recent activities, summer 2011

The 2010 - 2011 academic session has all but ended, which means that now I am entering, as usual, my 'busy' time of the year. I have just recently returned from facilitating a Training of Trainers Workshop for the Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative - Rwanda in Gisenyi, Rwanda. In the next few weeks I should be facilitating a workshop for the United Nations Development Programme's Regional Bureau for Africa. I will then head to Emory University in Atlanta, to do some teaching on the Global Master's in Development Practice. In June I will return to Dakar, and the United Nations African Institute of Economic Development and Planning, to facilitate a Training of Trainers Workshop for the Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative - Africa. Towards the end of June I will travel to Livingstone, Zambia, to facilitate a week-long short course on gender and economic policy for the Zambian Ministry of Finance. All in all, a very busy few months!

Crash club: when sputtering economies collide

Trust Mike Davis to tell it like it is. It is going to be a difficult few years.

Crash club: when sputtering economies collide - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Freedom for Palestine

A week ago I transited through Johannesburg -- my first time in South Africa. I found it quite ironic that I arrived in O.R. Tambo International Airport -- I am sure that I was the only person on the plane that had actually met Oliver Tambo, as the African National Congress headquarters in London during the apartheid years was just down the street from where I was living.

South Africa in the 1980s. Palestine in the 2010s. Different time, same struggle.



Thanks to David McNally for directing me to this.

Twenty-two years later, we still believe the Tiananmen myth

This is an excellent post on the myths and realities around the Tiananmen events of 20 years ago.

Brian's blog

the curious case of the missing recovery

Join Jim Stanford in this excellent search for Canada's economic recovery.



My thanks to Brian Robinson for showing me this.

"Every 30 minutes": crushed by debt and neoliberal reforms, Indian farmers commit suicide at staggering rate

A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years—an average of one suicide every 30 minutes. The crisis has ballooned with economic liberalization that has removed agricultural subsidies and opened Indian agriculture to the global market. Small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. Democracy Now! speaks with Smita Narula of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of an excellent new report on farmer suicides in India.



Thanks to Peter Mollinga for drawing my attention to this.

The death of Osama bin Laden

An excellent personal reflection by Richard Jackson on the meaning of the death of Osama bin Laden, published in The Hindu, India's best newspaper.

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The death of Osama bin Laden: it's a pity …

My thanks to Sharada to forwarding it on to me.