For years, the U.S. never considered Africa as a priority foreign policy agenda. The only context in which Africa came up in Washington was for preferential trade as in AGOA (Africa Growth & Opportunity Act) or in AIDS funding from PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and of course humanitarian assistance. Despite its […]
Geography Archives: Africa
Countries in the continent of Africa
Where We Stand: Monthly Review and the Credit Crisis
Sunday afternoon, October 5th, 2008, a moment at the height of a global credit crisis, the like of which has not been seen by anyone under the age of eighty. The time will come when calm has returned, and when we at Monthly Review will point to a record over the last several years of […]
SA and Zimbabwe Politicos Join Global Financiers in Self-Destruction
The past week has been a wild roller-coaster ride in and out of Southern African ruling-party politics, down the troughs of world capitalism, and up the peaks of radical social activism. Glancing around the region and world from those peaks, we can see quite a way further than usual. Looking first to South Africa, Saturday’s […]
Third World: Is Another Debt Crisis in the Offing?
While taking a significant toll on public revenues,1 repayment of the public debt has, since 2004, ceased to be a major concern for most middle-revenue countries and for raw material-exporting countries in general. In fact the majority of governments of these countries are having no trouble finding loans at historically low interest rates. However, the […]
Dealing with Iran’s Not-So-Irrational Leadership
Nothing expresses the widening gap between the mind frames of the Iranian ruling elite and their Western counterparts more than the headlines in their respective newspapers. The American media, above all, have unilaterally resolved the intelligence questions over Iran’s nuclear program. The New York Times leads the pack with articles and even editorials that […]
Osama’s a Joker:The Lights Are Out in the Cinema
You’ll be familiar with the story. An evil or crazy (the two are interchangeable) maniac is trying to destroy the American way of life, sowing destruction in an American city, blowing up American buildings, killing American citizens. We stand amidst the rubble, watching the firemen, wondering what happened. This man is demented, unreasonable; he […]
The Only Good Muslim Is the Anti-Muslim: Liberals’ Fear of Islam
For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the Left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter. Disappointment has often been self-inflicted. Supporters have dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of Obama’s inspiring story and written their own lines on Afghanistan, oil drilling, or […]
Of Jobs Lost and Wages Depressed: The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Employment and Wage Levels in the Philippines, 1980-20001
Introduction Despite the vast literature examining the link between trade liberalization and economic growth, empirical studies still fail to provide conclusive and unequivocal evidence supporting the link. What most of these studies emphasize is that openness, accompanied by a country-specific mix of appropriate complementary policies (macroeconomic and financial policies, education, infrastructure, institutional capacity and governance), […]
Food and Neoliberalism in South Africa: Entrenching the Legacy of Apartheid
Statistically, South Africa produces enough food to feed its entire population, and in most years it is even a net exporter of food.1 There is, therefore, not a shortage of food in South Africa. Yet if you walk through the streets of any township or rural village in the country, you will find hungry people […]
Manley and McKay: Reform and Revolution in the Politics of the African Diaspora
Lloyd D. McCarthy, “In-Dependence” from Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael Manley Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations (Africa World Press, 2007). Claude McKay and Michael Manley may seem like strange bedfellows for a study in 20th-century politics. Though both born in Jamaica, a generation apart, they could hardly have pursued […]
The Bottom of the Barrel: A Review of Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It
Summary Paul Collier, in an attempt to bring development economics to a wider audience, has written a book that departs from what he calls the “grim apparatus of professional scholarship.” The result is a book that is almost entirely unverifiable. What is verifiable turns out to be an elaborate fiction. Collier’s thesis is based upon […]
Zimbabwe: A Deal for Whom?
Negotiations between the MDC and ZANU-PF over the political future of Zimbabwe have reached a zenith in the past few weeks. It now seems almost inevitable that some sort of deal will be attained by the political masters of the MDC and ZANU and that power sharing will become a reality. The mediator in the […]
Will CCS Be Closed by University of KwaZulu-Natal Authorities?
Note on the Status of CCS within the University of KwaZulu-Natal On 30 July, the staff of the Centre for Civil Society and our host institution, the School of Development Studies (SDS), were summoned by Dean Donal McCracken, and told that as of 31 December 2008, CCS would be permanently closed, that Professor Patrick Bond […]
Jewish International Opposition Statement against Attack on Iran
Efforts to beat the drums of war for an attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor facilities are promoted in both the USA and Israel scenes. The recent New York Times opinion piece of July 18th, written by the Israeli historian Benny Morris, serves to consolidate those political forces. The Jewish opposition here expresses our outrage in […]
From Black Power to Ethnic Politics: Class Contradictions of Black Nationalism
Cedric Johnson. Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Cedric Johnson‘s Revolutionaries to Race Leaders traces the ideological cooptation of one of the twentieth century’s most vibrant social movements. The Black Nationalist resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s demanded nothing short of self-determination, […]
Why the World Isn’t Flat
Let me start my talk with a little story. In 1958, Japan tried to export this first passenger car to the US market. The company was Toyota, the car was called Toyopet. And, as you can guess from the name, it was a very cheap, small subcompact car, more of a four-wheels-and-an-ashtray kind of thing, […]
If Socialism Fails: The Spectre of 21st Century Barbarism
From the first day it appeared online, Climate and Capitalism’s masthead has carried the slogan “Ecosocialism or Barbarism: there is no third way.” We’ve been quite clear that ecosocialism is not a new theory or brand of socialism — it is socialism with Marx’s important insights on ecology restored, socialism committed to the fight against […]
Nigeria’s Oil
Awash in oil, yet its people, for the most part, are destitute. Nigeria discovered “liquid gold” half a century ago and today is the world’s eighth largest oil exporter. But the country is plagued by corruption, inefficiency, underdevelopment, and an uprising in its Niger Delta — the area where most of its oil reserves […]
Iran Should Sue to Stop US Attack
Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, proposes that Iran sue the U.S. in the World Court to enjoin it against threats to attack Iran. Part 1: The Libya Precedent “We filed papers with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on behalf of Libya against the US and […]
What Is Palestine to Me? An Interview with Fatima Hassan
Fatima Hassan, is a prominent South African human rights lawyer who was part of a South African Human Rights Delegation that in early July visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The delegation undertook the mission in order to: “support those, Palestinian and Israeli, working daily, by non-violent means, to bring an end to the […]
