Author: David Legge
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Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage
Tricontinental, 23 January 2024 It has been a scant 30 years since the ‘end of history’ was declared by bourgeois ideologists in pantomimes of wish-fulfilment for sensing the inviolability of United States imperialism. For peoples’ struggles and movements feeling the boot of imperialism on their necks, no such end was in sight. In the face…
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Sick development: how rich-country governments and World Bank funding to for-profit hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped
Anna Marriot, Oxfam International, June 2023. Development finance institutions owned by European governments and the World Bank Group are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive for-profit hospitals in the Global South that block patients from getting care, or bankrupt them, with some even imprisoning patients who cannot afford their bills. At the height…
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World Bank Enables Foreign Aid Theft
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Jan 17 2024 (IPS) – World Bank aid encourages governments to enable illicit financial outflows to offshore tax havens by reducing capital controls, thus draining precious foreign exchange and government resources. Aiding elite wealthAid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centres known for banking…
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Colombia takes significant next step to expand people’s access to affordable HIV treatment, and moves forward with compulsory license for HIV medicine dolutegravir
MSF Bogotá/Geneva, 6 February 2024 – On Friday, the government of Colombia took a historic step towards issuing its first-ever compulsory license (CL) to overcome patent barriers to HIV treatment and import less expensive generic versions of the HIV medicine dolutegravir without permission from the patent owner, ViiV Healthcare (a joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Shionogi). The…
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Neocolonial ISDS, Abused, Biased, Costly, and Grossly Unfair
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Feb 7 2024 (IPS) – Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in international trade and investment agreements – long abused by opportunists with means – are slowly being rejected by cautious governments. Developing country governments need to be much more wary of ISDS and its implications, and should urgently withdraw from existing commitments. They…
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A worldof debt: A growing burden to global prosperity
UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP, July 2023 Public debt can be vital for development. Governments use it to finance their expenditures, to protect and invest in their people, and to pave their way to a better future. However, it can also be a heavy burden, when public debt grows too much or too fast. This…
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The IMF and the Argentinian Right
C. P. Chandrasekhar, January 25, 2024 On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio. That surprised some. Going by the IMF’s stated ‘principles’, the disbursal should not have…
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The Scourge of Unemployment
Prabhat Patnaik The unemployment situation is worse today than it has ever been in post-independence India. There are two distinct elements that have contributed to this situation. One is the fact that the output recovery from the fall caused by the pandemic-linked lockdown has not been accompanied by a comparable employment recovery. In fact, even…
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Inequality Inc.
How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era of public action Oxfam, 14 January, 2024 Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people…
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AFTINET briefing paper on ISDS
Australian Fair Trade and Investment (AFTINET) updated briefing paper on Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), January 2024 AFTINET has produced an updated briefing paper on ISDS. It provides background and the latest evidence on ISDS cases including Clive Palmer’s three cases against the Australian government, which total nearly $410 billion. It documents other case studies and…
