FROM THE PANEL
Gustavo Gorriti Is and award-winning Peruvian journalist based in Lima. He covered Peru's internal war, drug trafficking and corruption. He is the author, among other books, of The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. He was Associate Director of Panama's La Prensa, Co-Director of Peru's La Republica and is currently a columnist for Caretas, Peru's leading newsmagazine.
Today, many regimes in Latin America regard themselves as leftist and came to power through the ballot box, but their commitment to democracy is doubtful. Hugo Chávez's affectionate relationship with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has less to do with Bush-bashing than with the price of oil, and their peers seem more concerned about guaranteeing reelection than promoting social progress.
Miriam Leitao is a reporter and columnist for O Globo and Radio CBN in Brazil. She is also a commentator on Globo TV Network and runs her own blog, www.miriamleitao.com, hosted at Globo online at www.oglobo.com.br. She was awarded Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2005.
Left vs right is outdated. Latin America is not lashing back against globalization.The continent is struggling with how to combat inequality while maintaining a stable democracy.
Mubashar Jawed Akbar is a leading Indian journalist and author. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of
The Asian Age, a daily multi-edition Indian newspaper with a global perspective and editor-in-chief of
The Deccan Chronicle, a news daily based in Hyderabad. He has written books including
Blood Brothers,
Nehru: The Making of India,
Kashmir: Behind the Vale,
Riot After Riot,
The Shade of Swords, and
India: The Siege Within.
The bull run of conservatism, ending in the neocon calamity of a bull run amok, has simply cleared space for the return of the anti-Right, a far more accurate term than Left and more inclusive than Liberal.
Bashir Goth is a veteran journalist, freelance writer, the first Somali blogger and editor of a leading news website. He is also a regular contributor to major Middle Eastern and African newspapers and online journals.
What is on the rise in the Muslim world is not a leftist movement but an Islamist uprising against American global dominance. U.S. military deployments trigger the same anti-occupation forces that temporarily allied with the U.S. to drive out the Soviet Empire. But not everything American is unpopular; Starbucks and Hollywood have the potential to win over the younger generations.
Glenda Gloria is the managing editor of
Newsbreak, the Philippines’s leading news and current affairs online magazine. A journalist for two decades now, she writes about security issues, governance, elections, the media, and Southeast Asia.
She began her journalism career as a reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in January 1986, a month before the edsa people power revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship. Three years later, she joined The Manila Times where she was assigned to cover the Philippine military, an institution that she has studied extensively. She left the Manila Times in 1992 to join the Manila bureau of Asahi Shimbun. In 1995, Ms. Gloria wrote about Makati and its mayor in Boss: 5 Cases of Local Politics in the Philippines, published by the PCIJ and the Institute for Popular Democracy. The book won the National Book Award. In 2000, together with Marites Dañguilan Vitug, she authored Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, a groundbreaking book on the Muslim rebel movements in Mindanao that won the National Book Award. In 2003, Ms. Gloria published a pamphlet on the phenomenon of appointing military officers to the Philippine bureaucracy (We Were Soldiers). Previously, she co-authored the book, Kudeta: Challenge to Philippine Democracy, published by the PCIJ. Last year, she wrote a book assessing the impact of political advertising on the presidential and senatorial elections that were held in May 2004.
ative reporting in 2004.
Born on July 23, 1965 in Laoag City, Philippines, Ms. Gloria earned her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila (1985). She holds a masters degree in political sociology, with distinction, from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1999). She has a two-year-old daughter. At present, she is also a lecturer on Media and Politics and Investigative Reporting at the KAF Asian Center for Journalism of the Ateneo de Manila University.
The Right is ascendant in Southeast Asia, and the Left is being pummeled -- literally, to death -- in the Philippines.
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Mr. Kuttab is the former director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Palestine and the founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station. His personal web page is www.daoudkuttab.com
While the Right and the Left are often associated with economic issues, in our part of the world they are often used in reference to war and peace, religiosity and secularism. Unfortunately, both expressions of the Right -- hawkish and religious -- are gaining ground.
Soli Ozel teaches at Istanbul Bilgi University's Department of International Relations and Political Science. He is a columnist for the national daily Sabah and is senior advisor to the chairman of theTurkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association. He is the editor of TUSIAD's magazine Private View and the editor of the Turkish edition of Foreign Policy a journal published by the Carnegie Endowment in the USA.
The 21st century losers of this process now crave a leftist political framework that is compatible with globalization and its potential rewards.
Dr. Ali Ettefagh serves as a director of Highmore Global Corporation, an investment company in emerging markets of Eastern Europe, CIS, and the Middle East. He is the co-author of several books on trade conflict, resolution of international trade disputes, conflicts in letters of credit, trade-related banking transactions, sovereign debt, arbitration and dispute resolutions and publications specific to the oil and gas, communication, aviation and finance sectors. Dr. Ettefagh is a member of the executive committee and the board of directors of The Development Foundation, an advisor to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and an advisor to a number of European companies. Dr. Ettefagh speaks Persian (Farsi), English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Turkish.
Sustainable globalization is about two-way trade, jobs, old-fashioned direct investment and the exchange of ideas
Miklós Vámos is a Hungarian novelist, screenwriter and talk show host. He is one of the most read and respected writers in his native Hungary. He has taught at Yale University on a Fulbright fellowship, served as The Nation’s East European correspondent, worked as consultant on the Oscar-winning film Mephisto, and presented Hungary’s most-watched cultural television show. Vámos has received numerous awards for his plays, screenplays, novels and short stories, including the Hungarian Merit Award for lifetime achievement. The Book of Fathers is considered his most accomplished novel and has sold 200,000 copies in Hungary.
In Central Europe, and especially in Hungary, the political notions of “right” and “left” have lost their original meanings. Not much is left.
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