Ray Hartley is concerned about budget deficits under Zuma’s increased spending plan:
The ANC’s reaction to news that we are in recession - a pretty shocking one at that with GDP coming in at -6,4% - has been to say that spending on infrastructure and public works must be accelerated. Which is all good and well, [...]

iAfrica.com has published a very kind review of this blog. I don’t have much to say about this about this, except that I’m very grateful and flattered to the be recipient of such attention so early on in this blog’s run.

Everybody knows Floyd Shivambu after his (in)famous interview with Redi Direko. But did you know that he also has a blog?
For a sample of his writing, check out this post, in which he likens COPE to (among others) the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and rebels in the Niger Delta.

Peter Suderman has mixed feelings about the new Star Trek:
[T]here are things to love in Abrams’s Star Trek, yet very little of the original series’ appeal remains. Rather than concern itself with politics, ethics, or social organization, Abrams’s Star Trek focuses on familiar quests for individual self-discovery. Like so many successful comic-book movies, it’s about [...]

Reflecting on the demise of the Tamil Tigers, Christopher Hitchens writes the following:
Deciding to fight as a conventional army that belonged to a separate state, the LTTE has now been defeated as a conventional army, and its state has ceased to exist. Not since the British defeated the Malayan Communists, who were too much restricted [...]

As someone who enjoyed the minimalistic, faux-documentary style of The Wrestler, this strikes me as weirdly appealing:
Despite its meager production values, The Girlfriend Experience looks sleek and appealing; it takes place in the same copper-toned cocoon of poshness that envelops the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, as Grey’s character, $2,000-an-hour call girl Chelsea, flits in and out [...]

While the Obama Administration has been focussed mainly on the so-called “AfPak” problem, the violence in Somalia has escalated to the point where it now ranks as one of the world’s most dangerous crises. The conflict became even worse this weekend, with the radical group al-Shabab carrying out an Iraq-style suicide bomb attack in Mogadishu. [...]

A related question is whether realism is actually part of the Republican Party’s intellectual DNA. Philip Zelikow says no, not really:
As a historian, I think one of the more remarkable things about the Nixon-Kissinger approach to great power relations and détente is actually how anomalous it was in comparison to the record of America’s international [...]

There’s an interesting discussion right now on Foreign Policy about the future of realism and the Republican Party. Daniel Drezner kicks things off with this post, to which Will Inboden responds:
[T]he debates within Republican circles that I recall from inside and that I have found most interesting outside tend to be fairly pragmatic — what [...]

Reader Mayibuye Magwaza thinks I’m letting the DA off the hook too easily in this post:
Sure, you’re complaining about counting heads in parliament as a benchmark for gender equality. However, I think there’s something to it. If the DA has failed to internally develop female leaders to the extent that Zille really couldn’t find anyone [...]

I love the blatant contradiction between this News24 headline and the actual content of the article underneath it.

David Smith on the similarities between South Africa and America:
In both America and South Africa, race remains a significant factor in social inequality, crime patterns or trying to predict how people will vote. On the surface, South Africa is the country that apparently flicked a switch to install a black governing elite for its majority [...]

Afrodissident says yes:
Everybody was watching to see whether he would keep or replace Mbeki’s finance minister, Trevor Manuel, associated with the conservative economic policies adopted by the government since 1996 (policies that were good for the market, but bad for the country’s poor majority). In the end, Zuma appointed a new finance minister, Pravin Gordhan [...]

Pierre De Vos has some tactical criticism for Cosatu:
First, Cosatu pulled a cheap - but ultimately doomed - stunt by launching an ill-advised equality court application to challenge the composition of the Zille’s cabinet. Now Die Burger is reporting that Cosatu is threatening to institute a motion of no confidence in Zille and her cabinet [...]

Michael Trapido takes an optimistic view of Pieter Mulder’s accession to the Zuma cabinet in this post:
During the Zuma presidency land redistribution as well as the plight of farmers in general are likely to become, among others, items requiring top priority. Accordingly, in practical terms, there can be no doubting that Mulder will and should [...]

The first post on any blog is always vaguely awkward, so let’s get it over with. I am Laurence Caromba, and this is my new blog. Some of you may know me from Commentary.co.za, where I blogged regularly for several years before - unforgivably - allowing my posting frequency to dwindle down to nothingness. Others [...]