April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

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The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq. In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a point that seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many: that the World Bank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather a U. S. bank. Ditto, its closest sibling, the IMF. In fact, if one looks at the World Bank and IMF executive boards and the votes each member of the board has, one sees that the United States controls about 16 percent of the votes in the World Bank - (Compared with Japan at about 7%, the second largest member, China at 4.5%, Germany with 4.00%, and the United Kingdom and France with about 3.8% each), nearly 17% of the IMF votes (Compared with Japan and Germany at about 6% and UK and France at nearly 5%), and the US holds veto power over all major decisions. Furthermore, the United States President appoints the World Bank President. So, we might ask ourselves: What happens when a "rogue" country threatens to bring the banking system that benefits the corporatocracy to its knees? What happens to an "empire" when it can no longer effectively be overtly imperialistic? One definition of "Empire" (per my book The Secret History of the American Empire) states that an empire is a nation that dominates other nations by imposing its own currency on the lands under its control. The empire maintains a large standing military that is ready to protect the currency and the entire economic system that depends on it through extreme violence, if necessary. The ancient Romans did this. So did the Spanish and the British during their days of empire-building. Now, the US or, more to the point, the corporatocracy, is doing it and is determined to punish any individual who tries to stop them. Qaddafi is but the latest example. Understanding the war against Quaddafi as a war in defense of empire is another step in the direction of helping us ask ourselves whether we want to continue along this path of empire-building. Or do we instead want to honor the democratic principles we are taught to believe are the foundations of our country? History teaches that empires do not endure; they collapse or are overthrown. Wars ensue and another empire fills the vacuum. The past sends a compelling message. We must change. We cannot afford to watch history repeat itself. Let us not allow this empire to collapse and be replaced by another. Instead, let us all vow to create a new consciousness. Let the grass-roots movements in the Middle East - fostered by the young who must live with the future and are fueled through social networks - inspire us to demand that our country, our financial institutions and the corporations that depend on us to buy their goods and services commit themselves to fashioning a world that is sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous for all. We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to step across that threshold, to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed into the light of compassion and cooperation.
my.auburnjournal.com John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981 he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main where he was a self-described "economic hit man." He is the author of the new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8171.htm www.johnperkins.org Climate finance leadership risks global bankruptcy Patrick Bond 26 April 2011 South Africa’s most vocal neoliberal politician, Trevor Manuel, is apparently being seriously considered as co-chair of the Green Climate Fund. On April 28-29 in Mexico City, Manuel and other elites meet to design the world’s biggest-ever replenishing pool of aid money: a promised $100 billion of annual grants by 2020, more than the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and allied regional banks put together. The Climate Justice lobby is furious, because as a network of 90 progressive organizations wrote to the United Nations, “The integrity and potential of a truly just and effective climate fund has already been compromised by the 2010 Cancún decisions to involve the World Bank as interim trustee.” A Friends of the Earth International study earlier this month attacked the Bank for increased coal financing, especially $3.75 billion loaned to South Africa’s Eskom a year ago. Manuel chaired the Bank/IMF Board of Governors in 2000, as well as the Bank’s Development Committee from 2001-05. He was one of two United Nations Special Envoys to the 2002 Monterrey Financing for Development summit, a member of Tony Blair’s 2004-05 Commission for Africa, and chair of the 2007 G-20 summit. Manuel was appointed UN Special Envoy for Development Finance in 2008, headed a 2009 IMF committee that successfully advocated a $750 billion capital increase, and served on the UN’s High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Finance in 2010. (Within the latter, he suggested that up to half the $100 billion climate fund be sourced from controversial privatesector emissions trading, not aid budgets.) No one from the Third World has such experience, nor has anyone in these circuits such a formidable anti-colonial political pedigree, including several 1980s police detentions as one of Cape Town’s most important antiapartheid activists. Yet despite occasional rhetorical attacks on “Washington Consensus” economic policies (part of SA’s “talk left walk right” tradition), since the mid-1990s Manuel has been loyal to the procorporate cause. Even before taking power in 1994, he was considered a World Economic Forum “Global Leader for Tomorrow”, and in 1997 and 2007 Euromoney magazine named him African Finance Minister of the Year. No wonder, as in late 1993 he had agreed to repay apartheid-era commercial bank debt against all logic, and negotiated an $850 million IMF loan that straightjacketed Nelson Mandela.
Page 1 and 2: Britain’s royal wedding: Not much
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Page 13 and 14: To add insult to injury none of the
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Page 17 and 18: But poor people are facing an elect
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Page 21 and 22: how much the IMF has changed. IMF M
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Page 29 and 30: governments. I can only think of a
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Page 35 and 36: My source informed me that large nu
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structure normally operates and sug
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want to be able to speak their mind
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a meeting with him at the US embass
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Government’s forces are proving i
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tanks’ that fill the media (many
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is not being used to push for finan
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[6] Shaxson, Nicholas. 2011. Treasu
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Before officially declaring insolve
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allow for direct democracy to exist
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nationalisation has the potential t
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7. http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/ar
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Exporting crops for overseas consum
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The World Trade Organisation (WTO)
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Special Issue (July), p. 36. [3] Br
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stations, agronomists, extensionist
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discount. The pilot AMC of $1.5 bil
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egan to explode and melt down. The
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climatic impacts of nuclear warfare
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them into electricity? Why not use
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expansion in the Gulf of Guinea des
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uling classes and imperialist power
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The death of Nigerian progressive p
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egion and the oil-bearing Niger reg
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another essay when the election res
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March 22, when Obama arrives for a
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population blindly following one po
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faced an economic crisis upon takin
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Shanghai Jiaotong University but wh
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okuvezwe ngenyanga edlule kwiWikiLe
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Iyona-ke indlela uSaif ebexhaphaza
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on for their livelihoods through oi
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suffering from a lack of raw materi
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the only big trade union organisati
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tearing aside the façade of rapaci
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BEE was wrapped up in a hopelessly
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other words, cutting up the capital
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part of the class struggle and that
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In similar vein, U.S. trade represe
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ethnic/racial identities, and gener
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convinced that Greece’s debts are
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parents rather than their own. This
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y the present revolutionary wave an
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Gaddafi himself has admitted that
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Massan d’Almeida First Published
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Most of the violence reported to da
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Peace & Justice Movement Should Opp
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ELIZABETH TAN: I think for the—ce
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divert attention from the struggles
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Bush failed to find any country in
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who are ready to listen to us’. P
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created to really come out of the c
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Iraq Looking eastward from Libya to
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the Wisconsin capital, Madison, 70,
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and Benghazi reached Al Jazeera the
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Ben Ali and Mubarak were little mor
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evealed a correlation between chole
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avert the strike. It shows that Isr
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Thirdly, even if Egypt and Tunisia
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Satya Sagar is a writer, journalist
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programme, has joined the forces of
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Since the beginning of the world ec
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society on the basis of the needs o
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"‘If you look up the last chapter
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maintenance of the capitalist syste
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the masses are once more on the mov
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However, this would be a mistake an
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around a clear revolutionary progra
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the youth are massively radicalised
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prices. The link between the floods
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were among Nigerians who came out a
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However while this renewed confiden
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present the Bolivian alternative an
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his base pay was more than tripled.
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NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: No
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As global attention remains focused
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course in Egypt, where detainees ar
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Dakar, no matter what was the theme
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September to assure a pro-Israeli t
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ezenkolo) njengaseTahrir Square eCa
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zivakashile ezilwela ubulungiswa be
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workplaces, higher ratios of manage
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Casualisation presents a threat to
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Pakistan review, said a collapse of
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Peninsula” members in Yemen into
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threaten to degrade the tax base ev
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have continued to unite under the b
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The City in the Field NguNawal El s
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noma ayisihlanu; sibe ngochwepheshe
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Like many people, as a child I was
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criticize anyone because anything g
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nursing school killed 150 future nu
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The concept of America as "Light of
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are jobless (nearly a million). Jus
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What would plan B be? Both the capi
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In the COP17 host city itself, Durb
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enewable energy technology and retr
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negotiators were already criticized
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Egypt, Professor? SAMER SHEHATA: Ye
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of the regime. And he is someone wh
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evolutionary process in China. The
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evolution from Tunisia spread throu
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Pambazuka News. South Africa prepar
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must also shoulder blame. In Decemb
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esingcolisa umkhathi. INingizimu Af
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Mhla egcina ukuma phambi komhlaba m
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Kulonyaka njengoba bekwenzeka ezing
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Parliament. When Lumumba was appoin
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the ABAKO leader, as President of t
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In London, Padmore became the mento
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an end to the humiliating slavery w
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The Ghanaian troops were mostly flo
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A later report in the same paper wa
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terms are failing beyond the most p
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In parallel battles, though, the be
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cutting the Hitachi deal. As a resu
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kakhokho uAustralopithecus asengcup
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adlule, ukulwa nokumbiwa kweuranium
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sobandlululo eyashintsha ekukhiqize
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the border with Mexico in Arizona.
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Nigeria's civil war in 1967, what i
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Revolt in the Maghreb Solidarity wi
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Wage increases achieved in the publ
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Patrick Bond 13 December 2010 CANCU
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The promised money is, however, in
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Jackson, can alert around 10,000 ma
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will do so again six months from no
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Asizilungiseleni ubuhixihixi kwezem
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ezomnotho abambalwa bayibuza lendab
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April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

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