Briarpatch Magazine » neoliberalism

Rich countries once used gunboats to seize food. Now they use trade deals.

dave — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:12:43 +0000

By George Monbiot The Guardian August 26, 2008 The world's hungriest are the losers as an old colonialism returns to govern relations between wealthy and poor nations In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Niño, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravagances, "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history", between 12 million and 29 million people died. Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger. Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair's favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty that will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world's poorest people.

Das Crapital: A spectre is haunting the suburbs of North America . . .

dave — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:36:19 +0000

**By Don Sawyer Briarpatch Magazine May 2008**

In fighting plans for a mammoth big box store that would devour the small city I call home, I have made a startling discovery: a dangerous cult has spread from the heart of darkest Arkansas, jumped the border and brainwashed millions of innocent Canadians into its doctrine of diabolical materialism.

Latin America banks on independence, undermines neoliberalism

admin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:10:43 +0000

Mark Engler, In These Times: In the closing weeks of 2007, a region in revolt against the economics of corporate globalization issued its most unified declaration of independence to date. On Dec. 9, standing before the flags of their countries, the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela, along with a representative from Uruguay, gathered in Buenos Aires and signed the founding charter of the Banco del Sur, or the Bank of the South. The Bank of the South will allow participating governments to use a percentage of their collective currency reserves to strengthen Latin America's economy and promote cooperative development. It plans to begin lending as early as 2008 with around $7 billion in capital.