This stream invites papers that develop a critique of –or a dialogue with- Eurocentric interpretations of human rights, and proposals that advance an understanding of rights grounded on any of the historical and geographical sites of the modern struggles for self-determination in the Global South. This stream also welcomes papers that, from the point of view of Europe, enter into a dialogue with the Third-World conceptualization of human rights. Please send your name, affiliation, title of your paper and an abstract of no more than 250 words by Friday, 26 June 2009 directly to the stream convenor.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a long and ugly history of discrimination against Black people. The Department’s new Secretary, Tom Vilsack, recently said “Some folks refer to USDA as the last plantation.” Across the South, White local and regional USDA managers routinely denied Black farmers critical farm loans and disaster assistance—aid that was easily granted to White farmers. This federal assistance often meant the difference between a thriving, economically viable farm and foreclosure.

In the second quarterly report on the Macau Forum, Lucy Corkin explores developments between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. From China’s burgeoning trade and investment relationship with Brazil and its continued engagement with Angola, Corkin explores Mozambique’s new strategic relationship with Beijing.

cc Africans and Africa suffer from planned underdevelopment, with colonialism and slavery providing economic benefits to one group at the expense of another, the International Association Against Torture’s Roger Wareham tells Riaz K. Tayob in Durban Review Conference. But the West won’t pay Africans reparations instead of aid, because then it couldn’t benefit from its ‘charity’, he adds. Wareham, ‘a black man who grew up in a racist country’, speaks about his lifelong commitment to the liberation of African people. International public opinion is important for influencing what happens on the ground as it isn’t possible to change a system from within, when its beneficiaries are also its gatekeepers.

After months of speculation about how the global economic downturn might affect HIV/AIDS programmes, a new World Bank report details the projected aftermath of the crisis and how it could place the treatment of more than 1.7 million at risk by year's end. Drug shortages, treatment interruptions and higher burdens of AIDS-related diseases are just some of the grim predictions for developing countries, laid out in a recently released report, Averting a Human Crisis During the Global Downturn: Policy Options from the World Bank's Human Development Network.

Security in-a-box is a collaborative effort of the Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line. It was created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders. Security in-a-box includes a How-to Booklet, which addresses a number of important digital security issues.

The United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva concluded its general debate after hearing statements on new forms of racist discrimination and expelling three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for disruptive behaviour. A number of the UN agencies spoke at the five-day Durban Review Conference, which comes to a close tomorrow, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), which warned that saying no to racism in the work is key to promoting respect, tolerance and inclusiveness.

Poor countries, including Kenya, are to receive financial support to develop and diversify exports when the ongoing trade negotiations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are concluded. WTO members have pledged to assist Least Developed Country (LDC) members in addressing their supply side capacity constraints, as well as the challenges that will occur due to increased competition as tariff rates used to protect their economies drop, once the Doha Round is concluded.

cc The whole financial system has to be broken down and rebuilt so that finance serves the real economy – and if the private sector does not deliver this, then the government must intervene, Heinner Flassbeck, UNCTAD’s chief economist has said in a wide-ranging interview with Riaz K. Tayob. A recent report from UNCTAD calls for ‘much more regulation’ to avoid ‘excessive speculation’ which treats commodities as an asset class. Flassbeck slates the G20 for its ‘traditional’ approach, which he says does not go far enough to address the misallocation of resources caused by ‘overshooting’ currencies and commodity prices.

Open source document manager, KnowledgeTree, has released a new community edition of its application with a new text extraction engine and stability improvements. This latest release of the application, version 3.6 Community Edition, also includes a new core API and RESTful interface to improve application integration

4strugglemag is an independent non-sectarian revolutionary voice. We are unapologetically anti-imperialist and solidly in support of progressive National Liberation, especially the struggles of New African/Black, Mexicano/Chicano, Puerto Rican and Native American Nations presently controlled by U.S. imperialism. Reflecting the work and principles of political prisoners held by the United States, 4strugglemag advocates for Justice, Equality, Freedom, Socialism, Protection of our Mother Earth, Human Rights and Peace.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the dapper former French finance minister who runs the International Monetary Fund, is finding it hard to conceal a certain swagger in Washington this weekend. If there is one big winner from the wrenching financial crisis of the past year, and the scramble by shell-shocked governments to tackle the turmoil, it is the IMF.

The battle between the Ministry of Finance and Reserve Bank over the allocation of cars to MPs has left ministers open to charges of hypocrisy by the legislators as they have more than two vehicles each while trying to block their colleagues in parliament from taking any from the central bank.

The global economy, which is experiencing the most severe recession since World War II, is projected to shrink by 1.3 percent in 2009, with a slow recovery expected in 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports in its April World Economic Outlook (WEO) released on Wednesday. Although the rate of contraction should ease from the second quarter of this year, output per capita is still projected to decline in countries representing 75 percent of the world economy. It is expected that growth will re-emerge in 2010 at a pace of 1.9 percent, which is sluggish in comparison to past recoveries.

The nature of China's investment in Africa is changing, as the global economic crisis opens up new opportunities, writes Stephen Marks. Broad packages bundle infrastructure investment with aid and commodity purchase help Chinese firms enter African markets and gain a foothold. A US$5 billion China-Africa Development Fund will focus on infrastructure and mining, and target industrial parks and commercial agriculture. The Chinese government has said however that it has ruled out outsourcing of food production by investing in overseas farmland.

China’s long-awaited medical reform plan arrived as spring flowers bloomed around Beijing. It consists of two documents: an “opinion on deepening health care reform” from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council; and “key points for implementing medical and health reform (2009-’11).”

Petrochemical group Sasol and India's Tata are considering investing in a multibillion-dollar coal-to-liquid (CTL) plant in India that could produce up to 80 000 barrels of liquid fuel a day. The companies are launching a prefeasibility study on the viability of the project, which a securities company analyst said last week could cost $5bn-$7bn, about the same as the estimated value of the proposed CTL plant in China, which would also produce 80 000 barrels a day.

A group of Chinese tourists have announced a travelling expedition from Ghana across the Sahara desert to help them learn more about Africa and also promote Ghana and the continent as a good tourist destination for other Chinese. The tourists will also serve as goodwill ambassadors for China by creating awareness among Chinese people about tourism opportunities and investment potentials on the continent.

China has unveiled an investment guide book to help domestic firms make foreign investments. The first batch of the guide book released Friday by the Ministry of Commerce covers 20 countries, such as Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. The guide book includes investment laws and regulations of the 20 countries and statistics about individual countries among other useful information such as advice on problems that firms may encounter.

Dozens of Chinese students who saw little prospect of getting into a top medical school have secured admission by becoming nationals of the tiny west African country of Guinea-Bissau, a newspaper said on Thursday. Among the 112 international students that entered Peking University Health Science Center in 2007 and 2008 were 48 from Guinea-Bissau -- all ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the Shanghai Morning Post said.