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Africa, Geology and the March of the Development Technocrats

'Environmental determinism' - the theory that Africa's development has been hindered as a result of 'the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit' - does not accurately explain Africa's poverty. Environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: "Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power." To tackle the real issues behind Africa's slow development and poverty would mean to go against Western economic interests and to radically change the world system in which we exist.

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Cognitive Infiltration: Your Government Appointees At Work

Cass Sunstein
Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures". (J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

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McCain Campaign Advisors Help Yanukovych Win Ukraine Election

Viktor Yanukovych
Viktor Yanukovych, the once-disgraced Ukrainian politician who was defeated by outgoing President Viktor Yuschenko in 2004 as a result of election tampering, a Supreme Court ruling that overturned fraudulent election results and massive street protests dubbed the "Orange Revolution" has finally gotten the last laugh. He is expected to be named the next president of the former Soviet Republic with an election victory on February 7, thanks in no small part to former presidential campaign advisors of Senator John McCain.

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How Agri-Food Corporations Make the World Hungry

Last November the World Summit on Food Security in Rome issued a declaration that the world is now hungrier than ever before. Significantly, this is not the result of food shortage, with world production at 11/2 times that needed to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet. The root cause of this insecurity is the food system itself, which is controlled by a handful of global monopolies. In fact, the crisis comes at a time of record global profits for the world's agri-food corporations.