astrogonza > Recent Status Updates

"After the US-backed mass murder of approximately one million people in 1965-66, Indonesia became one of the most important allies of the West during the Cold War. A general in the armed forces, Suharto, was rewarded with foreign aid and investment after overseeing the slaughter, and he ruled comfortably (and with record levels of corruption) into the 1990".

"But I had a slightly different ideological apparatus for interpreting an 'anti-corruption crusade' [...] Corruption manifested itself concretely through corporate influence over the state and public life; [...] Regular people were far more affected by the special rights granted to big construction companies and banks [...] than they were by the amounts of money actually kept by politicians themselves"

<< From 1990 to 2017, Russia's share of world GDP was cut in half, while China's share increased sixfold. It was this growth that played such a large role in powering Latin America's (much more modest) achievements in the Lula years. Countries in South America exported raw materials to China, which used them for a boom in infrastructure construction. >>