On 19 March 2003, the United States declared war on Iraq. Six months later, on 25 September, Edward Wadie Said passed away at the age of 67 in New York City after a decade-long struggle with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. The loss of one of the most elegant minds of...
intellectual
After the World Ended (IV): But How Can It Be Done?
What has to be overthrown in the ANC is a party which nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted for, and which is led by some of the shrewdest and most unscrupulous politicians in the country. Somehow those people have to be persuaded to stop supporting it, and those...
The Royal Society’s tunnel vision on population and poverty | reviewed by Ian Angus
People and the Planet. Royal Society Science Policy Centre Report. The radical ecologist Murray Bookchin once compared populationism to a phoenix, the mythical bird that periodically burns up and is reborn from its own ashes. No matter how often the “too many people”...
The Spear asks many questions, also about our view of human dignity by | Pierre De Vos
The Spear – as I have written before – has become about far more than about whether a painting resembling President Jacob Zuma with his penis hanging out should be banned because it humiliates Zuma, his many wives and children as well as affronts the dignity of all...
Durban COP17: failures in the making | by Patrick Bond
The failure of Durban’s COP17 – a veritable “Conference of Polluters” – is certain, but the nuance and spin are also important. Binding emissions-cut commitments under the Kyoto Protocol are impossible given Washington’s push for an alternate architecture that is also...
Desktop “Militants” And Public Intellectuals | by James Petras
Invited paper to be read at the “Symposium on Re-Publicness” Sponsored by the Chamber of Electrical Engineers. Ankara Turkey, December 9 – 10, 2011IntroductionThe relation of information technology (IT) and more specifically the internet, to politics is a central...
Austerity Versus Stimulus | by Prabhat Patnaik
IT is obviously silly to push for austerity in the midst of a recession, not just silly but cruel, since it prolongs the pain of unemployment. The recession is caused by a deficiency of aggregate demand. To overcome it what is necessary is an increase in demand which...
The great billion dollar drug scam | by Khadija Sharife
Alongside pneumococcal diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia,rotavirus-related diarrhoea is a primary childhood killer in developing countries, thought to snuff out the lives of 500,000 children each and every year. An overwhelming 85 per cent of these children...

