This episode of It's the end of the world
as we know it and I feel fine
was made possible by contributions
from slaves like you.
Spank you very much!
Bill Clinton had become president
with the vision of using political power
to transform America.
But he had been persuaded
to give away that power
to the financial markets
with the promise that this time
they would create a new kind of stability.
A new kind of democracy
free of the corruption of elite politics.
But it was now becoming clear
that in reality, America's political power
had just been transferred to another elite
-- the financiers on Wall Street.
And when faced by a crisis,
they had simply used that power
to rescue themselves.
In the process,
far from creating stability,
their actions were leading to a chaotic
and far more unstable world.
Gooooooooooooooood morning slaves
and welcome to another sedition of
It’s the End of the World as we Know it
and I Feel Fine... the show where
you don’t have to be a monk to discover
the sound of one hand clapping
Motherfucker!
That hit me in the ear!
I am your host the Stimulator,
and if you’re a Gen-Xer like me
y’all probably remember the early 90s
as a magical fucking time.
NAS had just dropped Ill-matic...
all over the world peeps were
getting fucked up and going to raves...
and we all got our first taste of
surfing the world wide web.
The first thing that you need to know
is that the Internet is amazing
and it's changing every day.
Once you've learned how to get
online yourselves, you'll start seeing
web pages everywhere.
TV shows have them, schools,
Disney World... even the White House.
What's a web page...
something ducks walk on?
And then, to top it off
in 1993, the United Snake’s smooth
sax-playing President, Billy Clint
told us all about a great new trade deal
called NAFTA
that was going to make the world a better
more prosperous fucking place.
We have made a decision now,
that will permit us to create
an economic order in the world
that will promote more growth,
more equality,
better preservation of the environment,
and a greater possibility of world peace.
Buuuuuuuuut like all politicians,
Slick Willy was full of shit.
Blue collar workers in the United Snakes
and Klanada got totally fucked by NAFTA,
with millions losing their jobs
to corporate outsourcing,
while millions of independent
Mexican farmers lost their livelihood,
leading to a crisis of mass migration
that has continued, unabated,
to this fucking day.
Fast-forward more than twenty years
and politicians are still
up to the same fucking tricks.
They confuse the BAD trade deals
in the past, with this one,
which is the first time when
we've been able to get one
that's even steven.
Understandably, folks in labour
and some progressives
are suspicious generally,
because of the experiences they saw
in the past.
But, my point is, don't fight
the last war, wait and see
what we actually have in THIS deal.
The latest incarnation of NAFTA - the TPP,
or Totalitarian Proletarian Pulverizer,
has been expanded to include
an additional nine countries,
and has been dubbed by its critics
as NAFTA on steroids.
After years of top-secret negotiations
these Taco Pinching Pandejos
finally released the text of the agreement
back in November, and since then,
high-priced corporate trade lawyers
from the United Snakes have added their
own special brand of legalese shit-varnish
granting corporations even more protection
for intellectual property rights.
I hereby inform you under powers
entrusted to me under section 47
paragraph 7 of council order #438476,
that Mr. Buttle Archibald, residing at
412 North Tower, Shangrila Towers
has been invited to assist the Ministry
of Information with certain inquiries,
and that he is liable to certain
financial obligations as specified in
council order RB/CZ/907/X.
Sign here please.
This subtle re-write will have grave
implications on the costs of medicine
in poorer countries in South America
and Southeast Asia, and will
force governments in all twelve countries
to criminalize even small
instances of copyright infringement.
Uhh.... Stim.
Yeah, I know... Agitator.
We’re going to motherfuckin jail!
Downloading films is stealing!
If you do it....
you WILL face the consequences.
The Throbbing Purple-headed Peoplefucker
was signed on February 4th,
in Auckland, New Zealand,
as thousands of peeps hit the streets
to denounce their government
as the puppets of the international
corporate elite that they are.
Massive protests have also rocked the
streets of Chile and Lima, Peru
where 5,000 militants threw down
on Thursday February 25th,
lobbing molotovs at the pigs,
who responded with live fucking rounds.
We reject the TPP because it's
another step, another attempt by
the government that bends its knees
before capitalists and global corporations
Buuuuuut by far the most militant protests
have taken place in Japan.
Check this shit out!
Fucking intense!
The Transnational Power Project
now only needs to be ratified by the
governments of each participating country
before it officially becomes law.
Here in Klanada...
while Justin Trudeau has yet to officially
make up his mind,
it’s pretty fucking obvious that he's
going to use his Parliamentary majority
to pass it.
Because, let’s be fucking real...
as Trudeau’s International Trade Minister
Chrystia Freeland explains, when
it comes to fucking people over...
That is my job... and the job
great Canadian companies.
And in other news, on Saturday
February 27th in Anaheim California,
anti-racist militants confronted
several members of the KKK
on their way to a racist fucking rally,
beating the living shit out of them.
During the fracas, several comrades
were stabbed -- one with the
sharpened business end of a flagpole --
and seven were arrested.
Copwatch Santa Ana,
and the LA Anarchist Black Cross are
currently accepting donations to help
cover these comrades
medical and legal bills.
For more info on how you can help,
check out my fucking website:
Last October, so-called South Africa
was rocked by a powerful student movement,
which paralyzed the country with
three weeks of intense protests
sparked by a proposed tuition increase.
Under the banner of #FeesMustFall,
thousands of pissed off students
stormed a parliamentary precinct
in Cape Town,
and marched on the headquarters of
the African National Congress, or ANC,
in Durban and Johannesburg.
This wave of struggle culminated
on October 23rd, when tens of thousands
of protestors rallied outside the office
of the country's corrupt,
neoliberal strongman, Jacob Zuma,
throwing down with the pigs
and torching several porta-potties.
Faced with the protestors'
unwavering determination,
and the sheer fucking size of the crowds,
Zuma backed down.
There will be a zero increase
of university fees.
Buuuuuuuuuuuut rather than settling
for this minor concession,
student organizers have kept their eye
on the motherfuckin prize....
namely, free universal education
and an end to the deep structural racism
that continues to divide the nation
into haves and have-nots.
Despite the fall of Apartheid in 1994,
South Africa remains one of the most
economically polarized countries on earth.
In fact, under the ANC, inequality has
only gotten worse.
Almost 80% of its population
are indigenous Africans, yet
thanks to the nation's colonial history
whites still own over 70%
of the fucking land.
And despite being the second largest
economy in Africa,
millions of its inhabitants live
in sprawling rural slums, struggling to
survive on less than a dollar per day.
Life is very rough.
There are more than 40 of us
sharing one toilet and a tap.
Zuma has been on the ropes since 2013,
after it was discovered that he spent
shit-tons of public skrilla
on opulent renovations to his casa.
In recent months, a growing movement
has been calling for him to be impeached,
and for an end to the ANC's
twenty-two year rule.
So... within this context
of political crisis, the student movement
exploded back on the scene
in mid-February to remind peeps
that shit is still fucking on.
On February 15th,
students at the University of Cape Town
erected a corrugated tin shack on campus
to highlight the lack of
affordable housing available for students.
Pigs responded with flash bang grenades,
which kicked things off.
Militants soon torched two vehicles,
including a university shuttle bus,
then proceeded to engage the po-po
in pitched street battles
late into the night.
On February 22nd,
students and campus workers
at the University of Free State
disrupted a school rugby match,
to demonstrate their opposition to
staff outsourcing, and to show solidarity
with striking workers.
Soon after the disruption, a mob
of white spectators swarmed the field
and began attacking the protestors,
in a gross display of racist violence.
Two days later
at North West University in Mafiking,
the school administrator appointed a new
Student Representative Council,
after dissolving the previous one
for being too fucking radical.
In the protests that followed,
a private security guard opened fire
with live ammunition,
with some reports suggesting that
a student was killed.
In response, militants torched
several campus buildings,
leading to a total suspension of classes.
At the time of this writing,
protests are continuing in
numerous universities across the country,
and show no signs of stopping
anytime soon.
To learn more about this situation
I recently caught up with Alex Hotz,
a member of #RhodesMustFall,
a grassroots student group
that came together in March of 2015
and which has been a major force in the
student movement ever since.
Hey Alex... how the fuck are you?
Ummm... it's a very loaded question.
I'm surviving.
For viewers who might not know,
who was Cecil Rhodes?
And why do people want his statue removed
from the University of Cape Town campus?
Cecil John Rhodes is a symbol of
white supremacy. He was a colonizer...
he was one of the first British governors
in colonized South Africa, and he
plundered the resources of this country,
genocided millions of Black people
and enslaved them, if not killed them.
But also was the founder of racialized
capitalism in this country, because he
started the first huge mining companies
which used and exploited the cheap labour
of Black people.
In recent years, university and
high school students from
so-called Quebec to Chile have
shown that when students get organized,
they can be a serious fucking force
to be reckoned with.
Can you tell us a bit about how
the current student movement
has spread throughout South Africa
and how it is organized?
We've seen the South African government
become a very repressive government that
almost kind of mimics the Apartheid state.
So there's a lot of repression...
police brutality, a clampdown on activity.
So it's been a bit difficult
to be coordinated in the same way in which
it seems the Chilean students,
the students of India, Montreal etc.
So what you find now, is a country that is
deeply polarized and students who are
entering institutions that have had
no change.. they're almost the exact same
institutions. They exist in the same way
they did under Apartheid.
And now Black students having to go into
these institutions and experience
incredible psychological and epistemic
violence, but also physical violence...
as we've seen recently from white students
management of the university, and police.
So... it's been amazing to see how
these protests have spread.
They started... at first it moved to us,
and we had a national shutdown, which we
coordinated through WhatsApp and, y'know...
facebook, etc, etc. And obviously that's
getting a little bit more difficult to do
because we know that the state, through
the National Intelligence Agency,
is trying to infiltrate our movements,
and to spy on many of us.
Last year saw an incredible level of
student mobilization for the
#FeesMustFall movement,
which ultimately succeeded in rolling back
planned tuition increases.
How were peeps involved in this movement
able to keep momentum going after
achieving its initial aims?
So I think for us, and for many of us,
it was never just about the 0% increase.
We were calling for free education,
and still call for free education, and an
ending of outsourcing at all of these
institutions.
And so while, that has been a victory
and it's been used to de-mobilize,
you know, masses of students who supported
and were active in #FeesMustFall, it was
interesting to see the masses of students
who joined #FeesMustFall, and I think
that was because it never necessarily
articulated a radical politic, in the way
in which we do in #RhodesMustFall,
where we have ideological pillars like
Black consciousness, Pan-Africanism,
Black radical feminism...
so it was able to galvanize masses of
students who not necessarily - who had
never been politicized before, and where
this was like, their first kind of
entering of marches, or protest actions.
And I think it was useful to start in that
kind of mobilization for the world,
and for South Africans to see
the police brutality and management
brutality that students faced for such
simple, nonviolent demands, and how that
was met with the violence of the state
and the violence of the institution.
So it's been very difficult, but I think
it is clear in a country with such high
inequality and poverty, and racism
where Black students are completely
alienated and marginalized from the
institutions, that free education
must happen in 2016 in order for the
Black majority in this country to be able
to enter these institutions and not be
excluded.
Because of its historic role
in the struggle against Apartheid,
the African National Congress or ANC
is seen by many people around the world
as a torch-bearer for anti-colonial struggles
more broadly.
Yet many people, including members of the
#RhodesMustFall movement, feel the ANC
has betrayed their original mission.
Why is that?
We went through a negotiated settlement
with the Apartheid regime,
which means that many of the
oppressive instruments that existed
in this country to repress, alienate,
exploit and marginalize Black people,
and oppress Black people, were left intact
--especially the economy of the country.
So, mining stayed intact.... agriculture
a bit of people retained the wealth,
white people retained the wealth.
White people retained the land...
and you never saw--Black people
to this day have not seen any kind of
redistribution, or even compensation
or reparation for what has happened to us
in this country.
So I think, for me the ANC continues
and has always been, like a buffer
and a gate-keeper for white supremacy
--white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
And their position now
as Fanon would speak of, is they are
the comprador class, the middle-man
between those who still retain power
and the Black majority.
The ANC is currently facing a challenge
from the left, coming from a new party
called the Economic Freedom Fighters,
or EFF.
What is the relationship between
the student movement and the EFF?
And do you feel that the betrayal of
the ANC has soured many South Africans'
opinions on traditional electoral politics
So the EFF, the rise of the EFF, I think
is incredibly important in this country
to challenge this notion that this
generation is apathetic, or apolitical.
And you can see the EFF, over a very short
period of time gained huge support.
And I suppose the EFF, just like the ANC
has an incredible amount of contradictions
... so many of them come from the ANC
and have grown up in the ANC, and in
other movements that are very close to
the ANC, like [inaudible], and the Young
Communist League, and the ANC League
which are all kind of linked to the ANC.
And, you know they talk about economic
freedom, etc, and nationalizing
the economy, but there's the challenge
of how within that organization
materialism through its leadership is
kind of accepted, and it goes unchallenged
South Africa has a variety of other powerful
social movements, such as the country's
trade unions, and the shack dwellers
movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo or AbM,
which I understand has a large section
in Cape Town.
Has there been much overlap and solidarity
between students and some of these
other social movements?
I think for us, to see the rise
in social movements like
Abahali baseMjondolo, and the way in which
they raised and put the issue of housing
and land to the fore of political
discussion and debates has been
incredibly important.
But I think what's also been really
interesting in our engagements as young
people with these political organizations
and social movements, to say that as young
people... from one generation to another,
you know, "We are forging our own struggle
and we are fighting our own battles...
and we would like your support.
But in a way that is not patronizing,
is not telling us what to do, but really
being able to learn together and
unlearn together and build a bigger
broader movement. Because we know that
we cannot do this by ourselves."
Anything else you'd like to add?
Maybe just to say that I think
it's critical that we build genuine
trans-national solidarity as young people
and as students across the world.
So to support the students of India,
to support the students of Chile, Brazil,
South Africa, Canada, Kenya...
who are struggling for the same things
we are... in countries where we are
repressed, brutalized, etc.
I think we can learn a lot from each other,
and support each other.
Thanks Alex!
And that about does it for this sedition
of It's the End of the World as we Know it
And I feel Fine.
If you'd like to find out the names of the
songs we played, the movies we sampled,
or to subscribe to our podcast,
or email list.... just visit my
fuckin website:
In case you didn't know, this show is
funded by micro-donations from wage slaves
who'd rather get their news from this
floating composite.
So... my undying love this week goes out
to the following slaves: Marisol, Joseph,
Kirk, Willie, Gerrard, Justina, Jeremy,
Reto, Renzo, Yvanne, Sebastien,
Christopher, Alexandra, Ricky, Andrew,
Jason, Dylan, Mason, Massiege, Sara,
Gregory, Jennifer, Martin, Jonathan, Max,
Gomo, Jonathan, Kyle, Stephen, Miguel
and... Shannon.
Teguino!
I would also like to welcome the newest
members of the taconspiracy...
Christopher, Stinsky and Daniel.
Chermole!
Stay tuned next time, for more news
from the global motherfuckin resistance!
Que la passen chingon camaradas!