Author Archives: antifriedmanitejoe

(guest blog) by Joe Mcivor

Moral Major­i­ty?

Back in May of this year, Austin Mack­ell wrote in The Guardian that the Arab Spring rev­o­lu­tions rep­re­sent­ed “a rebel­lion not just against local dic­ta­tors, but against the glob­al neolib­er­al pro­gramme they were imple­ment­ing with such gus­to in their coun­tries”. He cit­ed Egypt in par­tic­u­lar as an exam­ple of a nation which had tak­en IMF loans and then prompt­ly imple­ment­ed their rec­om­men­da­tions of sub­stan­tial pri­vati­sa­tion and cut­ting of ser­vices, with the usu­al dis­as­trous results for the well-being of the pop­u­la­tion. He went on to write that peo­ple in the West had so far “failed to see the peo­ple of the region as nat­ur­al allies in a com­mon strug­gle”.