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Speaking at an event to examine different ideological perspectives – left, right and centre - on building a more inclusive South African economy, Ann Bernstein of the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) called for continued fiscal discipline, which she argued has been responsible for lifting millions of people out of poverty in countries like India, Brazil and South Africa. This panel discussion was co-hosted by the South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS)...
What is misemployment? The School of Life has come up with a handy concept to describe human value, which seems to be ignored in unemployment debates. Whenever unemployment comes down, it sounds like really good news. It's great that productive forces in the economy are growing and there'll be a little more money in people's pockets. But if one gets a bit more ambitious about human potential, the picture become more complicated. Misemployment means being in work, but of a kind that fails to...
A grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, has decided Officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted after killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown. In reaction to the decision, protests have swept the U.S. in cities like New York all the way to the Golden Coast of Oakland, California. Professor Gerald Horne and civil rights organizer Kevin Alexander Gray contend that the Ferguson grand jury decision is in line with U.S. history. Gray, co-editor of the book, Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American...
The Swedish Court of Appeals upheld the continued detention of Julian Assange on Thursday, 20 November 2014. Assange has been held for four years without being charged with a crime, two of which he has spent in asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Michael Ratner, U.S. lawyer for Assange and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights provides some insights into the implications of this latest development. While the prosecutor in the Assange case was reprimanded by the...
At a recent event hosted by SACSIS and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in which we explored “left, right and centre” views on South Africa’s economic development, a journalist snuck in a question about the panel’s views on the Economic Freedom Fighters. It was interesting to hear what Ann Bernstein of the Centre for Development and Enterprise and Trudi Makhaya, economic analyst at eNCA Africa, had to say about the new political party. Bernstein argued that while...
For years Russell Brand has been one of Britain’s most popular comedians, but over the past 12 months he has also emerged as a leading voice of Britain’s political left. He has taken part in anti-austerity protests, spoken at Occupy Wall Street protests and marched with the hacker collective Anonymous. A recovering addict himself, Brand has also become a leading critic of Britain’s drug laws. He has just come out with a new book expanding on his critique of the political...