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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Are BRICS 'sub-imperialists'? - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...86650

america latin us reaction intervention forces indigenous exploitation brics

shared by Arabica Robusta on 26 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Across Southern Africa, because imperial and sub-imperial interests have both mainly focused upon resource extraction, a variety of cross-fertilising intra-corporate relationships emerged, symbolised by the way Lonmin (formerly Lonrho, named by British Prime Minister Edward Heath as the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’ in 1973) ‘benefited’ in mid-2012 from leading ANC politician Cyril Ramphosa’s substantial shareholding and connections to Pretoria’s security apparatus, when strike-breaking was deemed necessary at the Marikana platinum mine.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 26 Mar 13
       
      a variety of cross-fertilising intra-corporate relationships emerged,
  • South African, US, European, Australian and Canadian firms have been joined by major firms from China, India and Brazil in the region. Their work has mainly built upon colonial infrastructural foundations – road, rail, pipeline and port expansion – for the sake of minerals, petroleum and gas extraction. BRICS appears entirely consistent with facilitating this activity, especially through the proposed BRICS Bank.
  • in order to attack Al-Qaeda affiliates and assure future oil flows and a grip on other resources. Since taking office in 2009, Barack Obama maintained tight alliances with tyrannical African elites, contradicting his own talk-left pro-democracy rhetoric within a well-received 2009 speech in Ghana.
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  • According to Sherwood Ross, one reason is that amongst 28 countries ‘that held prisoners in behalf of the US based on published data’, are a dozen from Africa: Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, South Africa and Zambia. [9] In Gambia, for example, President Yahya Jammeh’s acquiescence to the CIA’s need for a rendition site for US torture victims may explain Obama’s blind eye towards his dictatorship.
  • And in January 2013, Pretoria deployed 400 troops to the Central African Republic during a coup attempt because, ‘We have assets there that need protection,’ according to deputy foreign minister Ebrahim Ebrahim, referring to minerals (according to his interviewer) [14] or to sophisticated weaponry that South Africa gifted the tyrant ruler there, François Bozizé (according to his reply in a debate with me in late February).
  • By mid-2012, Pretoria’s National Development Plan – overseen from within the SA Presidency and endorsed at the ANC’s December 2012 national conference – provided a variety of mandated changes in policy so as to align with South Africa’s new BRICS identity and functions. These mainly involved pro-business statements for deeper regional economic penetration, alongside the exhortation to change ‘the perception of the country as a regional bully, and that South African policy-makers tend to have a weak grasp of African geopolitics.’ [17] That problem will haunt Pretoria in coming years because, like the political carving of Africa in Berlin in 1884-85, the BRICS 2013 Durban summit has as its aim the continent’s economic carve-up, unburdened – now as then – by what would be derided as ‘Western’ concerns about democracy and human rights. Also invited were 16 African heads of state to serve as collaborators.
  • This notion, derived from Rosa Luxemburg’s thinking a century ago, focuses on how capitalism’s extra-economic coercive capacities loot mutual aid systems and commons facilities, families (women especially), the land, all forms of nature, and the shrinking state; Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession, and in special cases requiring militarist intervention, Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’. [22]
  • The forms of BRICS sub-imperialism are diverse, for as Yeros and Moyo remark, ‘Some are driven by private blocs of capital with strong state support (Brazil, India); others, like China, include the direct participation of state-owned enterprises; while in the case of South Africa, it is increasingly difficult to speak of an autonomous domestic bourgeoisie, given the extreme degree of de-nationalisation of its economy in the post-apartheid period. The degree of participation in the Western military project is also different from one case to the next although, one might say, there is a ‘schizophrenia’ to all this, typical of sub-imperialism.’ [23]
  • the more that specific companies targeted by victims require unified campaigning and boycotts to generate solidaristic counter-pressure, whether Brazil’s Vale and Petrobras, or South Africa’s Anglo or BHP Billiton (albeit with London and Melbourne headquarters), or India’s Tata or Arcelor-Mittal, or Chinese state-owned firms and Russian energy corporations. In this context, building a bottom-up counter-hegemonic network and then movement against both imperialism and BRICS sub-imperialism has never been more important. [24]
Arabica Robusta

It's business that really rules us now | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-lobbying-corporate-interests

exploitation movements social intervention responsibility government governance

shared by Arabica Robusta on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • That the words corporate power seldom feature in the corporate press is not altogether surprising. It's more disturbing to see those parts of the media that are not owned by Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere acting as if they are.
  • Research conducted by the Cardiff school of journalism shows business representatives now receive 11% of airtime on the BBC's 6 o'clock news (this has risen from 7% in 2007), while trade unionists receive 0.6% (which has fallen from 1.4%)
  • Tony Blair and Gordon Brown purged the party of any residue of opposition to corporations and the people who run them. That's what New Labour was all about. Now opposition MPs stare mutely as their powers are given away to a system of offshore arbitration panels run by corporate lawyers.
Arabica Robusta

UN Human Rights Council Takes on Corporations | Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy - 0 views

iatp.org/...-council-takes-on-corporations

exploitation movements social responsibility oil consulting land intervention ecuador

shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Ecuador proposed the idea in September 2013 after years of fighting Chevron who has refused Ecuadorean court judgments requiring the company to pay $18 billion in damages for massive environmental destruction and other harms to communities in the Ecuadorean Amazon. To avoid these payments, the company sued Ecuador for lost profits through “investor to state” dispute settlement provisions the country agreed to when it signed a bilateral investment treaty with the U.S. Such investor state provisions that grant corporations’ right to future profits over governments’ right to regulate are sadly common in free trade and investment treaties pushed by the U.S., including the current negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership (with Pacific Rim countries) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (with Europe). Civil society groups, including IATP, strongly oppose investor state provisions. 
  • Such People’s initiatives are growing in number and strength—aided by the launch of the Stop Corporate Impunity Campaign at Rio Plus 20 summit in 2012. The Campaign had a week of mobilization here in Geneva to strengthen the global effort and has launched a People’s Treaty process that is intended to mobilize social movements and citizens to stand up and demand accountability from their governments and to present an alternative vision of governance. It will be a critical bottom up process while governments begin their own deliberations on a binding treaty. 
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