Who's in Charge of Zuma's Presidency 2.0?

Picture: World Economic Forum Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen - The Presidency has a new website, let us call it Presidency 2.0. As I visited the site after Minister Manuel had announced the details of the government’s plan till 2014. Officially, it is called the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF). The website and the strategic framework share a surprising usability, because usually government’s information is inaccessible. I clicked on the section called “Presidency Kids,” but the site took so long to download. I instead...

Wall Street Recovery Based on Profits Gained from Intensifying Exploitation

We are told that Wall Street is bouncing back and the recession is bottoming out, but Richard Wolff, economist from the New School in New York City, pokes holes in the economic recovery and false euphoria of Wall Street. He says, what we are seeing now is a peculiar economic phenomenon. Across the United States, business are hurting. Revenues are down for almost every kind of business.  And in response, the businesses have done what businesses always do. Cut back in order to survive....

North American Governments Support Unfair Status Quo in Honduras

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted last month just hours before what would have been the first ever popular consultation in Honduran history in order to gauge the people's support for re-writing the country's constitution that was written in 1982 when the country was ruled by a US-backed military dictatorship. The current constitution is easily manipulated by the Honduran economic elite, who have the support of the United States (US) and Canada, says this report from The Real News...

South Africa and the World Development Report: Urbanisation or Balanced Growth?

Picture: Kool_Skatkat Stephen Greenberg - The World Bank’s recently released 2009 World Development Report - titled Reshaping Economic Geography - suggests South Africa may be out of step with mainstream thinking on economic development approaches. But what is this ‘mainstream’ thinking, and is South Africa really so out of step with it? In the report, the Bank argues that successful development will result from increasing economic concentration in urban areas, and that the role of the state is to enable...

More Unknowns than Knowns with GM Crops

Picture: Illuminating9_11 Michelle Pressend - Genetically modified (GMO) crops have more unknowns than knowns. Yet the South African government whole-heartily embraces this technology in the production of food crops, particularly maize, a staple food in South Africa. The South African pro-GMO lobby is very proud of the fact that South Africa is the eighth biggest GMO producer in the world among the 13 largest biotechnology-producing countries. They also make claims that this technology is accepted worldwide, however many African...

Gaza Update: Collective Punishment Continues

On 30 June 2009, "Spirit of Humanity," a ship carrying activists from eleven countries with humanitarian aid for Gaza was hijacked by Israeli forces and forcefully prohibited from completing its mission.  On 15 July 2009,  a convoy of 200 human rights activists managed to drive a truck caravan into Gaza after ten days of delays and harassment at the hands of Egyptian and US officials, reports Laura Flanders of GRITtv. Flanders speaks to Huwaida Arraf, a human rights...