"There seem to be three narratives about BRICS. The first is promotional and mainly comes from government and allied intellectuals; the second perspective is uncertainty, typical of fence-sitting scholars and NGOs; and the third is highly critical, from forces sometimes termed the 'independent left.'" (Patrick Bond)
Narrative 1: http://www.brics5.co.za/ Narrative 2: http://www.brics.utoronto.ca/ Narrative 3: Brics-From-Below - Counter Summit Hosted in Durban http://allafrica.com/stories/201303201121.html The brics-from-below agenda: http://www.groundwork.org.za/brics/brics-from-below%20call%20version%2017%20March.pdf http://www.groundwork.org.za/bricsfrombelow.html Background: Center for Civil Society http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?6,84 A BRICS Reader for the Durban summit, March 26-27 Pambazuka News 622 - Special issue http://www.pambazuka.org/en/ http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/current/ including three articles by Patrick Bond. a) Introducing BRICS from above and BRICS from below http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86651 b) Are BRICS 'sub-imperialists'? http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86650 c) BRICS and the sell-out to international capital: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86655 "[...] we must now be blunt if, as is certain, the Durban summit will be remembered as a latter-day 1884-85 Berlin conference. Five colonial powers – host Germany, Britain, France, Portugal and Belgium (plus Italy and Spain) – divvied up the continent back then with one common objective: efficient resource extraction through export-oriented infrastructure. WILL BRICS BANK DIFFER FROM BRETTON INSTITUTIONS? To update this very task, five BRICS leaders will invite 16 heads of state from Africa, many of whom are notorious tyrants, to a gated Zimbali luxury lodge on March 27 – having confirmed the continent’s economic carve-up the day before. Their knife of choice is a sharp new ‘BRICS Bank’ that London and New York economists Nick Stern and Joe Stiglitz – both former World Bank senior vice presidents – told them would cost $50 billion in start-up capital (exactly the thumbsuck number they’ve already chosen to announce). This new Bank comes nine months after $75 billion was wasted by the same five, bailing out the International Monetary Fund in a manner that shrunk both Africa’s voting share and prospects for world economic recovery. And 11 months ago, two BRICS nominees for World Bank president were soundly defeated by Washington’s candidate thanks to unfair US-EU voting power. The BRICS aim to replace the 'Bank of the South' – dreamt of by the late Hugo Chavez although repeatedly sabotaged by more conservative Brasilia bureaucrats and likewise opposed by Pretoria – but will theirs be any different than Washington’s twin banks? [...]" _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
