Globalisation – An Imperial Initiative? The fight of the Ogoni people.

The impact of globalisation on the global south is specifically important when discussing imperial globalisation. In this blog post, I will focus on Nigeria and here specifically on the Ogoni based social resistance movement The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). This social movement developed during the 1990s following Shell’s move into Ogoni territory. Shell engaged in large-scale oil extraction and exploration in Ogoni, forcing the indigenous people to give up land without their consent.

Photo by Friends of the Earth International

Yellow Vests, a modern Anti – austerity crusade: What does the future hold?

Photo by Pascal Maga

The Yellow Vest anti – austerity campaign has been a recurring issue in the news and social media.  It is an important issue that largely marked the 21^st century, a century of contestation and resistance, with a variety of social movements emerging as a result of crises of the neoliberal status quo.  These crises have actually empowered populist movements like the Yellow vests to spread all around the world, pressuring for more and more change at a regional and international level.  Essentially, it has been a contemporary crusade fought by tools like demonstration and non – compliance and resistance to the repressive nature of the system.  In this blog post, I will analyse this modern form of crusade, which has a banner and a symbol which makes it a full - grown resistance to the elites and the globalized structure they created.

ISIS - a resistance to neoliberal hegemony

Photo by Thierry Ehrmann

The West runs the world - and has since the 1970s. Neoliberal policies coming out of America and the UK have become mainstream and have influenced many other societies around the world. These dominant players in the global arena have intruded into Middle Eastern societies - to much of the locals’ disliking - in order to ‘democratise’ them; in other words, pulling them into a web of capitalism and democracy. Globalisation has created a new world order with the West at the forefront of expansion while leaving less developed countries uprooted and isolated. While some accepted this fact, others did not and planned to revolt against these money-driven westerners and their corrupt neoliberal values. Specifically after the US’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, a blossoming Islamic State (ISIS) would team up with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda in the Iraq Insurgency against corrupt Muslim leaders and Western Ideals. This blog post links globalisation to the rise of ISIS by first examining neoliberalism and its effects on different classes and their association with another, outlines the beginnings of the organisation and discusses how it rivals the neoliberal global order.

Fruck Off - Nottinghamshire people say no to shell gas

The general agreement among the citizens of Nottinghamshire is that hydraulic fracturing/fracking is harmful to their community. Not only does fracking cause substantial harm to the environment and contaminates local water springs, but the so-called benefits of fracking are backed up by the shale gas companies IGas and Ineos’ deceptive rhetoric. I argue that the expansion of fracking links to the ongoing investments in the UK energy market as a means of competing with international energy markets. Moreover, I argue that as long as the investors have powerful political allies on their side, they will ignore all opposition despite the controversies surrounding fracking because they have the resources to do so. This blog post aims to capture and discuss some of the essential developments of the issue by addressing recent events happening in Nottinghamshire and beyond. 

Photo by Sheila

Globalisation, Resistance and Trump: contesting the political economy of global restructuring

Voting for Donald Trump did not require civil disobedience, there were no strikes against other businesses and there was no significant violent protest. Trump’s electoral victory was however the result of a fundamental resistance to globalisation. More than that, and to the chagrin of his voters, Trump’s election demonstrates the beginnings of Marxist theory on capitalism. America, considered the bastion of global capitalism, had forsaken its proletariat in favour of allowing market forces to profit. The political elite had succumbed to the powers of multinational lobbyists and no longer sought to benefit ‘real Americans’. Such was the view of Trump voters, and whether or not it was true, their demand for a candidate outside of the political elite was fundamentally a rejection of globalisation. It was the culmination of a want for a return to isolationism and a revision of America’s relationship with the global economy.

Photo by LeoLondon

One Thousand Definitions of Freedom: what Occupy teaches us about resistance

Occupy Wall Street began with an image. In July 2011, the Canadian organisation Adbusters came up with a striking poster of a ballerina,serenely perched atop the Wall St statue of a bull. It stated the date of the protest – September 17^th – and the hashtag that gave the movement its name - #occupywallstreet. But more importantly, it asked the participants a very important question: What is our one demand? Ironically, this is also what other commentators have been asking ever since, but that does not mean that Occupy should have – or could have – given one such demand.

Photo by Michael Fleshman