This December, the United Nations will meet in Copenhagen to hash out an agreement on global warming, while activists from around the world will amass to demand more radical responses. South Africa-based scholar Patrick Bond talks about carbon trading, the ecological debt owed to Africa, and why a bad agreement in Copenhagen would be worse than no agreement at all.
Minter & Volman, "The Somalia Crossroads" In These Times
Volman & Minter, "Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa" Foreign Policy in Focus
Pirates off Somalia's coast; an armed insurgency inside that nation; a new US military command called AFRICOM. Will the Obama administration turn its rhetorical emphasis on diplomacy into reality in Somalia, or is the momentum in favor of military intervention? William Minter and Daniel Volman offer their perspectives. And Wilma Bonet directs the San Francisco Mime Troupe's Too Big to Fail.
In Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Michael Klare argues that a global political realignment of historic proportions is under way, based on ever-more-intense competition for reliable energy supplies. Klare describes emerging Big Power alliances and rivalries in energy-rich sites like the Caspian basin and Africa. (Holiday encore presentation.)
The impact of oil exploitation on residents of the Niger Delta is explored in Curse of the Black Gold, which features the photos of Ed Kashi. Kashi describes social misery as well as grassroots resistance to the designs of Big Oil and the Nigerian government. George Caffentzis is encouraged by an emerging emphasis on petroleum as common property.
Patrick Bond, "The Financial Meltdown" Links
Patrick Bond, Looting Africa: The Politics of Exploitation Zed, 2006
The role that transnational corporations and neoliberal policies play in keeping poor countries down is of intense interest to Patrick Bond, not least because South Africa, where he lives, is in trouble economically and environmentally. Recently Bond has written about the economic meltdown, pollution headaches in Africa, and social activist initiatives.
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