The heads of state of the most industrialised countries of the world are meeting in Cologne to talk about development, environmental protection, peace, prosperity... and we laugh our heads off!!!
These powerful men want to show their "generosity" by "forgiving" some of the debts of third world countries. We ask these leaders: Whose debts are you talking about? Who has something to forgive to whom? How can you be so eminently hypocritical?
According to conservative estimations , in the late 18th and the 19th century the drain of wealth from India to Britain (in the form of tributes and excess of exports over imports) amounted to about 2-2,5% of the yearly British National Income and about 30% of the capital formation. The consequences of this drain were deeply felt in the villages: when the Britishers came, the farmers had to pay around 65% of their income in tributes, 59% of which was kept by the British traders.
Such an inflow of stolen capital surely hastened the pace of industrialisation in Britain, but it was not the only factor. Indian agriculture also provided a substantial share of the raw materials needed for that phase of industrialisation, which was based on the textile industry. This was done by doing away with the diverse and self-sustained economy and ecology of villages and replacing them by the cash-crops needed to pay the taxes, which were the commodities demanded by the British industry. Since the Indian farmers were showing resistance to grow costly cash crops (which required a high working capital and took away the food security of the farmers and the villages), the European traders went as far as to use physical force to impose their will. They kept the prices of these cash crops low by demanding the payment of taxes from the peasants when the latter were short of cash (just before the harvest) and giving them short-term loans in condition that their produce would be sold to the traders at fixed contract prices - which were very low in order to keep the peasants in a debt trap that they could never escape.
By 1820 the British textile industry, which grew protected from its much more efficient Indian counterpart, had become competitive because of a massive growth based on large-scale exports to India. The British then focused on another product to enhance the transfer of wealth from India to Britain: opium. Britain required raw silk and tea from China but did not want to pay for them. Hence, a large extension of India was converted into a huge opium monoculture. This cheap opium was exported by the British to China to pay the bill. In what could be considered as the beginning of large-scale narco-politics by imperialist countries, a country was made addicted to opium and a war was fought in order to fuel the industrialisation of Britain. In 1855 Britain exported 8,5 million pounds worth tea and silk from China and exported only 1 million to that country. The rest was paid with Indian opium.
The formal dismantlement of the Colonial empires didn't change anything in the trade mechanisms used to extract wealth from the countries of the South. The former colonial powers along with the USA put in place corrupt governments to ensure "investment-friendly regimes" in these countries. The combination of these factors gave birth to the so-called "debt crisis" of the Third World, a crisis that has nothing to do with the people from these countries, but with the elites from the North and the puppet regimes that they control in the South.
The so-called "debt crisis" made Southern countries depend on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), controlled by the G7 group. The IMF and the WB imposed on Southern governments a set of devastating policies, according to the wishes of G7 countries. These policies have resulted in the transfer of billions of dollars from the poorest of the poor into the pockets of the richest elites of the world, the massive exploitation of people and nature in order to increase the output of cheap exports for rich consumers, and the dismantling of all policies designed to reduce the dependency of Southern countries on their former colonisers. And of course these policies led to the skyrocketing of the debts instead of their progressive elimination, just like the policies of the British traders towards Indian farmers.
Now the heads of state of the G7 want to present themselves towards the public as generous world leaders willing to forget and forgive some of these debts in a remarkable charitative gesture. This is a joke!!!
We laugh at the Gang of Seven Criminal Hypocrites that are meeting in Cologne
We laugh at their claim that neoliberal policies will bring peace and prosperity for all
We laugh at the corrupt Southern governments
for playing their part in this melodrama by paying debts that never existed
We laugh at the so-called "debt relief" of the G7 - WE DO NOT FORGIVE YOUR DEBTS!!