June 2012

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Prevention is Better than Cure in Healthcare: Doctors, Let Us Prescribe Decent Housing and Healthy Food for the Poor

Picture: As seen on TEDTalks Video This is a TED talk that every doctor in the world should watch. Rebecca Onie asks audacious questions: What if waiting rooms were a place to improve daily health care? What if doctors could prescribe food, housing and heat in the winter? At TEDMED she describes Health Leads, an American organization that does just that -- and does it by building a volunteer base as elite and dedicated as a college sports team. Onie is the founder of Health Leads, a program that connects patients to...

Can Zuma's 'Second Transition' Take Us off the Boil?

Picture: World Economic Forum/Flickr Richard Pithouse - The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. - Antonio Gramsci, Regina Coeli Prison, Rome, 1930 Neil Daniels was murdered in Cape Town on the 2nd of June. His genitals were burnt. Thapelo Makutle was murdered in Kuruman in the Northern Cape on the 9th of June. His genitals were hacked off his body and shoved into his mouth. Phumeza Nkolonz was murdered in Cape Town on the 23rd...

Final Episode of the Julian Assange Show on RT: Intellectual Giants Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali

Picture: As seen on RT. Video While Julian Assange awaits news of his fate at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, which he entered a week ago when he applied for political asylum, RT airs the final episode of his pre-recorded talk show, "The World Tomorrow". This final episode profiles intellectual giants Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali who talk about wide ranging issues, including the Arab drive for freedom, the West's structural crisis and new hope coming from Latin America. According to Ali, "Essentially...

The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: G8 Corporate Power

Picture: World Bank/Flickr Glenn Ashton - A dangerous international game is being played in the name of assisting Africa to feed itself. What is portrayed as charitable largesse has more in common with reinvigorating neo-colonialism than feeding Africans. This is in fact a misanthropic, multi-pronged raid by the G8 to control African commodities, land and seeds. Africa presently occupies an interesting niche amongst the emerging, tripartite global realpolitik. First are longstanding, yet waning, relationships between Africa and...

Coup in Paraguay: Will US Join Latin America in Condemning Ouster of President Fernando Lugo?

Picture: As seen on Democracy Now! Video Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo has been ousted in what he has described as a parliamentary coup. On Friday, the Paraguayan Senate voted 39-to-4 to impeach Lugo, saying he had failed in his duty to maintain social order following a recent land dispute which resulted in the deaths of six police officers and 11 peasant farmers. A former priest, Lugo was once called the "Bishop of the Poor" and was known for defending peasant rights. Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and...

We're Running Out of Time: The Interminable 50-Year Vision of the ANC's Second Transition

Picture: max_thinks_sees/Flickr Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen - The fisticuffs around the concept of a “Second Transition” have defined debates in the run-up to the African National Congress (ANC) national policy conference. The drafters of The Second Transition: Building a National Democratic Society and the Balance of Forces in 2012 argue, “The time has come to build a new national consensus for the next 50 years. The consensus should lay the basis for a second transition of social and economic transformation, building on the...