Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?

Moses that is  the problem: The global neoliberal order being a more distant culprit to the dispossessed people of the South in our predicament than our proximate leaders and political actors. When an African leader signs a dubious mining contract with a transnational company in a hotel in London, on behalf of his government/country, what we see is a greedy individual rather than a dot in the neoliberal chain. The solution is to connect the dots.
 

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My mission is to acquire, produce and disseminate knowledge on and about humanity as well as divinity, especially as it relates to Africa, in a constructive and liberating manner to people wherever they may be.
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Address: P. O. Box 4460 Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

Cell : + 255 754771763/+ 255 718953273

Blog: http://udadisi.blogspot.com/
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From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, December 16, 2010 2:10:10 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?

moses
while i agree largely with your careful reasoning, there is one point where i stopped. see it below.
ok, you are a farmer: you are growing a crop that was introduced to your region during the colonial period. call it, oh, cotton. why not.
the u.s. subsidizes cotton, thus enabling it to undersell mali. even in the poorest and most dispossessed region, cotton is affected since the malians cannot put up protective tariffs thanks to the stupid neoliberal rules that govern the imf.  and just in case we forgot, european subsidies exceed, in percentage, u.s. subsidies, and both the eu and usa are excempt from imf rules against erecting tariffs.
you live, let us say, in e congo where tin is mined. tin goes out, guns go in, militias, uganda elites, rwandan generals, all get rich
 you live, where? in senegal where those trawlers have harvested all the damn fish in the ocean, driving thousands to take piroques north, endangering themselves and drowning, only to get to a xenophobic europe ready to lynch them en mass, especially in italy which is ruled by a rightwing maniac.
should i go on? where is that corner, moses, where this economic order does not matter??
please. i know the leadership works hand in glove with the corporations that buy the diamonds, with the gun runners that sell the armaments. i know the chinese stepped into s sudan oil fields when the westerners moved out. please, where is this remote untouched corner?
i know, it is in the sahara. wait, what is africom surveilling? why are they expending millions to expend rule over mauretania, why did the chinese build a superhighway in mauretania. oh, oil. need i go on.
the order that is decimating africa reaches from elite to elite, and the rest of us, trawled up by those inhumane monsters, are left to cheer on bono.
we have to recognize ALL these forces if we are to establish a coherent policy for change. i would very very willingly start with the bottom up that you evoke, the subalterns that reach in peculiar ways across countries. all countries, integrated now more than ever into mechanisms of exploitation of resources and labor.
ken

On 12/15/10 11:53 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:

it is my view that for most peoples of the South and the North who are poor and dispossessed, the global neoliberal order is a more distant culprit in their predicament than are their proximate leaders and political actors.

--  kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu

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