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Post by wanyee on Aug 29, 2014 18:00:32 GMT 3
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Post by jakaswanga on Sept 20, 2014 13:33:16 GMT 3
THE CRISIS OF THE NEO-COLONIAL STATE EVEN AS AFRICA RISING!But I will take the long way about it. A few hundreds of years. 1. THE UNION OF SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND TESTED, AND HOLDING, JUST.Before I weave my tale, first an unusual headnote: Here is the ;)Caliph Raila Odinga saying something to stop by in his message of congratulations to Premier David Cameron of the UK. ' 'I have not doubt whatsoever that this is the future of the 21st century''. Hold your fire! (modern political establishments in a crisis, but why? Keeping in mind Africa rising within the Berlin contours, could a ceaserian be on the historical cards, so to speak, natural births of the new no longer possible within old canals?!) we will get there in time. First, Scotland.Internationally, Obama and Kerry's coalition of monsters to wage the War two Bushes did not finish in the middle east, went on a backburner as the Scottish referendum captured the world peoples imagination. --There appears a lot of peoples in the world who would cherish an PEACEFUL AND CREDIBLE PROCESS to decide on UNITY to their current POLITICAL UNIONS, or SECESSION/INDEPENDENCE. From Kashmir to Tibet, the Uighurs of Xinjian China, the Karens of Burma, The Muslims of Thailand, The Papuas of [New Guinea] Indonesia, Quebec Canada, Chiapas Mexico, the whites of Bolivia, the remnant whites of South Africa, Katangese of Congo, the Sikhs of India, the Tamils of Sri-Lanka, The Novorussians of Ukraine, The Tartars of Russia, The Eskimos of Denmark/Greenland, Eskimos of Alaska/UsA, Tuaregs of Mali/Azawad, Tuaregs of Niger, Saharawis of Morrocco/Spanish Sahara, Berbers of Marrocco, Nubians of Egypt, to the Catalans of Spain, Corsicans of France, Nothern Italians, .... (enough examples to make the point I think) the SCOTTISH REFERENDUM HAS BEEN A THRILLER LIKE NONE OTHER.The peaceful nature, the mature and democratic openness of the debate. The NON-RIGGING, has been mouth watering. Notice I left  out kenya in the above roll call.  OKAY Sorry folks, in as much as our domestics –-some featuring Corded Mpigs rebelling against the referendum after bribery by TNA, and on the other side, Jubileed Hogs under the hot shot Muigai grumbling after the Muthamaki read them the riot act: quit referendum train or quit seat, I thought there were other dramas elsewhere which, for those who understand the abstraction as a necessary intellectual tool, offer profound lessons to the local situation in Kenya. Both terms Here, it is increasingly clear the Rift-Valley which is the –-simmering land/means of production grievances-- hotbed of URP has many unresolved local issues which should remind us of the Jean-Marie-Seroney Jomo Kenyatta (+Arap Moi) split of yonder. Currently all is not well in the URP umbrella, and the great Orkoiyot William is having bees inside his anus, bees which, apparently, can not be swatted with the ease with which the Muthamaki silenced his detractors (like Kabogo of Kiambu on the referendum.) Old contradictions surface in new packages, or nefarius cleavages as Onyango the digital Oloo would have it. --From the extra judicial execution of Koitalel Wallace as a commonl law thug by the victorious colonial English King, to the PEV convulsion in the Rift Scottish referendum 2014, old contradictions re-surface in new packages. But.. The political soap at the top of Kenya is of course one long chain of juicy sequels with many a tear-jerker and cliff-hanger. And in 2008 we just saw how real that cliff hanging can get for the nation, if the elite soap is allowed to run unchecked. (NB: I am not factoring in bloody tear-jerkers like the murder of JM Kariuki yet)I made no bones about it, that I wished the union of Scotland and Engeland to continue. But I made no bones about it neither, that the reasons some Scots want out (45% want out now that we know the results of the referendum) can not be subsumed. A future where their money is spent on priorities of thei land. The health of their people, the competitive education and skilled training of their future generations of workers, and less war-mongering glory abroad in nostalgic spurts of keeping up appearances of a Greatness now sham. These are sane reasons, and anybody sensible living in any ''Union Kingdom'' currently engaged in wasting tax-payers money in whatever the form of guile corruption hides under, must take note of the fierce secessionist tendencies of regions with the wherewithal to go it alone. (Now, How does Kenya rate  in thrift with tax-payers purse!?)The most wherewithal is the nationalist consciousness of robust confidence in own ability to shape a better own future. Far from Politics, Scotland has been surging in noteworthy forms. Best-seller writers like JK Rowland of the Harry Porter series have refused to be lured to the ''sophisticated cultural Mecca's of new arrivals''; Scottish Universities have increasingly linked to ace colleges far and wide where the Scottish diaspora are well to do, like the USA and Australia, such that the traditional prestigious colleges in England have not the prestige and mystique they once held for ambitious Scots wanting to get on in the empire. Even the The City is just one commercial option in a world of global finance. Then there is the odd Higland Games Highland games have infused anabated indulgence in age-old Scottish idiosynracies, further re-affirming scottish identity.     THE CURSE OF OILCourtesy of the watchful Wanyee of Jukwaa in this thread jukwaa.proboards.com/thread/9169/turkana-benefits-bypass-local-poor we discern the seeds of the Nigerian methodology, as far as the Oil Industry is concerned. It is therefore merely a question of how long it takes Turkana nationalism to arise out of her inferiority complex, and declare no interest in continuing loyalty to the corrupt retardation of Kenya, underwriting the Nairobi-based Oligarchal pillage of a local resource, in return of nothing. We can of course characteristically continue to pretend there are no lessons from Scotland. politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/2014/03/will-oil-bring-promise-peril-communities-turkana-kenya/
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Post by wanyee on Sept 21, 2014 18:22:43 GMT 3
On discerning "the seeds of the Nigerian methodology, as far as the Oil Industry is concerned": Predicting Africa’s Next Oil Insurgency: The Precarious Case of Kenya’s Turkana County
The recent discovery of oil deposits in Kenya’s Turkana County could increase insecurity in the region.ARTICLE | 13 SEPTEMBER 2013 - 3:23PM | BY RED24
Kenya's Turkana County. Photograph by Filiberto Strazzari. Political scientists remain divided on the link between natural resources and armed conflict in Africa. One school of thought suggests that competition over the control of resources is itself a motivation for the development of armed insurgencies. Others – opponents of this greed-based theory – suggest that control over resources serves as a mechanism to correct economic and political inequalities. But all agree on one thing: there is a positive relationship between the availability of lootable resources and armed insurrection, and this is particularly the case where populations have been marginalised. Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta follows this pattern - the Delta experienced a protracted insurgency against the region’s hydrocarbon industry due to the negative impacts of oil exploration and the question of profit distribution. The conflict occurred in a context of ethnically-motivated violence and a burgeoning small arms trade, leading to the rapid militarisation of the region. A 2009 amnesty agreement formally brought an end to the Niger Delta conflict and, although the peace remains tenuous, the frequency of violence, kidnappings and terrorism has decreased. As a consequence, the world's attention has shifted towards the impending East African oil boom. Most vested stakeholders have focused on the potential geopolitical benefits of the boom, but fail to address the potential impact these resource discoveries could bring to areas already experiencing acute socio-political and economic marginalisation. A case in point is Kenya’s Turkana County. Located at the meeting of Kenya’s blurred borders with Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan, Turkana County is an arid region, long neglected by successive Kenyan administrations. However, in recent months, Turkana County has become a key area of interest for the Kenyan government and investors alike following reports that British-owned oil exploration company, Tullow Oil PLC, discovered an estimated 250 million barrels of crude oil there. While resource extraction is not expected to begin for several years, the Turkana oil finds have been celebrated. Oil revenue is seen as a solution to poverty in the region, where nine out of ten people live below the breadline. But behind the optimistic rhetoric, the prevailing political and security environment in Turkana County is looking conspicuously similar to that which sparked insurgency in the Niger Delta. If left unaddressed, we could potentially see the region become a theatre for oil conflict. Corruption and exclusionIf history in the Niger Delta is anything to go by, it is far from guaranteed that the population of Turkana County will benefit from the potential oil revenue. The existence of corruption has already been raised. During a two-day consultative meeting held in the regional capital, Lodwar, in June 2012, community leaders accused local officials of illegally acquiring title deeds, misappropriating community-owned land and using intimidation and violence to displace communities within the region’s oil-rich Ngamia 1 and Twiga South-1 localities. Equally scathing accusations against Tullow Oil were made. The company was accused of failing to publicise Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports, paying insufficient compensation to communities and bribing local councillors and leaders as a means of securing control of resource-rich land. The meeting also identified economic exclusion, accusing Tullow of outsourcing basic services and expertise, denying jobs to local people. Both the Kenyan government and Tullow Oil have rejected these allegations and committed to greater transparency to ensure local populations can see concrete benefits. However, until commitments have been realised, mistrust and scepticism will remain. Environmental impactThe potential for further environmental degradation in already fragile ecological conditions is a key concern for those living in the oil zone. An estimated 60% of the region’s inhabitants are pastoralists who have long struggled with seasonal droughts, which led to the deaths of thousands of livestock. The situation has deteriorated significantly over the last decade and it is estimated that 75% of the population is reliant on food aid. Projects are ongoing in the region to promote the diversification of economic activities, thus limiting dependency on the livestock trade; however, lack of infrastructural development continues to serve as a significant impediment to such initiatives. While the hydrocarbon industry will undoubtedly produce marked improvements in infrastructure, this is likely to be counterbalanced by the unavoidable ecological impact of oil exploration. Dwindling reserves of fertile land will be appropriated for mining activities, and risks of air, soil and water pollution are significant. While the government is quick to assure that mechanisms will be in place to offset any adverse ecological effects, environmental degradation is likely to lead to communal antagonism toward the region’s oil industry and, as witnessed in the Niger Delta, could contribute to armed civil insurrection within Turkana County. Small arms proliferationAlthough based in deep-rooted grievances, the role small arms proliferation plays in fuelling internal armed insurrection cannot be overstated. Again, the Niger Delta serves as a timely reminder. In the early-2000s, a thriving small arms trade developed as light weaponry flowed readily over the porous borders of Cameroon, Gabon and Guinea-Bissau. The subsequent militarisation of ethnic groups within the Niger Delta would later serve as important vehicles of the violence directed against the region’s oil industry. In Turkana County, the availability of light weaponry has been identified as playing a critical role in sustaining communal conflict. An estimated 50,000 small arms are already in circulation, created in part by neighbouring conflicts in South Sudan and Uganda’s Karamoja sub-region. Growing land and resource scarcity has significantly increased tensions, leading to frequent and protracted outbreaks of violence. Organised crime For some in Turkana County, access to weaponry has become the only means of socio-economic survival. Organised and well-armed gangs regularly engage in acts of criminality, usually in the form of cattle rustling and highway banditry. If left unchecked, such entities may pose a significant security threat to the region’s future hydrocarbon industry. As was witnessed in the Niger Delta, oil production has the propensity to support a thriving criminal enterprise. Oil bunkering, the process where oil is siphoned illegally from pipelines, remains rife within the Niger Delta and it is believed that as much as 7% (an estimated 150,000 barrels) of Nigeria’s crude oil is stolen daily. Revenue from oil bunkering is often pumped back into armed groups. As these groups expand, incidents of oil bunkering become more than an auxiliary threat to the oil sector. Rather, actions escalate into more direct threats, including terrorism, sabotage and kidnapping for the purposes of ransom and extortion. Oil and waterIt is not just oil that lies beneath Turkana County. Recently, massive water reserves have been discovered in the region. Many believe this water wealth could provide the solution to water insecurity not just in the drought-blighted regions in the north, but for the entire country. With both water and oil drawing all eyes to Turkana County, government and commercial stakeholders must act now to ensure the recent discoveries are to the benefit of local populations and to prevent the region becoming a focal point for a resource-driven conflict. Socio-economic development must come first. Forthcoming oil sector legislation needs to promote development and put the needs of the local population - and particularly the new hopes for the elimination of drought - above those of the oil industry. In addition, stronger policing and judicial structures within Turkana County will mitigate the need for community self-protection and should be focused on small arm control. For the economic stakeholders, there is a responsibility to ensure that the exploration and exploitation of all of the region's resources is an inclusive process which is subject to stringent controls. First and foremost, these players will need to manage local expectations by educating affected communities that any potential economic benefits derived from the oil and water discoveries are unlikely to occur overnight. Ultimately, any future industry within Turkana County has to be beneficial to the overall well-being of the region’s inhabitants. If not, communities may very well resort to violence. By Ryan Cummings, Chief Analyst for Africa for red24.
Think Africa Press welcomes inquiries regarding the republication of its articles. If you would like to republish this or any other article for re-print, syndication or educational purposes, please contact: editor@thinkafricapress.comSOURCE: www.thinkafricapress.com/kenya/predicting-next-oil-insurgency-precarious-case-turkana-county |
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Post by wanyee on Sept 23, 2014 0:49:39 GMT 3
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Post by wanyee on Sept 25, 2014 20:34:37 GMT 3
“Accumulation by Dispossession” by the Corporate Extractive Industry: The Case of Kenya’s Turkana Oil Basin
22nd September 2014
By Wanyee A. Kinuthia
This is the first chapter in a short essay
Chapter 1 - What is “Accumulation by Dispossession”?
This essay approaches the case of Kenya’s Turkana oil basin from the perspective of international political economy (IPE), and suggests that contemporary natural resource extraction lays bare modern imperialism(1), given that “the dominant mechanism used…to extract…wealth is the persistence of strategies of primitive accumulation…through raw material extraction.”(2) Karl Marx conceptualized primitive accumulation as an evolutionary stage having occurred in the development of capitalism, which resulted in many Marxist scholars treating the concept of primitive accumulation more as a historical event than as a theoretical approach.(3) This treatment continued until David Harvey resurrected primitive accumulation within the rubric of “accumulation by dispossession” for modern day social analysis. This essay draws upon David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession in order to critique current capitalist practices of primitive accumulation within the context of the global corporate extractive industry, and more specifically, in the context of Kenya’s Turkana oil basin.
Accumulation by dispossession refers to the persistence and increase of accumulation practices that Marx had regarded as ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ during the birth of capitalism. These include “the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful eviction of peasant populations; conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; suppression of rights to the commons…colonial, neo-colonial and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources).”(4) Features of primitive accumulation have persisted throughout the history of capitalism, particularly the “displacement of peasant populations and the formation of a landless proletariat.”(5) That is, contemporary peasant populations are being displaced by many of the same unscrupulous means that disbanded them in Europe during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, often at the insistence of key international institutions such as the World Bank. Harvey applies the concept of accumulation by dispossession to the study of this ongoing phenomenon occurring when long standing indigenous modes of production, largely, based on traditional forms of reciprocity and exchange are replaced by new capitalist modes.(6)
Harvey argues that under neoliberal globalization, contemporary capitalism is distinguished by its tendency toward increased reproduction and the process of accumulation by dispossession, which is the distinguishing feature of primitive accumulation.(7) According to Patrick Bond, resource extraction has recently intensified, revealing “some of the same kinds of primitive looting tactics” enshrined “within the framework of neoliberal (free market) policies adopted nearly universally across the…world.”(8)
REFERENCES:
1. Bush, R. (2007). Poverty and Neoliberalism: Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South. London, U.K:
Pluto Press
2. Bond, P. (2006). Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. p.34
3. Glassman, J. (2006). ‘Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by “extra-economic” means.’ Progress in Human Geography 30(5): 608-625.
4. Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards A Theory Of Uneven Geographical Development.
London, U.K: Verso. p.43
5. -------------- (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press. p.145-146
6. Ibid
7. Ibid. p.174-175
8. Bond, P. (2006). p.34
--
Next: Chapter 2 - Primitive Accumulation via the Washington Consensus
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 4:07:00 GMT 3
wanyee,Here's a trailer to an important documentary, aptly titled "Big Men", about the ways in which our local rotten 1% collude with western companies to rob Africans. The local rotten 1%, are our weakest link. I watched the entire documentary on TV. BIG MEN Official HD Trailer Premiere
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Post by OtishOtish on Sept 26, 2014 6:06:44 GMT 3
Wanyee:
You have here raised a "big one". Sadly, I have good reason to believe that it will all end rather badly. That need not be the case, but that's how it usually goes on the Beloved Continent.
The Turkana (and others who now find themselves atop potential wealth in such areas) have long been marginalized. For as long as I can remember, the general view appears to have been that if the "Somali" Kenyans are "second-class" citizens, then the Turkana, Pokot, Samburu, etc. are, at best, "first-class, division three". Is that likely to change any time soon? I doubt it. In fact, I would not be surprised if the Kenya Big Eaters suddenly came up with some sort of terra nullius.
The Niger Delta story is a good case-study of something that happens all over the place. Perhaps there is something to be learned from it. But where learning happens in its own way and at its own pace .... Anyways, I expect that, eventually, all this will be sorted out in the traditional African way---blood, tears, and assorted mayhem. When, not if. I really hope I am wrong, but so far this looks like the proverbial "slow-motion train-wreck, but everyone's too busy with other stuff ..."
I have noted your promise of
"Chapter 2 - Primitive Accumulation via the Washington Consensus"
I'll wait, but I'm with Kathure: First, take look at the local 1%. The speck and then the logs.
A couple of days ago I had a discussion (with all sorts) on how "the Chinese are finishing African wildlife". This was at an event to raise funds for wildlife preservation in Africa. There were a couple of Kenyans who got very excited about the fate of elephants and rhinos in Kenya. Said the Chinese must be stopped. Our national heritage and resources at risk! Wail, wail, wail.
I asked them a few questions, along the lines of
* "somebody is in the parks killing the animals; how many Chinese are running around over there?";
* "how many Chinese are in control or Kenya's airports and ports?";
* "how many Chinese control the operations (banks etc.) used to process and launder the proceeds of such activities?"
* And so on, and so forth.
To my mind, there is little point in wailing about others taking it when it's being given away like there's no tomorrow. From individuals to entire nations, nobody has much sympathy for mugs, suckers, greedy cannibals (i.e. those who eat their own kind), etc. Washington, Beijing, London, Paris? Absolutely. But before that, why not Nairobi, Lagos, Cairo, and Cape Town.
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Post by wanyee on Sept 27, 2014 19:49:55 GMT 3
Chapter 2 - Primitive Accumulation via the Washington ConsensusToday, primitive accumulation can be seen in the predominant mode of neoliberal economic globalization as articulated in the so-called Washington Consensus. Economic conditions began to deteriorate sharply in the 1970s, as the advanced capitalist countries entered a new phase marked by reduced growth.(1) Annual GDP growth rates worldwide fell to an average of 2.6 percent between 1973 and 1989, down from 4.9 percent between 1950 and 1973.(2) Claire-Turenne Sjolander writes that the roots of economic globalization lie in the “acceleration and transformation of changes which came into play in the 1960s” heralding a major reorganization of the capitalist economy.(3) Global economic competition intensified, as capitalism globally underwent a major structural change known as economic (neoliberal) globalization.(4) Economic globalization is here understood as “a system fuelled by the belief that a single global economy with universal rules set by corporations and financial markets is inevitable.”(5) After the Washington Consensus – a gathering of political and social elites who favoured market-based rather than state-managed development strategies – neoliberalism was adopted by the international financial institutions (IFIs) headquartered in Washington-DC.(6) In their application of neoliberal ideology, the IFIs, regional development banks (such as the African Development Bank and Asian Development Bank), and the international development agencies of the major donor countries insist that countries receiving their loans, credits, and development assistance must adopt policy reforms (including austerity measures) that make the private sector the primary engine of their development goals.(7) These reforms have essentially been used to open up national economies to transnational capital and to ‘integrate’ them into the global market.(8) According to Bonnie Campbell, some of these liberalization measures have resulted in an ongoing process of reduction in the autonomy of the state.(9) The hypothesis that investment in the extractive sector drives economic growth, which in turn spurs development and reduces poverty, underlies the thinking and strategizing that has taken place in the extractive sector over the last two decades. This hypothesis informed the World Bank studies on Africa and Latin America during the 1990s, and was translated into policy recommendations that ushered crucial reforms in the extractive sector.(10) Pursuant to this, the argument that production for export creates prosperity – based on the theory of comparative advantage – is the most important principle of neoliberal economics.(11) Particularly at the insistence of the IFIs, the overriding emphasis is for natural resources to be extracted by transnational corporations (TNCs) – the preferred terminology of the United Nations system – on an industrial scale and exported.(12) According to the IFIs, economic growth can only occur when subsistence lands are used for capital-intensive, large-scale, export-oriented commercial production, which take the form of huge commercial mines, plantation forest projects, and / or agricultural monocrop plantations, resulting in the displacement of millions of people.(13) “Progress” in the context of development projects translates to economic development, and is seen to be unidirectional, inevitable and led by market forces.(14) Thus, virtually all developing countries have adopted resource-led growth strategies,(15) while the IFIs maintain “a modernization view of development: the path to growth is unilinear and will be accomplished by ‘unlocking’ the…comparative advantage and potential” of countries through resource extraction.(16) These Western development models and the resulting projects that call for the displacement of thousands, even millions of people, have been heartily embraced by many post-colonial elites.(17) The advice of the IFIs is problematic on several grounds. For example, the theory of comparative advantage – export of raw materials for high-value addition elsewhere – has been discredited, because it only works if trade takes place between nations that are at roughly the same stages of economic development, rather than between wealthy nations selling value-added goods and much poorer nations selling primary products. This theory was applied throughout the twentieth century, but the terms of trade turned against developing countries, and they had to export more primary products so as to import the same amount of industrial goods.(18) In addition, with the advent of neoliberal globalization came a new factor – the concentration of market power in corporations that primarily seek to maximize profits by dominating global trade.(19) Proponents of free trade often cite the names and theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo to justify destructive export-oriented policies.(20) However, Smith preferred small, locally owned enterprises,(21) whereas Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage assumes that capital is static and confined within states(22) – unlike present market conditions. Moreover, export markets are variable, unreliable, and volatile. Recent food crises that resulted from falling commodity prices further attest to the failure of comparative advantage theories.(23) Harvey argues that “free trade” within the context of the present world system is a means of prolonging the relations of exploitation and dependence. Along with open capital markets, free trade has become the key means of favouring the monopoly powers that already dominate trade, finance, production, and services within the capitalist world. Hence, the primary means for accumulation by dispossession has been the liberalization of markets worldwide through institutional pressures exercised via international institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), backed by the power of the United States (and to a lesser degree Europe).(24) According to Harvey, the neoliberal definition of development is that “well-being is best advanced…within an institutional framework that privileges…the free market, and minimum state intervention.”(25) Among the reforms, regulatory frameworks and institutions introduced over the last two decades to liberalize the extractive sector of mineral-rich countries, the stringent retrenchment of the state has been the most important: that is “the new delineation between public and private spheres of authority and the transfer of what were previously public responsibilities to private actors.”(26) To this effect, the World Bank calls for a “clearly articulated mining sector policy that emphasizes the role of the private sector as owner and operator and of the government as regulator and promoter.”(27) This process of redefining the state’s role in the mining sector and more generally, reconceptualising its sovereignty, echoes the observations made from the perspective of international political economy with respect to the reduction in autonomy and authority of states, in addition to their reduced capacity to control the development of their own institutions.(28) At the same time, the distribution of structural power has been shifted in order to favour private actors and, especially, extractive companies.(29) Reigning economic policies and models – created and implemented by multilateral development agencies and hegemonic national governments through different forms of discipline, including loan conditionalities, austerity measures, etc – favour intensive efforts to enhance productive capacity. This hinges on the belief that general patterns of consumption and well-being are enhanced, when increased production and income filter through the system. Enhanced productive capacity is based on the principle of “efficient use” of resources to produce maximum value, defined primarily in terms of global market indicators, including earnings potential.(30) According to another definition, efficient use generally means to maximize the generation of profit and the return on investment on a specified piece of property (whether a piece of land or a product), instead of directing the use of that property to the benefit of those most in need.(31) This principle of resource use efficiency generally provides the impetus for states to engage in projects that displace communities. States and private capital view natural resources as being underutilized by local communities, thereby prompting the initiation of projects to exploit the economic potential of these resources more efficiently. The roots of the efficiency argument are deeply embedded in Western imperialism, and were enshrined in John Locke’s principle of improvement as a precursor to property rights – “the natural right of property derived from its productive use.”(32) References1. Leadbeater, D. (2008). Sudbury’s Crisis of Development and Democracy. In Leadbeater, D (ed) Mining Town Crisis: Globalization, Labour, and Resistance in Sudbury. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing 2. Maddison, A. (1991). Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development: A Long-Run Comparative View. Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press 3. Sjolander, C. (1996). The rhetoric of globalization: what's in a wor(l)d? International Journal (51)4, 603-616; See also: Kiss, A., Shelton, D., & Ishibashi, K (eds). (2003). Economic Globalization and Compliance with International Agreements. The Hague, Denmark: Kluwer Law International 4. Leadbeater, D. (2008). 5. Barlow, M., & Clarke, T. (2002). Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. New York, NY: The New Press. p.81 6. Soederberg, S. (2006). The war on terrorism and American empire: Emerging development agendas. In Colas, A., & Saull, R (eds) The War on Terrorism and the American 'Empire' after the Cold War. London, U.K: Routledge. See also: Dowlah, C. (2004). Backwaters of Global Prosperity: How Forces of Globalization and GATT / WTO Trade Regimes Contribute to the Marginalisation of the World's Poorest Nations. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers 7. Bonnano, A., & Constance, D.H. (2008). Stories of Globalization: Transnational Corporations, Resistance, and the State. Pennsylvania, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press 8. Harris, R.L (ed). (2005). Globalization and Development in Latin America (Volume 6). Whitby, ON: de Sitter Publications 9. Campbell, B. (2012). The role of the private sector in achieving Canada’s international development interests. Presented to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, April 4th. Department of Political Science, Faculty of Political Science and Law. Montreal, QC: University of Quebec 10. Madeley, J. (2000). Hungry For Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing Ltd 11. Bond, P. (2006). Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press 12. Campbell, B (ed). (2009). Mining in Africa: Regulation and Development. Ottawa, ON: International Development Research Council (IDRC) 13. Tauli-Copuz, V. (2006). World Bank and IMF Impacts on Indigenous Economies. In Mander, J., & Tauli-Corpuz, V (eds) Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization (A project of the International Forum on Globalization). San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books 14. Bodley, J.H. (1983). The World Bank Tribal Policy: Criticisms and Recommendations (mss.) Testimony prepared for the House Committee on Banking, Finance & Urban affairs, Subcommittee on International Development, Institutions and Finance. Hearings on the World Bank, 29 June. Washington, DC 15. Bond, P. (2003). Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (Second Edition). Lansdowne, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press 16. Bush, R. (2010). Mining, Dispossession, and Transformation in Africa. In Fraser, A., & Larmer, M (eds) Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust on the Globalized Copperbelt. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. p.255 17. Nandy, A. (1998). Exiled at home. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press 18. Madeley, J. (2000). 19. Ibid20. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible. A Report of the International Forum on Globalization. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 21. Ibid22. Ugarteche, O. (2000). The False Dilemma - Globalization: opportunity or threat? London, U.K: Zed Books 23. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). In his famous testimony to the House of Representatives Special Committee on the US mortgage crisis in October 2008, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan admitted that he “had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets” [Andrews, E.L. (2008). ‘Greenspan concedes error on regulation.’ New York Times, 23rd October] 24. Harvey, D. (2003). Thomas Friedman, the Pullitzer Prize winning foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, who is also a noted proponent of neoliberal globalization and a free market expert, blatantly wrote: “The fact that no two countries have gone to war since they both got McDonald’s is partly due to economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America’s willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization – from Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist…And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps” [Friedman, T.L. (2000). The Lexus and The Olive Tree. New York, NY: Anchor Books] 25. Harvey, D. (2007). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press. p.2 26. Campbell, B. (2012). 27. World Bank. (1992). Strategy for African Mining. World Bank Technical Paper, No. 181. Africa Technical Department Series, Mining Unit, Industry and Energy Division. Washington, DC: World Bank. p.53 (Emphasis added) 28. Strange, S. (1996). The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press 29. Campbell, B. (2010). Revisiting the Reform Process of African Mining Regimes. Special Issue – Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 197-217. 30. Penz, G. (1992). Development refugees and distributive justice: Indigenous peoples, land and the developmentalist state. Public Affairs Quarterly 6(1), 105-131. 31. Andreasson, S. (2006). Stand and Deliver: Private Property and the Politics of Global Dispossession. Political Studies 54, 3-22. 32. Wood, E.M. (2002). The origins of capitalism: A longer view. New York, NY: Verso. p.157-159 NEXT: Chapter 3 - From the Perspective of International Political Economy (IPE)-- Interesting documentary. However, I thought that the root cause of the systemic problem (i.e “neoliberal/economic globalization”) was not sufficiently discussed. I have attempted to shed a bit more light on this in Chapter 2 (above). Otishotish, I am not sure if I have also sufficiently addressed your argument, that Africans themselves are primarily responsible for the continent’s poor socioeconomic condition. If not, please recall the last time we had a similar discussion here on Jukwaa, under the thread CRITICAL NEWS "SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA IS BACK" BY WEST. You basically had the same argument then:“First make sure you are doing your best, then complain about how the world is an unfair place and everyone out there is out to stick it to you? Are we doing our best in Kenya? Have we ever even tried?” I responded as follows:I wholeheartedly agree - and admire your pragmatism. However, it is not always that simple. Let us start with your question regarding the deterioration of vital services in your locality. You ask: “what does all that have to do with any neo-colonial, imperialists?” Please consider the following statements: “Many African countries devote a significant share of their scarce public revenues to paying external debt service” (Ndikumana and Boyce, 2011). “Africa spends about four times more on debt-service payments than it does on health care” (Cavanagh and Mander, 2004:57). “Debt has thus become not only a means of pushing these countries into extreme poverty, but also a tool for domination and exploitation, phenomena that one might have supposed to have disappeared along with colonialism. Worse still, it has facilitated a transition from public to private colonization, virtually a return to slavery as we knew it in the nineteenth century. Debt prevents any form of sustainable human development, political stability or security” ( Third World Debt: A Continuing Legacy of Colonialism). Do you see why your question above DEMANDS that we address neo-colonial strategies of exploitation, particularly the very legitimacy of Africa’s odious debts, let alone the conditionalities attached to them? (The same applies to the deteriorated road, the dwindling supply of clean water, the aborted rural electrification scheme etc) Now, unless you would like us to debate the veracity of the above argument, let us return to our discussion regarding what you and I can do to remedy “the problem” of primitive accumulation in Africa. I ask you again, are you familiar with the concept of "free, prior, and informed consent" (FPIC)? ReferencesNdikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council) Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible. A Report of the International Forum On Globalization. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. -- I later wrote:Odious debt and international lawA nation’s debts can be considered odious if three conditions hold: 1. Absence of consent: the debts were incurred without the consent of the people. This is typically the case when the debts were squandered by an undemocratic regime, such as a military dictatorship. 2. Absence of benefit: The borrowed funds were not used for the public benefit, but instead for the private benefit of the ruler and his associates. The absence-of-benefit condition is evidently met when loans are used in ways that actively harm the people, for example by financing state repression. But it is also met when loans are used to fund capital flight. 3. Creditor awareness: The creditors were aware – or should have been aware – of both of the above conditions. SOURCE: Ndikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council)
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Post by OtishOtish on Sept 27, 2014 23:45:20 GMT 3
Wanyee: I'd be happy to join you in problem-solving, but I ask that we first properly the identity the problem and its source. For today's case-study let us take the Beloved Country, Kenya. Consider the case of its SGR. Here are the basic facts: * Kenya had a perfectly functional railway at independence. It was "eaten" into the ground. By Kenyans, not neo-colonial, hyper-imperialists types. * The World Bank would not fund the SGR because they saw no economic sense in it. They advised GoK to, instead, rehabilitate the old lines. * The East African countries and Rwanda hired some Canadian consultants to look into their railway proposals. There conclusions: no economic sense; fix the old line. So what does Kenya do?It decides that it will build the SGR, and for that it goes off to borrow a huge chunk of money. And the Chinese have been smart: the deal ensures that they get paid even if the SGR doesn't make a single cent. Will Kenyans later, when the repayments start, wail and gnash their teeth over "odious debts"? (I note that there was so much excitement about the borrowing from China that some declared that the West was jealous!) Kenya has also recently entered into an expensive borrowing arrangement via the Eurobond. That too will have to be paid. And while entering into new debts, there is none of the belt-tightening that one would expect; instead, the 1% are eating like nobody's business. In both cases, no guns were put to anyone's head. You say that you are concerned about "deteriorated road, the dwindling supply of clean water, the aborted rural electrification scheme etc". Have you ever considered what could be done by all the money that is eaten by the 1%, eaten by ghost workers, simply wasted, etc. That money could, with hard work and efficiency, do a lot. And no neo-colonial, hyper-imperialists types need be involved. Just Kenyans doing for Kenyans. Marcelo Giugale, the World Bank’s Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reduction Programs for Africa, has said and written much on these matters. His views on how poor countries got into these "odious debts" is interesting. Here is a short piece: " When countries in sub-Saharan Africa ("Africa" for short) gained independence in the 1960s, they inherited little or no public debt. And they stayed relatively debt-free until the early 1980s. Then, they went on a borrowing binge. By mid-1990s, the average African nation owed more than the value of all the goods and services it could produce in a year."www.huffingtonpost.com/marcelo-giugale/does-debt-forgiveness-wor_b_5318764.htmlI'd be interested to read your challenge of his version. A couple of other quick ones:* Nigeria: I once read that Abacha had stolen $5 billion and stashed it away in Switzerland. I thought that such a figure couldn't possibly be real. I changed my mind when the son was arrested and the mother offered to return about $3 billion for his release. Same story all over that country: looting without end. Yet at the same time, the country has no problem entering into more "odious debts". * Ghana: Newly "oil-rich", it spent big and mismanaged its economy. For a rescue, it has run off to the Hyper-Imperialist IMF, to ask for an "odious debt". Who will be to blame when it's crying time? And so on, all over the place.
Let us now get into the matter of debt relief:
I believe that in some cases it is necessary and can be helpful. But it cannot be a solution if people don't get their shite together. * About a decade ago, when Bono and the like were holding rock concerts for "debt forgiveness", US Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, gave a speech that was lauded for being "positive and inspiring". U2 still has it on its webpage. But O'Neil also pointed out some fairly obvious things: " Second, it's a simple fact that is as true about an individual as it is about a nation - even without debt, it's impossible to prosper without income. Even if we forgave all debts, many of these countries still could not fund their own budgets, and they would not be much better off. In Uganda over half of the government budget comes from foreign aid. Think about that. It is not a self-sustaining situation. The only way out of that kind of shortfall is internal economic growth. Local leaders must create the conditions for self-sustaining prosperity, not further dependency." www.u2.com/news/article/441* The debt-forgiveness bandwagon generally runs on the assumption that poor countries do actually want to get out of their "odious debts". That is not necessarily so. There is a thread on how, next week, Kenya will achieve Vision 2030 with a single stroke of the pen. On that, a couple of paragraphs caught my eye in the Daily-Nation article---a statement of "concern": " The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) said last week in a report that rebasing of Kenya’s GDP and pushing the country into middle-income status will take away access to concessional loans and grants.
Low-income countries enjoy highly concessional loans and grants to aid in their development agenda.
Concessional loans carry lower interest rates and have a longer repayment period compared with commercial advances, while grants are non-refundable funds given out by countries or organisations." www.nation.co.ke/business/Kenya-joins-middle-income-economy-status-on-Tuesday/-/996/2465256/-/880adn/-/index.htmlHmmm. This reminded me of statements in some IMF report: " An LIC [Low-Income Country]—in the absence of effective measures to raise the country’s total factor productivity (TFP)—may have an incentive to accumulate a significant amount of concessional debt and allocate resources to consumption rather than investment. The country manages its large debt at a very low cost by stagnating around the cutoff### and becoming permanently aid-dependent. More than just a theoretical possibility, the paper provides empirical evidence of growth stagnation around the cutoff." ###: "[earlier] Such a cutoff exists, for example, with multilateral concessional lending such as loans from the World Bank ... and the IMF ...". www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/staffp/2008/04/pdf/koeda.pdf* There are other points raised, explicitly or implicitly, in your comments. William Easterly, around a decade ago, did an excellent job of dealing with those. The sections of his paper are as follows. - " Third World Debts Are Illegitimate: Unhelpful idea." - "Crus hing Debts Worsen Third World Poverty: Wrong in more ways than one." - " Debt Relief Allows Poor Nations To Spend More On Health And Education: No." - " Debt Relief Will Empower Poor Nations To Make Their Own Choices: Not really."... - " Debt Relief Will Promote Economic Reform: Don't hold your breath." williameasterly.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/fp_debtrelief_111201.pdfCONCLUDING:I think very highly of David Ndii, and I always look forward to reading his articles in the Daily Nation. This week, he ends with some good questions: " Why do we tolerate so much hunger in our midst? Why do we run to donors to beg food whenever there is a mild drought, and leave the UN to feed our children, while we applaud overpriced highways and railways? What do hungry children need more to learn better, food or computers?" www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Kenya-Hunger-Food-Security/-/440808/2466568/-/3pu1l6/-/index.html" Because of evil, neo-colonial, hyper-imperial nasties." doesn't strike me as a good answer to those questions. Some time ago, one Peter Henry, an economics professor at Stanford, looked at whether debt relief really works. (I can't readily locate the relevant papers.) One of his conclusions was "doubtful" for most African countries. The reason: to stay away from "odious debts" requires sufficient economic activity; that cannot happen when the citizens are starving, ill from easily preventable or easily cured diseases, can't even get clean water, ... the usual. So we get back to my view: the problem of "odious debts" will not be solved by outsourcing the real problems and tearing out one's hair at the supposed unfairness of the world. (The world is always unfair. And bad.) Folks need to start taking care of No. 1: stop the mindless eating, put resources where they are most needed, work hard and smart, ... like Ndii says, conscience. |
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Post by jakaswanga on Sept 28, 2014 1:14:24 GMT 3
Wanyee: CONCLUDING: I think very highly of David Ndii, and I always look forward to reading his articles in the Daily Nation. This week, he ends with some good questions: " Why do we tolerate so much hunger in our midst? Why do we run to donors to beg food whenever there is a mild drought, and leave the UN to feed our children, while we applaud overpriced highways and railways? What do hungry children need more to learn better, food or computers?" www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Kenya-Hunger-Food-Security/-/440808/2466568/-/3pu1l6/-/index.html" Because of evil, neo-colonial, hyper-imperial nasties." doesn't strike me as a good answer to those questions. Some time ago, one Peter Henry, an economics professor at Stanford, looked at whether debt relief really works. (I can't readily locate the relevant papers.) One of his conclusions was "doubtful" for most African countries. The reason: to stay away from "odious debts" requires sufficient economic activity; that cannot happen when the citizens are starving, ill from easily preventable or easily cured diseases, can't even get clean water, ... the usual. So we get back to my view: the problem of "odious debts" will not be solved by outsourcing the real problems and tearing out one's hair at the supposed unfairness of the world. (The world is always unfair. And bad.) Folks need to start taking care of No. 1: stop the mindless eating, put resources where they are most needed, work hard and smart, ... like Ndii says, conscience. Very well put OtishOtish. I was just about to point out on Turkana oil-find, that the respective governor and the central government have two METHODOLOGIES to evaluate. The Norwegian one, and the Nigerian one. –- Ghana went for the Nigerian one, paying her elite in foreign currency in foreign banks. And the cedi collapsed and now they have mortgaged all that oil to repay odious debts –-debts to continue paying the same elite in foreign currency. I think if we place bets, oil-rich Kenya, not mention our profitable gas bulb offshore under the Indian ocean floor, is also set to copy the Nigerian oil delta example. It is a slow train crash and we know it. This is why there is a theory in social science which calls war the great purifier. It is when a rotten society burns itself out. Why are the Somalis tearing themselves and their country to peaces like that? –-The Siad Barre presidency, was just like the Salva Kiir. Kiir has been producing oil for 10 years. There is not a single page in book-keeping. (I did not say accounting. Even in Kenya we have not yet reached a stage where we can know what accounting is. That is why 40% of the state budget –-I rebase the :-Xcorruption rate 10% upwards in line with new corrections on statistics-- disappears to nobody knows where.) NB: Uhuru Kenyatta can carry condoms and mosquito nets to Migori all he wants. it is the best he can do. His behaviour on corruption indicates he is yesterday's man. This debt thing is out of his scope. --His chairman of the central bank is for instance a pick-pocket of a professor named Ndung'u. I do not see a pick pocket avoiding an odious debt trap for the nation. www.kenya-confidential.com/index.php/using-joomla/extensions/components/content-component/article-categories/115-central-bank-governor-to-face-corruption-charges-2 |
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Post by wanyee on Sept 28, 2014 16:36:51 GMT 3
Otishotish, 1. It was in fact you that I was quoting when I talked about deteriorated roads, dwindling water supplies, and aborted rural electrification schemes: On Mar 24, 2012 at 2:04am, you wrote: These days I am more concerned with more immediate things. Starting from village: the road from the nearest town is today worse than it was 30 years ago, the supply of clean water less, for years we have been hearing about a rural electrification scheme but hearing is as far as it has got, the local dispensary/clinic has almost no medical supplies and is so filthy that it is a danger to healthy people, dot, dot, dot. Every few years I hear that the government has allocated money but it has been "eaten". I am trying to do my bit at that small, local level. The geo-political imperialists will have to wait (Ref: CRITICAL NEWS "SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA IS BACK" BY WEST). In response, I refer (again) to the following statements: “Many African countries devote a significant share of their scarce public revenues to paying external debt service” (Ndikumana and Boyce, 2011). “Africa spends about four times more on debt-service payments than it does on health care” (Cavanagh and Mander, 2004:57). “Debt has thus become not only a means of pushing these countries into extreme poverty, but also a tool for domination and exploitation, phenomena that one might have supposed to have disappeared along with colonialism. Worse still, it has facilitated a transition from public to private colonization, virtually a return to slavery as we knew it in the nineteenth century. Debt prevents any form of sustainable human development, political stability or security” ( Third World Debt: A Continuing Legacy of Colonialism). ReferencesNdikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council) Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible. A Report of the International Forum On Globalization. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. -- 2. In response to Marcelo Giugale – the World Bank’s Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reduction Programs for Africa – on Africa’s debt burden:Ultimately, what led to many countries becoming mired in a severe debt crisis by the early 1980s was irresponsible lending by the IFIs and other Western banks, and irresponsible borrowing by autocratic regimes allied with the capitalist countries of the global North.(1) In addition, the U.S. had played a significant role in encouraging the IFIs to provide loans to dictatorships and quasi-democratic regimes in pro-capitalist countries in the South, “as part of its Cold War strategy to combat communist influence worldwide.”(2) These same banks – including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, the Bundesbank in West Germany, and the Bank of Canada – also raised nominal interest rates overnight, in a move that came to be known as “the Saturday night special” or more commonly as “the Volcker shock.”(3) Paul Volcker, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank at the time, argued that raising interest rates was the only way to address the persistent crisis of stagflation that had plagued the U.S. and much of the global economy during the 1970s. Consequently, both debts as well as interest payments skyrocketed worldwide, particularly in developing countries, resulting in the 1980s debt crisis. This increase in interest rates further coincided with plunging commodity prices, and “through no fault of its own, the Third World was suddenly faced with higher expenditures (in terms of increased debt maintenance) and lower income (due to falling commodity prices).” Since then, the foreign exchange of developing countries has been used to pay off foreign debts, instead of being utilized to advance their economies as originally intended. References1. Ndikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council) 2. Gibbs, T., & Leech, G. (2009). The Failure of Global Capitalism: From Cape Breton to Colombia and Beyond. Sydney, NS: Cape Breton University Press 3. Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards A Theory Of Uneven Geographical Development. London, U.K: Verso. p.43 4. Ibid5. Urmetzer, P. (2003). From Free Trade to Forced Trade: Canada in the Global Economy. Toronto, ON: Penguin Books 6. Ibid |
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Post by OtishOtish on Sept 28, 2014 19:13:54 GMT 3
2. In response to Marcelo Giugale – the World Bank’s Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reduction Programs for Africa – on Africa’s debt burden:Ultimately, what led to many countries becoming mired in a severe debt crisis by the early 1980s was irresponsible lending by the IFIs and other Western banks, and irresponsible borrowing by autocratic regimes allied with the capitalist countries of the global North. In addition, the U.S. had played a significant role in encouraging the IFIs to provide loans to dictatorships and quasi-democratic regimes in pro-capitalist countries in the South, “as part of its Cold War strategy to combat communist influence worldwide". Wanyee:
(1) As a rule, real control of others requires a sufficient measure of some coercion (soft or hard)---enough to project power that will overcome any resistance. Most people, in most situations, do not have that. That is why it is always easier to control oneself than to control others. And all that is true for both individuals and nations.
(2) People, from individuals to nations, tend to consider their own interests before those of others. The USA's number one interest is the USA, and I don't see that changing any time soon. It is for countries to carefully consider their own interests when dealing with the USA and any other country.
I also note that the new darling is China. African countries are now giddily entering into all sorts of dodgy arrangements with China. Fast-forward to day when it will be "China played a significant role in ... as part of its strategy to ..., and, once again, we got f**ked [willingly]".
(3) Banks do not work for the people they are lending to; they work for the people whose money they are lending out. Their only concern about the borrowers is that they pay back--with interest. And if they have been irresponsible in their lending, it is their business.
It is one thing for a kid or an immature person to say "oh the bank shouldn't have been so quick and easy in lending me the money". But it is quite different when the borrower is a state, especially one that insists it is sovereign, independent, and fully capable of taking care of its affairs.
(1)+(2)+(3): It makes little sense, and there is nothing to be gained, from complaining that others made it easy for poor countries to borrow money. This is especially so because the lenders really don't care; all they care about is getting paid.
What's more, the countries in question strongly object to being asked to be responsible, i.e. the "conditionalities". They will wail about neo-colonialism and the usual *isms. One can't have it both ways---on the one hand complaining about "irresponsible" lenders, and on the other hand resisting lender-calls that they be responsible.
Let us say that you, Individual Wanyee, go to the bank and borrow money on a variable-interest arrangement. Then suppose that next month the bank raises the interest rates and you have to spend more of your salary to service the loan. Do you think you will get much sympathy with "through no fault of my own"? I suspect what you will get is "you should have thought of that!". Likewise, whose fault is it that many African countries prefer to sell raw commodities rather than value-added stuff? That said, I do believe that there should be "sympathetic" mechanisms---e.g. limited debt cancellation---to help indebted countries deal with economic shocks. But such "sympathy" should not be extended to eaters, profligate spenders (e.g. SGR types), and the like. Part of the "Debt Is Killing Us" bandwagon prefers to take a simplistic approach: "So much money going out of Africa compared to what is coming in. So therefore!" But it pays to take a closer look, and the story gets quite interesting if one actually looks at individual countries, rather than one big African lump. Try that exercise. For a quick one, let us take the Beloved Country for our case study. Kenya's external debt payments, 2000-2010:2000: $449 million 2001: $373 million 2002: $414 million 2003: $446 million 2004: $270 million 2005: $446 million 2006: $333 million 2007: $345 million 2008: $298 million 2009: $275 million 2010: $284 million That's an average of about $357 million/year. The Anglo Leasing bandits made off with $700 million (foreign currency). I also noted the case of Abacha---just one guy over a short time---and his $5 billion (foreign currency). Where does the money come from?As Easterly has pointed out, there is a bit of fiction here: the countries in question don't always reach into their pockets to pay their external debt. This year, Kenya had a $600 million loan that was due in August. In June, Kenya's foreign reserves stood at $6.3 billion. Did Kenya, use its "foreign exchange" to pay debt instead of "utilizing it to advance its economy"? No, it left the $6.3 billion untouched and instead went off and borrowed $2 billion, part of which it used to pay the $600 million. Whether the newly borrowed money could have been put to better use had the $600 million debt not had to be paid back in August is a different issue. (But remember that the $600 million was borrowed, in 2012, by a democratically elected government.) Easterly's point is that there is in some places a perpetual treadmill in which lenders are being paid back with their own money (from new borrowing)---a far cry from the poor using what little they have to pay debts. The trick for the countries involved is to somehow manage to keep borrowing, and the party goes on.*** But of course keep wailing about getting deeper into debt. A healthy situation? No. But there it is. (Also keep in mind that for the poorest countries, the major lending comes from IMF/WB, and they are very good at loans for loans; plus, interest-rate raises is not really their thing.) ***Aside: This is a national version of a game that some people sometimes play with credit cards. If you have enough cards, you don't use your own money to make monthly payments; just take from one card to pay another. Cards do have a "cash-limit", so it can get tricky. But when it gets tricky, just apply for new cards; the credit agencies will note the clean record---thanks to all those diligent payments---and new cards, with higher limits, will arrive in the mail. The party can go on for quite some time, but it seems inevitable that it must end in tears. At that point, perhaps one will be ready to listen to good advice: worker harder and smarter, to make more money; spend less and wisely; stop borrowing on the cards; .... CONCLUDING:* Now, let us put aside the Endless Debt Treadmill and suppose that the money comes directly from pocket. If Kenya had chosen to pay that $600 million from its foreign reserves, I would still have noted that it is less that the $700 of Anglo Leasing. And think of what Abacha---just one guy!---could have done in Nigeria with "his" $5 billion. Nigeria's total external debt repayments during the five years of Abacha's rule were less than the $5 billion he helped himself to. This sort of thing is repeated all over the place: Money for guns? TICK! Money to eat? TICK! ... Money for education, health, legal debts? TIME TO BORROW! Some of writers whose articles I've linked above have referred to a "perverse" situation, in which, contrary to their cries, quite a few countries would rather stay on the Debt Treadmill. What they really mean is the 1% that rule and grab everything: If their countries make headway in getting out of debt, then borrowing becomes more costly, and it gets harder to get aid or borrow enough to pay existing debts and do other things that need to be done---no cheap IMF/WB loans, access to debt relief from individual countries, etc. That means more of the national revenues must be spent on what it should be spent on (including debt repayments). That, in turn, means less to eat for the 1%. They don't like that. There is a lesson to be learned somewhere there, and The Good Book puts it thus: pull the log out of your eye, then you will be able to see more clearly the speck in the other fellow's eye.
That is excellent advice, and one can see that it is indeed a good book. |
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Post by OtishOtish on Sept 28, 2014 20:15:26 GMT 3
I think if we place bets, oil-rich Kenya, not mention our profitable gas bulb offshore under the Indian ocean floor, is also set to copy the Nigerian oil delta example. It is a slow train crash and we know it. Sadly, it looks that way. The Turkana will probably have to apply the newly established Lamu Model---if they can get some terrorist friends or are prepared to deliver sufficient fireworks. Did you see how quickly stolen property was found and reclaimed down at the Coast? And now all is peaceful again. |
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Post by wanyee on Sept 29, 2014 14:04:39 GMT 3
Odious debt and international lawA nation’s debts can be considered odious if three conditions hold:1. Absence of consent: the debts were incurred without the consent of the people. This is typically the case when the debts were squandered by an undemocratic regime, such as a military dictatorship. 2. Absence of benefit: The borrowed funds were not used for the public benefit, but instead for the private benefit of the ruler and his associates. The absence-of-benefit condition is evidently met when loans are used in ways that actively harm the people, for example by financing state repression. But it is also met when loans are used to fund capital flight. 3. Creditor awareness: The creditors were aware – or should have been aware – of both of the above conditions. SOURCE: Ndikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council) -- The legal aspects of Africa’s debt burden need to be highlighted, particularly its origins as perceived under international law, “which now considers the debt to be illegitimate.”(1) The concept of “odious debt” is an established legal principle, and it is used to refer to debts owed even though the borrowed funds have been misappropriated by state officials and were either used for personal purposes or oppressing the population. Furthermore, the creditors may be considered to have committed a hostile act against the people, if the borrowed funds have been used for purposes that were not in the interests of the people, with the knowledge of the creditors. In such cases, creditors cannot legitimately expect such debts to be repaid. The principle of odious debt was first applied by the U.S., after it seized control of Cuba from Spain. Although Spain insisted that Cuba repay the loans it owed, the U.S. refused to do so. Instead, the U.S. argued that this debt ought not to be repaid, since it had been imposed on Cuba by force of arms and served Spain’s interests rather than those of its former colony. This precedent was subsequently upheld by international law in the case of Great Britain v. Costa Rica (1923), whereby funds were used for illegitimate purposes with the full knowledge of the creditor. The resulting debt was cancelled.(2) "The history of third world debt is the history of a massive siphoning-off by international finance of the resources of the most deprived peoples. This process is designed to perpetuate itself thanks to a diabolical mechanism whereby debt replicates itself on an ever greater scale, a cycle that can be broken only by canceling the debt. According to a new Working Paper on “Effects of debt on human rights” prepared by Mr. El Hadji Guissé for current UN Sub Commission on Human Rights (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/27), the developing countries’ debt is partly the result of the unjust transfer to them of the debts of the colonizing States! A sum of US$ 59 billion external in public debt was imposed on the newly independent States in 1960. With the additional strain of an interest rate unilaterally set at 14 per cent, this debt increased rapidly. Before they had even had time to organize their economies and get them up and running, the new debtors were already saddled with a heavy burden of debt."(3) References1. Third World Debt a Continuing Legacy of Colonialism, South Centre, Bulletin 85, August 2004 - www.globalissues.org/article/29/causes-of-the-debt-crisis#AContinuingLegacyofColonialism (Accessed on September 29, 2014) 2. Ndikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council) 3. Third World Debt a Continuing Legacy of Colonialism
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Post by OtishOtish on Sept 30, 2014 0:54:07 GMT 3
Odious debt and international lawA nation’s debts can be considered odious if three conditions hold:1. Absence of consent: the debts were incurred without the consent of the people. This is typically the case when the debts were squandered by an undemocratic regime, such as a military dictatorship. 2. Absence of benefit: The borrowed funds were not used for the public benefit, but instead for the private benefit of the ruler and his associates. The absence-of-benefit condition is evidently met when loans are used in ways that actively harm the people, for example by financing state repression. But it is also met when loans are used to fund capital flight. 3. Creditor awareness: The creditors were aware – or should have been aware – of both of the above conditions.
Wanyee:
Perhaps you missed it again. Try the following.
(a) Look up the meaning of "odious" in your nearest on-line dictionary. Try one with clear and simple English.
(b) On the basis of the clear and simple English of (a), ask yourself if things like Kenya's SGR debt are in the "odious" category.
(c) While still with (a) go back and re-read what I wrote. But this time wherever you comes across
odious debt
remove the surrounding quotation marks and "re-filter".
Now, let's back to the Egghead Version that you keep referring to and which I was aware of. Those who keep working this version will point to the few "successes" of countries like Ecuador. The reality is that in the end these "successes" don't actually get a better deal than those who simply say "we can't pay, please help", but, boy, have they generated Egghead Excitement & Fireworks!
What's more, nobody is keen to buy any "odious debt" nonsense from Africa. The reasons are pretty obvious, but you can also take another look at Easterly.
* Easterly was writing in 2001 when in Kenya---Island In Ocean of Chaos, Economic Powerhouse Of East Africa, Important Ally In This-And-That, Etc., Etc., Etc. ...---Moi was still in power. (He even uses Kenya and Moi as examples.)
* In the context of debt that has been acquired by a thoroughly rotten fellow, he points to Moi and aks this: what if the rotten fellow has been in power for a long time, looks set to stay, and would like to pile on more debts? (This is paraphrased and with an implicit extension.)
* The other point he makes is that when the system is thoroughly rotten, you can expect the rot to continue even if the Big Man changes. So where do you draw the line? And sure enough, in Kenya you can plot the line from Moi to Kibaki to The Project: as far as finances go, the only thing that has changed is the Rot Master; in everything else, it's kaeni hivyo hivyo, kazi iendelee, accept and move on.
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Post by wanyee on Sept 30, 2014 2:54:47 GMT 3
Otishotish, Do you agree or disagree as to whether Kenya/Africa already had odious (or illegitimate) debts before the Chinese came? Once again, please consider the following:The legal aspects of Africa’s debt burden need to be highlighted, particularly its origins as perceived under international law, “which now considers the debt to be illegitimate.”(1) The concept of “odious debt” is an established legal principle, and it is used to refer to debts owed even though the borrowed funds have been misappropriated by state officials and were either used for personal purposes or oppressing the population. Furthermore, the creditors may be considered to have committed a hostile act against the people, if the borrowed funds have been used for purposes that were not in the interests of the people, with the knowledge of the creditors. In such cases, creditors cannot legitimately expect such debts to be repaid. The principle of odious debt was first applied by the U.S., after it seized control of Cuba from Spain. Although Spain insisted that Cuba repay the loans it owed, the U.S. refused to do so. Instead, the U.S. argued that this debt ought not to be repaid, since it had been imposed on Cuba by force of arms and served Spain’s interests rather than those of its former colony. This precedent was subsequently upheld by international law in the case of Great Britain v. Costa Rica (1923), whereby funds were used for illegitimate purposes with the full knowledge of the creditor. The resulting debt was cancelled.(2) References1. Third World Debt a Continuing Legacy of Colonialism, South Centre, Bulletin 85, August 2004 - www.globalissues.org/article/29/causes-of-the-debt-crisis#AContinuingLegacyofColonialism (Accessed on September 29, 2014) 2. Ndikumana, L., & Boyce, J.K. (2011). Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent. New York, NY: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, Royal African Society, and Social Science Research Council) See also:Barack Obama’s three misdeeds in AfricaBy CADTM
Global Research, July 21, 2009
21 July 2009Article authored by Emilie Tamadaho Atchaca (Benin), Solange Koné (Ivory Coast), Jean Victor Lemvo (Congo Brazzaville), Damien Millet (France), Luc Mukendi and Victor Nzuzi (Congo Kinshasa), Sophie Perchellet (France), Aminata Barry Touré (Mali), Eric Toussaint (Belgium), Ibrahim Yacouba (Niger)[1]After the G8 summit in Italy, US President Barack Obama flew off to Africa with a so-called gift: an envelope of 20 billion dollars to distribute over 3 years, so that “generous” donors in the rich countries could “help” reduce world hunger. While the promise to eradicate hunger has been made on a regular basis since 1970, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published a report last month indicating that the number of undernourished people has passed the one billion point, that is 100 million more over the past year. At the same time, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) sounded the alarm bell and announced that it had to cut rations distributed in Rwanda , Uganda , Ethiopia , North Korea and Kenya (Obama’s paternal family’s home country), principally due to the reduction in contributions from the US, its main donor[2]. Beyond the effect of President Obama’s announcement, the latest in a long list of good intentions that have done nothing to improve the current situation, it is worth recalling that the 20 billion dollar aid figure over 3 years amounts to less than 2% of the sums the US spent in 2008-2009 to save the bankers and insurers responsible for the crisis. After extending a hand to the “Muslim friends” in his Cairo speech (while continuing to destabilise the Middle East region behind the scenes), after a hand held out to the “Russian friends” (while maintaining his stance on the Eastern European anti-missile shield), now Obama is extending a hand to the “African friends” (while keeping his neocolonial cap firmly atop his head). When Obama lets the rich countries off the hook Obama’s long address in Accra, Ghana, follows up on a series of meetings with his counterparts abroad. Under the pretext of setting new bases for US relations with the rest of the world, once again Obama has excelled in the art of advocating openness and change, while continuing to implement his forerunners’ disastrous policies[3]. From the outset, he stated that it was “up to Africans to determine Africa’s future”. And yet, while everyone can agree with this statement that makes perfect sense on the face of it, in reality this is not always put into practice, and the G8 countries over the past half-century have played a key role in depriving African peoples of their sovereignty. Obama doesn’t fail to remind us “I have the blood of Africa within me”, as if this automatically provided more strength and legitimacy to his message. In any case the message was clearly conveyed: the colonialism their ancestors were victims of should no longer provide excuses for Africans. This is very similar to the speech French President Nicolas Sarkozy pronounced in Dakar a few months after his election. But Sarkozy’s speech sparked a wave of well-deserved protest, and so far Obama has miraculously averted such a response…But now we will do what it takes to end this injustice! Straight off, Obama let the Western world off the hook for the current state of the African continent’s development. Declaring, “development depends upon good governance” and “that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans”[4], he starts out from the false observation that the poverty plaguing Africa is primarily due to poor governance or the free choices of African leaders. In short, it is Africans’ fault. Nothing could be farther from the truth! With affirmations such as “the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants”[5], President Obama is downplaying the rich countries’ central role in the course Africa has taken. And in particular the role of the major international financial institutions, starting from IMF and the World Bank, which are powerful instruments of the great powers’ domination organizing the subjection of the peoples of the South. This is done via structural adjustment policies (end to subsidies for staple goods, drastic cuts in public spending, privatisation of public companies, market liberalization, etc.) that make it impossible to meet basic needs, spread deep poverty at breakneck speed, increase inequalities and make the worst horrors possible. When Obama compares incomparable situations To back up his statements, Obama compared Africa to South Korea. Firstly, he explained that fifty years ago, “when my father travelled to the United States from Kenya to study, at that time the per capita income and Gross Domestic Product of Kenya was higher than South Korea’s”, before he added: “There had been some talk about the legacies of colonialism and other policies by wealthier nations, and without in any way diminishing that history, the point I made was that the South Korean government, working with the private sector and civil society, was able to create a set of institutions that provided transparency and accountability[6]. Regular and attentive readers of CADTM publications choked on that one! This is because South Korea’s supposed economic success[7] came about despite the recommendations imposed by the World Bank on most other developing countries. After the Second World War and up until 1961, the military dictatorship in power in South Korea benefited from significant donations from the United States, totalling the sum of 3.1 billion dollars. This is more than all World Bank loans to the other Third-World countries during the same period! Thanks to these donations, South Korea did not have to go into debt for 17 years (1945-1961). External borrowing only became significant from the end of the 1970s, once Korea’s industrialisation was well under way. So everything started out in Korea through an iron-fisted dictatorship that implemented a statist and highly protectionist policy. Washington set up this dictatorship in the wake of the Second World War. The State imposed a radical agrarian reform under which big Japanese landowners were expropriated without compensation. The peasants took on ownership of small plots of land (equivalent to up to 3 hectares per family) and the State expropriated the surplus crops, formerly pocketed by Japanese landowners when Korea was a Nippon colony. The land reform set stringent restrictions on the peasantry. The State set prices and production quotas, not allowing for the free play of market forces. From 1961 to 1979, the World Bank backed Park Chung Hee’s military dictatorship although Korea refused to follow the Bank’s development model. At the time, the state was planning the country’s economic development with an iron fist. Continuing to implement a policy of industrialisation by substitution for imports and the overexploitation of the working class were two ingredients in the country’s economic success. The World Bank did back Chun Doo Whan’s dictatorship (1980-1987) although the Bank’s recommendations were not always followed (particularly in terms of restructuring the automotive sector). Thus when Obama declared, “the South Korean government, working with the private sector and civil society, was able to create a set of institutions that provided transparency and accountability”[8] he failed to mention that the private sector was clearly guided by the State and the Korean dictatorship “dialogued” with civil society by guns and cannons. The history of South Korea from 1945 until the early 1980s was marked by massacres and brutal repression. It is also important to refresh Barack Obama’s memory as he refers to the Zimbabwean example to illustrate Africans’ failure and comparing it to the South Korean model. The year Zimbabwe achieved independence (1980) was marked by popular uprisings against the South Korean military dictatorship. These were crushed in blood; more than 500 civilians were killed by the military with Washington’s backing[9]. At this time, and since 1945, the South Korean armed forces were put under a joint US-Korean command, itself under the control of the commander-in-chief of United States forces in South Korea. The massacres perpetrated by the South Korean army in May 1980 were completed by a massive repression in the following months. According to an official report dated 9 February 1981, over 57,000 people were arrested during the “Social Purification Campaign” underway since the summer of 1980. Almost 39,000 of these people were sent to military camps for “physical and psychological re-education”. In February 1981, the dictator Chun Doo Hwan was received at the White House by the new United States President, Ronald Reagan. Is this the example Obama wants to offer to the people of Zimbabwe and other African countries? Korea’s geostrategic position was one of its major assets until the end of the 1980s, enabling it to avert IMF and World Bank control. But in the 1990s, the entire geopolitical situation was in disarray following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Washington’s attitude towards allied dictatorships shifted gradually, accepting to support civil governments. Between 1945 and 1992, South Korea lived under a military regime with Washington’s blessing. The first civil opponent elected to the presidency in an open election was Kim Youngsam, who accepted the Washington Consensus and implemented a clearly neoliberal agenda (elimination of tariff barriers, multiple privatisations, liberalization of capital movements), plunging South Korea into the 1997-1998 South-East Asian economic crisis. In the meantime, South Korea was able to achieve an industrialisation the rich countries refused in Africa’s case. We can thereby understand to what extent the South Korean model is unconvincing and can’t be reproduced everywhere. Moreover, South Korea’s relative lack of natural resources paradoxically favoured its development because the country avoided transnational corporations’ resource lust. The United States viewed Korea as a strategic zone from a military standpoint, facing the USSR bloc, not as crucial sources of supplies (as were Nigeria, Angola and Congo-Kinshasa). If Korea had major reserves of oil or other strategic raw materials, Washington would not have allowed it the same elbowroom to develop a powerful industrial complex. The United States are not prepared to deliberately foster the emergence of powerful competitors with both major natural reserves and diversified industries. When Obama pardons capitalism for its misdeeds As for the current economic crisis, Obama spoke out against the irresponsible risk-taking of a few, sparking a recession that has swept the world. Thus, he conveys the impression that this crisis was caused by the irresponsibility of a handful of individuals whose excesses plunged the world into recession. This analysis eclipses the responsibility of those who have imposed financial deregulation for almost thirty years, above all the United States. It would be more precise to underline the productivist capitalist development model, painfully imposed by the countries of the North, as the source of the many crises underway. These are not merely economic crises, but also food, migratory, social, environmental and climate crises. All these crises originate with decisions made by imperialist governments in the North, and above all the United States government which controls both the IMF and World Bank, so it can impose conditionalities favourable to its interests and those of its major firms. Since the early 1960s, when most African countries achieved “independence”, IMF and the World Bank have been a kind of Trojan horse to promote the appropriation of natural resources and defend creditors’ interests. By supporting dictatorships in many corners of the world, (Mobutu in Zaire, Suharto in Indonesia, Pinochet in Chile and so many others), then by forcing the implementation of harsh antisocial policies, successive Western governments have never allowed for the guarantee of basic human rights throughout the world. Expressions such as “right to self-determination”, “democracy”, “economic and political rights” are not realities in Africa, contrary to the crushing weight of debt repayments and the pleas of the starving. When will African emancipation come? Africa was broken by the devastating slave trade system in the context of the triangular international trade established by Europe and its settlers in the Americas from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Then it was held in trusteeship by European colonialism from the end of the 19th century until independence. Thereafter, Africa has been held in dependency through the mechanism of the debt and public development aid. After African countries achieved independence, they were handed over to potentates (Mobutu, Bongo, Eyadema, Amin Dada, Bokassa, Biya…) most of whom were protected by the European capitals and by Washington. Several important African leaders who sought autonomous development that would promote their peoples were assassinated on the orders of Paris, Brussels, London or Washington (Patrice Lumumba in 1961, Sylvanus Olympio in 1963, Thomas Sankara in 1987…). The African ruling classes and the political regimes they established have a very clear share in the responsibility for Africa’s litany of misfortunes. Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe is one of these. Today, the peoples of Africa are directly affected by the effects of the world crisis whose epicentre is in Washington and Wall Street, revealing that capitalism is up against an impasse unacceptable for peoples. Barack Obama’s African origins are a godsend for businesses in his country defending very specific economic interests in the exploitation of Africa’s resources. This is a reality that Obama sweeps away with the back of his hand, as he continues a paternalistic and moralising path in order to convince Africans not to undertake the struggle for meaningful independence and real development, finally guaranteeing the full satisfaction of human needs. Translated by Maria Gatti. [1] Emilie Tamadaho Atchaca is president of CADD Benin, Solange Koné is a women’s rights activist in Ivory Coast, Jean Victor Lemvo – Solidaire- Pointe Noire (Congo Brazzaville), Damien Millet is the CADTM France spokesperson, Luc Mukendi is the coordinator of AMSEL / CADTM LUBUMBASHI , Victor Nzuzi is a farmer, coordinator of GRAPR and NAD Kinshasa, Sophie Perchellet is a researcher at CADTM Belgium , Aminata Barry Touré is president of CAD-Mali/Coordinator of the Peoples’ Forum, Eric Toussaint is president of CADTM Belgium , Ibrahim Yacouba is a trade unionist in Niger, … all are members of the international CADTM network, www.cadtm.org [2] See the Financial Times (FT) 12 June 2009. According to FT, Burham Philbrook, the US Undersecretary of State for Agriculture declared that Washington could not guarantee funding of WFP at the level of 2008, during which the United States had brought 2 billion dollars to the WFP budget. Also according to FT, Philbrook suggested that WFP had to reduce its aid although he knew perfectly well that the number of hungry people increased in 2009. [3] This continuity is also visible in Obama’s failure to take action in the putsch in Honduras. While denouncing it, he lets matters slide. Furthermore, the Pentagon is very close to the putschists. The latter would not remain in power if the Pentagon gave them the order to withdraw. [4] www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56711G20090711 [5] www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=165220 [6] From Obama’s statement at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila. [7] See Eric Toussaint, World Bank: A Critical Primer, Pluto-Between the Lines-David Philip, London-Toronto-Cape Town, 2007, chapter 11, “South Korea: the miracle unmasked”. Online: www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article1847 [8] seoul.usembassy.gov/pres_071009.html [9] Eric Toussaint, chapter 11, “South Korea : the miracle unmasked”, p. 117. SOURCE cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=4619 |
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Post by wanyee on Oct 1, 2014 10:16:23 GMT 3
Chapter 3 - From the Perspective of International Political Economy (IPE)The international political economy (IPE) approach dates back to 1971 when Susan Strange, then at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, founded the International Political Economy Group (IPEG).(1) The IPE approach is centred on the institutional arrangements and power structures that privilege certain actors and values. This allows for a critical assessment of these institutional arrangements and power structures, as well as their origins and history, both temporally and physically. It encourages an examination of the context under which they were established, the people involved in their formation, the underlying objectives and values, as well as an analysis of how the relationships between these institutions and actors have evolved over time.(2) From the IPE perspective, the Washington Consensus illustrates how values that are favoured by certain powerful actors serve to promote their interests and positions within the global political economy. As Ray Bush writes, “it is not that markets are good or bad, but that some countries or regions have the power to make the world market work to their advantage, while others do not, and have to bear the cost.”(3) He cites the fact that the liberalization of African economies occurred three times faster than the reduction in tariffs in the member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).(4) In the context of the extractive industry, mining regimes--regulatory frameworks are a central component of the power structures that influence relations among the actors involved. This conditions the nature of the negotiating space that is created, the results of the negotiation processes, and the ability of participants to advance alternative policies, thereby perpetuating “asymmetrical relations of power and influence.”(5) In particular, the free entry system is a key structural issue that results in the preferential treatment enjoyed by the mining industry. The principle of free entry can be basically defined as the “right of any person to freely access lands and resources for mining purposes.”(6) The free entry system gives mining corporations the right of entry on virtually all lands without consulting affected landowners.(7) In its most established form, the free entry system “confers little to no government discretionary powers, and mining entrepreneurs can exercise these…rights without ‘fearing’ government or third-party intervention.”(8) This mineral tenure system grants unlimited access to land based on the assumption that mining is the “highest and best” use of it.(9) Regimes based on free entry appear characterized by an asymmetrical power structure that constrains the negotiating space of impacted communities, thereby limiting their opportunity to choose a development strategy that is suitable to their needs.(10) These power asymmetries are perpetuated through the lack of appropriate resources, funding, and opportunities that facilitate meaningful participation. Meaningful participation is based on involvement that is “timely, inclusive, deliberative, transparent and empowering.”(11) Instead, project-affected people are rarely involved in conceptualizing or designing projects that affect them.(12) “Decision-making structures are value-articulating institutions that determine the values that can be expressed, and, ultimately, the preferable choices…they establish procedures that frame the debate and that influence what will be negotiated, thereby skewing the outcome.”(13) In other words, the ability to shape institutions is largely dependent on the ability to promote ‘priority values’ within those institutions. The values favoured by certain powerful actors effectively serve to promote their interests and positions. Values are transmitted by institutions and actors, and any possibilities or outcomes of political action are largely determined by the hierarchy of these values.(14) For example, the World Bank Group (WBG) has rejected a key recommendation from the 2003 Extractive Industries Review (EIR) that communities affected by mining be entitled to “free, prior, and informed consent” (FPIC).(15) Instead the WBG advocates for free, prior and informed consultation, a 2005 amendment that removes the need for consent, thereby threatening the autonomy and human rights of people affected by extraction / ‘development’ projects.(16) Accumulation by dispossession by the global extractive industry is facilitated by the free entry principle, which inspired the nineteenth-century formulation of mining legislation / regulatory frameworks in North American and British spheres.(17) Dawn Hoogeven argues that the roots of free entry and its significance to current resource regimes requires more careful consideration, rather than focusing on discourses regarding sustainability and best practice procedures, which tend to obscure the power of mineral rights regulations and the impact of the free-entry system. Tracing the historical path of the free entry mining system in various countries, and its impacts on individual and collective rights to lands and resources, is an issue that requires more attention from researchers, organizations, and policymakers concerned about the extractive industry.(18) According to Bonnie Campbell, one of the foremost researchers on the extractive industry, the free entry principle also guided the worldwide liberalization process of mining regimes in the 1980s and 1990s, along with other liberalization measures adopted during the Washington Consensus in the 1990s. Campbell explains that the rights, principles and values that free mining embodies were adopted in various mining code reforms.(19) This is the period when the global extractive industry underwent an extensive process of deregulation, financialization, and privatization.(20) According to Warhust and Bridge, “over 90 countries have reformed their mining investment laws and mining codes in the past two decades.”(21) Moreover, rather than being an integral part of national development projects, these reforms were designed as “an isolated, sectorial approach favouring mining corporate interests.”(22) See also:Tiomin contract is manipulative, argues Reform GroupThe Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC)
Written By: Emmanuel Kola,
Posted: Tue, Sep 11, 2007The Coalition for Constitutional Reforms, Kenya (CCR-Kenya) wants Canadian Mining Company, Tiomin Resources Incorporated, to discontinue plans for titanium mining in Kwale, Coast Province. CCR-Kenya and its partners say the contract agreement under which Tiomin Resources has been operating is based on the exploitative free entry system. The pro-reform body says the system is a dominant means through which mineral rights are usually granted to mining companies in most countries. It gives the miner's the exclusive right to people-owned mineral substances from the surface to unlimited extension downwards. Consequently, CCR-Kenya is calling on the company to initiate a departure process through which they can be justly compensated any fees they paid to landowners. The pro-reform body says titanium deposits in Kwale should be left to the Kenyans to help local processing industries and not handed over to a private company for export without processing. CCR-Kenya plans to launch a nationwide campaign on Wednesday against Tiomin's mining activities in Kwale. Signatures are being collected from members for a petition to the Government. SOURCE: The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) URL: www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp?ID=44907 (Accessed on 11th September, 2007) References1. Murphy, C.N., & Nelson, D.R. (2001). International political economy: a tale of two heterodoxies. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 3(3): 393-412. 2. Strange, S. (1996). The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press 3. Bush, R. (2007). Poverty and Neoliberalism: Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South. London, U.K: Pluto Press. p.42 4. Ibid. p.43 5. Campbell, B. (2010). Revisiting the Reform Process of African Mining Regimes. Special Issue – Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 197-217. 6. Ibid7. Campbell, K. (2004). Undermining our Future: How Mining’s Privileged Access to Land Harms People and the Environment (A Discussion Paper on the Need to Reform Mineral Tenure Law in Canada). Vancouver, BC: West Coast Environmental Law 8. Ibid9. MiningWatch Canada. (2010). Reforming Mining Laws and Policies - www.miningwatch.ca/reforming-mining-laws-and-policies (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 10. MiningWatch Canada. (2008a). The Boreal Below: Mining Issues and Activities in Canada’s Boreal Forest. Ottawa. ON: MiningWatch Canada 11. Sinclair, A.J., Diduck, A., & Fitzpatrick, P. (2007). Conceptualizing learning for sustainability through environmental assessment: Critical reflections on 15 years of research. Environmental Impact Assessment Review (28)2, 415-428. 12. Weitzner, V. (2010). Indigenous Participation in Multipartite Dialogues on Extractives: What Lessons Can Canada and Others Share? Special Issue – Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 87-109. 13. Walter, M., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2010). How to Be Heard When Nobody Wants to Listen: Community Action against Mining in Argentina. Special Issue – Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 281-301. 14. Campbell, B. (2010). 15. Financial Times (2003), 3rd February. London, UK. Quoted in Moody, R. (2007). 16. World Bank. (2005). Revised operational policy on indigenous peoples, OP 4.10. In The World Bank operational manual. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank 17. Canel, E., Idemudia, U., & North, L. (2010). Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 5-25. 18. Lapointe, U. (2009). Origins of Mining Regimes in Canada & The Legacy of the Free Mining System. Presented at the Conference on Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. March 5-7, 2009. The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) and the Extractive Industries Research Group (EIRG). Toronto, ON: York University 19. Campbell, B. (2010). Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 21. Warhust., A., & Bridge, G. (1997). “Economic liberalization, innovation and technology transfer: opportunities for cleaner production in the minerals industry.” Natural Resources Forum (21)1, 1-12. 22. Canel, E., Idemudia, U., & North, L. (2010). -- NEXT: The Resource Curse
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Post by jakaswanga on Oct 3, 2014 23:16:57 GMT 3
WANYEE,
Concentrated and furious you have been in your posts on this subject. Passionate and academically wide-ranging, you have unleashed a tsunami of literature covering the same. As far as I can read, this external aspect is now adequately catered for. If you keep it up without the other side, I am afraid you will run the risk of a monomanic bias.
Let me explain what I mean.
To counterbalance the avalanche of EXTERNAL DETERMINANTS, there is need too, for a second part to exclusively deal with the INTERNAL factors at play within the African societies, or political polities. The factors which make it so easy, nearly inevitable, that Imperialism and these external organisations run amok, shaping Africa to their whims.
Why do our current political systems collaborate to decisively with our own degradation as a people? Why do we manufacture leaders who are so treacherous to the aspirations of our people? This political economy, Wanyee, I see you avoiding.
Consider a cabinet consisting of Saitoti and Kibaki. Between the two of them, in terms of sheer brain power, why do they let degenerates like the IMF run rings around them in SAP and the rest of the hocus-pocus from Bretton Woods? We need a honest and ruthless look at ourselves. And a ruthless reckoning within ourselves. Our own collusion with the global forces of our dehumanisation.
Imperialism can not be denounced for diligence in doing what it set out to do as its historical mission. It is the liberation struggle in Africa, falling short, that needs to be in the docket, its masks being peeled back –-by a furious, passionate and articulate Wanyee!
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Post by OtishOtish on Oct 4, 2014 6:41:58 GMT 3
Wanyee:
That is truly bizarre stuff. That interpretation of South Korea's industrialization and economic history is so absurd that it's hard to believe that anyone who can read, write, and has access to even very sketchy information could come up with it. Just what purpose is served by these wild "theories"? It would be a waste of time to *really* tackle that or any other aspect of that "industrious"article; so I won't. But at least a couple of the really funny parts should be noted:
** "In the meantime, South Korea was able to achieve an industrialisation the rich countries refused in Africa’s case."
- African countries, or at least those who write such things, should grow up and give up this "daddy said he could" but "mummy said I couldn't" sort of thing. Such attitudes are fundamentally self-defeating and will produce nothing.
- I have heard some countries---and Kenya is one of them---boldly state that "we will be an industrialized state by this and that date", but I don't see any actions on the ground that would suggest a reality even remotely resembling that. Is that because they are waiting for the "refusals" to be lifted?
** "If Korea had major reserves of oil or other strategic raw materials, Washington would not have allowed it the same elbowroom to develop a powerful industrial complex."
- There we go again: "allowed". Daddy, daddy, please let us!
- Your friends have not carefully considered the implications of their "argument" if applied to all those African (and other) countries that do not have "major reserves of oil or other strategic raw materials".
- Have your friends considered that some countries that do not have "natural resources" might simply have decided to work harder and smarter? Have they, for example, considered how a country like South Korea that, on the basis of Korean land, ought to have no food security is in fact doing so well in that regard (cheap food, etc.)? How? Take a look at whose land they are using while the owners wail about "not allowed, no this, no that".
- Your friends have overlooked the fact that rich countries actually prefer to have other countries get rich and then work with them, as long as the bone-heads keep supplying the natural resources. That is why the WTO negotiations have pretty much ground to a halt, African countries are getting shafted, but the rich folks are all signing FTAs between themselves.
"They don't care about and will not help us develop because we have no natural resources!"
&
"They allowed those others to develop because they didn't have any natural resources!"
Sigh.
** General Park was certainly not a "nice" man. Your friends list some of some of the nasty things he did:
- "more than 500 civilians were killed by the military"
- "over 57,000 people were arrested"
- "39,000 of these people were sent to military camps"
Your friends then ask The Big Question:
"Is this the example Obama wants to offer to the people of Zimbabwe and other African countries?"
Really.
I had to read that one three times. First: normal reading. Second: check that it's not the late-night booze. Third: did someone really, really write that and mean to write it?
We'll skip the fact that obviously Obama did not mean that. We'll also skip the fact that there are many aspects of South Korea's industrialization and economic development that African countries could learn from and without having to do everything that some dictator in Korea did. Instead let us cheerfully accept the claim that Obama meant exactly what your friends, for whatever reason, claim or imply that he meant. Then we have this;
- If the brutalization of the populace is an "inevitable" aspect of development, then in recent times African countries have been way ahead in the game. What African "leaders" have done, and still continue to do, to their populations far exceeds the list of Park's sins. So, to the extent that those are "pre-requisites", they have been satisfied 1000000 times. Now develop.
- Zimbabwe doesn't need such an "example". Mugabe, all on his own, and before Obama came along, managed to do it to the Ndebele. Made General Park look like a boy-scout.
Now, African countries are well within their rights to pursue whatever path they want and to industrialize in whatever way they want. But they should give up this idea of "we are not allowed", "we are just poor exploited folks", etc. Nobody really cares about such wailing, especially when they see African "leaders" really socking it to their people. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and nobody has much sympathy for those who seemingly can't focus on their own interests. Quite a few of the billions that, say, Western commercial banks lend to Africa are just the billions that the Abachas and their like stole. Imagine having to borrow and pay interest on your own money! And then, instead of dealing with the theft at the root, it's all "oh, those bad, terrible foreigners!". Step One in getting others to respect you and your people: Respect yourself and your people.
In concluding:
For the most part, I have no "problems" with the sort of stuff your friends churn out. And the same for their friends who are indicated in the lists of references. But one shouldn’t take it too seriously. People have to make a living, and one can be made on that particular production line; in fact, one is sometimes surprised by the number of people who are getting are paid, by “nasty, exploitative, neo-colonial types” (this or that foundation, this or that aid program, etc.) to labour in “research institutes” that are solely devoted to churning out material against “nasty, exploitative, neo-colonial types”. We understand---a man is not a cow and cannot eat grass---but real development cannot be founded on such scribbles.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 4, 2014 16:20:34 GMT 3
Jakaswanga and Otishotish, History is full of examples of leaders who have tried to do the right thing, particularly here in Africa, but have been eliminated by the “West”: “Several important African leaders who sought autonomous development that would promote their peoples were assassinated on the orders of Paris, Brussels, London or Washington (Patrice Lumumba in 1961, Sylvanus Olympio in 1963, Thomas Sankara in 1987…)” [Ref: Barack Obama’s three misdeeds in Africa] The point that I am basically trying to make has been stated in the same article above: “Today, the peoples of Africa are directly affected by the effects of the world crisis whose epicentre is in Washington and Wall Street, revealing that capitalism is up against an impasse unacceptable for peoples” [ Ibid] |
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Post by OtishOtish on Oct 4, 2014 17:40:50 GMT 3
“Several important African leaders who sought autonomous development that would promote their peoples were assassinated on the orders of Paris, Brussels, London or Washington Over 50 years ago. Time to suck it up and move on. Focus on the "important leaders" that the continent has been churning out since then and what they have been up to. Yes, I have had it said that those who overthrew and killed him were his own country-men but were supposedly working at the behest of the French. Let us suppose that all that is indeed true. I would then suggest focusing on the " his own country-men". The way the world works is that as long as there are "usables" available, they will be used; so instead of weeping to or about the French, who really don't care, it is more useful to work on producing strong, "use-proof" locals and institutions. |
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Post by jakaswanga on Oct 4, 2014 17:46:18 GMT 3
Jakaswanga and Otishotish, History is full of examples of leaders who have tried to do the right thing, particularly here in Africa, but have been eliminated by the “West”: “Several important African leaders who sought autonomous development that would promote their peoples were assassinated on the orders of Paris, Brussels, London or Washington (Patrice Lumumba in 1961, Sylvanus Olympio in 1963, Thomas Sankara in 1987…)” [Ref: Barack Obama’s three misdeeds in Africa] The point that I am basically trying to make has been stated in the same article above: “Today, the peoples of Africa are directly affected by the effects of the world crisis whose epicentre is in Washington and Wall Street, revealing that capitalism is up against an impasse unacceptable for peoples” [ Ibid] I agree. To the list on that pantheon of the eliminated, one can add Eduardo Mondlane, Steven Biko, Amilcar Cabral --whose thought is so profound it has achieved cult status in academia. But please Wanyee, Barrack Obama is hardly the fellow to quote on Africa's economic woes! Guy can not fix universal health care in the USA! such care as is as ABC in the rest of the so-called developed world, as a car insurance is everywhere. |
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Post by wanyee on Oct 5, 2014 10:16:36 GMT 3
Jakaswanga and Otishotish, Just to clarify, can we agree with the following statement: “Today, the peoples of Africa are directly affected by the effects of the world crisis whose epicentre is in Washington and Wall Street, revealing that capitalism is up against an impasse unacceptable for peoples” (Ref: Barack Obama’s three misdeeds in Africa). -- Chapter 4 – The Resource CurseThe World Bank has also acknowledged that without effective public policies to encourage economic growth, large-scale resource extraction does not automatically lead to long-term sustainable development.(1) The World Bank has stated that the successes of exploratory processes do not necessarily translate into mining projects, associated industries, employment, or economic growth, if the requisite conditions are not met.(2) Although the World Bank and other major institutions continue to promote resource-led development as a model for economic growth in developing countries, a paradox of underdevelopment generally accompanies resource-led economic growth. Ironically, countries with abundant resources tend to perform less well economically, than countries that are considered resource-poor.(3) Large-scale resource extraction has often ruined traditional means of livelihood and natural environments worldwide, leaving behind formerly sustainable societies and local economies dependent on foreign corporations and external markets.(4) A World Bank report has confirmed that local economies do “not appear to have benefitted from large-scale mining through sustained economic growth and improved services” and that often “local people feel no perceptible benefit from the resources extracted from ‘their’ land”.(5) Many local people also complained about the lack of jobs and access to land for farming.(6) In fact, the World Bank now admits that exploitation of resources leaves affected communities poorer.(7) This has been labelled the “resource-curse”.(8) In a report titled Where is the wealth of nations? the World Bank states that ‘natural capital’ such as natural resources has been grossly undervalued, and that preserving this natural capital is vital to reducing poverty in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa.(9) The World Bank’s 2003 Extractive Industries Review (EIR) brought the resource-curse thesis into a broader public arena.(10) According to the EIR, while per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had been growing by an average of 1.7 per cent in all developing and transitional economies, it was contracting by 2.3 per cent a year in those where minerals accounted for more than 50 per cent of exports.”(11) The World Bank has concluded that “for every percentage point increase in a country’s extractive dependency, that country’s potential GDP falls by 9 percent.”(12) Recent studies in the Philippines found that GDP grows by only 0.15 per cent for every 10 per cent increase in mining-related income. These statistics demonstrate that far from being a driver of economic growth, “GDP growth responds weakest to growth in the mining sector.”(13) Rather than generating substantial and uninterrupted revenue flows at predictable levels, or providing employment and infrastructure that can help build nationally integrated markets to meet domestic requirements, resource dependence has primarily served the interests of TNCs and their global markets.(14) According to Ray Bush, “the dynamics of imperialism, promoted by TNCs in the political and economic internationalization of capital, continue to shape the relations between mineral economies and the international economy.”(15) One consequence of this is “the reproduction of ways in which communities bordering mines are abjected.”(16) James Ferguson has summarized this as the way people are thrown aside, expelled, or discarded and also thrown down, debased and humiliated.(17) References1. Campbell, B. (2010). Revisiting the Reform Process of African Mining Regimes. Special Issue – Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 197-217. 2. World Bank. (1996). A Mining strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean: Executive summary. Mining Unit. Industry and Energy Division. Technical Paper No. 345, Washington, DC: World Bank 3. Bush, R. (2007). Poverty and Neoliberalism: Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South. London, U.K: Pluto Press 4. Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N. (2002a). Globalisation: Threats and Opportunities. In Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 5. World Bank. (2003). Project Performance Assessment Report: Ghana Mining Sector Rehabilitation Project (Credit 1921-GH) and Mining Sector Development and Environment Project (Credit 2743-GH). Sector and Thematic Evaluation Group, Operations Evaluation Department, report no. 26197, Washington, D.C. p.21 6. Ibid7. Bond, P. (2006). Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press 8. Auty, R. (1993). Sustaining Development in Mineral Economics: The Resource Curse Thesis. London, U.K: Routledge. See also: Reed, D. (2002). ‘Resource extraction industries in developing countries.’ Journal of Business Ethics 39, 199-226; Ross, M. (2001). Extractive Sectors and the Poor. Boston, MA: Oxfam America 9. World Bank. (2005). Where is the wealth of nations? Measuring capital for the 21st century. Washington, DC: Conference Edition. See also: Reuters. (2010). Rethink foreign deals, African nations advised. The Daily Nation (Kenya), 25th May 2010 10. Stevens, P. (2003). ‘Resource impact: a curse or a blessing?’ Dundee, Scotland: CEPMLP 11. Pegg, S. (2003). ‘Poverty reduction or poverty exacerbation? World Bank group support for extractive industries in Africa.’ Report sponsored by Oxfam America, Friends of the Earth-US, Environmental Defense, Catholic Relief Services and the Bank Information Centre. p.15 12. World Bank. (2005). p.24 13. Rovillos, R.D., & Tauli-Corpuz, V. (2012). Development, Power, and Identity Politics in the Philippines. In Sawyer, S., & Gomez, E.T (eds) The Politics of Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Multinational Corporations, and the State. New York, NY: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). p.132-133 14. Bush, R. (2010). Mining, Dispossession, and Transformation in Africa. In Fraser, A., & Larmer, M (eds) Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust on the Globalized Copperbelt. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan 15. Ibid. p.254 16. Ibid17. Ferguson, J. (2008). Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, U.K: Duke University Press -- NEXT: Chapter 5 - The Corporate Extractive Industry |
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Post by wanyee on Oct 14, 2014 19:43:45 GMT 3
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Post by wanyee on Dec 15, 2014 12:27:17 GMT 3
Investors may have to pay royaltiesSee also:CHAPTER 6 - The Corporate Extractive IndustryThe architecture of global capitalism that was in place at the start of the twenty-first century was comprised of the fundamentals of a global capitalist system: the power of capital over labour, investment, and goods; the receptivity of states to the needs of capital; and the existence of domestic and global institutions capable of reinforcing the discipline crucial to capitalist reproduction.(1) “New private-sector friendly” codes and legislation regarding the rights of foreign investors have subsequently been included in free trade agreements, thereby providing the legal basis for “suing governments that rescind permit for mining operations.”(2) Today, extractive companies (or TNCs) have gained “unprecedented access to a larger proportion of the earth’s surface than ever before…shaped by a world marketplace where countries must compete for private sector investment.”(3) Thus, extractive TNCs are the principal agents of accumulation by dispossession, because they embody the emerging ideology of global capital accumulation by marking out new frontiers for global capitalism.(4) According to Ray Bush, TNCs are “conduits of commodification and dispossession.”(5) In fact, present struggles over oil and mineral wealth, involving the industrialized countries and TNCs, highlight processes characterized by violent accumulation by dispossession of natural resources.(6) Research shows that processes of centre-periphery accumulation by dispossession are at the core of resource extraction by extractive TNCs, which promote “a plunder of resources underpinned by limited formal employment and coercive labour regimes in areas close to mines.”(7) This mirrors the impact of European colonial merchants, as today’s companies operate modern technology and have vast resources at their disposal as compared to their host governments. Corporations are presently “the dominant institutional force at the centre of human activity and the planet itself.”(8) According to the Institute of Policy Studies, fifty-one of the top one hundred economic units in the world are corporations, not countries. The world’s top two-hundred corporations account for almost a quarter of the total measured economic activity (in terms of GDP) of the entire world.(9) At the turn of the century, the largest 500 corporations accounted for about 80 per cent of foreign investment, 70 per cent of world trade and 30 per cent of world output. About a third of international trade was conducted by TNCs within their own organizations – that is, a subsidiary in one country selling to and / or buying from a subsidiary in another, or trading with the head office.(10) Furthermore, most of the TNCs’ sales are conducted directly through the markets in which they are located, rather than through foreign trade.(11) Today, the world’s top ten energy companies account for a quarter of the global energy market, while the top ten chemical companies account for approximately 40 per cent of the market. The world’s top ten seed companies account for almost three-quarters of the global seed market, with just three controlling slightly more than half the market.(12) Hence, neoliberal globalization may be aptly called corporate globalization. Corporate globalization has profoundly and adversely affected the conditions of economic development and democracy, particularly through the tremendous increase in the power of TNCs relative to that of communities and labour.(13) TNCs have become powerful entities that can wield significant influence with government and the general population.(14) However, such concentration of corporate power “distorts the functioning of markets and undermines democratic decision-making processes.”(15) One of the most notable features of corporate globalization is “the massive increase in the concentration and centralization of capital,” to the extent where a few TNCs control production and trade, both globally and domestically.(16) By 1990, the four largest mining TNCs controlled almost 15 percent of capitalization in the global mining sector, and by 2002, that amount had doubled.(17) This process of concentration and centralization has continued, mainly via corporate mergers. In addition, corporate globalization poses a serious threat to society, because mining TNCs are generally structured to remain free of any legal responsibility to operate in moral, humane, or any other ways that are beneficial to communities, workers, or the environment.(18) This is primarily because the legal framework regulating TNCs operates in such a way that parent companies and their subsidiaries are considered to be distinct legal entities, generally rendering the former not liable for wrongs committed by the latter.(19) Since neoliberal capitalism is premised on the doctrine of economic growth and free trade, corporations must constantly produce and sell products, in order to achieve continual growth.(20) According to the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), TNCs are governed by three main principles: the absolute need to make profits; the need to grow continuously and expand territorially and functionally; and the need to remain as unrestricted as possible in their operations.(21) The hallmark of conservative economic theory is that firms should not be constrained in their pursuit of profit. The late Milton Friedman, a Nobel Laureate in economics and arguably the most influential conservative economist of the twentieth century, maintained that the sole responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits.(22) Any action by the firm’s directors that conflicts with this objective is “subversive to the interests of the corporation and society.”(23) Legal scholar, Joel Bakan, argues that corporations exist solely to maximize returns to their shareholders.(24) In fact the corporation was not designed simply to create wealth, “but rather to extract and concentrate it.”(25) Over the last thirty years, the phenomenal growth of TNCs has occurred in a climate of investment liberalization, deregulation and privatization. The globalization of investment finance has greatly enhanced the structural power of TNCs, thus significantly increasing their leverage over dependent economies and governments. Several examples of this process can be found in the extractive sector.(26) Multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the IFIs impose market conditionalities in natural resource extraction and energy provision, compelling Southern states to seek private capital.(27) In tandem, TNCs have lobbied for less taxation, more security and increased access, thereby exploiting the increasing rivalry between liberalizing economies for foreign mining capital.(28) Ferguson refers to this as “extractive neoliberalism.”(29) The conditions of economic development and democracy have been profoundly and adversely affected by economic globalization, particularly due to the tremendous increase in the power of corporations relative to that of communities and labour.(30) A report from the Institute of Policy Studies revealed that fifty-one of the top one hundred economic units in the world are corporations, not countries, while the world’s top two hundred corporations account for almost a quarter of the total measured economic activity of the entire world.(31) Hence, economic globalization may be more appropriately referred to as “corporate globalization.”(32) Corporate globalization poses a serious threat to society, because corporations are generally structured to remain free of any legal responsibility to operate in moral, humane, or any other ways that are beneficial to communities, workers, or the environment.(33) According to the U.N Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie, such effective impunity arises from the “governance gap” – or “enforcement vacuum”(34) – which he crucially defines as a lack of sanctioning and reparation.(35) Ruggie states that a key part of the problem is the legal framework that regulates the activities of corporations, whereby parent companies and their subsidiaries are considered to be distinct legal entities, generally rendering the former not liable for wrongs committed by the latter.(36) In addition, corporations are institutions that are based on three main principles: the absolute need to make profits; the need to grow continuously and expand in terms of territory and functionality; and their need to remain as unrestricted as possible in their operations.(37) Corporations not only exist exclusively to maximize returns to their shareholders,(38) they are in fact designed to extract and concentrate this wealth into the hands of a few.(39) Consequently, the most significant impact of corporate globalization has been excessive inequality worldwide. According to a 2006 United Nations report, the richest one per cent of the world’s adults – who also lived in North America – owned forty per cent of global wealth, and the richest ten per cent of the world’s adults owned more than eighty-five per cent of global wealth. In contrast, the bottom half of the world’s adult population barely owned one per cent of global wealth.(40) Even within the industrialized countries, the rich-poor gap continues to grow – for example, the United States is the world’s richest country, yet it has the widest gap between the rich and the poor.(41) Moreover, according to the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), economic/corporate globalization will create an “even wider gap between regional winners and losers than exists today.”(42) Corporate globalization depends on the Earth’s resources for its very existence, thus opening up the natural resource market to satisfy increased volumes of global trade, transport, communication, and the increasing affluence that it creates.(43) The entire structure of modern civilization is derived from or depends on the use of natural resources. These resources include land, water, minerals, fossil fuels, forests, marine resources, and biological resources. Without them, we would have no skyscrapers, no planes, no ships, no cars, no bridges, no weapons, no electronics, no consumer products, no central heating, no air-conditioning and none of the provisions of running water and sewage disposal that we take for granted.(44) Although mining companies have been the subject of conflict and controversy since the early years of the twentieth century, the industry’s latest growth phase, marked by unprecedented and unregulated geographical expansion as well as the intensification of resource exploitation, raises new issues.(45) Following the Washington Consensus, the laws of developing countries have been designed to facilitate the large-scale exploitation of natural resources by mining corporations.(46) Generally, these corporations either purchase land or collaborate with local allies in host (often developing) countries, so as to forcefully displace people from their lands, in order to access the natural resources in their territories, primarily for export to developed countries.(47) Thus, large-scale resource extraction often ruins traditional means of livelihood and natural environments, leaving behind formerly sustainable societies and local economies dependent on foreign corporations and external markets.(48) Furthermore, since economic/corporate globalization is solely based on the principle of economic growth, corporations must constantly produce and sell products, as well as continually prowl the marketplace in search of profits, in order to achieve continual growth.(49) However, one feature of resource extraction is that all reserves are inevitably depleted over time, as their output declines. Extractive companies must therefore continually discover or acquire new reserves in order to sustain a fairly stable output during the course of their operations.(50) As resource extraction intensifies, the total available supply of many key materials will also diminish, leading to a corresponding increase in prices and increased conflict over critical resources such as oil, uranium, and certain rare earth metals.(51) Resistance is then framed as a security threat that can potentially interrupt access to strategic resources. This argument in turn informs the penchant to dismiss those who mount such resistance as “terrorists.”(52) Michael Watts argues that primitive accumulation and militarism have been coupled to the “War on Terror,”(53) which has provided the context for labelling the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) “a terrorist organization with possible links to other international terrorist organizations targeting Western…interests.”(54) This has also been the case with Niger’s indigenous Tuareg and the fabrication of a Sahara-Sahelian front in the U.S-led War on Terror.(55) NOTES:1. Cammack, P. (2002). ‘Neoliberalism, the World Bank and the New Politics of Development.’ In Kothari, U., & Minogue, M (eds) Development Theory and Practice. Basingstoke, U.K: Palgrave 2. Canel, E., Idemudia, U., & North, L. (2010). Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 5-25. 3. Otto, J. (1998). ‘Global changes in mining laws, agreements and tax systems.’ Resources Policy (24)2. p.85 4. Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N. (2002). Politicising Finance. In Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 5. Bush, R. (2010). Mining, Dispossession, and Transformation in Africa. In Fraser, A., & Larmer, M (eds) Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust on the Globalized Copperbelt. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. p.255 6. ---------- (2007). Poverty and Neoliberalism: Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South. London, U.K: Pluto Press 7. ---------- (2010). p.251 8. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible. A Report of the International Forum on Globalization. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. p.272 9. Anderson, S., & Cavanagh, J. (2002). The rise of corporate global power. Institute for Policy Studies. fwww.rrojasdatabank.info/top200.pdf (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 10. Madeley, J. (2000). Hungry For Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing Ltd. 11. Morales, I. (2008). Post-NAFTA North America: Reshaping the Economic and Political Governance of a Changing Region. In Shaw, T.M (ed) International Political Economy Series. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan 12. Vitali, S., Glattfelder, J.B., & Battiston, S. (2011). The network of global corporate control. Zurich, Switzerland: ETH arxiv.org/pdf/1107.5728.pdf (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 13. Leadbeater, D. (2008). 14. Ali, S.H. (2003). Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts. Tucson, Az: The University of Arizona Press 15. Melber, H (ed). (2012). No future without justice: Report of the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives. development dialogue No. 59, June 2012. p.12 16. Dunning, J.H. (1997). Alliance Capitalism and Global Business. London, U.K: Routledge. p.16 17. Humphreys, D. (2005). “Corporate Strategies in the Global Mining Industry.” In Bastida et al. (eds) International and Comparative Mineral Law and Policy: Trends and Prospects. The Hague, Netherlands: Kluwer Law International 18. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). 19. Ruggie, J.G. (2010). Governing Transnational Corporations. www.internationalrelations.com/2012/09/30/ruggie-governing-transnational-corporation/ (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 20. Gibbs, T., & Leech, G. (2009). The Failure of Global Capitalism: From Cape Breton to Colombia and Beyond. Sydney, NS: Cape Breton University Press 21. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). 22. Chernomas, R., & Hudson, I. (2007). Social Murder: And Other Shortcomings of Conservative Economics. Winnepeg, MA: Arbeiter Ring Publishing 23. Ibid. p.7 24. Bakan, J. (2005). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. London, U.K: Constable & Robinson Ltd. 25. Korten, D. (2002). Predatory corporations. In Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 26. Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N. (2002). Politicising Finance. In Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 27. Ibid 28. Bridge, G. (1999). ‘Harnessing the bonanza: Economic liberalization and capacity building in the mineral sector.’ Natural Resources Forum 23, 43-55. 29. Ferguson, J. (2008). p.210 30. Leadbeater, D. (2008). Sudbury’s Crisis of Development and Democracy. In Leadbeater, D (ed) Mining Town Crisis: Globalization, Labour, and Resistance in Sudbury. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing 31. Anderson, S., & Cavanagh, J. (2002). The rise of corporate global power. Institute for Policy Studies. fwww.rrojasdatabank.info/top200.pdf (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 32. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). 33. Ibid 34. Campbell, B. (2008). Regulation & Legitimacy in the Mining Industry in Africa: Where does Canada Stand? Review of African Political Economy (35)117, 367-385. The “governance gap” or “enforcement vacuum” has also been referred to as the “regulatory gap,” which results from the lack of binding rules or regulations, especially at the global level – due to economic globalization [Re: Bexell, M., & Morth, U (eds). (2010). Democracy and Public-Private Partnerships in Global Governance. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan] 35. Ruggie, J.G. (2008). Protect, respect and remedy: A framework for business and human rights. Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. A/HRC/8/5 7 April 36. --------------- (2010). 37. Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). 38. Bakan, J. (2005). See also: Rowland, W. (2012). Greed, Inc.: Why Corporations Rule the World and How We Let It Happen. Markham, ON: Thomas Allen Publishers 39. Korten, D. (2002). 40. United Nations. (2006). Press Conference On World Distribution Of Household Wealth – www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2006/061205_Household_Wealth.doc.htm (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 41. International Labour Organization of the United Nations (ILO). (2004). Cited in Cavanagh, J., & Mander, J (eds). (2004). 42. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (2000). Global Trends, 2015. Langley, VA: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 43. Blanco, E.M., & Razzaque, J. (2011). Globalisation and Natural Resources Law: Challenges, Key Issues and Perspectives. Cheltenham, U.K: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 44. Lanning, G., & Mueller, M. (1979). Africa Undermined: Mining Companies and the Underdevelopment of Africa. Harmondsworth, U.K: Penguin Books Ltd. 45. Canel, E., Idemudia, U., & North, L. (2010). 46. Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N. (2002a). Politicising Finance. In Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 47. Standlea, D.M. (2006). Oil, Globalization, and the War for the Arctic Refuge. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 48. Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N. (2002b). Globalisation: Threats and Opportunities. In Evans, G., Goodman, J., & Lansbury, N (eds) Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation. London, U.K: Zed Books 49. Gibbs, T., & Leech, G. (2009). 50. Ali, S.H. (2003). Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts. Tucson, Az: The University of Arizona Press 51. Klare, M.T. (2002). Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC 52. Obi, C.I. (2010). Oil Extraction, Dispossession, Resistance, and Conflict in Nigeria’s Oil-Rich Niger Delta. Special Issue - Rethinking Extractive Industry: Regulation, Dispossession, and Emerging Claims. Canadian Journal of Development Studies (30)1-2, 219-236. 53. Watts, M. (2006). “Empire of oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the scramble for Africa.” Monthly Review, September 54. Pham, P. (2007). Next front? Evolving United States-African relations in the “War on Terror” and beyond. Comparative Strategy 26(1), 39-54. See also: Lubeck, P.M., Watts, M.J., & Lipschutz, R. (2007). Convergent Interests: U.S. Energy Security and the “Securing” of Nigerian Democracy. www.ciponline.org/research/entry/convergent-interests-us-energy-security-and-the-securing-of-nigerian-demo (Accessed on February 10, 2014) 55. Keenan, J. (2010). Africa unsecured? The role of the Global War On Terror (GWOT) in securing US imperial interests in Africa. Routledge, Critical Studies on Terrorism (3)1, 27-47. See also: Keenan, J. (2008). Uranium Goes Critical in Niger: Tuareg Rebellions Threaten Sahelian Conflagration. Review of African Political Economy (35)117, 449-466. In the same vein, according to the Kenyan government, Kenya's military incursion into neighbouring Somalia in 2011 under the pretext of fighting the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab, was a geopolitical strategy [Nani-Kofi, E. (2013). Nairobi and the West's proxy war in Africa. www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/16662-nairobi-mall-killings-and-the-wests-proxy-war-in-africa. See also: Cartalucci, T. (2013). Kenyan Bloodbath: Reaping the "Benefits" of US AFRICOM Collaboration: NATO's North African terror tidal wave sweeps predictably into Kenya. www.globalresearch.ca/kenyan-bloodbath-reaping-the-benefits-of-us-africom-collaboration/5351037; Gettleman, J. (2011). Kenyan Motives in Somalia Predate Recent Abductions. www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/world/africa/kenya-planned-somalia-incursion-far-in-advance.html; Cunningham, F. (2012). Kenyan False Flag Bomb Plot Aimed At Tightening Sanctions Noose On Iran: Islamic Republic Falls Foul In African Cradle of America's 'War on Terror.' www.globalresearch.ca/kenyan-false-flag-bomb-plot-aimed-at-tightening-sanctions-noose-on-iran/31795; Wilson, A. (2013). US Interventions in East Africa: From the Cold War to the 'war on terror.' www.opendemocracy.net/5050/amrit-wilson/us-interventions-in-east-africa-from-cold-war-to-war-on-terror; Shimatsu, Y. (2013). Was it a Psyop? Nairobi Mall Deceit Abets Israeli-Western Pipeline Wars to Oust Asian Rivals. www.globalresearch.ca/was-is-a-psyop-nairobi-mall-deceit-abets-israeli-western-pipeline-wars-to-oust-asian-rivals/5351985; Straziuso, J. (2013). NYPD Report on Kenya Attack Isn't US Gov't View. Associated Press, December 13, 2013. abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=NYPD%20Report%20on%20Kenya%20Attack%20Isn't%20US%20Gov't%20View. (Links accessed on February 10, 2014) NEXT - CHAPTER 6: Economic Globalization and the Primacy of Natural Resources
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out kenya in the above roll call.
in thrift with tax-payers purse!?)