The situation in Zimbabwe may soon “implode” as a cholera outbreak spreads and basic services collapse, South African leaders and a group of international statesmen warned yesterday.
About 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks, according to the UN, and almost 300 have died. A chronic shortage of medicine has sent hundreds of people south [...]

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Will South Africa follow its brother Zimbabwe?
South Africa is at a crossroads. There is a growing crisis of confidence in the country’s future. Crime is out of control; corruption in high places is endemic (accountability practically nonexistent); state utilities are collapsing; the impartiality of the judiciary is threatened by unruly elements bent on imposing their [...]

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The Mafia are ingeniously silver-plating their glimmering stash of South Africa’s stolen gold. The disguise has allowed them to launder money in Swiss bank accounts. Investigations finger top Swiss Bank — UBS, and its subsidiary Metalor, who is the proven recipient of the ‘odd gold’. So shouldn’t Metalor have informed the authorities? Technically they’ve so [...]

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Those are the 40-plus countries with the scientists, engineers and infrastructure for building bombs — and in at least one other case, that of South Africa, a history of having done so.
About a dozen are nuclear “rollback” states, ranging from Sweden and Switzerland, which seriously researched the weapon option in the 1950s and 1960s and [...]

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Since the end of apartheid, thousands of white South Africans have been forced into poverty. They blame the government’s positive discrimination policies, which favour black employees.

Link to video on YouTube.

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Current troubles in Zimbabwe have caused large numbers to seek a better life in South Africa. However, the journey is perilous and the reality migrants face when they arrive often comes with bitter disillusions.
YouTube video
NY Times Video: Zimbabweans Flee to South Africa

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Why are we going to experience a geometric explosion (price doubling and redoubling) in oil prices?
1. Peak oil and declining production around the world. Plus you need to factor in oil producing countries’ local consumption. Rising local consumption in oil producing countries means they will stop exporting oil long before they run out.
a. You see [...]

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A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.
Dock workers at the port, backed [...]

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The principal characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations is turning out to be nonpolarity: a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift from the past.
The twentieth century started out distinctly multipolar. But after almost [...]

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