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South Africa Shows Europe How Anti-Austerity Protests Are Done
While we have grown 'used' to hearing of protests in several European peripheral nations, South Africa has turned the anti-austerity protest amplifier to 11 in recent days. From the Lonmin massacre and subsequent wage increase to the truck-drivers' strike and Amplats firing of 12,000 workers , Reuters is reporting that South Africa's local government worker's union has now said it will join a nationwide strike amid the labor unrest in the mining sector. Demanding 'market-related salaries' this strike would bring the South African economy to its knees - at a time of rising deficit concerns. Critically, this has dramatic repercussions. Since firing people is no longer an option as "Those who are dismissed will make sure that there will be no operations operating and that will cause a massacre just like at Marikana," some companies will be forced out of business (reducing supply) or suffer significant margin compression on cost increases leaving commodity producers struggling - which will inevitably mean prices for end-users will rise (slowing end-user demand or crushing their margins). It seems the South African labor unions found the M.A.D. card.
Via Reuters South Africa,
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's local government workers' union said on Monday it would launch a strike over pay in the next few days, the first sign of a wave of labour unrest in Africa's biggest economy spreading from the mines into the public sector.
Since August, close to 100,000 workers, including 75,000 in the mining sector, have downed tools in often illegal and violent protests that look likely to hit growth this year and undermine the government's efforts to cut its budget deficit.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has promised to reduce the deficit from the 4.6 percent of GDP forecast for this financial year. Any public sector wage increase would make that more difficult.
"The union is mobilising towards a national protest, which would begin as soon as this week," South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) spokesman Tahir Sema said.
A majority of SAMWU's 190,000 members are expected to join the strike for "market-related salaries" which may last for one day or drag on indefinitely, Sema said.
...
Moody's cut South Africa's government bond rating last month, citing the government's difficulty in keeping up with economic challenges and widening strikes.
ELAND ON STRIKE
Wildcat strikes have already shut down large parts of the mining industry in the world's top platinum producer and a major supplier of gold, pushing prices of precious metals higher.
Xstrata is the latest victim, with workers at its Eland platinum mine walking out on Friday.
The mine is expected to produce 176,000 ounces of platinum this year, compared with forecast production nationwide of 4.9 million ounces of the precious metal used in jewellery and vehicle catalytic converters.
Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) fired 12,000 wildcat strikers on Friday, a high-stakes attempt by the world's top producer to squash illegal stoppages that have hit output at seven of its mines.
The dismissed workers were defiant and threatened a repeat of the showdown with security forces at rival Lonmin's Marikana mine that led to the police killing of 34 miners on August 16, the bloodiest such incident since the end of apartheid in 1994.
"Those who are dismissed will make sure that there will be no operations operating and that will cause a massacre just like at Marikana," said one worker representative, who asked not to be named.
...
A strike by more than 20,000 truck drivers entered its third week on Monday, hitting logistics companies and leading to filling stations running out of some grades of fuel. Wage talks with employers were expected to resume on Tuesday.
The main transport union, SATAWU, said it was gearing up for a one-day rail and port worker strike on October 15, which could hit exports of coal and other minerals.
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Yes.
the return to neo-feudalislm in first world.
the return to neo- tribalism in third world.
The lost continent of Atlantis being the elusive second world. "Sleeping with the fish" as the famous line of Godfather said; those who are the sheeple of this lost continent.
Just how can one have a return to neo-feudalism and neo-tribalism? In fact, just how can one even have a return to 'feudalism' and 'tribalism' which never existed as implemented ideologies anywhere in human history?
Revisionism is a lovely sauce for spicing canned trashed as respectable thought.
Go back to 800 AD to Charlemagne's sacre and you have the beginnings of the feudal order. Based on vertical heirarchy in society bowing to two orders; spiritual and temporal, that constitute its power institutions. The clerics wrote and the feudals spoke their allegiances.
Go back to Abraham and you have an example of the beginnings of a tribal order; just like in the Iliad and the Bhagvadgita. Poems that create the sense of bloodline and belonging to same region and cultural origin; of which language and Deities be the building blocks.
... Birmingham, Paris ...
Actually managment better wake up.
What worth are minerals underground with no one to risk their lives to mine them?
In the modern world with press coverage and TV, things are a bit different. If this was still De Beers running things before the age of widely available video access, they would have stacked people like cordwood in 1-2 places & this would have ended as quickly as it began.
If there is a hell, Rhodes and his ilk are certainly burning in it. Even by the standards of his age in Victorian England, he was a deplorable man.
Yeah, they probably pay them poor guys like $5 a day and each guy is producing 1 oz of Au.
I bet it costs them ten bucks to get 1 oz of PM.
If you ever see pix of the living quarters and such, it's pretty bad.
They need Oblowme to organize them. Maybe he will be available for other assignments soon.
Africa seems right for him, somehow. Didn't he have a relative from those parts?
The Geographically Diversified Mining Conglomerate- labor strike & resultant offline production reduces cashflow in country A, while rising prices and increased cashflow in country B partially offsets losses in country A. The mining company won't enter into a contract where operating expenses continually exceed the costs of production, out of contol energy price inflation currently crowds out the margin available for wage price inflation, as the US printing presses export global instability.
Put your tin-foil hat's on fellow readers and listen that current high percent models indicate high probability that a socializing trending of foreign "white" assets will continue in an attempt to "perge corporatism".
African socialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a "traditional" African way, as distinct from classical socialism. The white man has birthed another peice of modern art in which the developing world will now use for themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh2iyPmucFk
You mean, like with spears and stuff?
I saw that in a Jungle Jim movie.
Is that where everything goes to the chief, and everythign that is left to the chief's brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, brothers in-law etc. ?
He thinks there is a difference between the Tribal Oligarchs and the Corporate Oligarchs. Africa is a place on map to most.
Another unintended consequence of QE.
South Africas unemployment rate stands at 23.5% and is rising as "the economic slowdown takes hold." That's a modest estimate of the 50,586,757 total population of South Africa which equates to roughly 12,000,000 people. Now calculating working age of 15-64 at 65.2%, so roughly a 60/40 % ratio of working age are employed verses unemployed.
The mining sector of South Africa accounts for about 18% of the countrys total GDP (8.6% direct, 10% indirect and induced). Their total GDP is #25 in the world at 500,000,000,000. now thats about $100,000,000,000, Corperations can chip alittle more of the cheese block.
'market-related salaries' is very plausible and intresting thanks for the thought Cabreado. This is Aleady in place but more in terms of so called subsidys and tax break's. The concept that the government will maximize buisness to create breaks that small and medium size buisnesses can in turn give breaks to the consumer is needed to be re-evaluated. (in a non-facist way) Maybee in a more Reganomics way.
obviously, the government of south africa, is not doing enough to protect the children from tooth decay.
Understanding Globalisation
As posted earlier, the IMF is clueless..
Global Financial Stability Report - Restoring Confidence and Progressing on Reforms -October 2012
http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/GFSR/2012/02/index.htm
The Nature of Globalization Fachhochschule Coburg, 2005
Government indoctrinated education beliefs spoken in 2008
Globalization: What Does It Really Mean?
the IMF is not clueless; it has an historic agenda : serve the greenback supremacy, which got even more reinforced after BW revoke of 1971. Add to that the accelerated trend to world corpocracy launched by Reaganomics-Thatcherista big bang and you have its current Timmy controlled brief cut out before our eyes :
Everything that is good for big business and big reserve currency is "our" bloodline...even if it means debt servitude for all the others. We've seen this play out again and again since the 1990s.
Of course, the current capitalist melt-down has destroyed IMF's past status, as its protecting a dead duck : the greenback, and promoting the corpo-fascist model which is now evident to all.
So its lost its respectability of being a "multilateral think and act tank".
Its more a shit and sleight of hand tank. But for how long?
As the need for a new monetary system is evident to all those who participate in its financing and who are now openly against the status quo. That Mrs Lagarde is clueless is beyond doubt as touted about on other threads in ZH.
This is what happens when people wake up and realize they are rubbing their lives away each day like an eraser so someone else in the world can avoid their own responsibility for their own lives and go play some more instead of doing their own work.
This madness will only grow because we have reached another boiling point where the masses are realizing they are just hamsters in a wheel and every year they are required to run a little faster and are still at a dead end life.
The balance of focus has gone way too far on "things" and the most important factor, people, are being run to death so a few can have more things. Time for everyone to make and eat their own bread for a while and let things calm down.
You would have to be historically blind not to see what is coming. Revolution is breaking out in pockets around the world. It won't be long because the attitude spreads like the plague. The real issues are will you survive, and who will be in charge when the smoke clears, a Jefferson, an Hitler, or a Stalin? History has taught us that the Jeffersons of this world are very rare but the others come in droves. May God have mercy on us all.
I honestly don't see how attitudes change for the better from here. Each year people are going to be more oppressed, each year people are going to be more desperate, and each year people are going to be more brazen at attacking the status quo as their small victories accumulate. Anything short of Jesus (or any other god) coming down to bless everything; or a truly awe inspiring invention/discovery (which vastly improves quality of life for all) has a chance of ending this peacefully and without epic conflict. Anyone who doesn't see this coming probably deserves to be take out of the gene pool.
If I may interject,
Down With The Transportation Sexual Assault Gestapo!
"We grab your balls and tits
They don't hire us for our wits
We are the mighty TSA
And we don't give a shit!
Seig Heil! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!
We like little kids
But they're always screwing up
We take them to our secret rooms
So we can feel them up!
Seig Heil! Seig Heil! Seig Heil!"
Ah!
A little protest feels good every now and then.
What makes a protest legal or illegal? Are all protests illegal when the workers want something better for themselves?
When the natives aren't happy, nobody is happy. Elite failed to take into consideration brotherly love that is magnified tenfold united due to dire straits.
Then, the politicians will either make the necessary changes or face watching tens of thousands of people be annihilated while they are in office, marking them for life as a failure at every level and responsible.
The politicians will turn on the elites to save themselves. Teh elites will turn on each other. The world will fall into chaos and monoplization as result of globalization will tell us why this does not work - they will be unable to operate to to civil unrest and dangerous conditions.
We'll face shortages due to the reliance on a few rather than many. And it will take about a decade to clean this mess up in the streets from angry parents unable to feed and house their kids. The new world order is going to fail because humans dream of more. If there is no hope and dream for more...well,then....that will have to change. Silencing the masses with threats of persecution just fuels the indignant response to the decisions made by the lunatic fringe who have it all now.
Today in Spain - Protesters evict the cops.
Must see video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T6aKZxaEUC0
Somehow I think the end will be less humane. Sorry.
Easy: Legal protests provide profit and loot for the bankster kartels, Illegal protest is everything that doesn't! Sometimes "illegal protests" is conflated with Terrorism, making "illegal protesters" into "enemy combattants" so O'Bomber can send his rent-boys to murder them.
I just wonder how long it's going to be before the masses with spears and machetes get tired of having their members shot and decided to dig up the old troves of AK-47s from the apartheid days.
The equitable solution would be for the owners to allow a percentage of the profits to flow back to the workers in incentive based programs. But the "thug mentality" of the elites is to hide behind machine gun wielding security forces and kill, kill, kill.
Elites -- trying to keep up with the Rothschilds while heaping misery on the rest of mankind. It takes very little to significantly improve the lifestyle of poor workers, and the cost of such actions wouldn't put a minor dent in the overall wealth of the owners.
The path the elites in SA are treading will eventually become a sad story with an unhappy ending for all. And it doesn't have to be that way. Talk about hubris.
Spain responds accordingly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T6aKZxaEUC0
How long before the people realize they have the strength in numbers? Not long at all. Any politiican in office while thousands of protesters are attacked or seriously injured. will be run out of the country in shame.
Just make sure you know who the "elite" is that you are talking about...
http://imgur.com/DZyZH
For those of you that may not know, that is Julius Malema - former ANC Youth League president who has been responsible for most of these strikes through his calls for nationalisation of mines and banks. A true man of the people...
It's not about the cost, its about Principles ;-)
Wonder if they know to run GS out of South Africa.
...seems to be a lot of trouble happening all over the place, lol. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOyZOqtdWy8
"Exactly what happened. The white slave masters set the example. Once they where thrown out, the ones who took their place became the new slave masters. Mandela and the ANC jumped from being slaves/political prisoners, into oligarchic slave masters and opressors. The more things change, the more they remain the same."
I fear the 1976 revolution is coming down hard on the ANC government....Let the stone throwing begin!!!
African natives fought each other in tribal groups before the white man ever set foot on the dark continent.
Where is Tarzan? The Phantom?
Order must be restored.
They NEVER stopped.
Not to hijack this post, but...ok, I'm hijacking. I was waiting for TrimTab's Madeline Schnapp to weigh in on the BLS numbers and tonight, she did. She makes some interesting points.
There's Something Very Fishy With the September BLS Unemployment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV9NzX-Iebcdelete. I thought I was reading the BLS BS thread.
here's Obama harshing on Mitt's mellow:
YouTube - Obama on Romney in 7 Seconds
We’ve been bled, please stop the Fed
Written in June 2009, things were clear back then
http://oahutrading.blogspot.com/2012/10/weve-been-bled-please-stop-fed.html
Ultimately this is the trend we are all on. It's the future, a series of ever increasing strikes until all work and production ceases. It's the end result of a worldwide fiat currency system where they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work. Eventually we won't work at all, at least not for imaginary money.
It's obvious that you know nothing whatsoever of South Africa's history of strikes.
South Africans Show Bankers What "Too Big To Fail" Really Means
See that mob?
"Too big to fail", new, improved and metastasized.
If one looks at the ruling class in South Africa, it is made up of the ANC, the South African communist party and the Congress of South African trade unions. Basically all a bunch of communists. Yet here we have government workers striking for "market related salaries". The government IS the market here, and the government is anti-market... TIA baby!
Undeniable, American Civil War, it is in the Cards
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/10/07/undeniable-american-civil-war-it...
These strikes are only one of the consequences of money printing in America.
No, they are not. Strikes have been ongoing in South Africa for decades. Someone is always on strike there. And their motivation is not economic, but political. If you should have learned anything from former Soviet defectors, it's about the purposes of strikes in the 'West', which have not been about workers rights or increasing wages since at least the Second World War, but the destruction of 'Western' society. The left wing of the ANC to which most of the politically-active or ideologically-driven 'youth' now belong still entertains fantasies about a communist revolution replete with wholesale theft and slaughter of every white face in Southern Africa. If you don't understand this, you understand nothing about current South African political developments.
Okay, I understand the ongoing communist fight against the capitalists philosophy, but how's that the companies doing business there are Anglo-American and not Chino-Russian? I highly doubt that the union leaders are not part of the government, as in any communist or ex-communist country.
The miracle of 'americanism' spreading around the world.
So some 'americans' are in a post theft economy, their first urge is to legitimate all the loot they have accumulated (and that is a lot) through specious argumentation as suited for 'american' way of thinking.
The other 'americans' are in the pre theft economy stage, they are in the US 1770s situation.
If they want to build their 'american' middle class model style, they will have to find their indians, so to enable them in their freedom, truth and justice, 'american' way, project.
'Americans' versus 'Americans'... Aint uniformity beautiful? When the whole world is 'american', what a wonderful place. Who does not want to live there already?
You know, I tried LSD once, but I suspect that my trip on acid was a whole lot tamer than the Long March of insanitation and prejudiced blobbing-up that you have been on here for the last year or more.
Coincidentally, my acid trip did not manifest in any kind of bigotry, much less the virulent, monomaniacal, never-ending sort that you display in your every post about your so-called 'americans', 'americanism' and 'US Citizenism'.
Make me shake my head in pity and contempt.
Ahh Bennie's and America's policies all coming home to roost. Who would have thought that the dollar being bound to oil and oil going skyhigh from US printing and budget deficits would cause all these peasants to revolt due to the cost of their fuel and food? Who woulda thunk it? Just wait till they figure out it's been us that caused all of this mess. Weather and shortages got exactly dick to do with any of this too.
obama and his union brownshirts should do it here. please. lets get the war started. the only problem i see is these fat lazy gubmint types only strike for lunch, but getting all that blubberous weight on one side of the country to band together might sink the nazi state and all them fat assholes who grad u mated a high school .....please goobermint go on strike i need a break on paying you fat bastards to go on lunch...
The conversation did not imply that the people wanted to own the company rather they wanted a stronger government that will maximize social causes by engaging corperations to contribute/participate more in the community building process. There is a Large disconnect a almost "hands off" aproach that multi-nationals adopt within the countrys/regions/peoples they profit from.
The Buffett Rule is a tax plan proposed by President in 2011. The tax plan would apply a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on individuals making more than a million dollars a year.(think it should be 10 million) According to a White House official, the new tax rate would impact 0.3 percent of taxpayers. This is a loose comparison as I am think Mittens is a better choice.
Land, profit, rights and libertys will all remain.