I do know about both Klein and Perkins, IIRC Klein also wrote the shock treatment book? Or maybe that's Disaster Capitalism I'm thinking of. But I'm familiar with that history both from them and other sources.

And I think two good sources to follow up on to understand the point of the debt traps is Yanis Varoufakis and Michael Parenti. Because it is true that yes, it does give them access to the commons, but it gives them far more than that.

IMF in particular sets up what's known as "stabilisation plans", which is a stipulation of the loan terms. And what that means is basically austerity at the point of a gun.

It's a rollback of health and safety regulations, public spending, infrastructure investments, education, human rights, labour rights, healthcare facilities, technology investment, everything. It basically hollows out a government from within.

But it doesn't change taxes. Instead the entire budget becomes an interest payment on these predatory loans. So it really turns an entire state into a for-profit institution that line the pockets of various international banks. Like the East India Company almost, really overt and old school colonialism but through new financial instruments.

And if you disobey? Then you become like Yugoslavia, or Libya, or Lebanon.

That is actually the real reason the DPRK is so maligned by corporate media, it's because they're unreachable. 99% of the news about them come from "anonymous sources" that have been exposed as CIA assets within the press corps of AP and sometimes Reuters. Although Reuters often relies on liasons from British intelligence.

We don't really know the situation in the DPRK, but it's likely a pretty normal country aside from the isolation. But this isolation is a very rational thing, because without it they'd be like Thailand or the Philippines.

And maybe they don't have the same level of wealth or technology as a lot of other countries, but thanks to how they keep the IMF out, at least their kids spend their childhood at a school desk instead of a sewing machine.

At least their air quality is good, and their environment and ecosystem is good. At least the women have rights to live in their own homes and open up their own bank accounts instead of being treated as second class citizens.

And the same is true about Iran. It's by no means a paradise, but the fact that they are no longer under The Shah. The fact that children especially have rights in this country, that they are not just an indentured labour pool for the world's 1% is the real transgression that has the private sector media so furious.

And that's where the idea of a "developing" country comes from. It's hard to deny that these places are brutal dictatorships full of slave labour, but you can always in a very subjective and metaphysical kind of way declare that they're on the right track.

You can say "Yes, these people are starving, have no rights, and get treated like garbage, but according to a WTO study last year, their median income level has gone up by 3%" or something.

And it's generally pure smoke and mirrors because by that criteria a lot of these "Axis of Evil" countries would've skyrocketed since they gained independence from the world's 1%.