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Arabica Robusta

The Arabs in Africa - 0 views

www.jadaliyya.com/...the-arabs-in-africa

social movements arab egypt multinational corporations mncs mubarak intervention telecom africa

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Although just one aspect of the current situation in Libya, I suggest that it should give us pause to consider the stakes of this conceptualization of a basic Arab-African or Arab-black antagonism—one that not only formulates these as mutually exclusive categories but also pins them against one another in the context of the Libyan revolution.
  • Just a handful of commentators have questioned the veracity of the “African mercenaries” charge while maintaining their support for the uprising.
  • there is scant evidence that these people are, first of all, participating in state-sponsored violence against the popular uprising, and, second, were brought into Libya for this explicit purpose. On the contrary, we know that Libya was already home to a significant number of foreign workers—including some two million black African migrant workers. We should also note Libya’s documented history of racial discrimination. Almost one year to the day before the February 17 Day of Anger that jumpstarted the revolution, UN Watch, an independent organization monitoring the UN, issued a statement entitled, “Libya Must End Racism Against Black African Migrants and Others.”
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  • In light of this recent history, the videos and photographs of “African mercenaries” raise disturbing questions. Are the men we see pictured here perpetrators of state-sponsored violence, are they victims of racism, or is it possible that both of these things may be true at the same time?
  • What we can learn from the framing of violence in Darfur is that Arabs are not considered “Africans” by policymakers, journalists, and organizations, and that Arabs and Africans may be seen by these same groups as fundamentally different, and consequently face fundamentally different kinds of problems—suffering differently, inflicting harm differently, and handling politics differently—in a manner that hinders “our” own consideration of them together.
  • The area that is considered vulnerable to this regional unrest stretches at least from Algeria to Iran and has been called the Arab world or the Middle East, despite the fact that Iranians are not Arab and most of Algeria lies west of France. This geography does not, however, appear to reach far south of the Mediterranean, at least where Africa is concerned. Although the two successful revolutions thus far lay on the African continent, there has been an overall failure to consider their effect in terms of sub-Saharan African politics and places such as Gabon, Mauritania, Djibouti, and Uganda.
  • politics of geopolitics. First, what we should recognize is that terms such as “Africa” and “the Middle East” function not only on the basis of geography or actual political ties, but as stand-ins for racial signifiers. Despite a shared history of European colonialism in its different manifestations, Africa and the Middle East nonetheless bear extremely different histories of representation or historical imaginaries within the European continent (which is, I would point out, also not a continent, but something like a subcontinent).
  • If Qaddafi has brought in foreign mercenaries--and I'm not saying he hasn't--this doesn't change the way the discourse around these mercenaries is tied up in broader race relations.
Arabica Robusta

These winds of change may now reach across the Sahara | Wangari Maathai | Comment is fr... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...nds-change-reach-across-sahara

social movements arab egypt multinational corporations mncs mubarak intervention telecom africa ivory coast

shared by Arabica Robusta on 14 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • certain factors do help explain the volatility in north Africa and the relative quiet to the south – and why that may not persist indefinitely. The first is the idea of the nation itself, along with regional identity.
  • A second factor is the role of the military. The Egyptian army's decision not to fire on protesters was key to the success of the February revolution. Sadly, we couldn't expect the same in sub-Saharan Africa,
  • More tragic evidence of this was provided last week when unarmed women expressing their opinion about the disputed election in Ivory Coast were mown down by troops loyal to the incumbent president. Not only was this a clear violation of human rights, but evidence of recklessness and impunity, and the extreme lengths to which leaders will go to protect their power.
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  • In Ivory Coast, despite last week's brutal attack, on the eve of International Women's Day hundreds of women marched to the spot where their colleagues were killed, a clear demonstration that, slowly but surely, even Africans south of the Sahara will shed their fear and confront their dictatorial leaders. The women's bravery will be an inspiration to others in Africa and elsewhere.
Arabica Robusta

OP-ED: The Fate of Minorities in the Arab Spring - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

ipsnews.net/news.asp

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 May 11 - No Cached
  • They demanded, and won promises for, what people in other Arab states are also now seeking - a multiparty system, freedom of the press, and the prospect of genuine democratic pluralist elections.
  • In late 2010, Egypt was the scene of a bloody attack against a Coptic church in Alexandria. Nobody could then have imagined that a few weeks later, massive crowds of Muslims, Christians and agnostics would gather together in the same city to help force Hosni Mubarak from power.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Glimpses of the Tunisian revolution: The victory of dignity over fear - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...72930

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 10 May 11 - No Cached
  • We expressed our admiration and solidarity and we offered our support and the promise to carry their stories, their struggles and their aspirations with us and share them in whatever ways we could as our commitment to contribute to imagine and construct a better world, more just and equal, each of us in the places where we live and work.
  • We also explained that we wished to explore the viability of a regional and continental Social Forum in Tunisia to celebrate the revolution and support the transition.
  • Enthusiastic citizens discussed and negotiated their differences, exchanged their experiences, disagreed vehemently, even shouted their frustration and disappointments contributing to give form to their visions and inspiring in each other actions and daily practices towards the establishment of a new society.
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  • In a large hall, over hundred people gathered to welcome us. In the intense atmosphere made hazy by the smoke of cigarettes inhaled with anxiety and pain, mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers and friends told us their tragedies, their losses, their suffering, their fight, their hope. In a more intimate setting on the third floor of the big building, we met later with others who lost their beloved and cried for justice, who were tortured and demanded their rights.
  • we asked each other with incredulity how we could tell the genuine from the demagogic and the demagogic from the outright false among the rhetoric that seemed to express the same discourses of liberation and the same aspiration to justice and development for all?
  • Facebook was in everyone’s mouth, Al Jazeera’s journalists were praised for their courage and dedication (though, some told us, ‘in the long run we can’t forget they are islamists’).
  • But while nobody denied the supportive role of new social media, the general understanding was that though they helped they were certainly not the determining factors pace the international media (perhaps too eager to stress how western technology democratizes the world).
  • the Italian Prime Minister and his delegation met their Tunisian counterparts in Tunis to discuss an agreement on the migrant crisis which involved shutting down Italy and Europe and send back the thousands deluded migrants who thought hospitality was one of the values of a continent that likes to preach to the world cosmopolitan ideals. If those migrants knew that in Italy a debate rages on the extent to which the boats that carry them, in which they risk their lives and die by the dozens, can be shot at to prevent their landing on national shores!
  • This revolution may have already changed the stereotypes of the submissive, agency deprived, Arab. But as the transition processes develop they may contribute to the elaboration of new democratic practices whose resonance exceeds the national boundaries and make the Tunisian youth rise to the secular Pantheon of historical revolutionaries.
Arabica Robusta

The Libyan Revolution is Dead: Notes for an Autopsy « ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY - 0 views

zeroanthropology.net/...n-is-dead-notes-for-an-autopsy

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 May 11 - No Cached
  • Surely, by now, we have abundant practice in doing nothing at all–we must be a hardened people, with very thick skin, and an ability to ignore the screams coming from the basement whenever we like. So why must Libya be this exception? What made you wake up, and wake up in such a way that you wanted to be the hero of someone else’s story?
  • The Arab League’s decision to first call for a no fly zone can only invite the most scornful mockery. This is a club of dictators, who found the ideal opportunity to remove a competing dictator that they have long resented and detested.
  • When the UN passed the latest resolution against Libya, the Al Jazeera correspondent in Benghazi, Tony Birtley, engaged in obscene and undignified cheering and gloating.
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  • the Emir is an interventionist in his own right, supporting the Saudi invasion of Bahrain, the crushing of peaceful protest, to which he may add more Qatari forces, while also promising support for the implementation of the no fly zone against Libya.
  • Every night I watched CNN’s Anderson Cooper, hot, breathless, turgid, anally righteous, spewing venom against the dictator–much of it deserved, some of it resting on ignorance and fabrication–the dictator’s “lies,” “keeping them honest,” all principles never directed back at CNN.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Whose dictator is Gaddafi? - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...73153

social movements arab multinational corporations mncs intervention libya qaddafi imperialism

shared by Arabica Robusta on 17 May 11 - No Cached
  • A neo-colony is ruled by the Empire not directly; only indirectly - through its agents in the countries concerned.
  • However, Gaddafi has his idiosyncrasies. He is trusted neither by the Empire nor by his fellow heads of state in the Arab League and the African Union. President Museveni, in praising Gaddafi as a ‘nationalist’ criticised him for his ‘mistakes’ - among them, backing Idi Amin in Uganda; pushing for a United States of Africa; proclaiming himself ‘king of kings’; ignoring the plight of Southern Sudan; and promoting terrorism. For the Empire, Gaddafi had become an unreliable, indeed dangerous, neo-colonial dictator. The Empire had to bring him to book.
Arabica Robusta

Transnational Institute | Africa: Chilling the Arab Spring - 0 views

www.tni.org/...africa-chilling-arab-spring

economic adjustment crisis neoclassical structural theory mubarak intervention egypt corporations mncs multinational arab social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • If the IMF leadership praised the dictatorship, insisted on austerity and advocated squeezing poor people for more taxes, what business does it have today in giving similar advice to Tunisia, or anywhere in the Middle East and North Africa, or for that matter Europe or anywhere at all? What can we learn about IMF thinking in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as Palestine?
  • In contrast, there was no IMF conditionality aimed at reforming the dictatorship and halting widespread corruption by Ben Ali and his wife's notorious Trabelsi family, or lessening the two families' extreme level of business concentration, or ending the regime's reliance upon murderous security forces to defend Tunisian crony capitalism, or lowering the hedonism for which Ben Ali had become famous.
  • In that document, IMF staff worried that "managing popular expectations and providing some short-term relief measures will be essential to maintain social cohesion in the short term," and that this would come at a price: "external and fiscal financing gaps of US$9-12 billion... which would need to be filled with exceptional support from Egypt's multilateral and bilateral development partners, particularly given the limited scope for adjustment in the short term."
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  • Resuming privatization and increasing the role of carefully structured and appropriately priced PPPs should assist fiscal adjustment and mobilize private resources for infrastructure investment.
  • In addition to expanding Public Private Partnerships (PPPs, a euphemism for services privatization and outsourcing), the IMF named its priorities: "adopting as early as possible a full-fledged VAT, complementing energy subsidy reform with better-targeted transfers to the most needy, and containing the fiscal cost of the pension and health reforms."
  • As Adam Hanieh from London's School of Oriental and African Studies concluded just after the G8 summit and allied Arab states pledged $15 billion to Egypt, The plethora of aid and investment initiatives advanced by the leading powers in recent days represents a conscious attempt to consolidate and reinforce the power of Egypt's dominant class in the face of the ongoing popular mobilizations. They are part of, in other words, a sustained effort to restrain the revolution within the bounds of an "orderly transition" - to borrow the perspicacious phrase that the U.S. government repeatedly used following the ousting of Mubarak.
  • If successful, the likely outcome of this - particularly in the face of heightened political mobilization and the unfulfilled expectations of the Egyptian people - is a society that at a superficial level takes some limited appearances of the form of liberal democracy but, in actuality, remains a highly authoritarian neoliberal state dominated by an alliance of the military and business elites.[10]
  • They welcomed Libya's strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector and supporting growth in the non-oil economy. The fiscal and external balances remain in substantial surplus and are expected to strengthen further over the medium term, and the outlook for Libya's economy remains favorable (emphasis added).[12]
  • The fund's mission to Tripoli had somehow omitted to check whether the "ambitious" reform agenda was based on any kind of popular support. Libya is not an isolated case. And the IMF doesn't look good after it gave glowing reviews to many of the countries shaken by popular revolts in recent weeks.[13]
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - On the African awakenings - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...74882

movements social multinational mncs corporations intervention africa

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • because of the depth of the current crisis of capitalism, that duality will become, I believe, ever more polarised in the coming period. In this presentation I want to explore some of the causes and dynamics around what I would describe as a time of African Awakenings.
  • Indeed, I think it would be a mistake to consider the shifting political and social climate in Africa being based on the overt, large-scale uprisings alone. There is growing evidence in a number of countries of social movements re-emerging during the last 10 years, providing a framework through which the disenfranchised have begun to re-assert their own dignity, proclaiming - even if only implicitly - their aspiration to determine their own destiny, their own right to self-determination.
  • The remarkable growth and spread of alternative media such as Pambazuka News is, I would suggest, further testimony of the changing mood on the continent. Ten years ago when we launched Pambazuka News, I was dismissed as a hopeless romantic for naming the website and newsletter 'Pambazuka' meaning, in Kiswahili, the awakening. I believe that the gathering momentum of these awakenings defines the social and political scene on the continent today. We are witnessing not so much an ‘Arab Spring’ as an African Awakening.
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  • Conventional wisdom - or more accurately, perhaps, corporate media - would suggest that this is happening because the growing middle-class have rising expectations for individual freedom, mobility, money, private health and education, luxury commodities, cars, and so on. It is suggested that what is fuelling the discontent with autocratic regimes is middle-class aspiration for an unfettered market and their frustrations with the regimes that prevent them enjoying these benefits.
  • Almost without exception, the same set of social and economic policies were implemented under pressure from the IFIs (international financial institutions) across the African continent - the so-called structural adjustment programmes (later rebranded as Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes), all to ensure that African countries serviced the growing debt. But the agenda of the creditors was also to use the debt ‘crisis’ to open avenues for capital expansion, through extreme privatization and liberalization of African economies.
  • The net effect was to reduce the state to having a narrowly prescribed role in economic affairs, and precious little authority or resources to devote to the development of social infrastructure, its primary role being to ensure an ‘enabling environment’ for international capital and to police the endless servicing of debt to international finance institutions.[8]
  • the most serious consequence of these policies was not simply the reversal of the many gains of independence, but the erosion of the ability of citizens to control their own destiny. Self-determination, originally such a powerful motor force for mobilisation in the anti-colonial movement, was gradually suffocated. Economic policies were no longer determined by citizens and their representatives in government, but by technocrats from the international finance institutions and the World Bank, with hefty support provided by the international aid agencies.
  • And where progressive developments occurred – as in Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara – assassinations, support for military coups and economic isolation were some of the weapons used to prevent citizens having the audacity to construct alternatives to the crass policies of neoliberalism.
  • Research by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) estimates that a staggering US$11.5 trillion has been siphoned 'offshore' by wealthy individuals, held in tax havens where they are shielded from contributing to government revenues.
  • Many criticise SAPs/PRSPs as being the product of bad policy - neoliberal policies that are said to be dogmatic and an expression of 'market fundamentalism'. But, as Prabhat Patnaik has argued recently, the policies that are being insisted upon by the international finance institutions are the result of the structural needs of financialised capitalism in the present era, something that began as early as the 1970s and today dominates all parts of the global economy.
  • If a country is graded well by credit-rating agencies then that becomes a matter of national pride, no matter how miserable its people are.
  • But perhaps the most serious dispossession that we face is a political dispossession. Our governments are more accountable today to the international financial institutions, to the corporations who extract wealth without restriction, to the international aid agencies that finance institutions such as the IMF, than to citizens. In this sense, our countries are increasingly becoming more akin to occupied territories than democracies.
  • The sweeping away of Ben Ali in Tunisia and of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt took the imperial governments, who had been ardently supporting those regimes financially, economically, politically and militarily, completely by surprise. The corporate media sought to present the uprisings as sudden and spontaneous, despite the evidence in both countries that the eventual pouring of people on to the streets was the outcome of years of attempts to organize protests that had been brutally suppressed. Corporate media sought to present the mobilizations as being the product of Twitter and Facebook, obscuring the agency of people and conveniently forgetting that in Egypt the largest mobilization occurred after both the Internet and mobile phone networks had been blocked.
  • Imperial response to the uprisings has been, in essence, to establish in Tunisia Ben Ali-ism without Ben Ali, and in Egypt, Mubarak-ism without Mubarak.
  • With the fall of Mubarak, it is hardly surprising that the US has been eager to push for the formation of a government comprising the remaining components of Mubarakism - the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • If the events in Tunisia and Egypt inspired hope, its twin, despair, is perhaps what is dominant in relation to Libya, Côte d'Ivoire and Somalia.
  • the current crisis of capitalism is different from the earlier one in that the scale of concentration and centralization of capital is unprecedented, and accompanied by a financialisation of capital also on an unprecedented scale. As one person recently characterized it: General Motors used to produce cars and occasionally speculated; today General Motors speculates on the stock markets, and occasionally produces cars!
  • In Africa we have seen the devastation of Somalia, the destruction of the natural environment in places such as the Niger Delta, the military interventions in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire, to say nothing of the arming of regimes that ensure the illegal occupation of the territory of Western Sahara. At the same time we see the emergence of social movements seeking to reassert the dignity of our people, the protests and uprisings that have developed over the continent. The outcome of all these events cannot be foreseen. But there are grounds for optimism, I believe.
  • What this approach ignores is that while citizens may have a chance to vote once every four to five years, finance capital votes every day on the stock markets, voting that has a direct consequence on every aspect of production, and on the price of every day goods, fuel, land prices, and so on.
  • Secondly, one of the striking features of the current period is the degree to which there is growing recognition across the global South of the commonalities in experience of the dispossessed. Indeed, there is even recognition of those commonalities emerging in the North - viz the recent uprisings in Wisconsin, Spain and Greece. For the first time in many years, there is a potential to create solidarity links with people in struggle based not on charity and pity, but on an understanding of the common cause of our dispossession.
  • while recognizing that there are many struggles against those who seek to exploit Africa, there are opportunities also to create today the alternatives to profit-driven motives of corporations. For example, African farmers’ organisations are confronting the onslaught of foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, backed by oligopolies like Monsanto, that are ‘pushing agro-chemical crops using multi-genome patents.
  • ‘You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.’
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Popular protests in Burkina Faso - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...72114

social movements multinational mncs corporations intervention burkina faso africa chouli

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Burkina Faso has a vibrant civil society that has managed to resist attempts by successive regimes in the post-colonial period to be co-opted into the single party system or the system of trade union representation that continues to dog the country.
  • In contrast to Ben Ali’s Tunisia and Mubarak’s Egypt, Burkina Faso has always had a certain degree of freedom of information and expression and the right to organise. It is easier for young people from underprivileged classes to meet and plan their actions in person[3] rather than on the net[4].
  • Echoes of North Africa can also be seen in the relations with the police. Police brutality in the country make police stations a favourite target during demonstrations, yet in Leo some members of the armed forces reportedly apologised to demonstrators, assuring them they understood their desire for justice. ‘This immediately brought down tensions, demonstrators agreed to move on shouting bravos to the soldiers for their solidarity and compassion.’[6]
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  • Essentially, the resemblance to the uprisings in the north lies in structural similarities - an unequal society, high unemployment, the lack of future perspectives, police violence, impunity, a closed political system, a bourgeoisie tied in with a non-functioning political administration and the longevity of the regime.
  • The bloody repression of the protests in Koudougou and the entire province of Boulkiemde was followed by attempts at appeasement, which suggests that the authorities are seriously worried about the spread of popular discontent.[13] Public anger is already high, first because Blaise Compaore wants to modify the constitution to allow him to stay on as president for life.
  • The regime has stuck to the same tactics it has used since 1997 to deal with the latest crisis, alternating carrot and stick while denouncing the fact that its concessions have failed to reduce tensions.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Uprising, imperialism and uncertainty - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...72342

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Although the Obama administration response to Cote d’Ivoire has been relatively muted, the US president has openly supported Ouattara as the rightful winner of the elections. However, blogger Bombastic Element reports that some US Republicans are openly supporting Gbagbo in what appears to be motivated by Islamophobia. ‘First it was Pat Robertson, now Republican senator James Inhofe took the senate floor yesterday, pleading Gbagbo's case and presenting his version of Cote d'Ivoire's rigged election math to CSPAN cameras. ‘We are no fans of Quattara, but in pitching their buddy Gbagbo and his line about rigged election results, Robertson and Inhofe, blinded by Christian camaraderie and the fact that Quattara is a Muslim, are selling snake oil to a Libya fatigued American public, who is just now tuning in to watch.’
  • Apart from the attempts at censorship, this is such a ludicrous action by the government to prevent people from organizing, as it assumes that without social media uprising cannot or will not take place. It goes hand in hand with the ‘technoholics’ who continue to attribute revolutionary actions with social media – Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
  • The Angry Arab has given up on the Libyan rebels altogether: ‘It is no more a Libyan uprising I was as excited as anyone to see the Libyan people revolt against the lousy dictator, Qadhdhafi: a tyrant who one should hate with an extra measure of eccentricity because--like Saddam--he is particularly obnoxious and repugnant as far as tyrants are concerned. But I can't say now that I support the Libyan uprising: it is no more a Libyan uprising. The uprising has been hijacked by Qadhdhafi henchmen, Qatar foreign policy agenda, and the agenda of Western government. Count me out.’
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  • The biggest imperialist force on the planet, NATO, is bombing Libya “in the name of revolution,” CIA operatives are active on the ground, Western “military advisers” become visible in Benghazi, as US and Egyptian military specialists are reported by Al-Jazeera to be training the revolutionaries. ‘The Libyan revolution is being hijacked in front of our eyes… This is counterrevolution…’
Arabica Robusta

Libya: It's Not About Oil, It's About Currency and Loans By John Perkins « Da... - 0 views

dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/...ency-and-loans-by-john-perkins

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.
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