…the PhD
Ken Danns has thrown his hat into the ring once again. A fella with a decent PhD in Sociology from Stonybrook, NY, back when Burnham was busy constructing his dictatorship and Rodney was undermining him from within, Danns studiously sat on the fence while teaching at UG. He finally jumped off into the PNC camp as a candidate from the “Reform” wing in 2001.
He was one of five Guyanese who were brought together by the US military – SOUTHCOM – in 2011, just after the elections of that year, to analyse the “strategic culture” of Guyana. And not so incidentally, explain why the PPP needed to be ousted from a standpoint of securing US strategic interests. Why isn’t it surprising that Ivelaw Griffith, the 10th – and only anointed Vice Chancellor – was the organiser, chief cook and bottlewasher?
Anyhow Danns got a gig as a columnist for the Chronic (along with Barrington Braithwaite, David Hinds, Lincoln Lewis, etc. Get the drift?) In his most recent column, he strained mightily at a gnat to dub the PPP’s declaration of non-cooperation as “sabotage”!! The PPP, of course, was reacting to Prezzie’s latest act of political unilateralism — appointing (Chief?) Justice James Patterson as the GECOM Chair.
Danns tried polish up his blatant piece of political propaganda to justify the pressures the PNC will unleash against the PPP between now and 2020 — as announced internationally in Georgia and domestically at Mocha. He cited the theorist Thorstein Veblen’s definition of sabotage – “the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency” – but dubbed it “euphemistic”!!
Fact of the matter is Veblin took pains to demonstrate that the modern negative connotations of the word was introduced by the US capitalists who opposed workers’ efforts to better their working conditions!! “Sabotage” as “the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency”, Veblen showed, lies at the heart of the modern economic system, in that production is curtailed and controlled to prevent “overproduction” and falling prices!!
Danns came up with a list of five kinds of sabotage – “industrial sabotage, the sabotage of estrangement, the sabotage of ritual, the sabotage of incompetence and indolence, and political sabotage” – to hone in on the last, which he dumped on the PPP and which was “the most egregious form of sabotage”!! If Danns hadn’t sold out his credentials to the PNC, he would’ve noted Veblen had advised that sabotage was never to be automatically condemned.
Rather, the anarchist sociologist pointed out that many forms of sabotage are recognized as “indispensable to the common good” and sanctioned by statute and common law, as well as the “public conscience”!
Like the PPP’s programme of civil disobedience against Prezzie’s unilateralism.
…strategic culture
Knowing your interest is piqued by your Eyewitness’s reference to the SOUTHCOM Conclave, he’ll quote the bare essentials”. It defined “the Origins of Guyana’s strategic culture, (b) probes the values and beliefs of its Keepers, (c) examines territorial disputes, drugs, and crime as core enduring rivalries and emerging Challenges, and (d) discusses the vicissitudes of the November 2011 elections and deficits in capabilities for credible national defense and public security as key aspects of Continuity and Change.”
“As regards the Keepers, the top leaders of the major political parties are important. The PNC and the PPP have dominated the political scene, thereby significantly influencing elite beliefs. The PNC began as a nationalist and anti-colonialist party, but later touted Cooperative Socialism. The PPP preached Marxism, anti-imperialism, and anti-colonialism, until winning power in 1992, when it faced the practical realities of governing in a post-Cold War world.”
“Race-based politics has led to a new discourse about an “ethnic security dilemma,” which presumes that each of the major ethnic groups is obliged to develop its own security strategy vis-à-vis the other. The nation has been witnessing East Indian triumphalism beyond the political domain. The promotion of “Indian-ness” by the PPP Keepers has been a key aim and value for them.”
Not a word about the PNC and “African-ness”!!