21 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org
A review of Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century (Penguin Books 2009)
If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?
It's a daunting task to critique a book by a billionaire. JK Galbraith once wrote that conventional wisdom has it that wealth is correlated with intelligence. By that logic, the author whose book I'm reviewing, Infosys founder (net worth $1.7 billion) Nandan Nilekani is exponentially smarter than me.
Dan Freeman-Maloy, whose blog is notesonhypocrisy.com, has collected several significant pieces of research on Canada and the Palestine Question and published them as a single PDF (Aaron Swartz would be proud). He has also done a major talk on the same issue, that elucidates some of the main points in the PDF. For those interested in Canadian foreign policy, for those interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict and the west's role in it, Dan's work is indispensable.
First published at http://www.countercurrents.org/podur310113.htm
Sometimes, at night in the city where I live, in Toronto, I will be walking alone to or from the subway station. No one else will be on the street, and I'll see a woman walking towards me in the distance. My protocol is to cross to the other side of the street where I am clearly visible, and let her pass with a lot of distance between us. When I'm walking behind a woman at night, I'll do the same thing – cross the street, quickly pass so that she can see me in front of her rather than hearing me behind her.
A Conference at York University about Capitalizing Power, organized by Jonathan Nitzan. In my talk, I try to relate Nitzan's "Capital as Power" framework to environmentalist thinking.
A Review of Douglas Bland. 2009. Uprising: A Novel. Blue Butterfly Books.
Joe Emersberger's got a sharp eye for discerning when media information is misleading or false. When the 2004 coup happened in Haiti, Joe published his correspondence with the Globe and Mail reporter in Haiti at the time, and very ably showed me how someone with a keen eye and decent principles can hold their own in a debate with someone with a privileged position and (undeserved) authority.
A podcast interview with me on the DRC on global research.ca, conducted by Michael Welch.
December 19, 2012 Socialist Project Bullet article summarizing Haiti's New Dictatorship
What constitutes a dictatorship? Haiti had an election in 2006, which the popular candidate won. It had an election in 2011, which had one of the lowest turnouts in recent history and which was subject to all kinds of external manipulation. Given these elections, is it unfair to call Haiti, a country that suffered 30 years of classic dictatorship under the Duvaliers from the 1950s to the 1980s, a dictatorship today?
Every time I give someone my email address, or tell them the title of my blog, I get a raised eyebrow or a shocked look. Now, telling people the title of my first book has the same effect. For that reason, I've set up this blog to have "Why Killing Train?" and an explanation about the new book very prominently available on the front page.
When Belgium realized in the 1950s that, given that France and Britain were losing their African colonies, it would no longer be able to hold on to Congo, it set about trying to guarantee continued control over the strategic aspects of the economy, especially the mines. At first, it sponsored its local political groups, but lost control of these. The next step, just after the Congo became independent, was mercenaries and proxy warfare – a huge international crisis and United Nations mission that was, in the 1960s, called “The Congo Crisis”.
