shakahislop
Well-known member
Where are you talking about. It's not obvious to me
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- disappointed in shaka empire of dust lawrence of arabia mike davis meets rockers uptown mike davis meets the city of quartz (in dub) neil colonialism oblivious footsoldier of the imf only built for african lynx shaka gets a bollocking spectres of zhao the congos - heart of the congos type 'imf debt restructuring' into a search engine
other_life
bioconfused
and that man's name was kwame nkrumah
sufi
lala
i'm surprised i thought you had a better underastanding of imperialism,
and also maybe a less conradian sense of teh "dark masses" etc
other_life
bioconfused
mixed_biscuits posting about neocolonialism makes me feel like im living in a cuckoo clock
shakahislop
Well-known member
Time for some self-reflection. Ten years ago I would have said that I understand basically what imperialism is and that more or less that's what's going on in the world. It seems a lot less obvious now and more complicated. The more time I spend outside the rich countries the more I get the sense that they're a more minor player. As compared to the people in whatever country you're talking about, and as compared to the governments of neighboring countries sometimes.
On the other hand the capitalist chains of exploitation, ie the ways in which western comfort depends on people in other places, gets more and more obvious
This is the kind of thing I mentioned Mike Davis writing about in the 'Debt' thread:
"Everywhere the IMF — acting as bailiff for the big banks and backed by the Reagan and Bush administrations — offered poor countries the same poisoned chalice of devaluation, privatization, removal of import controls and food subsidies, enforced cost-recovery in health and education, and ruthless downsizing of the public sector. (An infamous 1985 telegram from Treasury Secretary George Shultz to overseas USAID officials commanded: ‘in most cases, public sector firms should be privatized’.)"
other_life
bioconfused
mike davis.. a gadol....
luka
Well-known member
craner hates him hes going to go balistic once he sees version hs posted that quote again.
sufi
lala
well i was not in Dakar or Addis since the 90s and i expect things might have changed a bit - i believe both cities have done a lot of "development" but there's been no escape from the economic trap that keeps most Africans poor
That doesn't sound like him at all.
shakahislop
Well-known member
isn't this a thing of the 90s? I used to read about this all the time. when I was 16 I was all over stiglitz and george monbiot writing about these things. I've always wondered why it slipped off the left agenda. My assumption is that it was a temporary burst of ideological enthusiasm at IMF and World Bank and that they stopped doing anything like this in about 2004. what became of that whole formation of the left is fascinating to me, coz I was a kid I assumed it was permenant but so many of the concerns have faded away (sweatshop are another one, anti-road protests, GM, the WTO)
Yeah, we talked about this the other day. The left ceding the anti-globalisation territory to the right. That 90s wave is very unfashionable atm, although Naomi Klein still seems to be a fixture. You see a lot of people on the left dunking on Hardt and Negri nowadays and nobody really talks about Seattle '99 and Genoa '01.
luka
Well-known member
Bandage on a Bullet Wound
The 131-page report, “Bandage on a Bullet Wound: IMF Social Spending Floors and the Covid-19 Pandemic,” analyzes loans approved from March 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, until March 2023 to 38 countries, with a total population of 1.1 billion, and finds that the vast majority are...
No, they're still doing it.