With serious concerns around the city’s pro-pollution policy and activity, will Durban – the host of the upcoming COP17 summit – clean itself up, asks Patrick Bond.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/543/stranded_tanker_tmb.jpgFrom a wrecked tanker on South Africa’s coast to the forests of South America, Patrick Bond explains why mining oil is a bad idea.

Two deaths recently marked the South African political landscape - one of a well-known former government minister, the other of a community organiser. When it came to water, the two were on opposite sides of the political battle lines: Kader Asmal implemented a commericalised water policy while Thulisile Christina Manqele fought against that policy. Both leave a legacy, writes Patrick Bond.

With a crucial conference on climate change taking place in Durban, South Africa, in December, Patrick Bond cuts through the elite conspiracy that will result in a no deal scenario and a continued rise in global temperatures. 'The strongest possible stance will be needed to finally address the mess,' he writes.

‘There appears to be very little difference in what is being advocated [by the IMF] to Arab democrats today and what was advocated to Arab dictators yesterday,’ writes Patrick Bond.

‘[P]olitical reconciliation between Washington and fast-rising Arab democrats is impossible,’ writes Patrick Bond, as civil society reformers in Palestine express their disgust with Barack Obama’s 19 May policy speech on the Middle East and North Africa.

Patrick Bond makes a stinging critique of the recent report of the African Development Bank that claims that ‘one in three Africans is middle class’ and as a result, Africa is ready for ‘take off’.

The Climate Justice lobby is already ‘furious’ about the involvement of the World Bank as an interim trustee of the UN’s Green Climate Fund. But appointing ‘South Africa’s most vocal neoliberal politician’, Trevor Manuel, as co-chair of the fund could be ‘fatal to climate change mitigation and adaptation’, warns Patrick Bond.

Patrick Bond rips through the liberal veneer of Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, highlighting the complicity of the London School of Economics in accepting money from Gadaffi.