Biographical note

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics-including Pirates of the Caribbean, Bush in Babylon, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome-as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the New Left Review and lives in London. DIANA JOHNSTONE was born on 23 June 1934 in St Paul, Minnesota. Her childhood was spent in Washington DC and most of her adult life in Europe - France, Germany, and Italy. She obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where she was active in the large campus movement against the war in Indochina. She organized the first international contacts between American citizens and Vietnamese representatives in Paris. She was European correspondent for In These Times from 1976-1990 and she has also written for The New Statesman and Le Monde Diplomatique. She now lives in Paris. Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature and of Kings College Cambridge, his celebrated works include Orientalism, The End of the Peace Process, Power, Politics and Culture, and the memoir Out of Place. He is also the editor, with Christopher Hitchens, of Blaming the Victims, published by Verso. New Left Review published an obituary in Nov-Dec 2003: http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2481 Ellen Meiksins Wood, for many years Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, is the author of many books, including Democracy Against Capitalism and, with Verso, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Peasant-Citizen and Slave, Citizens to Lords, Empire of Capital and Liberty and Property. GILBERT ACHCAR is a Lebanese academic, writer, and socialist. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009) was Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include The Long Twentieth Century, Adam Smith in Beijing, and, with Beverly Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. His work has appeared in many publications, including New Left Review-who published an interview on his life-long intellectual trajectory in March-April 2009 (http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2771)., and in Nov-Dec 2009 ("http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2814) - and there are more accounts on his memorial website: http://www.sympathytree.com/giovanniarrighi1937/. Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona. Author of American Power and the New Mandarins and Manufacturing Consent (with Ed Herman), among many other books, he is a linguist, historian, philosopher, and cognitive scientist who has risen to prominence in the American consciousness as a political activist and the nation's foremost public intellectual. Peter Gowan (1946-2009) taught international relations for many years at London Metropolitan University. He was the author of The Global Gamble and A Calculus of Power, co-editor of The Question of Europe, cofounder of the journal Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, and a longstanding member of the editorial board of New Left Review-who published an interview with Peter Gowan along with an obituary in Sept-Oct 2009. Régis Debray is the author of many books, including Media Manifestos, Critique of Political Reason and God: An Itinerary. Robin Blackburn is the critically acclaimed author of The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery and The American Crucible. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the New School in New York. He lives in London