Patrick Bond

ECR

The latest spill should nudge policy elites and community activists to begin properly preparing for a post-carbon future. It is time South Africa – and the world - questioned its overconsumption of fossil fuels, especially via overpriced and dangerous pipelines.

Protection of transnational corporate property rights, including the objectionable constitutional treatment of the corporations as “juristic persons” with the same rights as us humans, is one reason SA corporations have become the world’s fraud champs. But there are grounds for hope in fighting them.

SNO

A World Bank report makes the incredible claim that the South African Treasury has been exceedingly generous in social spending. With that, neoliberals can now justify social spending caps or even cuts. In reality, though, South Africa has the fourth lowest public social spending amongst the world’s largest 40 countries.

Enca

Last week SA's leading alternative to state broadcasting saw its integrity self-destruct. Personality battles are getting most attention but problems caused by structural conflicts of interests must be raised, investigated and resolved, as a leading example of malevolent state-corporate cronyism.

ETN

This Friday, a new civil society campaign, 'WorldVsBank', featuring protests and teach-ins, will take place at the Bank’s Annual Meeting in Washington and ten other countries, including South Africa’s three largest cities. The campaign arises from widespread recognition all over the world that the Bank has made the world a worse place socially, politically, economically and environmentally.

NYP

What last month’s march did, better than any other event in history, was demonstrate the unity of activists demanding genuine emissions cuts and government funding of an alternative way of arranging society. They offered a transformative view of a world economy that must go post-carbon and post-profit if our species and countless others are to survive.

VA

Facing the most serious civilizational threat ever, what is the South African government doing? The new Infrastructure Development Act pushed into law by Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel will fast-track carbon-intensive mega-projects on behalf of mainly foreign corporate beneficiaries.

Wiki

As world leaders gather at the UN next week, the window to halt runaway climate change is closing fast this decade, with world-wide emissions cuts of 50 percent needed by 2020, and 90 percent by 2050. Not much can be expected to come out of the UN talk-shop. Emerging powers, on the other hand, are not pursuing any new strategies either

Pete Souza

Many observers have been quick to argue that the recent US-Africa summit was meant to deepen America’s involvement in Africa at a time when China is fast expanding its presence on the continent. That may well be so, but it is also not unlikely that the US could work with China and other nations for mutual exploitation of Africa

BS

There is nothing to celebrate about the new financial architecture unveiled by the BRICS as an alternative to capitalist dominance. In fact the BRICS are happy enablers of Western capitalism and its destructive excesses

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