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globalisation
The danger of Grameenism
Patrick Bond with Khorshed Alam
2010-10-21, Issue 501
cc SavijanaFar from being a panacea for fighting rural poverty, microcredit can impose additional burdens on the rural poor, without markedly improving their socio-economic condition, write Patrick Bond and Khorshed Alam.
The global food price crisis
A critique of orthodox perspectives
Walden Bello
2009-06-25, Issue 439
cc joespakeIn an extract from his forthcoming book Food Wars, Walden Bello critiques the orthodox views of economist Paul Collier on the global food price crisis. Collier argues that not enough food was produced to meet increased demand from Asia, thanks to a failure to promote commercial farming in Africa, the European Union ban against GMOs and the diversion of American grain to biofuels production. Bello counters that a globalised system of production has 'created severe strains on the environment', 'marginalised large numbers of people from the market, and contributed to greater poverty and greater income disparities within countries and globally'. Defenders of peasant agriculture, says Bello, blame 'capitalist industrial agriculture, with its wrenching destabilisation and transformation of land, nature, and social relations' for today’s food crises, with 'rates of profit determining where investment will be allocated' rather than the desire to satisfy 'the real needs of the global majority'.
The future of aid
Yash Tandon
2008-08-26, Issue 394
The following is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Yash Tandon's new book, Ending Aid Dependence, published by Fahamu Books, September 2008. For more information please visit, http://www.fahamu.org/publications
Aid: Rethinking old concepts
Benjamin W. Mkapa
2008-08-26, Issue 394
The following is the foreword to Yash Tandon's new book, Ending Aid Dependence, published by Fahamu Books, September 2008. For more information please visit, http://www.fahamu.org/publications
Food shortages: stories of strife across the globe
Azad Essa
2008-08-05, Issue 392
The current food crisis has been heralded as the worst since the 1970s. Ordinary people, from South Africa to Egypt, India to Turkey, have been forced to make severe adjustments to their lives to deal with food hikes that continue to rise exponential...
World’s workshop becomes world’s strike capital
Stephen Marks
2008-07-30, Issue 391
Apparently, January 1 2008 saw a breakthrough in Chinese workers’ rights, and a flight of employers to other lands where labour is cheaper and less protected. At least that is what must have happened if the rosiest [or most alarmist] interpretations of China’s new labour law, which came into force on that date, are to be believed....
Africa’s Unnatural Disaster
Sameer Dossani
2008-07-23, Issue 390
While the mainstream media doesn’t always ignore the pressing issue of hunger in Africa, it rarely explores the root causes of this problem. Behind most news on the issue, there’s an assumption that casts hunger as a natural result of unfortunate weather conditions, coupled with bureaucratic inefficiency and bad economic planning.
Xenophobia is a global phenomenon
Chengiah Rogers Ragaven
2008-07-17, Issue 389
Xenophobia, refugees and immigration politics in their own right have negative connotations when examined through the lens of universal values, moral truths or scriptural teachings which form the basis of our humanitarian civilization, but when translated and practiced through the lens of racism, religious chauvinism, cultural and ethnic ‘otherness,’ the consequence can be horrendous and catastrophic.
A brief history of the G-8
Walden Bello
2008-07-09, Issue 387
In Hokkaido, Japan, we have not only in Bush, Sarkozy, Brown, and Fukuda a group of discredited leaders with very low ratings at the polls in their own countries, writes Walden Bello. We have as well a G8 that is, more than ever, lacking in legitimacy as the typhoon unleashed by the project of globalization that it has promoted is wracking the globe in the form of the simultaneous crises of skyrocketing oil prices, rising food prices, global financial collapse, and worsening climate change. Against this backdrop, Japanese and Asian social movements are faced with the choice of taking either the Road of Genoa or the Road of Gleneagles—that is, to deepen the G8’s crisis of legitimacy or, as in Gleneagles, to salvage the G8 once again. The greatest gift that the Japanese movement can give to global civil society is by leading the struggle to make the Hokkaido Summit the final summit of the G8.
The principles of food sovereignty
Yash Tandon
2008-06-18, Issue 383
A proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers, writes Yash Tandon. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.
The oil crisis in global context
John Samuel
2008-06-23, Issue 383
We could be on the threshold of a new phase of globalisation, one where there will be a new protectionism, more regional trade and regional economic activism and where governments will be forced to address the problems of the vulnerable middle class and poor, argues John Samuel.
The committed intellectual: reviving and restoring the National Project
Yash Tandon
2008-05-29, Issue 376
A man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind, writes Yash Tandon. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world. Our collective efforts, he continues, will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.
Towards African-American Unity and a Black United Front
Nationalities Committee
2008-05-22, Issue 374
Commemorating Malcolm X's Birthday, appraise existing African American leadership and call for a Black united front that can shake the foundation of a border-less neoliberal globalization.
Pitfalls of export processing zones
Herbert Jauch
2008-03-26, Issue 357
Under AGOA, Ramatex Textile & Garment Factory, a Malaysian company moved to Namibia. Herbert Jauch looks at the cost of allowing companies to operate without government regulation, tax exemption and government sanctioned suspension of worker rights in Export Processing Zones.
The routes and possibilities of a South - South subversive globalization: Africa and Brazil
Jacques Depelchin
2007-12-11, Issue 332
Jacques Depelchin reflects on the growing economic, political and cultural relationship between Brazil and the Africa and urges for a solidarity from below that is cognizant of black revolutionary history.
The philosophy of Kabwe Zitto
Nationalism and identity in Tanzania
Ramesh Shah
2007-12-11, Issue 332
Ramesh Shah looks at the evolution of political discourse in Tanzania
The 'lost protocol' in Uganda: tears, struggles and hope
Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe
2007-11-21, Issue 329
Today, as many across the continent celebrate the 2nd Anniversary of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the women’s movement in Uganda is struggling to ‘find the protocol’, says Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe