U.S. Affairs

The Financial Crisis As Seen By The Cheerleaders Of Capital

Guest Blogger — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:50:32 -0700

Today, the plunge of financial markets spread with furious ferocity to Europe, where the London FTSE had its sharpest one-day fall ever, the French CAC 40 fell by a whopping 9%, the same as Madrid, while Frankfurt slumped 8%, and markets had to be temporarily closed in Russia. As the major Euro-American economies teeter on the brink of a prolonged recession, the dangers for many economies in the global South especially Africa rise as primary commodity prices plummet and foreign investment dries up. read more »

The Financial Crisis and Asia

PTZeleza — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:11:44 -0700

Perhaps far more than any part of the world, the Asian dimension of the American financial crisis is the most intriguing. A flood of cheap goods and money from Asia lulled the United States into a false sense of economic prosperity, in which Chinese and Japanese reserves and Arab petrodollars financed rising deficits and debt-driven consumption most evident in the housing bubble. read more »

Obama's and McCain's Africa Policies: In the Campaigns' and Candidates' Own Words

Guest Blogger — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:33:17 -0700

While it is difficult, even inadvisable, to predict who will win the U.S. Presidential elections in November, we know it will either be Senator Obama or Senator McCain. However, it seems unlikely that whoever wins there will be major changes in U.S. policy towards Africa. Certainly, the continent has not featured much in the elections. read more »

The Bumpy Roads Towards The End of Pax-Americana?

PTZeleza — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:35:50 -0700

As I write, the U.S. House of Representatives has just voted 228-205 to reject the mammoth $700 billion rescue package for the financial industry. Predictably, disappointed Wall Street is plunging. The financial meltdown is now such that the news of collapsing banks is no longer big news, not even when the 109 year old Washington Mutual collapsed last week, the biggest bank to fail in American history.

The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

Corey Walker — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:12:54 -0700

"The West is living through an economic and social crisis so unprecedented in its tempo, so complex in its effects, that there are many who do not know that it is taking place." Michael Harrington, The Next Left (1987)

The nationalization of American International Group and the continuing turmoil in the economy have forced many Americans to take a second look at some of the complex issues facing capitalism in the new millennium. read more »

The Contagion from Wall Street: How Severe?

Guest Blogger — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:29:17 -0700

Yesterday, I wrote my commentary on the economic meltdown on Wall Street. The crisis continues and will continue leaving in its wake a shattered financial system and a battered global economy. It was just announced that the U.S. Federal Researve Board will lend $85 billion to the tottering insurance behemoth, AIG, and in exchange the government will receive 79.9% stake in the company. How the mighty of finance capital have fallen. Even the voters in the U.S. read more »

The Economic Tsunami On Wall Street

PTZeleza — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:55:28 -0700

An economic tsunami is ravaging Wall Street, shaking the citadels of American finance to their core, sinking celebrated investment banks into insolvency, sending stock markets into freefall, swelling the lines of unemployment with stunned MBAs, sweeping into oblivion the fantasies of free market infallibility, souring the mood of a country already depressed from eight years of economic and political mismanagement. read more »

No Jobs Make Mean Streets

James Thindwa — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:30:46 -0700

As urban economies collapse, gun violence rises

When Anthony Haydin woke up on June 30, he did not imagine his street would be the scene of one of Chicago's most deadly shootings. Three people had been shot in an apartment right across the street from his. Police said the victims had been murdered in a "gang-and-drug related shooting."

Irony of Guantánamo: The "War on Terror" and the Legacies of American and Cuban History

Cary Fraser — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:18:46 -0700

On June 12, 2008 the United States Supreme Court decided the case Boumedienne et al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et al. which had been brought against the Bush administration by individuals captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere in its "War on Terror." These individuals were classified under American law as "enemy combatants" - not prisoners of war whose rights were protected under the internationally recognized Geneva Convention - and had been incarcerated at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. read more »

The World's Verdict Will Be Harsh If The US Rejects The Man It Yearns For By Jonathan Freedland

Guest Blogger — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:57:32 -0700

One of the strange ironies of the current U.S. presidential elections is that Senator Obama's overwhelming popularity abroad is not an asset among some Americans. For them it raises doubts about his patriotism, a discourse that, ultimately, is about such Americans' suspicions of both the outside world and the Americanness of African Americans. But how is the world likely to react if Obama's loss in the elections is perceived to be the result of these suspicions, of America's inability to transcend its deep wounds of race and racism? read more »

Post-Election Violence Inquiry in Kenya: Will the Kriegler Commission Defer Another Dream? By Godwin R. Murunga

Guest Blogger — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:52:19 -0700

Kenyans are generally very sceptical of Commissions of Inquiry. Regarding this, a study by the African Centre for Open Governance concluded that Commissions of Inquiry "are a very expensive postponement of the moment of truth and justice." Yet, at the start of the year, a number of Commissions of Inquiry were set up to look into aspects of the post-election crisis in Kenya. read more »

The Charade of International Aid

PTZeleza — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:32:20 -0700

The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was recently held in Accra, Ghana, from 2-4 September. The conference brought together heads of bilateral and multilateral development agencies and donor organizations, ministers from over 100 countries, and civil society organizations. read more »

The Frightening Prospect of a "Post-Racial" World

Wandia Njoya — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:32:54 -0700

I get amused reading the commentaries about Obama and Biden, McCain and Palin, because the writers sound like they take this election business too seriously when it's just an American presidential election. We've seen a 40-odd others before, and we'll be seeing a few more if Christ doesn't decide that 2000 years is soon enough to show up after being waited for for so long. read more »

The Republican Politics of Distraction and Destruction

Guest Blogger — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:45:23 -0700

You know a political party is absolutely bankrupt when it substitutes posturing for policy, diatribes for debate, venom for values, when it campaigns in full flight from its record, when meanness becomes a tool for mobilization, when it seeks salvation in the electorate's susceptibility to amnesia and shallowness and pins its hopes on the monumental distraction of a vice-presidential nominee called Sarah Palin. And the gullible media suddenly, but predictably, falls all over itself to praise her ability to read with eloquence a speech from a teleprompter! read more »

From an Ordinary Campaign to an Extraordinary Politicis : Where Do We Go From Here?

Corey Walker — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:43:59 -0700

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

Michelle Obama's Speech

Guest Blogger — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:05:48 -0700

Thousands of miles away in the homeland of Barack Obama's father, the Democratic Convention appeared to me a little too mushy for the concrete political and social issues at stake. The soon-to-be president of the United States did an impressive job with his speech, but thousands of miles away in his father's homeland, increasing men are becoming less human as Obama gets closer to capturing the most coveted patriarchal seat in the world. read more »

Senator Obama's Democratic Party Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech

Guest Blogger — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:13:38 -0700

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama

"The American Promise"

Democratic National Convention

August 28, 2008

Denver, Colorado

Video http://my.barackobama.com/barackspeech read more »

The Importance of Race in the U.S. Presidential Elections

Guest Blogger — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:54:13 -0700

I returned to the US a few days ago after an absence for much of the summer just in time for the frenzy over Senator Obama's selection of a Vice-Presidential running mate. read more »

An Open Letter to Professor Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, PhD, OON, Chairperson of Transcorp, etc

Pius Adesanmi — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:22:38 -0700

Dear Professor Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke,

Greetings. I apologize for the cumbersome heading of this letter. I may be dangerously approaching one and a half decades in the West, I am still very mindful of the importance of titles in Nigeria. I try to respect our sensibilities. read more »

Israeli paper publishes Obama's wall note…Neocons React

Pius Adesanmi — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:16:01 -0700

(News from various sources: The Israeli paper Maariv obtains the note Obama left at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and puts a photograph of it on its front page. The handwriting, beneath the letterhead of the King David Hotel, does appear to be Obama's. Visitors traditionally stick notes of prayer into the wall. read more »