Does the West really care about development?

A great opinion piece. People of the developing world always forget that the developed Global North didn't "develop" without hampering the development of the Global South. Large & intelligent populations of the Global South were seen as dangerous for the Global North's ambitions of developing themselves & keep ruling the world.

As I have blogged earlier, Global North developed by mass murdering, looting, & effectively disabling the development of the Global South by constant interference through military & political means. They wanted an easy & cheap access to human & mineral resources of the Global South, which could only be achieved by effectively controlling the region through any means, necessary.

Those means included interfering in political matters to install their own strongmen, abuse human rights at their own will, create such conditions of non-development & violence in the Global South, just so people of those countries have to move out of those countries, & their human labour is used in the development of the Global North, instead of developing their own countries in the Global South.

Corruption & human rights abuses in the Global South were done with the full consent & acknowledgement of the leaders of the Global North. But, as we should already know that Global North is a hypocritical world; they cry the crocodile tears, decrying the corruption & human rights abuses in the Global South, but then turn around & approve those activities as long as they are helping them achieve their own objectives of looting their resources of the Global South.

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/mar/05/does-west-care-development

When it comes to international affairs, western politicians love to celebrate their devotion to development. In her flagship speech on development as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton offered stories about US aid transforming the lives of poor people in Indonesia, Nicaragua and South Africa. Laurent Fabius, the minister of foreign affairs for France, recently hailed his country’s commitment to development in the former colonies of west Africa. And at last year’s UN sustainable development goals summit, David Cameron spoke proudly about Britain’s record of providing “stability and security” to poor countries.

But this narrative of western benevolence only works by relying on our collective amnesia. For a slightly less fairytale-like version of the west’s relationship with development, we need to rewind to the decades following the second world war.

After the end of European colonialism in Africa and Asia, and with the brief cessation of US intervention in Latin America, developing countries were growing incomes and reducing poverty at a rapid pace. Beginning in the 1950s, countries like Guatemala, Indonesia, and Iran drew on the Keynesian model of mixed economy that had been working so well in the west. They made strategic use of land reforms to help peasant farmers, labour laws to boost workers’ wages, tariffs to protect local businesses, and resource nationalisation to help fund public housing, healthcare, and education.

This approach – known as “developmentalism” – was built on the twin values of economic independence and social justice. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked quite well. According to economist Robert Pollin, developmentalist policies sustained high per capita income growth rates of 3.2% for at least 20 years – higher than at any other time during the whole 20th century. As a result, the gap between the west and the rest began to narrow for the first time in history. It was nothing short of a miracle.

One might think western states would be thrilled at this success, but they were not amused. The new policies meant that multinational companies no longer had the easy access to the cheap labour, raw materials and consumer markets to which they had become accustomed during the colonial era.

Western powers – specifically the US, Britain and France – were not willing to let this continue. Instead of supporting the developmentalist movement, they set out on a decades-long campaign to topple the elected governments that were leading it and to install strongmen friendly to their interests – a long and bloody history that has been almost entirely erased from our collective memory.

It began with Iran in 1953. The democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, was rolling out a wide range of pro-poor reforms, part of which included wresting control of the country’s oil reserves from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). Britain rejected this move, and responded swiftly. With the help of the CIA, Churchill deposed Mosaddegh in a coup d’etat and replaced him with an absolute monarch, Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, who reversed Mosaddegh’s reforms and went on to rule Iran with western support for 26 years.

The following year, the US did the very same thing in Guatemala. Jacobo Arbenz – the country’s second democratically-elected president – was redistributing unused portions of large private estates to landless Mayan peasants, with full compensation for the owners. But the American-based United Fruit Company took issue with this policy, and pushed Eisenhower to topple Arbenz. After the coup, Guatemala was ruled by US-backed dictatorships for 42 years, which presided over the massacre of more than 200,000 Mayans and one of the highest poverty rates in Latin America.

Brazil, too, was hit by a US-backed coup; they deposed President Goulart for his land reforms, corporate taxes, and other pro-poor policies that western companies disliked, and replaced him with a military dictatorship that lasted 21 years. President Sukarno of Indonesia was ousted for similar policies and replaced by a dictator, who – with British and US support – killed more than one million peasants, workers, and activists in one of the worst mass murders of the century, and went on to rule for 31 years. And then of course there was Chile: the US helped depose President Allende, the soft-spoken doctor who promised better wages, fairer rents, and social services for the poor, and replaced him with a dictator whose economic policies plunged some 45% of Chileans into poverty.

Some regions never even got a shot at developmentalism, western intervention was so swift. In Uganda, Britain raised the murderous Idi Amin to power, who crushed the progressive Common Man’s Charter before it could be implemented. In the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, the country’s first elected leader, was assassinated by Belgium and the CIA when it became clear he would restrict foreign control over resource-rich Katanga province. Western powers installed Mobutu Sese Seko in his place, a cartoonishly corrupt dictator who commanded the country for nearly forty years with billions of dollars in US aid. Under Mobutu’s reign, per capita income collapsed by 2.2% each year; ordinary Congolese suffered poverty worse than that which they had known under Belgian colonial rule.

In west Africa, France refused to cede control over the region’s resources after the end of colonialism. Working through the secretive Françafrique network, they rigged the first elections in Cameroon and handpicked the president after poisoning his main opponent. In Gabon, they installed the dictatorship of Omar Bongo and kept him in power for 41 years in exchange for access to the country’s oil.

We could rehearse many, many more examples, all the way up to the recent western-backed coups in Haiti. It is tempting to see this as nothing but a list of crimes – albeit one that casts serious doubts on the west’s claims to promoting democracy and human rights abroad. But it is more than that. It reflects an organised effort on the part of western powers to destroy the developmentalist movement that flowered in the global south after colonialism. They simply would not tolerate development if it restricted their access to resources and markets.

The legacy of this history is that there is now greater inequality between the west and the rest than there was at the end of colonialism. And a soul-scorching 4.2 billion people remain in poverty today. No one has been brought to justice for the coups and assassinations that destroyed the global south’s most promising attempt at development and crushed popular dreams of independence. Probably no one ever will. But we need to acknowledge that they happened, and stop pretending that the US, France and Britain are benevolent champions of the poor.

Where women are killed by their own families

If the headline of this news article would be the only thing showing up, then a lot of people around the world would've assumed that this news article must've been talking about a country where there's Shariah (Islamic law) & where husbands can have up to 4 wives & Islam rules the land etc. All thanks to Western media.

But this news story, although still quite sad & unfortunate, is of the Central American countries where Christianity rules the land. As per the article, top 3 countries in the world where women are most in danger are El Salvador, Jamaica, & Guatemala, & in these countries, Christianity is 80%, 72%, & 87%, respectively.

Now, someone would say, what religion has to do with abusing women. And they would be correct. Religion has nothing to do with how women are treated in the general public. Heck, all major religions pretty much preach the same ideals to run a peaceful & respectful society. But, then, the Western media force feeds the public around the world that Islam teaches its male followers to abuse women.

No, abusing women has nothing to do with Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or any other religion for that matter.

Abuse of women is correlated with the illiteracy, lack of knowledge, special circumstances, & cultural aspects of a society. If a woman is abused in India, that's nothing to do with Hinduism or Islam, but it has to do with how the males are raised to think of women as a sub-species of some sort, or sexual objects, & hence treat them as such. Special circumstance would be as the article suggests that Guatemalan society suffered a 3-decade long war in which men were trained to abuse women. Those men were never re-trained to live in the post-war society as normal humans & hence they abused their own family women. American soldiers went & going through the same thing where they are suffering from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) & hence their loved ones are the ones who suffer the most as a result.

Blaming a specific religion for violence against women does nothing to help a society or women. It actually furthers that violent behaviour & isolate those women in need because religion becomes a target. As we can see, for instance, that clothing choices of Muslim women has become the topic du jour in the Western world of North America & Europe. Banning head scarves won't help any Muslim woman but further isolate that woman, where she might be abused even further, in silence.

Teaching women their value in society & teaching men how women are their equal partners help a society move forward. Respect & gender equality helps a society build a better future. By the way, please keep in mind here that I am not talking about Western feminism but what Islam teaches about gender equality. Western feminism is nothing to do with gender equality. That's taking the balance out of the society & swinging the pendulum way out towards the other end (woman's end) & punish all men in the process.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34978330

Every year an estimated 66,000 women are murdered worldwide. One of the countries with the highest rate of violence against women is Guatemala - so why is it such a dangerous place to be female?

"We are being killed by our fathers, brothers, stepfathers… the very people who are supposed to care for us," says Rebeca Lane, a feminist rapper in Guatemala City.

"Most of us have to live violence in silence so when someone hits us or screams at us we just close our eyes and let go. We have to join other women and talk about it so we know this is not OK, this is not normal."

When Lane was 15, she got involved with an older man who was not only controlling, but also physically & sexually abusive. "He knew what he was doing. He isolated me from my family and friends. I know what it is to live with violence from an early age," she says. The relationship lasted for 3 years.

Now she uses her music to campaign for women's rights. "Poetry saved my life. When I started to write it was vital to my recovery," she says. Her best-known song, Mujer Lunar - Lunar Woman - is a lyrical call for respect for women's bodies, lives & independence.
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Guatemala has the third highest femicide rate in the world (after El Salvador & Jamaica) - between 2007 & 2012 there were 9.1 murders for every 100,000 women according to the National Guatemalan Police. And last year 846 women were killed in a population of little more than 15 million, says the State Prosecutors Office.

It seems the reason for this lies in the country's brutal past. Lane's main inspiration as a feminist activist is the aunt after whom she is named. She never met her father's sister, but her story helps draw a direct line between the social instability of today & Guatemala's 36-year civil war.

Lane's aunt disappeared in 1981 after she joined left-wing guerrillas fighting the military government. Around the time Lane's aunt died, news began to filter out of the rape, torture & murder of tens of thousands of women & girls - mostly from indigenous Mayan communities accused of supporting the insurgents.

More than a decade later, a UN-sponsored report said this abuse had been generalised & systematic - it estimated that 25% or 50,000 of the victims of Guatemala's war were women.

Sexual violence was "at very high levels and used as a tool of war", says Helen Mack, of the Myrna Mack Foundation. "The stereotype was that women were used for sex and seen as an object, to serve families, and this continues today."

Mack's sister, Myrna - after whom the human rights organisation is named - died after she was stabbed in the street by a military death squad in 1990. Myrna had uncovered the extent of the physical & sexual violence the army had used against Mayan communities.

During the conflict, an army of around 40,000 men & a civilian defence force of approximately one million were trained to commit acts of violence against women. When the war ended & these men returned home, they got no help in readjusting.

Mack believes they redirected their aggression towards their wives, mothers & girlfriends - a culture of violence towards women & an expectation of impunity, which still persists today, developed.
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In Mack's experience, it is common for women to be threatened in this way or even killed by their attackers. Violence against women is still considered a domestic matter, she says, despite new laws against femicide & other forms of violence against women. In 2008 Guatemala became the first country to officially recognise femicide - the murder of a woman because of her gender - as a crime.

"The difference in Guatemala between the murder of a woman and of a man is that the woman is made to suffer before death, she is raped, mutilated and beaten," says the country's Attorney General Thelma Aldana.

Aldana is trying to change attitudes towards victims who are often blamed for the abuse they receive. "A few years ago the police and forensic investigators would arrive on a crime scene and say, "Look how she is dressed - that is why they killed her [or] she was coming out of a disco at 1am - she was asking for it."
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"The justice system can do a lot to change culture," she says.

"We asked women to come forward and break the silence. Femicide and other forms of violence against women are now the crimes that are most reported in the country, with an average of 56,000 reports a year - this includes rape, sexual violence, physical and economic violence and murder."

There are now femicide tribunals in 11 of the country's 22 departments or provinces where the judges & police officers receive gender crime training.
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Destroy Their Economic Livelihoods, and They Will Come

As we all heard Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric during the American election drama that "illegal" & "undocumented" immigrants are destroying US. Whether they are indeed "destroying" American economy & the country itself, that's up for debate, but what nobody ever talks about is why there are so many people pouring across the border from Latin & Central America.

I have explored this topic earlier, in my blogs, that one of the many reasons so-called "developing" countries of the world are stuck in "developing" mode for decades, & even centuries, is that the wealthy & developed Global North (i.e. US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia etc.) are actively destroying & deliberately keeping the "developing" countries in the "developing" mode. There are several ways of doing this through economic (subsidies on industries etc.), financial (aid with exorbitant interest rates & conditions), & military (sell weapons) means. Several times, all these are intertwined. For instance, financial aid is provided to a country, which then turns around & buy military equipment from the same countries that gave the aid in the first place. So, the aid is never got used to service the public or improve the country.

In this Real News analysis, Mr. Faux is essentially saying the same thing that the average person from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, or El Salvador is running away from its country & trying to enter US because US made those countries a hell for that average person. The average American is hating that "illegal" Honduran or Guatemalan or El Salvadoran taking away his/her job or whatnot but the fact of the matter is that that average American racist person is the cause for that "illegal" to run away from his/her home in the first place.

If that average American would not have elected or at least protested against its own government's illegal intervention in the internal governmental matters of those Central American countries, then there would be far less, if not none, "illegals" in the US.

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                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTvjSam5yyE

JEFF FAUX, AUTHOR, THE SERVANT ECONOMY: For the last few months, the last 6, 8 months, ... tens of thousands of children have been pushing across the U.S. border between Mexico and Texas in a desperate effort to flee poverty and violence and hopelessness in their countries.

They're overwhelming facilities down there. The detention centers are overcrowded. The immigration service doesn't know what to do with these kids. Some of them get put on buses to be sent to families someplace. It's a mess.

And it's quickly deteriorated into politics, of course. The Democrats and Republicans blame the president. The president says it's a humanitarian crisis, so we have to act, and so we do. But lost in this debate is the question of U.S. responsibility for the basic causes of this tragic immigration to the United States. Immigration politics in the U.S. focuses on the U.S. But ... the question of what to do with people who are arriving here misses the point of how they arrived and why they arrived.
People come from somewhere, and in this case 95% of these children are coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now, this just happens to be three countries, along with much of the rest of Central America, that the U.S. has dominated and controlled for the last hundred years.

ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: Well, exactly what role has U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and Central America played in driving this immigration?

FAUX: ... to answer that question, start with another question. If the United States is skilled in nation building, which it says it is, why are these economies such social and economic disasters? The answer is we have not run these economies for the people there. We have run them for U.S. investors who want cheap labor and their oligarch cronies who provide the cheap labor.

The enforcer of this system--and this is a system that goes back decades--... is the U.S. military. Whenever people there have challenged the rule of these oligarchs and these repressive governments, the United States has run to the rescue of the oligarchs.

In 1954, famously, Guatemala elected, finally, a left-leaning reformer. The first thing that happened was that the United States organized the Guatemalan military for a coup and an attack, and they drove the president out. It was followed by 40 years of savage repression, 150,000 people murdered in that little country over that period of time. Today, the same rich families and the same military control Guatemala.

I was in Guatemala recently, and people told me they were afraid to take a bus, because what happened is that every once in a while, ... armed thugs, would come aboard the bus, shoot the driver, and rob the passengers. A few days later, I was talking to a young man who said no one can get a real job in this country unless they're connected to one of the five or six ruling families, so everyone wants to immigrate to the United States. But it costs $10,000 to hire a coyote take him here. Where are you going to get the $10,000? They borrow it from the criminal gangs. Most of the time, people never make it and they find themselves back in Guatemala owing $10,000 to some pretty bad people. And those criminals, gangs, say, give us the money (this is in his words) or we'll kill your mother, or come work for us. And your first job is to put a mask on, take a gun, go board a bus, shoot the driver, and rob the passengers.

Guatemala is a basket case under the regimes that we have supported.

Same thing in Honduras. 1963, a reformer got elected. We supported a coup to get rid of him. 2009, another reformer gets elected. We support another coup. Now, 2009, the Obama administration publicly said, oh, that's terrible and ... they denounced it, but privately, they paved the way for the military-run government to stay, and the oligarchs once again triumphed.

In 2011--this is only the latest budget numbers that we've been able to uncover--we exported $1.3 billion in military electronic equipment to Honduras. Now ask yourself: what is Honduras--who is Honduras defending itself against? Who is invading Honduras? The answer, of course, is nobody. Now, their rationale is this great war on drugs. In the last 30, 40 years, billions of U.S. dollars have gone to the military in Central America, ostensibly because of the war on drugs. Now, after 30 or 40 years, it's quite clear that the war on drugs is a failure. And the reason it's a failure is because the military that gets all this aid is knee-deep in narcotrafficking. And what's happened now is the combination of drugs, weapons, and poverty is destroying this country to the point where the children are fleeing. The war on drugs in Central America is a failure, but the war of the elite oligarchs on their own people has been a success. And the result are these poor children being driven across the border.

Now, whatever comes of the immigration battle between the Democrats and Republicans, whatever happens to the president's bill, the waves of desperate immigrants from Central America, from other parts of the Caribbean that we have essentially dominated over the last hundred years will not diminish and is never going to diminish unless the United States government and the United States people face the reality that the basic cause of this immigration is rooted in the corrupt regimes that we have supported all these years.