US – Features

Text of talk on receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Johannesburg, 25 May, 2010

By Mahmood Mamdani, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

It warms my heart to see these flowing gowns.  I congratulate you on work accomplished!  For over a millennium, these gowns have been a symbol of high learning from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic.  Should anyone ask you where they came from, tell them that the early universities of Europe – Oxford, Cambridge, le Sorbonne – borrowed them from the Islamic madressa of the Middle East.

If they should seem incredulous, tell them that the gown did not come by itself: because medieval European scholars borrowed from the madressa much of the curriculum, from Greek philosophy to Iranian astronomy to Arab medicine and Indian mathematics, they had little difficulty in accepting this flowing gown, modeled after the dress of the desert nomad, as the symbol of high learning.  Should they still express surprise, ask them to take a second look at the gowns of the ayatollahs in Iran and Iraq and elsewhere and they will see the resemblance.  Education has no boundaries.  Neither does it have an end.  As the Waswahili in East Africa, which is where I come from, say: elimu haina muisho. 

Read More »Beware bigotry some thoughts on free speech the zapiro cartoons

Confidence Games and Ponzi Schemes

By Lynn Henderson

The United States economy continues its plunge into the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, dragging in its wake the entire world’s financial system. What is the cause of this now world-wide economic catastrophe? Without a clear understanding of its root causes we will not be able to find a way out. Rather the crisis itself will be used to inflict even greater damage on its chief victims, working people here and around the world.

Read More »Confidence games and ponzi schemes

Badil Resource Center Organizes Exchange between South Africa Trade Unionists and Palestinian Civic Leaders

Bethlehem – BADIL Resource Center – South African anti-Apartheid leader and union official Ziko Tamela is in the Israeli occupied West Bank this week to gain insight into the Palestinian reality on the ground and to forge stronger links for solidarity work. Tamela is the international secretary for the South African Transport and Communications Workers Union, which gained international attention during Israel’s recent 22-day war on Gaza by refusing to off-load Israeli cargo. In doing so, it consciously sought to replicate the boycott activity of European dockworkers who refused to handle South African goods during the dark days of the apartheid regime.  Badil Resource Center organized a day’s activity for Tamela including a tour of Deheisheh refugee camp led by members of its popular committee; a tour of Aida refugee camp, including the surrounding apartheid wall; an exchange with the  children of Laji’ cultural center, also in Aida refugee camp; and a visit to the Church of the Nativity. Read More »Badil resource center organizes exchange between south Africa trade unionists and palestinian civic

Full account of Muhammed Omer’s hair-raising encounter with the Shin Beth 
 
from Khalid Amayreh in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

From his hospital bed at the European Hospital in Gaza  and with barely audible voice,  award-winning  Palestinian journalist Muhammed Omer has given a  full account of  the  hair-raising encounter  he had  last week with  Shin Beth agents at the Allenby Bridge border-crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.

Omer, a co-winner of the 2008 Martha Gelhorn Prize for Journalistic Excellence,  said  he was abused, assaulted , humiliated, ridiculed, kicked, and strip-searched at gunpoint by undisciplined Shin Beth officers until he had a nervous breakdown in which case he lost consciousness for at least 90 minutes.

Read More »Full account of muhammed omers hair raising encounter with the shin beth