Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before. Right. It’s ridiculous. So, to… Read More »
The comment boards of articles about immigration are often filled with heart-wrenching stories of American engineers who can’t find employment. They too blame foreigners for their woes. So what gives? Could there indeed be a vast conspiracy by the technology industry to exclude Americans from the innovation economy? The truth is we’re not seeing the… Read More »
Mariya Ivancheva in CriticAtac To make an analogy between Chávez’s social democracy and the “totalitarian” socialism in Eastern Europe is an easy task mostly for the representatives of organizations and media who side with the Venezuelan opposition. Students and NGO activists sponsored by international organizations have traveled across the Western world campaigning against the so-called… Read More »
Of course they are: A paper from the Centre for the Study of African Economies suggests that savvy Chinese companies have set up shop in Africa as a route to get their products into the US, with the added incentive of all those juicy AGOA benefits. The logic is impeccable. Not only does an Africa platform get… Read More »
Ken Opalo has an excellent article on drug trafficking in Africa: The problem of drug trafficking in Africa is not merely a law enforcement concern. Firstly, it is a threat to the development and consolidation of important state institutions, especially the region’s judiciaries and security agencies. In many of the African states that have been… Read More »
Thoughts are with Ghana at the passing of President Atta Mills, who many described as being slow but steady. The vice president was sworn in last evening as the new president. The video of the swearing-in ceremony is here. The new President John Dramani Mahama was a minister for communication between 1998 and 2001. Shortly… Read More »
In the current edition of The Economist: In some countries it [citizenship] is, in effect, on sale. In others, such as America, it may be an accident of birth, with no conscious choice involved. Rather than making a fetish out of passports, a better approach would be to use residence (especially tax residence) as the… Read More »
Robert Frisk writes in The Independent: The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become… Read More »
On naked capitalism: My first take on the question came when The Guardian asked me to write an oped on Occupy Wall Street a few days later. At the time I was inspired mainly by what Marisa Holmes, another brilliant organizer of the original occupation, had discovered in her work as a video documentarian, doing… Read More »
Manan Ahmed in The National: Both Stewart and Mortenson illustrate one particular configuration of the relationship between knowledge and the American empire – the “non-expert” insider who can traverse that unknown terrain and, hence, become an “expert”. Even a cursory examination of the archive dealing with the American efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan demonstrates… Read More »