Geography Archives: Africa

Just how dangerous is the World Bank and its neo-conservative president, Robert Zoellick, to South Africa and the global climate? Notwithstanding South Africa’s existing $75 billion foreign debt, last Thursday the bank added a $3.75bn loan to Eskom for the primary purpose of building the world’s fourth-largest coal-fired power plant, at Medupi, which will spew […]

  I had the opportunity to sit for a conversation with the Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan at the end of the 2009 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal.  Ramadan is a public intellectual who has been a figure of both much praise and much condemnation, occasioned by controversial statements and positions that […]

  A coalition of nearly 20 Jewish groups, ranging from the right-wing David Project and the Jewish National Fund to the liberal J Street, is distributing a misleading statement condemning a Student Senate bill at UC Berkeley.  The ground-breaking bill calls for divestment from companies that profit from the perpetuation of the Israeli military occupation […]

  (Phone Message) “Hey, Justine, I just wanted to say, ‘Come back safely.’” May 16, 2007.  Tomorrow morning, my son and I leave for Iran. (Phone Message) “Hi, Justine, I want you to be careful and maybe not mention to people that you’re Jewish.” (In-flight Announcement) “. . . We do ask you to respect […]

It is amazing that I am now at last again on South African soil, since my previous trip here was in December.   I am at home in my soul in a way that is unique for my travels.   I am breathing in the salty air from the Indian Ocean, feeling the hot rays of the […]

  What are the consequences of the implementation of neo-liberal economic philosophy for industrialization and development of poor countries?  The answer: de-industrialization of many low-income countries; destruction of their food production (influenced also by protectionist agricultural policies of developed countries), thus their heavy dependence on food imports.  The boom in commodity prices had improved the […]

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat.  I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.  I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days.  That was to […]

  A talk delivered at the conference “The Left in Palestine/The Palestinian Left,” School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 28 February 2010 This talk is dedicated to the memory of my late friend and comrade, the Arab Marxist Jabra Nicola (1912-74). The terms “Right” and “Left” as used in Israel are misleading: they do […]

On Tuesday morning clashes erupted between Palestinian protesters and Israeli military and police forces across the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem. Dozens of Palestinians were injured and many were detained.

  Zimbabwe’s land issue has generated unprecedented debates both within and outside the country.  The debates, which followed the dramatic occupations of white farms by rural peasants in the late 1990s, are generally polarised between those who support radical land reform and those who support market-orientated reforms.  The former stand accused of supporting Mugabe’s regime […]

Johannesburg, 11 March 2010 (IRIN) — Most food crop cultivation in Africa is rain-fed, but climate change is affecting vital rainfall patterns and pushing up temperatures, diminishing yields that could halve in some countries by 2020.  This warning has been widely quoted since it first appeared in a synthesis report for policy-makers in 2007 by […]

“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty […]

  Sukant Chandan interviews Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled and Palestinian Gaza resident and revolutionary Shireen Said for International Women’s Day 2010 Leila Khaled: “Palestinian women have a fundamental role in uniting Palestinians” The Palestinian people’s oppression continues due primarily to the financial, diplomatic, and military support that the Zionist state receives from the USA and […]

  The Barcelona-born writer recalls his intense relationship with one of his “greatest literary idols.” Juan Goytisolo has just published Genet en el Raval (Genet in El Raval, Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de lectores, 2009), a chronicle of a literary as well as emotional friendship.  The Barcelona-born writer met the poet Jean Genet (1910-1986), one of […]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.  (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.)  And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]

Attention all US law enforcement agencies!  Be on the lookout: a war criminal is coming our way.  The Butcher of Gaza is coming to America. One year after the war on Gaza, during which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) murdered 1,400 Palestinians including 400 children, the IDF and war criminal Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi will […]

Daughters are God’s irony on men.  Not His vengeance or His revenge on us, but surely His irony. Daughters, when they come, are never expected and seldom asked for, especially if she is a first child.  Always a surprise, usually more for the father than the mother, who, if she suspects at all, keeps it […]

The unusually lengthy list of nominees for this year’s Best Picture Oscar features a slew of do-gooder films about the suffering of others.  Most are about people who’re at a considerable cultural distance from the white, middle-class Americans who are the primary consumers of these films. Lee Daniel’s Precious transports us to Harlem, to the […]

March 1-7, 2010, Worldwide, with U.S. events in: Bard, NY; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; CT; Davis, CA; Iowa City, IA; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC. The 6th annual Israeli Apartheid Week is currently taking place in cities across the globe.  This week, human rights advocates around the world will host […]

From 21 January to 2 February 2010, Eric Toussaint and Olivier Bonfond — both involved in alterglobalization activism and members of the International Council of the World Social Forum, of the world coordination of social movements, and of the Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt 1 — participated in various events and […]