from the page: "..At the end of the summit's first day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that member countries had agreed to contribute 1% of their international reserves toward the bloc's main bank in order to create a reserve fund. The Bank of the Alba was established in 2008 with the intention of providing economic support to people-centred regional projects and to contribute to sustainable social and economic development across the region. The Bank is also cited as acting as a continental alternative to the International Monetary Fund... The heads of state also discussed the possibility of increasing the commercial use of the sucre, the bloc's virtual currency. The sucre is currently used for direct trading between the ALBA countries, allowing them to circumvent the U.S dollar and minimise the foreign-exchange risk.

from the page: "..the end of 1999, it was officially confirmed by a story in the Washington Post that President Eisenhower had given a direct order for the elimination of Patrice Lumumba... Throughout the misrule and oppression by Mobutu, the World Bank and the IMF were partners in the oppression. After Mobutu was removed, the Bank sought to link violence and warfare in the DRC to 'primary commodity production'.. What was most revealing from the analysis of the World Bank..was the extent to which questions of democratic participation on the one hand and the global armaments culture on the other are excluded from the policy alternatives offered for peace.. The conflict paradigm without historical reference to the experiences of the Belgian mining companies and the role of foreign corporations under Mobutu is represented with the full authority of the name of the World Bank to argue that countries 'with Congo like geography' and reliance on primary exports are prone to 'Civil Conflict.'

even if you think that your country has good laws for resources development, it is illusions or pies in the sky. as long as military occupation (your nation doesn't have sovereignty and occupiers put themselves above the laws and your government), civil war (your nation isn't under the rule of law yet), and IMF (this organization enables major powers to "legally" plunder everything they can lay hands on in foreign countries, especially poor ones.) assault your nation, resources development create not wealth for Afghans but negative legacy from which they suffer. I fear that resources will be exhausted before they stand in the entrance to "their road to prosperity."

from the page: "..I am conscious of the genocidal activities that have been carried out in the name of progress... It is from this perspective where I am presenting the argument that the aid, development and humanitarian industries are components of the armaments culture. Western Non-Governmental Organizations and private military corporations are as important to Western warfare in Africa as the guns wielded by NATO or their African clients... Western concepts of peace, development and pacification generated wars, genocide, militarism and violence... These social movements exist at all levels and seek to repair the history of plunder by setting in motion institutions of transitional justice to the point where an alternative can be crystallized away from the predatory forms of economics that are dominant. It is this new direction that calls for solidarity from those who want to break with the ideas of development, white supremacy and the logic of the capitalist mode of production...

from the page: "...The IMF has been a front for the lords of finance of Wall Street in the USA, and the linkages between the IMF/Wall Street and the US Treasury ensured that the poor of the world subsidised the US military... The IMF has assisted in granting immunity to Europeans and North Americans for crimes of economic rape against Africans... Many in France who call themselves socialists have been in denial about the rape of Africa. Instead of supporting activists such as Eva Joly who have been exposing the fraud and corruption of France in Africa, these ‘socialists’ are claiming that Strauss-Kahn was set up. A former culture minister Jack Lang described the treatment of Strauss- Kahn as a ‘lynching'... Clearly, these members of the French socialist confraternity do not understand the real lynching that is part of the racist structure of western capitalism... Is it now time for the establishment of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Reparations? ...

--the US gov't might have demand $11 billion, sympathy budget allocations, in exchange for 80-million-dollar aid service by US military. the next rip-off is reconstruction business and reactor decommissioning business which will continue for decades or a century. why commentators who always criticize capitalism fall silent about this? is this essentially different from US aid or reconstruction businesses in Haiti? why your targets are only TEPCO and the Japanese gov't? in the confusion of earthquake disaster and man-made nuclear disaster by TEPCO and the Japanese gov't, US war industry and US and French nuclear industry backed by their gov'ts exploit Japanese people, too. and some Japanese who believe a word tomodachi of operationion tomodachi came to connive at US military bases in Japan as launching pads for US invasions on the world. Don't omit these shitty players.

from the page: "...the money would never go to the actual country; instead it would go to our own corporations... we have created a world where 5% of us in the United States consume about 30% of the world's resources. The system that we created is a total failure and it causes tremendous misery... This system has been created by organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, the CIA, the NSA and the multinationals... It's not just an American system. It's a global system; you could say the United States has been the driving force behind it, though... Until we realize that corporations are calling the shots and not the governments and that we are empowering this system, it will continue as is... But we have been sending a very strong message that says we want cheap goods and services even if it means being socially and environmentally irresponsible... Barack Obama is in an incredibly tenuous situation. The man really doesn't have a lot of power. The corporations have the power.

from the page: "..the very limited function for the state recommended by neoliberal doctrine in the abstract was turned on its head in reality. In Mubarak’s Egypt business and government were so tightly intertwined that it was often difficult for an outside observer to tease them apart... Similar stories can be told throughout the rest of the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa... The military were nonetheless part of the crony capitalism of the Mubarak era. After relatively short careers in the military high-ranking officers are rewarded with such perks as highly remunerative positions on the management boards of housing projects and shopping malls... a large element of what got enough people into the streets to finally overwhelm the state security forces was economic grievances that are intrinsic to neoliberalism... Egypt and Tunisia are the first nations to carry out successful revolutions against neoliberal regimes.

from the page: "..The cables track this human tragedy through the indifferent eyes of American diplomats, whose main concern was always for the potential profits to be made from Zimbabwe’s natural resources. They chart the efforts of US, British and European diplomats, often working through the UN, to establish a regime that will open up the country to international investment... The cables demonstrate how a form of neo-colonial domination continued to exist in this nominally independent country. Events did not always go according to Washington’s plans, but the power-sharing agreement that is now in place is essentially in line with the ideas mapped out by successive US ambassadors over the last decade. Tsvangirai emerges from the cables as a creature of Washington, who is useful to US interests because his background as a trade union leader provided the means of averting an independent political movement among urban workers that might provide leadership to the rural poor...

from the page: "Mass and spontaneous demonstrations erupted on Friday, December 17th in the city of Sidi Bouzid (central Tunisia) when Mohammad Bouazizi, a 26 year-old, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire after a female police officer slapped and spat on him. The only crime Bouazizi committed was that of being a street vendor selling vegetables and fruits without a permit... Tunisia's national unemployment rate, which understates the true unemployment situation, stands at 14%. However, the youth unemployment rate (those between15-24 year-old) is at 31%... Tunisia's inequality is so severe that the bottom 60% of the population earns only 30%... Still, the IMF describes the government management of the economy and the uneven economic growth which benefited mainly northern and coastal cities while marginalizing the interior of the country as a "prudent macroeconomic management.".. The protesters are fed up with the status quo of a self-enriching and corrupt ruling family.

from the page: "The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to give greater voting rights to the large emerging economies, giving China and India long-sought recognition within the financial body. The move, announced on Friday, makes China the third leading voice of the global lender, ahead of Germany, France and Britain. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, director of the IMF, called the agreement "historic", saying it marked a recognition of the "growing role in the global economy" played by emerging markets. A number of smaller European nations and oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia lost votes so that "new changes in the global economy will now be reflected in changes in the fund", according to Strauss-Kahn... The shift represents the most significant overhaul at the IMF since the body was set up after World War Two."

from the page: "Pakistan shut down a pivotal US-NATO Afghan war supply route yesterday following a NATO attack on a Pakistani border post that killed three Pakistan Frontier Corps troops and injured three others... NATO officials have justified the attack on the Mandata Kandaho outpost as an act of "self-defence," just as they did three helicopter attacks last weekend that killed more than 50 people... the Torkham border-crossing is..with more than half of all the food and fuel used by US-NATO occupying forces in Afghanistan shipped via this route... the US has cemented a strategic partnership with Pakistan's arch-rival India and sought to block several key Pakistani initiatives, including the building of a natural gas pipeline from Iran and obtaining nuclear reactors from China. Pakistan has been devastated by floods since late July, with more than 20 million people... the US..has dramatically intensified drone attacks inside Pakistan, with more than 20 staged last month alone...

from the page: "..The link between aid and a wider imperialist agenda can be traced across the globe... It is a method of rewarding allies and punishing those who dare to question the global order. Aid can be limiting in two ways. First, by being "tied" to purchases from the donor country’s firms, and second, when it is made "conditional" on certain economic or political behaviour.. Much of the "gifted" money ends up in the hands of consultants from Western firms, who "advise" governments.. Unsurprisingly, their suggestions tend to favour companies from their native countries... One example is donor countries insisting upon the privatisation of state assets, like water and electricity, coupled with the liberalisation of markets—opening the door to Western exporters... Millions of people around the world watching the crisis unfold in Pakistan will want to know why the US has handed over billions of dollars in military aid, but can only find a fraction of that for vital humanitarian aid.

from the page: "The past several months have witnessed a shift in social policy by the international bourgeoisie even further to the right, marked by a turn from economic stimulus policies to brutal austerity measures. In the name of deficit reduction, the ruling classes of all the major capitalist countries are carrying out a frontal assault on the past social gains of the working class... That the living standards of the world’s people are to be equalized downward, rather than upward, is an indictment of the capitalist system... The 750 billion euro rescue package and the launching of austerity programs to make the working class pay for it have revived the European bourgeoisie’s self confidence—at least for the present... The international bourgeoisie is proceeding in a highly conscious manner to intensify its war against the working class. It is keenly aware of the crucial service provided by the trade unions in stifling the resistance of the working class..."

from the page: "...The European elite is now demanding further measures aimed at increasing the profits and privileges of this wealthy elite, insisting that Borisov implement the brutal type of cuts already introduced in Romania, Hungary, Latvia and other Eastern European states... At the start of this month the European Commission expressly called upon Bulgaria to maintain its budget deficit at around three percent. The government had shortly before adopted a budget based upon a 3.8 percent deficit and involving extensive cuts. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have also made their recognition of the initial measures agreed by the government dependent on further “difficult steps” towards budget consolidation..."

from the page: "...Tassos Anestis, a shipyard worker, told the Financial Times: “We are going to suffer because of measures imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund … but it is those who ruined the economy that should pay.""

from the page: "...Having put us in debt, the IMF and WB, through the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP), enter Pakistan, in the disguise of helping us repay loans, restructure our economics, and to eliminate poverty (which they themselves created!). SAP is non-negotiable i.e. our government has absolutely no say or any input whatsoever in the matter and is only required to implement it, as it is... The first dictation from IMF, through SAP, to our government, is to drastically cut down on social expenditure.. For those women activists and feminist NGOs working in Pakistan towards the facilitation of women’s rights to good education and proper health opportunities should stop beating around the bush and understand and acknowledge the real root cause of high female illiteracy and mortality rates: i.e. SAP, and should rally against these economic policies instead of other less important issues, if they really want to see any improvement in the lives of women..."

from the page: "...Excessive production of any good..means that unless new markets can be found, the price of that product falls and profits collapse... After the war, its massive spending in Europe and Japan permitted America to offload surplus cash, while building new markets. During the same period, it spent lavishly on infrastructure at home and on the development of the economies of the southern and south-eastern states. This strategy worked well until the early 1970s... Paul Wolfowitz..was writing about the need to invade Iraq in the mid-1990s. The impending war will not be fought over terrorism, anthrax, VX gas, Saddam Hussein, democracy or the treatment of the Iraqi people. It is, like almost all such enterprises, about the control of territory, resources and other nations' economies. Those who are planning it have recognised that their future dominance can be sustained by means of a simple economic formula: blood is a renewable resource; oil is not."

from the page: "...The first feature of a banana republic as “A collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts socialized.”... The second characteristic of a banana republic is “Devalued paper currency in the international community.”... The third characteristic of a banana republic is: Kleptocracy — those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it... And the fourth characteristic of a banana republic is: There must be no principle of accountability within the government so that the political corruption by which the banana republic operates is left unchecked... Well, America isn’t dependent on limited agriculture like bananas. But just about the only areas of growth are in the military and in giant companies lavished with..

from the page: "The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives... In a cruel irony, both sides in the civil war were financed by the same donors institutions with the World Bank acting as a Watchdog. The Habyarimana regime had at its disposal an arsenal of military equipment, including 83mm missile launchers, French made Blindicide, Belgian and German made light weaponry, and automatic weapons such as kalachnikovs made in Egypt, China and South Africa... Large quantities of machetes and other items used in the 1994 ethnic massacres --routinely classified as "civilian commodities" -- had been imported through regular trading channels... Bitter economic medicine was imposed under the banner of "reconstruction and reconciliation". In fact the IMF post-conflict reform package was far stringent than that imposed at the outset of the civil war in 1990.

from the page: "Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S.-led World Bank tightened its grip on Haitian economic policy. Essentially, it decided that the dysfunctional Haitian elite should encourage international investment in export-oriented assembly sweatshops. This was called a "structural adjustment program." Haiti’s trade tariffs on foreign goods were to be removed, public utilities privatized, and all state subsidies removed—including on essential items like gasoline, subject to sharp price fluctuations that can greatly increase transportation costs for workers and street vendors.. Another key goal of the World Bank plan was to redirect food production away from satisfying the nutritional needs of Haitians to producing food for the export market. A 1982 document of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a federal "aid" agency often linked to the CIA, proposed the "gradual but systematic removal" of domestic crops from 30% of all tilled land, whose products can then be exporte

from the page: "..in 2003 "Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, while total foreign assistance for education, health care and other services was a mere $39.21 million." In the midst of the suffering and anguish following the earthquake, many Haitians came together to console and help each other. Journalist David Wilson...wrote of the singing that followed the disaster. "Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray.." A young Haitian American commented to Wilson on the singing..."People in other countries wouldn't do this. It's a sense of community." If these elements of the "relief" efforts continue in this exploitative vein, it is this community that will likely be crushed even further by disaster capitalism and imperialism... what Haiti needs is doctors not soldiers, grants not loans, a stronger public sector rather than a wholesale privatization, and critical solidarity with grassroots organizations and people to support the self-determination of the country

from the page: "..‘Aid can be placed in a continuum from left to right, starting with Purple Aid (based on the provision of global public goods), Yellow Aid (based on the principle of geopolitical strategic and security interests), Orange Aid (based on the commercial principle), and Red Aid (based on an ideological principle).’... donors have often used ‘human rights’ as a cover to push money into many of our own civil society organisations in the South to advance their own agenda in our countries... Its global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the WTO and the OECD are losing legitimacy and credibility. The countries of the South, on the other hand, are beginning to reassert their national independence... I am also doing some research and writing on African integration and regionalism. This is under threat from the EPAs, and continued fixation of our leaders to the flawed neoliberal policies of the Bretton Woods institutions."

from the page: "'The notion that official foreign aid is in reality intended to alleviate poverty in the Third World dies hard. The actual function of aid from western governments and their agencies, the World Bank and the IMF, is to subsidize the operations of the private corporations and banks of the West. This is not conspiracy theory. It is a conclusion painfully and slowly, reached after many years of research... Aid was, and is, used by governments and big multilateral aid agencies to ensure that the governments that receive it adopt policies that favour not just capitalism in general, but the interests of their private corporations and banks in particular... From 1944 onwards, when the World Bank and the IMF were set up, these institutions have dominated aid policies. They are controlled by the US and other major western governments, through weighted voting and the fact that the World Bank raises most of its money on Wall Street. "

from the page: "Last week the IMF disbursed $150m to the de facto government of Honduras, and it plans to disburse another $13.8m on 9 September. The de facto government has no legitimacy in the world... This is in keeping with US policy, which is not surprising since the US has been...the Fund's principal overseer... the US government has yet to determine that a military coup has actually occurred. This is because such a determination would require, under the US Foreign Appropriations Act, a complete cutoff of aid... the IMF would likely say that the current funds are part of a $250bn package in which all member countries are receiving a share proportional to their IMF quota, regardless of governance. This is true, but it doesn't resolve the question... Interestingly, the IMF had no problem cutting off funds under its standby arrangement with the democratically elected government of President Zelaya in November of last year, when the Fund did not agree with his economic policies."

from the page: "The U.S. announced a new cut-off of $16.5 million in military aid and the US Embassy in Honduras also warned that an additional $180 million is at risk. There are still many more pockets of U.S. aid that could be suspended, including security aid under the Merida Initiative, $100 million in a Millennium Challenge grant, and $42 million in development aid... Interviewed on Telesur, Honduran Ambassador to the UN Roberto Quesada warned that Honduras was heading for an "economic abyss" due to sanctions against the coup... Despite the hardships that sanctions would imply, more and more members of Honduran human rights organizations, the Zelaya government and the international community are speaking up in favor of sanctions to bring the coup leaders to mediation with viable proposals. If the U.S. government does not decide at once to back up its positions with stronger consequences, its endorsement of the mediation process will ring hollow in international circles..."

from the page: "Welcome to Destabilization 2.0, the latest version of a program that the western powers have been running for decades in order to overthrow foreign, democratically elected governments that don’t yield to the whims of western governments and multinational corporations. Ironically, Iran was also the birthplace of the original CIA program for destabilizing a foreign government. Think of it as Destabilization 1.0: It’s 1953.. The CIA is sent into the country to bring an end to Mossadegh’s government... Enter Destabilization 1.1... It starts when the IMF moves in to offer a bribe to a tinpot dictator... Destabilization 1.2 involves seemingly disinterested, democracy promoting NGOs with feelgood names like the Open Society Institute, Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy... Now we arrive at Destabilization 2.0... Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media are being employed to amplify the effect of (and the impression of) internal protests."

from the page: "... any bank that actually lends should get money from the government; more money to small and medium-sized banks in smaller towns and less to Wall Street institutions ... economic stabilization policy has to be coordinated internationally in order to diminish the already dangerous global imbalances... I think it's unlikely that countries will again enter into open protectionism. What I do fear is indirect insulation measures like financial aid or subsidies... Everyone will say that more regulation is necessary and that balance is needed between national sovereignty and common action in a globalized world. But how much substance will lie behind their words? ... The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15th again showed that unbridled capitalism doesn't work... If we are to learn one thing from the economic crisis, it's this: Globalization can't be stopped. It has to be managed or else the global economy won't work."

from the page: "Fresh revelations have emerged about torture and murders carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999 and the occupation that followed. Allegations that the KLA maintained a secret network of prisons in their bases in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania were made on the BBC programmes “Crossing Continents” and “Newsnight,”.. This is probably the first time a major news network has carried out an investigation into the claims which have been largely ignored, even suppressed, for more than a decade... NATO launched the war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 on the pretext that the regime of Slobodan Milosevic was carrying out ethnic cleansing in Kosovo—a charge the ICTY was unable to prove. However, the real origins of the Kosovo crisis lie in the economic breakdown of the former Yugoslavia that was fuelled by the IMF and World Bank’s structural adjustment plans in the late 1980s..."