Statement by Comrades from Cairo: We Refuse Economic Bondage -- Stop the Loans

[IMF headquarters in Washington, DC. Source: IMF. Image from Wikimedia Commons] [IMF headquarters in Washington, DC. Source: IMF. Image from Wikimedia Commons]

Statement by Comrades from Cairo: We Refuse Economic Bondage -- Stop the Loans

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was released by Comrades from Cairo on 31 October 2012]

Dear friends,

In the coming period we will again be facing a familiar enemy that many of you have and continue to battle. International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the IMF have long had a hand in plundering the Egyptian economy and dispossessing the Egyptian people. We aim to resist these institutions and their depredations, but we know that this struggle is a global one and so we address this letter to all those working in solidarity against these bankers and cronies.

Since the revolution, these IFIs have once again been eyeing the country, hoping to consolidate and expand their control. Citing “economic instability,” they want to force their program onto Egypt - an economic fix that would yet again widen the gap between rich and poor and attack the livelihoods of millions. What they call “instability” is nothing less than the grassroots uprising that opposed the status quo of political and economic hegemony of Egyptian rule.

The real problem is that we have not yet removed the IFI-trained Egyptian economists who continue to run our ministries and banks, while Egypt’s new leadership maintains a neoliberal logic of governance. The Muslim Brotherhood, the generals, the bureaucrats, and the bankers have the same intentions in mind: continued exploitation, theft, and commercialization of the country`s natural and human resources.

While some of the Brotherhood’s key leaders have promoted neoliberal policies for years, shortly after taking power, the organization formally dropped its religiously-grounded opposition to an IMF loan, claiming financial “necessity.” In practice, this means prioritizing the demands of banks and financial institutions over policies that would increase social justice for Egyptians. Furthermore, while the IMF claims that the loan has no conditions, an “economic reform package” prepared by their lackeys within the Egyptian financial system must be approved by the Fund before any money is loaned. No conditions, indeed.

The IMF might be the most obvious creditor with imperial intentions, but it is not alone in creating and maintaining unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationships based on domination and subordination. Just as dangerous are institutions like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank, who aim to commodify, privatize, and pillage anything they can, from transport and electricity to the Nile herself. Many of these banks supported our dictators for years, celebrating their attempts to subject us, our land, and our water to private capital.

Egypt is no exception. The South African revolution against apartheid was deemed a threat to economic stability - the new leadership that emerged boasted revolutionary credentials that made possible the implementation of a neoliberal program that exceeded its colonial predecessors. Following his election victory with promises of progressive programs, Lula, the president of Brazil, introduced ever more strident neoliberal policies whitewashed over with charity programs for an increasingly poor underclass. India was no different, where economic policies said to help the country enter global markets translated into thousands of farmers going into debt and losing their livelihoods while stratification between poor and rich surged. And the examples go on. The world over, these International Financial Institutions and the northern governments that run them exploit the uncertainty of "post-revolutionary" moments by imposing more austerity measures and tightening the noose around nations revolting against these very systems of control.

Egypt is no exception. Their solution is our problem, their “economic stability” is our destitution and exploitation - the reason why we revolted. By standing together we can strengthen our stance of abject opposition.

We acknowledge a lineage of struggle against IFIs and the IMF: an inspiring global network of peoples and activists of which we are a part. Today, we in Egypt are under further attack and imminent danger, and have decided to take on this fight.

For those similarly targeted by the IMF and IFIs and who have been fighting against those predators, let us find ways to combine our efforts and join forces in opposing these loans both locally and globally.

For others, we ask you to march on the headquarters of the banks based in your countries, and to use creative resistance and direct action strategies so that we can put an end, together, to the injustices and the oppression driven by these institutions.

No Bosses, No Creditors! 

 

Sincerely,

Comrades from Cairo

31 October 2012

comradesfromcairo@gmail.com

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Long Form Podcast: Episode 1- Nesrine Malik

      Long Form Podcast: Episode 1- Nesrine Malik

      This conversation focuses on Long Form’s primary theme, an exploration of whether this historical moment represents the disintegration of the global order established after the Second World War, or a period of upheaval that will ultimately leave it intact. Topics covered include the elections of Donald Trump in the US and Keir Starmer in Great Britain; the role played by the far right and centrists in challenging the global order; Sudan; and Palestine.

    • Announcing the Long Form Podcast with Bassam Haddad and Mouin Rabbani

      Announcing the Long Form Podcast with Bassam Haddad and Mouin Rabbani

      There can be little doubt we are living in a time of monsters. But is the global order that emerged after the horrors of the Second World War dying in a paroxysm of conflict and violence that are tearing its foundations apart? Or are as we experiencing yet another period of upheaval that will be absorbed and leave the world as we know it fundamentally intact? Long Form consists of a series of lengthy discussions and conversations with leading thinkers, scholars, and activists that explores the most pressing issues of our day, sheds light on their context and dynamics, and in so doing seeks to explore the broader theme of challenges to the global order and how these might affect it.

    • Season 18 Episode 3: Is the United States Becoming a Shithole Country? (11 February 2025)

      Season 18 Episode 3: Is the United States Becoming a Shithole Country? (11 February 2025)

      Contrary to popular thought, becoming a shithole country comes with some huge perks. Who needs to think about and spend precious resources on education, healthcare, environmental protection, creating jobs, and other laborious and inconvenient chores? The “shithole” concept was a paradigmatic and pedriatic shift in how global policy is conducted. Trump’s latest dump poses new questions we will consider rigorously and religiously, God willing. Also, who does not like resorts? Or a good cleanse?


Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412