Norman Girvan

Highlights: Beware of the ‘hype’/100 economies of the South are still in recession/China’s growth will not necessarily boost developing countries’ exports/Rethink the role of domestic markets and of industrial policy and technology policy/The South should make its own definition of South-South Cooperation

Read South Bulletin No. 44 March 2010

The Dangers Confronting Humanity, Fidel Castro

norman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:03:12 +0000

It is not an ideological question, related to an irremediable hope, that a better world is, and must be, possible. It is a known fact that the homo sapiens has existed for about 200,000 years, which is no more than a tiny span of the time passed since the emergence of the first basic forms of life on our planet approximately three billion years ago…

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Statement on Haiti, Reginald Dumas

norman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:06:09 +0000

Unabridged version of a statement delivered Ambassador Reginald Dumas in his capacity as Chairman of a session on Haiti at a Round Table organised by the United Nations and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in New York on March 1-2, 2010.

The confused aftermath of the Haiti earthquake is clear testimony to the inadequacies that exist and persist. ..I believe a major reason why the international community does not do as well in troubled countries as it would like is an insufficient emphasis on the people of the countries and their cultural characteristics. Culture is not only song and dance and literature…

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Haiti: An Oppressed State, Latin American Solidarity Coalition

norman — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:55:25 +0000

Report of a delegation of 11 academics, journalists and Latin America solidarity leaders from the United States and Canada that visited Haiti prior to the recent earthquake, from Dec. 28, 2009-Jan. 7, 2010.

The delegation met with over 70 individuals and organizational representatives in Port- au-Prince, including the two most impoverished neighborhoods, Cite Soleil and Bel Air. We took recorded testimony from twelve victims of MINUSTAH violence (people who themselves were wounded by UN troops), or whose family members were killed during UN attacks on their
communities. The delegation also spent two days in Jacmel visiting sustainable development projects…

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The British Caribbean Betrayal of British Guiana, Review by Cary Fraser

norman — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:01:44 +0000

Cary Fraser reviews Robert Anthony Waters, Jr.’s “‘A Betrayal of the Cause of Colonial People the World Over’: The British Caribbean Against Jagan.” The Journal of Caribbean History 43:1 (2009): 115-135.

In this article, Robert Waters makes an effort to explore the internal dynamics and tensions of the decolonization process in the British West Indian colonies during the 1950s and 1960s, particularly among the leaders of the four colonies that gained their independence in the 1960s – Jamaica (1962), Trinidad and Tobago (1962), Barbados (1966) and Guyana (1966)…

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Chile and Haiti after the earthquakes: so different yet so similar, José Antonio Gutiérrez D.

norman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:33:32 +0000

Much has been said about the differences between Chile and Haiti - the earthquake in our brothers’ Caribbean republic produced a far higher death toll (300,000) and much greater damage, both in absolute and relative terms. There has been talk about the geological and seismological reasons, such as greater depth of the epicentre and the area where it happened, and they certainly did play very clear a role. But above all we must be looked at is the political, social and economic explanation of why an earthquake of greater magnitude in Chile had a much smaller impact…

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Related

Chile’s Social Earthquake Roger Burbach

Chile is experiencing a social earthquake in the aftermath of the 8.8 magnitude quake that struck the country on February 27. “The fault lines of the Chilean Economic Miracle have been exposed,” says Elias Padilla, an anthropology professor at the Academic University of Christian Humanism in Santiago. “The free market, neo-liberal economic model that Chile has followed since the Pinochet dictatorship has feet of mud.”

Cuba, the Corporate Media, and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Salim Lamrani

norman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:54:15 +0000

On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The corporate media put the tragic incident on the front page and emphasized the plight of Cuban prisoners…

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Related

‘Powerful interests are behind the cyber-dissidence of Yoanni Sanchez’ Salim Lamrani interviewed by Guillermo Nova

Transforming the Barbados Economy in the Age of Liberalisation, Owen Arthur

norman — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:02:37 +0000

Lecture to the Young Economists Association, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, February 25, 2010

I suppose that one of the requirements to be a former Prime Minister is that you should be seldom seen, and seldom heard. I fully intend to meet those requirements. Sometimes, however, there will be developments in our public affairs about which it will be difficult to speak, but impossible to remain silent...

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Haiti: Self-Help The Basis Of Viable Alternative, Charles Arthur

norman — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:34:18 +0000

One of the most remarkable aspects of the post-earthquake situation has been the resilience and courage of the survivors. In the greater Port-au-Prince area, people have organized themselves in the face of incredible odds…