In The News

Haiti: Tailor-Made for South-South Cooperation

Jonathan Glennie October 20, 2011
With a history of colonization, debt, US trade boycotts and domestic corruption, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Recent natural disasters, including hurricanes, storms and the 2010 earthquake compounded the challenges. Writing for the Guardian, Jonathan Glennie recommends that Haiti explore South-South cooperation, adding that “no amount of aid from the west can make up for...

Laos’ Spanking New Road to Nowhere

Haseenah Koyakutty October 12, 2011
To depend on others or not, that’s the dilemma of tiny Laos in connecting with neighboring nations. A highway, funded and built by Thailand, would connect the undeveloped Oudomxay region with Vietnam, Thailand and China. But a bridge crossing the Mekong River, part of the project, is left unfinished as China and Laos debate contract conditions. China’s population is 200 times larger than that of...

China Plays Hard Ball

François Godement September 19, 2011
European nations deep in debt are playing a dangerous game with China by teasing global markets. Neither borrowers nor would-be rescuers offer transparency about how much European debt China holds. Sensing that China is increasingly the only available willing buyer, leaders like Wen Jiabao allude to conditional lending, urging an end to anti-dumping charges or allowing asset sales that benefit...

Band Aid

Michael Holman September 1, 2011
The absence of a government role compounds the heart-wrenching crisis in East Africa. Aid agencies, not African governments, are leading famine-relief efforts in East Africa, writes Michael Holman for the UK magazine Prospect. Drought and famine are threatening the continent’s most troubled nations, including Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan. “But this does not justify Africa’s absence from the...

Ethiopia “Using Aid as Weapon of Oppression”

August 29, 2011
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations describes the seven nations – Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, the Sudan and Uganda – of the Horn of Africa, as one of the most food-insecure regions in the world. A team of journalists from the BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism traveled through Ethiopia, posing as tourists, and discovered communities allegedly...

Only 3 Percent of What You Buy Is Made in China, But It's the Most Important 3 Percent

Greg Lindsay August 25, 2011
For four decades, corporations have outsourced manufacturing operations to Asia, reducing costs. Shifting manufacturing off-shore eliminated jobs and also “sacrificed the know-how to think of new ways of manufacturing goods,” explains Greg Lindsay for Fast Company. In all, services represent two thirds of the US economy. Manufacturing’s role is small: San Francisco Federal Reserve economists...

Globalizing Insurgency in Somalia

Christopher Anzalone August 23, 2011
The Somali Al Qaeda–linked insurgent movement al-Shabab has ruled most of southern and central Somalia, including the capital city of Mogadishu, since mid-2008. Originating as the most radical wing of the military arm of the Islamic Courts Union coalition, the movement delivered relative law and order and peace to Somalia in 2006. Since then, al-Shabab has moved ideologically closer to the...