They say no link - Changing the Cuban governmental structure would lead to neoliberal takeover and the destruction

of human rights. Nichols, National Executive of the Democratic Social Perspective, 2005
(Dick, The Cuban Revolution in the Epoch of Neoliberal Globalisation, http://readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/CubaNeoLiberalEpoch.pdf)
As the anti-Cuba campaign spreads even to these distant shores we will need to make use of the powerful arguments in support of the Cuban cause, explaining the simple truth that theres

more human rights and democracy under Cubas single-party system than under the two-party farce of western money politics.
Here its always a case of plus a change, plus la mme chose the more things change, the more they stay the same while

a multiparty system of the type being pushed for Cuba by the USA would mean a catastrophic decline in human and democratic rights that capitalist restoration would bring. Even on the grounds on which Amnesty International and the US Human Rights Watch operate that of universally recognised human rights conventions operating irrespective of the intensity of conflict conditions Cubas alleged crimes are puny compared to those of its main accuser, the super-powerful, super-secure United States. To get an idea, compare the reports on the two countries in the 2001 Amnesty
International annual report: Political prisoners? Tell that to Leonard Peltier and the Puerto Rican patriots who have been in goal for decades. Death sentences? A few in Cuba last year, but take a look at the new presidents record as the governing ghoul of the Lone Star state. Prison population as a percentage of total population? No contest, with three million in US goals operating as slave labour.

The neoliberal concept of making the largest profit in the shortest time makes environmental collapse inevitable. Wise et al., Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies; Universidad Autnoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
(Ral Delgado Wise, Humberto Mrquez Covarrubias, Rubn Puentes, Reframing the debate on migration, development and human rights: fundamental elements, October, 2010, www.migracionydesarrollo.org)
The internationalization of capital. The

expansion strategy of the global economy involves a profound economic restructuring based on the establishment of subcontracting chains dominated by large multinational corporations, which have a global reach. This form of expansion seeks to economically
reinsert peripheral countries that are rich in natural resources and ensure an abundant and cheap workforce. The new export platforms, in fact, operate as enclaves, that is production, commercial and services zones dominated by multinational corporations and often exempted from national taxation and regulation of working and environmental conditions. These types of plants cur- rently employ between 55 million (Robinson, 2008) and 66 million Southern workers (Singa Boyenge, 2006) and the strategy is widely implemented by large manufacturing, financial, agricultural, commercial, and service-sector multinationals (Robinson, 2008). Financialization.

Financial capital generates speculative strategies that foster the channeling of investment funds, sovereign funds, pension funds and social savings toward new financial instruments that offer short-term high profit margins but can entail re- current crises and massive fraud. These speculative strategies obstruct and affect the functioning of the so-called real economy (Foster and Magdof, 2009; Bello, 2006). Environmental degradation. Biodiversity, natural resources, and communal and national wealth are privatized for the benefit of large corporations that favor profits while ignoring social and environmental costs. This leads to increased environmental degradation, pollution, famine, and disease, as well as climate changes (global warming and increasingly frequent extreme climatic events) that threaten the symbiotic relationship between humans and the environment (Foladori and Pierri, 2005). The restructuring of innovation systems. Advances in IT,
telecommunications, biotech- nology, new materials and nanotechnology cater to the needs of large corporations looking for increased profits. Scientific and technological research have been restructured under mechanisms such as outsourcing and offshore-outsourcing, which allow corporations to employ southern scientists, transfer risk and responsibility, and capi- talize on resultant benefits by

amassing patents. This

has lead to unprecedented mer- cantilism in scientific research, short-term perspectives and a lack of social concern (Freeman, 2005b, Lester and Piore, 2004).

The development paradigm that exports Western values subjects peripheral peoples to violence and genocide and makes the oppression of the primitives inevitable. Mignolo, Professor of Cultural Anthropology @ Duke U, 2k
(Walter, Local Histories/Global Designs, 115-117)
enrique Dussel, an Argentinian philosopher associated with the philosophy of liberation, has been articulating a strong countermodern argument. I quote from the beginning of

Modernity is, for many (for Jurgen Habermas or Charles Taylor, for example), in essentially or exclusively European phenomenon. In these lectures, I will argue that modernity is, in fact, a European phenomenon, but one constituted in dialectical relation with a non-European alterity that is its ultimate content. Modernity appears when Europe affirms itself as the "center" of a World history that it inaugurates; the "periphery" that surrounds this center is consequently part of its self-definition. The occlusion of this periphery (and of the role of Spain and Portugal in the formation of the modern world system from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries) leads the major contemporary thinkers of the "center" into a Eurocentric fallacy in their understanding of modernity. If their understanding of the genealogy of modernity is thus partial and provincial, their attempts at a critique or defense of it are likewise unilateral and, in part, false. (Dussel [19931 1995, 65) The construction of the idea of modernity linked to European expansion, as forged by European intellectuals, was powerful enough to last almost five hundred years. Postcolonial discourses and theories began effectively to question that hegemony, a challenge that was unthinkable (and perhaps unexpected) by those who constructed and presupposed the idea of modernity as a historical period and implicitly as the locus of enunciationa locus of enunciation that in the name of rationality, science, and philosophy as serted its own privilege over other forms of rationality or over what, from the perspective of modern reason, was nonrational. I would submit, conse quently, that
his Frankfurt lectures: postcolonial literature and postcolonial theories are constructing a new concept of reason as differential loci of enunciation. What does "differential" mean? Differential here first means a displacement of the concept and practice of the notions of knowledge, science, theory, and understanding articulated during the modern period. Thus, Dussel's region alization of modernity could be compared with Homi Bhabha's, both speak ing from different colonial legacies (Spanish and English respectively): "Driven by the subaltern history of the margins of modernityrather than by the failures of logocentrismI have tried, in some small measure, In revise the known, to rename the postmodern from the position of the postcolo nial" (Bhabha 1994, 175; emphasis added). I find a noteworthy coincidence between Dussel and Bhabha, albeit with some significant differences in accent. The coincidence lies in the very iui portant fact that the task of postcolonial reasoning (i.e., theorizing) is not only linked to the immediate political needs of decolonization (in Asia, Al rica, and the Caribbean) but also to the rereading of the paradigm of modi i n reason. This task is performed by Dussel and Bhabha in different, although complementary ways. After a detailed analysis of Kant's and Hegel's construction of the idea of I nlightenment in European history, Dussel summarizes the elements

Modern (European) civilization understands itself as the most developed, the superior, civilization; (2) This sense of superiority obliges it, in the form of a categorical imperative, as it were, to "develop" (civilize, uplift, educate) the more primitive, barbarous, underdeveloped civilizations; (3) The path of such development should be that followed by Europe in its own development out of antiquity and the Middle Ages; (4) Where the barbarians or the primitive opposes the civilizing process, the praxis of modernity must, in the last instance, have recourse to the violence necessary to remove the obstacles to modernization; (5) This violence, which produces in many different ways, victims, takes on an almost ritualistic character: the civilizing hero invests his victims (the colonized, the slave, the woman, the ecological destruction of the earth, etc.) with the character of being participants in a process of redemptive sacrifice; (6) from the point of view of modernity, the barbarian or primitive is in a state of guilt (for, among other things, opposing the civilizing process). This allows modernity to present itself not only as innocent but also as a force that will emancipate or redeem its victims from their guilt; (7) Given this "civilizing" and redemptive character of modernity, the suffering and sacrifices (the costs) of modernization imposed on "immature" peoples, slaves, races, the "weaker" sex, el cetera, are inevitable and necessary. (Dussel 119931 1995, 75)
that i onstitute the myth of modernity: (1) the myth of modernity is laid out by Dussel to confront alternative interpietations. While Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as postmodernist think is such as Lyotard, Rorty, or Vattimo, all propose a critique of reason (a v iolent, coercive, and genocidal reason), Dussel proposes a critique of the enlightenment's irrational moments as sacrificial myth not by negating reason but by asserting the reason of the otherthai is, by identifying postcolonial reason as differential locus of enunciation. The intersection between tbi idea of a self-centered modernity grounded in its own appropriation of greco-Roman (classical) legacies and an emerging idea of modernity from the margins (or countermodernity) makes clear that history does not begin in Greece, and that different historical beginnings are, at the same time, anchored to diverse loci of enunciation. This simple axiom is, 1 submit, a bind.internal one for and of postsubaltern reason. Finally, Bhabha's project in lename the postmodern from the position of the postcolonial also finds lis niche in postsubaltern reason as a differential locus of enunciation.

Neoliberalism creates a kill to save mentality in which people are sacrificed under the false justification of saving the greater good- this collective suicide inevitably causes extinction
Santos 03, Director of Social Studies at University of Coimbra (Boaventura de Sousa, April, Collective
Suicide?, Bad Subjects, Issue # 63) According to Franz Hinkelammert, the

West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was under Stalinism, with the Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the Western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it. Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the present-day reality, and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market failures; instead, it is the outcome of market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically eradicate all terrorists and potential terrorists. This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to reproduce infinitely the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During the last hundred years, the
West has experienced three versions of this logic, and, therefore, seen three versions of the end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the state and international institutions in their favor. I have described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly democratic rulers. At all these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism,

predominates, the idea of a looming collective suicide, only preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the
efficacy of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version, neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number of forms, from the idea of "discardable

populations", referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and consumers, to the concept of "collateral damage", to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic

heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the Non-Governmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this is without there being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest countries for four years. Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial destruction has always been linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial design of radically changing the terms of economic, social, political and cultural exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates postulated by the maximalist logic of the totalitarian illusion in operation. It is as though hegemonic powers, both when they are on the rise and when they are in decline, repeatedly go through times of primitive accumulation, legitimizing the most shameful violence in the name of futures where, by definition, there is no room for what must be destroyed. In today's version, the period of

primitive accumulation consists of combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization of war. The machine of democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction. In opposition to this, there is the ongoing movement of globalization from below, the global struggle for social justice, led by social movements and NGOs, of which the World Social Forum (WSF) has been an eloquent manifestation. The WSF has been a remarkable affirmation of life, in its widest and most inclusive sense, embracing human beings and nature. What challenges does it face
before the increasingly intimate interpenetration of the globalization of the economy and that of war? I am convinced that this new situation forces the globalization from below to re-think itself, and to reshape its priorities. It is well-known that the WSF, at its second meeting, in 2002, identified the relationship between economic neoliberalism and imperial warmongering, which is why it organized the World Peace Forum, the second edition of which took place in 2003. But this is not enough. A strategic shift is required. Social movements, no matter what their spheres

of struggle, must give priority to the fight for peace, as a necessary condition for the success of all the other struggles. This means that they must be in the frontline of the fight for peace, and not simply leave this space to be occupied solely by peace movements. All the movements against neoliberal globalization are, from now on, peace movements. We are now in the midst of the fourth world war (the third being the Cold War) and the spiral of war will go on and on. The principle of non-violence that is
contained in the WSF Charter of Principles must no longer be a demand made on the movements; now it must be a global demand made by the movements. This emphasis is necessary so that, in current circumstances, the celebration of life can be set against this vertiginous collective suicide. The peace to be fought for is not a mere absence of war or of terrorism. It is

rather a peace based upon the elimination of the conditions that foster war and terrorism: global injustice, social exclusion, cultural and political discrimination and oppression and imperialist greed. A new, cosmopolitan humanism can be built above and beyond Western illuminist abstractions, a humanism of real people based on the concrete resistance to the actual human suffering imposed by the real axis of evil: neoliberalism plus war.

They say that the US needs to help Cuba to become more democratic but the Santos piece of evidence specifically illustrates that thats what the neolib system does; they say they want to make life better for the primitives and spread democracy when in reality they are simply oppressing those people more.

Wise et al., Director of Doctoral Program in Migration Studies & Prof of Development Studies; Universidad Autnoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
(Ral Delgado Wise, Humberto Mrquez Covarrubias, Rubn Puentes, Reframing the debate on migration, development and human rights: fundamental elements, October, 2010, www.migracionydesarrollo.org) At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, a general crisis centered in the United States affected the global capitalist system on several levels (Mrquez, 2009 and 2010). The consequences have been varied: Financial. The overflowing of financial capital leads to speculative bubbles that affect the socioeconomic framework and result in global economic depressions. Speculative bubbles involve the bidding up of market prices of such commodities as real estate or electronic innovations far beyond their real value, leading inevitable to a subsequent slump (Foster and
Magdof, 2009; Bello, 2006). Overproduction. Overproduction crises emerge when the surplus capital in the global economy is not channeled into production processes due to a fall in profit margins and a slump in effective demand, the latter mainly a consequence of wage containment across all sectors of the population (Bello, 2006). Environmental. Environmental

degradation, climate change and a predatory approach to natural resources contribute to the destruction of the latter, along with a fundamental undermining of the material bases for production and human reproduction (Fola- dori and Pierri, 2005; Hinkelammert and Mora, 2008). Social. Growing social inequalities, the dismantling of the welfare state and dwindling means of subsistence accentuate problems such as poverty, unemployment, violence, insecurity and labor precariousness, increasing the pressure to emigrate (Harvey, 2007; Schierup, Hansen and Castles, 2006). The crisis raises questions about the prevailing model of globalization and, in a deeper sense, the systemic global order, which currently undermines our main sources of wealthlabor and natureand overexploits them to the extent that civilization itself is at risk. The responses to the crisis by the governments of developed countries and international agencies promoting globalization have been short-sighted and exclusivist. Instead of addressing the root causes of the crisis, they have implemented limited strategies that seek to rescue financial and manufacturing corporations facing bankruptcy. In addition, government policies of labor flexibilization and fiscal adjustment have affected the living and working conditions of most of the population. These measures are desperate attempts to prolong the privileges of ruling elites at the risk of imminent and increasingly severe crises. In these conditions, migrants have been made into scapegoats, leading to repressive anti- immigrant legislation and policies (Massey and Snchez, 2006). A significant number of
jobs have been lost while the conditions of remaining jobs deteriorate and deportations inc rease. Migrants living standards have drastically deteriorated but, contrary to expectations, there have been neither massive return flows nor a collapse in remittances, though there is evidence that migrant worker flows have indeed diminished.

This economic paradigm will inevitably collapse development will eviscerate the planets resources and end in great power war the impact is extinction. Meszaros 8
(Istvan, professor emeritus @ University of Sussex, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time)
Thus, we

face the urgency of time not least on account of the already planned as well as the ongoing aggressive war-practices arising from the perilous conditions and contradictions of our time. What makes these issues particularly grave is that the dangerous actions undertaken by global hegemonic imperialism are neither capable of being brought to a lasting conclusion, nor is it feasible that they will be abandoned in favor of a more sustainable and even minimally rational course of development. For notwithstanding the unlimited arrogance of militarily backed state power, the uncomfortable fact remains that it is very far from being sufficient for securing a historically sustainable outcome to destroy the central military position of the arbitrarily decreed enemy "by overwhelming force," in the words of the favorite strategic doctrine, as the Americans
are now forced to recognize, even if not to admit, in Iraq. Occupying a country on a permanent basis, and generating the required resources for a profitable occupation as a matter of course, is a prohibitively complicated matter, not to mention the total absurdity of extending direct imperial dominationwith the weapons of mass destruction abundantly possessed by the United States to major areas of our planet. No doubt, the

aggressive adventures of global hegemonic imperialism are fully capable of and may indeed

actually succeed in destroying human civilization. But they are absolutely incapable of offering a sustainable solution to the grave problems of our time. One cannot underline strongly enough how serious it is
that even the growing aggressiveness cannot produce the wishfully anticipated results on a lasting basis, no matter how immense might be the resources invested in it by the dominant imperialist state. And the problem is further complicated by the fact that the prodigally invested resources are derived to a large extent out of escalating U.S. indebtedness, at the expense of the rest of the world, ironically now including in a prominent place China. But no

matter how much is wasted, and how aggressive and humanly destructive the military strategy pursued, even if it assumes genocidal forms, the actual results will fall far short of the projected imperialist expectations. The structural crisis of the capital system as a whole deepens also in that
respect. Nevertheless, for the time being global hegemonic U.S. imperialism can dominate with relative ease its potential rivals. But can this state of affairs be assumed to endure forever? The inter-state relation of forces was never permanent in the past and could never become permanent in the capitalist future. Inevitably,

there are always significant costs involved in securing one state's dominance over another, which must therefore remain strictly transitory, not to mention the implications of a single state's postulated domination of the rest of the world in accord with the arrogant neoconservative vision of the "American Millennium." The relative material productive power of the potential rivals is a most important factor in this respect, and only a fool could take for granted the permanence of an existing proportionality among the major countries, at the unalterable advantage of a much smaller country, like the United States, vis--vis
China, for instance. It is no secret that in the most aggressive circles in Washington a great deal of effort is constantly invested in advocating a "proper way to deal with the Chinese threat" to U.S. supremacy in the future, including the anticipated use of large-scale military destruction. Whatever may be the success of such design in the near future by the old and not so old "China lobby," the problem itself is certainly not going to disappear. For China's economic power is bound to become far greater than that of the United States within a relatively short space of time. Already today, if China decided to withdraw its almost astronomical magnitude of financial assets from the United States, that would cause a massive economic earthquake not only in the United States but also throughout the entire world. This problem, with all of its political and potentially even military corollaries, must be faced soon in a rational and sustainable way, if we want to avoid the destructive impact of the strategies favored by the China lobby and by its unrelenting broader Washington allies. Moreover, as regards a somewhat more distant future, also the growing and potentially also very greatdevelopmental promise of India must be reconsidered in accord with its true significance. It is not enough to notice China and India for the transparently self-serving purpose of the Western capitalist countries which already blame them on account of the worsening ecological conditions of our planet. The

existing relation of forces in our global order is totally untenable in the long-run. Nor is it possible to
attribute the slightest degree of rationality to the U.S. military plans to deploy a new anti-missile system in Poland, with the transparent pretence that the placement of such weaponry next door to Russia is a "defensive shield" for the United States "against al-Qaida." Russian protests voiced against that plan made it amply clear that they do not take the offered justification seriously for a moment. Could anybody consider this kind of U.S. military measure, set in place with the full complicity of Poland,63 as anything other than recklessly playing with fire? The

now discernible and aggressively pursued strategies of global hegemonic imperialism can only make matters worse, because imperialism, as the anachronistic sworn enemy of historical time, cannot function without imposing on its ruthlessly controlled dependencies the most iniquitous forms of domination. By contrast, only the genuine advocacy of responsibly facing up to the grave problems of capital's deepening structural crisis in the spirit of substantive equality (feasible only in a
socialist order)which could make the paradoxically "small country" of the United States the uncontested equal of the big countries of India and Chinais an absolute requirement for the future. For only the generally adopted spirit of substantive equality can offer a historically sustainable solution to the now prevailing and potentially most destructive inter-state relation of forces.

Perms inclusion guarantees that inequalities are whitewashed and Western interests always win out. Martell, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 2009
(Luke, Global Inequality, Human Rights and Power: A Critique of Ulrich Becks Cosmopolitanism, Critical Sociology 35(2) 253272, SAGE)
Where Beck does try to put into action his cosmopolitan postcolonialism it runs into trouble (e.g. Beck and Sznaider, 2006). He advocates a both/and perspective taking over from an either/or perspective. This is good for bringing in previously exc luded inputs to views that have stressed Westernization without understanding a mixture of influences including from non-Western sources (e.g. Abu-Lughod, 1989). However a

both/and view runs the risk of replacing Westernization perspectives with one in which power and inequality is glossed over by an attempt to resurrect understandings of the inputs of non- Western societies. When different global societies meet there are often some that have greater economic, political and ideological power. To highlight this fact is not to endorse it. And it is not to say there are

not real sources of opposition and alternatives to Westernization both academically and politically (in the latter case from Iran to Venezuela for example). But positing a both/and mix appears to give an equality to a mix of perspectives when there are great inequalities and power differences in that mix. In trying to give more of a role to inputs from beyond the West it runs the risk of playing
down the Western power that such inputs are subjected to. Becks own use of a both/and hybridizing postcolonialism (2000b: 89) underesti- mates these power relations and inequalities. In a discussion of deregulation and flexibi- lization which promote an informal economy, diluted trade union representation and weak states Beck suggests these are non-Western standards being adopted by Western societies. But the direction of power is the other way around. These are structures and effects of neoliberalism being exported by Western-dominated governments and institu- tions to other Western and non-Western societies with the deleterious effects that Beck rightly suggests. Western

power is underestimated here when neoliberalism is seen as an effect of the importation of poor regulation from the nonWest to West rather than an expression of the corporate and state power of Western interests. So the novelty and uniqueness of Becks cosmopolitanism for establishing a postcolo- nial perspective is justified
by an understatement of the extent to which postcolonialism is already in existence and an overstatement of the role of cosmopolitanism in having a new role in establishing this itself. At the same time, his more hybrid postcolonial view, rather than restoring a greater emphasis on poorer countries contribution to globaliza- tion, may underestimate the power they are

postcolonialism fits into a more general pattern in his work, of underestimating previous down a road which rather than overcoming power and inequality seems as much to play down how significant it is.
subjected to. Becks cosmopolitanism in social science, overestimating the novelty of his cosmopolitan vision, and leading

They say perm do both but the perms inclusion guarantees that inequalities are whitewashed and Western interests always win out. Martell, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 2009
(Luke, Global Inequality, Human Rights and Power: A Critique of Ulrich Becks Cosmopolitanism, Critical Sociology 35(2) 253272, SAGE)
Where Beck does try to put into action his cosmopolitan postcolonialism it runs into trouble (e.g. Beck and Sznaider, 2006). He advocates a both/and perspective taking over from an either/or perspective. Thi s is good for bringing in previously excluded inputs to views that have stressed Westernization without understanding a mixture of influences including from non-Western sources (e.g. Abu-Lughod, 1989). However a

both/and view runs the risk of replacing Westernization perspectives with one in which power and inequality is glossed over by an attempt to resurrect understandings of the inputs of non- Western societies. When different global societies meet there are often some that have greater economic, political and ideological power. To highlight this fact is not to endorse it. And it is not to say there are not real sources of opposition and alternatives to Westernization both academically and politically (in the latter case from Iran to Venezuela for example). But positing a both/and mix appears to give an equality to a mix of perspectives when there are great inequalities and power differences in that mix. In trying to give more of a role to inputs from beyond the West it runs the risk of playing
down the Western power that such inputs are subjected to. Becks own use of a both/and hybridizing postcolonialism (2000b: 89) underesti- mates these power relations and inequalities. In a discussion of deregulation and flexibi- lization which promote an informal economy, diluted trade union representation and weak states Beck suggests these are non-Western standards being adopted by Western societies. But the direction of power is the other way around. These are structures and effects of neoliberalism being exported by Western-dominated governments and institu- tions to other Western and non-Western societies with the deleterious effects that Beck rightly suggests. Western

power is underestimated here when neoliberalism is seen as an effect of the importation of poor regulation from the nonWest to West rather than an expression of the corporate and state power of Western interests. So the novelty and uniqueness of Becks cosmopolitanism for establishing a postcolo- nial perspective is justified
by an understatement of the extent to which postcolonialism is already in existence and an overstatement of the role of cosmopolitanism in having a new role in establishing this itself. At the same time, his more hybrid postcolonial view, rather than restoring a greater emphasis on poorer countries contribution to globaliza- tion, may underestimate the power they are

postcolonialism fits into a more general pattern in his work, of underestimating previous cosmopolitanism in social science, overestimating the novelty of his cosmopolitan vision, and leading down a road which rather than overcoming power and inequality seems as much to play down how significant it is.
subjected to. Becks

Human rights are a corrupt project that position the subaltern as helpless victims while de-politicizing the roots of their oppression instead, we should facilitate a move towards human dignity, which can only be achieved through self-determination and withdrawal of imperial meddling. Mignolo, Professor of Cultural Anthropology @ Duke U, 2006
(Walter, Citizenship, Knowledge, and the Limits of Humanity, American Literary History 18:2, Project MUSE) Changing the law and public policies won't be of much help in this process. What is needed is that those who change the law and public policy change themselves. [End Page 312] The problem is how that may take place if we would like to avoid the missionary zeal for conversion; the liberal and neoliberal belief in the triumphal march of Western civilization and of market democracy; and the moral imperatives and forced behavior imposed by socialism. As I do not believe in a new abstract universal that will be good for the
entire world, the question is how people can change their belief that the world today is like it is and that it will be only through the "honest" projects of Christians, liberals, and Marxist-socialists that the world could be better for all, and citizenship will be a benediction for all. The

changes I am thinking about are radical transformations in the naturalized assumptions of the world order. The naturalized assumptions I am thinking about are imperialcolonial, and they have
shaped the world in which we live in the past five hundred years when Christianity and capitalism came together and created the conditions for the self-fashioned narrative of "modernity." Hence,

the transformations I am thinking about require an

epistemic decolonial shift. Not a "new," a "post," or a "neo," which are all changes within the same modern colonial epistemology, but a decolonial (and not either a "deconstruction"), which means a delinking from the rules of the game (e.g., the decolonization of the mind, in Ngugi Wa Th'iongo's vocabulary) in which deconstruction itself and all the "posts-"
for sure are caught. Delinking doesn't mean to be "outside" of either modernity or Christian, Liberal, Capitalist, and Marxist hegemony but to disengage from the naturalized assumptions that make of these four macronarratives "une pensee unique," to use Ignacio Ramonet's expression.2 The

decolonial shift begins by unveiling the imperial presuppositions that maintain a universal idea of humanity and of human being that serves as a model and point of arrival and by constantly underscoring the fact that oppressed and racialized subjects do not care and are not fighting for "human rights" (based on an imperial idea of humanity) but to regain the "human dignity" (based on a decolonial idea of humanity) that has and continues to be taken away from them by the imperial rhetoric of modernity (e.g., white,
Eurocentered, heterosexual, and Christian/secular). The conditions for citizenship are still tied to a racialized hierarchy of human beings that depends on universal categories of thought created and enacted from the identitarian perspectives of European Christianity and by white males. In the Afro-Caribbean intellectual traditionfrom C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, and Lewis Gordonthe very concepts of the human and humanity are constantly under fire.3 Would indeed a black person agree with the idea that what "we" all have in common is our "humanity" and that we are "all equal" in being "different"? I would suspect that the formula would rather be of the type advanced by the [End Page 313] Zapatistas: "[B]ecause we are all equal we have the right to be different."4 The universal idea of humanity, believe me, is not the same from the perspective of black history, Indian memories, or the memories of the population of Central Asia. The humanities, as a branch of knowledge in the history of the since the European Renaissance, have

university always been complicitous with imperialcolonial designs celebrating a universal idea of the human model. The moment has arrived to put the humanities at the service of decolonial projects in their ethical, political, and epistemic dimensions; to recast the reinscription of human dignity as a decolonial project in the hands of the damnes rather than given to them through managerial designs of NGOs and Human Rights Watch that seldom if ever are led by actors whose human dignity is at stake. Decolonial projects imply downsizing human rights to its real dimension: an ethical imperative internal to imperial abuses but not really a project that empowers racialized subjects and helps them to regain the human dignity that racism and imperial projects (from the right, the left, and the center) took away from them.