It is always easy – and tempting – to work with slogans and catchwords like Brazilianisation, New Princedoms and the like. One aspect behing putting them forward is the fact that they often focus on one point, by this presenting things neatly. And for this they can and should be always be criticised. But occasionally they also allow us to understand the broader picture that they carry with them. Two recent telesur-reports on the recent developments in Brazil highlight this in an interesting way, highlighting the dangers we are currently facing globally and nationally/regionally.
Dangers we are facing globally means that, of course, what happens there is part of a wider geopolitical strategy:
* Senate-imposed President of Brazil Michel Temer being not much more than a string-puppet to the USNA – yes, the self-elected world gendarme Northern America having again its dirty hands in the game and
Brazil is only the latest Latin American Coup
* the global dimension gets also clear when we understand that the movement is one aiming on getting
Brazil back in the clutches of Washington
Looking at the economic development and the fact that it is to some extent based on throwing off the ropes of the neocolonialist dependencies and obediences, also turning towards BRICS, UNASUR and others are major threats for the overcome system of the global hegemonic structures. – The
is not really in sight.
Reestablishing inner colonialisation is the second dimension: Brazilianisation is, indeed, about reestablishing the old hegemonies of a white male society, where “austerity” becomes identical with reinstalling a system that ignores human rights, that explicitly opens doors for discrimination and arbitrary rules.
When we then see the term Brazilianistion in its originally intended understanding of the “West” adopting the rules of a then neocolonial country (the origin of the term goes back to the pre-reform Brazil of the late 1990s), the current developments may give us some idea of what we can expect – or it may alert us when it comes to seeing the germs already now:
* Nestle Gains Control of Town’s Water for the Next Half Century
It reminds me of an interview I once heard, the Nestle CEO openly stating that he does not care about people dying because of the lack of access to water.
* A colleague from Austria wrote in a recent mail about the way in which his university deals with applications for academic jobs. He claimed that all applications should be assessed by a well defined catalogue of requirement – the same catalogue used for all applicants. The reply he had to face, coming from the chairwoman:
We surely have the right to assess every person indiviually and flexibly.
Right, this happened in Austria and the chairwoman had been a German. Not yet 100 years ago somebody came from Austria to Germany [and of course, he did not stay there].
* And of course we find the inequality exactly HERE. In a policy note of the
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
we find the data on the 1 % and the 99 %. But not less interesting is a look at the data of the sources of “income”. As true as it is that “honest labour never makes a person rich”, the gap between those who get income from “work” and those how gain from what is called unearned income, defined as
any income that comes from investments and other sources unrelated to employment services
is also increasing.
That the definition of unearned income also includes social transfers/welfare shouldn’t surprise – the clandestine socialisation of private entrepreneurship. If there would be a law making enterprises pay a “decent income”, we would not face the increasing number of the so-called working poor. And the latter live on state welfare but depend increasingly on charities – yes, Brazilianisation and New Princedoms go hand in hand. One of the differences between the old and the new princedoms is, of curse, that the church though still playing an important role, is to me extent replaced by other good-doers: The foundations of the super-rich, defining in their light what social quality should be and profiling themselves as the new messiahs …
Commedia della Vita or Pánta Rêi's Firm Ground 