March 19
GUEST: Fadhel Kaboub, associate Professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, talks about neocolonialism in Africa, and how third world countries are driven into debt and their citizens robbed of all wealth.Big Structural Adjustments with Fadhel Kaboub
We spent a good deal of the interview outlining how First World countries strip their African colonies of everything they have. While supposedly free, these colonies are tied to European currencies, suffer under staggering debt, and watch helplessly as everything in their county is privatized for some foreign profit. It is called neoliberalism when whole Third World countries are completely structured to transfer wealth to their First World overlords. My almost any measure, these African countries are not free.
We reviewed several economic mechanism that effectively robs the wealth of colonized African nations. There is the push for mono-crops that leaves these countries unable to feed themselves. There is the discouragement of manufacturing, so that these countries are dependent on European corporations for all goods. Then there is the predictable balance of payment deficits that push nations into an ever increasing debt load, held by European banks. Life in these African countries goes from underdevelopment to worker exploitation and the destruction of the natural environment. The richer the country is in resources, the worse this hell becomes for most of its citizens.
In the last several decades, this economic exploitation has come home to the European and American economic systems. Areas within these First World nations have become exploited, repressed and grossly polluted. Areas with non-white populations have seen their water privatized, their schools closed down, and their cities bankrupted. Neoliberalism is alive and thriving here in the US, while the billionaire class keeps expanding and workers lose more and more of their incomes.
It is no wonder that the people of this country (apart from the Washington insiders and their corporate media) are ready to try something else. Bernie represented something different, the first time in decades that a presidential candidate threatened the capitalist stranglehold on the rest of us. No wonder the media attacked him at every turn. Let's face it, neoliberal Democrats would much prefer another four years under Trump than an actually shift towards equality and worker's rights.
It is time to build a united front against neoliberalism. We must join such movements in the Third World, while realizing that their enslavement is becoming our own.
