7 Astounding Facts About the Insane Cost of War

Usually August is back-to-school month, when kids pick up their shiny new books and head to class. But this time it looks a bit more like back-to-war. The war profiteers will be hatching new schemes to cash in on misery and you and I will be picking up the tab.

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The new scramble for Africa (part 2)

The original Scramble for Africa: extraction routes In Europe, the process of colonialism was cleverly presented as benevolent. Charitable-sounding groups like the International Africa Association were created to provide a front for the plundering of African resources. And developments like the railway and steamship, brought to African shores using capital from Europe’s emerging financial centres, were portrayed as generous sharing of new technology whilst facilitating access to cheap raw materials to feed the industrial revolution.

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The Illusion of Foreign Investment Growth? Africa Must Break With the World Capitalist System

How long and deep can the current character of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) penetrate the social legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Africa? Proclamations of economic growth throughout the continent are being received with much skepticism and consequently prompting the desire among many to address the persistent poverty, inefficiency and growing class divisions. .

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Leadership, Genocide and War Crimes. An African Perspective

On June 30th the African Union summit meeting at Equatorial Guinea voted the “Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights.” It maintains that while in power, African leaders and “senior officials” are not subject to prosecution for genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. In principle the Protocol mirrors the judicial realities of Canada and the U.S., which assures our heads of state immunity, but less overtly..

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The new scramble for Africa (part 1)

World Development Movement (WDM) has produced a new series of infographics depicting the parallels between European colonialism and the encroachment of multinational corporations on the African continent. In this series of three weekly articles, WDM and This Is Africa explore the dynamics behind this modern-day game of thrones. .

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Today’s Oligarch Curtain of Lies, Theft, Death and Destruction Are Exposed As Never Before

In psychology our belief system shapes our perceptions of the world around us, in fact becoming our very sense of reality. Our primary caregivers, most often our parents, project their view of us and their world onto us and we in turn internalize their views as our own sense of developing self and world view. In this last century the influence of mass media has also come to increasingly shape our world and self-concept. As adolescents and young adults we often change and modify our perceptions of the world based on our own interpersonal experience particularly with peers and movement to finding resonance with a more authentic, individuated self in relation to our surrounding world. But with time and more adult experience often comes an existential dilemma and/or crisis if and when we encounter growing dissonance between what we thought we knew and changing reality input increasingly at odds with our old world view.

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Detroit and Iraq: Both Devastated by the Same Thieves

The ugly face of empire and disaster capitalism is visible all over the world. Detroit, Michigan, was once a thriving city but was sent into a tailspin by the deindustrialization of the United States, white flight, and institutional racism which blamed black people who were in fact the victims of catastrophe. The coup de grace was delivered by big banks like UBS, Bank of America and Barclays, which sold risky derivatives schemes to corrupt Detroit politicians [3]. When the financial deal inevitably headed south, the banks were the creditors first in line for a payout.

Far back in that line were the workers and people of Detroit. The emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, whose very position they had voted against establishing, rules the city. The new mayor is a figurehead and the people have no representation as the Republican governor and emergency manager remake the city for capital and the gentrifying settler class.

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