neocolonialism

Opinion — One of the most ingenious propaganda weapons ever developed is that the powerful nations of the West—led by the United States—have a moral responsibility to use military force to protect the rights of people being repressed by their governments. This “responsibility to protect” (R2P) always had a dubious legal standing, but its moral justification also required a psychological and historical disengagement from the bloody reality of the 500-hundred-year history of U.S. and European colonialism, slavery, genocide and torture that created the “West.”

21st Century Wire says…

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – Since Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory – which rarely garners much attention from the national media – has received widespread coverage which has focused on the Trump administration’s slow response to the disaster.

Ken Burns’s 18-hour documentary on the Vietnam War, which aired on PBS and BBC, presented extraordinary footage of the war’s grotesque brutality but also soft-pedaled the motivations of U.S. policymakers as well-meaning albeit misguided, or as the prologue put it, a conflict begun in “good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings.”

When the Labour government in 2003 joined the disastrous US-led war against the people of Iraq, Tony Blair and other senior government ministers were much criticised on the left of the party for abandoning its oft-advertised promise to have an “ethical foreign policy”.

The notion of a colonist as cannibal in Haiti is widespread. This idea, called manje moun (eating people), could hardly qualify as superstition, given the experience of colonialism. It is daunting to find a better description for those who grab control of water and food, and then calculate the minimum caloric intake a population needs so that a maximum of labor may be extracted from its emaciated and zombified workers without killing them. The neo-colonists may call themselves humanitarians, but their victims know exactly what they are.

Druse participate in a rally, demanding the return of the Golan Heights, taken by Israel in 1967, close to the Syrian border in Buqata in the Golan Heights, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2016. The annual demonstration is in protest of the 1981 Israeli law in which the Jewish state annexed the strategic plateau it captured from Syria during 1967 Arab-Israeli war. (AP/Oded Balilty)

Alex de Waal
African Arguments
When UK PM David Cameron opens the Anti-Corruption Summit on 12 May, we should be aware that the greatest fraud perpetrated on the majority of the world’s citizens is all perfectly legal.
Africa loses at least $50 billion a year — and probably much, much more than that — perfectly lawfully.