The Real Scandal At The World Bank
The Real Scandal At The World Bank
While the world's press has been fixated on the teeny-weeny scandal over whether the World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped to get his girlfriend a $300,000-a-year gig next door, they have been ignoring the rancid stench of a far bigger scandal wafting from Wolfie's Washington offices.
This slo-mo scandal isn't about apparent petty corruption in DC. It's about how Wolfowitz's World Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world, and knowingly worsening our worst crisis - global warming - every day.
Let's start with the victims. Meet Hawa Amadu, 70-something, living in the muddy slums of Accra, the capital of Ghana, and trying to raise her grandkids as best she can. Hawa has a problem - a massive problem - and the World Bank put it there. She can't afford water or electricity any more. Why? The World Bank threatened to refuse to lend any more money to her government, which would effectively make it a leper to governmental donors and international business, unless it stopped subsidising the cost of these necessities. The subsidies stopped. The cost doubled. Now Hawa goes thirsty so her grandchildren can drink, and weeps: "Am I supposed to drink air?"
She is not alone. Half a world away, in Bolivia, Maxima Cari - a mother - is also thirsty. "The World Bank took away my right to clean water," she explains. In 1997 the World Bank demanded the Bolivian government privatise the country's water supply. So Maxima couldn't afford it any more. Now she has to use dirty water from a well her villagers dug. This dirty water is making her children sick, and she is sullen. "I wash my children weekly," Maxima says. "Sometimes there's only enough water to wash their hands and faces, not their whole body ... This is not a nice way to live." The newly elected socialist government of Evo Morales is planning to take the water back - and he is, of course, condemned and threatened by the World Bank.
Meet some more victims. I have met hundreds, from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East. Muracin Claircin is a rice farmer in Haiti - only he can't grow rice any more. In 1995, the World Bank demanded Haiti drop all restrictions on imports. The country was immediately flooded with rice from the US, which has been lavishly subsidised by the US government. The Haitian government barely exists and can't offer rival subsidies anyway: the World Bank forbids it. So now Muracin is jobless and his family are starving.
Some 5,000 miles away, Charles Avaala in Ghana is watching his tomatoes rot. He used to grow them for a government-owned community tomato cannery that provided employment for his entire community. The World Bank ordered his government to close it down, and to open the country's markets to international competition. Now he can't compete with the subsidy-fattened tomatoes from Europe. He, too, is starving.
How would Hawa and Maxima and Muracin and Charles feel if you told them none of this is considered a scandal, but business as usual?
These victims are not merely an anecdote soup; they are an accurate summary of the World Bank's effect on the poor. Don't take my word for it. The World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group just found that barely one in ten of its borrowers experienced persistent growth between 1995 and 2005 - a much smaller proportion than those who stagnated or slid deeper into poverty. The bank's own former chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, says this approach "has condemned people to death... They don't care if people live or die."
Why? Why would a body that claims to help the poor actually thrash them? Because its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank's head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action - the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time.
The bank's staff salve their consciences by pickling themselves in an ideology - neoliberalism - that says there is never a conflict between business rights and human rights. If it's good for Shell, it must be good for poor people - right?
This ideology also backfires on us in the rich world. In 2000, the World Bank was finally forced to undertake a review of its energy policies. It did its best to rig it, putting the former energy minister of the corporation-licking Indonesian dictator General Suharto in charge. Emil Salim was even serving on the board of a coal company at the time he was appointed. But - to everyone's astonishment - Salim concluded by opposing the carbon-pumping oil and gas projects that make up 94 per cent of all the bank's energy projects. He said they should be stopped altogether by 2008.
The bank's response? It ignored its own report and carried on warming. The business climate, it seems, trumps the actual climate. Feel the heat.
While the elites huff and puff about Wolfowitz's alleged small corruption and ignore his organisation's proven immense corruption, there is something we - ordinary citizens - can do. In the summer of 2001, at the global justice protests in Genoa, I met Dennis Brutus, a former inmate of Robben Island prison alongside Nelson Mandela. He had been repelled by the bank's actions in South Africa, and started his protests against them by asking a very basic question: who owns the World Bank? It turns out we do. Ordinary people in the West - through their trade unions, churches, town councils, universities and private investments - own it. The bank raises nearly all its funds by issuing bonds on the private market. They are often held by socially minded institutions, the kind who signed up to Make Poverty History. So, Brutus realised, we have a simple power: to sell the bonds and bankrupt the World Bank. "We need to break the power of the World Bank over developing countries just as the disinvestment movement helped break the power of the apartheid regime in South Africa," he explained.
The campaign to make World Bank bonds as untouchable as apartheid-era investments has already begun. The cities of San Francisco, Boulder, Oakland and Berkeley have sold theirs. Several US unions have also joined. Even this small ripple has caused anxiety within the bank about the threat to its "AAA" bond rating.
In the Genoa sun, as tear gas fired by the Italian police hissed in the background, Brutus told me: "I lived to see the death of political apartheid. Now I want to live to see the end of global financial apartheid."
This is the fight we should join. Not some petty squabble over which Washington technocrat is morally pure enough to lead the forces of subsidy-slashing and starvation.
© 2007 The Independent
41 Comments so far
Show AllI guess I just joined now for a bit because today it looks like we may be on the verge of a meltdown disaster similar to the Great Depression only they say this could be worse and it may be that the country as we know it will collapse. It's relatively simple. When you have clowns running things, things go wrong. Too bad but I think the coming election will be different. It will be largely irrelevant. I hope otherwise but I think the U.S. dollar was nice while it lasted but you better put your fortune someplace else. You might be able to hang on to something of what you have. I've heard rumors that people will be rioting in the streets because they cant even get enough to eat let alone not have a place to spent the night. I'm out of the work force now and glad to be done with that trash. If something happens to me, no big deal, I had a pretty good run and I'm with a very nice lady. Good luck, all.
In every place the WB has its tentacles one thing is clear: no poor person has any of the money or any of the assets purchased with that money.
Recall the loans and require that those who got the money take care of the debt service. It will change nothing in the daily lives of the poor.
Politicians who "sell" a national patrimony are selling that which is only partly theirs and pledging the shares of others. Require the WB to establish the validity of a seller's claims to ownership.
aljazeera just covered the subject, in the second of a series of documentaries by Max Keiser of Karmabanque.com, one of the few people speaking the " truth about markets" you can see part one here :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59lOjYwkB40
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1583154561904832383&pr=goog-sl
this is a 2 part vid. is 3 1/2 hours long. I got to this site through Rense.com. In the last 2 years I have totally relearnt my history, starting with Loose change and Confessions of an Economic Hitman. What will we do when they curtail out internet "privelidges"? I am also following the nanotechnology involved in Morgellons disease,yes, i agree we are the Living Dead.
Contrary to the dictates of Malthusian logic, the world is not over populated.
The destruction of the world wide eco-system is a result of carefully calculated plans of the High Contracting powers, of what is called the developed world.
For over 100 years now, the early work of Tesla on the production of energy from the Cosmological process, has been blocked.
The powers that be decided that they would rather "Fight than switch," to a just social order, and instead built up nuclear weapons to be employed upon the human race as instruments of "Population reduction technology."
Their crimes against are nearly complete. We are still here do in no part to their plans for us. We have been spared an all out nuclear war by the timely intervention into our world by some still largely unknown high level power, the "ET."
Our nuclear war fighting Fiend class has already pulled the nuclear trigger on us several times over the decades. We are all the "Living Dead." This is why the presence of the "ET" remains classified "Above top secret."
Hopefully the "ET" will continue to hold our nuclear war fighting enemy fiend elite class down, at least for enough time for you all to awaken to the truth of our situation, and react in such a way as to end the nuclear threat that we all face. Remember; we are the "Living Dead."
I encourage everyone to learn about our money system and supply. As gently as possible I try to engage people in discussions about that specific topic. I've found that I'll get people listneing more easily if I use a feather approach as opposed to a sledge hammer approach. People I meet at the gas station, at the bank (including tellers and managers), friends, etc. I'm always looking for people to engage and a way to engage them.
I'm in Kentucky. Around Louisville. Today is the running of the Kentucky Derby and there are parties all over the city. I will be equipped with copies of our federal and my state constitutions. I get 10 of them a month for free from the Legal Research Commission in Frankfort. I find offering them people to be a great segue into conversations about constitutional issues, and my hot button issue is money.
Article 1, section 8 states "Congress shall have the power to ... coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures..." I move next to a definition of the dollar. The Mint and Coinage Act of 1792 was specific in defining a dollar as 371.25 grains of pure silver. Then I hold up a Federal Reserve Note in the amount of one. Some people get it, and some don't.
OK, I've been on my soap box long enough.
Be well.
there have been a lot of comments about "money" and intrest, there has been "nothing" circulating as money since the world has opted to go off the gold standard this was the place in history that the train headed down a dead end track , we are now close to the cliff and nothing will stop us from going over the edge.
Only gold and silver are real money, the world opperated on gold and silver for 5000 yrs. until the world goes back to a gold and silver based money supply and trashes the phoney paper junk we will never be free people of the world but will continue to be slaves to the creators of the paper money credit system!
Could that be Thomas Ancrum? from Waterford?? one chance in a million!? My perspective is more cynical, I think 911 was a put up job by those oil elites to catalyze events toward the theft of Iraqi oil. Look at bush when they tell him the second plane has struck. you would think he would try to phone Rumsfeld or someone to find out what is happening. But then perhaps he did know, so he didn't need to call, no problem, lets continue with reading MY PET GOAT. Its so interesying, that goat. Soooooo many unexplained details to 911, Sooooo many missing pieces. The game is rigged and the big players don't play by the rules. Perhaps if the Americans get some of their rights back they will investigate how and why they were lost.
To RuthK:
The ideas didn't just disappear--we were seduced into letting them go, and now we are paying the price.
put an end to b.s. lies, untruths and misconceptions in the u.s. ! Support the rebirth of the 13th ammendment "Titles of Nobility" to the u.s. constitution. No person who accepts any gift, payment or personal compensation from any foreign entity or corporation would be able to hold or be elected to any public office were this lost but not forgotten ammendment be enacted ! put an end to the corporate person in power, in office, in the whole world. pass it on. please..
This just confirms World Bank's skullduggery. Permit me to refer to the following links to my article "Whither Globalisation?"
The world today is embroiled in an economic turmoil caused by the globalisation process. It is a veritable confusion worse confounded by the North versus South polarities of trading policies, developmental disparities and stark reality of opulence contrasted with destitution. These are increasingly brought in close encounters of an unforeseen variety in an inter-connected global environment with unprecedented, unpredictable and unnatural fusion of economic systems mixed in a strange brew of socio-ethnic and cultural cross-currents buffetted hither and thither by perennial human greed. An unprecedented global dilemma posed by the merciless process of globalisation with all its ostensible benefits and built-in evils.
The natural resources of the earth are not inexhaustible. Oil is fast depleting. The last barrel of oil is not too far. A new energy future has to be worked out. Nearly 2.2 billion people in more than 62 countries, one-third of the world's population, are starved for water. Global population has tripled in the past 70 years while water use has grown sixfold due to industrial development, widespread irrigation, and lack of conservation. It is feared scarcity of water may lead to third world war.1 To top it all there is a projected 3C jump in global temperature caused by global warming which in turn would include a loss of up to 400 million tonnes of cereal production and put between 1.2 billion and three billion people- half of the current world's population- at risk of water shortage. It is a case of double jeopardy. This is a wake-up call for the developed industrial nations.
In "a terrible indictment of the world in 2007" the UN said 18,000 children die every day of hunger and malnutrition and 85 million go to bed every night with empty stomach, 100 mm. Indian kids are malnourished. The spectre of global warming is knocking at the door. With the US poised for a MAD nuclear adventure the mankind is in for a future shock as never before in human history. It is truly all this and hell too scenario.
http://www.countercurrents.org/gl-patil220207.htm
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/news.php
Bal Patil Asks, Whither Globalisation?
18,000 children die every day of hunger and malnutrition; 85 million go to bed hungry every night.
moneylender April 27th, 2007 2:48 am -
***"Let me control and issue a nations' currency, I care not who writes its laws"***
The above remark was actually made by Mayer Amschel Bauer, the banking patriarch who later changed his name and crest to Rothschild (Red Shield). As Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz discovered when she dared to take a peek behind the curtain, the rest is window dressing and illusion.
Too much power in to few hands! The World Bank, the IMF - previously known as the BIS or the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve, all of them are instruments of diabolical deception.
Those who survive the bloody boots of the global beast will live as mere debt slaves.
Peace, Best Wishes and Hope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk1vEuhBuEU
Smurfy said
agree with everything you just said apart from this bit:
"Interest is NOT necessary or inevitable"
Yes it is.
S.
Think about it, if money is created out of NOTHING, why should there be interest, with out interest most things will cost half or less then what you pay now and lead to counter inflation, lead to abolition of national debt. And as another writer pointed out all religions forbids it a unifying force among religions an hence less conflict
Thomas More. Thanks for answering my question. I have a clearer idea of what is going on now, from what you have seen. The only reason I said he lacked diplomatic skills was because of his last appearance before The UN where he said he could still smell the smoke/sulfur in the air.
what is the real purpose of globalized, monolithic banking institutions? you might say, its a zen question that spans centuries.
a free electronic paper I wrote called
fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism
endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.
more info on request.
recent supporting material:
confessions of an economic hit man by Perkins
money as debt video by Grignon
In reading the article, I was reminded of a book I recently read. It included a quote from Robert Kennedy. Although the World Bank and our GNP are not exactly the same, the underlying assumptions of greed and exploitation are the same. I was so impressed with the quote that I copied it down. Here is it.
In March of 1968, Robert Kennedy challenged the dearly held concept that pure economic activity (usually measured by the GNP) is an honest way to measure the impact of corporations on the human community. In 1968, he said:
"Our gross national product is now over 800 billion dollars. But that GNP, if we judge the country by that, counts air pollution, cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonders. It counts napalm, nuclear weapons, and armored cars for police to fight riots in cities. It counts rifles and knives and television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to children."
"Yet, the GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not count the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither wit nor courage, neither wisdom or learning, neither compassion or devotion to country. It measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile."
I'm old enough to remember the 60's. Some people think of them only in terms of drugs and free-love. I never took drugs and I don't really believe in free love. At that time, there was also a great deal of idealism. We, or many of us, believed that if we changed underlying assumptions about money and consumer-based world, things would be better. Unfortunately, these ideas seem to have disappeared.
I didn't spend 8 months there, I was there 8 months ago for 3 weeks on a church mission to teach road building. ( they wash out a lot there )
Your first points are correct in my opinion, most of the critical press comes from the far right and its mostly the wealthy complaning in Venezuela. But most of his positive press comes from the left. Far right and far left are the same in my opinion. Extremist scare the devil out of me.
"other than his lack of diplomatic skills?"
I think he has excellent diplomatic skills and is a very polished speaker and politician. I "think" he knows exactly what hes doing.
Everything he is doing for the people right now is based on his oil windfall and is not sustainable. Its somewhat like "bread and Roman circus" Almost all is concentrated in the cities as far as I could tell and very little gets out to the rural areas where most live.
So far what I observed while I was there was what looks like the beginning forms of the same old socialist style strong man show. Very much like the old "Banana Republics" from the 50's and 60's. Nationalizing, socializing everything in sight. A real push to build up the army I thought, recruiters were prevelant in the rural area offering excellent pay.
I am no expert on Venezuela by any means, it was just my feeling, observations and small things the farmers said about the price controls and the benefits promised but not yet delivered.
I could certainly be wrong about the guy, he may just be a loudmouth .........but he sure sounds a lot like Castro and others from the late 50's and the 60's right now.
In any case we need to stay the heck out of their business other than helping them when we can.
There's a lot of poor folks out there that could use a bit of help, without strings.
Ahro
George W Bush, the tin-pot president of the US of A.
Apparently your idea of democracy is "my way or the highway"
Looks like I've been promoted to Republican " Chicken Hawk"
Seriously though, I was in Venezuela about 8 months ago and they are VERY unhappy with the US as a whole, but Chavez wasn't exactly the choice of the people any more. He won't be defeated in any "elections" in the near future, you can count on that.We can at least vote our "tin pot" out.
"Venezuela threw out the US supported coup (remember, the witch, Condi, congratulated the coup) and placed Chavez back in"
I'm well aware of it. We just have different opinions. I think the Venezuelan people lost either way, they just lose more with Chavez.
As to the highway, I'd hate to think I gave that impression, if thats the case...my apologies.
Thomas More, I'm being serious here. I read about Chavez in some publications and it's always in a negative right. Whenever I read what the other people say is, almost, but not always the opposite. I don't really trust papers like the LA Times, Washington Post, NY times anymore, and they almost always cast Chavez in a negative light. The wealthy in Venezuela seem to be the only ones complaining.
You have spent eight months there, and if you traveled between the rich and poor areas, I think you should have some insight from your experience. So my question is this: why is Chavez so bad? Is it because he favors a different form of government? Or is he doing things which are truly hurting the people – all the people? From what I've read, he's been elected by a wide margin many times and the US is trying to undermine him. I know he wants to create a South America independent of the wishes of Washington. So please tell me what it is that makes him such a bad leader, other than his lack of diplomatic skills?
Dear Smurfy:
You said
'I agree with everything you just said apart from this bit:
"Interest is NOT necessary or inevitable"
Yes it is.'
In fact interest is not necessary. Islam says that paying or receiving interest is a sin and many devout Mulsims conduct business without it. Christian teachings says the same thing, but this has been ignored by the Church for centuries.
Today there are hundreds of alternative currency systems in operation and in many cases the currency does not bear interest. Some systems even operate on a system of demurrage, or negative interest, where money loses value if you hold on to it rather than use it. The idea is that money, like other assets, should 'rust'.
Interest is an important source of newly created money, and since banks and othern private financial institutions are the major sources of interest-bearing loans, this means that the creation of this kind of new money is largely outside of government (and therefore potentially democratic) control.
However a far more significant source of newly created money, money which is not backed by any goods or services, and which again is largely controlled by private financial institutions, is fractional banking.
It is no accident that one of the linch-pin organizations driving neoliberal globalization should be instituted as a bank. Without serious reconstruction of the banking sector, economic justice will be extremely dificult to achieve. Put your efforts and support behind alternative currencies and other innovative, equitable and environmentally responsible financial structures.
Peace,
Ale
PS I still think Wolfowitz should stay at the WB. Better a seriously disabled WB president unable to do very much than a replacement selected by the Bush administration and a rehabilitated Wolfowitz back 'managing' US imperialistic adventures.
I commend to your reading the book by Dennis Brutus, Poetry and Protest, that is a well-written memoir and collection of poems, mnay of which were written while imprisoned with Mandela at Robben Island. On p. 293 he writes: "I believe that we can achieve a new kind of world - that another world is possible, as the World Social Forum theme puts it. This will not be accomplished through armed struggle, but in fact through Gandhian principles that are more likely to be transformative. We must be willing to challenge injustice, even if it means withstanding the brutality of the cops, getting beat on the head, and gassed. We have to say, 'Go ahead, we're not going to quit."
Wolfie was known as the "architect of the Iraq war" that went so well "W" made him pres of the world bank.
the peter principle gone wrong
It seems that 6.4 billion people living on planet Earth are about 4.4 billion too many for sustainability. What to do? Starve them to death, bomb them, whatever and make a profit while you are at it. What a nice group the elite is. When the rest of us are all gone they will start cannibalizing each other. Once the human race has become extinct the earth can begin to heal itself.
I agree with everything you just said apart from this bit:
"Interest is NOT necessary or inevitable"
Yes it is.
S.
There are a lot of people out there who want true and a free society.Those were the very ideals Hutch Min expressed when he took power.The powers that be did not want Vietnam to be a true democracy, the rest is history.That's what the leaders of Venezuela are trying to create power from the bottom up wards
You cannot create any fair society with out addressing the question of MONEY SUPPLY.As long as we allow Private Banks to create money out of NOTHING as a exponential compound interest bearing DEBT we will all remain enslaved from cradle to the grave.
Money will go into manufacture of Arms which will be used against the people to suppress them, press will be used to peddle false hood, elected representatives will be bought off from creating a true democracy.
Once the Money Supply is in the hands of the people, where the elected representatives are the sole distributors of the funds for productive capacity that will benefit every one, then you may be on a far better world
Illusion, yes the American people are living in an illusion as they are enslaved from cradle to the grave as the rest of the world.The Out Standing Market Credit Debt of that country in the last count stood at $76.63Trillion dollars, the Government will never be able to service the loan let alone repay the capital. Every day this amount is reflected in the books it accrues exponential compound interest. The US lives on a daily overdraft of Billions from the People's Bank of China (a turn up for the books), and others.
Every thing and every body in the US is owned by private banks, and you pay interest on every thing on money created out of NOTHING
But in the first world fed on rubbish both in mind and body, just to be healthy to be Cannon fodders to fight some one Else's war. In the Third World Eight million children die every year this has gone on for decades the holocaust is alive and well.
As long as Banks create money out of NOTHING as a compound interest bearing DEBT to finance wars where the profit margins are better than anything on offer you are in a vicious cycle of violence.
The arms industry is the most subsidised industry in any country, especially in the US..
''If you want to be a slave and pay the cost of your own slavery, let the banks create the money'
''Let me control and issue a nations' currency, I care not who writes its laws''
So you can 'ELECT' any party of any colour, it wold not matter an iota
Peace is profitless.
As the Late Lord Hailsm, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales pointed out, that we live in a tripartite totalitarian dictatorship; Press, Elected and Financial.
Interest is NOT necessary or inevitable, this insidious and invidious imposition on humankind should be abolished immediately and can be abolished
We are told we are all free and live in a democracy. People can be fooled all the time.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." - George W. Bush
If you don't like Chavez, blame US policy, especially energy policy that has resulted in ever increasing oil prices. Without those high oil prices, Chavez' success would probably be limited to Venezuela, he never would have achieved the international stature he enjoys.
I can only agree.
Nothing but class warfare. This is the wealthy of the world making themselves wealthier off of the misery of others. God bless the dictators of thailand for forcing the issue with the big pharmaceuticals. I hope other countries follow their lead. The problem is not the west but oligarchy alll over the world.
Its a dumb design. Lets give some clique the power to issue and loan digital credits to the whole world, call it THE WORLD BANK and then have them reel in the real wealth of the planet. The fact that they even allowed a weasel like Wolfowitz to be president shows their insane.
The IMF and the World Bank are personifications of the view that nothing is worthwhile unless someone is making a profit out of it. They're trying to wrest control of fresh water so they can charge for it. Can breatheable air be far behind?
World bank and IMF is a corporate front for privatizing every necessity in the world. They are a disgrace to the human species, as they are parasites feeding off the poor. i give Kudos to Argentina and Malaysia to give them the one-finger salute. Both these countries are doing very well despite these banks nay-saying.
The countries that these bank 'helped' are mired in a never-ending debt.
I have to laugh and cry at the same time about this whole clusterfuck. The US will eventually be on the receiving end of such treatment when China, the Arabs and Japan decide they want their trillions of dollars back that they've provided us over the years by way of floating our GROSS debt. I wonder how much the Great Lakes will be sold for and who will claim them?
We are truly and irrevocably fucked. But, we deserve it. What goes around comes around.
This is the real face of globalization. It is even starting to affect North America, and I assure you that will not stop the US Government, out of whose federal treasury the World Bank operates from squeezing every last drop of blood, oil, clean water or any other 'essential' substance out of the world and converting it into phantom 'liquidity' that the investment market squabbles over so dearly.
Anything that has gone on in Iraq or Afghanistan pales laughably to the death and misery caused by the actions of the very few in the upper echelons of power seeking their transcendance from anything human into avatars of pure wealth ruling over a scorched earth awash in the corpses of those deemed no longer useful to their personal enrichment.
Dark ages ahead. What a shame.
When I read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins, I experienced a unique epiphany. I realized that sometimes the facts are more unbelievable than fiction. Once I read that book, it suddenly was no longer a stretch into "conspiracy theory" to see a possible link between the assassination of leaders abroad by the "jackals" (as the author called them)and the assassination of our own leaders such as JFK and RFK. I would highly suggest reading this book as a reality check. It will certainly dispel conventional notions of what we call political and economic realities.
www.raycarlson.com
Argentina has no oil.....Malaysia is successful not because of oil...don't make asinine assumptions please.
Boy, I'm loathe to think Chavez is someone to emulate. Take a closer look at what he's doing.
Argentina and Malaysia are doing well now because of the price of oil. What about later?
As to the World Bank and the IMF.....truly good ideas that used to work that have been hi-jacked by the corrupt and greedy.
Time to say goodbye to these guys and hope the folks that are still fooled by them start thinking clearer.
E-mail your Congressmen and Senators, Federal and State, tell them what they are doing wrong. Come on 2008!
It is precisely in response to this kind of Machiavellian manipulation of "foreign aid" that Chavez has launched trade agreements among South American nations that will leave the World Bank behind. US rightwing politicians fear Chavez's example because he forces the corporations to pay a more fair share, and then uses profit to better the lives of ordinary citizens. I just wish every government official with access to public money was forced to watch A CHRISTMAS CAROL as many times as it would take for them to develop a conscience. The same thing being done to privatize water, is also being done with drugs for AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. These corporations are soulless creatures, modern monsters that traffick in human lives and environmental ecosystems. Meanwhile, their tentacles reach into media to convince "little working people" that the Republicans have THEIR best interests in mind. Advertising seeks the brightest minds graduating from psychology courses just so it can understand which buzz words and stimuli can--like Pavlov's tests--get the "consumer" to buy their game plan. Mass hypnosis as nature burns, and the mis-users of power write foreign and domestic policy. Yes. It already HAS become a Dark Age, indeed. Eventually to those that survive it, a new Renaissance will arrive.
ahro April 26th, 2007 3:10 pm
Argentina has no oil…..Malaysia is successful not because of oil…don't make asinine assumptions please.
I certainly did make a mistake there. I of course meant Venezuela when I spoke about the oil. Definately should be more careful.
I applaud your correction but abhor your lack of civility. In any case if you admire tin pot dictators like Hugo Chavez....enough said.
It doesn't matter if Thomas More doesn't think Chavez is someone to emulate. Each new fascist policy that is implemented by the neocons via the US Gov. or World Bank enhances the chances for more socialist candidates to be LEGALLY elected (unlike Bush/Cheney)by constituents in countries all over the world who are being harmed by neocon fascist policies. Although US voters may be too delusional to vote in their own best interest, such is not the case among oppressed people in many other nations.
If you don't like Chavez, blame US policy, especially energy policy that has resulted in ever increasing oil prices. Without those high oil prices, Chavez' success would probably be limited to Venezuela, he never would have achieved the international stature he enjoys.
Good points, confessions of an economic hitman is a must read to understand this issue.. Also, Greg Palast's "Armed Madhouse" touches on this issue and relates it to the economic meltdown that is occupied Iraq. Can you name the only country in the world that operates entirely without tariffs or any economic protections on its markets? thats right... Iraq. Thank you your regency L. Paul Bremer.. this edict was one of his first as head of the provisional authority... this is why iraq has over 50 percent unemployment and absolutely no economic power... any country in the world can dump its goods into iraq... Hence, the iraqi's have produced nothing but deathsquads since the beginning of the occupation.
But Tom,
Venezuela threw out the US supported coup (remember, the witch, Condi, congratulated the coup) and placed Chavez back in (I have no love or hate for him). That was the will of the people. It just wasn't the will of George W Bush, the tin-pot president of the US of A.
Apparently your idea of democracy is "my way or the highway"
The Real Scandal At The World Bank is the fact that it exists.