This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
-- rich Arab oil states
-- "newly-emerging imperial countries of Asia and Israel;" and
-- US and European interests, including Wall Street speculators.
Key nations involved include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China, Korea, Japan, Israel, America, and various European countries. Their modus operandi include "political and financial mechanisms," coup d'etats, destabilization, bribes and more to ally with neoliberal collaborators in an imperial land grab. Once in place, extreme exploitation occurs, including repression, impoverishment, and displacement to produce crops for export. Peasants become serfs for $1 - 2 dollars a day. Agribusiness reaps huge profits and get footholds for new investments.
The World Bank is heavily involved directing $1.4 billion for takeovers of "underutilized lands." Deep polarization is the result - between wealthy investors and speculators on one side v. "hundreds of millions of starving, landless, dispossessed peasants" in numerous countries around the world.
The process is in its early stages with what's coming to include takeovers of "transport systems, infrastructure and credit systems...." An elite few outside the country will profit hugely. Internal collaborators will get rich. Local middle class elements are shrinking, and the vast majority of poor and dispossessed workers and peasants will lose the most as they always do. Today's global economic crisis hits them hardest. Their only recourse is mass uprisings, but military crackdowns will likely follow.
Yet Petras believes new agribusiness empires "may be short-lived" - replaced by "a new wave of rural-based national liberation movements and ferocious competition between new and old imperial states fighting over increasingly scarce financial and economic resources." And it may happen "with or without change in the US or Europe."
Regional Wars and Western Progressive Opinion: Commiserate with the Victims; Condemn Those Who Resist!
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
