Geography Archives: Africa

Michael Heinrich is a political scientist and mathematician in Berlin and a member of the editorial board of Prokla — journal for critical social science.  Below is an interview with the “. . . ums Ganze!” [. . . All or Nothing!] coalition. “…ums Ganze!”: The federal government has staked out a position for the […]

June 11, 2007 Gerald A. Reynolds Chair of the Commission United States Commission on Civil Rights Regional Office 624 Ninth Street, NW Washington DC 20425 Dear Chairman Reynolds and Members of the Commission, I write to you on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom […]

Introductory Note: This essay is an adaptation and reworking of a historic 1963 document of the Students for a Democratic Society.  Its original was mimeographed in several thousand copies and distributed jointly by the SDS National Office and the newly-created Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP).  America and the New Era was intended to be […]

  What happens when hundreds or even thousands of small and not-so-small organizations come together to meet, dialogue, and present their ideas over the course of a long weekend?  The World Social Forum (WSF), an annual gathering of tens of thousands of people from over 100 countries, has provided this space for those able to […]

A summary of the FAO declaration from its headquarters in Rome, on May 16, 2007. World cereal production is on track to reach a record level in 2007.  In spite of this, supplies will be barely adequate to meet increased demand, boosted by the development of the biofuels industry. International prices for most cereals have […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its April 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The “reform” offensive that started in 1991 as New Economic Policy has continued 15 years with different cover stories — as “recovery from BOP crisis” or “shining India” […]

Just less than a year ago in May 2006, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario unanimously passed in convention its path-breaking Resolution 50 in support for the global campaign against Israeli apartheid.  The resolution called on the union to educate its members on the apartheid nature of the Israeli state.  It also mandated […]

  Murmurings of a political tsunami are emerging with regards to Israel’s policies towards the “non-Jewish” citizens of the “Jewish democratic state.”  Azmi Bishara, perhaps the most prominent political leader of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, was in the midst of engaging in his routine activities of propagating the rights of the Palestinian Arab […]

Trade Unions and Social Forums Since 2001, trade unions and other social movements, ranging from environmentalists to women’s organizations, from urban youth movements to indigenous peoples fighting for land rights, have come together at the World Social Forum (WSF) to debate and promote alternatives to the race-to-the-bottom, corporate model of globalization.  While participation from U.S. […]

If you want to know what’s going on in Zimbabwe, you could try taking seriously the view commonly argued by the independent left in this region, namely that Mugabe talks radical — especially nationalist and anti-imperialist — but acts reactionary, especially to the urban poor and working people. Fortunately, we have a fresh version of […]

It is now more than three decades since neoliberal economic and political ideas began to supplant Keynesian orthodoxies within the treasuries and finance ministries of Western governments and in the policy-making centers of development agencies and financial institutions.  Bolivia was one of the first Latin American countries to adopt a neoliberal approach back in the […]

The active imagining of an alternate global politics could hardly be more pressing.  Mounting global inequalities, the turbulence of climate change, and recurring military interventions by Western powers have been the daily fare of the neoliberal world order.  This world order was constructed over the last two decades under the hegemony of the U.S., in […]

  I have been very puzzled by how many on the left and in the liberal media seem to imagine that the situation in Iraq and the Middle East is bad for the Imperialists.  They are having a heyday with the so-called WOT. . . . It is going very well for them . . […]

  NOTE: The paper below was written in the early months of January 2001.  While the paper’s anticipation of the centrifugal forces pulling at the labor movement and the possibility of international unions “literally leaving the AFL-CIO” unfortunately proved prescient of the Change to Win split, it has been even more difficult than anticipated to […]

DREAM: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy by Stephen DuncombeBUY THIS BOOK Stephen Duncombe is a long-time activist and a professor of at the Gallatin School at New York University.  His new book Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy urges progressives to tap into popular fantasies and desires and to […]

The latest news from the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, and GM) automakers is bad.  As of Valentine’s Day — how appropriate for North American workers to receive another shot to the heart — the permanent force reduction now exceeds 100,000.  Most of the jobs eliminated are hourly workers, UAW and CAW union members in fact […]

For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating.  Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]

  Need a crash course on the present state of the world?  Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all?  I’d like to introduce you to a small literary arsenal. A good place to begin is the book […]

Every year on Valentine’s Day, millions of Americans head to their local florist shop or supermarket to buy flowers for a friend, spouse, or family member.  Some place their orders through NPR, which rewards contributors to public radio with a dozen roses sent to the person of their choice.  Especially if there’s a romantic relationship […]

  Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has helped dramatize the enormity of the global environmental crisis.  The scale of the threat posed by industrially induced global warming, and the short time in which to take meaningful action to prevent catastrophic consequences, makes the question of how to combat global warming arguably the most urgent […]