With all the talk of AI of recent, I picked up "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" (2023) by Paul Scharre to see where the new changes might fit into courses I have covered of recent (political economy, ethics, evaluation). A complaint to start: many figures in my copy of this book were blank, grey useless boxes. Clearly a printing error on the part of the publisher, but frustrating nonetheless. The book has eight parts. Part 1 is a good summary of the key issues (data, computational power, talent, institutions), which is probably the most useful high-level part of this book. Part 2 begins to cover ethics, introduces a number of stories, and the role of corporate engagement. Parts 3 and 5 are largely anti-China (that is not to defend China; that is only to point out that the negative examples this ex-US army ranger chooses are Chinese ones; when discussing consent, privacy, and monitoring we learn all about Chinese evils, but no mention of the NSA or Snowden, or others – this consistent inclusion/exclusion bias makes the book largely pro-American and anti-Chinese). Part 4 covers the unhealthy information environment we all live within, but is largely outdated (expectedly, books are slow to publish). Part 6 returns to US military projects (a common theme of the book, not surprisingly given the author's background). Part 7 outlines some of the problems with AI: bias, risks, limitations, vulnerabilities. Part 8 concludes with perspectives on the future of war. A few notes:

"AI has many constructive applications. AI will save lives and increase efficiency and productivity. It is also being used as a weapon of repression and to gain military advantage. This book is about the darker side of AI." (p. 4)

"In fact, machine learning systems are often so narrowly constrained by the datasets on which they've been trained that their performance can often drop if they are used for tasks that are not well-represented in the training data. For example, a facial recognition system may perform poorly on people of races or ethnicities that are not adequately represented in its training data. A machine learning algorithm used for predictive maintenance on one aircraft won't work on another aircraft—it would need to be retrained on data for the new aircraft. It may not even be effective at predicting maintenance needs on the same aircraft in a new environment, since maintenance needs may differ based on environmental conditions, such as in a desert where sand can clog parts or in a maritime environment where there is saltwater corrosion." (p. 21)

"Facial recognition systems are being merged with other tools for big data analysis in the Ministry of Public Security's "Police Cloud" system. Police cloud computing data centers, which are being implemented in numerous cities and provinces across China, include not only criminal records, facial recognition, and other biometric data, but also addresses, religious affiliations, medical records, birth control records, travel bookings, online purchases, package deliveries, and social media comments. These databases are not merely repositories of information but are intended to automatically fuse and analyze data for police. They could be used to monitor and track individuals of interest and also connect them to associates." (p. 89) 

Ali Shariati was an Iranian scholar and philosopher (1933-1977), argued to be one of the foremost intellectuals influencing the Iranian Revolution. Ali Shariati and the Future of Social Theory: Religion, Revolution, and the Role of the Intellectual (2017), edited by Byrd and Miri, revisits the ideas of Ali Shariati for contemporary and future of social sciences. The book is an edited collection (15 chapters), with contributions from a wide range of geographies and perspectives. Some notes:

"Shariati instead championed an enlightened and thus reinvigorated Islam that could govern itself, wherein Islam was the guide of the people and not their manager. This of course "radicalized" Islam, but not in the same way that is discussed when speaking of al-Qaʾeda, isis (daesh) and other terrorist groups – the false prophets of Islamism. Shariati radicalized Islam by a future oriented-return to its most radical roots, best exemplified by the sunnah (way) of Muhammad and his family, reacquainting the Muslim ummah with its original zeitgeist: a theologically oriented demand and revolt for social justice. In this way, Islam represented the universal longing for human emancipation, human flourishing and human solidarity, and rejected the particularity of the interests of the ruling elites" (p. 3)

"For Shariati, the exploitative sociology of Europe had realized that in order to be able to rob the East, to ride on her back, and to deceive her, it was imperative to strip her from her personality. Once this was accomplished, the East would proudly follow the West and, with unspeakable lunacy and thirst, would consume western goods. The exploiter, in this case the West, wanted to see his machines work all of the time. Furthermore, it wanted to see all originality, religion, tastes, and various talents destroyed, so that all races could be changed to become consumers of his products. In order to achieve this purpose, the exploiter searched for ways to deprive a nation of its personality, which was defined as the unique aspects of a culture that differentiates it from another. Therefore, a generation, like a tree, had to be severed from its roots so that it could be used and manipulated any way the exploiter wished." (p. 31-32)

"Shariati's epistemology posits that all knowledge is inherently value-laden relative to the universal ethics of Good and Evil which join existence in preceding essence. All knowledge must therefore be situated within the historical struggle between the religions of legitimation and revolution. Shariati thus advances an axiological epistemology that collapses Cartesian dualism without affirming a subjectivist, "anything-goes" ethical relativism. Methodologically, and consistent with the axiological anti-dualism of his epistemology, Shariati prescribes a methodology of critical hermeneutics. Because only God has universal knowledge of cause and effect, any attempts at unearthing an absolute semiotics is futile and impossible. Instead, Shariati argues that the only appropriate model for advancing human knowledge is the continuous interpretation of facts relative to their social construction and religious politics. Broken down into its constituent parts, Shariati's hermeneutical method involves 'objection, criticism, and the inner choice or selection of the individual.'" (p. 55)

"Shariati's ideas on religion and Islamic culture become clear in his correspondence with Franz Fanon. In his letter, Shariati expresses his disapproval and disagreement with Fanon over the essentiality of leaving religion in order for a nation to progress and conquer imperialism. He, instead, believes that a society must retain and regain its cultural and religious heritage as they can achieve the same ends. To him, religion, or more specifically the Islamic tradition, is the most powerful element for uniting the peoples and guiding them towards progressive objectives. Shariati cogently argues for the essentiality of a rediscovery of the national psyche before fighting the West. It is only with a domestic and an inherent ideology rooted in its own political culture that Iran can gain its respect by resisting imperialism." (p. 76)

"What Syed Hussein Alatas said of the mental captivity of intellectuals more than four decades ago still holds true, as the captive mind is real and ­pervasive in our society today. Trained almost entirely in the western sciences, the captive mind enjoys reading the western authors, and is educated primarily by western teachers, either in the West or through their available works in local institutions of education. Many of our intellectuals and university/college teachers read the works of western authors and teach them, yet they are not aware of this academic dependency, and those who are conscious of it do not bother to make an effort to change it. Our teachers use textbooks that are developed in countries very different than ours. They appear to have been total victims of the captive mind. Thus, Alatas' concept of captive mind resonates perfectly with the notions of mimicry and repetition that have been considered as one of the most effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge." (p. 79)

"In terms of educational methods, Shariati puts forward this pair of contrasting words: cultivation vs. instruction. According to him, the Islamic view puts cultivation at the center of education, whereas the western view takes instruction as the main vehicle for education. This is in parallel to the ­above-mentioned centrality of values in the curriculum adopted by Islamic education, and the centrality of knowledge in western education. According to Islamic education, in order to provide pupils with values, instruction is not enough, but living with pupils and dealing with their daily issues and giving them a role model is required." (p. 218) 

Walking around a bookshop that largely carried children's materials, I came across an interesting (and out of place) book: "The Afghanistan File" written by Prince Turki AlFaisal Al Saud, the Director of the General Intelligence Directorate (1977-2001) in Saudi Arabia. It seems the book was dictated by Prince Turki, written by Michael Field, and published in 2021. The book is published by Arabian Publishing, so it might not have made its way around the typical networks. For those interested in Afghanistan, or Saudi, this is an interesting addition to the dialogue. A few notes:

"In spite of his reservations Brzezinski recommended 'more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice'. 'It is essential that Afghanistani resistance continues,' he wrote. 'To make [this] possible we must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels … We should concert with Islamic countries both in a propaganda campaign and in a covert action campaign…' This memorandum led to another Presidential 'Finding' at the end of December, which permitted the CIA to send weapons secretly to the Mujahideen. The purpose was to make the Soviet intervention as costly as possible to get the USSR 'bogged down', as Brzezinski put it later, and to discourage other military interventions." (p. 9-10)

"The purchasing of weapons and ammunition was managed mainly by the CIA, and at the start it was agreed among us, the Pakistanis and the Americans that supplies would be of Warsaw Pact origin so that it would appear to the Russians that the Mujahideen had captured them or bought them from the Afghan army. Alternatively they could be of old western manufacture, the sort of material that the Mujahideen might have bought on the international arms market or in the frontier region. At all costs we wanted to avoid showing that our three countries were involved as suppliers." (p. 42)

"During the war the amounts of money going into the pipeline increased enormously. In 1980 Saudi Arabia and America together put in $300,000, though at this stage there were various other direct payments made, including the $2 million we sent in cash with Ahmad Badeeb in January that year. In 1981 the two countries put in $60 million, by 1984 the figure had reached $400 million and by the end of the Soviet occupation it was running at around $1 billion. The actual movement of the Saudi contribution was into a Swiss account of the CIA." (p. 48)

"In his book The Hidden War: A Russian Journalists Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, published in 1990 during the time of glasnost, Artyom Borovik wrote that the Soviet Union at the beginning was 'obsessed with our own messianic mission and blinded by arrogance… [W]e rarely stopped to think how Afghanistan would influence us… In Afghanistan we bombed not only the detachments of rebels and their caravans, but our own ideals as well… In Afghanistan the policies of the government became utterly incompatible with the inherent morality of our nation. things could not continue in the same vein.'" (p. 98) 

Ha-Joon Chang has written many excellent books, on this blog I have covered Kicking Away the Ladder and 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism. With the encouragement of Oxfam's Duncan Green, in 2007 Chang published "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism". The book aims for a general audience, and in many ways puts the arguments in the above two books in a more accessible way, often conveyed via story. For the details, see his other books. Many of the examples are getting dated, but still a useful read. Some notes:

"This neo-liberal establishment would have us believe that, during its miracle years between the 1960s and the 1980s, Korea pursued a neo-liberal economic development strategy. The reality, however, was very different indeed. What Korea actually did during these decades was to nurture certain new industries, selected by the government in consultation with the private sector, through tariff protection, subsidies and other forms of government support (e.g., overseas marketing information services provided by the state export agency) until they 'grew up' enough to withstand international competition. The government owned all the banks, so it could direct the life blood of business—credit. Some big projects were undertaken directly by state-owned enterprises—the steel maker, POS CO, being the best example—although the country had a pragmatic, rather than ideological, attitude to the issue of state ownership. If private enterprises worked well, that was fine; if they did not invest in important areas, the government had no qualms about setting up state-owned enterprises (SOEs); and if some private enterprises were mismanaged, the government often took them over, restructured them, and usually (but not always) sold them off again." (p. 14)

"Unfortunately, another lesson of history is that rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past. Even the newest member of the club of rich countries, my native Korea, has not been an exception to this pattern. Despite once having been one of the most protectionist countries in the world, it now advocates steep cuts in industrial tariffs, if not total free trade, in the WTO." (p. 61)

"Markets have a strong tendency to reinforce the status quo. The free market dictates that countries stick to what they are already good at. Stated bluntly, this means that poor countries are supposed to continue with their current engagement in low-productivity activities. But their engagement in those activities is exactly what makes them poor. If they want to leave poverty behind, they have to defy the market and do the more difficult things that bring them higher incomes—there are no two ways about it." (p. 210)

"Knowing what policies are right for your particular circumstances is not enough. A country must be able to implement them. Over the past quarter of a century, the Bad Samaritans have made it increasingly difficult for developing countries to pursue the 'right' policies for their development. They have used the Unholy Trinity of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, the regional multilateral financial institutions, their aid budgets and bilateral and regional free-trade or investment agreements in order to block them from doing so. They argue that nationalist policies (like trade protection and discrimination against foreign investors) should be banned, or severely curtailed, not only because they are supposed to be bad for the practising countries themselves but also because they lead to 'unfair' competition. In arguing this, the Bad Samaritans constantly invoke the notion of the 'level playing field.' The Bad Samaritans demand that developing countries should not be allowed to use extra policy tools for protection, subsidies and regulations, as these constitute unfair competition." (p. 217-218). 

That was 1993, via Latour:

"On page four of my daily newspaper, I learn that the measurements taken above the Antarctic are not good this year: the hole in the ozone layer is growing ominously larger. Reading on, I turn from upper-atmosphere chemists to Chief Executive Officers of Atochem and Monsanto, companies that are modifying their assembly lines in order to replace the innocent chlorofluorocarbons, accused of crimes against the ecosphere. A few paragraphs later, I come across heads of state of major industrialized countries who are getting involved with chemistry, refrigerators, aerosols and inert gases. But at the end of the article, I discover that the meteorologists don't agree with the chemists; they're talking about cyclical fluctuations unrelated to human activity. So now the industrialists don't know what to do. The heads of state are also holding back. Should we wait? Is it already too late? Toward the bottom of the page, Third World countries and ecologists add their grain of salt and talk about international treaties, moratoriums, the rights of future generations, and the right to development. The same article mixes together chemical reactions and political reactions. A single thread links the most esoteric sciences and the most sordid politics, the most distant sky and some factory in the Lyon suburbs, dangers on a global scale and the impending local elections or the next board meeting. The horizons, the stakes, the time frames, the actors – none of these is commensurable, yet they are, caught up in the same story." 

I have covered many critical assessments of development on this blog. However, comparatively few have covered the Middle East and North Africa region. Was pleased to come across "Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment" by Ali Kadri (2015). The region has had diverse historical and contemporary experiences and I found several parts of the book generalized experiences to the "Arab World", which are questionable when one looks into the specifics of countries. The book could have better engaged the heterogeneity of the region. Similarly, the book could have been more empirically grounded, particularly claims of the more recent years for which there is a lot of data. Nonetheless, this is an interesting read, a few notes:

"De-development should not be confused with relative underdevelopment vis-à-vis Western formations or with a delinking of developing formations from the global accumulation process. De-development is the purposeful deconstruction of developing entities. Primarily, it involves stripping by force the working classes in those entities of the right to own and control their resources and use them for their own benefit." (p. 2-3)

"Ever since the rise in oil prices in 2002, all Arab countries, of which the majority are oil producing, have registered steadily positive growth rates of around five percent. However, this 'growth' was hollow and degenerative, like the swelling in the bellies of malnourished people. In point of fact, the uprisings erupted when Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Egypt were enjoying record real-growth rates. The chapter criticises existing policies and concludes that in the AW, the resource curse is the curse of the imperialist assault sustained by the Arab working classes, and that an examination into the re-empowerment of the working class within the political process is required." (p. 19)

"For the time being, it appears structurally prohibitive to abandon oil dependency—to 'kick the oil habit'. Persistent dependence on oil is not haphazard; it is defined and reproduced by a consortium of Arab ruling classes and US-headed imperial powers. Assuming that development were to occur, the effects of Arab development on the sway of forces that thrive on accumulation by encroachment and militarism would be significant. This is a war region, in which the state of conflict itself is an input into global accumulation and that the world has come to internalise as a necessity." (p 31)

"The usual sermon-like policy of the WB/IMF is to liberalise, increase the effectiveness of labour, and improve technology… Given such unrealistic assumptions, these formulaic policy measures are tantamount to obfuscation." (p. 43)

"When so many resources escape and imports represent on average around 50 per cent of GDP (2011 figures), the multiplier theory, according to which one dollar multiplies several-fold in the economy, founders. Capital inflows are channelled into raising consumption, especially on the luxury goods of the merchant class as it emulates its foreign counterpart either directly or indirectly by shifting resources away from investment." (p. 43)

"Poor performance associated with imperialist assault is not related to Arab oil perse; it is a much broader social phenomenon prevailing wherever imperialism strives for primary-product control by aggressive means. To resolve the debacle, socially, politically and historically specific mediations between capital and labour need to be assessed. WB/IMF policy has (deliberately) overlooked the obvious, which is the ties of Arab merchant classes to US-led imperialism and the war context." (p. 46) 

Ohio University Press has a series of "Short Histories of Africa". I recently decided to pick up most of the collection for potential use as reading materials for classes. This post covers "Mozambique's Samora Machel: A Life Cut Short" (2020), by Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman. Like the books on Nkrumah and Cabral, this one is relatively longer than the average in the series. This book is enjoyable and well written, for a class on Mozambique or revolutionary leaders, I would recommend this book (particularly for more introductory courses). A few notes:

[from the Foreward] "Discussing relations with countries like Zambia and Tanzania, he would observe that there were people in neighbouring countries who thought they were superior because they had been colonized by the British and not the Portuguese. Or he might ask, why was it that in colonial times our waiters would serve the Portuguese soldiers with courtesy and respect, but now would be rude to their own people? The answer was that the enemy was camping in our heads - we still had the mentality of underdevelopment." (p. 12-13)

"Lisbon also made the colony profitable by renting African workers to labour-starved South African gold mines and, to a much lesser extent, to white farmers and industrialists in neighbouring Southern Rhodesia. Beginning in 1897, the Rand National Labour Association, subsequently renamed the Witwatersrand National Labour Association, paid the government a fee for each Mozambican worker. It also set up a deferred payment system under which workers received half of their wages when they returned home and Lisbon was paid an equivalent amount in gold. By 1910, approximately eighty thousand Mozambicans - representing from 30 to 50 percent of the able bodied male population in some districts of southern Mozambique - were working in the gold mines." (p. 40)

"The principle that citizenship was not contingent on origin or skin colour was enshrined in Mozambique's new constitution, which outlawed all acts creating divisions or privileged positions based on race, gender, ethnic origin, or class position. Immediately after independence Frelimo initiated campaigns against ethnic regionalism, racism, and sexism. Broadcasts, newspaper articles, comic strips, bulletin boards, murals, and graffiti stressed the message that "from the Rovuma to the Maputo, we are all Mozambicans." (p. 121)

"Samora's government also rejected widescale use of incarceration to punish those who violated societal norms. Instead, reeducation centres or established shortly after independence. Samora's faith in revolutionary pedagogy and restorative justice shaped his thinking about the reeducation process, which dated back to the armed struggle. Moral and political education and the development of a work ethic would serve as the basis for rehabilitation. Samora articulated this vision in the following terms: "the reeducation centre should be a school where professional knowledge should be passed on and made use of. It is the fundamental task of officials in charge of reeducation centres to know the history of each one of the people being re-educated - his life history and his origin - in order to understand why he committed his crimes." (p. 128-129)

"As a young man, Samora was heavily influenced by Frantz Fanon's contention that "colonizing the mind" was the most insidious legacy of colonialism. In his 1977 acceptance speech upon receiving an honorary doctor of law degree from Nigeria's Ahmadu Bello University, Samora emphasized that "the ultimate effort [of colonialism was] to make out of each Mozambican and assimilado, a little Portuguese with black skin" and defined colonialism as a cultural act of rape. He believed that democratization of knowledge would free Mozambicans from the shackles of illiteracy, the tyranny of superstition, and the cultural arrogance of missionary education." (p. 132-137)

"In the last years of his life Samora and the entire Frelimo leadership had been forced to compromise their radical agenda. Mozambique's next president Joaquim Chissano, who served from 1986 two 2005, went even further totally abandoning the socialist project in favor of neoliberalism and market capitalism... The 1987 IMF agreement was the death knell of Mozambican socialism. The preamble of the new constitution enacted in 1990, while celebrating the struggle that led to independence, omitted any reference to free health care and education as rights of citizenship." (p. 198-199)

Enablers of Colonization and those in Solidarity:

"The West's support of Portuguese colonialism had driven Mondlane and many of those around him to adopt a more radical anti-imperialist stance, to the consternation of some of his more nationalist followers. This first group was backed by their host president Nyerere of Tanzania, who facilitated Mondlane's meeting with the Organization of African unity and the socialist countries." (p. 76)

"Samora's belief that the Nkomati Accord would provide opportunity for Mozambique to rebuild turned out to be illusory, since Pretoria never ended its military assistance to RENAMO. The South African Defence Force continued to air-drop arms and ammunition, use submarines operating off Mozambique's coast to resupply guerrilla units, and allow large numbers of RENAMO insurgents to cross into Mozambique from their camps in the Transvaal. Documents captured in 1985 at RENAMO headquarters in Gorongosa revealed the extent of the charade. South African security forces also kept resupplying RENAMO forces based in Malawi, adjacent to the Mozambican border." (p. 184)

"More than thirty years later, only incomplete evidence has been released about the cause of the crash. Those who planned and carried out the plot to kill Samora remain unidentified despite investigations by the Margo Commission, established by white-ruled South Africa in 1987; postapartheid South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard testimony on the crash in 1998; and a joint Mozambican-South African Commission established in 2010." (p. 192-193) 

Ohio University Press has a series of "Short Histories of Africa". I recently decided to pick up most of the collection for potential use as reading materials for classes. This post covers "Amilcar Cabral: Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary" (2019), by Peter Karibe Mendy. This book in relatively longer in this series, like the Nkrumah book, contains a rich historical contextualization and offers a detailed account. Some notes:

"Desperate to establish the pax lusitana, the Portuguese exploited the differences of language and culture and played off one group against the other, constantly making a distinction between the Islamized "neo-Sudanese" Fulas and Mandinkas of the interior, and the "builders of strong states," and the "animist paleo-Sudanese" of the coastal region, the " more backward peoples." Applying a racist anthropology, colonial officials-cum-social scientists considered the neo-Sudanese to be of the Hamitic / Semitic racial origins, which supposedly made them superior to all the other groups regarded as paleo-Sudanese." (p. 31-32)

Cabral commented: "All Portuguese education disparages the African, his culture and civilization. African languages are forbidden in schools. The white man is always presented as a superior being and the African as an inferior. The colonial "conquistadores" are shown as saints and heroes. As soon as African children enter elementary schools, they develop an inferiority complex. They learn to fear the white man and to feel ashamed of being Africans. African geography, history and culture are either ignored or distorted, and children are forced to study Portuguese geography and history." (p. 46)

"Regarding the supposed racial and intellectual inferiority of Africans, the famous Portuguese writer and politician Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins insisted in 1880 that education for Africans was "absurd not only in the light of History but also in light of the mental capacity of these inferior races." Contemptuous of Portugal's proclaimed double mission of civilizing and evangelizing the "inferior races" and "barbarous peoples" of Africa "placed between man and the anthropoid" Oliveira Martins sneered, "why not teach the Bible to the gorilla and the orangutan, who have ears even though they cannot speak, and must understand, almost as much as the black, the metaphysics of the incarnation of the Word and the dogma of the Trinity?"" (p. 59)

"At Porto, the exhibition of sixty-three pretos da Guine (blacks of Guinea) drew huge crowds of spectators who gaped and gawked at the half naked "savage" women with their exposed breasts, the scantily clad men, and the nude children. The exotic Africans on display also included Angolans and Mozambicans in their replicated "natural habitats" of "primitive" mud-hut villages, in which they were required to live and display their putative lifestyles and cultures for the duration of the exposition. On show in much the same way as the animals in the nearby Porto zoo, the human exhibits were meant to testify to the supposed superiority of the white race." (p. 60-61)

"The increasingly favorable international environment was also due to Cabral's skillful use of the media to publicize the cause of the armed struggle, particularly in countries that were Portugal's NATO allies. From the early years of the war, he continually invited a number of journalists, writers, and film makers to make eyewitness accounts of the armed struggle in progress." (p. 152-153)

"When Luis Cabral's ex-wife, Lucette Cabral, met Nelson Mandela after his release from twenty-seven years of imprisonment, she admiringly told him, "You are the best." Mandela quickly responded, "No, there is Cabral."" (p. 200)

Notes on enablers and those standing in solidarity:

"… the concerned Lisbon authorities quickly sent reinforcements that included a detachment of F-86 Sabre jet fighter planes provided to Portugal by the United States for NATO deployment in Europe. These were later complemented by American T-6 Texan light attack planes and West German-built Italian Fiat G-91 light attack fighter aircraft." (p. 124)

"[Cabral] substantially increased the number of men and women sent abroad for military training, mainly to the USSR, the PRC, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Cuba, besides African countries like Algeria, Morocco, Ghana, and the host country ( Guinea-Conakry)." (p. 138)

"Following the report of a UN fact-finding mission sent to Conakry three days after the aborted invasion, Security Council resolution 290 (1970), adopted with the abstentions of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, reaffirmed "the inalienable right of the people of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea (Bissau) to freedom and independence," condemned Portugal for the aggression, and declared that "the presence of Portuguese colonialism on the African continent is a serious threat to the peace and stability of independent African states." (p. 150) 

Ohio University Press has a series of "Short Histories of Africa". I recently decided to pick up most of the collection for potential use as reading materials for classes. This post covers "Kwame Nkrumah: Visions of Liberation" (2021), by Jeffrey S. Ahlman. The book is contextualized beyond biographical detail, with details of the events occurring while Nkrumah was in the US and UK. The book also unravels the "Nkrumahs" that exist in various narratives about him and his legacy. Recommended. Relatively longer for the series. A few more notes than usual:

"At the heart of Nkrumah's independence-day pronouncement was a political project aimed at the construction of a new Ghana, a new Africa, and, most expensively, a new world. This was to be not only a world in which Ghanaians and Africans alike would be accepted on their own terms, but, even more importantly, a world that they would also have an active voice in forging. However, it was also a project of destruction, for it was to be a project tied to the destruction of the world that colonialism had built. It was a project that, while building something new, also aimed to tear down the racism, inequality, and exploitation that, in the new Ghanaian prime minister's eyes, were fundamental to the colonial project in Africa and beyond." (p. 35)

"Nkrumah was not alone in detailing the political and cultural significance of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia for peoples of African descent living inside and outside the continent. In the United States, for instance, the invasion galvanized groups of African American communists fighting in the Spanish civil war to turn their fight against Spanish fascism into a proxy war against Italian fascism. Likewise, the Trinidadian pan-African Marxist C. L. R. James emphasized the role of the invasion in unsettling colonial governments in the British West Indies as it accentuated racial tensions within the islands during the mid 1930s. Furthermore, committees and activist organizations in cities ranging from New York to Paris and Accra to Lagos held meetings, collected money and other resources, demonstrated, and organized locally and internationally in support for the Ethiopian cause." (p. 64-65)

"Much like during the First World War a generation earlier, the question of self-determination dominated the Second World War. As viewed by the Allied powers during the early stages of the war, the Axis powers' foremost political crime was their disrespect for the sovereignty and political wishes of the territories they invaded. Accentuating this belief in their August 1941 Atlantic Charter, the American president Franklin Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill - in many ways echoing their predecessors two decades earlier - declared the universality of a people's right to "choose the form of government under which they will live." However, shortly after the declaration, Churchill again followed his predecessors' lead as he quickly sought to affirm that the principles outlined in the charter did not apply to Britain's colonies. Almost immediately, however, West African newspapers, activists, and others had begun to push back against British attempts to read colonial peoples out of the charter." (p. 82)

"Much as Lenin had argued nearly three decades earlier, in Nkrumah opened his book by insisting that "the basis of colonial territorial dependence is economic." As outlined by Nkrumah, Europe's colonies fundamentally served as safety Nets for the European economy itself." (p. 85-86)

"As Nkrumah would also outline throughout his career, imperialism should not be seen only as a mechanism of territorial control. At its core, he would argue, it was the root of the global capitalist system and stood at the foundation of the twentieth-century international order. As a result, it not only created the political world in which colonized peoples lived, it also fundamentally shaped the ways in which colonized peoples interacted with one another as well as how they and colonizing peoples related to one another." (p. 104)

"Nkrumah took a chance and moved to the United States to attend the first historically Black college in the country, where he survived the final years of the Great Depression and the Second World War as a Black man in a country built upon racial subjugation, segregation, violence, and inequality. Radicalized from his time in the United States, Nkrumah returned to the British imperial sphere in 1945 with the goal of ending colonial rule across Africa and beyond. The fight in Nkrumah joined in post war London ultimately brought him back to the Gold Coast in 1947, where he would spend the next nineteen years imagining, re-imagining, and theorizing a world free from the exploitation and extractive processes of capitalist imperialism." (p. 175-176) 

Ohio University Press has a series of "Short Histories of Africa". I recently decided to pick up most of the collection for potential use as reading materials for classes. This post covers "Julius Nyerere" (2017), by Paul Bjerk. A few notes:

"Upon returning he was told he no longer had a job at St. Francis High School, as the colonial government had informed the Catholic leadership that they would not countenance a salaried teacher openly involved in oppositional politics." (p. 40)

"Kambona later recalled, "I found him sitting on the floor reading a book about Gandhi." (Throughout his career Nyerere continued to take yearly vacations in his home village during the rainy season, removing himself from Dar es Salaam politics while he took stock of himself and his country.)" (p. 41)

"During this year of upcountry travel, Nyerere ready book by Petro Itosi Marealle an old man from a chiefly family near Mount Kilimanjaro. The book presented a theory of rural African society that the author called ujamaa, meaning "familyhood." Nyerere first used this term in a speech on land policy a few months after his resignation. He began to develop Ujamaa into a comprehensive political ideology that combined African nationalism with his own unorthodox theory of harmonious socialism that rejected Marx's theory of class conflict. Nyerere envisioned African socialism as a social ethic derived from the shared responsibilities of family life in rural Africa." (p. 58-59)

"Nyerere had always been uncomfortable with the racial rhetoric surrounding Africanization policy and now for "localisation" of the civil service, meaning that the effort would be to hire and promote citizens of Tanganyika, regardless of their race, to replace the highly paid expatriates." (p. 64)

"When West Germany cut off military aid in protest of Tanzania's plan to host an East German consulate in Dar es Salaam, and enraged Nyerere told the West German ambassador to "take the rest of your aid as well." In 1965, Nyerere broke relations with Britain to protest its passive policy towards Southern Rhodesia's declaration of independence, which had made it easier for the white minority there to maintain its domination." (p. 80)

"A visiting IMF negotiator proposed to explain the package to the president personally. Mtei brought him to see Nyerere, who, after listening for a short while, abruptly got up and walked away. Nyerere said the IMF visitors had treated him with disdain and vowed that he would never allow his country to be run from Washington. They should go home, he told him Mtei. "I will devalue the shilling over my dead body." Nyerere felt that devaluation effectively stole money from his citizens' pockets to the benefit of foreign investors." (p. 119-120)

"When western representatives wanted to know more about the spiraling Congolese conflict, Nyerere berated them for their ignorance about their own countries' contribution to the conflict, especially since the United States had funded Mobutu's dictatorship. "You imposed and supported Mobutu for 32 years!" he told them. "We could not do anything. You know how bad Mobutu destroyed the country. This time leave us Africans to try and help Congo. The Congolese people have suffered a lot. Their blood is our blood. Please leave us alone this time."" (p. 140)