This article on the World Socialist website argues that the handling of the Eurozone financial crisis points to a policy of 'pushing Greece over the edge, with devastating consequences for the Greek working class, while allocating hundreds of billions more in public funds to cover the potential losses of banks across Europe - a new bailout that will inevitably be paid for at the expense of the jobs, wages and social conditions of workers in every European country. These attacks will set a new benchmark for attacks on the working class in the US and internationally.'

The latest issue of the South Bulletin focuses on the recent deterioration in the state of the global economy and the effects this will have on developing countries. Highlights include:
- Bracing for a New Global Financial Crisis (by Martin Khor)
- The End of Recovery And Start Of A New Global Downturn (by Y?lmaz Akyüz)
- A Lot of Uncertainties and Volatilities Facing Developing Countries: Presentation by Dr Yaga Venugopal Reddy.

As Zimbabwe begins investigating 700 foreign-owned companies that missed this week's deadline to submit plans on the sale of majority shares to locals, investors are looking to a deal struck by Old Mutual for clues on compliance. The company, the largest of its kind on the Zimbabwe stock exchange, has significant commercial property holdings and is the largest provider of insurance in the country. As a first step towards the required 51 per cent, Old Mutual agreed to set aside 25 per cent for staff, pensioners, policyholders, a youth fund and black investors.

Despite its oil wealth, in 2006 Angola ranked ninth from the bottom in the world on health spending, which accounted for just 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Since then, spending per person has tripled from $64 to $204, according to World Health Organisation data. Yet Angola still has less than one doctor for every 10,000 people, while battling to eradicate preventable diseases like polio.

South Africa’s Home Affairs department has notified Zimbabwean authorities that it is resuming the removal of illegal immigrants after lifting a special moratorium which has been in place since May 2009. South Africa had given Zimbabwean immigrants, estimated in the millions, a 31 December 2010 deadline to regularise their stay but just 275,762 submitted work permit applications which were decided by 31 July.

Zambia’s President Michael Sata has reversed the previous government’s sale of a privately-owned bank to South Africa’s FirstRand, dissolved several parastatal boards and revealed that the nation, including State House, was 'stinking with corruption'. The Zambian leader dismissed all 72 district commissioners that were appointed by the previous government, saying they were politicians, and ordered them to immediately vacate their offices and houses. 'We cannot have civil service positions given to political parties,' he said.

Al Jazeera is carrying a four-part documentary series on the global financial crash. The documentaries examine what caused banks to stop lending, the true causes of the crisis and what is being done to prepare for the next crisis.

An anxious three months lie ahead for Kenya as judges prepare to hand down verdicts on whether International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will press crimes against humanity charges against the Ocampo Six. This article in the Daily Nation says there is consensus that the defence teams have put in a strong case to try and get their clients off the hook but that the prosecution may have a large mass of evidence which they have only disclosed to the judges and which they are holding on to in preparation for the full trial stage.

The UN Security Council has called on the African Union (AU) to urgently increase the strength of its peacekeeping force in Somalia (AMISOM) to its mandated level of 12,000 to enable it to better carry out its UN-authorised mandate to stabilize the war-torn country. In a unanimously adopted resolution, the 15-member body also extended AMISOM’s authorisation until 31 October 2012, and called on UN member states and regional and international organisations to provide additional equipment, technical aid and funding to the enlarged force.

A new cholera epidemic has hit the Central African Republic and has already claimed at least 10 victims in the south, Health Minister Jean-Michel Mandaba said. His comments came the day after a health services source sounded the alarm that cholera had killed six people in the Limbo region, 20km from the capital Bangui.

The involvement of men is key to the success of the gender-equality movement, but changing long-held social structures and convincing men of the importance of equal opportunities for women will not happen overnight, experts say. 'Men giving up their superior position is akin to acting out of the normative or prescribed way and [means men can be] ridiculed for acting differently - not like men,' Maria Magezi, programme officer with the NGO, Akina Mama wa Afrika, told IRIN in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

The United Nations Economic, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has a mandate to promote human rights and press freedom, but the president of Equatorial Guinea wants to use it instead to promote his image. You can help block the UNESCO-Obiang prize by contacting African governments that sit on UNESCO's governing board. Tell them that the world is watching and that a decision to approve a prize honouring President Obiang would be heavily criticised.

The INTERIGHTS Quarterly Update is a regular email containing summaries of recent news, including updates on litigation, events and publications.

The 2011 Right Livelihood jury has awarded Jacqueline Moudeina from Chad 'for her tireless efforts at great personal risk to win justice for the victims of the former dictatorship in Chad and to increase awareness and observance of human rights in Africa'. Moudeina is a lawyer who works fearlessly to bring the former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to justice making sure that those who committed crimes do not go unpunished. At the same time, she works on a wide range of human rights issues concerning Chad today. With her commitment to justice as prerequisite for reconciliation and her dedication to intervene from the grassroots level up to international jurisdiction, she has made a prominent and crucial contribution to winning respect for human rights in Africa.

Rights groups in Guinea have denounced the action of security forces against the inhabitants of a village more than one hundred kilometers south of the capital, Conakry. Lawyers Without Borders and the Equal Rights for All say they are disappointed with the government over the alleged attacks by gendarmes and army troops against inhabitants of the Saoro village over a land dispute with the Soguipah Company. The land conflict started in 2003 following a presidential decree allocating 2,000 hectares of land in Saoro village to the Company.

From the 18 - 20 July 2011, the first Southern African Regional Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) was hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa, by JASS (Just Associates) Southern Africa and Women’s Net. The Feminist Tech Exchange, organised under the Building Women’s Collective Power partnership, brought nine women’s rights activists from Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe together to share and build knowledge and skills on communication and ICTs from a feminist perspective. The exchange was convened as a way to strengthen women’s collective organising power through the use of ICTs.

Thousands of people who fled insecurity in Sudan's Southern Kordofan State to neighbouring South Sudan's Unity State remain vulnerable, amid humanitarian access and security concerns, says the UN. 'People entering the area are reported to be highly vulnerable, some having walked with children for two weeks,' said Siddartha Shrestha, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) South Sudan chief of communication. At present, about 9,200 people have been registered, states a recent report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Detailed updates about the activity of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) are now available in near real-time, thanks to a partnership between two US-based NGOs. The LRA Crisis Tracker, a joint venture between Invisible Children and Resolve provides data on attacks, killings, abductions, injuries and looting by the LRA, an insurgency that began in northern Uganda in the 1980s, whose fighters are now scattered across remote areas of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. Data is published on the tracker's website as well as on social media such as Twitter and Facebook and via apps for iPad and iPhone.

Breast ironing is a traditional ritual in which, by using heated and flat objects, a girl's growing breasts are pressed in order to suppress and reverse their development. 'Breast ironing has existed as long as Cameroon has existed,' says Sinou Tchana, Cameroonian gynaecologist and vice-president of the Cameroonian Association of Female Doctors. In the early nineties, when her association started touring the ten regions of Cameroon to find out what practices could have been affecting female sexuality, they were shocked by the prevalence of breast ironing in most parts of the country.

A group of around 150 assailants have shot and hacked to death at least 19 people and seriously injured six people in a village in northwest Nigeria, police said. The attack took place on Saturday in Lingyado, in the state of Zamfara, which sits at the base of the Sahel where Africa's most populous nation borders Niger. Islamist sect Boko Haram has been blamed for scores of attacks in Nigeria's north, but there was so far no indication of the group's involvement in Saturday's raid.

Benin has launched a major campaign to arrest growing drop-out rates as schools begin a new term. The one-year campaign is expected to encourage parents to allow their children to stay enrolled in school. With a national enrolment rate of 87.3 per cent, Benin has an impressive record. But it has been difficult to keep the children in school, watering down the gains.

Shell fuelled human rights abuses in Nigeria by paying huge contracts to armed militants, according to a new report published by Platform and a coalition of NGOs. 'Counting the Cost' implicates Shell in cases of serious violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region from 2000 to 2010. The report uncovers how Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbated conflicts, in one case leading to the destruction of Rumuekpe town where it is estimated that at least 60 people were killed. According to Platform’s report, Shell continues to rely on Nigerian government forces who have perpetrated systematic human rights abuses against local residents, including unlawful killings, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Africa needs to come up with an indigenous philosophy of development determined and influenced by the mores of traditional values derived from its own linguistic and cultural repertoire, a university lecturer from the department of African Languages and Literature, University of Zimbabwe, has said. Angeline Masowa, who spoke on Friday at a Conference on African Renaissance, Integration, Unity and Development in Pretoria, South Africa noted that the western model of development posed as the benchmark, which every nation wishing to be regarded as developed, had to follow, with the requirements of development dictated by the west.

Abdul worked as a journalist in Somalia before death threats from Al-Shabab militia drove him to leave his native country and head for Mozambique where friends told him he would receive help at Maratane refugee camp in Nampula Province. The boat he boarded in Mombasa had 110 other passengers. Now Abdul and his fellow passengers are all being detained in the same prison in southern Tanzania. Neither the Mozambican police who arrested them in the northern town of Palma and then violently deported them to the Tanzanian border, nor the immigration officials who found them there attempted to determine which of the migrants were asylum-seekers entitled to receive protection and assistance, and which were economic migrants subject to immigration laws.

In order for global climate change policies and efforts to progress, intense local activism and countries most adversely affected by climate change must play a leading role. If they don't, an upcoming meeting of state parties to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in South Africa will be a conference of 'paralysis' and 'profiteers', says Patrick Bond, climate justice expert and author of the book 'Politics of Climate Justice' coming out in November.

South Africa could be paying 'a couple of hundred million US dollars' towards a rescue package for troubled euro zone countries, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said. Gordhan told journalists at a press conference in Pretoria, on his return from the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, that there had been a general recognition that 'we’re all in it together and everyone has to make a contribution to the solution'.

Global production of biofuels increased 17 per cent in 2010 to reach an all-time high of 105 billion liters, up from 90 billion litres in 2009. High oil prices, a global economic rebound, and new laws and mandates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, and the United States, among other countries, are contributing to the surge in production, according to research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute’s Climate and Energy Program for the website Vital Signs Online.

In many cities air pollution is reaching levels that threaten people's health, according to an unprecedented compilation of air quality data released by the World Health Organisation. The information includes data from nearly 1,100 cities across 91 countries, including capital cities and cities with more than 100,000 residents. WHO estimates more than two million people die every year from breathing in tiny particles present in indoor and outdoor air pollution. In both developed and developing countries, the largest contributors to urban outdoor air pollution include motor transport, small-scale manufacturers and other industries, burning of biomass and coal for cooking and heating, as well as coal-fired power plants.

Pregnant women and girls in Sierra Leone continue to face serious challenges in accessing drugs and medical care that are crucial to ensure safe pregnancy and childbirth, says this Amnesty International report. 'Over the last two years the Government of Sierra Leone has introduced various initiatives to address these challenges, including some welcome steps to increase women's access to health services and reform of the health workforce. In April 2010 the government launched a major initiative to provide free care to pregnant women and girls. However, much remains to be done.'

The Girl Art Project is a one of a kind exhibition in Nairobi running from 18 October to 8 November, 2011 at the Godown Arts Centre. It is a joint project between two groups MWA, Minority Women in Action which advocates for LBTI women’s rights and AFRA-Kenya (Artists for Recognition and Acceptance – an organization of Lesbian Bisexual and Trans Women) through the support of UHAI-EASHRI, the East African Sexual Health and Rights Initiative. The theme of the exhibition is inspired by the female form, presence and experience.

Reporters Without Borders has registered at least eight serious press freedom violations ranging from arbitrary arrest to shooting attacks on journalists in the past two months in the semi-autonomous northeastern region of Puntland and the breakaway northwestern territory of Somaliland. In most of these cases, there has been no investigation and no one has been punished.

Civil society has criticised the proposed National Intelligence Service Bill which allow security agents to tap telephone conversations. Kenya National Commission for Human Rights (KNCHR) commissioner Omar Hassan and human rights activist Al Amin Kimathi vowed to lobby different organisations and the government to amend the Act before it is tabled in Parliament. The activists said the Bill will infringe on people’s privacy as it not only allows government agencies to record one’s conversation, but it also empowers police to invade a private house in search of information.

A Cairo court has sentenced the former information minister to seven years behind bars and the former head of state TV to five years on corruption charges. Judge Abdallah Abul Hashem ordered ex-information minister Anas al-Fikki jailed for seven years 'for squandering public money'. Osama el-Sheikh, head of the Egyptian Television and Radio Union, was sentenced to five years on similar charges in a case involving the purchase of soap operas at inflated prices.

At least 300,000 Congolese civilians have weapons in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a report released by a research group in Brussels said on Monday. According to the report by the Group of Information and Research on Peace (GRIP), at least 80 per cent of men have weapons in the province of Kivu and Katanga. The investigators of GRIP questioned some 10,000 heads of families in these regions that are, or have been, the theatre of clashes between armed groups and the Congolese government forces.

There was total compliance 26 September to the one-week nationwide warning strike by Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, disrupting examinations in the nation's premier university, University of Ibadan, University of Jos and paralysing academic activities in others. The warning strike is in protest against Federal Government's alleged refusal to implement the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement which will be due for re-negotiation in six months. The agreement, among others include 26 per cent funding of education, wage improvement and upward review of retirement age of professors from 65 to 70 years.

An appeal to the European and North American intelligentsia against the attack on the African peoples
Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III

Since the invasion of Iraq, the West has given us daily proof that it is neither interested in the common destiny of humanity nor in dialogue between peoples. Its only concern is absolute global dominance – military, financial, cultural and intellectual. Prince Kum’a Ndumbe 111 thinks, the NATO imposed war against Libya is just one more episode in the scramble for Africa.

******

The funding of research and alleged scientific dialogue
Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III

It is time for Africa to rearm itself in the face of the various attacks being unleashed against it by Western military powers. A key area is sovereignty over the use of its natural resources and wealth. The struggle, argues Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III, begins with the restoration and reaffirmation of our collective memories.

******

Egypt – Time for the peoples revolution to open the Rafah Crossing!
Haidar Eid

Israel has not only colonised the territories, writes Haidar Eid, but it has also taken control of the “Palestinian narrative and history” and confiscated international law. The Rafah crossing, like the birth of the Palestinian state, is testimony to the injustices that continue to be inflicted on the people.

******

Under pressure from campaigners, UNESCO last year rightly shelved a prize for research in the life sciences funded by Equatorial Guinea’s president of 32 years, the despotic Teodoro Obiang. Given Obiang's poor human rights record, why are African governments suddenly so eager to resuscitate the award, asks Tutu Alicante.

Professor Maathai was a celebrated environmentalist, but what was equally remarkable about her was ‘her open defiance of outdated, male chauvinistic, neo-colonial and repressive attitudes and traditions’ that hindered not just women, but Kenya as a whole, writes Rasna Warah.

Although Troy Davis was killed despite massive protests online, digital activism raised public awareness of racism and oppression in the US state of Georgia, writes Jessica Ann Mitchell. This case and others show that indeed digital activism works.

Oxfam today launched a major new report, , to highlight the growing pace of large-scale land deals abroad, often brokered at the expense of poor communities that lose homes and livelihoods - sometimes violently - with no prior consultation, compensation or means of appeal.

Warm greetings to you and all at Pambazuka. Thank you for [Wambui Otieno]. Her life and times is in our memories as a true daughter of Kenya. She lived life large, resourcefully and courageously.

Kenya human rights activist and author Philo Ikonya shares

Khadija Sharife takes a look at the links between Hong-Kong-based private entity China International Fund, Angola’s state oil company Sonangol and Zimbabwe’s diamond fields.

Even before the Arab Spring had shown the power of the internet to accelerate the free flow of news and views and to bring like-minded citizens together to mobilize for change, authoritarian regimes had introduced extensive controls over digital media. Authoritarian regimes had built pervasive, multilayered systems for online censorship and surveillance. These systems have grown more diverse and sophisticated in the past two years, as documented in Freedom House's 2011 'Freedom on the Net' report and elsewhere.

This website presents material linked to an on-going research project in Masvingo province in the south-east of the country. This has involved a detailed study of what happened to people’s livelihoods after land reform, across 16 land reform sites and 400 households.

‘Mention South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and those with good memories can attest to the lesson of history, which is that if you want to remain friendly with the USA, keep its military at arm’s length.’ So why would Ghana risk souring its relationship with the US, as Pakistan has already done, by allowing it to use Ghanaian territory for military purposes, asks Cameron Duodu.

Wangari Maathai was ‘very passionate about Human Rights’ as well as the environment, and was extremely supportive of Gay Kenya in its early days, the organisation recalls.

Across Africa, citizenship is being manipulated and restricted to deny rights to those whom a state wishes to marginalise or exclude, begins the abstract to this article, in reference to Ethiopia and Eritrea. 'While much was made of the expulsions at the time, the wider issues raised by these actions – in particular the continued vulnerability of the deportees to further abuses and the failure of the courts to address their situation – has not been examined. This article begins by looking at events in the Horn before examining evidence regarding the inability of those who were expelled to obtain asylum.'