It’s a very strange form of colonialism, China’s new colonisation of Africa. Unlike British, French, Belgian, Portuguese and US colonialism, it doesn’t involve military bases, armies, assassinations, massacres, pillaging, destabilisation campaigns, divide and rule campaigns, or any coercion as such.

Even at the economic level, it’s quite different: for example it doesn’t do the whole enforced-structural-adjustment thing, and it has developed this cunning trick of building important infrastructure like schools, hospitals and roads, just to make people believe that it’s not simply interested in stealing natural resources.

In fact, given that Chinese colonialism in Africa is based on mutually-agreed trade and aid contracts, you could almost say that it’s not really colonialism at all. More like just… trade and aid.

Still, these are just petty nuances, hardly worth talking about. Down with evil China, the new coloniser of Africa! Come back, Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal, all is forgiven!

Thatcher died? OK. I mean, heck, she was evil and I’m not shedding any tears, but to be honest I think the near-universal obsession with her is slightly misplaced. Yes, she led the attack on the working class in Britain and fiercely represented British imperialist interests abroad. That was her job. That is the job of any Prime Minister of this country. Where are the great and wonderful British PMs that we should hold up as alternatives? Churchill? He was a vicious racist and murderous colonialist. Blair? The wars he led in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia were among the most significant attacks on the world’s oppressed masses in modern history. How about Earl Clement Attlee, that great hero of the left who partnered with the US to bring about the deaths of three million Koreans?

On a numbers basis, you could argue that by comparison, Thatcher was relatively peaceful! Yes, she brought in privatisation and liberalisation; she attacked the trade unions; she introduced racist anti-immigration policies; she supported torture and murder in Ireland; she went to war to protect Britain’s obscure ownership of Las Malvinas (‘The Falklands’); she supported the apartheid regime in South Africa; she was a close friend of the murderer Pinochet; she attacked the welfare state; and she took our milk away. In short, she was an enemy of the people. But I honestly believe that the reasons she’s hated so much more than any other British PM are:

1) She happened to be a Tory Prime Minister at a time when Labour were at least making an effort to pretend that they were on the side of the workers, and therefore the unions and the mainstream left made a big noise about everything she ever did;

2) People care more about the welfare state in Britain than they do about the murder of millions of innocent civilians abroad. Which, I would argue, is largely a result of having internalised the prevailing racist empire ideology.

“I think there is an enormous amount to be proud of in what the British empire did and was responsible for” - David Cameron in Amritsar, refusing to apologise for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre (in which a British Army regiment fired indiscriminately at a large crowd of unarmed protestors, killing in the region of a thousand people).

With all due respect, Mr Cameron, go to hell. There is not “an enormous amount to be proud of” in the British empire, the defining characteristics of which were genocide, theft, mass murder, rape, exploitation and policy-driven famine. To take pride in the empire is to rejuvenate the myth of the white man’s burden; it is to affirm the ‘civilising mission’ of colonialism and slavery; it is to state the superiority of Anglo-Saxon blood over that of the people of India, Ireland, China, Afghanistan, Palestine, Africa and the Americas.

What is true is that Britain’s colonial theft was so lucrative that it gave rise to important new developments in technology as a result of the vast accumulation of capital. These developments are an objective reality, and can (and should) be put to use in the service of humankind. However, you would have to be a hardened racist and reactionary nationalist to have ‘pride’ in the circumstances that gave rise to them.

Everything that Cameron said in his speech in Amritsar (for example his refusal to return the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond “confiscated” by the East India Company) was sickening empire justification, based on outright lies and dubious historical revisionism, no better than holocaust denial. If it were just the rantings of a lunatic, it wouldn’t be anything to worry about, but in truth it reflects an increasing trend, as can be seen from all the propaganda surrounding the royal wedding, the jubilee, the olympics, etc. As the recession deepens and the economic basis for any kind of social peace disappears (ie as people increasingly have no jobs, hope or support networks), this empire ideology serves to strengthen the national identity, to keep the white lower classes on message, to marginalise non-white communities, and to prevent any kind of unity of oppressed against oppressors. Oh, and to emphasise ‘Britishness’ in advance of the referendum on Scottish independence.

It’s not just Cameron; it’s the entire ruling class, including Labour. We need to understand it and fight it.

So France (with US and British support) has invaded Mali to put a stop to an uprising of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb - an organisation closely affiliated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which France enthusiastically supported in the takeover of Libya. This is after the west didn’t lift a finger in response to last year’s coup that overthrew Amadou Toumani Touré. To paraphrase Marvin Gaye, what the f*** is going on?

It’s very difficult to find reliable analysis on this issue right now, but a few things seem clear:

1) France’s main target is not Mali but neighbouring Algeria, which after Libya’s fall is the last remaining resistant state in North Africa. Although Algeria has made plenty of compromises with the west for the sake of preserving stability in a hostile world, it remains a block to neocolonial ambitions in Africa, and continues to operate in a way that is not at all acceptable to the West (for example having a largely nationalised economy, rejecting normalised relations with Israel, and being the biggest sponsor of the African Union). Forcing AQIM to focus their efforts on Algeria would be a major strategic victory for Algeria’s erstwhile coloniser, France.

2) The French/US/British intervention is at least partly designed to pre-empt an African response to the Mali crisis, thereby further disempowering the African Union and promoting the strategic objectives of Africom.

3) Mali has a whole lot of gold, uranium and salt. Control of these resources is of course an important long-term objective over which the imperialist countries compete.

4) This madness would not have been possible when Gaddafi was alive. The overthrow of the Libyan Jamahiriya opened the floodgates for a new wave of militarised colonialism in Africa.

The reporting on the Delhi gang rape situation has been frankly disgusting. The western press seems to be using it in a racist, hypocritical way to highlight the backwardness and misogyny of Indian society - which implicitly means celebrating the west’s love of equality and its wonderfully fair treatment of women. None of the commentators mention little facts such as that an estimated 12 million women in the US have been raped, or that a third of those rapes involve females under the age of 12.

The crass sexualisation of modern consumer capitalism cannot but create an increasingly dangerous situation for women. At the risk of sounding like an old prude, a lot of the advertising I see (and which children of all ages are exposed to) is shocking in its sexual objectification of women. You see those same billboards in India too - a socially conservative country which is still struggling with the transition away from a feudal village-based social structure (where the anti-women feeling has in some ways increased even as the economic basis of patriarchy has declined).

Death penalty isn’t “the answer”. And the self-serving ethnocentric commentary from the western press doesn’t help at all. The root issues are intense poverty (an outcome of underdevelopment, itself caused by imperialism) and cultural imperialism. If there’s one word to sum up what India needs, that word is: socialism.

‎”It is not clear that Africa can generate its own salvation. It may be necessary to devise a form of neo-imperialism, in which Britain, the US, and the other beneficent nations would recruit local leaders and give them guidance to move towards free markets, the rule of law and – ultimately – some viable local version of democracy, while removing them from office in the event of backsliding.”

That was written by Bruce Anderson, a perfectly respectable establishment journalist who was Political Editor of the Spectator and who wrote regularly for the Independent. This overtly racist and colonialist perspective represents nothing more than the HONEST end of the liberal-conservative spectrum of opinion.

A simple guide to colonialism in the 21st century.

• Countries A, B and C want to dominate the world’s resources and labour. Country D wishes to develop independently. Irreconcilable contradiction. 
• A, B and C have money, weapons, media and experience. They might for example stir up conflict between D and E in order to weaken and destabilise D. 
• They will almost certainly sponsor unrest within D, sending money and offering training to groups that are favourable to A-B-C aims.
• They might apply economic sanctions against D, the effect of which would be to weaken it and to encourage discontent among its population.
• Like anywhere else, D is a complex country with its own problems and contradictions. A, B and C will find a way to exploit these. 
• A, B and C have the clout to ask the ‘international’ financial institutions to apply loan conditions of privatisation and deregulation.
• Unemployment, rising prices, increasing inequality will help a lot should A, B and C decide to take things to the next level.
• Just as social unrest is kicking off in D due to years of neoliberal reform, A, B and C find a way to get weapons to opposition groups.
• The destabilisation is backed by a wide-ranging campaign of criminalisation, demonisation and character assassination of D’s leaders.
• Naturally, D’s government isn’t going to sit back and be overthrown. So it comes down hard on the attempts to destabilise/overthrow it. 
• A, B and C now cry out about D’s human rights abuses. Suddenly well-meaning people everywhere are calling for D’s government to be taken out. 
• Having ensured an absolute minimum of resistance at home, A, B and C go to war to topple D and establish a client state (that recognises I).
• Human rights abuses in D increase massively under an unpopular, incompetent, kleptocratic administration. But they go largely unreported. 
• D goes from being relatively affluent to being a failed state. It sees starvation, illiteracy and sectarian killings for the first time in decades.
• Next year, A, B and C will use the same strategy against E and F. By then, everyone will have forgotten the lessons of D.