The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Saliem Fakir -
No sooner had Zuma confirmed his cabinet and a select few in the whining caucus already started complaining that industrial policy is best left to the private sector to sort out. All government needs to do is dish out the incentives, lower the taxes for exporters and ensure wage expectations are kept to the minimum.
So long as government does this, the private sector will do its level best to pick the winners. Such cynicism against government intervention must be met with...
Trade is very imbalanced against the poorest countries says Mary Robinson of Realizing Rights; and part of the reason is the subsidies on agricultural products in rich countries. She argues for more coherence between the aid and trade policies of rich nations.
The 2008 G8 Summit has just drawn to a close. This "On the Map - State of the World" report, released to coincide with last year's G8 summit, shows us that contrary to popular belief, aid money does not flow from the North to the South, but goes in the opposite direction. The poor have paid the rich two trillion dollars for the privilege of staying poor. When you add up all the cash that wealthy nations send south and compare it to the money going in the opposite direction,...
Glenn Ashton -
Looking at the annual gathering of G8 leaders, one could be forgiven for believing that the real reason behind these meetings is to address global concerns. But it is not. The G8 is nothing more than a meeting where a great deal of political posturing takes place to present the image of a sympathetic west.
Phantom aid is a neat concept coined by Action Aid to describe the kind of aid given to the developing world by Western powers. Action Aid’s clarification of the flow of...
Leonardo DiCaprio argues that human addiction to oil has brought us to the brink of destruction. Our burning of oil and other fossil fuels has dumped over seven hundred billion tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, causing global warming. At the same time, big corporations and politicians have not done enough to save us. They have gained too much money and power off our addiction to oil, making them resistant to change.
Saliem Fakir -
Even in the purview of John Stuart Mill’s political economy, the insight was not lost on him that opportunities for cultural and intellectual exchange lay so pregnant with potential and concurrent with the growth of commerce between trading countries.
Mill wrote:
“..commerce is the purpose of the far greater part of communication which takes place between civilized nations. Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of...
