In Praise of Wangari Maathai
Maathai, who died this week, stood up to the dictatorship of Daniel Arap Moi, and the global regimes of the IMF, the World Bank and all the rest.
Politics
Didier Drogba, Truth Commissioner
Cote d'Ivoire's newly-appointed commission counts 11 members, with footballer Didier Drogba one of them, representing the country's diaspora.
Nicholas Kristof Saves Another Woman
In The New York Times columnit's world, Kenya is just another Third World site of pathos, despair, degradation, and fallen women waiting to be saved.
The Real Maids of Beirut
The vast majority of domestic workers in the Middle East are migrant workers. A fair number are from Africa, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia.
What about the maid?
African women work as domestics over the world. How have they responded to or organized to improve their conditions?
The Mobile Phone Chimera
Two recent articles highlight the fact that the digital divide is very much still with us, and in fact new kinds of divides may be opening up.
The Black Maroons of Colombia
The spontaneous mobilization of Afro-Colombians against mining corporations (backed by the Colombian state) is something to pay attention to.
The ‘African chambermaid’ and the media
Nafissatou Diall's rape accusation against Strauss-Kahn plays out in front of wider struggles by African women to secure justice and well-being.
The Rwandan Glass Ceiling
When does being a Rwandan woman matter? When that woman is a killer, a rapist, a torturer, a `monster.’ Not when she is an organizer and a healer.
It is the time for summer lists
A few of those things we missed, tweeted or could not get to this past week.
