Re: Re: Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
At 06:52 PM 4/6/00 -0700, you wrote: >I wouldn't say it's [the New York TIMES] the best paper but certainly the >best in the US. Its editorial stance is another matter altogether. today's TIMES has a front-page story about how Israel's harsh treatment of Arabs is mellowing. They never mentioned this harsh treatment, as far as I can tell, until it started (slowly) going away. That's the NYT! Frankly, it's best to get news from a variety of sources. If I had the time & money, I'd subscribe to the LE MONDE/MANCHESTER GUARDIAN weekly... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
I wouldn't say it's the best paper but certainly the best in the US. Its editorial stance is another matter altogether. Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5612 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Louis Proyect wrote: > >I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like > >this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it > >does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing > >the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. > > > >o!!.. > > > >Mine > > The NY Times is much more complex. There are continual battles going on > over how to report, either in the interests of the truth or in the > interests of the State Department. Raymond Bonner was an honest reporter > who dared to question the Reaganite line on Central America. Finally he was > purged. I think everybody should read the NY Times on a daily basis, either > in print or on the web. It is the best newspaper in the world, regardless > of its editorial stance. > > Louis Proyect > > (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org) > >
Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
I do think that there are "some" honest reporters in New York Times, but i do not think that it is the "best" newspaper in the world. This generalization requires a qualitative comparison of different newspapers around the globe first. Then, we may agree or disagree about the specifics. To me, it is Al-Ahram (let's say), to you it is New York Times. Even if you read major headlines on a daily basis, many third world issues are hardly mentioned in details, given very little substantive emphasis on the back pages. Whatever mentioned is mostly US centric designed to fit the US foreign policy goals and its hegomonic long term interests in specific terms. I think Raymond Banner deserves to be in much better places rather than being insulted by corporate capital interests. We really need such critics within the ranks of anti-systemic media. thanx... Mine -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 14:21:26 -0400 From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:17765] Diamonds and colonialism (fwd) >I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like >this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it >does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing >the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. > >o!!.. > >Mine The NY Times is much more complex. There are continual battles going on over how to report, either in the interests of the truth or in the interests of the State Department. Raymond Bonner was an honest reporter who dared to question the Reaganite line on Central America. Finally he was purged. I think everybody should read the NY Times on a daily basis, either in print or on the web. It is the best newspaper in the world, regardless of its editorial stance. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
>I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like >this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it >does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing >the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. > >o!!.. > >Mine The NY Times is much more complex. There are continual battles going on over how to report, either in the interests of the truth or in the interests of the State Department. Raymond Bonner was an honest reporter who dared to question the Reaganite line on Central America. Finally he was purged. I think everybody should read the NY Times on a daily basis, either in print or on the web. It is the best newspaper in the world, regardless of its editorial stance. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. o!!.. Mine -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 13:02:51 -0400 From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:17759] Diamonds and colonialism >From NY Times, April 6, 2000 "Africa's Diamond Wars" Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/040600africa-diamonds.html Exploiting a Continent The miseries of modern Africa are, in many ways, a legacy of its history. In the case of both Angola and Congo, colonialism obliterated whatever political culture may have predated the arrival of Europeans. It invented huge, largely fictive nations - Angola is the size of Texas, Congo of the United States east of the Mississippi - roping together people who regarded one other as foreigners. To make their nation-building pay, colonialists used force to haul off everything from ivory to rubber to human beings. In Congo, the Belgian colonial state was famously greedy and cruel. Its agents set impossible quotas for production of rubber and ivory, killing or chopping off the hands of villagers who failed to meet them. The novelist Joseph Conrad called it "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." In Angola, the Portuguese were less brutal, but no less toxic. At independence in 1975, several hundred thousand Portuguese residents, virtually the entire educated population, abandoned the country. Some took even their doorknobs with them. They left behind a place where almost no Angolans had any training in statecraft, business or agriculture. Then for the better part of the last 50 years, the cold war and the white-minority governments of southern Africa injected cash and arms into regional wars. The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, supported Unita in the early 1970's and again in the late 1980's. The Marxist government of Angola received military assistance from the Soviet Union and up to 50,000 troops from Cuba. When the C.I.A. was not helping Unita, the rebels got military backup from white-ruled South Africa. Sierra Leone, a small country in West Africa, had a more benign colonial history under British rule. But since the 1940's, predators who smuggle diamonds have warped every aspect of the nation's economic and political life. The meddling of colonialists, superpowers and white governments all but stopped at the start of the 1990's, leaving diamonds, oil and other natural resources as the primary forage for rebels and governments. In those countries where there was nothing to trade for weapons - as in Mozambique, where post-apartheid South Africa stopped financing rebellion and post-Communist Eastern Europe stopped financing the government - war simply fizzled out. But Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone had plenty of diamonds left over to excite greed, fuel war and to buy favors. The United Nations report on the embargo against Unita described how Mr. Savimbi gave a "passport sized" packet of diamonds to the president of Togo, Gnassingbe Éyadéma, as payment for allowing his children to live in Togo and go to school there. Togo has denied it. Mr. Savimbi "sealed" his friendship with the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, by giving him a number of envelopes full of diamonds, as well as contributing to his political campaign and helping his government pay debts, according to the report. In return, it said, Burkina Faso sent Mr. Savimbi three flights of diesel fuel. The government of Burkina Faso denies that. "Oh, the diamonds, diamonds, diamonds," said a character in Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter," a 1948 novel set in Sierra Leone. "You cannot understand how many bribes are necessary." Manipulating Scarcity De Beers created its cartel 110 years ago when the company's founder, Cecil Rhodes, realized that the sheer abundance of diamonds in southern Africa would make them virtually worthless. By carefully manipulating scarcity, De Beers prospered as perhaps the most powerful cartel in the annals of modern commerce. In the process, however, De Beers has run afoul of antitrust laws in the United States. The company's senior executives dare not enter this country because of an outstanding antitrust indictment that charges De Beers with fixing the prices of industrial diamonds. The company's grip on the diamond market has slipped a bit from near-total dominance at mid-century, but it has continued to keep the price of gem-quality diamonds high by being both aggressiv
Diamonds and colonialism
>From NY Times, April 6, 2000 "Africa's Diamond Wars" Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/040600africa-diamonds.html Exploiting a Continent The miseries of modern Africa are, in many ways, a legacy of its history. In the case of both Angola and Congo, colonialism obliterated whatever political culture may have predated the arrival of Europeans. It invented huge, largely fictive nations - Angola is the size of Texas, Congo of the United States east of the Mississippi - roping together people who regarded one other as foreigners. To make their nation-building pay, colonialists used force to haul off everything from ivory to rubber to human beings. In Congo, the Belgian colonial state was famously greedy and cruel. Its agents set impossible quotas for production of rubber and ivory, killing or chopping off the hands of villagers who failed to meet them. The novelist Joseph Conrad called it "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." In Angola, the Portuguese were less brutal, but no less toxic. At independence in 1975, several hundred thousand Portuguese residents, virtually the entire educated population, abandoned the country. Some took even their doorknobs with them. They left behind a place where almost no Angolans had any training in statecraft, business or agriculture. Then for the better part of the last 50 years, the cold war and the white-minority governments of southern Africa injected cash and arms into regional wars. The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, supported Unita in the early 1970's and again in the late 1980's. The Marxist government of Angola received military assistance from the Soviet Union and up to 50,000 troops from Cuba. When the C.I.A. was not helping Unita, the rebels got military backup from white-ruled South Africa. Sierra Leone, a small country in West Africa, had a more benign colonial history under British rule. But since the 1940's, predators who smuggle diamonds have warped every aspect of the nation's economic and political life. The meddling of colonialists, superpowers and white governments all but stopped at the start of the 1990's, leaving diamonds, oil and other natural resources as the primary forage for rebels and governments. In those countries where there was nothing to trade for weapons - as in Mozambique, where post-apartheid South Africa stopped financing rebellion and post-Communist Eastern Europe stopped financing the government - war simply fizzled out. But Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone had plenty of diamonds left over to excite greed, fuel war and to buy favors. The United Nations report on the embargo against Unita described how Mr. Savimbi gave a "passport sized" packet of diamonds to the president of Togo, Gnassingbe Éyadéma, as payment for allowing his children to live in Togo and go to school there. Togo has denied it. Mr. Savimbi "sealed" his friendship with the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, by giving him a number of envelopes full of diamonds, as well as contributing to his political campaign and helping his government pay debts, according to the report. In return, it said, Burkina Faso sent Mr. Savimbi three flights of diesel fuel. The government of Burkina Faso denies that. "Oh, the diamonds, diamonds, diamonds," said a character in Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter," a 1948 novel set in Sierra Leone. "You cannot understand how many bribes are necessary." Manipulating Scarcity De Beers created its cartel 110 years ago when the company's founder, Cecil Rhodes, realized that the sheer abundance of diamonds in southern Africa would make them virtually worthless. By carefully manipulating scarcity, De Beers prospered as perhaps the most powerful cartel in the annals of modern commerce. In the process, however, De Beers has run afoul of antitrust laws in the United States. The company's senior executives dare not enter this country because of an outstanding antitrust indictment that charges De Beers with fixing the prices of industrial diamonds. The company's grip on the diamond market has slipped a bit from near-total dominance at mid-century, but it has continued to keep the price of gem-quality diamonds high by being both aggressive and flexible. Through the years, it has sponged up periodic floods of diamonds from Russia, Australia and, until recently, across parts of war-ravaged Africa where it does not own all the mines. Together with the artificial perception of rarity, what makes diamonds profitable to more than 2.5 million miners, traders, cutters and wholesalers around the world - and what energizes the $50-billion-a-year retail diamond jewelry industry - is romance. That, for the most part, is also an invention of De Beers. In 1938, De Beers hired a New York advertising company to convince millions of couples that the larger the diamond on an engagement ring, the greater their love. In the 1960's, a similar