January 2011

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The New Growth Path and the Three Elephants in the Room

Picture: www.jobshunter.org Saliem Fakir - Old political-economy problems always nibble at the feet of new aspirant runners. These problems are systemic and get carried from one era to another despite the changing face of political players.  In the last 15 years, South Africa rode the economic wave on the basis of a commodity boom, consumption driven growth and the financialisation of our economy via stock speculation, property bubbles and other ways of sourcing unearned income. The real economy showed little traction other than...

Tunisians Demand Democracy - The Future of Tunisia and the Middle East

Video For the past month, Tunisia has been gripped by a wave of protests over unemployment, high food prices and government repression. Protests erupted in mid-December in the western region of the country, when a university graduate, Mohamed Bouazizi, unable to find employment set himself alight following police harassment for selling vegetables on the streets. The protests were largely organised by young people using internet social networking sites and spread quickly throughout the...

Beyond Matric

Picture: Bo Mackison Glenn Ashton - Another class of matriculants have completed the ritual of examinations followed by the highs and lows of success or failure. So where do we expect these young people go now? Is our educational system capable of preparing our youth for a future in an uncertain world?  Without even bothering to venture into the minefield of questions raised around the latest matric results, we really need to consider just how antiquated our educational system really is when looked at against the rapidly...

WikiRebels: A Documentary about WikiLeaks & Julian Assange

Video While the world debates the merits of the case surrounding its founder, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks continues to pursue its political agenda, which is to expose immoral and unjust behaviour by releasing classified information into the public domain -- a small, but important step in a larger political and ideological battle. The documentary WikiRebels, filmed in the six months leading up to Assange's arrest in England (on an extradition warrant from Swedish authorities seeking to bring him in...

One Year Later, Life No Better in Haiti

Video January 12, 2011 marked the one year anniversary of the earthquake that shattered the lives of millions of Haitians. One year after the earthquake in, much hasn't changed on the ground in Haiti. People are still living in squalid, cramped, flimsy, makeshift shelter because there is no space to build proper housing. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that the rubble from the earthquake has not been cleared -- bodies that were in the destroyed buildings on January 12th 2010, for the...

New Obama Chief of Staff Appointment Further Proof that White House Belongs to Wall Street

Video In recent days, president Barack Obama of America announced his new Chief of Staff, William Daley. For the past seven years, Daley has been a senior executive at JP Morgan Chase. Before that he worked for a hedge fund and in telecommunications. He was also Bill Clinton's commerce secretary for three years and he managed Al Gore's failed run for the Presidency in the year 2000. Paul Jay of the Real News Network speaks with Glenn Ford, co-founder of Black Agenda Report, founding member of the...