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Wednesday, June 1, 2005 |
Here you can see why it is important when you are a corrupt president of the US to put your own friends in high places:
WP: "The Supreme Court overturned the 2002 criminal conviction of Enron Corp.'s accounting firm yesterday, nullifying with a single stroke one of the government's biggest victories in the corporate scandals that climaxed the bull market of the 1990s."
Enron was one of Bush's biggest contributors.
12:54:18 PM 
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Since George W. Bush we see the face of neocon capitalism more clearly than ever. The principle of globalism is easy to understand: you make the countries in question dependent by giving them 'aid' (i.e. loans) via the IMF and World Bank, which they can't ever repay, and then you can impose your own conditions on any country. If they don't agree with your terms, you bomb them or incite a revolution to get a regime change.
Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.
"As an economical hit man, John's job was to convince third world countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development - loans that were much larger than needed - and to guarantee that the development projects were contracted to U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the U.S. government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able to control these economies and to ensure that oil and other resources were channeled to serve the interests of building a global empire."
Guardian: "Rejoice! The world is saved! The governments of Europe have agreed that by 2015 they will give 0.7% of their national income in foreign aid. Though he does not become president of the EU until later this year, Tony Blair can take some of the credit, for his insistence that the G8 summit in July makes poverty history. It's inspiring, until you understand the context.
Everyone who has studied global poverty - including European governments - recognises that aid cannot compensate for unfair terms of trade. If they increased their share of world exports by 5%, developing countries would earn an extra $350bn a year, three times more than they will be given in 2015. Any government that wanted to help developing nations would surely make the terms of trade between rich and poor its priority.
This, indeed, is what the UK appears to have done. In March it published the most progressive foreign policy document ever to have escaped from Whitehall. A paper by the departments of trade and international development promised that: 'We will not force trade liberalisation on developing countries.' It recognised that a policy that insists on equal terms for rich and poor is like pitting a bull mastiff against a chihuahua. Unless a country can first build up its industries behind protectionist barriers, it will be destroyed by free trade. Almost every nation that is rich today, including the UK and the US, used this strategy. But the current rules forbid the poor from following them. The EU, the paper insisted, should, while opening its own markets, allow poor nations '20 years or more' to open theirs.
Before the election, Blair makes one of his tear-jerking appeals for love, compassion and human fellowship, and gets the anti-poverty movement off his back. After the election he discovers, to his inestimable regret, that love, compassion and human fellowship won't after all be possible, as a result of a ruling by the European commission.
The idea that Blair had no more intention of introducing fair terms of trade than I have of becoming a Catholic priest gains credence from the UK's support for the bid by Pascal Lamy, Mandelson's predecessor, to become head of the World Trade Organisation - a post he won on Thursday.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that Lamy was the man who destroyed the world trade talks in Mexico in September 2003. He tried to force through new rules on investment, competition and procurement, which would have allowed corporations to dictate terms to the poor world's governments. He persisted with this policy even when he had lost the support of European governments, and when it became obvious that his position would force the poorer nations to pull out.
So the poor world is going to need the extra aid, in 2015 and far beyond. This means that it will remain obedient to the demands of countries with an interest in its continued exploitation. Those demands have done more than anything else to hold it down. As the World Bank's own figures show, across the 20 years (1960-80) before it and the IMF started introducing strict conditions on the countries that accepted their loans, median annual growth in developing countries was 2.5%. In the 18 years after (1980-1998), it was 0.0%."
Poverty is organised.
12:22:21 PM
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I have voted NO to the European Constitution today.
One of the most important arguments is the lack of democracy in the proposed constitution.
If the number of people I saw in the polling station waiting to vote is something to go by, then the turnout for this referendum will be higher than for previous elections.
9:51:17 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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