In search of real justice for Africa and Africans,and her/their descendants in a world of justice,injustices and impunity

Abstract

The quest for justice by Africans and peoples of African descent, wherever they may be in the world, is arguably one of the most daunting mental, psychological, moral, legal and material challenges facing humanity in general, and the peoples of Africa in particular. It is a question of whether African peoples demand justice for the wrongs committed against Africa and its peoples over the last 500 years, or whether Africa and African peoples accept complicity in the global impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of those injustices, and by doing so diminish the significance of contemporary enthusiasm for global justice. Centralising the question of impunity to date for horrendous crimes, gross human and peoples’ rights violations and other injustices against Africa and Africans is not meant to distract Africans in Africa and the diaspora from the quest, in the 21^st century, for a new Africa that we have a historical responsibility to build and, by doing so, to ensure that the past is not repeated. Acknowledging the wrongs of the past and making symbolic reparative actions for those wrongs are essential for ensuring that the pursuit for a better world of justice is not built on top of underlying sinkholes and on the waste dumps of past injustices. Critical breakthroughs, such as the commitment enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union (2000), on crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and the prohibition of unconstitutional change of government, must be vigorously pursued to their logical conclusion. To do so requires an understanding of where Africans, in their relationship with peoples in the rest of the world, are coming from. Smaller parts of the world have experienced similar heinous injustices with impunity, and Africa's pursuit of real justice also applies to those states and their peoples. Corrective or reparative justice is needed to clear the path for the meaningful and honest promotion of real global justice in the making of the future. It is imperative that the making of the African Renaissance confront real global justice for the sake of the past, the present and the future.     

From Resistance to Accommodation: Taiwanese Working Class in the Early Postwar Era (1945–55)

This article explores Taiwan’s worker activism in the early postwar era (1945–55) in the attempt to revise the received perception of labour quiescence under high authoritarianism. Rather than a passive victim of state repression, workers mounted two rounds of resistance, first in the form of factory-defending worker-militias during the February 28 Incident of 1947 and later in the subsequent clandestine communist movement. With the case of sugar industry workers, it is argued the postwar ethnic domination was the triggering factor for worker resistance, which was severely repressed. Their consecutive failures as well as the lure of the privileged status of state-owned enterprise employees eventually persuaded them to accept a subordinate role.     

华侨对“一·二八”淞沪抗战的贡献

华侨在“一·二八”淞沪抗战时期支持十九路军抗日,捐款捐物,支援祖国抗日军民,开展各种抵制日货的活动,充分体现了海外华侨的爱国精神,反映了中华民族强大的民族凝聚力,为中国人民的抗日事业做了重要贡献。本文试就海外华侨在“一·二八”淞沪抗战时期精神上积极鼓励十九路军抗战,捐款捐物支持祖国抗日军民,开展国民外交和各种抵制日货的活动作一个论述,以纪念他们对中国人民抗日事业做出的贡献。     

Assessment of walkway tribometer readings in evaluating slip resistance: a gait-based approach

The purpose of this study was to assess the viability of using slip risk (as quantified during human subject walking trials) to create a reference standard against which tribometer readings could be compared. First, human subjects (N=84) were used to rank objectively the slipperiness of three different surfaces with and without a contaminant (six conditions). Second, nine tribometers were used to independently measure and rank surface slipperiness for all six conditions. The slipperiness ranking determined from the walking trials was considered the reference against which the tribometer measurements were compared. Our results revealed that only two of the nine tribometers tested (Tortus II and Mark III) met our compliance criteria by both correctly ranking all six conditions and differentiating between surfaces of differing degrees of slipperiness. These findings reinforce the need for objective criteria to ascertain which tribometers effectively evaluate floor slipperiness and a pedestrian's risk of slipping.     

新藤黄酸对人乳腺癌耐药细胞体外作用的研究

目的 观察新藤黄酸(gambogenic acid,GNA)对人乳腺癌耐药细胞MCF-7/ADR的作用。〖JP〗方法 采用MTT法观察GNA、阿霉素(adriamycin,ADR)及两者联用对MCF-7/ADR细胞增殖的抑制作用,采用流式细胞仪观察MCF-7/ADR细胞内ADR浓度。结果 GNA能剂量依赖地抑制MCF-7/ADR细胞的生长,作用48 h时,GNA对MCF-7/ADR细胞的IC50为12.88 μmol/L;4 μmol/L GNA可增加MCF-7/ADR细胞对ADR的敏感性,使ADR对MCF-7/ADR细胞的IC50 由80.22 μmol/L降至12.54 μmol/L;GNA显著增强MCF-7/ADR细胞内ADR的积累,呈剂量依赖关系。结论 低剂量GNA能显著增加MCF-7/ADR细胞对ADR的敏感性。     

Autonomous peasant struggles and left arts of government

I argue that self-organisation cannot account for how grassroots struggles can pursue transnational political change. I develop an account of some ‘left arts of government’ through which resistance is facilitated and organised without reintroducing oppressive and hierarchical forms of rule. I do so by focusing on the practices of autonomous peasant mobilisations. Land occupation movements facilitate the ability of people to engage in ongoing resistance on their own behalf. They organise resistance through horizontal communication and through transnational networks involving representative structures. Finally, peasant mobilisations engage with states and international institutions to solidify gains made.     

Remaking markets in the mountains: integration,trader agency and resistance in upland northern Vietnam

As part of an ongoing agenda by Vietnamese lawmakers and local state officials to accelerate market integration in the northern mountains, rural marketplaces are being physically and managerially restructured according to standard state-approved models. Moreover, these market directives are coherent with the ‘distance demolishing technologies’ that James Scott (2009 Scott, J.C. 2009. The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]) suggests the state has implemented to bring these uplands more directly under its panoptic gaze. This integration strategy seldom meshes well with upland livelihood needs. In this paper we examine a number of power contestations currently unfolding as upland market traders – both Vietnamese and ethnic minorities – negotiate or resist these developments while striving to maintain meaningful livelihoods.     

On fighting for global justice: the role of a Third World international lawyer

Abstract

The life of a Third World international lawyer is devoted to resistance to the norms of international law designed by agents with power to promote the interests of the powerful sections of the international community. Increasingly the instrumental norms of international law are fashioned through the use of private power, making the positivist claim that public international law is a law between states illusory. The task of this paper is to identify a framework of common concerns so that a collectivity of Third World lawyers can work together, examine how mechanisms of power can be countered, and devise a confrontational strategy.     

资源失灵与阻抗力——基于M村婚姻暴力现象的研究

解释婚姻暴力时资源正功能论和资源负功能论并存,现实中女性拥有较多资源也可能长期遭受婚姻暴力,构成本文所谓"资源失灵"现象。本文通过对资源概念进行界定及分类,厘清问题本质,考察农村家庭中妻子面对婚姻暴力时经济资源失灵的过程与机理,揭示家庭背景、社区文化等结构资源对个体经济资源的主导作用,从阻抗力的角度思考相关对策。女性具有的男权中心性别观念会扭曲其对经济资源的主观认知,抑制其资源利用能力,导致资源失灵。家庭因素、社区环境等结构资源通过社会化过程影响个体的观念系统,也会以社会支持方式促进或压制经济资源的作用。婚姻暴力阻抗力能减少受暴女性对施暴者或者婚姻关系的依赖性,其产生需激活相应的外部结构资源,并激发个体的意愿与决心。