Global Affairs

The following is an adaptation of a presentation I made at a conference organized in April 2007 by the French Graduate Students of the State University of New York at Albany. The conference's theme was centered on postcolonial theory and a concern that the "new" generation of African authors did not seem to be as politically "engagés" (the French term for "committed") as Jean-Paul Sartre urged his intellectual contemporaries in the late 1940's.  read more »

Africa and the world at large are reacting to Senator Obama's victory as the presumptive nominee in the U.S. Democratic Party electoral contest with mixed emotions. Parts of Africa have been gripped by Obamamania and many would like to believe it ushers a new day for the US itself and its relations with the continent, the ancestral homeland of the senator's father. Others contend it will be business as usual, that putting a black face in the White House will not change the imperial policies of the United States. Such views are heard most loudly in the Middle East.  read more »

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine (May/June 2008) has a list of what the magazine says are the top 100 public intellectuals living today. The subjective nature of the definition "public intellectual", and the names of people I notice included, and left out, is enough to make me not take this exercise seriously.

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The Yahoo! Headlines that invade my consciousness every time I log off my email account are often annoying. The patronizing reports about Asia, pessimistic ones about Africa and gooey ones about US - from Hollywood fashion to the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are, frankly speaking, often irrelevant and an assault on my soul and sanity. But occasionally I get to see an amusing headline.  read more »

Pan-Africa and the Third World are certainly on the move insofar as the west’s colonialist and racist perceptions of African and Third World people are concerned. However there are certain areas in which negative perceptions of African and Third World peoples are deeply entrenched, and will require specialized forms of informed and analytical critique to address them.  read more »

Lame duck American presidents in their final year in office often turn to foreign policy to bolster their diminishing influence and burnish their legacy. President Bush is proving no exception.  read more »

When most people think of the African diaspora, they think of the Americas. But African diasporas exist in all parts of the world from Europe to Asia, where in some cases they antedate the formation of the Atlantic diasporas. There is a particularly large African diaspora in the Arabian Gulf where the descendants of Africans have influenced all aspects of the cultures of these societies including music.  read more »

In 2007 Africa and the world witnessed changes in all walks of life from politics to the economy to the arts to entertainment. Some of the changes were positive and uplifting, many others continued the sorry saga of humanity’s propensities for war and greed.  read more »

Pakistan and the world are mourning the tragic assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. There is much speculation on who was behind it and its likely consequences for Pakistan, the volatile region and the world at large.  read more »

After years of procrastination, I finally inhaled deeply and took the Kenyan driving test with tens of other people almost half my age. My delayed rite of passage left me with food for thought about the strengths and weaknesses of the so-called Kenyan or new African Diaspora residing mainly in Western Europe and the United States.

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After virtually ignoring the enduring and explosive Palestinian-Israeli conflict for seven years, the Bush Administration sponsored the Annapolis Mideast conference. In this special issue we get views of several Arab and African commentators on the conference itself and the wider conflict and its history.  read more »

The American dollar has been in free fall against the major currencies including the Euro, the British pound and even the Canadian dollar and there is a distinct possibility that it may cease to be the world’s reserve currency. What is behind this dramatic turn around for thre once almighty greenback and what are the implications for the global economy?  read more »

Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media, says Noam Chomsky. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation.  read more »

James Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor Emeritus of Sociology whose credentials and achievements are long and impressive. He's a noted academic figure on the left and a well-respected Latin American expert.  read more »

Lately, even Democratic candidates for president have been weighing in on why the U.S. must maintain a long-term, powerful military presence in Iraq, writes Michael Schwartz.  read more »

This is Not the Raving of a Deluded Old Man by Nirpal Dhaliwal;  Here We Go Again, by Cameron Duodu; A shameful History by Johnjoe McFadden  read more »

The decision of the Nobel Literature Prize committee to name Doris Lessing as this year’s laureate should raise red flags in the minds of those concerned with the integrity and cultural autonomy of African literature, writes Wandia Njoya.

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The developing world’s stance towards the question of the environment has often been equated, writes Walden Bello, with the pugnacious comments of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, such as his famous lines at the Rio Conference on the Environment and Development in June 1992:  read more »

Hamid Dabashi comments on a meeting of minds

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The opening of this year's UN General Assembly highlights well the rift that exists in the world body, writes Curtis Doebbler.

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