Re:How China's “debt traps” work
by username332211 on Monday October 02, 2023 @02:04PM
(#37742048)
I don't see how you can drag someone's credentials to prove he isn't a useful idiot. Malcolm Caldwell, famous for being the very embodiment of a useful idiot was a research fellow at UCL.
Other defenders of the Red Khmers had even more impressive credentials. Need I remind you who was the writer of "Distortions at Fourth Hand" and "Manufacturing Consent"?
By definition, all useful idiots have impressive credentials. Without credentials, they are not useful.
Re:How China's “debt traps” work
by littlestymaar on Monday October 02, 2023 @02:30PM
(#37742430)
> Other defenders of the Red Khmers
Are you talking about the entire Western block where in the 80 when western powers brought support to the milicia in order to piss off the Soviet Union-backed Vietnam, or what?
> How you have determined he was a "foreign agent or useful idiot" is curious.
That's easy. Generally speaking, anyone who is critical of empire-building is seen by that empire's apparatchiks as a "foreign agent or useful idiot."
The criticism doesn't come from any position of principle, it's just us-versus-them tribalism.
As someone who sporadically did political organizing with David Graeber, I assure you he was sharply critical of US policy as it pertained to exploiting developing countries. He also happened to be a professor of anthropology at Yale and the London School of Economics. How you have determined he was a "foreign agent or useful idiot" is curious. But I know David would have found it as funny as I do.