticeably.

However, prudent accounting practices can sometimes be, almost foolishly, understating risk regarding the asset… Plus risk can often impact only after some time after the event. Thus did Cambridge Analytica demonstrate the real tangibility: of the liability that was incurred through sloppy data management… As does the Covert 19 virus now.

The basic ‘bookkeeping’ rules that require data to be shown as an intangible asset at a prudent value that may see DATA being less highly valued than its records allow…. While the corresponding costs [ie;liability] of holding the DATA hacked are huge.The market understands value better than bookkeepers in this case.

Nonetheless; the facts of life are that all Assets sit on the credit side of the account: because they are OWNED.

So let it be with DATA

And the OWNERS are the PEOPLE who supplied it.

Another way to look at this: is that the OWNERS thus have EQUITY in the data.

So. The world is faced with a catastophe. This virus is here and usually they stay.
So this disruption will continue and we face a global depression that could be worse than any ever known. Universal Basic Income is a 4th Industrial Revolution Tool that can alleviate pain.

The world has changed and now runs on DATA… something in which the Owners have equity that is not being realised.

So the solution starts with a change in the rule that says data has an intangible value because it is turning out, that the damage could see the end of all things that we have ever known.

Therefore i postulate the Thesis that:
Data holds the key to a Universal Basic Income…
That Universal Basic~Income Is Not Founded On the illusion of infinite Debt because it coomes from the Credit side of the business.
Debt is the short version of Debit the opposite of equity

TheEar/ LySciFiWri/ TersLikeHeinleinAsi/ MovAndHerbertPlayedAWorldCalled/ Credits/

Those credits belong to those who gave them … We the People.

Go Figure

Loves ya all

An Empty Vessel


ThereWas

NoPLanNoI

DeaOfWhatWouldBe

DoneToTheEconomyWhen

TheyWon

EachMem

BerArrivedWithTheir

OwnAgendaAllOf

WhichWereNeverFormallyA

Dopted

SoIt

WasCornerA

MarketSqueezeLikeOrange

TillAllTheJuiceWasSuckedOutAnd

ThenRun

Every so often you haphazardly encounter information that stuns you with its absolute simplicity. And suddenly a light shines and a whole lot of things make total sense.

On the morning of the 7th there were three voices on the radio talking. It was a program that started after I had climbed uncomfortably into a hot soaking bath; so I wasn’t going to move to turn it off… or change the Station. And it was loud so I had to listen.

The talk that unfolded was what the station calls a ‘mediated conversation’. It was hosted by the current incumbent to SAFM ‘s AM Live production’s. The current resident host is one, Stephan Grootes…

In Summary: They were a pair of professors who had written a book evaluating the current Mzanzian ruling party’s historical shifts in economic policy… They themselves it seems were as stunned by their discovery as Mr Grootes was. And I was too: when they shared it.

They were setting out apparently to discover why so many critics of the Party’s performance argued something that I had always understood to be a valid position… That the party had veered from their chosen course: and betrayed the revolution. It seems that we all had an idea associated with the freedom charter. That stuff wasn’t ever ANC policy however. They were deeply pragmatic, apparently.

Thus the venerable profs discovered that the party didn’t have an economic policy statement in the first place from which to veer.

Knowing now, that the former ‘slaves’, who were unilaterally handed the keys to the throne room after spending three hundred years in the Darkroom; were as ignorant as I was, regarding the art of governance: makes me feel much better… And deeply admiring of their sheer Chutzpah that had the whole planet fooled… They were simply a team of brilliant confidence tricksters, who got away with stealing a whole country from under the noses of all the world’s warmest hearted liberal lefties… What’s not to love?

Of course with all Kills [It is Afrika after all] there has to come a time when the Povo get a chance to feed… And the cupboard is increasingly bare and new ideas to bring in new flows of prospective loot are proving awkward: So here’s the latest “plan”.

Take the choicest remaining piece from the carcass… Steal the worker’s pensions… Easy peasy.

So right now the ruling party are about to close the deal. Their proposal, mooted by the fellows who run the main Union grouping in the country: that the public workers pension fund should be well looted for as much as what is in it. The idea is to replace all the loot, stolen from the national power supplier, Eskom. That loot was taken with a ‘cash for debt’ arrangement. The looters created a debt burden that can never be repaid.

The draw against the worker’s pensions never needs to be repaid

I do rekolekt once before, having to vote, as a teacher; for the former evil, thieving: pre-revolutionary government’s proposal. It was during the closing days of the former evil regime… The battle against the Cubans in Angola had bankrupted the country. They would pay us an increase on the misery money we received for spending a few hundred hours a month slaving over a hot timetable. The deal was that the increase had to be paid for from the teacher’s part of the pension fund… And we had to vote for it.

Teachers voted for money today … I was always then, and forever afterwards, a temporary teacher. That meant no pension fund deductions from my miserable pittance of a salary. I had always believed they were unsustainable. That they would inevitably be looted as the vote determined then: and the global trend to Negative interest rates subtly demonstrates today. So I never had a permanent pension penalty type job… I didn’t care about the pensions.

Back then the increases were approved:and mostly taxed backthrough inflation. The pension money ‘loan, was eventually classed as a bad loan; and written off. Thus the money was never, to my rekolektion, repaid.

The current proposal from a ruling class we now know to have ‘apparently’ no economic policy at all; is the simple Mafia methodology of the well-practiced enforcer. Either you let us steal the money to pay off the debt that we had to incur, for us to get away with appropriating all the money we siphoned away… Or … [because we know it needs electricity] … we switch off the economy. As a late struggle hero once famously observed “We didn’t join the Struggle to stay poor.”

Mzansi’s economics have once again been demonstrated to be the economics of expediency… a lively tribute to Adam Smithsonian Self-Interest on supreme steroids.

Well Done to those professors, who shall remain as anonymous as all the people they apparently interviewed for their hilarious tome.

!NiK[‘20]

Reviewing a “Amiable Rotter”

Victory

PumpIt
UpLordBoris
OfKlevesHeWhoUni
TedPrekariats*ToElites
AndWon

!NiK[‘19]

A while back in one of my blogs I referred to the “Amiable Rotter” of Greyfriers/Billy Bunter notoriety. The Rotter [for the confused: I refer to el Boris the new “Ruler” of England] won then and has won again. This time with the biggest majority in a generation: he is the Lion King for the moment.

It was almost inevitable… even though no media that I followed, predicted such a landslide… At best it would, many hoped, be another hung parliament. The part of the [so-called] Left called Labour, overestimated their tame fodder’s preference for a full-on post-Marxist style confiscation of things; and its rump resolved on getting a job done, in place of fancy chat shows signifying: literally NO THING….

And so the amiable rotter has pulled the biggest electoral heist in recent memory… in fact in more than a generation. He has separated the Precariat* from the historical Working class.

The significance of what is and has happened is still being processed and even denied by the populace. And of course: it may easily turn into hell on earth.

But what if it doesn’t? The Alchemist famously said that which happens once may never happen again but that which happens twice will almost certainly happen a third time. Leave won twice.

Now: full disclosure. I do not live in the UK and was/am firmly a Remainer. I did not think that the … English had it in them to go for the moon, while free bread was on offer. I was wrong… perhaps. So since I am a democrat one must accept that the majority want to move on… hoping that it turns out ok. But it’s like leaving home when, you’ve grown up… not easy… Must be done.

So: The next fifty years may be humanity’s last fifty years as an organised entity…. Well for a while anyway. If the emerging new world is to survive it needs to move forward into the future as it is unfolding: not rush off in pursuit of a Luddite past.

Seemingly; everything about this “Amiable Rotter” suggest that he has a vision of himself as the megalith giant of the 21st century… The man who renewed prosperity. And so I salute him as a man of practical purpose… Who may have a breadth OF VISION that is palpable.

Thus far he reveals someone whose destiny does not relate to renewing the mortgage every five years. He is however concerned with being remembered, a thousand years from now… Most excellent fellow: if that is true. There hasn’t been a different candidate who better deserved the job… Well maybe the comedian who grabbed Ukraine and created a modern reality show called the Impeachment’s Charade… But. That is another tale.

Boris has captured this emerging Precariat* class for the moment. Labour has to realise its historical hegemony amongst the broad proletariat has been fatally undermined… and so far their loss has simply been seen as a clumsy error.

At a fundamental level the goals of the old/new [non?] Working class and Professor Standing’s emerging “Precariat” are in opposition: one, the latter, being aspirational: the other, those who actually voted Labour: support seeking and/or radical left type revolutionary. Boris has an epoch changing opportunity. (I would also humbly suggest that sustaining his winning formula should include UBI.]

Aah. So to close this summer blog from a place feeling the edges of climate shifts… Jozi northwest central…. My home in my own private forest in Afrika… six kms from the financial heart of same: Afrika. Let me hope you all had a wonderful festive season and look toward a great 2020 and… As I write this, missiles have rained down on random runways in Iraq: and President Tsunami pauses his finger on the Tweeter button…. Which gives me a fun lead into what I call the “Impeach Tsunami” Misdirektion of the year… ….

Those who have frequented my pages may know that I set out in March last year to write a XrappZi a day, for the rest of the year. The year finished with about 375 of the 22 syllable poems in five lines each. [See above opener for those who may be confused for a moment.]

So to close the year I’ve chosen to feed you some of my favourites, for reasons that may now seem obvious. The one up front [about which I have just reminded you] commented on Boris’ amazing victory. The cluster that follows below were all written, during the same seven-day period this year following the event described in the first two stanzas…. So I joined them up… Because they treased me at the time… And given the [US] Democrats apparent reluctance to pursue their first round sucker punch … perhaps I have touched a nerve… You choose.

Here it is: Enjoy: XrappZi J# 16-20

Ex[s]tinktionRulz
WhatGoes
UpMayNever
ComeDownForSuchWas
TheStateOfATeenageFrown
MostCurt.

Greta
ThunbergCriedOut
HowDareYouPutEx[s]tink
TionOnPauseTalkOfFairyTales!
Money!

SheSpoke
TheyTrembledThen
KnowingThereWasNoGo
IngBackTooManyMouthsWanting
MoreFood.

SoThey
CalledForMis
DirektionImpeachTsu
NamiDistraktNoiseHowDareWe
DrownOut.

“TwoThings
OnlyThePeo
PleDesireBreadAndCir
Cus[s]esRepublikGoneEmpire’s
NoMore”*.

!NiK[19]
With thanks to Juvenal who wrote the closing stanza [more or less] 2000 plus, years ago.
Join us as we discover the start of what may, for a time, be the “roaring twenties” revisited: and hopefully not the kind of roaring Australia is presently experincing. .
Loves you all
!NiK
• Precariat/Prekariat: Amongst a diffuse body of work Professor Guy Standing of University of London published The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, also called a Transformative class. Boris has captured this class for the moment. Labour has to realise its historical hegemony amongst the broad proletariat has been fatally undermined.