In 2000 the First World countries conspired to create a spectacular society special - The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were a host of targets in the struggle against Third World deprivation, disease and illiteracy. Of course, numerous previous promises had been made over a generation only to be scuppered by either a refusal to cough up the cash once the money was required or the setting of inappropriate conditions related to the internal politics of the donor nations - think USA's refusal to go anywhere near development needs that might impinge upon the reactionary sexual politics of the American right wing, for example.
For over a quarter of a century, the First World has spun out strategies to improve the plight of the impoverished Third World gaining extensive media coverage in the process. Such media coverage has been conspicuous by its absence when such promises prove to be empty rhetoric. The guilt complexes of the populations of the rich nations suitably assuaged, we can all get on with enjoying our standards of living, such standards being built on the backs of global poverty. The media even provides us with a blinkering option of looking away prior to any potentially disturbing Third World images which occasionally appear on mainstream news programmes.
This odious strategy was merely a continuation of the structure imposed on the poor of the First World where we have all become anaethetised to realities such as a permanent pool of unemployed and the climate of fear that the working class and, nowadays, even the lower middle classes experience in an uncertain workplace with an absence of suitable safety nets.
So what? So this... Shareholder capitalism is taking these abusive strategies to new levels of tyranny as we impose our psychopathic fascistic system on the most vulnerable people on the planet.
Shareholder capitalism desires control, absolute control, despotic control. Think money... The financial institutions gain control of people, businesses and countries by forcing each of them to borrow to survive - the same strategy applies to house purchase in the First World, business development at any global strata and debt-ridden countries in the Third World via the banks and the IMF. As soon as you owe these bastards money, you are under their influence and your freedom is pawned to the chains of financial misery. The rich world is currently awash with liquidity, the global elite do not know what to do with all their money. And yet, freedom is anathema to money heads. In the developed world, there is a choice to be made here, we can always choose to opt out of the rat race and avoid the strictures imposed by capitalism. No such option exists for the global poor.
Initially, the capitalists tried to hide behind creative economics - fallacies like Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), for example. To explain this particular little prank. By any measure, the gap between the global rich and the global poor is getting wider - there are chief executives (CEOs) who earn $1 million each night while they sleep whereas fifty percent of the Third World exist on less than $2 per day. As income inequality has continued to widen, a new form of measurement was necessary to disguise this plunder. Enter PPP. Rather than compare the plight of the Third World directly with the rich, PPP compares the plight of the Third World now with the Third World historically. And, sure enough, a can of coca cola is now ever so slightly more affordable in Chad than it was a decade ago. However, the massive extension in global income inequality in this decade has resulted in the permanent imprisoning of the population of Chad in their blighted country as the amount of cash required to make the leap into a more developed country has massively increased - shareholder capitalism is a great believer in the free movement of capital but absolutely not of people... To make matters even worse, the educated classes in Chad, the doctors, nurses, etc are able to leave and earn riches way beyond the levels available in their homeland. As a further example of the false mathematics of PPP, examine this fact. China will become richer than the USA measured at PPP this year. In reality, Goldman Sachs reckon it will be 2027 before this reality comes to pass.
Shareholder capitalism has now moved beyond the strategy of merely hiding behind nonsense mathematics and are confident enough to clearly state their real agenda.
In the last couple of years, the Doha round of trade talks have foundered because the US and the EU are refusing to open up their markets to the Third World unless these impoverished countries remove their trade barriers to an even greater extent. The net balance would be a further increase in the already hideous disparity of wealth. Fortunately, countries like Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and India are saying no and, consequently, the trade round is stuck at a stage of stalemate. Not content with that particular ruse having been blocked, new strategies have moved to the fore. It is these that indicate the true level of psychopathy being hoisted onto the poorest people on the planet.
Researchers at the Centre for Global Development - a Washington based right wing libertarian think tank - argue that donors should only commit themselves to make payments to the globally disenfranchised when such a poor country is able to absolutely demonstrate "independently audited progress towards a goal" ie prove to us that you are willing to accept the ravages of a shareholder capitalist system and then we might, just might, provide you with some financial assistance. Or, of course, you can die in misery... The Economist editorial gushes supportively "...nor should a lack of foreign cash stop countries inching their way out of poverty by their own efforts - which is the only way any country has ever done it". Absolute tosh... these statements are as near to despicably evil as I am able to perceive (I generally do not go for absolutes like good and evil but this IS evil) - the choice is effectively slavery or slow death or both... It is an impossible goal to climb the global ladder of financial security when you are saddled with debts to the First World based on historical abuses of your country together with a trade system which means that to get your bananas into Tesco means first elbowing aside massive American owned global businesses like Dole and Chiquita. The Economist expands its arguments by stating that the provision of aid will not alter the situation due to the "pitiful state of poor countries health systems". Why are these health systems so pitiful? Lack of aid together with debts to the imperial abusers. Furthermore, the most psychopathic elements of the shareholder capitalism family worry that the provision of a top down aid structure will undermine the incentives for a Third World country to implement structural market reforms that will allow the First World globalised companies to fully exploit these potential market opportunities.
Basically, embrace our system or rot in your malarial AIDS ridden poverty...
Aside from the charities and NGOs, the only current First World generated structures that are providing any assistance to the poorest of the poor are those provided by private companies. Settle down, this is not an altruistic gesture. Mining giant Anglo American, for example, has implemented health programmes for its employees in South Africa not because they give a damn about their workers chances of contracting AIDs or malaria but because the ongoing deaths of workers severely impacts upon corporate profits. The conditions experienced by the miners of Lancashire and Yorkshire (outlined in Orwell's 'The Road To Wigan Pier') pale into relative insignificance when compared with the plight of miners in China and Africa health care or not...
And what happens if the Third World says "fuck your system and your patent protection" and proceeds to establish health provision unilaterally via the establishment of generic drug companies owned and run by Third World countries to eradicate health problems without having to beg to the rich world? The First World pharmaceutical companies simply undercut such firms so as not to lose market share. Nice eh?
It is faith of the upmost folly to trust that a system that shows no interest in the disenfranchised of the First World is going to be anything other than tyrannical in the Third World. While the rich world bases its donations on their determination of whether a poor country deserves such support, the inequalities, poverty and perilous state of huge swathes of the world's population will simply deteriorate further.
Quoting Ms Dynamite at one of those guilt removal musical events that give all of us rich people a nice warm glow - "We as a nation have robbed, killed, stolen and tortured the Third World and they have got a debt to us"...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
