Conc.: Wolfowitz: responsible for the Iraq disaster and the World Bank's usury

AND NOW THE WORLD BANK IS GOING DOWN.

FPF - April 28th 2007 - Noami Klein is correct but rather soft in some of her judgment: Wolfowitz is one of the worst war criminals on earth, and should - with all his criminal collaborators everywhere - have been in jail for life and with hard labor a long, long time ago. Anybody who knows about the killing usurers of for instance the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the murderous profit making mafias that have scorched people and earth for decades, wishes the worst for Wolfowitz and his ilk. They really deserve all punishment they'll get. - HR

THE WORLD BANK HAS THE PERFECT STANDARD BEARER

THE BANK'S CREDIBILITY WAS ALREADY FATALLY COMPROMISED BY HYPOCRISIES FAR GREATER THAN THOSE OF WOLFOWITZ.

by Naomi Klein

The Guardian (UK) - Friday April 27, 2007 - It's not the act itself, it's the hypocrisy. That's the line on Paul Wolfowitz coming from editorial pages around the world. It's neither: not the act (the way he disregarded the rules to get his girlfriend a pay rise); and not the hypocrisy (the fact that Wolfowitz's mission as World Bank president is fighting for "good governance").

First, let's dispense with the supposed hypocrisy problem. "Who wants to be lectured on corruption by someone telling them to 'Do as I say, not as I do'?" asked one journalist. No one, of course. But that's a pretty good description of the game of one-way strip poker that is our global trade system, in which the United States and Europe - via the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation - tell the developing world: "You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep ours up." From farm subsidies to the Dubai Ports World scandal, hypocrisy is our economic order's guiding principle.

Wolfowitz's only crime was taking his institution's international posture to heart. The fact that he has responded to the scandal by hiring a celebrity lawyer and shopping for a leadership "coach" is just more evidence that he has fully absorbed the World Bank way: when in doubt, blow the budget on overpriced consultants and call it aid.

The more serious lie at the centre of the controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution that had impeccable ethical credentials - until, according to 42 former World Bank executives, its credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairy tale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.)

The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour "flexibility" in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005 the World Bank withheld a promised $100m after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some anti-poverty organisation.

RAPID-FIRE SHOCK THERAPY

But the area where the World Bank has the most tenuous claim to moral authority is in the fight against corruption. Almost everywhere that mass state pillage has taken place over the past four decades, the World Bank and the IMF have been first on the scene of the crime. And no, they have not been looking the other way as the locals lined their pockets; they have been writing the ground rules for the theft and yelling "Faster, please!" - a process known as rapid-fire shock therapy.

Russia under the leadership of the recently departed Boris Yeltsin was a case in point. Beginning in 1990, the World Bank led the charge for the former Soviet Union to impose immediately what it called "radical reform". When Mikhail Gorbachev refused to go along, Yeltsin stepped up. This bulldozer of a man would not let anything or anyone stand in the way of the Washington-authored programme, including Russia's elected politicians.

PLUNDER IN RUSSIA: I'VE NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN IN MY LIFE!

After Yeltsin ordered army tanks to open fire on demonstrators in October 1993, killing hundreds and leaving the parliament building blackened by flames, the stage was set for the fire-sale privatisations of Russia's most precious state assets to the so-called oligarchs. Of course, the World Bank was there. Of the democracy-free lawmaking frenzy that followed Yeltsin's coup, Charles Blitzer, the World Bank's chief economist on Russia, told the Wall Street Journal: "I've never had so much fun in my life."

When Yeltsin left office, his family had become inexplicably wealthy, while several of his deputies were enmeshed in bribery scandals. These incidents were reported in the west, as they always are, as unfortunate local embellishments on an otherwise ethical economic modernisation project. In fact, corruption was embedded in the very idea of shock therapy.

BANK ACCOUNTS ABROAD

The whirlwind speed of change was crucial to overcoming the widespread rejection of the reforms, but it also meant that by definition there could be no supervision. Moreover, the payoffs for local officials were an indispensable incentive for Russia's apparatchiks to create the wide-open market that Washington was demanding. The bottom line is that there is good reason that corruption has never been a high priority for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - their officials understand that when enlisting politicians to advance an economic agenda guaranteed to win those politicians furious enemies at home, there generally has to be a little in it for the politicians in bank accounts abroad.

Russia is far from unique. From Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator* who managed to accumulate more than 125 bank accounts while building the world's first neoliberal state, to Carlos Menem, the Argentinian president who drove around in a bright red Ferrari Testarossa while liquidating his country, to Iraq's "missing billions" today, there is in every country a class of ambitious and bloody-minded politicians who are willing to act as western subcontractors. They will take a fee, and that fee is called corruption - the silent but ever present partner in the crusade to privatise the developing world.

The three main institutions at the heart of that crusade are in crisis - not because of the small hypocrisies, but because of the big ones. The World Trade Organisation cannot get back on track, the International Monetary Fund is going broke, displaced by Venezuela and China.

AND NOW THE WORLD BANK IS GOING DOWN.

The Financial Times reports that when World Bank managers dispensed advice, "they were now laughed at". Perhaps we should all laugh at the World Bank.

What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable anti-poverty organisation has been sullied by one man.

The bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say: let the ship go down with the captain.

[andend] - A version of this article appears in the Nation Nologo.org and at Url.:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2066764,00.html

-0-

FPF - STRONGLY RELATED:

*WOLFOWITZ IS A SERIAL KILLER - WORLD BANK OR IMF? HERE ARE THE MURDER TEAMS WOLFOWITZ AND HIS GANG USE: 'Confessions of an economic hit man.' World Bank insider Perkins explains: "Jackals' are C.I.A. sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If it doesn't work, they perform assassinations, or try to." They steal billions for the World Bank, IMF, USAID, UNDP, AID etc. - It's your life too: Must watch Video Url.:  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8171.htm

* THE STEALING WAR LORDS IN LONDON USE THE OPEN RUSSIA FOUNDATION (based in London and Washington) with Khodorkovsky himself, Henry Kissinger, Lord Jacob Rothschild, and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Arthur Hartman. The head of Khodorkovsky's London Yukos office is the infamous Lord David Owen. - Url.:  http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3032russ_oligarchs.html

* General Augusto Pinochet embezzled tens of millions of dollars. He hid them in 128 (one-hundred-and-twenty-eight) different bank accounts, most of them in the internationally known 'Bank for Crooks & Spooks' the Riggs bank. Which is Leumi Bank which is the BIS... - Url.:  http://internetsamizdat.blogspot.com/2006/12/palast-tinker-bell-pinochet-and-fairy.html

* AND THIS IS WHERE THE STOLEN BILLIONS END UP: AT THE 'BIS' - "The Bank for International Settlements" - Who controls global monetary affairs? The BIS! Based in Basle, Switzerland, the BIS is central bank to central banks. The BIS has greater immunity than a sovereign nation, is accountable to no one, runs global monetary affairs and is privately owned. This is a must-read report to understand the globalization process." - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/y6xmed

* HOW THE WORLD BANK, IMF AND OTHER THIEVES STOLE BILLIONS FROM RUSSIA AND ITS PEOPLE, WHILE KEEPING YELTSIN PERMANENTLY DRUNK AND DRUGGED - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/4gpd7

* THE ISRAELI/CIA COMPLEX WAS USING KHODORKOVSKY to sell off the assets of YUKOS to Exxon/Mobil (as well as a smaller piece to Texaco), hence bringing Russia’s pipelines into the hands of the western powers. The Nov. 5 New York Times also indicated that the Bush family’s Carlyle Group was involved. It was not long after Putin began threatening the YUKOS conglomerate that neo-conservative pundits such as William Kristol and Ariel Cohen began calling Putin a “communist,” “another Stalin” and “tyrannical.” The basis of these wild accusations, of course, is the fact that Putin stands in the way of Zionist domination. - Url.:  http://www.americanfreepress.net/11_07_03/Countdown_to_Armageddon/countdown_to_armageddon.html

* HR ITEMS CONCERNING WOLFOWITZ - Url.:  http://images.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Henk+Ruyssenaars%22+%2BWolfowitz

* WORLD BANK INSIDER PERKINS WROTE A BOOK ABOUT ALL THESE STOLEN BILLIONS: WHERE DOES ALL THE MONEY GO? - Url.:  http://forpressfound.blogspot.com/2007/01/all-these-billions-where-does-all.html

* "PEOPLE DO NOT FORGET. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/9cyeq

* US: SECRET STRATEGY DOCUMENT ORDERS TO 'NEUTRALIZE' ALL RESISTANCE - Url.:  https://uk.indymedia.org/en/2006/02/333045.html

* US FASCISM: ''MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2006'' - "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin - Wikipedia - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ydkywt

* WHAT'S THE BILDERBERG GROUP PLANNING CONCERNING YOU? - You can read more here at the web site of Daniel Estulin, one of the few experts on Bilderberg. What he doesn't know about the Bilderberg mafia and your future isn't worth knowing. - Url.:  http://danielestulin.com/?op=inicio&idioma=en

* THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS BOGUS - The Guardian (UK) - Michael Meacher MP ( meacherm@parliament.uk) was environment minister in the U.K. government from May 1997 to June 2003 when he resigned in protest at Tony Blair's policies. - Url.:  http://www.serendipity.li/wot/meacher.htm  

* FINANCING THE NAZIS VIA A BANK IN ROTTERDAM? - THE BUSH FAMILY, HITLER AND THE DUTCH CONNECTION - Url.:  http://www.rense.com/general26/dutch.htm

* "IF THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS TAKEN AWAY, THEN DUMB AND SILENT WE MAY BE LED, LIKE SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER. - GEORGE WASHINGTON - ''ELECTRONIC CONTROL IS SLAVERY'' - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ym4777

* THROW OUT WAR PROPAGANDISTS LIKE THE BBC, FOX, CNN ETC.! - Url.:  http://www.cemab.be/news/2006/07/1632.php

* Henk R. is a journalist who has been declared 'Persona non Grata' by five 'governments' in East and West. This far he has lived and worked abroad - never in an English speaking country - for more than 4 decades for international media, but always as an independent foreign correspondent. Of which 10 years - also covering Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide - from the war in Vietnam until now - that every bullet and every bomb breeds more resistance against the inhuman US junta's war machine and its global terror!

* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:  http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
 http://tinyurl.com/2yxlyj
The Netherlands
 fpf@chello.nl

-0-