"Cold War Mentality" - Loujie, China Daily, China
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Jamaican trek convinced me development schemes rarely work
The main problem is that the public, around the world, still thinks that the developed countries built major international financial & trade organizations, like IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank, & WTO (World Trade Organization) to help in the development of developing countries of Africa, Asia, & Latin America. That is so not the case.
Actually, these organizations were made to make it seem like transferring money from developed countries to developing countries, in the name of a good cause, & of course, making it look like the developed countries are contributing their fair share to make the world a better place. But this is not the case. IMF & World Bank do transfer money to developing countries but with such restrictive terms & conditions that the organizations who are supposed to work in the field with those loans etc. have their hands tied behind their backs. Interest payments on those funds are also astronomical due to several factors; political volatility, civil unrest, lack of proper governance, corruption, market volatility etc.
But, then, why do IMF & World Bank hand billions of $$$ to corrupt officials in developing countries, who are well-known corrupt, thanks to organizations like Transparency International (I have a problem with them, too, but that's for another place & time)? First, these international financial organizations hand over billions to corrupt officials without any questions asked, & when those officials are pushed out of the government, & people want a change for the better, that same poor public is hit with economic sanctions (which further raises interest rates on those billions of loans) & are asked to pay back those loans (which were given to well-known corrupt officials) through hard austere budgets. WTO also works in tandem with these organizations by directly / indirectly advocating for trade barriers, which help the incumbents (developed countries) expand their economic might all over the world while keeping the economies of the developing countries tied up in knots from which they can never try to get out or severely change their economic system.
Of course, in such dire economic times, like we are currently seeing in Greece, the public starts to filter out of the country to seemingly better prospects in terms of life, economy, jobs, education etc. Those economic migrants are then hired as general labourers in developed countries, which provided those loans in the first place. With no / scarce jobs & educated people out of the country, that developing country has its back against the wall, with hands & feet tied behind its back. The public which is left behind in the country are financially constrained to grow the economy, which in itself, running on a very austere budget, & government can't pour money in the economy because of austerity, & hence, crime, civil unrest, corruption, political & market volatilities rear their ugly heads, which in turn, require the country to always essentially have its hand out for more loans & funds. Hence, the developing countries are always stuck in the mud, so to say, & can never seem to get out of it to become a developed country.
So, who really benefits with these international organizations? Developed countries. They get their interests on those loans. They get cheap & educated labour from these developing countries. Their companies have the world to expand their markets & export all over the world, which in turn, helps keep the trade balances & monetary value of their currencies in a healthy shape. All the while, the developing countries stay in the "developing" pool & get the blame for not being able to ever develop itself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jamaica is a small country full of clever, intelligent people who are being poorly served by the world that historically shaped it. Remarkably, this painful past has somehow led to an ability for it to punch far above its weight.
In February 2015 I had the opportunity to experience first hand the mood & feeling of the people by walking Jamaica from east to west accompanied by 10 local people on the One-Love One-Step walk. We hiked from Morant Point to Negril, through the most neglected parishes over the mountains & into farming communities. This is a country full of stories & folklore & to understand the people, it is critical to listen to them.
The focus of the walk was to highlight the local issues surrounding climate change & to feel the pulse of people’s lives. We interviewed & filmed over a hundred Jamaicans talking about how they feel & what their expectations are for their future & those of their children. The only word I can distil to share with you is hopelessness. It is endemic & it is corroding the heart of this nation.
The economy is built on the extraction of natural resources, sugar, bauxite, people. Most of the money earned from tourism leaves the island & a modern-day exodus is killing the country, a classic brain drain towards the provision of a low-cost labour force of farm workers & chambermaids in the US & Canada, working on temporary visas doing the jobs no one else wants to do.
Now in the third year of an IMF-backed economic programme, Jamaica is running the most austere budget in the world, with a primary surplus of 7.5%. Even Greece, which is facing a tense standoff with the IMF & European authorities over its debt, is only expected to run a primary surplus of 3% of GDP this year & 4.5% for years thereafter – & this is widely considered to be politically unsustainable.
I have seen millions of dollars wasted in Jamaica & across the Caribbean, I have also seen this happen in India when I was working there developing primary healthcare opportunities. In my experience, much of the waste is not caused by local bodies but by the organisations that provide the funding. They inadvertently wrap local people up in red tape, creating unrealistic outputs based on feeding their own need to hit internal & international targets.
Again & again I have seen fantastic local people frustrated by a system that is not designed to fit them, that is not built on their story but some self-serving development corporation that purveys a one-size-fits-all approach. These agencies then blame local people & organisations for failure. An example is the coffee industry, focused only on Blue Mountain (BM) coffee which received investment & development, both internal & external, & has led to the desertification of many small coffee farms throughout Jamaica – 80% of all BM coffee is sold to one major Japanese customer.
There is a slow re-introduction of freshwater Tilapia farming & Cassava processing plants but they are built on crumbling & undeveloped sites because of the tragic mismanagement of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) & the last big hurricane to hit the island. Development money in these sectors rarely reaches the small farmer. This has led to increasing the crime & praedial larceny rates (the theft or agricultural produce or livestock).
The time has come for a slow development movement, built on the stories & realities of local people. Last year I commissioned Uncovering Authentic Jamaica, a piece of social research, to better understand the Jamaican people & their development needs.
“People are our greatest asset. But they want to get out,” said one hotelier at Treasure Beach tourist trap. We discovered many tangible opportunities, most of which existing development agencies ignore or do not understand as they do not fit the standard model. For example, only focusing on women’s development doesn’t fit a country like Jamaica where the young men are falling woefully behind the women both in job opportunity & educational attainment. Much is left un-researched in Jamaica because it is a proud country full of patriotic people & Brand Jamaica has to be maintained.
There are good things happening & Jamaicans do have an indomitable spirit. A group of young men are changing their world & creating an eco village in the middle of Kingston & organisations such as Farm-up Jamaica are ringing slow but steady change.
As all good gardeners know, it is best to water a tree at the drip line, the area under the outer circumference of the branches. This is where the tiny rootlets are located that take up water for the tree. Trees should be watered here, not at the base or they may develop root rot. Applying this thinking to development would consider how interventions are initiated at the right place at the right time. Present intervention often has a scatter-gun approach. There is a lack of robust, focused & brave investment.
If we apply “drip line” thinking to emerging economies, then we identify exactly where key interventions should be applied. Support this with an impactful business development model, increasing value chain share, & thinking beyond fair-trade, we could create a pivotal change.
The future is bright, but only if we work bravely to restructure debt interest payments & find a better solution for Jamaica than crushing austerity, declining living standards & growing hopelessness.
Dee Kyne is a social entrepreneur & environmentalist working to end ecocide.
Actually, these organizations were made to make it seem like transferring money from developed countries to developing countries, in the name of a good cause, & of course, making it look like the developed countries are contributing their fair share to make the world a better place. But this is not the case. IMF & World Bank do transfer money to developing countries but with such restrictive terms & conditions that the organizations who are supposed to work in the field with those loans etc. have their hands tied behind their backs. Interest payments on those funds are also astronomical due to several factors; political volatility, civil unrest, lack of proper governance, corruption, market volatility etc.
But, then, why do IMF & World Bank hand billions of $$$ to corrupt officials in developing countries, who are well-known corrupt, thanks to organizations like Transparency International (I have a problem with them, too, but that's for another place & time)? First, these international financial organizations hand over billions to corrupt officials without any questions asked, & when those officials are pushed out of the government, & people want a change for the better, that same poor public is hit with economic sanctions (which further raises interest rates on those billions of loans) & are asked to pay back those loans (which were given to well-known corrupt officials) through hard austere budgets. WTO also works in tandem with these organizations by directly / indirectly advocating for trade barriers, which help the incumbents (developed countries) expand their economic might all over the world while keeping the economies of the developing countries tied up in knots from which they can never try to get out or severely change their economic system.
Of course, in such dire economic times, like we are currently seeing in Greece, the public starts to filter out of the country to seemingly better prospects in terms of life, economy, jobs, education etc. Those economic migrants are then hired as general labourers in developed countries, which provided those loans in the first place. With no / scarce jobs & educated people out of the country, that developing country has its back against the wall, with hands & feet tied behind its back. The public which is left behind in the country are financially constrained to grow the economy, which in itself, running on a very austere budget, & government can't pour money in the economy because of austerity, & hence, crime, civil unrest, corruption, political & market volatilities rear their ugly heads, which in turn, require the country to always essentially have its hand out for more loans & funds. Hence, the developing countries are always stuck in the mud, so to say, & can never seem to get out of it to become a developed country.
So, who really benefits with these international organizations? Developed countries. They get their interests on those loans. They get cheap & educated labour from these developing countries. Their companies have the world to expand their markets & export all over the world, which in turn, helps keep the trade balances & monetary value of their currencies in a healthy shape. All the while, the developing countries stay in the "developing" pool & get the blame for not being able to ever develop itself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jamaica is a small country full of clever, intelligent people who are being poorly served by the world that historically shaped it. Remarkably, this painful past has somehow led to an ability for it to punch far above its weight.
In February 2015 I had the opportunity to experience first hand the mood & feeling of the people by walking Jamaica from east to west accompanied by 10 local people on the One-Love One-Step walk. We hiked from Morant Point to Negril, through the most neglected parishes over the mountains & into farming communities. This is a country full of stories & folklore & to understand the people, it is critical to listen to them.
The focus of the walk was to highlight the local issues surrounding climate change & to feel the pulse of people’s lives. We interviewed & filmed over a hundred Jamaicans talking about how they feel & what their expectations are for their future & those of their children. The only word I can distil to share with you is hopelessness. It is endemic & it is corroding the heart of this nation.
The economy is built on the extraction of natural resources, sugar, bauxite, people. Most of the money earned from tourism leaves the island & a modern-day exodus is killing the country, a classic brain drain towards the provision of a low-cost labour force of farm workers & chambermaids in the US & Canada, working on temporary visas doing the jobs no one else wants to do.
Now in the third year of an IMF-backed economic programme, Jamaica is running the most austere budget in the world, with a primary surplus of 7.5%. Even Greece, which is facing a tense standoff with the IMF & European authorities over its debt, is only expected to run a primary surplus of 3% of GDP this year & 4.5% for years thereafter – & this is widely considered to be politically unsustainable.
I have seen millions of dollars wasted in Jamaica & across the Caribbean, I have also seen this happen in India when I was working there developing primary healthcare opportunities. In my experience, much of the waste is not caused by local bodies but by the organisations that provide the funding. They inadvertently wrap local people up in red tape, creating unrealistic outputs based on feeding their own need to hit internal & international targets.
Again & again I have seen fantastic local people frustrated by a system that is not designed to fit them, that is not built on their story but some self-serving development corporation that purveys a one-size-fits-all approach. These agencies then blame local people & organisations for failure. An example is the coffee industry, focused only on Blue Mountain (BM) coffee which received investment & development, both internal & external, & has led to the desertification of many small coffee farms throughout Jamaica – 80% of all BM coffee is sold to one major Japanese customer.
There is a slow re-introduction of freshwater Tilapia farming & Cassava processing plants but they are built on crumbling & undeveloped sites because of the tragic mismanagement of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) & the last big hurricane to hit the island. Development money in these sectors rarely reaches the small farmer. This has led to increasing the crime & praedial larceny rates (the theft or agricultural produce or livestock).
The time has come for a slow development movement, built on the stories & realities of local people. Last year I commissioned Uncovering Authentic Jamaica, a piece of social research, to better understand the Jamaican people & their development needs.
“People are our greatest asset. But they want to get out,” said one hotelier at Treasure Beach tourist trap. We discovered many tangible opportunities, most of which existing development agencies ignore or do not understand as they do not fit the standard model. For example, only focusing on women’s development doesn’t fit a country like Jamaica where the young men are falling woefully behind the women both in job opportunity & educational attainment. Much is left un-researched in Jamaica because it is a proud country full of patriotic people & Brand Jamaica has to be maintained.
There are good things happening & Jamaicans do have an indomitable spirit. A group of young men are changing their world & creating an eco village in the middle of Kingston & organisations such as Farm-up Jamaica are ringing slow but steady change.
As all good gardeners know, it is best to water a tree at the drip line, the area under the outer circumference of the branches. This is where the tiny rootlets are located that take up water for the tree. Trees should be watered here, not at the base or they may develop root rot. Applying this thinking to development would consider how interventions are initiated at the right place at the right time. Present intervention often has a scatter-gun approach. There is a lack of robust, focused & brave investment.
If we apply “drip line” thinking to emerging economies, then we identify exactly where key interventions should be applied. Support this with an impactful business development model, increasing value chain share, & thinking beyond fair-trade, we could create a pivotal change.
The future is bright, but only if we work bravely to restructure debt interest payments & find a better solution for Jamaica than crushing austerity, declining living standards & growing hopelessness.
Dee Kyne is a social entrepreneur & environmentalist working to end ecocide.
Iran: A victim of terrorism
Another great opinion piece by Belen Fernandez. With the help of international traditional media & social media, the world has been brainwashed to blame the victims for their actions, while praising & wholeheartedly supporting the actions of oppressors.
As my prior blog posts have stated multiple times, double standards & lies are the norm of Global North / developed economies of North America & Western Europe. One of their citizens get hurt, the world has to come to a standstill, but thousands upon thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Afghanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Japanese, Palestinians, Nigerians, Nicaraguans, Iranians etc. can die but nary a peep from the media or governments. To add insults to injuries, those countries & those victims get blamed for their deaths.
While the permanent members of UN Security Council sells arms & ammunition around the world, like US did to Israel while it was relentlessly bombing Gaza, which is also known as, "the largest open-air prison in the world," or how UK & Canada are selling their arms & weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is using them to bomb innocent civilians in Yemen, but when Pakistan shared its nuclear technology with Libya & Iran, its top nuclear scientist was house bound & restrictions were placed on the country. While Iran has to pretty much "take off its clothes in public" to keep its nuclear technology & to get rid of economic sanctions, UN Security Council members are trying to out-sell each other in terms of selling their military technology to the whole world, just so more & more innocent civilians die each & every day around the world.
How do you think an Iraqi father would regard an American when he comes to hear Madeleine Albright saying that killing one / most / all of his children was "worth it" due to Iraqi economic sanctions of 1990's? Although, harming / killing an innocent person is wrong everywhere in the world, regardless of where that person lives, but showing no empathy, & even blaming the victims, for actions which he / she didn't commit in the first place, is far more worse. No compassion & empathy would lead to seething anger & then that anger would find a violent outlet & then that outlet would be called "terrorism".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"One should have a single, not a double, standard."
These were the (translated) words of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking at a conference I recently attended in Tehran. His observation was in reference to the habit of the United States & Co of decrying terrorism but then applauding terroristic behaviour when it serves their interests.
US mastery of the double standard means that, for example, the word "terrorism" is dutifully applied to situations in which planes are flown into US buildings, but not to ones in which US warships shoot down Iranian passenger jets, killing everyone on board.
A look at reality
While Iran is portrayed in Western & Israeli circles as a relentless supporter of terrorism worldwide, the conference focused on a less politically convenient reality: that of Iran as a victim of terror.
According to Iranian calculations, more than 17,000 persons have perished as a result of terrorist operations in the country since the Islamic revolution of 1979. The majority of these were perpetrated by the anti-government Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK).
Casualties have included three-year-old Fatima Taleghani, who burned to death when MEK members set fire to her room, teenager Zeynab Kamayee, who was reportedly suffocated with her veil, and 35-year-old Dariush Rezaeinejad, one of five Iranian scientists assassinated in recent years - apparently with the help of the Israelis.
...
'Material support'
The US government has also demonstrated sympathy for select Iranian terrorists, albeit in a far less noble fashion. In 2012, the US state department delisted the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), despite reports of continuing terroristic activities.
Prominent journalist & constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald described the delisting as "more vividly illustrat[ing] the rot and corruption at the heart of America's DC-based political culture than almost any episode I can recall".
While still on the FTO list, Greenwald wrote, the MEK had thrown large sums of money at an array of Democratic & Republican personalities, journalists, & other opinion shapers, who then became advocates for the organisation.
Along with previous training sessions in the US for MEK operatives, Greenwald argued that such collaborative arrangements seemed to constitute "material support" for terrorism - a felony under US law.
But the US justice system prefers to reserve this crime for hapless Muslims, like Syed Fahad Hashmi, a US citizen & Brooklyn College graduate sentenced to 15 years in prison - following several years of pre-trial solitary confinement - for allegedly providing material support to al-Qaeda.
What was the exact nature of Hashmi's "support"? Having once provided temporary accommodation in London to a man who happened to supply al-Qaeda members with socks & rain ponchos.
The US on trial
Again, the term "double standard" comes to mind.
And it returns with a recent Wall Street Journal article titled: "Terror Victims Eye Thawing with Iran", which explains that "[o]ver the past two decades, terrorism victims have filed about 100 lawsuits against Iran in US courts", alleging Iranian sponsorship of attacks ranging from the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut to 9/11.
Citing testimonies from the victims' lawyers, the article notes that "lifting just the nuclear sanctions [against Iran] could free up billions of Iranian assets in Europe and elsewhere that victims may attempt to seize as part of their judgements".
The barracks bombing is regularly attributed to the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah - which didn't officially exist at the time. If we follow the above line of reasoning, however, it appears that the US is eligible for a fairly infinite number of lawsuits - in Lebanon & beyond.
Not only did the US rush shipments of weaponry to Israel during its assault on Lebanon in 2006 - an affair that dispensed with approximately 1,200 human lives, most of them civilian - it also contributed financially & morally to Israel's sustained terrorism in Gaza via billions of dollars in annual aid & ceaseless repetitions of the mantra that Israel is engaged in self-defence.
Standard operating procedure
Other US hobbies, like drone strikes & imperialist wars, can also be pretty terroristic in nature. Furthermore, as California-based independent researcher Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich remarked during her presentation at the conference in Tehran: economic sanctions against Iran constitute a form of "UN-sanctioned terrorism" given their detrimental effects on the well-being of innocent civilians.
One of the more glaring examples of the ruthlessness of sanctions is, of course, Iraq. Reports in 1996 that half-a-million children had so far died as a result of the policy elicited the following response from then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "We think the price is worth it."
Indeed, when it comes to terrorising people, the "land of the free" beats the Islamic Republic, hands down. But the victory goes largely unreported in mainstream circles because double standards have become standard operating procedure.
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.
As my prior blog posts have stated multiple times, double standards & lies are the norm of Global North / developed economies of North America & Western Europe. One of their citizens get hurt, the world has to come to a standstill, but thousands upon thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Afghanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Japanese, Palestinians, Nigerians, Nicaraguans, Iranians etc. can die but nary a peep from the media or governments. To add insults to injuries, those countries & those victims get blamed for their deaths.
While the permanent members of UN Security Council sells arms & ammunition around the world, like US did to Israel while it was relentlessly bombing Gaza, which is also known as, "the largest open-air prison in the world," or how UK & Canada are selling their arms & weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is using them to bomb innocent civilians in Yemen, but when Pakistan shared its nuclear technology with Libya & Iran, its top nuclear scientist was house bound & restrictions were placed on the country. While Iran has to pretty much "take off its clothes in public" to keep its nuclear technology & to get rid of economic sanctions, UN Security Council members are trying to out-sell each other in terms of selling their military technology to the whole world, just so more & more innocent civilians die each & every day around the world.
How do you think an Iraqi father would regard an American when he comes to hear Madeleine Albright saying that killing one / most / all of his children was "worth it" due to Iraqi economic sanctions of 1990's? Although, harming / killing an innocent person is wrong everywhere in the world, regardless of where that person lives, but showing no empathy, & even blaming the victims, for actions which he / she didn't commit in the first place, is far more worse. No compassion & empathy would lead to seething anger & then that anger would find a violent outlet & then that outlet would be called "terrorism".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"One should have a single, not a double, standard."
These were the (translated) words of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking at a conference I recently attended in Tehran. His observation was in reference to the habit of the United States & Co of decrying terrorism but then applauding terroristic behaviour when it serves their interests.
US mastery of the double standard means that, for example, the word "terrorism" is dutifully applied to situations in which planes are flown into US buildings, but not to ones in which US warships shoot down Iranian passenger jets, killing everyone on board.
A look at reality
While Iran is portrayed in Western & Israeli circles as a relentless supporter of terrorism worldwide, the conference focused on a less politically convenient reality: that of Iran as a victim of terror.
According to Iranian calculations, more than 17,000 persons have perished as a result of terrorist operations in the country since the Islamic revolution of 1979. The majority of these were perpetrated by the anti-government Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK).
Casualties have included three-year-old Fatima Taleghani, who burned to death when MEK members set fire to her room, teenager Zeynab Kamayee, who was reportedly suffocated with her veil, and 35-year-old Dariush Rezaeinejad, one of five Iranian scientists assassinated in recent years - apparently with the help of the Israelis.
...
'Material support'
The US government has also demonstrated sympathy for select Iranian terrorists, albeit in a far less noble fashion. In 2012, the US state department delisted the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), despite reports of continuing terroristic activities.
Prominent journalist & constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald described the delisting as "more vividly illustrat[ing] the rot and corruption at the heart of America's DC-based political culture than almost any episode I can recall".
While still on the FTO list, Greenwald wrote, the MEK had thrown large sums of money at an array of Democratic & Republican personalities, journalists, & other opinion shapers, who then became advocates for the organisation.
Along with previous training sessions in the US for MEK operatives, Greenwald argued that such collaborative arrangements seemed to constitute "material support" for terrorism - a felony under US law.
But the US justice system prefers to reserve this crime for hapless Muslims, like Syed Fahad Hashmi, a US citizen & Brooklyn College graduate sentenced to 15 years in prison - following several years of pre-trial solitary confinement - for allegedly providing material support to al-Qaeda.
What was the exact nature of Hashmi's "support"? Having once provided temporary accommodation in London to a man who happened to supply al-Qaeda members with socks & rain ponchos.
The US on trial
Again, the term "double standard" comes to mind.
And it returns with a recent Wall Street Journal article titled: "Terror Victims Eye Thawing with Iran", which explains that "[o]ver the past two decades, terrorism victims have filed about 100 lawsuits against Iran in US courts", alleging Iranian sponsorship of attacks ranging from the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut to 9/11.
Citing testimonies from the victims' lawyers, the article notes that "lifting just the nuclear sanctions [against Iran] could free up billions of Iranian assets in Europe and elsewhere that victims may attempt to seize as part of their judgements".
The barracks bombing is regularly attributed to the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah - which didn't officially exist at the time. If we follow the above line of reasoning, however, it appears that the US is eligible for a fairly infinite number of lawsuits - in Lebanon & beyond.
Not only did the US rush shipments of weaponry to Israel during its assault on Lebanon in 2006 - an affair that dispensed with approximately 1,200 human lives, most of them civilian - it also contributed financially & morally to Israel's sustained terrorism in Gaza via billions of dollars in annual aid & ceaseless repetitions of the mantra that Israel is engaged in self-defence.
Standard operating procedure
Other US hobbies, like drone strikes & imperialist wars, can also be pretty terroristic in nature. Furthermore, as California-based independent researcher Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich remarked during her presentation at the conference in Tehran: economic sanctions against Iran constitute a form of "UN-sanctioned terrorism" given their detrimental effects on the well-being of innocent civilians.
One of the more glaring examples of the ruthlessness of sanctions is, of course, Iraq. Reports in 1996 that half-a-million children had so far died as a result of the policy elicited the following response from then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "We think the price is worth it."
Indeed, when it comes to terrorising people, the "land of the free" beats the Islamic Republic, hands down. But the victory goes largely unreported in mainstream circles because double standards have become standard operating procedure.
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
"Jupiter Ascending" quote
Time is definitely the most precious commodity in the universe. As the famous idiom goes, "time and tide stops for no man," & everyone is also equal before it. Time doesn't discriminate among people based on financial, racial, linguistic, ethnicity, or geographic factors. Everyone is competing with another for nothing else, but essentially, for more time; time to add to their lives. Since, everyone wants more time than the next guy & no one can have more time regardless of how beautiful or rich or talented or influential connections he / she has, it becomes the most precious item in the whole universe.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Escaping the Election Cocoon
A good opinion piece on how censoring others who don't subscribe to our own ideologies / thoughts & don't confirm our pre-existing biases adversely affect our own ability to make intelligent decisions.
Lots of people around the world are wondering for the past year or so how such bigoted people like Donald Trump in US elections 2016 or even a self-professed criminal like Rodrigo Duterte, latest President of Philippines & who was nicknamed, "The Donald Trump of Philippines," can win over millions of people.
A major reason for how these kinds of people win over the hearts & minds of millions is because those millions of voters are living in a bubble / cocoon of their own. Anyone who is not a mindless "yes-man" to their ideas / opinions / thoughts are banished from their little worlds. They feel intelligent & safe in knowing that they are surrounded by people who think like them. In the end, there are millions who are mindlessly following anyone, like a herd of sheep, to do anything to appease their human god.
So why are we seeing more mind-numbing stupidity in this gilded age of data & information, which are all around us & easily accessible, too? We are seeing this happening far more frequently in this information age, because the information providers, the social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc.), are helping the populations become mindless zombies. The social media is actively altering the perception & truth around us by feeding us info which confirm our bias & echo our thoughts, instead of helping us see the other side of the debate.
On a personal level, I've felt this happening all too often. I've been unfriended & unfollowed by friends because of my thoughts & opinions; just because I am not mindlessly saying what they wanted to hear from their "friends". I thought a true friend who is supposed to push back on your ideas which are wrong, but, apparently, in this "modern" day & age, a true friend is one who mindlessly agrees with you with whatever crap you are spewing out of your mouth.
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More & more, we are living in our own tailor-made media cocoons, carefully constructed shells that surround us with voices & ideas that support our own beliefs. Conversely, they also shelter us from anything that might challenge our perspective. This distorts our view of the world, makes us less able to understand others, & less likely to embrace new ideas.
My parents & my grandparents before them had 3 sources of news: the local paper, the radio, & the 6 o’clock television news. On a typical day, I get my news from 2 or 3 newspapers, the radio, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, a couple of news sites & maybe LinkedIn. And I’m probably below average. A recent survey by Ipsos Reid examined 16 different types of media commonly used by Canadians for their news. Another poll by the Media Technology Monitor in 2014 found that the number of Canadians who are using the Internet as their main source of news has increased by 20% over the previous 2 years.
The options to filter that news are also increasing. The most common online news aggregators & social media platforms, such as Facebook & Twitter, allow us to customize what we see. Are stories about the global refugee crisis getting you down? Click. 60 million people just disappeared. Is a particular journalist saying something unpleasant about your political party? Click. As far as you’re concerned, her mouth has been forever covered by especially durable duct tape.
When we tune out that journalist because we feel she isn’t being “objective,” what we really mean is that her views do not support our pre-existing beliefs. In fact, truly objective news is impossible. Every adjective & headline shifts the story in one direction or another. Even if you reduced a story to just numbers & facts, much would depend on which figures & in which order.
Unfortunately, our habit of tuning out ideas & voices we don’t like is part of our biological programming. “Confirmation bias,” the tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs & to remember it longer, is a well-documented & inescapable element of our behaviour. As a result, we instinctively tailor our universe to limit the emotionally upsetting views that contradict us. Until recently, the shortage of media choices made this hard to do. Left or right, we all watched the same suppertime newscast. Now, it’s finally possible to be bound in a nutshell, & count ourselves kings of infinite space, because we can avoid any bad dreams.
This has been very apparent in the refugee debate. A significant number of Canadians are opposed to allowing in more Syrians, due to the possibility that they would include Islamic State supporters, or that they would spread Islam or because we should be helping our own poor first. If you listen to a specific set of radio stations, read certain blogs & interact with people similar to yourself on Facebook, these ideas aren’t only defensible, they are overwhelmingly obvious.
Likewise, another group of Canadians who subscribe to different newspapers, listen to the CBC & read the Huffington Post are equally convinced of the self-evident fact that there is a clear need for Canada to do more, & accepting far more refugees would neither strain our economy nor our social fabric. In reality, both sides are filtering out important pieces of information, making it impossible to see the full picture. Which is why neither group can grasp how anyone could possibly be so asinine as to dispute what is so clearly self-evident.
This is bad, & not just because it prevents us from having civil conversations about Canada’s refugee & immigration policies. It creates a lack of empathy that leads us to denigrate & dismiss the opinions of others. The leaders of all political parties, who are equally unable to acknowledge they do not have a monopoly on the truth, demonstrate this attitude repeatedly.
Our self-made cocoons also impair our ability to make intelligent decisions. In ... elections, most voters will not watch a single debate, read any of the party platforms or attend any campaign events. They don’t need to. They already know for whom they’re going to vote, &, coincidentally, everyone else in his or her cocoon is voting the same way.
And for those we ultimately elect? Their own filters will make their governing decisions less effective. Ruling parties of all stripes tend only to listen to academics who support their agenda, only attend rallies that contain true believers, only read newspapers that endorse their policies & only engage constituents who already voted for them. ...
There are ways to cut through these cocoons, however. Just by being aware that you are constantly self-censoring the information that reaches you helps. You can also consciously resist the urge to mute the outspoken critic on Twitter, or unfollow the Facebook friend who shares articles in support of that politician you loathe. One step further would be to actually read some of those articles, or pick up a newspaper you wouldn’t normally read, no matter how much of a rag you think it is.
...
Lots of people around the world are wondering for the past year or so how such bigoted people like Donald Trump in US elections 2016 or even a self-professed criminal like Rodrigo Duterte, latest President of Philippines & who was nicknamed, "The Donald Trump of Philippines," can win over millions of people.
A major reason for how these kinds of people win over the hearts & minds of millions is because those millions of voters are living in a bubble / cocoon of their own. Anyone who is not a mindless "yes-man" to their ideas / opinions / thoughts are banished from their little worlds. They feel intelligent & safe in knowing that they are surrounded by people who think like them. In the end, there are millions who are mindlessly following anyone, like a herd of sheep, to do anything to appease their human god.
So why are we seeing more mind-numbing stupidity in this gilded age of data & information, which are all around us & easily accessible, too? We are seeing this happening far more frequently in this information age, because the information providers, the social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc.), are helping the populations become mindless zombies. The social media is actively altering the perception & truth around us by feeding us info which confirm our bias & echo our thoughts, instead of helping us see the other side of the debate.
On a personal level, I've felt this happening all too often. I've been unfriended & unfollowed by friends because of my thoughts & opinions; just because I am not mindlessly saying what they wanted to hear from their "friends". I thought a true friend who is supposed to push back on your ideas which are wrong, but, apparently, in this "modern" day & age, a true friend is one who mindlessly agrees with you with whatever crap you are spewing out of your mouth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More & more, we are living in our own tailor-made media cocoons, carefully constructed shells that surround us with voices & ideas that support our own beliefs. Conversely, they also shelter us from anything that might challenge our perspective. This distorts our view of the world, makes us less able to understand others, & less likely to embrace new ideas.
My parents & my grandparents before them had 3 sources of news: the local paper, the radio, & the 6 o’clock television news. On a typical day, I get my news from 2 or 3 newspapers, the radio, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, a couple of news sites & maybe LinkedIn. And I’m probably below average. A recent survey by Ipsos Reid examined 16 different types of media commonly used by Canadians for their news. Another poll by the Media Technology Monitor in 2014 found that the number of Canadians who are using the Internet as their main source of news has increased by 20% over the previous 2 years.
The options to filter that news are also increasing. The most common online news aggregators & social media platforms, such as Facebook & Twitter, allow us to customize what we see. Are stories about the global refugee crisis getting you down? Click. 60 million people just disappeared. Is a particular journalist saying something unpleasant about your political party? Click. As far as you’re concerned, her mouth has been forever covered by especially durable duct tape.
When we tune out that journalist because we feel she isn’t being “objective,” what we really mean is that her views do not support our pre-existing beliefs. In fact, truly objective news is impossible. Every adjective & headline shifts the story in one direction or another. Even if you reduced a story to just numbers & facts, much would depend on which figures & in which order.
Unfortunately, our habit of tuning out ideas & voices we don’t like is part of our biological programming. “Confirmation bias,” the tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs & to remember it longer, is a well-documented & inescapable element of our behaviour. As a result, we instinctively tailor our universe to limit the emotionally upsetting views that contradict us. Until recently, the shortage of media choices made this hard to do. Left or right, we all watched the same suppertime newscast. Now, it’s finally possible to be bound in a nutshell, & count ourselves kings of infinite space, because we can avoid any bad dreams.
This has been very apparent in the refugee debate. A significant number of Canadians are opposed to allowing in more Syrians, due to the possibility that they would include Islamic State supporters, or that they would spread Islam or because we should be helping our own poor first. If you listen to a specific set of radio stations, read certain blogs & interact with people similar to yourself on Facebook, these ideas aren’t only defensible, they are overwhelmingly obvious.
Likewise, another group of Canadians who subscribe to different newspapers, listen to the CBC & read the Huffington Post are equally convinced of the self-evident fact that there is a clear need for Canada to do more, & accepting far more refugees would neither strain our economy nor our social fabric. In reality, both sides are filtering out important pieces of information, making it impossible to see the full picture. Which is why neither group can grasp how anyone could possibly be so asinine as to dispute what is so clearly self-evident.
This is bad, & not just because it prevents us from having civil conversations about Canada’s refugee & immigration policies. It creates a lack of empathy that leads us to denigrate & dismiss the opinions of others. The leaders of all political parties, who are equally unable to acknowledge they do not have a monopoly on the truth, demonstrate this attitude repeatedly.
Our self-made cocoons also impair our ability to make intelligent decisions. In ... elections, most voters will not watch a single debate, read any of the party platforms or attend any campaign events. They don’t need to. They already know for whom they’re going to vote, &, coincidentally, everyone else in his or her cocoon is voting the same way.
And for those we ultimately elect? Their own filters will make their governing decisions less effective. Ruling parties of all stripes tend only to listen to academics who support their agenda, only attend rallies that contain true believers, only read newspapers that endorse their policies & only engage constituents who already voted for them. ...
There are ways to cut through these cocoons, however. Just by being aware that you are constantly self-censoring the information that reaches you helps. You can also consciously resist the urge to mute the outspoken critic on Twitter, or unfollow the Facebook friend who shares articles in support of that politician you loathe. One step further would be to actually read some of those articles, or pick up a newspaper you wouldn’t normally read, no matter how much of a rag you think it is.
...
The Roots of Nigeria's Chaos
A good interview to highlight couple of the points I've been blogging about since last year:
1. When "terrorists" attacked France last year, I blogged that nobody is looking at the real reasons behind the motivations of why these young people became or did what they did. Of course, what they did was wrong, but why did they do it. Just blaming Islam for its "hateful speech towards non-Muslims" is not sufficient enough reason.
The reason I said was these youths were venting their frustrations after watching & suffering injustices, mostly because of discrimination; racial, linguistic, religion, ethnicity etc. They were lashing out at an unjust & unfair society. Of course, their way of lashing out or venting their frustrations was wrong. In the same vein, the "terrorist" groups operating in several other 3rd-world countries are also lashing out after suffering injustices; perceived or otherwise. Be they "terrorist" groups be Boko Haram or ISIS or Al-Nusra or Al-Qaida etc.
As this Nigerian activist explains that there is a huge imbalance of wealth in Nigeria, in the North & the South, & I would add on to it that imbalance, & the perceived injustice growing out of it, drove many to join an amalgam of these groups that are collectively called, Boko Haram.
2. Then, the Nigerian activist goes on to explain how US foreign policy, multinational oil companies, IMF, & World Bank supported corruption in Nigeria or came up with monetary policies which, in effect, further exacerbated the wealth imbalance in the country, which, in turn, created the current conditions of lawlessness & "terrorism".
As I have also blogged previously that the governments of developed countries, through their foreign policies & support of their multinational companies, effectively plunder & rob the developing countries of their natural & intellectual resources, which, in turn, create a wave of cheap labour force for their own countries (immigration) & create more wealth for their own companies.
The Nigerian activist stated how Nigerian economy & politics are heavily dependent & thus "shaped by multinational corporations. ... We are running an economy that is based, basically, on oil rents, collection of royalties and rents from oil production by transnational oil corporations. They have overbearing influence on the political development of the country and on the economy. ... And so right now the oil companies operate above the law, because the government would not do anything ... whatsoever to offend them or to make them lose their profit. And so they break the law with absolute impunity."
He then goes on to explain how the overbearing & devastating influence of IMF & World Bank hobbled & effectively disabled the Nigerian economy & economic development. "... the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has also been very significant in dislocating the pattern of growth of the Nigerian economy and African economy generally that was visible between--in the early '70s through the early 1980s. And that, of course, happened through the introduction of structural adjustment programs that opened up the economy for dumping of products from the Global North, from North America, from Europe, from Japan, Australia, and then also killing local production, local industries, killing local agriculture, and, making these countries kind of dependent on ... foreign aid and stuff like that. So we've seen a situation where the negative influence of multinational corporation has played a very, very big role in keeping our nation from being on the right path of progress."
Ironically enough, we've seen the devastating impact of these structural adjustment programs within European Union, too, within the past 5 years or so. European Union was effectively made by richer countries of Europe (Germany & France) to basically push their products on to the poorer economies of Europe (Greece, Portugal etc.). So, while Germany enjoyed positive trade balances due to exports to these countries, it also effectively killed the industries of Greece (& negative trade balances due to heavy imports) & made it dependent on German imports. When economy tanked, there was nothing to support Greek economy & it nosedived disastrously.
So, yes, I concede that there are corrupt politicians in developing countries & there is widespread corruption. But, the corruption can be overtaken if developed countries of the Global North stop meddling in the internal affairs of those countries. Political & economic meddling hobbles & destroys any chances of progress developing countries have & effectively push them back further in the hole.
Since, the developing countries keep trying to climb out the hole but the walls are kept out of reach by developed countries, economic development & proper distribution of wealth never takes place. That, in effect, create the perfect conditions for wrong elements of the society to rile up the young population against their own & any foreign influences. Then, the Global North (or developed countries) label those people "terrorists" & try to root them out with any means necessary. That in turn create more chaos & destruction without actually solving the problem, since, the root of the problem was never looked upon, deliberately or otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Nigeria is in a state of semi-chaos. And the question I have, and I think most people following this story have, is: how did Nigeria get to a point where such events can take place?
Now joining us to help give some historical context to all of this ... is Nnimmo Bassey. He's a Nigerian architect, environmentalist, an author, a poet. He chaired the Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012. He was executive director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. And he now is the director of the Mother Earth Foundation.
So can you just give us quickly what's happening now on the ground in Nigeria and a little bit about who the Boko Haram is and what they represent?
NNIMMO BASSEY, DIRECTOR, HEALTH OF MOTHER EARTH FOUNDATION: As you said, Nigeria is undergoing very difficult times at the moment. But these had been building up over time. Usually in the past we had incidents of clashes over religious differences between the Muslims and Christians in the northern part of the country, but these were on-and-off incidents. But what we're seeing now is a sustained aggression by a diversity of groups who are generally grouped under the label Boko Haram. Boko Haram does not appear to be one single organization that has a command structure as such, but an amalgam of groups who share perhaps a philosophy of just wreaking destruction in the nation.
Nigeria gained political independence in 1960, but the structure was not perfect. And just as the nation was getting its act together, 6 years into independence, the military struck. ... the year after the military struck, Nigeria faced a civil war ... from a number of reasons. And when the Civil War ended in 1970, Nigeria wealth from oil revenue, crude oil revenue. And then, at that time, the military head of state said Nigeria had the problem of how to spend money, not how to make money. So that kind of settled the philosophy.
JAY: Before you get into the oil politics, 'cause I know it's such a big story, from after independence, 1960s and so on, it's at the height of the Cold War, and much of African politics, as I understand it, was shaped by the Cold War. What was the role of US policy in the development of the military dictatorship in Nigeria?
BASSEY: ... we had military rule in Nigeria from 1966 ... and this went on for about 3 decades, with just a little space of time that they left in 1979 and came back in 1983.
And also in this time, the US has maybe made a few noises against military dictatorship more generally. I believe the US was not really obviously against the governments in power. And, of course, Nigeria was a very strong frontline state against apartheid in South Africa at a time when US was ambivalent, the US was ambivalent about what was going on in South Africa. So it wasn't really a very smooth relationship all through this time.
But the military were not politicians, generally. They were just young man who grabbed power for whatever purpose. And they had to run the country down to the ground. And so what we're seeing now manifesting in the country now is a result of several years of misrule, both by politicians and by the military, and right now have been in meetings where the past military rulers go to great pains to explain that they cannot be to blame, because they always work with politicians. And, of course, with the local politicians, they also work with politicians from the US, from Europe, and from elsewhere.
But we had a situation where wealth has been concentrated in a few hands across the nation. If you look at statistics, right now the ... GDP, gross domestic product, is said to be growing at a rate of more than 6% per year, and just a couple of weeks ago the government announced: by recalculating the gross domestic product, Nigeria is now the biggest economy in Africa, bigger than South African economy.
But at the same time, what is not being told to the world, what is not being announced clearly, is that poverty is increasing rapidly also. So you have a situation where 70% of the population live in poverty, and then wealth is concentrated in a few hands. And in the northern part of the country, this disparity is much more sharper because of years of negligence, especially in educational sector, because some people ... manipulate the poor and the marginalized, children, especially, and the youth, into not obtaining suitable education, but just being put in a state where they have to depend on the rich for daily handouts and occasional days of festivities. And so you find in the northern part of the country very deep and desperate poverty besides incredible wealth here of a few people. And so over the years, this has built up. This has resulted in discontent, especially amongst the poor, young people.
And the problem generally across the nation has been that over--the years of military rule has made even the civilian politicians behave sometimes like--as if they were military overlords. And elections have not been fair and free most of the time. And politicians were very, very readily amenable to using political talks, some of whom have been armed with weapons. And if you look at the crisis that occurred in the South in about--around 2005 in the Niger Delta, in the oil fields, where militancy heightened, you find that some of the young people who were involved in this militancy had worked as help to politicians through elections, but they would not receive what they were promised at the end of the day. And so the politicians used to use and then dump them.
And a similar thing also occurred in the northern part of the country, but we are not in a position to say exactly how what has become the Boko Haram phenomenon grew, from what was the root. What is known is that the amalgam of groups generally operating under this name or under this nomenclature believe that anything Western must be rejected, especially Western education. And so they will fund a lot of attacks on schools, on public institutions, and then on the military, on whatever they feel would hurt the government.
But what has become very reprehensible is that over the past few months, these insurgents (as they're labeled these days) have concentrated on killing defenseless children, some in their sleep in their hostels, in secondary school hostels. They've recently ... abducted over 200 girls from a hostel in a school at Chibok in northeastern Nigeria. In Abuja about two weeks ago they set off explosions in a very densely packed motor park, a public transportation hall on the outskirts of Abuja, killing innocent workers and children who were either on their way to school or to their offices.
JAY: How much has the interests of big Western oil companies shaped the politics of Nigeria? I mean, you're talking about a handful of very, very wealthy, and in the north tremendous poverty, where all these events are taking place. But in terms of over the last decades, how much has Nigerian politics been shaped either by, you know, Western/American oil companies, and even directly with US CIA and such involvement?
BASSEY: Well, let me speak about how the Nigerian economy and politics have been shaped by multinational corporations. They've been very key in shaping the way politics has developed in the country and how the economy has grown. We are running an economy that is based, basically, on oil rents, collection of royalties and rents from oil production by transnational oil corporations. They have overbearing influence on the political development of the country and on the economy. In fact, the national budget of Nigeria has always been about ... what should be the benchmark of the price of crude oil. And so crude oil has been a determinant factor right from the early 1970s, when oil revenue became the major source of foreign exchange for the country. And so right now the oil companies operate above the law, because the government would not do anything ... whatsoever to offend them or to make them lose their profit. And so they break the law with absolute impunity.
...
Now, because of the heavy dependence on oil revenue, as I said, these corporations have very heavy influence on politics. And rich people in the country are rich because they have a slice of oil revenue, not because they engaged in anything productive. And so we run a kind of voodoo economy, something that is more or less maybe beginning to change now because there are other sectors of the economy that are contributing to progress, and that is getting a bit more productive than before.
But as I say this, the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has also been very significant in dislocating the pattern of growth of the Nigerian economy and African economy generally that was visible between--in the early '70s through the early 1980s. And that, of course, happened through the introduction of structural adjustment programs that opened up the economy for dumping of products from the Global North, from North America, from Europe, from Japan, Australia, and then also killing local production, local industries, killing local agriculture, and, making these countries kind of dependent on ... foreign aid and stuff like that. So we've seen a situation where the negative influence of multinational corporation has played a very, very big role in keeping our nation from being on the right path of progress.
1. When "terrorists" attacked France last year, I blogged that nobody is looking at the real reasons behind the motivations of why these young people became or did what they did. Of course, what they did was wrong, but why did they do it. Just blaming Islam for its "hateful speech towards non-Muslims" is not sufficient enough reason.
The reason I said was these youths were venting their frustrations after watching & suffering injustices, mostly because of discrimination; racial, linguistic, religion, ethnicity etc. They were lashing out at an unjust & unfair society. Of course, their way of lashing out or venting their frustrations was wrong. In the same vein, the "terrorist" groups operating in several other 3rd-world countries are also lashing out after suffering injustices; perceived or otherwise. Be they "terrorist" groups be Boko Haram or ISIS or Al-Nusra or Al-Qaida etc.
As this Nigerian activist explains that there is a huge imbalance of wealth in Nigeria, in the North & the South, & I would add on to it that imbalance, & the perceived injustice growing out of it, drove many to join an amalgam of these groups that are collectively called, Boko Haram.
2. Then, the Nigerian activist goes on to explain how US foreign policy, multinational oil companies, IMF, & World Bank supported corruption in Nigeria or came up with monetary policies which, in effect, further exacerbated the wealth imbalance in the country, which, in turn, created the current conditions of lawlessness & "terrorism".
As I have also blogged previously that the governments of developed countries, through their foreign policies & support of their multinational companies, effectively plunder & rob the developing countries of their natural & intellectual resources, which, in turn, create a wave of cheap labour force for their own countries (immigration) & create more wealth for their own companies.
The Nigerian activist stated how Nigerian economy & politics are heavily dependent & thus "shaped by multinational corporations. ... We are running an economy that is based, basically, on oil rents, collection of royalties and rents from oil production by transnational oil corporations. They have overbearing influence on the political development of the country and on the economy. ... And so right now the oil companies operate above the law, because the government would not do anything ... whatsoever to offend them or to make them lose their profit. And so they break the law with absolute impunity."
He then goes on to explain how the overbearing & devastating influence of IMF & World Bank hobbled & effectively disabled the Nigerian economy & economic development. "... the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has also been very significant in dislocating the pattern of growth of the Nigerian economy and African economy generally that was visible between--in the early '70s through the early 1980s. And that, of course, happened through the introduction of structural adjustment programs that opened up the economy for dumping of products from the Global North, from North America, from Europe, from Japan, Australia, and then also killing local production, local industries, killing local agriculture, and, making these countries kind of dependent on ... foreign aid and stuff like that. So we've seen a situation where the negative influence of multinational corporation has played a very, very big role in keeping our nation from being on the right path of progress."
Ironically enough, we've seen the devastating impact of these structural adjustment programs within European Union, too, within the past 5 years or so. European Union was effectively made by richer countries of Europe (Germany & France) to basically push their products on to the poorer economies of Europe (Greece, Portugal etc.). So, while Germany enjoyed positive trade balances due to exports to these countries, it also effectively killed the industries of Greece (& negative trade balances due to heavy imports) & made it dependent on German imports. When economy tanked, there was nothing to support Greek economy & it nosedived disastrously.
So, yes, I concede that there are corrupt politicians in developing countries & there is widespread corruption. But, the corruption can be overtaken if developed countries of the Global North stop meddling in the internal affairs of those countries. Political & economic meddling hobbles & destroys any chances of progress developing countries have & effectively push them back further in the hole.
Since, the developing countries keep trying to climb out the hole but the walls are kept out of reach by developed countries, economic development & proper distribution of wealth never takes place. That, in effect, create the perfect conditions for wrong elements of the society to rile up the young population against their own & any foreign influences. Then, the Global North (or developed countries) label those people "terrorists" & try to root them out with any means necessary. That in turn create more chaos & destruction without actually solving the problem, since, the root of the problem was never looked upon, deliberately or otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Nigeria is in a state of semi-chaos. And the question I have, and I think most people following this story have, is: how did Nigeria get to a point where such events can take place?
Now joining us to help give some historical context to all of this ... is Nnimmo Bassey. He's a Nigerian architect, environmentalist, an author, a poet. He chaired the Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012. He was executive director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. And he now is the director of the Mother Earth Foundation.
So can you just give us quickly what's happening now on the ground in Nigeria and a little bit about who the Boko Haram is and what they represent?
NNIMMO BASSEY, DIRECTOR, HEALTH OF MOTHER EARTH FOUNDATION: As you said, Nigeria is undergoing very difficult times at the moment. But these had been building up over time. Usually in the past we had incidents of clashes over religious differences between the Muslims and Christians in the northern part of the country, but these were on-and-off incidents. But what we're seeing now is a sustained aggression by a diversity of groups who are generally grouped under the label Boko Haram. Boko Haram does not appear to be one single organization that has a command structure as such, but an amalgam of groups who share perhaps a philosophy of just wreaking destruction in the nation.
Nigeria gained political independence in 1960, but the structure was not perfect. And just as the nation was getting its act together, 6 years into independence, the military struck. ... the year after the military struck, Nigeria faced a civil war ... from a number of reasons. And when the Civil War ended in 1970, Nigeria wealth from oil revenue, crude oil revenue. And then, at that time, the military head of state said Nigeria had the problem of how to spend money, not how to make money. So that kind of settled the philosophy.
JAY: Before you get into the oil politics, 'cause I know it's such a big story, from after independence, 1960s and so on, it's at the height of the Cold War, and much of African politics, as I understand it, was shaped by the Cold War. What was the role of US policy in the development of the military dictatorship in Nigeria?
BASSEY: ... we had military rule in Nigeria from 1966 ... and this went on for about 3 decades, with just a little space of time that they left in 1979 and came back in 1983.
And also in this time, the US has maybe made a few noises against military dictatorship more generally. I believe the US was not really obviously against the governments in power. And, of course, Nigeria was a very strong frontline state against apartheid in South Africa at a time when US was ambivalent, the US was ambivalent about what was going on in South Africa. So it wasn't really a very smooth relationship all through this time.
But the military were not politicians, generally. They were just young man who grabbed power for whatever purpose. And they had to run the country down to the ground. And so what we're seeing now manifesting in the country now is a result of several years of misrule, both by politicians and by the military, and right now have been in meetings where the past military rulers go to great pains to explain that they cannot be to blame, because they always work with politicians. And, of course, with the local politicians, they also work with politicians from the US, from Europe, and from elsewhere.
But we had a situation where wealth has been concentrated in a few hands across the nation. If you look at statistics, right now the ... GDP, gross domestic product, is said to be growing at a rate of more than 6% per year, and just a couple of weeks ago the government announced: by recalculating the gross domestic product, Nigeria is now the biggest economy in Africa, bigger than South African economy.
But at the same time, what is not being told to the world, what is not being announced clearly, is that poverty is increasing rapidly also. So you have a situation where 70% of the population live in poverty, and then wealth is concentrated in a few hands. And in the northern part of the country, this disparity is much more sharper because of years of negligence, especially in educational sector, because some people ... manipulate the poor and the marginalized, children, especially, and the youth, into not obtaining suitable education, but just being put in a state where they have to depend on the rich for daily handouts and occasional days of festivities. And so you find in the northern part of the country very deep and desperate poverty besides incredible wealth here of a few people. And so over the years, this has built up. This has resulted in discontent, especially amongst the poor, young people.
And the problem generally across the nation has been that over--the years of military rule has made even the civilian politicians behave sometimes like--as if they were military overlords. And elections have not been fair and free most of the time. And politicians were very, very readily amenable to using political talks, some of whom have been armed with weapons. And if you look at the crisis that occurred in the South in about--around 2005 in the Niger Delta, in the oil fields, where militancy heightened, you find that some of the young people who were involved in this militancy had worked as help to politicians through elections, but they would not receive what they were promised at the end of the day. And so the politicians used to use and then dump them.
And a similar thing also occurred in the northern part of the country, but we are not in a position to say exactly how what has become the Boko Haram phenomenon grew, from what was the root. What is known is that the amalgam of groups generally operating under this name or under this nomenclature believe that anything Western must be rejected, especially Western education. And so they will fund a lot of attacks on schools, on public institutions, and then on the military, on whatever they feel would hurt the government.
But what has become very reprehensible is that over the past few months, these insurgents (as they're labeled these days) have concentrated on killing defenseless children, some in their sleep in their hostels, in secondary school hostels. They've recently ... abducted over 200 girls from a hostel in a school at Chibok in northeastern Nigeria. In Abuja about two weeks ago they set off explosions in a very densely packed motor park, a public transportation hall on the outskirts of Abuja, killing innocent workers and children who were either on their way to school or to their offices.
JAY: How much has the interests of big Western oil companies shaped the politics of Nigeria? I mean, you're talking about a handful of very, very wealthy, and in the north tremendous poverty, where all these events are taking place. But in terms of over the last decades, how much has Nigerian politics been shaped either by, you know, Western/American oil companies, and even directly with US CIA and such involvement?
BASSEY: Well, let me speak about how the Nigerian economy and politics have been shaped by multinational corporations. They've been very key in shaping the way politics has developed in the country and how the economy has grown. We are running an economy that is based, basically, on oil rents, collection of royalties and rents from oil production by transnational oil corporations. They have overbearing influence on the political development of the country and on the economy. In fact, the national budget of Nigeria has always been about ... what should be the benchmark of the price of crude oil. And so crude oil has been a determinant factor right from the early 1970s, when oil revenue became the major source of foreign exchange for the country. And so right now the oil companies operate above the law, because the government would not do anything ... whatsoever to offend them or to make them lose their profit. And so they break the law with absolute impunity.
...
Now, because of the heavy dependence on oil revenue, as I said, these corporations have very heavy influence on politics. And rich people in the country are rich because they have a slice of oil revenue, not because they engaged in anything productive. And so we run a kind of voodoo economy, something that is more or less maybe beginning to change now because there are other sectors of the economy that are contributing to progress, and that is getting a bit more productive than before.
But as I say this, the influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has also been very significant in dislocating the pattern of growth of the Nigerian economy and African economy generally that was visible between--in the early '70s through the early 1980s. And that, of course, happened through the introduction of structural adjustment programs that opened up the economy for dumping of products from the Global North, from North America, from Europe, from Japan, Australia, and then also killing local production, local industries, killing local agriculture, and, making these countries kind of dependent on ... foreign aid and stuff like that. So we've seen a situation where the negative influence of multinational corporation has played a very, very big role in keeping our nation from being on the right path of progress.
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