BEYOND THE CRISIS

Though the world economic outlook continues to look grim, it is worth asking what the world will be like when we exit this crisis. We have to identify the forces that are affecting the course of events so that we can change the existing order and avoid these problems in the future.

WHY FREE TRADE IS THE BEST ROUTE TO FEEDING THE WORLD HUNGRY

While the world could probably agree on basic objectives for our agricultural systems -adequate, nutritious, and affordable food, decent pay for farmers, and culturally and environmentally-sensitive production - we still disagree on what global integration could bring to this process.

NEPAL: DEMOCRACY TO DEMAGOGUERY

The shaky amateur video shows the leader of Nepal's Maoist party boasting how he tricked the United Nations into thinking his army was 35,000 strong when it had only 7,000 guerrillas. He goes on to admit how he has lied to everyone about his commitment to democracy and the peace process, and that his real goal is total control of the army and the state.

THE PROBLEMATIC FUTURE OF THE SUCRE

Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia and the seat of the Supreme Court of Justice. It was named in honour of Antonio Jose de Sucre y Alcala (1795-1830), a friend of South American liberator Simon Bolivar and second president of Bolivia, born in what is now Venezuela and buried in Quito. The sucre was the currency of Ecuador until 2000 when it adopted the dollar. SUCRE is also the acronym of the Unified System for Regional Compensation, a common currency that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has proposed for the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Andes (ALBA), an alliance comprised of Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and now the Caribbean microstates of Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (which use the East Caribbean dollar as their common currency). Ecuador will be an observer (it isn't sure what it will do with the dollar). ALBA is partially a response to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA), born in 1994 in Miami, and now defunct.

EUROPEAN UNION: IDENTITY CRISIS IN THE SOCIALIST PARTIES

The first good news regarding the economic crisis is arriving from the United States, about certain improvements in the banking sector as well (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Chase, etc). For now, they are but faint signs. But Barack Obama continues to fight on all fronts, with rigour and courage.

BURMA: WHY BOYCOTT JUST MAKES THINGS WORSE

Cut off contact with Hamas! Don't talk to Israel! Keep away from Burma! Over the past few years there have been calls from many quarters to break off contact with regimes we don't like. Few, however, seem to have a realistic idea of whether breaking off contact works, or what kind of regime it might work on.

CUBA – CHANGE VS EMBARGO

It's important to remember that before an end of the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense), and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots. Without these events, the embargo/blockade of Cuba, decreed 47 years ago, may have continued for who knows how long in its perennial form, condemned by many in international fora, denounced by the Cuban government, suffered through by the Cuban people, and kept in place by successive US administrations that believed it could force political change in Havana.

WORLD MUST KEEP UP PRESSURE ON AFGHAN LAW AGAINST WOMEN

When news broke about the new Shi'ite Personal Status Law in Afghanistan, many were appalled by the fact that it legalises rape within marriage. "Marital Rape Legal in Afghanistan", screamed the headlines, and we all reacted with shock and horror. On closer inspection, however, the law is actually much worse than we had all thought.

MEDIA METAMORPHOSIS

Major global depressions, like the current one, always have a domino effect that reaches almost every economic and social activity. The media, however, tend to focus on only a few of its manifestations -those that strike the centres of power- while neglecting the periphery where poverty deepened by the crisis has far more dramatic consequences.

CUBA: BEYOND AND BEHIND THE WORLD CRISIS

We Cubans may be the people least frightened by the ominous talk of the "economic crisis" that is stalking the world and has already devastated so many. A prolonged submersion in the sea of shortages and severe limitations that led down into the hell of widespread poverty during the post-Soviet decade of the 1990s -euphemistically dubbed the "Special Period in Times of Peace"- taught us to weather extended periods of every kind of scarcity -food, electricity, transport, housing, medicine, clothing, and much more- and to come through it alive, albeit all too often battered.

GLOBAL CRISIS: WOMEN WORKERS WILL BE HIT HARDEST

As the global economic crisis continues to unfold, it is having severe effects on international trade. UNCTAD estimates that merchandise exports from developing countries could decline by 15.5% this year. At the regional level, we expect export growth to shrink by 16.8% in Asia, 12.5% in Africa, and 10% in Latin America.

ADDRESSING WORLD CRISIS REQUIRES A G192, NOT THE G20

For those of us focused on eradicating poverty and inequality, the greatest risk about the G20 summit was that the richest countries would use the global financial downturn to cut back on aid commitments and put the interests of their own countries first. This would spell disaster for the millions of people suffering from rising hunger and climate change and living in deep poverty across the developing world.

DEMOCRATISING FINANCE

The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the "too big to fail" culture of global money-centre banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralise and democratise finance.

GROWING A GREEN COLLAR ECONOMY

In an economic downturn long on loss and short on solutions, few buzzwords have travelled more rapidly from the margins to the mainstream than the term "green jobs".

MISGUIDED PHILANTHROPY CANNOT FEED AFRICA

The biotech industry is using the increase in global hunger as a tool to win support for GM crops. Its tactics of "poor washing" (we must accept genetic engineering to increase production and improve livelihoods of farmers) and "green washing" (biotech is environmentally friendly and will help counter climate change) have won favor with the misguided philanthropic community as well.

LATIN AMERICA: LEFT OF THE WORLD

The victory of Mauricio Funes, El Salvador's president elect and candidate of the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), completes a striking movement to the left in Latin American politics. The configuration of the continent had steadily shifted since the time the majority of countries emerged from military dictatorships and elected centrist or conservative governments. Today, with the exception of Mexico and Colombia on one side and Cuba on the other, the continent is governed by either the moderate left with social democratic leanings or by neo-populists. And then there is the Dominican Republic, which is governed by liberals with social concerns.

TOWARD A WORLD FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Crying out in opposition to war and nuclear weapons is neither emotionalism nor self-pity. It is the highest expression of human reason based on an unflinching commitment to the dignity of life.

AFRICA COULD LOSE BIG IN ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENTS WITH EU

Given the way the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations have been based on the requirement for reciprocal market opening with the European Union (EU), they are likely to bring more losses than gains for Africa and make the path to development even more difficult than it already is. For this reason, the South Centre recommends an alternative approach.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY IS MORE VALID, AND MORE NEEDED, THAN EVER

Since its beginnings in the 1960s, Liberation Theology has adopted a global perspective, focusing on the conditions of the poor and oppressed throughout the world, victims of a system that thrives off the exploitation of labour and the plundering of nature. The system exploits the working class and the weakest nations. It also represses those who oppress and thus violate their own humanitarian impulses. In a word, everyone must be freed from this system that has continued for almost three centuries and has been imposed across the planet.

THE NEW FINANCIERS

In today's global financial crisis, the question inevitably arises, Who will the new financiers be?

LIVING IN HISTORY

On November 23, 1963, I was just an eight-year-old boy. I remember that historic afternoon with a vividness that always startles me: I was on the patio of my house when a neighbour named Merida entered and announced jubilantly that they had killed that "son of a bitch" Kennedy.