The images of typhoon damage coming out of the Philippines over the past few weeks are horrifying, softened only by the global response to those in peril. In such catastrophes, women and girls are at greater risk, particularly in low-income countries. Natural...
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was found guilty of 11 charges by a court in the Netherlands, is a man of many firsts. He’s the first head of state to have escaped from a medium-security prison in the United States. He was the first sitting head of state to face charges of international crimes against humanity since the Nuremberg trials. Now, he’s the first head of state since World War II to have been convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal.
“The long-awaited verdict of the Special Court brings some measure of justice to a region ripped apart by brutality, greed, and proxy geopolitical actors,” Woods said.
Someone very important is visiting Africa, specifically five countries including Tanzania, Rwanda, Benin, Ghana, and Liberia. He is the president of the United States of America. The hassles of hosting a U.S. president are bad enough. His people take over your whole country and make our normally inefficient states go into overdrive and our egregious first ladies and their husbands go into overkill to show their hospitality. We never knew many of them could bend their knees until they were leading cleaning troops across the capitals in preparation for Clinton’s visit in 1998 from Kampala to Accra!
A central aspect of President Bush’s trip to Africa is the promotion of neoliberal trade policies and foreign direct investment as a path to “empowerment” and a “culture of self-reliance and opportunity.” The president has explicitly rejected “the paternalistic notion that treats African countries as charity cases, or a model of exploitation that seeks only to buy up their resources.”
What’s more American than football, apple pie and Chevrolet? How about cool brand new radial tires?
A U.S. Army captain in Africa waxes philosophical. It’s like the old saying, he opines; "give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll eat forever."
Just two months after U.S. aerial bombardments began in Somalia, the Bush administration solidified its militaristic engagement with Africa. In February 2007, the Department of Defense announced the creation of a new U.S. Africa Command infrastructure, code name AFRICOM, to “coordinate all U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent.”
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the 175th anniversary of the first meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.
Liberia is rich in natural resources and Africa’s largest producer of natural rubber. It is also one of the world’s poorest countries. Liberia’s impoverishment is directly related to the wealth generated from its natural resources; wealth that because of a history of inequality and exploitation benefits multinational corporations and some wealthy Liberians at the expense of the citizens of Liberia. However, many Liberians, along with international allies, are actively resisting this unjust system.