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The Battle for Angola’s Oil

Khadija Sharife November 23, 2009 Khadija Sharife

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

Resource-rich Angola was once known as the scene of Africa’s longest-running civil war. Today, life expectancy hovers around 44 years – not unlike that of an average Briton living in the 1800s. Over 70% of the population lives in poverty, and the country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. And the nation’s lifetime dictator of 30 years, Jose Dos Santos, leader of the liberation-party-turned-permanent-government, the MPLA, does not appear to have lost his lust for the throne. read more

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Corporate Power: The real reason Obama is not making much progress

Johann Hari November 23, 2009 Johann Hari

Source: Independent

Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement but it still won’t provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies – if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital Copenhagen conference by saying the US – the single biggest emitter of warming gases – will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite the real improvements on Bush – such as the end of torture, the resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in Honduras – many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so slowly? read more

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Brazil: GM’s Rainforest Racket

Mark Schapiro November 23, 2009 Mark Schapiro

Jonas de Souza
I am standing in the shadow of General Motors' $1 tree. It's a native guaricica, with pale white bark and a spreading crown that looms about 40 feet above my head. Hanging from its trunk is a small plaque that identifies it as tree No. 129. I've come here, to the verdant chaos of Brazil's Atlantic forest, to understand the far-reaching and politically explosive controversies taking shape in diplomatic corridors thousands of miles away over the fate of trees like this one.

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Rebel Witches and the Creation of Capitalism

Alex Knight November 19, 2009 Alex Knight

Silvia Federici's brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, tells the dark saga of the Witch Hunt that consumed Europe for more than 200 years. In uncovering this forgotten history, Federici exposes the origins of capitalism in the heightened oppression of workers and in the brutal subjugation of women. She also brings to light the enormous and colorful European peasant movements that fought against injustice.