Rescued from a state of near-irrelevance by the world recession and an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars (mostly from the U.S., Europe, and Japan), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now thinking of expanding its role into previously uncharted territory. In Istanbul for the fall meetings of the IMF, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn […]
Geography Archives: Africa
Countries in the continent of Africa
The End of Mahmud Abbas
A United Nations report commission, created after the 2008-2009 Gaza War, has released a thundering report that has ripped through the Palestinian and Arab street, threatening to bring down Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and his entire cabinet. Mandated to lead the mission was Richard Goldstone, the respected South African president of the United Nations Human […]
On Islamic Reform and Liberation Theology: Interview with Chandra Muzaffar
Chandra Muzaffar is Malaysia’s best-known public intellectual. He has written widely on questions related to Islam, inter-faith relations and liberation theology, issues that he discusses in this interview with Yoginder Sikand. Q: Much of your writing focuses on a critique of capitalism and consumerism, or what you very aptly term as ‘moneytheism’, which you contrast […]
Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian General Strike
In the long tradition of Jewish working class involvement in and support for liberation struggles, IJAN-Labor stands in solidarity with the High Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the National Committee of Local Authorities, and all parties, movements and institutions of Palestinian civil society in Israel, who have called a general strike for […]
Key Facts to Keep in Mind While Opposing War against Iran
Representatives of Iran and six of the world’s most powerful countries are scheduled to meet this week in Geneva, one of a series of events that increasingly looks like a rerun of the build-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. As we prepare for a barrage of anti-Iranian media spin, it would be good […]
Swaziland: PUDEMO Welcomes COSATU Congress Resolutions
The recently concluded Congress of COSATU among other things declared to the world that COSATU will campaign for PUDEMO to be recognised as the genuine representative of the oppressed people of Swaziland. Further, that PUDEMO must be given diplomatic status accorded all liberation movements in various countries. This is a bold and very revolutionary […]
Iran, Etc.
Hooman Majd Answers the Nuclear Question Question: How do you respond to concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions? Majd: Stop worrying. Don’t learn to love the bomb, but stop worrying. First of all, Iran is so far away from having a nuclear weapon. I know there are all these reports, these alarmist reports: Iran has enough […]
UC Workers Strike as Faculty, Students Boycott Classes
University of California faculty, students, and workers rallied against state budget cuts and unfair labor practices at 10 campuses and five medical centers from San Diego to Davis on September 24. As a boycott of classes to protest teachers’ unpaid days off (furloughs) and students’ double-digit fee increases unfolded across the state, members of the […]
A Letter to The Economist
25 August 2009 To the Editor The Economist Dear Sir, This is with regard to the review of my book Listening to Grasshoppers that appeared in The Economist. If this letter is long, ironically it is because the factual errors in the review are so many. In an attempt to highlight my “flawed reporting and […]
Back to the Future: The Arab Nationalist Tradition and the Political Imagination of Today
The Arab and Muslim world is indeed in crisis. This crisis, however, may give us a new opportunity to reclaim our fate from foreign powers, local autocrats, and religious fanatics. To do so, we can benefit from recuperating the best elements from our great tradition of Arab nationalism. Under the banner of “Arab nationalism,” […]
Speaking Truth to Power: The Mythology of Imperialism
When I decided to teach Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness at Berkeley High School, it had been out of favor as an appropriate text because it was considered too controversial. I wanted to do a whole unit on Africa and the Congo, including African authors, journalism, and history, and I figured we could start […]
Decentralized Despotism and Its Discontents
Lungisile Ntsebeza. Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the Politics of the Land in South Africa. Leiden: Brill, 2005. 300 pp. $38.00 (paper), ISBN 978-90-04-14482-8. One central question forms the backbone for this local study of governance in a rural district of the Eastern Cape: how is it that the chiefs and headmen, many of whom […]
The Responsibility to Protect, the International Criminal Court, and Foreign Policy in Focus: Subverting the UN Charter in the Name of Human Rights
It was just a matter of time before members of the collapsing left enlisted in the imperial attack on the most fundamental principles of the UN Charter, and added their voices to the growing chorus of support for Western power-projection under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). But this […]
Swazi Queens’ $6m Shopping Spree
There is growing anger in Swaziland as it emerges that the media have been forced to censor news that a group of King Mswati III‘s wives have been on another international shopping trip squandering up to E50 million (6 million US dollars) that should belong to ordinary Swazis. When the wives went on a […]
A Crucial Factor in Colonial Conflicts: Opposition from Within
In a colonial conflict, the main protagonists are, on the one hand, the colonial power and, on the other, the colonized population, and, when it exists, the liberation movement of the latter. This was the case in the Algerian liberation war, the struggle of the Vietnamese people, in Angola and in Mozambique. The ability of […]
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants
Doris “Dobby” Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights. The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant […]
The Politics of the UNDP Arab Human Development Report
On Tuesday, July 21st, the United Nations Development Program launched its 5th Arab Human Development Report (AHDR). The independently prepared report was not presented to the public prior to its publication, but criticism began to surface even before it was released, both from researchers involved in the report and from observers. Wujohat Nazar (Perspectives) […]
Petroleum and Energy Policy in Iran
Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption. This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]
Uneven Development Is the Root of Many Crimes
Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York, 23 July 2009 The phrase, responsibility to protect, brings to my mind painful memories of lack of protection of many people who died of ethnic cleansing in Kenya earlier this year. The incidents of ethnic cleansing […]
“Come Over and Help Us”: A History of R2P
Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York, 23 July 2009 The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have […]
