by WALDEN BELLO

The Bretton Woods institutions are ripe for radical reductions.

I think that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been misinformed. I don’t disagree with their shutting down USAID, but I think it’s rather small fry.  There are much, much bigger fish to fry if you want to really save U.S. government money that is being wasted in programs that are mischievously justified as aid to the poor people of the world.

Elon, hear me out:  if you walk northwest from your headquarters at the Eisenhower Executive Building along Pennsylvania Avenue, you’ll come after one long block upon two ugly buildings squatting beside each other. One is the World Bank. The other is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). You can actually just walk in and demand to look at their books since they are extensions of the U.S. government. And you would have a very good reason to do so, since these are two of the most questionable and controversial institutions directly or indirectly funded with U.S. taxpayers’ money.

Let me start with the World Bank, which is located at 1818 H St NW.  This institution has so-called development projects throughout the Global South, otherwise known as developing countries. This agency says that its mission is to end poverty in the developing world. To fulfill this goal, its lending has risen from nearly $55 billion in 2015 to $117.5 billion in 2024. Yet, despite this massive increase, the Bank admits that global poverty reduction “has slowed to a near standstill, with 2020-2030 set to be a lost decade.” Some 3.5 billion people, or 44 percent of the globe, remain poor, after decades of massive World Bank lending. And a major part of the reason is that World Bank programs have created poverty instead of alleviating it.

Living in Luxury While “Fighting Poverty”

To manage its operations, the Bank’s full-time staff rose from nearly 12,000 in 2015 to over 13,000 in 2023.  These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. If one includes all employees—permanent, non-permanent, contractual, part-time—throughout the world, the Bank employs close to 41,000 people. The vast majority, 26,000, or 63 percent, work out of the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, and only 3,200 are located in Africa, where most people in extreme poverty live.

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by FAISAL ALI

France’s president can’t stop talking, but his condescending remarks on Africa are only accelerating the collapse of French influence on the continent.

In early January, the beleaguered president of France, Emmanuel Macron, told French ambassadors at a conference that none of the countries in the Sahel region would be sovereign today “if the French army had not deployed in the region” to support their fight against jihadists. “I think someone forgot to say thank you. It does not matter, it will come with time,” he added. “Ingratitude, I am well placed to know, is a disease not transmissible to man.”

Macron’s remark was blasted by several African officials, including Chad’s president, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, who said he thought Macron was in the “wrong era.” Senegal’s outspoken prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, also objected in a post on social media. He said that France didn’t have the legitimacy or capacity to ensure the sovereignty of African states, and added that France had often “contributed to destabilizing certain African countries such as Libya, with disastrous consequences noted for the stability and security of the Sahel.” Burkina Faso’s military leader, Ibrahim Traore, said France should pray for his country’s ancestors, as without having plundered them during the colonial era it wouldn’t enjoy the global standing that it does today. Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, a German-Malian former MEP for the Green party, asked whether France should be thanking Africans “who gave their blood for Europe” in WWII.

Eric Orlander, host of the popular China-Global South Project podcast, gasped when he played the soundbite in a recent installment of his program. “Oh my goodness,” Orlander reacted as he put Macron’s comments to his guests. Ovigwe Eguegu, an analyst at the Development Reimagined think tank who participated in the conversation, fact-checked the president. He explained that Malians, for example, were very positive about France’s intervention in 2013 and gave a warm welcome to then-president Francois Hollande, waving French flags and shouting “Vive la France”. Eguegu also added that from each French-led regional military initiative to the next, whether Operation Serval, Barkhane, or G5 Sahel, “what you’d find is a consistent decline in the security situation.” Macron said thanks would “come with time,” but time has joined his adversaries. Every year that passes only adds fuel to the fire of growing disdain for his administration. 

Orlander’s guests asked the simple question: what caused the instability in the Sahel? Did the Libyan government overthrow itself and then allow arms and newly redundant militants to flow into the Sahel? France was a key contributor to a problem it claimed to be solving with its post-2013 interventions, and as the ledger of French sins grows longer, more voices across the continent are joining in calling out Macron, either for tone-deafness or for deliberate or mistaken attempts to gerrymander the historical record.

Africa is a country for more

by NEIL J. RUBENKING

As you enter personal information around the web, data aggregators gather and sell it. We tell you how to protect your privacy with the best personal data removal services we’ve tested.

PCMag has helped you pick the best antivirus ever since the software for it existed. We also stay on top of new types of protection, like personal data removal services that prevent data brokers from selling your personal information. These services scour the many people search and data broker websites for your personal data and act as your proxy for requesting the removal of your data. We consider a variety of criteria in our evaluations, including price, ease of use, and the number of data aggregators each can handle, and we test their protective abilities directly. Based on our analysis, Optery and Privacy Bee are our Editors’ Choice winners, but we have a collection of other services for your consideration. Read on for our top picks and tips to choose the service that suits your needs.

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by KIZITO MAKOYE

MBARALI, Tanzania, Feb 21 2025 (IPS) – A hush had fallen over Mbarali District, but it was not the quiet of peace—it was the silence of uncertainty.

Just months ago, the rolling plains were gripped by fear as government-backed rangers, dressed in olive green fatigues, roamed through villages, seizing cattle, torching homes, and forcing entire communities to the wobbly edge of survival. The REGROW project, a USD 150 million initiative funded by the World Bank to expand Ruaha National Park (RUNAPA), had promised tourism growth and environmental conservation. What it delivered was a brutal campaign of state-sanctioned land grabbing under the guise of protecting nature.

Then, in a stunning turn of events, the World Bank pulled the plug on the project in January 2025 after intense scrutiny from human rights watchdogs and the United Nations. On paper, it was a victory for the thousands of farmers and pastoralists whose lands were threatened. But for many, the damage had already been done.

A Victory Hollowed by Loss

“We lost everything,” said Daudi Mkwama, a rice farmer who watched helplessly as rangers confiscated his cattle and demolished his storehouse. “They told us we were trespassers on land our ancestors have farmed for generations.”

The REGROW project aimed to double the size of Ruaha National Park, claiming vast swaths of farmland and grazing land in the process. Villages that had coexisted with nature for centuries suddenly found themselves labeled as threats to conservation. The government, backed by international funding, deployed heavily armed TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks Authority) rangers to enforce new restrictions.

At least 28 villages in Mbarali District were affected, home to more than 84,000 people. Farmers were barred from their fields, and pastoralists were banned from grazing their livestock. Those who resisted faced brutal crackdowns. Reports of beatings, arbitrary arrests, and even extrajudicial killings surfaced, prompting an investigation by the World Bank’s Inspection Panel.

“One day, they came and took my cows—said I was grazing in a protected area,” said Juma Mseto, a Maasai herder. “We begged them to let us go. They just laughed and told us to go to hell.”

The Politics of Land and Power

Tanzania’s conservation model has long been marred by controversy. Despite its reputation as a wildlife haven, the country’s protected areas have historically come at a high human cost. The eviction of Indigenous communities has been a recurring pattern, from Ngorongoro to Loliondo, and now Mbarali.

IPS News for more

by KATHERINE CLARKE

In 1987, Forbes published its first billionaires list, featuring 140 individuals whose combined wealth totaled $295 billion. At the time, the richest person in the world was Japan’s Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a real estate tycoon worth $20 billion.

Today, the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, is worth $419.4 billion, roughly 21 times as much as Tsutsumi at his peak and more than two million times as much as the median net worth of an American household, according to exclusive data from global wealth intelligence firm Altrata.

As the ranks of global billionaires have swelled dramatically in recent years, a new category of ultrarich has emerged—the superbillionaire. Musk is one of just 24 people worldwide who qualify for that distinction, which is defined as individuals worth $50 billion or more.

As of early February, those superbillionaires’ fortunes accounted for more than 16% of all billionaire wealth, a dramatic increase from 4% in 2014, according to Altrata. Their combined net worth totaled $3.3 trillion, equivalent to the nominal GDP of France. Of those 24 people, 16 qualified as centi-billionaires, meaning they have a net worth of at least $100 billion.

The rise of the superbillionaire has coincided with a significant leap in luxury markets across the world, including real estate, as these individuals cobble together massive portfolios of luxury homes around the globe.

Experts say the data shows how the ranks of the ultrarich have begun to pull away from the merely wealthy, and how a subset has been propelled to new heights.

“Billionaires have always obviously controlled significant amounts of wealth, but now you’re talking about differences in the billionaire population themselves,” said Maya Imberg, head of thought leadership and analytics at Altrata, who has been researching the superbillionaire set. “It’s quite staggering just how much the net worths of some of these people have grown.”

In major luxury real-estate markets like New York, Miami, Palm Beach, Los Angeles and Aspen, new supertall towers and spec mansions have popped up geared specifically to the billionaire set and there has been an explosion of nine-figure home sales across the country.

Each of the superbillionaires on Altrata’s list has direct personal residential real-estate holdings of at least $100 million, and often far more, according to the company. Imberg said that number is likely to be a significant underestimate in some cases because real estate can often be held in a partner’s name or owned by one of these billionaires’ companies or holding companies.

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Watch here

In an event happened in London for Gaza, Irish comedian and activist Tadhg Hickey draws a striking parallel between Ireland’s colonial past and Palestine’s present struggles.

He argues that both nations have endured oppression under a similar colonial playbook—marked by land theft, ethnic cleansing, and a sense of racial superiority by their oppressors.

Hickey highlights historical evidence of British colonial violence in Ireland, such as skulls of murdered Irish peasants displayed at Trinity College, Dublin.

He believes that the same supremacist ideology drives Israeli actions against Palestinians today and condemns the West’s apparent indifference toward Palestinian suffering.

Hickey’s sharp political satire has garnered over 100 million views and a global social media following, alongside a fair share of backlash, including death threats. As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens, he has become an outspoken advocate, using his voice to expose Western complicity and call for urgent action.

Beyond social media, he has written, directed, and starred in numerous projects for Ireland’s national broadcaster (RTÉ) and has toured extensively across Ireland and Britain with his critically acclaimed theatre and stand-up comedy shows.

New Arab for more

by MIMI ZOU

When small Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek released a family of extremely efficient and highly competitive AI models last month, it rocked the global tech community. The release revealed China’s growing technological prowess. It also showcased a distinctly Chinese approach to AI advancement.

This approach is characterised by strategic investment, efficient innovation and careful regulatory oversight. And it’s evident throughout China’s broader AI landscape, of which DeepSeek is just one player.

In fact, the country has a vast ecosystem of AI companies.

They may not be globally recognisable names like other AI companies such as DeepSeek, OpenAI and Anthropic. But each has carved out their own speciality and is contributing to the development of this rapidly evolving technology.

Tech giants and startups

The giants of China’s technology industry include Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. All these companies are investing heavily in AI development.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu earlier this month said the multibillion dollar company plans to “aggressively invest” in its pursuit of developing AI that is equal to, or more advanced than, human intelligence.

The company is already working with Apple to incorporate its existing AI models into Chinese iPhones. (Outside China, iPhones offer similar integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.)

But a new generation of smaller, specialised AI companies has also emerged.

For example, Shanghai-listed Cambricon Technologies focuses on AI chip development. Yitu Technology specialises in healthcare and smart city applications.

Megvii Technology and CloudWalk Technology have carved out niches in image recognition and computer vision, while iFLYTEK creates voice recognition technology.

The Conversation for more

by DAVID SWANSON

Wouldn’t it be nice if the war in Ukraine were entirely one side’s fault, if the U.S. had one political party that did everything perfectly, if USAID had only ever caused either benefit or harm, and if all the self-contradictory gibberish coming out of Trump’s pie hole were either lies or holy gospel? A lot of people sure seem to think so.

Here in the real world, things are ever so slightly more complex than in a cartoon. A war can develop through evil actions by two — count ’em — sides. And that’s not all. Those evil actions can be — gasp! — very different and unequal to each other. I know. I know. It makes the brain just throb, right?

An agency can both feed the hungry and help overthrow governments for imperialist thugs. It seems impossible, if only because costume designers will have no idea how to dress such an agency. And yet.

A president can demand that governments spend vastly more on wars and propose cutting war spending in half. The same skills that once made the holy Trinity both single and triple can make sense of this. The threats and demands are brilliant negotiating, or the proposed reductions are a brilliant distraction. But you cannot actually take enlarging and shrinking military spending at face value and proclaim them both right.

Of course, loyal Democrats can hear Trump back cutting military spending and decide that military spending must be maximized, but this requires ignoring the fact that Trump is also demanding vast increases to military spending around the world and through the work of his disciples in the United States Congress.

Of course, burnt out, frustrated peace activists can celebrate Trump’s cut-spending comment as a ray of glorious hope, if not the coming of the Savior, but that requires ignoring the same pieces of reality.

I suggest three simple steps.

First, accept that contradictory positions cannot both be right and that you will have to determine which, if either, you agree with based on something other than the identity of the fascist jackass who said them.

Second, once you’ve decided, for example, that reducing military spending is the way to go, feel free to indulge in only criticizing Trump, but criticize the Trump who wants more military spending, who is moving more nukes into Europe, whose DOGE charade is avoiding military spending, and whose Congressional court jesters are pushing legislation to move vast piles of what remains of non-military spending into the golden toilet of the Pentagon. Or feel free to indulge in only praising Trump, but praise the Trump who wants to get rid of nuclear weapons, make peace, end wars, and cut the Pentagon in half. Or do both the criticizing and praising as merited.

Third, demand action to back up the words you agree with. If a U.S. president who is in the midst of a mad power grab bending the federal government to his will wants to get rid of nukes, he doesn’t have to wait for other countries. He can begin a reverse arms race by halting the production of new weapons and taking a first step in reducing them, before waiting for that move to be matched in Moscow. If he wants to reduce military spending, he can send in the DOGE brownshirts to eliminate hoards of military officers as if they were hungry children in need of food. He can put a halt to efforts in the Congress to pass legislation vastly increasing military spending, and instead order the introduction of legislation to cut the beast in half.

Would such actions get more push-back from Congress Members than those targeting useful and humanitarian projects? Of course! But without any actions at all — in fact with actions to the contrary — why take the rare good Trumpism seriously at all?

Don’t want to demand action from Trump because that would involve communicating with Trump and he’s just too odious? OK. Go to Congress and tell your misrepresentatives and lords of the upper chamber to cut military spending in half, either because Trump said so or because your Congress critters themselves said so in the past (depending on your district) or because military spending deprives us of so much, impoverishes us, and is an immoral act that threatens our existence and that of all living things.

David Swanson for more

by EVELYN FOK

When I moved to India for work, I found that rape was a feature of the country, as deeply embedded as caste

It was a warm spring evening in Bengaluru. Purple jacaranda blooms leaned heavy against the dying light, and warm puffs of exhaust sat suspended in the air, as if urging the monsoon to break. Leaving the newsroom at the end of the day, I decided to stop by an office-warming party for a mapping company I was considering writing about, right by my apartment in upscale Indiranagar. Around two dozen people milled about the open-plan space, sipping beers and bobbing to the reggae playing in the background. This crew was distinct from the regular Bengaluru startup crowd: they had travelled to places like Poland and Peru for mapping projects, and there were quite a few women as well; the lead told me they wanted to reach gender parity soon. They seemed eager to get to know me as a fresh-faced foreigner new to the city, not as a reporter who might feature them in the paper.

Before I knew it, it was almost 10 pm. As I took my leave, my host offered to walk me home. It was rare for me to be out drinking midweek but I shook my head no: I lived just a few blocks away! ‘Are you sure? It’s pretty late,’ he said, with genuine concern in his eyes. I dismissed his worries with a flick of my hand. The gesture felt a little too intimate between a reporter and a potential source; besides, I had chosen to live in Indiranagar precisely because of its reputation for being safe: for the right to walk home without worry. Before he could press further, I made my way towards the exit and spent a few minutes getting lost inside the maze of shoes, my vision woozy around the edges.

Once I’d stepped out of the building, the euphoria of the party took all of two seconds to fade. The road ahead was pitch dark, deadly quiet. A gust of wind whipped against my torso, then another. I steeled my jaw, hunched my shoulders, and began marching the hundred or so metres back towards the bright-lit main road. I’d walked home after sundown a number of times, but this time, approaching the junction, I realised something was amiss: the streetlamp on the corner was not on. The road stayed dark. I figured there must have been another blackout – they had become more frequent as the days grew hotter.

A low-pitched buzz was approaching from ahead – I could just make out the contours of a motorbike scooting towards me at full speed. Before I knew it, a hand had thwacked my chest. When I finally gathered myself to react, I spun around and saw his face, turned towards me from the receding vehicle, shiny with sweat in its red backlight. Tuft of hair on top, double chin bulging from the bottom, the offending arm held out like a weapon. A wicked smile that said: Gotcha. Did you think you were safe?

Aeon for more

by VICTOR BEAUDET-LATENDRESSE

Since Donald Trump began intimidating Canada with border tariffs and threats of annexation, the premiers have been wavering. While François Legault and Doug Ford puff out their chests, striving to embody the image of strongmen in the face of the storm, Justin Trudeau in Ottawa is lacing up his boxing gloves one last time. Deep down, we suspect they will eventually return to their usual posture of concessions and subservience toward Washington. They all have one thing in mind: returning as quickly as possible to the free-trade status quo.

Let’s face it, it’s not just Trump threatening jobs in the lumber sector in Quebec’s regions. It’s also the obsession with free trade that prevents our governments from considering credible and concrete solutions within our reach.

The abrupt departure of Amazon, which flouts the right to unionize and leaves more than 3,000 people jobless, sets the tone. Just days after celebrating Trump’s victory at the White House, Jeff Bezos showed his 1.5 million employees that any attempt to stand up will be punished, no matter the cost. Unsurprisingly, if Trump ultimately imposes tariffs, the primary victims will be the workers.

Before our eyes, neoliberalism, with its destructive effects—outsourcing, job insecurity, growing inequalities, dismantling of public services, environmental destruction—is now paving the way for authoritarian solutions to the problems it has itself created.

But what hurts me most, what makes me feel so dismayed, is the silence of the left. Where is this left that once stood up without hesitation when the system crushed its own people?

I grew up in a family of leftists. Not revolutionaries seeking glory, just people who believed the world could be changed. Through their stories, I heard of a time when the left never missed a fight.

This left that marched for bread and roses against poverty and exploitation, that besieged Quebec’s Upper Town to block the freedom-stifling advance of free trade, that defied imperialism by opposing the war in Iraq. This left that brought down a government during the Maple Spring.

Today, it seems the left hesitates, unsure of how to proceed. Donald Trump’s tariff announcements are a perfect example. In the 1980s, we campaigned against the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), in the 1990s against NAFTA, and in the early 2000s we helped stop the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). So why, today, in the face of the evident failure of neoliberalism and the aggressive return of economic protectionism, is the left hesitating? Must one be a dangerous radical to say that this questioning of free trade is a golden opportunity to rethink our economy?

The same analysis could be applied to the migration crises. The authoritarian right relies on no facts to erect its walls, only on communication strategies that benefit them and endanger everyone else. Yet, the left responds only on the level of ethics, recognition, and symbols: we must not exclude, we must not discriminate. Fine, but as significant increases in migration caused by climate change loom, what public policies are we proposing to welcome them? Nothing, just good intentions and respect for others in coexistence. That’s not enough.

What I dream of is a Quebec where the question asked on the radio in the morning isn’t “how many immigrants will we turn away,” but rather “how many people will we help?” Our humanity depends on it, and historically, the left has never shied away from defending it.

I don’t know if I’m the only one asking these questions. Maybe I’m too young, too idealistic, too naive. I don’t want to be nostalgic for a left I never knew, but I refuse to grow old with the feeling that it was already too late.

I have only one certainty left: the time for ambiguity, or even condemnation, is over. The time is for organization and action. Or at least, it should be.

So here I am, casting my bottle into the sea. I don’t know if anyone will pick it up. But if it ever washes ashore, I hope someone will take the time to read my worry, my anger, but above all, against all odds, my hope. Because I want to believe the left still has a role to play, but if it refuses to confront the situation, perhaps we must conclude it has nothing left to say…

Alternatives International for more