As the US "Summit for Democracy" continues today, it's worth remembering how the US has actively destroyed democracies across much of the global South over the past several decades, while propping up authoritarian regimes. Here are a few prominent examples:
In 1953, the US worked with Britain to orchestrate a coup that deposed Mohammed Mosaddegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran, and in his place propped up the authoritarian regime of Reza Shah. Remember Mosaddegh:
In 1954, the US orchestrated a coup to depose Jacobo Árbenz, the democratically elected leader of Guatemala, and installed the military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas in his place. Remember Árbenz:
In 1961, the US conspired with the UK and Belgiam to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Republic of Congo. They installed the Mobutu dictatorship in his place. Remember Lumumba:
In 1964, the US orchestrated a coup against João Goulart, the democratically elected leader of Brazil, and replaced him with a right-wing military junta. Remember Goulart:
In 1966, the US and Britain backed a coup against Kwame Nkrumah, the democratically elected president of Ghana, and installed a military junta to rule in his place. Remember Nkrumah:
In 1973, the US orchestrated a coup that deposed Salvadore Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and installed the right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in his place. Remember Allende:
The US supported the Batista dictatorship in Cuba; Suharto's blood-soaked regime in Indonesia; the apartheid state in South Africa; the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. They have propped up the regime in Saudi Arabia for several decades. It's a long and devastating list.
The US has destroyed many of the South's most promising democratic movements, whenever they have shown even the slightest inkling of supporting socialist or anti-imperialist policies. Because for the US, what ultimately matters is US economic interests and US hegemony. That's it.
*Belgium
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
New paper: "How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?"
Is it possible to realise this vision without exacerbating ecological breakdown? Yes! But it requires a totally different approach to the question of growth and development. 🧵 sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Some narratives hold that ending poverty and achieving good lives for all will require every country to reach the GDP/cap of high-income countries. But this would have severe ecological consequences. It forces a brutal dilemma between poverty reduction and ecological stability.
Convergence along these lines is also not possible given the imperialist structure of the world economy. High consumption in the core of the world-system depends on massive net-appropriation from the periphery. This model cannot be universalized.
As usual, middle-income countries that have strong public provisioning systems tend to perform best. This model allows countries to deliver relatively high levels of human welfare with relatively low levels of resource use.
Latin America boasts eight of the ten best-performing countries.
Most high-income countries continue to decline. Norway and Iceland— often mistakenly regarded as sustainability leaders — have declined nearly to the level of the United States. aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/…
People would better understand North Korea’s disposition toward the US if they remembered that US forces perpetrated an industrial-scale bombing campaign that destroyed nearly all of the country’s cities and towns, civilian infrastructure, and 85% of all buildings.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians were incinerated. The US dropped more bombs on North Korea in the early 1950s than they did in the entire Pacific theatre during WW2, making North Korea one of the most bombed countries in the world. You don’t easily forget such a thing.
All of these are war crimes today under Protocol I of the Geneva Convention.
“After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.” en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_o…
We have *extraordinary* productive capacities. We can do virtually anything. Renewable energy? Integrated public transit? Regenerative farming? High-quality affordable housing for all? DONE. But we are prevented from doing these things because they are not profitable to capital.
Medicines to end preventable diseases. Universal public healthcare. Insulated buildings. High-efficiency appliances in every household...
We live in a *shadow* of the society we could have because we do not have democratic control over finance and production.
We face mass deprivation, human misery and ecological crisis all around us. All of it totally unnecessary. And we are told to believe that this is somehow natural and "normal". It's wild.
Major investors like BlackRock and JPMorgan have pulled out of Climate Action commitments because they can achieve higher profits doing fossil fuels and emissions. A clear reminder that capitalism cannot achieve green transition with the necessary speed. ft.com/content/ab26da…
Renewables are cheap. Rapid decarbonization can be achieved. But affordability and feasibility are not what matters to capital. What matters is profits. They will invest in whatever is most profitable, and all of us are hostage to their insane logic.
It is critical to understand: finance represents power over our collective productive capacities - *our* labour and resources. With these capacities we can easily solve social & ecological problems. But we are prevented from doing so because capital directs our efforts elsewhere.
Did capitalist reforms reduce extreme poverty in China? New empirical data suggests the opposite. In the 1980s, socialist China had some of the lowest rates of extreme poverty in the periphery, while the capitalist reforms caused poverty to increase. theconversation.com/chinas-capital…
Scholars have long argued that the World Bank's $1.90 method suffers from a significant limitation, as it does not tell us whether people can actually afford essential goods (food, shelter, clothing, fuel), whose prices may move differently to the rest of the economy.
To overcome this limitation, we need to measure incomes against the cost of basic needs. This is a more robust approach.
With this method, we see that China's public provisioning systems ensured that even low-income people could access essential goods.