Regions

  [Beijing's Bird's Nest, under construction in preparation for the 08 Olympic Games] . . . while we undergo some (re)construction. Please stay tuned!

Since the new year, there has been a serious rise in attacks against non-slavic immigrants in Russia, mainly in the city of Moscow. Human rights groups accuse nationalist extremists, with neo-Nazi sympathies, of murdering between 41-53 immigrants, most of which are from Central Asia or the Caucacus. These types of attacks have occurred in recent […]

Zimbabwe is not the only African country in which journalists are under siege. Any place where the politics are constriced by authoritarianism or merely by the encroachments of paranoid leadership the members of the media run the risk of being jailed. Just the latest example comes from Uganda, where three journalists (including the editor) from the magazine […]

Mauritania is a poor country that produces only 30% of its own food. Meanwhile the global cost of food is skyrocketing. Naturally the result is food scarcity and the impoverished, as they always do, suffer disproportionately. And Mauritania is not alone. Much of Africa is feeling the squeeze of this global crisis of food underproduction coupled with […]

Michael Isikoff, who is really one of the best reporters out there, has a brief article on what is happening in Yemen now.  The meat of it is Robert Mueller's recent visit, about which Isikoff says “did not go well, according to two sources who were briefed on the session but asked not to be […]

At The Mail & Guardian last week longtime observer of South African politics Mark Gevisser, author of Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, compares Thabo Mbeki to Barack Obama and wishes that the former would learn from the latter.  My only caveat: Beware analogies drawn too closely, as context matters.

By the way, I have no more idea what yesterday's Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announcement that ZANU-PF lost parliament, as most assumed, mean any more than anyone else does. Robert Mugabe has experienced setbacks before (think of the hair-breadth 2000 Parliamentary election or the  1999 defeat of Mugabe's proposed constitutional changes) but never have the vultures […]

At The Mail & Guardian Adriann Basson uses the racist response ( “Daai boy is so goed, hulle kan hom nou maar wit verklaar” [“That black boy is so good, they can certify him white now]”) of a fellow Afrikaner to a Bryan Habana try to explore race, and racism, in South Africa. I’m always […]

A number of civil society groups concerned with Zimbabwe's welfare and operating under the banner of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in Zimbabwe have slammed the Southern African Development Community and Thabo Mbeki for their lack of resolve on the Zimbabwe question. In a damning quotation Wellington Chibebe of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade […]

Is Zimbabwe on the brink of a civil war? Has the military engaged in a secret coup? Is Zim a police state? (To this last, at least, we say: “yes.”)  The sad state of affairs is such that these questions are not only viable, they are necessary. Even with the United States putting the sort of […]

Walid Jumblatt was the first of the March 14 group to give one more chance to Nabih Berri's call for yet another round table discussion. They did not stop talking, mind you, just that they failed to agree on a solution. Walid Jumblatt did well for accepting Berri's call, which most likely is a bluff. […]

The news is not getting any better in Zimbabwe. Police have arrested hundreds of individuals seeking shelter in the headquarters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). many of them were seeking safe haven from ZANU-PF's ominously-named “Operation Mavhoterapapi,” which translates to “Who did you vote for?” This does not end well.