Neoliberalism is not inevitable

For all those millions and millions of people who have been brainwashed into believing that neoliberalism is the inevitable solution to all our economic and humanitarian problems on the planet, there is news.

The inevitability of the neoliberal economic system is a huge hoax, which has been acted out at the expense of the human race in the sole interest of profit for the few and the total subjugation of the billions of the rest of us. We, the working people, are, so far, obediently bending our backs and making do with the few crumbs the corporate rulers are throwing our way while we accommodate them with out ingrained belief that that’s the way the system works, and that’s the only way the system can ever work.

Actually, neoliberalism was intended to gradually strangle the economies of the third-world countries and thus seriously degrade the living standards of the people. The World Bank, the IMF and the WTO were set up to make it possible for the rich countries of the world to run the business of the planet, naturally under the judicious leadership and the ultimate profit of the multinational corporations mainly linked to the psychopathic and ruthless mega power that is the U.S. of A. Psychopathic mainly in as much as it is totally impervious to human and geopolitical reality. Europe and Asia were supposed to toe the line or else risk being deprived of their share of the booty.

If we focus in on the last 50 years alone, there was a time when, in the aftermath of World War II, there were hopeful signs that the world-wide scourge of starvation and disease could be dealt with. Third-world countries had hope that the world community would look realistically on this huge problem and there was actually hope that popular consensus would decree that mass starvation was unacceptable in a civilized world.

Bandung or the end of the first colonial era – an aura of hope

At the end of the second World War, the poor countries (then called the underdeveloped countries) got together for a ground-breaking conference in Bandung on Java, Indonesia in April 1955. After the numerous upheavals that have taken place in the geopolitical order of the world since that year, notably the Iranian revolution in 1979, the War in Vietnam ending in 1975, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 with the ensuing implosion of the Soviet empire, it seems of great practical interest to take a step back and look at the way the world was put together at that time.

In Bandung, 29 states and 30 resistance movements in still colonized countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, etc.) were represented at this Asian-African conference which was initiated by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time), Burma and Indonesia. It was set up to mark the end of the colonial era. (Bandung or the end of the first colonial era - Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2005, reproduced in ‘Manière de voir’ of June-July, 2006) The term ‘third world’ was coined by the French economist Alfred Sauvy in 1952, designating the non-aligned developing countries. The world was strictly divided between the nominally democratic West and the Soviet totalitarian colossus.

The Conference was to symbolize the stand of these ‘underdeveloped’ countries as being neither for the West nor for the East. Some remarkable leaders were at the head of some of the more prominent third-world countries at the time. There was Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Sukarno in Indonesia, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. These were men who did not subscribe to being leashed on to one great power or another. They were all as much as it was possible intent on remaining non-aligned.

Bandung was followed six years later by a similar conference in Belgrade with the independent-minded Marshal Tito as host and Yugoslavia was even for a while a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

There was an aura of hope and trust in the future, a vigor and a radiance of newly won freedom clearly visible at this conference of formerly colonized countries and the countries which were still fighting for their independence. There was a common feeling of a sunrise in the third world.

The originally Asian and African Non-Aligned Movement now included Yugoslavia, one of the Eastern European countries that was keeping its independence from the USSR. Numerous other conferences by the NAM followed and the number of countries rose to 115 representing 55% of the people on the planet. Some Latin American countries joined the NAM as well, and all of Africa was represented. NAM focuses on national struggles for independence, the eradication of poverty, economic development and the opposition to colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism. India, Egypt and South Africa were some of the most important members.

“The term "Non-Alignment" itself was coined by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru during his speech in 1954 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In this speech, Nehru described the five pillars to be used as a guide for Sino-Indian relations, which were first put forth by the contemporary Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. Called Panchsheel, these principles would later serve as the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement. The five principles were:

1.     Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty

2.     Mutual non-aggression

3.     Mutual non-interference in domestic affairs

4.     Equality and mutual benefit

5.     Peaceful co-existence

The world's "non-aligned" nations declared their desire not to become involved in the East-West ideological confrontation of the Cold War.”

Neocolonialism and neoliberalism

What has become of this promise for a more just world? How did we get from this promise of hope and justice to the present system of exploitation that is covered by the concepts of neocolonialism and neoliberalism?

This Non-Aligned Movement was too great a hindrance for the imperial ambitions of the United States. The rise of powers in Africa, in Asia and even in their own backyard, Latin America, was impossible to accept. The United States, the uncontested leader of the ‘civilized’ world and the lone great power after the implosion of the Soviet empire, could brook no such arrogance on the part of lesser and ‘uncivilized’ countries which had barely stepped out of colonial dependence.

Ways to achieve super-power goals

It is clear that the U.S. administrations have consistently been focused on not letting anyone stop their ambitions towards sole domination of the planet. They have always done everything possible to stunt any independence movements, any moves towards democratic nationalism, where countries had the audacity to try to stand up on their own and for their leaders to fight to improve the livelihoods of their people. Whenever a country had a strong leader who was a potential threat to the U.S. world domination, the U.S. managed to intervene, either in the wings, plotting against the recalcitrant humanitarian leader, such as was the case with Salvador Allende in Chile (coup d’état in 1973, U.S.-friendly General Pinochet taking over) or Sukarno in Indonesia in 1970 (U.S.-friendly Suharto installed in his place).

Or else, they would more openly fight mendacious wars to demonstrate their power. It could be done under the NATO emblem, such as in former Yugoslavia, or quite openly, such as Reagan’s ridiculous little war on Grenada or Clinton’s 1998 bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan.

Reagan’s horrendous Central American wars in the 1980s were considered too risky to be fought openly, so they had to hide behind the U.S.-supported contra movements always present in the countries considered by the U.S. administrations as rightfully belonging to the U.S. sphere of power.

In each case, there was always a pretext for the aggression that would be propagandized mainly for the benefit of the American people, and which always got the unfailing support of the mass media. War sells, be it in the fight against Communism or against terrorism.

Another effective way of imposing their power was by supplying corrupt African dictators with arms, in which game various European countries entered with the alacrity of winner take all. The tone was set by the Unites States and the former colonial powers were not slow to see the advantages of keeping the newly independent nations from developing internal strength and true independence by backing the opposition movements and so help develop the necessary contingencies for a civil war that might otherwise have been avoided. Even if the country’s leaders were originally all set to play a straight game to advance their country, the unscrupulous men at the helm of the planet solved that problem with promises of financial retribution to the rulers and/or the disappearing of politically undesirable individuals.

The fight against democracy

Patrice Lumumba, African nationalist leader, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June-September 1960), was brutally murdered after only a few months in power, since he was considered too far left, too close to the USSR and of course too independent for the Western powers. (Lumumba was replaced in 1965 by the deeply corrupt Mobutu Sese Seko.) His is just one of the most clear-cut cases of Western interference, the same as in the pretty open case of Allende’s death in 1973, those two being among the most alarming cases of Western interference to keep emerging democracies from becoming too strong for comfort. If it was not the U.S. who backed the killing of Lumumba, it was certainly in their interest that it be done.

The powerful documentary ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ (by Austrian documentary movie maker, Hubert Sauper) about the Nile perch in Lake Victoria, the alarming lack of concern for the suffering of the native people and the obscene profit of Western industrialists is but one example of what is currently going on all over Africa. The Western and Russian planes carry arms to Africa, to Tanzania in this case, (further delivered to wherever there is a civil war to back up or to instigate) and return with their cargo holds filled to the brim with Nile perch which Westerners love to eat, in this case mostly unaware of the crimes that have preceded the catch of the fish.

Having now dismembered and rendered unrealistic any form of resistance from Africa, trying to keep on superficially good terms with the big Asian economies, for the time being, the U.S. administrations are piqued and surprised to see Latin American countries rise up in disobedience and revolt. The possibility to dominate oil-rich Venezuela and other budding independent and socialist countries have become an absolute priority. For the time being though, the military is tied up in Iraq and there is no telling what the madmen have in store for Latin America when the day comes to take action against Chávez, Evo Morales and other indigenous or mestizo leaders, far too independent to suit U.S. world-dominating ambitions.

The brutality of eternal war and destabilization

However, keeping the world in continuous upheaval is the goal of the U.S. statesmen, and the openly expressed goal of the neocons in particular. Aggressive wars, civil wars, economic destabilization and bankruptcy of countries dependent on WTO and the World Bank for survival, are all means to the end of assuring U.S. world dominance. NATO was supposed to play the U.S. game (and did in the case of the Kosovo tragedy). The UN too was seen by the American administrations as a handy tool for enforcing American interests, thus the horrible ploy of the veto power of five countries, a power that has been used innumerable times by the U.S. and by the USSR/Russia, but far less by the other veto holding powers.

The one thing the U.S. administrations fear more than anything else is democracy – with its accompanying openness. Oh, they will mouth the word, but it doesn’t have any real meaning any more. Americans are condescendingly allowed to live happily in the fantasy world that hundreds of years of propaganda have created for them, the belief that theirs is a democratic country. And what’s more, it is the greatest democracy in the world, the most moral, the most devout, the most compassionate country in the world.

American ignorance and naiveté are unlimited and the leaders very carefully see to it that things remain that way. Even looking back on history, it is doubtful if anyone can honestly refer to the rapacious United States of America as a great democracy. Ruthless killings and brutal grabbing of other people’s territories have always been the rule of the game, ever since the indescribably cruel decimation of the Native Americans.

The big surprise

This insolent and megalomaniac country, which has set out for itself the role of planetary leadership in a world where some resources are finite, even though there is plenty of food resources to feed the billions in the world, this country’s arrogant leaders are coming in for a huge surprise.

The spirit of independence and human dignity are far too powerful, far too deeply ingrained in the human soul, to make it possible in the long run to let one hubristic country take up the reins in a move that will lead to the death and destruction of their own people and of the planet.

People are already rising up, first of all in the many countries in Latin America where the citizens are stirred by a new-found sense of national and individual pride and power, where they finally see the possibility of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger as a goal which has been slow in coming.

They are speaking up, they are crying out, in defense of their national rights and values. Much more is to come the day the USA implodes from its own overreaching and arrogance. The noise of the rattling of American sabers will be drowned out in the general din from the battle cries of the long-suffering people and the voices of the new leaders who are taking over the running of the destinies of their own people.

 © Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com

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Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Siv O’Neall