The World

SACSIS seeks to examine global issues, particularly as they relate to South Africa.

The Obama Mirage

Picture: jmtimages Saliem Fakir - In the glare of the international audience, we are being treated with Obama-mania. It is a wonderful and exciting media spectacle. Barack Obama is undoubtedly a new breed of leader – everybody has been watching. He has already made history and may well make further history if he is elected the President of the United States. It is easy to be captivated by Obama. He has traversed where no black person in the US has been able to go before. Obama is the story of the American dream coming...

U.S. Mayors Mobilizing Against a War With Iran

Picture: NoHoDamon Karen Dolan - Foreign Policy Disaster Redux: Raise fears about a Middle East country. Tie that four-letter-word country to the potential for mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv and Texas. Convince the U.S. public that this country's ties to terrorists, its fanatical Islamist faith and its megalomaniacal leader with a scary-sounding name add up to the end of western civilization. Conclusion: Iran must be stopped, no option off the table. The saber rattling increases, despite the December 2007 National...

The Drift Away From the Western World

Picture: blog.lib.umn.edu Saliem Fakir - Even in the purview of John Stuart Mill’s political economy, the insight was not lost on him that opportunities for cultural and intellectual exchange lay so pregnant with potential and concurrent with the growth of commerce between trading countries. Mill wrote: “..commerce is the purpose of the far greater part of communication which takes place between civilized nations. Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of...

On the Anniversary of Nelson Mandela's Election: Why Political Campaigns Are Only One Road to Social Change

Picture: www.writespirit.net Danny Schechter - Everyone has a memorable moment or special date that marked their political lives. For me, it was April 27, 1994, the day of South Africa’s first democratic election when a disenfranchised majority chose Nelson Mandela as its new president. To those that fought so many years against apartheid, it was a political miracle, seen almost a biblical moment ushering in a new Rainbow nation. I had a front row seat 14 years ago inside the Mandela campaign, making an insider film that...