What I have been reading

I read a lot online and post articles, columns, long reads on my social media accounts. 

Here are some I recently posted. Some are "old" articles, please note. 

What makes South Asia so vulnerable to climate change? 8 Jul 2023 Al Jazeera 

Saleemul Haq, director at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said the region is particularly at risk because of a combination of geography, population and poverty.  “Over a billion and a half people are living in an area that is not such a big part of the world. It has major river systems from the Hindu Kush and the Himalayan mountain regions flowing through,” he told Al Jazeera.

Fanon documentary confronts fallacies about anti-colonial philosopher  Mon 21 Jul 2014 The Guardian 

In this documentary Olsson builds layer upon layer of images showing abject poverty racism over-worked people crude guerrilla warfare countering slick European planes places where natural resources like oil and diamonds are being unearthed with appalling living conditions for workers and hospitals overflowing with wounded women children and men.In so doing he taps into the primary violence of the coloniser rather than of the colonised falling definitively into the camp of thinkers who believe that Fanon was not propagating violence but merely understanding it’s effects and uses.

Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.  July 10 2023 - Christine Emba - Washington Post 

Of course a masculinity defined solely in opposition to women — or to the gains of feminism more specifically — doesn’t provide a true road map to the future. Perhaps most alarmingly many of the visions of masculinity these figures are pushing are wildly antisocial untethered to any idea of good. Men are urged to situate themselves in a mythic story in which the world was always meant to be under their control. The fact that it no longer is becomes fuel for defensiveness and a victim complex one that has corrosive and tragic effects.

‘Foreigners on our own land’: ethnic clashes threaten to push India’s Manipur state into civil war Aakash Hassan in Manipur and Hannah Ellis-Petersen Mon 10 Jul 2023  The Guardian 

While the state and central government – both controlled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) – have insisted that the situation is “slowly improving” those on the ground tell another story. Curfews and restrictions remain in large parts of the state and the internet has repeatedly been shut down. Thousands of additional army and paramilitary personnel have been deployed while both sides have formed their own vigilante armed groups. This week eight more have died in clashes.

‘Our feminist ancestor’: Ama Ata Aidoo author activist and African heroine  - Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah Wed 5 Jul 2023  - The Guardian 

She hated to be addressed in familial terms – “Auntie”, “Mummy”, “Ma” – something Ghanaians instinctively do as a sign of respect. Yet many of us still felt compelled to call her Auntie because she was as magnanimous in her generosity as she was stern in her critique – something only a favourite aunt can get away with.  She expressed love through her commitment to the rights of women, as well as queer and marginalised communities of all kinds. Sissie, the protagonist in Our Sister Killjoy, says: “Yes, work is love made visible.” Ama Ata Aidoo’s love for us – women, feminists, the marginalised, African people wherever we may be – is visible in the incredible archive of work she leaves behind.

‘Despair is settling in’: female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan - Zahra Nader and Zan Times reporters -  28 Aug 2023  - The Guardian 

The data suggests Afghanistan has become one of very few countries worldwide where more women than men die by suicide.

Revealed: Big conservation NGOs are majority governed by finance figures -  JAMES WAN - AUGUST 23 2023 

New analysis has revealed that the majority of trustees at arguably the four biggest conservation NGOs in the world are closely linked to the finance industry. The revelation into who governs these influential and wealthy Western-based organisations has alarmed conservation specialists.

African Arguments looked into the backgrounds of the 111 individuals that sit on the boards of Conservation International (CI) The Nature Conservancy (TNC) the World Wildlife Fund-US (WWF-US) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It found that just over half are associated with finance.

These four NGOs set the global conservation agenda in many ways. They work in over 100 countries and territories across six continents running multi-million-dollar projects that cover hundreds of millions of hectares. They actively aim to influence national and global policy and are a leading voice at multilateral forums like the UN.

Sène suggests that the influence of these few NGOs has led to a “monopoly” of ideas – and not just globally. In most of countries in which they work these big organisations’ financial and political power is of a different magnitude to that of their local counterparts. According to some conservationists working in Africa the big NGOs can end up dominating the national conservation space.

This power imbalance is especially significant given that many local organisations vehemently disagree with the approach of the four NGOs. 

Interestingly the domination of financiers on the boards of the big conservation NGOs seems to have coincided with a rising emphasis on market-based solutions to climate change and the exponential growth of carbon markets. 

...the four big NGOs have defended the importance of offsetting schemes and the voluntary carbon market has grown apace.

Liberia set to concede 10% of its territory to Emirati company for carbon credit production - The pollution rights derived from the conservation or reforestation of nearly 1 million hectares of forests would allow the United Arab Emirates to meet its climate commitments. - Laurence Caramel - August 2, 2023 - Le Monde 

Liberia is preparing to grant the exclusive rights of over 1 million hectares of forest about 10% of the country's land area to a private Emirati company that will be tasked with marketing the carbon credits obtained from conservation or reforestation projects. A memorandum of understanding between the Liberian Ministry of Finance and the company Blue Carbon LLC was concluded in March and the final contract set to last for 30 years is said to be in the process of being signed.

Can We Please Have an Adult Conversation about China?: The Thirty-Second Newsletter (2022) AUGUST 11, 2022 - Vijay Prashad - Tricontinental 

A new kind of madness is seeping into global political discourse a poisonous fog that suffocates reason. This fog which has long marinated in old ugly ideas of white supremacy and Western superiority is clouding our ideas of humanity. The general malady that ensues is a deep suspicion and hatred of China not just of its current leadership or even the Chinese political system but hatred of the entire country and of Chinese civilisation – hatred of just about anything to do with China.

This madness has made it impossible to have an adult conversation about China. Words and phrases such as ‘authoritarian’ and ‘genocide’ are thrown around with no care to ascertain facts. China is a country of 1.4 billion people an ancient civilisation that suffered as much of the Global South did a century of humiliation in this case from the British-inflicted Opium Wars (which began in 1839) until the 1949 Chinese Revolution when leader Mao Zedong deliberately announced that the Chinese people had stood up. Since then Chinese society has been deeply transformed by utilising its social wealth to address the age-old problems of hunger illiteracy despondency and patriarchy. As with all social experiments there have been great problems but these are to be expected from any collective human action. Rather than seeing China for both its successes and contradictions this madness of our times seeks to reduce China to an Orientalist caricature – an authoritarian state with a genocidal agenda that seeks global domination.

This madness has a definite point of origin in the United States whose ruling elites are greatly threatened by the advances of the Chinese people – particularly in robotics telecommunications high-speed rail and computer technology. These advances pose an existential threat to the advantages long enjoyed by Western corporations who have benefited from centuries of colonialism and the straitjacket of intellectual property laws. Fear of its own fragility and the integration of Europe into Eurasian economic developments has led the West to launch an information war against China.

Western countries with a long history of brutal colonialism in Africa for instance now regularly decry what they call Chinese colonialism in Africa without any acknowledgment of their own past or the entrenched French and US military presence across the continent. Accusations of ‘genocide’ are always directed at the darker peoples of the world – whether in Darfur or in Xinjiang – but never at the US whose illegal war on Iraq alone resulted in the deaths of over a million people. The International Criminal Court steeped in Eurocentrism indicts one African leader after another for crimes against humanity but has never indicted a Western leader for their endless wars of aggression.

Where are the rational arguments here in a smear campaign that says dialogue with Chinese intellectuals is somehow off-limits but conversation with US government officials is perfectly acceptable? What level of civilisational apartheid is being produced here where liberals in South Africa are promoting a ‘clash of civilisations’ rather than a ‘dialogue between civilisations’?

Countries in the Global South can learn a great deal from China’s experiments with socialism. Its eradication of extreme poverty during the pandemic – an accomplishment celebrated by the United Nations – can teach us how to tackle similar obstinate facts in our own countries (which is why Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research produced a detailed study about the techniques that China employed to achieve this feat). No country in the world is perfect and none is above criticism. But to develop a paranoid attitude towards one country and to attempt to isolate it is socially dangerous. Walls need to be knocked down not built up. The US is provoking a conflict due to its own anxieties about China’s economic advances: we should not be drawn in as useful idiots. We need to have an adult conversation about China not one imposed upon us by powerful interests that are not our own.