Archive | March, 2009

The World Bank’s Board of Governors has approved the first of a series of reforms aimed at amplifying the voice and influence of developing countries inside the World Bank Group.  The centrepiece of these much-awaited reforms, announced in mid-February, is an additional seat for Sub-Saharan Africa on the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, a change […]

In this Briefing, we look at how the US’s agricultural reconstruction work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of the US military campaign in these countries and […]

  André Meier, dir.  Do Communists Have Better Sex? (Sex im geteilten Deutschland).  First Run/Icarus Films, 2006. 52 mins., color, subtitles in English. This film, a mixture of scholarly research and light-hearted presentations of stereotypes about the role of sex in divided Germany (from the end of the Second World War to the fall of […]

The process of establishing a transatlantic free trade area is the inverse of the process that led to the construction of the European Union.  While the European common market is an economic structure based first on the liberalization of trade and then on the creation of a common currency, the transatlantic free trade area is […]

Sea level rise will displace millions across the world.  Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN. JOHANNESBURG, 10 March 2009 (IRIN) — In the past few months, newspapers across the globe have been flooded with a debate over new studies projecting a higher and faster sea-level rise by the next century, which would sound the death-knell for low-lying countries […]

Crack in sea ice recorded along the Antarctic Peninsula on 2 January, 2009 by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s MODIS Rapid Response. Photo: NASA. JOHANNESBURG, 10 March 2009 (IRIN) — The UN Environment Programme’s 2009 Year Book lists disturbing evidence from studies in 2008, which show that the earth is losing its ice at a […]

  James Renton.  The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914-1918.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.  xi + 231 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6; $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6. The word “masquerade” is not one to be used lightly by historians.  Obviously, James Renton is aware of this, and he strives to justify his choice of […]

I am trying to follow the events of the Baseball Classic, thanks to our national television services.

On November 18, 2008, activists in Cleveland, Ohio came together to form an organization called Ohio Moratorium Now on Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shut-offs.  A Cleveland winter lay ahead of us in one of the most poverty-stricken, foreclosure-ridden cities in the United States.  All around the US on a daily basis came stories of working […]

In recent years, there has been a gradual growth in the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, calling for putting economic pressure on Israel until it recognizes the rights of the occupied Palestinian people and puts an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip […]

This year sees the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Williams, one of the towering socialist thinkers of the past century.  A superb biography — Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale — has just been published by Dai Smith.  He charts Williams’s passage from the Welsh border country, where his father was a railway signalman, […]

Aijaz Ahmad: The Obama administration has already made two — in my view — very dangerous decisions. One is to send 17,000 more troops right away. And even more dangerous and disastrous in the long term, I believe, is the decision to arm large numbers of militias in various provinces where the Taliban are active. These actions will only destabilize and create a situation much worse for the people of Afghanistan and would make the solution even much more difficult.

At the end of the Globalization and Development event, with the presences of more than 1,500 economists, outstanding scientific figures and representatives of international organizations meeting in Havana, I received a letter and a document from Atilio Boron, a Doctor of Political Science, senior professor of political and social theory, director of the Latin American Program for correspondence courses in the social sciences – PLED, as well as other important scientific and political responsibilities.

This Sunday, the Eighth of March, Assemble at Plaza O’Leary at 9 AM in Silence, to March toward Plaza Los Museos, the Location of the Cultural Festival We Are Marching to Open New Paths.  Big Marches Work Their Magic Because We Make the Path by Marching, Which Is the Legacy of the Collective Memory of […]

This campaign film by Amnesty International and Mundi Romani drawing attention to the importance of women and the complexity of the Roma identity was released on 6 March 2009, in time for International Women’s Day.  The campaign seeks to combat the escalating violence against the Roma people in Europe, including Hungary, which is threatening the […]

  Who Am I? / من انا؟ Observer / متفرجة Excerpts from the Book of Aswat / مقتطفات من كتاب أصوات Aswat / أصوات Aswat (Voices) is a group of Palestinian gay women, home to all lesbian, inter-sex, queer, transsexual, transgender, and bisexual women and women who are just beginning to question their sexual identities.

Interview with Eric Toussaint, President of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), in Havana. Obama Picked People Who Brought You This Crisis as His Advisers What is your opinion of Team Obama? Toussaint: Obama picked the very people who are responsible for this economic fiasco.  Some hoped that Obama would appoint […]

Throughout the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine conflict, civil society has been active in responding to crises and advocating for peace and justice.  Kathambi Kinoti of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) interviewed Eilat Maoz, a general coordinator of the Coalition of Women for Peace, an Israeli organization that works for peace in Israel and […]

The February employment report showed the labor market deteriorating at an even faster rate, with the unemployment rate rising from 7.6 percent to 8.1 in February.  The economy lost 651,000 jobs in the month, but job loss for the prior two months was revised up as well.  Job loss for the last three months is […]

  Jean-Hugues Ratenon is President of the “Agir Pou Nou Tout” [Act for All of Us] Association, which is part of the Collective of Trade Unions, Political Organizations, and Community Associations of Réunion (COSPAR), the organizer of the social movement. The prefect of Réunion announced, on Thursday, 5 March, a decrease in the price of […]