On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005 that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes […]
Geography Archives: Africa
Countries in the continent of Africa
South Africa: A Nation in Protest, a Moment of Hope
July 31, 2009 It is Friday afternoon, and I am in the Johannesburg Oliver Tambo Airport preparing for my journey back to New York where I will arrive Saturday morning. I left South Africa and Swaziland at the beginning of July, only to return two weeks later to put together the project that I am […]
Interview with Simone Bitton, Director of Rachel
How would you tell the story of your movie Rachel? It is a cinematographic inquiry into the death of a young girl who was crushed by a military vehicle in a diseased country. This young girl was American, the vehicle was an Israeli bulldozer, and the country is Palestine and Israel — a region whose […]
On the Increasingly Complex Relationship between Immigration Policy and (Inter)national Security
Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Simon Reich, eds. Immigration, Integration, and Security: America and Europe in Comparative Perspective. The Security Continuum: Global Politics in the Modern Age. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. xi + 480 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4344-0; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-5984-7. Migration and security have always been linked, but, as Ariane Chebel […]
Against Tolerance: Islam, Sexuality, and the Politics of Belonging in the Netherlands
The Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Zizek argues that tolerance constitutes a mystifying discourse veiling what is really at the heart of political and social struggle. There is good reason, Zizek argues, that someone like Martin Luther King didn’t make use of the concept. The struggle against racism is not a struggle for tolerance, […]
An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement: How Should We React to the Events in Iran?
The “Iranian people” have not spoken. What’s happening in Iran today is a developing conflict between two forces that each represent millions of people. There are good people on both sides and the issues are complicated. So before U.S. progressives decide to weigh in, supporting one side and condemning the other, let’s take a little […]
Morocco: An Alternative to Iran?
A recent article by Anne Applebaum, published under two separate titles in the Washington Post (“Morocco, an Alternative to Iran”) and Slate (“Morocco Makes Peace with Its Past”), has caused quite a stir amongst Moroccan bloggers, as well as on Twitter and in forums. The article, which suggests Morocco as a model for democracy coexisting […]
North Korea: “Sanity” at the Brink
Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has […]
Workers Creating Hope: Factory Occupations and Self-Management
Introduction In most countries, political leaders and bosses are using the global economic crisis to once again unleash an attack on workers and the poor. As part of this, we have seen corporations around the world trying to make workers pay for the crisis by retrenching tens of millions of people. In the most extreme […]
SA Political Power Balance Shifts Left — Though Not Yet Enough to Quell Grassroots Anger
With high-volume class strife heard in the rumbling of wage demands and the friction of township “service delivery protests,” rhetorical and real conflicts are bursting open in every nook and cranny of South Africa. The big splits in the society are clearer now. Distracting internecine rivalries within the main left bloc — which saw off […]
Brazil: Revisited
“A modern city, warts and all.” — Dennis Brutus Dawnlight seeps slowly into Sao Paulo skies as if reluctant to rediscover old betrayals or disclose new ones in Lula’s disappointed lands (IMF/World Bank scoundrels have tenacious as well as rapacious ravening claws) but trees silhouetted against pale skies against malodorous ditches assert irrepressible growth, undeterrable […]
The Atrocity Exhibition
Some Brief Notes on Congolese History Since its inception the Congo has been raped. Its origins as a state are unique within African history, initiated, as it was, not as a colony but as the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium; an obscene figure whose 23-year reign was cloaked in the empty rhetoric […]
Appeals Court Rules against Shell Nigeria, Allows Plaintiffs to Seek Further Information to Establish Connections to United States
New York, June 3, 2009 — Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the District Court decision dismissing the Wiwa v. Shell plaintiffs’ claims against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, Ltd. (Shell Nigeria). The District Court had dismissed the case against Shell Nigeria on March 4, 2008, finding it did not have jurisdiction […]
Second Issue of Jafa Now Available!
Labour for Palestine is pleased to announce the second issue of Jafa – Labour Bulletin in Solidarity with Palestine. This second issue has a special focus on Israel’s war on Gaza. We publish here a range of solidarity resolutions that were passed by unions around the world, analysis of the aftermath, and discussion around […]
Nation-States as Building Blocks
Paul Nugent. Africa since Independence: A Comparative History. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. xix + 620 pp. $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-333-68272-2; $35.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-333-68273-9. This is a masterful work of usable academic history. By sharply delineating diverse trends in scores of countries, it applies expert analysis to sub-Saharan Africa, “the continent which has been […]
The Many Faces of Humanitarianism
Humanism and Human Rights Who or what is the ‘human’ of human rights and the ‘humanity’ of humanitarianism? The question sounds naïve, silly even. Yet, important philosophical and ontological questions are involved. If rights are given to beings on account of their humanity, ‘human’ nature with its needs, characteristics and desires is the normative […]
Sweet Crude
“For fifty years, crude oil has been flowing from under the feet of the people of the Niger Delta. For fifty years, they have been promised that this would mean a better life. This promise has never been kept. Now, the people have had enough.” Sandy Cioffi is a Seattle-based film and video artist. […]
Interview with Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr.
Part 1 Part 2 Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr., the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, is the author of In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understand His Father’s Legacy (2001). Omoyele Sowore is a Nigerian human rights activist and the publisher of Sahara Reporters. This interview was produced for Sahara Reporters and brought […]
Massive Casualties Feared in Nigerian Military Attack on Niger Delta Villages
Go to <www.democracynow.org/2009/5/21/nigeria> for the transcript of this program. ABUJA, 22 May 2009 (IRIN) — Thousands of civilians have fled their villages in Nigeria’s Delta state after government troops launched an offensive against militant groups in the state on 13 May. Villagers in Delta state’s Gbramatu kingdom reported Oporoza and Okerenkoko villages being attacked […]
Benny Morris’s War on History
Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (Yale University Press, 2009). This book is a disgrace. It is difficult to understand why a reputable publisher like Yale University Press would wish to have its name on a book that is so dishonest, ill-informed, and pursues an obvious political agenda. Perhaps the clue […]
