Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Human Rights
Cuba’s Culture of Dissent

Cuba’s Culture of Dissent

by | Oct 21, 2011

When the Cuban government released a number of dissidents earlier this year, human rights groups applauded the decision. But critics also took the occasion to paint Cuba once again as a society where a single word of criticism gets you shipped off to a dungeon, from which you will never return, reduced to being a statistic in an Amnesty International report. This belief may contain a kernel of truth. But in many ways it provides a cartoon version of Cuba, one that misses altogether the texture and reality of Cuban life, particularly its politics and its culture of dissent. And there is a culture of dissent.

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The Last Colony in Africa

by | Oct 18, 2011

‘The Western Sahara is the last country in Africa that has not been correctly decolonised – instead, the right of the Sahrawi people to post-colonial independence has been frozen in time,’ writes Konstantina Isidoros in introducing this special edition of Pambazuka News. ‘If we are to take the rule of international law as our guiding foundation, then Morocco has blatantly defied international law twice, by its illegal invasion of someone else’s sovereign territory and by its illegal occupation that still continues today.’

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The Nobel Prize and The African Woman

by | Oct 18, 2011

Three women are sharing the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace. One is Yemeni human rights leader Tawakul Karman. The other two are African: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s current president and Africa’s only female democratically elected head of state, and her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee who is a peace activist and spellbinding challenger of the ultra-male, brutality-wielding world of warlords. 

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Ford Confirmation: Too Little, Too Late

Ford Confirmation: Too Little, Too Late

by | Oct 18, 2011

In early October, Senate Republicans reversed a yearlong policy of deflection and unanimously confirmed Robert Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria. Though Ford has served in the post since his recess appointment by President Obama in early 2010, Republicans had balked at the idea of “rewarding” the Syrian government with the presence of an official U.S. ambassador, a position that had previously remained unfilled since the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Haririin 2005. Since the Syrian uprising began earlier this year, Ford has been a persistent and vocal supporter of the opposition, and has issued a number of scathing indictments against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

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The Prisoner Swap

The Prisoner Swap

by | Oct 14, 2011

Like so many other diplomatic and political initiatives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the recent announcement of a new prisoner release is based on the same solution that has been proposed dozens of times before – only to collapse because the time, and usually Israeli political will, wasn’t right. In this case, the separate announcements made by Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, asserted that Hamas would release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas in 2006, while Israel would release 1023 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom had been in jail for decades.

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