IMF/World Bank Destroying Governments - Unity Publishing
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IMF / WORLD BANK DESTROYING COUNTRIES
The World Bank - IMF is owned and controlled by NM Rothschild and 30 to 40 of the wealthiest people in the world. For over 150 years they have planned to take the world over through money. The former chief economist of the World Bank, Joe Stiglitz, was fired recently. He pointed out to top executives that every country the IMF/World Bank got involved in ended up with a crashed economy, a destroyed government, and sometimes in flames with riots. Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank would not comment on his dismissal.
Before Joe Stiglitz was fired he took a large stack of secret documents out of the World Bank. These secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund reveal that the IMF required nations:
1. to sign secret agreements of 111 items
2. in which they agreed to sell off their key assets - water, electric, gas, etc.
3. in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved
4. in which they pay off the politicians billions of dollars to Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer of a countries fixed assets
If they do not agree to these steps they are cut-off from all international borrowing. Today if can't borrow money in the international marketplace, no one can survive, whether you are people or corporations or countries. If that does not work they overthrow the government and plant lies about the former government and/or even rewrite history.
The Argentina Plan
Inside documents from Argentina show the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. Argentina has had six presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed. This happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets, like their water system. Then they taxed the people. They created big government and big government handed it off to the private IMF/World Bank. They pay off the politicians billions in Swiss bank accounts.
The Enron Connection
The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a company called Enron. Then the globalists blow out Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation. .
They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations - the politicians then hand it over to the IMF for nothing. The Globalists pay them off individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts. The plan is total slavery for the entire population. Enron is a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, etc.
IMF Planed Riots
The IMF/World Bank are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. It's not privatization. They steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank. They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank grabbed half the Argentine banks. British Petroleum grabbed pipelines in Ecuador. Enron grabbed water systems all over the place. The problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. It is not just a question of the theft. You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense. And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now. The IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury. Indonesia is in flames.
Every country IMF/World Bank meddling in they destroyed their economy and they ended up in flames. They even plan in the riots. They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you get riots in the streets. And they admit that it an IMF riot. Because you have riot, all the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions.
California Utilities & Enron
It is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so greedy - they are preparing it for America. The chief investigators of Enron for the State of California said that that it's not just the stockholders that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular. Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation - from the experts I've had on and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks. You did pay California's electric bills according to the investigations, they are telling me that they were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12-billion dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get it back from now. Well they actually caught the Governor buying it for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt and doing it over and over and over again.
Enron's Auditor - Lord Wakeham
The men who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after. Lord Wakeham, who was on the audit committee of Enron, is the head of NM Rothschild. There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something like fifty Boards. And he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. In fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants in Britain. Enron owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what Lord Wakeham approved and then they gave him a job on the board. On top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. Lord Wakeham is supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts, but he is also the head of the board to regulate the media. Lord Wakeham is trying to pass laws in England where you can't own your own water. He can't be touched because he regulates the media.
Rothschild and the Illuminati
Burrow into NM Rothschild, you'll find it all there. The IMF/World Bank implosion, four points, how they bring down a country and destroy the resources of the people. First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks. Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills no one can pay. Then open up your borders to trade - complete free marketeering. Its like the opium wars. This isn't free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through this. China has a 40% tariff on the USA, but the USA has a 2% on them. That's not free and fair trade. It's to force all industry into a country that the globalists fully control, and they control China.
Wal-Mart
The Illuminati owns Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart has 700 plants in China. There is almost nothing in a Walmart store that comes from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall. They have big flags saying "Buy American" and there's hardly anything from America in their stores. What's even worst is they will hire a factory and right next to it will be the sister factory which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Walmart.
Briberization
Sell off the water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's say about 5 billion dollars, ten percent of that is 500 million. A Senator from Argentina said that he got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron. Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world's price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer? The answer was that if they only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your Swiss bank account. This is the same George W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken Lay of Enron until 1994. Now they are having these white-wash hearings. Bill Clinton, to get even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn't charge more than one-hundred times the normal price for electricity. That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton's cap on prices. Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy department reversed the clamps on Enron.
Step Two
Argentina is an example of step two of the IMF. A fifth of the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets. Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession (created by the IMF), you absolutely demolish the nation.
You don't start cutting the budget in a recession, you start spending money to stimulate the economy. You don't raise taxes, you cut them. But they tell these countries you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according to the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign banks - the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking. If fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws against loan-sharking because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine law.
Part 3 and Part 4.
Then they open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars. They destroy an economy so that it can not produce anything, and then open the borders to sell their own goods. They force nations to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs - legal drugs. That's how you end up with an illegal drug trade. What's there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?
In Part 4, they take apart of the government by the coup d'etat and they install their own corporate government. In Venezuela where they have an elected president of the government, the IMF has announced that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do anything. He said what I'm going to do is double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as he did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military and watch this because the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies.
Philipps tranceformation@trance-formation.org or http://www.GregPalast.com or http://www.gregpalast.com
Bush Administration Signals End to Open Government
1) The Bush administration invoked executive privilege to keep Clinton-era documents secret. The move shocked Republican lawmakers. Why would Bush want to cover up for Bill Clinton? Representative Dan Burton, who is the Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, even threatened to hold Bush in contempt of Congress unless he releases several sets of subpoenaed Justice Department documents that he has hidden. It does not matter. Bush promises to never comply with congressional investigators. Bush is determined to keep Clinton's crimes concealed.
2) Bush flatly refuses to hand over records of internal energy task force meetings. These records could either incriminate or exonerate Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney regarding allegations of conflict of interest in the
Enron scandal. Even the General Accounting Office is suing the White House (a first) to obtain the records. Again, Bush refuses to comply. The president is even willing to ignore court orders demanding the release of documents.
3) Just this week, the United States Government's top lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court that officials have the right to lie to American citizens. No, he did not explain how that assertion jives with Bush's Christian testimony.
4) Two days ago, the White House ordered all federal agencies to delete their web sites of all "sensitive information." The White House did not say what information it considered "sensitive."
5) Vice President Cheney is already the stealthiest Vice President in U.S. history. Seldom does anyone know where he is or what he is doing.
6) President Bush admitted to forming a mysterious "shadow government" comprised of unknown persons who are living in underground bunkers at secret sites outside Washington, D.C. Not even top legislators know who these
people are or what instructions have been given them. Furthermore, how does a "shadow government" mesh with the U.S. Constitution? These questions have never been (and never will be) answered.
When asked by a reporter about these and other matters, Bush said, "I have a duty to protect the executive branch from legislative encroachment." Congress, for the most part, only learns of Bush's clandestine carryings-on as brief sketches leak out in the press.
However, none of this seems to bother the American people or members of the press. Bush is a wartime president (even though no one officially declared war) and, therefore, can do anything he pleases with total impunity. In truth, the Bush administration signals the end to both open government and constitutional government - and few people seem to even notice.
Christians cannot comment on Government in USA
Congress has decided to silence you, me, and any other Christian who dares express a moral view that may impact a political campaign! The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have both passed a so-called "campaign finance reform" bill ... and now President Bush has said he will sign it into law! In spite of all the propaganda in the media, this legislation actually silences Christian and conservative organizations - banning them from commenting on key moral issues during election campaigns ... while allowing the liberal media to speak out freely.
This new law is a SLAP IN THE FACE to our right to free speech. It is absolutely, blatantly UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
* This legislation effectively strips church and conservative leaders and organizations of religious free speech during elections.
* For me or any other conservative spokesperson to comment and inform you with a Christian perspective would be illegal ... and the threat of jail a reality!
* Even your own pastor cannot inform you on key political and moral issues when it comes time to vote!
So where will you get all your information about the political and moral views of candidates? FROM THE BIASED, SECULAR MEDIA!
From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com, see a related article on how scientists and academics are viewing the possibility of reducing the world's population by more than four billion people and doing so selectively with DNA biological weapons. See how hundreds of microbiologists are being assassinated world-wide to keep this plan in the hands of only a few people. www.rense.com www.narconews.com
How the World Bank, IMF and WTO destroyed African agriculturehttp://www.worldhunger.org/articles/08/editorials/bello_afag.htm Walden Bello(July 20, 2008) Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains. Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets. . African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base. From Exporter to ImporterAt the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa. Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt. Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline. Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced applications, lower yields, and lower investment. One would have expected the non-economist to predict this outcome, which was screened out by the Bank and Fund’s free-market paradigm. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector believed that reducing state expenditures created more risk and failed to step into the breach. In country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. In those instances where private traders did come in to replace the state, an Oxfam report noted, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.” What support the government was allowed to muster was channeled by the Bank to export agriculture – to generate the foreign exchange earnings that the state needed to service its debt to the Bank and the Fund. But, as in Ethiopia during the famine of the early 1980s, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into more and more unsuitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the Bank’s encouraging several economies undergoing adjustment to focus on export production of the same crops simultaneously often led to overproduction that then triggered a price collapse in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s program to expand cocoa production triggered a 48% drop in the international price of cocoa between 1986 and 1989, threatening, as one account put it, “to increase the vulnerability of the entire economy to the vagaries of the cocoa market.” 1 In 2002-2003, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia. As in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Latin America and Asia, the Bank and Fund confined themselves for the most part to macromanagement, or supervising the dismantling of the state’s economic role from above. These institutions left the dirty details of implementation to the state bureaucracies. In Africa, where they dealt with much weaker governments, the Bank and Fund micromanaged such decisions as how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired, or even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom. In other words, Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reached into the very innards of the state’s involvement in the agricultural economy to rip it up. The Role of TradeCompounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair trade practices on the part of the EU and the United States. Trade liberalization allowed low-priced subsidized EU beef to enter and drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. cotton growers offloaded their cotton on world markets at 20-55% of the cost of production, bankrupting West African and Central African cotton farmers in the process.2 These dismal outcomes were not accidental. As then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block put it at the start of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986, “the idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on U.S. agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at lower cost.”3 What Block did not say was that the lower cost of U.S. products stemmed from subsidies that were becoming more massive each year, despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase out all forms of subsidy. From $367 billion in 1995, the first year of the WTO, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Subsidies now account for 40% of the value of agricultural production in the European Union (EU) and 25% in the United States. The social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable. According to Oxfam, the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 – or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.”4 That was, however, a rare moment of candor. What was especially disturbing was that, as Oxford University political economist Ngaire Woods pointed out, the “seeming blindness of the Fund and Bank to the failure of their approach to sub-Saharan Africa persisted even as the studies of the IMF and the World Bank themselves failed to elicit positive investment effects.”5 The Case of MalawiThis stubbornness led to tragedy in Malawi. It was a tragedy preceded by success. In 1998 and 1999, the government initiated a program to give each smallholder family a “starter pack” of free fertilizers and seeds. This followed several years of successful experimentation in which the packs were provided only to the poorest families. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after, however, is a story that will be enshrined as a classic case study in a future book on the 10 greatest blunders of neoliberal economics. The World Bank and other aid donors forced the drastic scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, food output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its strategic grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the crisis in food production turned into a famine in 2001-2002, there were hardly any reserves left to rush to the countryside. About 1,500 people perished. The IMF, however, was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program with the government on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural markets…crowd out more productive spending.” When an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government finally had enough of the Bank and IMF’s institutionalized stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy program, enabling two million households to buy fertilizer at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The results: bumper harvests for two years in a row, a surplus of one million tons of maize, and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to other countries in Southern Africa. But the World Bank, like its sister agency, still stubbornly clung to the discredited doctrine. As the Bank’s country director told the Toronto Globe and Mail, “All those farmers who begged, borrowed, and stole to buy extra fertilizer last year are now looking at that decision and rethinking it. The lower the maize price, the better for food security but worse for market development.” Fleeing FailureMalawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today. Owing to the absence of any clear case of success, structural adjustment has been widely discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments that once subscribed to it have distanced themselves from the Bank, the most prominent case being the official British aid agency that co-funded the latest subsidized fertilizer program in Malawi. Perhaps the motivation of these institutions is to prevent the further erosion of their diminishing influence in the continent through association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions. At the same time, they are certainly aware that Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to the conditionalities of the World Bank, IMF, and Western government aid programs. Beyond Africa, even former supporters of adjustment, like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington and the rabidly neoliberal Economist acknowledged that the state’s abdication from agriculture was a mistake. In a recent commentary on the rise of food prices, for instance, IFPRI asserted that “rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades,” and says that it is time for “developing country governments [to] increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.” At the same time, the Bank and IMF’s espousal of free trade came under attack from the heart of the economics establishment itself, with a panel of luminaries headed by Princeton’s Angus Deaton accusing the Bank’s research department of being biased and “selective” in its research and presentation of data. As the old saying goes, success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan. Unable to deny the obvious, the Bank has finally acknowledged that the whole structural adjustment enterprise was a mistake, though it smuggled this concession into the middle of the 2008 World Development Report, perhaps in the hope that it would not attract too much attention. Nevertheless, it was a damning admission: Structural adjustment in the 1980’s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs, and cooperative organization. The expectation was that removing the state would free the market for private actors to take over these functions—reducing their costs, improving their quality, and eliminating their regressive bias. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some places, the state’s withdrawal was tentative at best, limiting private entry. Elsewhere, the private sector emerged only slowly and partially—mainly serving commercial farmers but leaving smallholders exposed to extensive market failures, high transaction costs and risks, and service gaps. Incomplete markets and institutional gaps impose huge costs in forgone growth and welfare losses for smallholders, threatening their competitiveness and, in many cases, their survival. In sum, biofuel production did not create but only exacerbated the global food crisis. The crisis had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO systematically discouraged food self-sufficiency and encouraged food importation by destroying the local productive base of smallholder agriculture. Throughout Africa and the global South, these institutions and the policies they promoted are today thoroughly discredited. But whether the damage they have caused can be undone in time to avert more catastrophic consequences than we are now experiencing remains to be seen. Walden Bello is a senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a program of Chulalongkorn University's Social Research Institute, and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). This article first appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus and may be viewed at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5271. Sources1. Charles Abugre, “Behind Crowded Shelves: as Assessment of Ghana’s Structural Adjustment Experiences, 1983-1991,” (San Francisco: food First, 1993), p. 87. 2. “Trade Talks Round Going Nowhere sans Progress in Farm Reform,” Business World (Phil), Sept. 8, 2003, p. 15 3. Quoted in “Cakes and Caviar: the Dunkel Draft and Third World Agriculture,” Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 1993), p. 220 4. Morris Miller, Debt and the Environment: Converging Crisis (New York: UN, 1991), p. 70. 5. Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (Thaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 158. |
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." --Winston Churchill
“What does imperialism mean? It means the assertion of absolute force over others.” Robert Lowe 1878
Monday, January 18, 2010
World Bank 'Destroyed Basic Grains' in Honduras, Haiti
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&refer=home&sid=aGxiawAqP0.w
World Bank 'Destroyed Basic Grains' in Honduras, Haiti
Alison Fitzgerald, Jason Gale and Helen Murphy
Bloomberg
Thu, 15 May 2008 06:40 EDT
Fidencio Alvarez abandoned his bean and corn farm in southern Honduras because of the rising cost of seeds, fuel and food. After months of one meal a day, he hiked with his wife and six children to find work in the city.
''We would wake up with empty stomachs and go to bed with empty stomachs,'' said Alvarez, 37, who sought help from the Mission Lazarus aid group in Choluteca in January. ''We couldn't afford the seeds to plant food or the bus fare to buy the food.''
Honduran farmers like Alvarez can't compete in a global marketplace where the costs of fuel and fertilizer soared and rice prices doubled in the past year. The former breadbasket of Central America now imports 83 percent of the rice it consumes -- a dependency triggered almost two decades ago when it adopted free-market policies pushed by the World Bank and other lenders.
The country was $3.6 billion in debt in 1990. In return for loans from the World Bank, Honduras became one of dozens of developing nations that abandoned policies designed to protect farmers and citizens from volatile food prices. The U.S. House Financial Services Committee in Washington today explored the causes of the global food crisis and possible solutions.
The committee examined whether policies advocated by the bank and the International Monetary Fund contributed to the situation. Governments from Ghana to the Philippines were pressured to cut protective tariffs and farm supports and to grow more high-value crops for export, reports by the Washington-based World Bank show.
Haiti Pressure
The IMF pressed Haiti, as a condition of a 1994 loan, to open its economy to trade, Raj Patel, a scholar at the Center for African Studies in the University of California at Berkeley told the committee. When trade barriers fell, imports of subsidized rice from the U.S. surged, devastating the local rice farmers, Patel said.
''That is very odd,'' said committee chair Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. ''For anyone to have looked at Haiti at that time and thought that it was a functioning economy is a sign I think of ideology going rampant.''
''Of course they got it wrong,'' said Robert S. Zeigler, director-general at the International Rice Research Institute, southeast of Manila. ''It will work if you're an extremely wealthy country and you can import rice at any price. But if you're not an extremely wealthy country, I think that's very poor advice.''
'Command and Control'
The bank's strategy -- summed up in a 1989 article by its chief economist for South Asia, John Williamson --became known as ''The Washington Consensus.''
''The focus of the liberalization was on lowering domestic food prices,'' said Mark Plant, the IMF's deputy director of policy development in Washington. Governments' ''command and control'' policies increased consumer costs and cut farmer income, he said.
Williamson, now affiliated with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in a May 9 interview that the ideas are still sound, though they may have been pushed too hard by the World Bank.
''My own view is that all those things are good for countries,'' he said. ''But I'm not terribly sympathetic with the World Bank going in and laying down a list of things countries have to do.''
Highest Tariffs
Honduran agriculture stagnated through the 1980s because of subsidies and market controls, prompting the bank to recommend economic changes, said Adrian Fozzard, the institution's manager for Honduras.
Rice farmers in Honduras were protected by the highest import tariffs in Central America when former president Rafael Callejas took office in 1990 with the economy stalled. The trade barriers that helped the country meet more than 90 percent of domestic demand were dismantled under an agreement for a World Bank loan in September that year, allowing cheaper imports to flood the market.
The requirements for the loan included eliminating import restrictions and surcharges and reorganizing the agricultural finance system, according to Eurodad, a network of 54 European non-governmental organizations that was granted access to the World Bank's loan database to monitor loan conditions.
Prices Plunge
Prices paid to farmers fell by 13 percent in 1991 and 30 percent more in 1992, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
In August 1993, the World Bank advised Honduras to adopt a second round of economic changes as part of another loan, according to Eurodad. Those conditions included eliminating all price controls and cutting tariffs further.
''Remaining trade and price controls should be eliminated,'' bank officials said in a 1994 internal report. ''The program of privatization of state silos should be completed; and the use of a grain reserve for price stabilization should not be reinstated.''
The report's author, Daniel Cotlear, now a World Bank economist for Latin American and the Caribbean, declined to comment for this story.
The bank pushed the policies because food prices fell in real terms for at least two decades, and few economists expected that to change, said Mark Cackler, manager of its Agriculture and Rural Development Department. Free trade and open markets remain the best path to competitiveness, he said.
''There are actually opportunities to reduce protectionism that have a beneficial impact,'' Cackler said.
World Bank Reaction
World Bank spokesman Sergio Jellinek said it's impossible to connect today's food price crisis with 20-year-old free-trade policies.
''The price of food, especially grains, is determined in the international market and not in the local markets,'' he said. ''So if a country such as Mexico, or Colombia, or El Salvador or Honduras would have multiplied by three or four its grain production, that would not have significantly affected world supply. And food prices in local markets would be as high as they are today.''
There now are 1,300 rice farmers in Honduras, compared with more than 20,000 in 1989, according to human rights group FIAN.
''The international lending agencies have destroyed the basic grains industry in Honduras,'' said Gilberto Rios, executive secretary of FIAN Honduras. ''The best land now produces things like African palms, which are not for consumption.''
Last month, thousands of activists, students and farmers blocked highways and rallied in the capital, Tegucigalpa, to protest food prices and policies that made their country the most open to free trade in Latin America -- and one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
Not 'a Boon'
Per capita income rose by 0.5 percent a year from 1990 to 2004, one of the slowest growth rates in Latin America, a January report by the International Food Policy Research Institute found.
''Trade liberalization does not appear to have been much of a boon to the Honduran economy,'' the Washington-based institute said in the report.
In the Philippines, the World Bank encouraged the country, the world's biggest importer of rice, to stop striving for self- sufficiency and instead to diversify into crops like tropical fruits which have greater export value.
It approved a $60 million loan in 2004 to help the Philippines' Department of Agriculture become more market- oriented, diversify crops and stimulate private investment.
A World Bank Group technical working paper in June 2007 said the government shouldn't stockpile grain to stabilize prices. Rather, it should keep enough on hand for disasters and social welfare programs. It also advocated opening the domestic market to competition by cutting tariffs.
Philippines Reverses Course
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo now says the country has to change course toward being able to feed itself.
''We must move toward more self-sufficiency, not necessarily 100 percent, but more self-sufficiency, less import dependence on rice,'' she said last month.
African nations including Ghana and Mali similarly followed World Bank advice. In 1992, the bank required Ghana to cut tariffs on rice to 20 percent from 100 percent, leading to a tripling of cheap rice imports, Patel said.
In 2004, the bank advised Ethiopia to stop providing fertilizer and credit to small farmers as part of a debt relief package, and it persuaded Indonesia to dismantle its rice marketing board, according to Elizabeth Stuart in Washington, who is the head of relations with the World Bank and IMF for Oxfam International, the U.K.-based alliance fighting poverty.
Cheap Loans
Now farmers are asking the Honduran government to reverse policy and provide cheap, long-term loans to buy the seeds and fertilizers they need to survive.
The government of Honduras yesterday asked the IMF to send a team to the country to examine how the rising food and fuel prices are affecting the economy and whether they should reconsider some aspects of a current economic program, the IMF said in a press release.
''We haven't seen the worst of it yet; that's to come,'' said Jarrod Brown, president of the Mission Lazarus. ''They need help now.''
For Alvarez and his family, help can't come quickly enough.
''We want to go back to our land, it's all we have,'' he said.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
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http://aaempire.blogspot.com/2010/01/world-bank-destroyed-basic-grains-in.html
Monday, March 1, 2010
Parallels of Conquest, Past and Present
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=37514
2010-02-26
Parallels of Conquest, Past and Present
Like William the Conqueror who ignored the English battlefield dead, the US government has not identified – nor even made a good-faith effort to estimate – the number of Iraqis and Afghanis who have been killed. By suppressing the human toll, the war still can be sold as benefiting the Iraqi people. The reality of their intense suffering, however, is much different from the generally positive image that US propagandists seek to present, notes Douglas Valentine.
After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror’s army buried its fallen comrades, but left the corpses of the English defenders to rot in the fields.
Such is the brutal nature of war: the victor inflicts all manner of suffering and humiliation on the vanquished. Nearly a millennium later, what the United States is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is only marginally different.
William the Conqueror made no pretense about his brutal subjugation of the English. They hated him and resisted his occupation for 20 years, during which time he took their property and gave it to the Norman upper class.
Over 300,000 English people were murdered and starved (one fifth of the population) and some 300,000 French and Normans were planted in England in positions of authority.
During the repression, an English nobleman was likely blinded, castrated, and thrown into a dungeon in one of the hundreds of castles that William built across the countryside to defend Norman interests. The overall strategy was to eliminate native leadership and to terrorize the population into submission.
By the time William repented his sins on his deathbed in 1087, England had ceased being England.
While the US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are different in many details, there are disturbing parallels in the extent of the carnage and the strategy of coercion, in the innocent blood that has flowed and the number of survivors who have been terrorized.
Like William the Conqueror who ignored the English battlefield dead, the US government has not identified – nor even made a good-faith effort to estimate – the number of Iraqis and Afghanis who have been killed.
That’s because the Bush administration – and now the Obama administration – have had an official policy of not counting the number of people killed, crippled, rendered homeless, starved, or condemned to disease and possibly insanity.
US government officials have claimed that this policy has been followed to escape the “body count” mindset that became notorious during the Vietnam War. But it also has made it impossible to quantitatively measure the amount of misery that US policymakers have inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan.
The lack of official numbers also has enabled the US government to cast doubt on unofficial estimates that put the number of Iraqi dead in the hundreds of thousands or possibly over one million. Most reports in the mainstream US news media cite much lower estimates, presumably to avoid offending the powers-that-be in Washington.
Out of the Press
As much as possible, US leaders have sought to keep the ugliness of these wars – the mangled bodies, the burned-off faces, the squalid refugee camps, the abused captives – out of the press and away from the public’s consciousness, thus to preserve the pretense of moral superiority that defines American “exceptionalism.”
But the principal advantage of having no official casualty estimates and few photos of atrocities in Iraq is that the American people aren’t reminded of the horrendous consequences of a war launched by President George W. Bush under the false claim that Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles.
By suppressing the human toll, the war still can be sold as benefiting the Iraqi people. The reality of their intense suffering, however, is much different from the generally positive image that US propagandists seek to present.
And that is one big difference between the slaughter of Englishmen by William the Conqueror and the carnage unleashed by George W. Bush, the modern-day conqueror. William’s cruelty was done in the light of day.
Yet, it is not as if the US government doesn’t keep tabs on those killed, maimed or rendered as orphans. The government simply doesn’t want the American people to know the quantity or the specifics, all the better to strip the two conflicts of their human dimensions.
In Afghanistan, for example, the CIA and military have been conducting a census of every village, town and city in the country – much like William’s infamous Doomsday (or Domesday) Book, which assessed the property of every English landowner for the purpose of levying taxes or confiscation.
As commander of the US occupation army, General Stanley McChrystal wants to know the name of every Afghan, so his analysts can decide who is a Taliban and who is not, or in the even vaguer vernacular favored by the US military, who are the “bad guys.”
McChrystal’s survey seeks to determine where each man lives, how many people are in his family, who his wife and children and relatives are, where he works and where his property is.
In places like Marjah, considered a Taliban stronghold where a US-led offensive is currently underway, McChrystal is at a bit of a loss, but he still tries to obtain actionable intelligence through networks of spies and via all manner of electronic surveillance, including satellites.
Tracking the Taliban
This biographical information and other data about Afghanis are entered into a computer in McChrystal’s office, where the material is carefully monitored by the CIA and military special operations units.
Within a separate folder for suspected Taliban, every man is identified by the same biographical criteria as every other Afghan. In addition, each Taliban is categorized by his rank and position within the organization.
Low-level fighters are left to the Marines, while “high-value targets” get their own folder and are handled by the CIA and military special operations.
These “high-value targets” are given the kind of special attention that William the Conqueror reserved for English noblemen, who were viewed as especially important to kill or otherwise neutralize in order to pacify the countryside.
“High-value targets” in Afghanistan have the property (intellectual as well as physical, such as opium fields) that McChrystal wants to deny the Taliban. So, more biographical information is gathered about them, and their movements are tracked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Through spies and sophisticated electronic surveillance, McChrystal even has a very good idea when they are leaving one safe house and traveling to another. The jets are fueled, and the drones are in the sky, waiting.
And this is how and why 27 Afghan civilians were slaughtered on Feb. 21 while traveling between remote provinces in a caravan of minibuses. The CIA and military special operations forces were alerted that some “high-value target” was traveling with his family, and McChrystal seized the opportunity to kill them all.
In a dirty war like the one in Afghanistan, killing “high-value targets” almost always involves murdering them while they are at home or while traveling with their families; otherwise they are much less accessible and thus harder targets.
Killing enemy leaders along with their entire families has a psychological-warfare impact, too, putting this secret policy under the intelligence rubric of “black propaganda.”
It is psychological warfare because these mass killings have a sobering effect on low-level Taliban who wish to rise in the ranks. It is a form of propaganda that every Afghan citizen is aware of, and it is “black” because it is not officially acknowledged, keeping the American people in the dark.
The mainstream US news media plays along by rarely citing the obvious facts of this dirty war. The killing of civilians is dismissed as an accident that is accompanied by a routine apology from General McChrystal or some other US spokesman.
Savagery, Past and Present
Though US media propagandists treat McChrystal as an honorable and hard-working warrior, the truth is that he is no less savage than William the Conqueror. Both spread terror by killing their enemies, dismembering bodies and inflicting death and cruelty on non-combatants as well.
The primary difference is that William and his army did their killing up close with battle axes and swords for everyone to see, while McChrystal and his high-tech killing machine inflict carnage from far away with 2,000-pound bombs or with missiles fired from drones – and then cloak the horror behind censorship and propaganda.
These cover-ups are essential because the American public might otherwise bolt against Washington’s imperial adventures, which often end up with working-class American soldiers dead or maimed while US corporations snake away with valuable resources from the conquered countries or otherwise use them for economic or geopolitical ends.
This strategy works because most Americans don’t know – and many may not care to know – the names and biographies of the victims.
Douglas Valentine is author of The Phoenix Program as well as The Strength of the Wolf and the new book Strength of the Pack. His Web site is DouglasValentine.com.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Challenging Christian Hegemony
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/26/challenging-christian-hegemony/
Tikkun Daily at 3:15 pm
February 26, 2010 REPLIES: 7
By Be Scofield, Crossposted from Tikkun Daily
“You’re either with us or against us.” – from Matthew 12:30
“Language is the perfect instrument of empire.”- Antonia De Nebrija
I recommend checking out the latest booklet from Paul Kivel called “The Language of Dominant Christianity” (available as a downloadable PDF for only $3.50 or as a book for $4.95.) It is a short (85 page) A-Z dictionary of common vocabulary words in the English language that reveal how Christianity has influenced our thinking. In addition to defining a comprehensive list of words (64 pages) Kivel provides a section on “word groups” and points out how certain terms are found within our criminal/legal system, notions of morality, racial understandings, educational ideals and political ideology. And in the first part Kivel provides the context of why it is important to analyze and examine the Christian roots of our language.
This booklet is one part of Kivel’s latest project to name Christian dominance as one of the many systems of oppression. Kivel is a well respected violence prevention educator who wrote “Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Social Justice” among many other books on oppression. If you haven’t heard of him or want to know more about Paul’s work including his videos and interviews you can visit his website.
And in the spirit of my post last week where I pointed out how atheists are studying to be religious leaders at Starr King I want to emphasize that there are Christians who are equally concerned about Christian hegemony and are dedicating time and resources to ending it.
Paul Kivel describes Christian hegemony:
From www.christianhegemony.org
I define Christian hegemony as the everyday, pervasive, and systematic set of Christian values and beliefs, individuals and institutions that dominate all aspects of our society through the social, political, economic, and cultural power they wield. Nothing is unaffected by Christian hegemony (whether we are Christian or not) including our personal beliefs and values, our relationships to other people and to the natural environment, and our economic, political, education, health care, criminal/legal, housing, and other social systems.
Christian hegemony as a system of domination is complex, shifting, and operates through the agency of individuals, families, church communities, denominations, parachurch organizations, civil institutions, and through decisions made by members of the ruling class and power elite.
Christian hegemony benefits all Christians, all those raised Christian, and those passing as Christian. However the concentration of power, wealth, and privilege under Christian hegemony accumulates to the ruling class and the predominantly white male Christian power elite that serve its interests. All people who are not Christian, as well as most people who are, experience social, political, and economic exploitation, violence, cultural appropriation, marginalization, alienation and constant vulnerability from the dominance of Christian power and values in our society.
Christian hegemony operates on several levels. At one level is the internalization of dominant western Christian beliefs and values by individuals in our society. Another level is the power that individual preachers, ministers and priests have on people’s lives. Particular churches and some Christian denominations wield very significant political and economic power in our country. There is a vast network of parachurch organizations, general tax-supported non-profits such as hospitals, broadcasting networks, publishing houses, lobbying groups, and organizations like Focus on the Family, Prison Fellowship, The Family, World Mission, and thousands of others which wield influence in particular spheres of U.S. society and throughout the world. Another level of Christian dominance is within the power elite, the network of 7-10,000 predominantly white Christian men who control the largest and most powerful social, political, economic, and cultural institutions in the country. And finally there is the level which provides the foundation for all the others-the long and deep legacy of Christian ideas, values, practices, policies, icons, and texts that have been produced within dominant western Christianity over the centuries. That legacy continues to shape our language, culture, beliefs, and values and to frame public and foreign policy decisions.
Christian dominance has become so invisible that its manifestations appear to be secular, i.e. not religious. In this context, the phrase “secular Christian dominance” might be most appropriate, Christian hegemony under the guise of secularism. Of course, there are many forms of Christian fundamentalism which are anything but secular. Often fundamentalists want to create some kind of theocratic state. But the more mainstream, everyday way that dominant Christian values and institutions influence our lives and communities is less evident, although no less significant and certainly not limited to fundamentalists.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Achilles Heel of the New World Order
AS ALWAYS: THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER EVIL TO CONFRONT IT AS A LARGE GROUP!!!
http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15816
February 16, 2010
The Achilles Heel of the New World Order
By Jason Charles
The old world tendencies of war and iron-fist oppression is still present in today's elite ruling super-class, but technology has far outpaced even their diabolically dark intellect and the human dynamic has exploded on to the scene, making the people hyper-aware of the danger they face in this next decade.
::::::::
By Hawk | TruthAlliance.net | Feb. 10, 2009
The Dream of King Nebuchadnezzar as interpreted by Daniel the prophet,
You are that head of gold. "After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron--for iron breaks and smashes everything--and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
Daniel 2:38-44
This prophetic dream of the Babylonian King speaks of four empires that will rule the Earth, each in its turn. Starting with Babylon the Great and the golden head, each layer grows weaker and weaker representing each major empire in its turn.
Here we are many centuries later watching the collectivist impulse in the human species being carried out once again, yet the dynamics are very different as Unified Europe seeks to pull down the whole of the world into a Global Oder.
This 'new Babylon' has replaced priests with PhD's, Kings with Presidents, merchants with brokers, centurions with drones, and God with the self. The only difference is the whole of the global empire is teetering on the incredibly fragile infrastructure, everything about it says it's going to collapse in on itself.
The lumbering giant, symbol of tyranny and oppression will collapse as its feet of clay and iron crumble before it's beastly weight.
The Golden King
The Babylonian system represents a convergence of political might, economic might, and military might exercising uni-lateral authority over competing populations and its own. Babylon was known for it's great wealth conquering the once rich nation of Israel and many other nations, taking with it incredible riches and the spoils of war.
The support for the Babylonian kingdom among conquered nations was achieved by kidnapping and indoctrinating aristocratic youths into their system of empirical control. They would then insert them back into these conquered and domesticated cultures to maintain the illusion of popular support. These princes who under went Babylonian re-education would proclaim the superiority of their system, and as trade and wealth pored into their cities, discord soon waned among the people in invaded nations as time went on.
Support for the kingdom was waged more in the mind of its subjects than through the swift and devastating blade of military domination.
Babylon through superior economic leverage, and military force of arms,was quite impressive and was able to dominate the surrounding cultures through this method of suppression, but the true show of absolute power was focused in on their own people.
"That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up. And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace." Daniel 3:5,6
Total worship of the king and his image was demanded of the Babylonian nation states anyone who denied that all power and authority was present in the king and wielded godly authority on the Earth was quickly put to death. Life was good unless you set yourself against the edicts of the king.
The Alloy of Empires
The Babylonian system represents the holy trinity of the god-state, where all power and authority was recognized in one supreame executive that was worshiped as a god.
Every empire goes through a period of expansion and tremendous growth, but due to the corruption and hubris of competing factions with in, the empire will eventually experience a period of decline.
The Iron Legs of the Roman empire prove to be an excellent example of how an empires military can be incredibly disciplined and achieve total spectrum domination on the battlefield but due to the rock star excess and egotistical indulgence on the part of the emperor class, they remained forever politically unstable and subject to collapse.
As a result, empires moved away from the universal executives overt rule, and began to rule by more cunningly covert methods of control. Colonial rule, exercised by the British empire seemed new at the time but was really a revival of the old Babylonian system of waging economic war and buying influence through it's colonial agents. Agents who used the empires vast riches to ensnare the countries support through, treaties, banking deals and taxation to the crown.
What used to take thousands of foot soldiers to conquer, the resources and wealth of nations were now being spoiled through economic leveraging and the backroom dealings of shady colonial puppets with the empire.
The real gut wrenching example can be found with America succumbing to British control through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The subversion of the old emperical system of monatary control won out against the free people of America bringing them back under colonial British rule without the peoples knowledge. The super wealthy, Bank of England and the Rothschild family simply bought out the American government as share holders of the Federal Reserve Bank, as debtor is subject to lender so is the U.S. Treasury and thus the tax payers subject to the Federal Reserve.
Rebuilding on Unstable Ground
Here we are in the present, this system of colonial rule has developed considerably. Technology has exploded integrating human kind on a level never before seen. Everything has been wired together quite literally in vast networks of computers, fiber optics, satellites and economic channels across the globe.
The lines between commerce, and nation states have been blurred and the global elite have monopolized industries seeking to once again coalesce its power into a centralized empire. The old westernized world of the European elite, which houses the financial and political authority inside the newly constructed European Union, and it's mechanized military partner America have now begun the process of collapsing their respective economies in favor of a universally ruled global government made up of G20 nations.
What seems to be a well orchestrated plan over the last century to erode national sovereignty of colluding nation states has begun, and out of this inevitable collapse a new world order has been announced, in which representative rule in a global union will provide the facade for the real power brokers who remain behind the scenes exercising influence in privatized kingdoms, a council of industry titans that reside outside the law in this technological brave new world.
Iron doesn't Mix with Clay
The old world tendencies of war and iron-fist oppression is still present in today's elite ruling super-class, but technology has far outpaced even their diabolically dark intellect and the human dynamic has exploded on to the scene, making the people hyper-aware of the danger they face in this next decade.
We humans are the unpredictable wild card in all of this, technology has opened our eyes, and danger lurks on the rim of our vision. The New World Order , this old world iron is evil and it must be opposed. As the new Babylonian beast attempts to arise, it will find its feet are in-sufficient to support its un-godly weight.
Weakness 1: Technological Infrastructure
This is probably the most exposed aspect of the New World Order system, the entire military, financial system and 'Big Brother' control grid derives its power from the heavily integrated yet wholly outdated and fragile telecommunications infrastructure. All the computer systems of the world are wired together in a series of networks run by a gaggle of private and government based companies. Linked up by satellites, and telecommunications hubs all across the world.
There are literally hundreds of these network operating centers (NOC) and telecom Central Offices (CO) in each community switching massive amounts of data, plugged into military bases, financial institutions, and even key infrastructure complexes like nuclear power plants. It has been reported that one slip by a contractors shovel can cost billions of dollars of damage in down time.
The beast is literally wearing it's tender genitalia on it's face, and if it gets overly heavy handed the peoples of the world could easily grind this whole system to halt without a a single shot fired.
The technological advances and sophisticated military systems are so inter-dependent on diverse highly specialized manafactured components from companies all over the globe the right cable cut could ground i.e. fleets of F-16's and other key military supply lines to a halt, and in a matter of a year or less would be useless pieces of scrap metal.
NSA, DARPA, the Pentagon, Special Ops and everything is so heavily reliant on this technology if absent the playing field will once again be leveled back to the days of black powder where a man has to face his opponent on a open battlefield.
The elite are working to fix the problem, but it is and will remain to be the tender underbelly of the BEAST system. They sure as hell fire don't want the free peoples of the world to know, but anyone with a IT background knows this to be so and the secret is out.
Weakness 2: The Enemies Tactics of Control Exposed
There have been a number of critical errors on the part of the establishment, believing they can utilize technology to enslave the westernized nations has proven to be a costly error. Yes, propaganda, and t.v. media have shaped our culture into arrested developed dysfunctional, but the exponential spread of information has proven incredibly damaging as people wake up to the systems of sophisticated mind control that keeps men and women working their 9-5 and voting in rigged partisan political politics.
People are now capable of accessing, understanding and disseminating the elites own manuals regarding the complex systems of population dominance. A art once reserved to the upper echelons of dynastic rulers, or confined to the whispers of hidden mystery schools are now the subject of discussion on 1000's of forums across the internet.
The lies used to keep the hegemony of power in civilization under wraps, have already spilled their way into the consciousness of the people. Blogs, radio shows, and guerrilla video news have erupted and give little wiggle room to the current batch of charlatans and salesmen of the day.
Here are few of the tactics the elite use that have quite literally been snatched from their diabolical control freak hands. The information revolution has rendered these tactics useless like an exposed magicians parlor trick.
False Flag Terror Attacks - War build up is very profitable, and if there is no wars then the idea is to start them. How you ask? Simple, dress up your own people in opposition colors have them attack your own stronghold and sit back and wait for the outrage of your people to mount driving the nation to war.
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Double Think - Derived from the works of George Orwells book 1984, we see how a person can quite literally hold two paradoxical views in their heads that would quite easily cancel each other out under normal and less politically stressed conditions. I.E. "A country spending it's way out of bankruptcy", "War = Peace", "A jobless recovery" or "we have to give up our freedoms to secure liberty". These are purposely put forth to freeze critical thinking within a society.
Political Correctness - This is a method used to limit free speech in an open society, by setting up protected classes of people, whether religion, sexual orientation, political ideology or race this stifles any type of debate and progress with in the targeted society.
Divide and Conquer - A method to divide a unified group of people into factional categories along political, racial, religious lines. The more ways one can fracture the population the easier they are to manage and misdirect the force of their collective intent. Keeping one freeman at another freeman's throat allows the manipulators the opportunity to seize control amidst the chaos.
Problem, Reaction, Solution - Never let a good crisis go to waste, or just artificially create one. Fear is a powerful motivating force, simply engineer a crisis, fear and chaos ensues, and then people will react in panic, calling upon government to offer up the solution. Which usually means more, military, legislation, and money thrown at the problem giving those in power an excuse for more executive power to be centralized in a person or party who has the perceived "solution" ready to deploy.
Economic Enslavement - The central banking system is a ingenious way to enslave entire populations, simply use the control of money to encourage nations or people to take out loans at interest rates they could never pay back. When the debtor files bankruptcy the bank then seizes all property and assets or real value with in a society.
Destruction of the Family Unit - A incredibly damaging tactic of control is to break up and confuse the long established relationship between male and female. The family being the building blocks of all healthy societies have been targeted by the elite. By confusing the roles of husband and wife through eloborate social revolutions and empowerment movements with in a society one gender over the other and vise versa conflict arises disrupting this basic unit of society and can cause tremendous damage to the fabric of a nation. A society with out a strong family unit raises increasingly dysfunctional and self-destructive children, and is exponentially degenerate as generation passes this behavior on to their children and in turn their children.
Multiculturalism - Another way to destroy a country is to introduce a massive influx of cultures into a society that fail to learn the language and integrate into it's system of laws. The tide of illegal immigrants into the United States serves as a perfect example of this tactic at work in today's world and has proven to be incredibly taxing on the nation as a result, stressing it to a breaking point.
Front companies and co-intel pro - The wealthy have long known it is far easier to fund and train their own people to set up institutions, and organizations that cloak themselves as allies of the their opposition to slowly mobilize support and then when the time is right use their influence to create dissent and confusion with in the co-opted organization. This device works very well in rendering a collective useless and fighting among themselves.
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All of these tactics and more are currently being waged against the populations of the globe in a concise and orchestrated fashion to centralize power and support for the New World Order now emerging.
Weakness #3 Scientific Hoaxs and Social Engineering Uncovered
In order to establish a New World Order, the nation states of the world would have to willingly give up their sovereignty. This has posed a very, very big problem for our would be global masters. Especially here in the United States were we are exceptionally nationalistic. Billions of dollars have been used to create "think tanks" and UN backed scientific institutions to develop white papers on how exactly to do break the backs of nations who have proven to be uncooperative. The problem is most of their global empire is built on the "big lie" which is to say, tell the lie long and often enough and people will eventually come to accept it as true. This only works if information to the contrary is not ready available and easily disseminated which it is via the internet rendering these lies in-effective out of the gate.
You can challenge yourself by determining which "tactics" of empirical control come into play. I.e. "climate change = problem reaction solution". It's easy when you know the elites games.
Climate Change - The laughable "science" of global warming which has been proven an audacious lie to fund and build the bureaucratic constructs of a global system of governance have been exposed as a fraud. Which for the elite has literally been forced fed to populations as a global issue that can only be resolved by a global regulating body of some sort.
The swine flu pandemic - Another hoax that was perpetuated by big pharma and the global health organization body called the World Health Organization (WHO), aiming to create a crisis without a borders that can only be solved once again by global governance.
The War on Terror - Al-qaeda is a global specter and a instrument of political control, and not a real threat in the least. An establishment boogie man to induce a state of perpetual war.
please email us at rob@opednews.com and we will consider adding the site to our whitelist.)
Eugenics and Population Control - Another false specter with "global implications", pushed into our consciousness. The maxim is simply we need a global government in place to curb the population explosion. This is another false reality, in most western countries population is declining, yet in the 3rd world population is a problem because the rate of infant death is extremely high, making it necessary for families to have 4-5 children assuring a chance of survival.
The answer is to simply economically empower these 3rd world countries which naturally reduces the need for large families as access to medicine and food become readily available.
Instead they and the western nations have been targeted by the global body of social engineers for population reduction. The rise in cancer rates, and debilitating disease in western societies and rise in AIDS and sterilization programs in the 3rd world have risen astronomically. The population is undergoing what is termed "soft kill" extermination programs and have been under way for decades. The water is full of poisons and heavy metals, food is tainted with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and artificial chemicals that have been proven to destroy healthy function in the body. This is by design and has impacted you and your family.
Pulling Ourselves from the Rubble
As more and more people learn to read between the lines in this "new" Babylon system, the less likely the super-class will succeed in bringing their master plan to completion. When one realizes that these tactics and lies are what they have built their power base on, it becomes obvious that we simply can't allow such morally deficient, sociopaths to wield any sort of power on this planet much less universal power. They have shown their hand, the outrage is mounting and like the dream of Nebuchadnezzar God is raising up a new Kingdom, a Kingdom of sovereign individuals that the Babylon system will hurl itself against only to be smashed to pieces. It simply can't stand when built upon a foundation of lies, brutality and a flimsy technological infrastructure.
For those who can see it, we have arrived. The Beast must fall first though, as the system realizes the people have indeed awakened to its dark implications it will attempt to lunge forward without having completed its formation, causing its un-timely demise. Set your spiritual and physically house in order and may God Bless the people of the 'New Kingdom'.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
Many Are Dying For Our Having Hoped Obama Would Not Practice Imperialism
Imperialism is psychopathic and evil (including demonic evil). People need to !!!WAKE UP!!!, give these things their PROPER NAMES and !!!STAND UP AGAINST!!! EVIL COLLECTIVELY!!!!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Many-Are-Dying-For-Our-Hav-by-Jay-Janson-100216-174.html
February 18, 2010
By Jay Janson
In retrospect, does it not sound terribly naive that we would hope a U.S. president whose candidacy was selected and backed by our most powerful bankers would be permitted, just maybe, perhaps by virtue of his being black and well spoken, to modify the intense imperialism that has characterized all previous presidencies since, if not including, that of Teddy Roosevelt and before?
He said he would bomb Pakistan and he has.
He indicated he would be willing to sacrifice men, women and children to assassinate leaders of those warring against American occupations and he has.
He said he would, and he did, send more troops to broaden the war against Pashtun Taliban, formerly the Reagan approved and recognized government of Afghanistan.
He has praised Americans for having fought the Vietnamese in their own country and keeps American troops in Iraq, though he called Iraq a "dumb war." when seeking the votes of citizens no longer supporting that war.
He has praised European settlers for their westward march across America without acknowledging the death and suffering of the indigenous peoples of the continent whose nations the settlers from across the sea conquered
He pre-justified the week long massacre of Gaza, and kept silent during the chilling dispatch of four hundred Palestinian children along with over a thousand of their relatives and friends
While still a candidate, he signed on to giving hundreds of billions of dollars to bankers who favor, propagate and profit from wars.
We could have been pretty sure Obama would never condemn the industrial investment banks of Henry Ford, Rockefeller, General Motors, General Electric, IBM, Dupont, Joe Kennedy, Prescott Bush, Averell Harriman, Brown Brothers, J.P. Morgan, Chase Bank, Allen and John Foster Dulles, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, Gillette, Goodrich, Singer, Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola, ITT, and media magnates William Randolph Hearst, the UP Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune, and others for having backed Adolph Hitler and invested in arming the Germany of the Nazis up to superpower status, knowing full well (and in most cases pleased) that Hitler persecuted Jews and Communists.
Obama has always proclaimed capitalism and the United States as, overall, "a force for good in the world."
"Hope springs eternal." is the saying often applied to circumstances that don't appear to warrant hope.
Zen Buddhists, practicing a strict application of highly disciplined mind, understand "hope' and "fear' as two sides of the same coin.
Just as fear can have a negative function, hope can paralyze, can be made to substitute for action and can becloud accurate appraisal and decision making.
Both hope and fear anticipate something that has not yet happened. For example, hoping that a certain damn will not break is similar to fearing that it will.
Fear and hope, not unlike prayers evoked in their name, are retreats from endeavor, a postponement or avoidance of involvement. As does fear, hope lessens the awareness and attention so critical to decisive action.
Millions of progressives, even if not completely hooked by the campaign slogan of "change" hoped that Obama would be different. But, as the wise saying goes, "Hoping doesn't make it so."
Before the election our priority was getting a Democrat elected as America's first black president, and we felt obliged to lay low so the rabid and ignorant right wing plurality out there would not associate Obama with criticism of America, or the peace movement which corporate media characterizes as appeasement and weakness. Immediately after inauguration Obama bombed Pakistan as promised (a promise most assuredly meant for the ear of the military complex).
During our present generation, the lies, misrepresentations and treachery of U.S. presidents (Obama now included), Congresses and a Pentagon subservient media cartel have caused a multi massive amount of Muslim children to fall in harms way of lethal U.S. military action in Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Pakistan and Yemen. This merely continues a century long history of vicious and cruel armed Western imperialism in Muslim lands: various sub-Saharan African colonies, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Iraq, since the Ottoman empire was sliced up for England and France with United States of America in profitable acquiescence.
Our hope was incredibly misplaced, that once in office, Obama would have acted contrary to his promises of bellicose intentions and as an exception to all his imperialist predecessors, that he had only pretended to be a hawk before an war indoctrinated electorate in order to gain office. A capitalist chief executive allowed to place the lives of children being slaughtered by U.S. military in poor Third World countries above the interests of Wall Street war profits would have no precedent.
Extremists fighting for justice in a world of U.S. military hegemony hold the millions of Americans limiting themselves to only hoping for a safer fate for foreign children, guilty and responsible as the Commander-in Chief Obama's other officials of U.S. corporate governance.
Americans in general have a good amount of leisure but little or no interest in the crimes of their government abroad. Among them are many Americans who are personally disturbed or uncomfortable particularly about their awesomely powerful military taking the lives and limbs of children. But the greater part of pangs of conscience is devoted to hoping rather than any action at all. Those who seek news and information beyond that twisted on TV and in tabloids, will know of daily atrocities by the same boastful military that though having a large military facility less than three hundred miles from the Haiti earthquake zone did little more than block the aid coming into the Port-au Prince airport from other nations, disembarking its fine Navy hospital ship from Maryland only three days after the quake struck.
Since hope and fear are two sides of the same coin, obviously fear of retribution beyond that of 9/11 is more prevalent than the hope that our killing will cease.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
Thursday, February 18, 2010
End of Empire - Waking Zombie Nations / Psychology, Consciousness and the Egoic Mind
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/end-empire-waking-zombie-nations-psychology-consciousness-and-egoic-mind?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
End of Empire - Waking Zombie Nations / Psychology, Consciousness and the Egoic Mind
By Cognitive Dissonance
Created 02/17/2010
To be fair, this article could just as easily have been called “Waking a Zombie World”. While various people and governments point to the USA as the bad actor in this mess, in fact it has taken dozens of nations to form this conga line to hell and the rest of the world is far from blameless. Nor is America the sole residence of the world’s zombie population. However, since this writer and much of the ZH readership reside in American, we will assume an American (ego) centric focus. My apologies for the delay in posting this article which I had promised some time ago. In my defense, there are hundreds of thick and dusty books on this subject at the local library, proof that it’s not very easy to condense this complex subject into a 10 minute read. In fact, it’s impossible to do so and not even worth trying. While you can break visible light down to its primary colors, it’s actually composed of millions. The same applies to this subject. What I finally decided to do was break it down into separate postings so that the reader could find the courage and stamina to actually read it. Even with the division, be forewarned that this first posting is still a long read.
This article is an effort to understand what’s really going on, why Americans (and the rest of the world) appear to be frozen in place, seemingly helpless and hopeless in the face of incredible corruption and thieving. A quick review of history shows us this isn’t the first time it has happened, though it may be the biggest since the 1930’s. In fact, these types of disasters seem to occur regularly, following a well worn script to its inevitable conclusion. The bad guys escape with the loot while the general population looks on, tails between the legs, hands in pockets and eyes cast down, impotent to the end. Why do we allow ourselves to be used and abused like this? Why are we spectators to our own destruction? While the human condition can’t always be quantified, it can be understood to some extent, but only if we’re willing to peer into some extremely uncomfortable places. My ultimate goal in writing this “End of Empire” series is to promote reflection and understanding. Significant and lasting political and social change will not occur until we elevate our understanding and awareness far above where it is today. I most definitely don’t have all the answers and anyone who claims they do is smoking the good stuff and should share their stash with this formerly long haired hippie. Pass the bong dude.
In this article, I’ll describe how I see myself, the world and the people who live in it. By doing so, the reader will be looking over my shoulder at the workings of the human psyche, or at least my interpretation of the psyche. What you will not find is the consensus view on this subject. For that, all you need do is pop open a standard psychology 101 text book and dive in. The reason I leave the beaten path is simple. The really interesting ideas are usually found way out on the fringe and deep in the weeds. That’s not to say you can’t find “truth” or accurate knowledge within the consensus, just that cutting edge ideas and concepts aren’t tolerated well among the establishment. In my opinion, the established leaders rarely go into areas that aren’t well traveled and seldom stray from their own fields of expertise. Ironically, in a discipline that devotes much ink to the discussion of the ego, the principal players’ egos prevent little more than incremental forward progress. When you’re sipping from government and corporate grants, you don’t often make waves.
Now for the fine print disclaimer. My understanding is ever changing and evolving and I reserve the right to change my opinion before I finish this sentence or this series. The one constant thing in life is change. All I ask of the reader is to read this in its entirety and in the order written. When mucking around in the bushes, it’s very easy to take things out of context when you don’t read the context. The subject is so involved and complex that each paragraph could be expanded into 8 more and still not be complete. I ask the reader to consider that I just might have left some things out of this article in the interest of brevity and not because I’m clueless.
Established “facts” are often facts the consensus believes can be or has been proven, which in the field of psychology is usually what the majority believes to be fact. Circular logic is often accepted by the consensus because it substantiates and validates the consensus. We see this in religion, politics, science, finance, in every human behavior. Because of this, it’s impossible to understand ourselves and our world without a fundamental knowledge of psychology and philosophy and the willingness to break the boundaries of accepted thought and leave the pack. From my point of view, only when I began to color (way) outside the lines did I begin to pull together seemingly unconnected ideas and concepts into a bigger, more coherent picture. Psychology helps me understand why we do what we do and philosophy forces me (at least temporarily) to abandon any notions of right or wrong, good and bad, better or worse and see life as it really is. When thinking philosophically, I must leave my biases and prejudices at the door. I use these two tools, along with others, to gain (and hopefully maintain) perspective.
Since I’m not a classically trained psychologist with a consensus belief system, I’m at liberty to explore multiple ideas and concepts that aren’t constrained by a formal ideology or professional field of expertise. From my point of view, I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Instead of herding everything I learn into rigid categories for emotional and intellectual comfort, I try to follow the rabbit wherever it goes. After decades of trying to do things “my way or the highway” I’ve learned the hard way it’s best to navigate life with an open mind and a loosely held belief system, in the same manner one might gently cradle a delicate butterfly rather than desperately clutch a huge sack of potatoes. By doing so, when something doesn’t fit my worldview or belief system, I simply let go and let it mold itself into any shape that’s required to fit the new information. Contrary to what one might think, this doesn’t result in radical changes but rather subtle movements. The key is mental and emotional flexibility and with lots of practice and a healthy dose of courage, it can be as easy as that.
While this process might sound nonsensical, impossible even (“you have to believe something” I’ve been told) it’s actually very easy and quite liberating once you exercise it on a regular basis. Very young children do it every day, until it’s finally conditioned out of them using an extremely effective program of dogmatic repetition and indoctrination administered by our state sponsored training institutions known as the public and private school system. For those children who require additional training, there are 4 more years of intensive focus available for a substantial additional charge. Finally, in those tragic cases where a few unfortunate children refuse to absorb their conditioning, graduate school is offered. Quite frankly, it’s their last and only hope and it’s usually financed with huge loans and paid back in monthly installments, assuming they finally secure gainful employment once released onto an unsuspecting and vulnerable world. These adult children are hopelessly institutionalized and those who survive this level of indoctrination have historically done the most damage to society.
All kidding aside (well, actually I wasn’t kidding) the training I just described is not known to produce an open mind and a flexible belief system. As I continue to work on reversing and repairing a lifetime of damage to my own psyche and spirit, the perspective gained from this flexibility allows me to forcibly move my dominant ego to the back of the bus and away from the controls. I say forcibly because the ego is the original and ultimate control freak, a crisis manger that knows it all and won’t willingly release command. The ego will not go quietly into the night. By corralling the egoic mind, it enables my intellect and awareness to explore areas my ego would normally shield from me. It took me the longest time to realize that what I thought was “me”, my “self”, my conscious mind talking and thinking was often and sometimes exclusively my ego, which is a very constrained and purposely narrow slice of my full consciousness. In essence, I discovered that my ego, that constant companion I’d always assumed was “me”, wasn’t actually “me”. Worse yet, I realized my ego lied to me. As a matter of fact, my ego lied to me all the time, in a very successful attempt to shield me from myself and the world around me.
It appears I really am wearing rose colored glasses, placed there by an hyper vigilant ego perfectly adapted to an environment made dangerous by lions, tigers and bears (oh my) but mostly useless and quite self destructive in a modern world of townhouses and tea parties. While the ego is wonderfully capable of piloting the ship through dangerous shoals and shark infested waters, it is not well suited to the everyday mundane task of cruise ship captain. It is time to extract the (ego) maniac from the pilot house and put him in charge of the bilge pumps. However, you don’t want to remove the ego completely because you need it in a pinch. While the ego will scream and holler at first, (usually manifested in fear and anxiety) it really isn’t comfortable handling delicate cruise ship piloting duties 24/7. Once you negotiate a truce with your ego by assuring your ego you need it during crisis situations, the ego will stay busy rebuilding the bilge pumps and manning the life boats, where it really is much happier. You really don’t want the antisocial and paranoid head of security running the public relations department all the time.
Don’t believe me? Think this is silly? Well, you might be correct, but consider the following. Have you ever experienced a situation where you’re talking to someone, carrying on a somewhat heated conversation (meaning your ego is front and center) and yet at the same time you mentally float off and find yourself watching yourself as you argue with the person? Or something happens and you react instinctively, yet at the same time and in the back of your mind, you’re asking yourself why you’re doing or saying this or that? I’m talking about real time here, not after the fact. Sort of like watching yourself while also being in the “here and now”. This actually happens to many people but rarely do they talk about it publically, for fear of being branded crazy or weird. I suggest that if you’ve never experienced this, it might be because you’ve never tried or you’re more egocentric than some (that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just is what it is) and you might benefit from being aware of it.
To go a little further with this idea (and deeper into the weeds) as I’ve learned to control my dreams (I submit that dreaming is simply a different aspect of consciousness) there are times when I’m in my dream (seeing through my dream eyes in my dream body so to speak) while also watching myself in my dream, in exactly the same manner as described above. But I’ve also experienced (more accurately controlled) the third perspective while dreaming, moving in and out of my dream body at will, disembodied from myself, while at the same time watching me watch my ego in the dream. There are other perspectives as well (out of your dream body and into someone else’s dream body, which I find exhilarating) but I don’t wish to scare off the reader too soon.
I see all this as simply different perspectives or dimensions of the same consciousness. I humorously call this dream state the ultimate expression of me, myself and I (and that guy). While some people get physically and emotionally upset when I discuss this (yes, some people become quite threatened by things like this) if science can rationally discuss string and membrane theory, quantum mechanics and 11 dimensions, I can talk about expanded consciousness. For those readers experiencing a queasy stomach right about now, wondering who this lunatic is, you’re welcome to exit stage right if you like. For those readers who regularly read my comments on ZH, I’ll quote my all time favorite line from the movie “Starman”. “You wanted crazy, you got crazy.” :>)
Circling back, this heightened awareness has many different names in other cultures and (not surprisingly) it’s that place or level one wishes to reach during meditation, Yoga or intense concentration. Many “creative” and “religious” people have reported reaching a heightened state of awareness during moments of greatest inspiration and concentration. (I’ll touch the “religious” third rail in my next article.) This heightened awareness can only be reached by taking the ego out of the driver’s seat and engaging yourself. You, or more accurately your consciousness, can be found in this area of higher awareness, where your true creativity and knowledge is located. This is where you find the more fully formed you, not the everyday ego we all assume is us, which is what is exposed to the world when we’re on automatic pilot. This higher awareness is where your gut instinct resides, the place where problems are sorted out when you “sleep on it”, where you put something in the back of your mind for processing. If you think about it, there are dozens of popular cliché’s we use every day that actually describe a higher level of consciousness. While we kind of, maybe, sort of, accept this as possible, we rarely spend any time attempting to engage this area at will and use this power to our benefit.
Just think, all those wasted years in my late teens and early 20’s taking hallucinogenic drugs and looking for me when I was actually right here all the time. :>) You really can have lots of fun with this if you don’t take yourself too seriously and regularly tickle the funny bone. (I’ll cover more thoroughly the “hallucinogenic drugs” third rail next time.) My little laugh at my own expense actually highlights that most basic and fundamental aspect of being human, the longing or yearning for “meaning” that humans have described for thousands of years. Think of the tens of thousands of books, poems and songs written over the ages describing the search for the meaning and purpose of life. As you might suspect, I have some ideas on the subject but not here, not now. By the way, Microsoft’s “Word” spell check doesn’t like this article. Too many me, myself and I’s (which Word as king narcissist automatically corrects to read “me, me, me”) has Bill Gates’ crowning achievement all worked up.
Anyway, the phenomenon of watching your ego while awake and aware is sometimes called perspective but also has many other names and explanations. The real question is how are you able to do this if “you” are your ego and your ego is “you”? How can you be “you” and also be watching yourself at the same time? It’s almost as if you’re of two minds as the saying goes. In my opinion, the ego is a narrow slice of and a distinct part of your total consciousness (but a part of it none-the-less) something I call my basic self, where my mental reflexes lay, the emotional me, the crisis manager, my reptilian brain for lack of a better term. You can actually train yourself to step back and watch your ego at will, though it can be more difficult during times of stress, when the dominant ego asserts it’s primacy over your consciousness. Interestingly, during deep concentration or during meditation, when I’ve moved the ego into the background and my consciousness forward, I sense there are additional levels of awareness. It’s my understanding that it’s possible for the more highly developed conscious being (shamans, Dali Lama, etc) to “go” much further than I can even conceive of. This is a rabbit hole that’s very deep, endless even, and while I’ll never fully explore it in my lifetime, it’ll be loads of fun trying.
Once you begin to practice this, you find it’s much easier to subvert your ego because you no longer identify yourself with the ego. “You” are not your ego and your ego is not “you”. “You” are the master, the overseer, the conscious being and your ego is your servant, in the same manner your arm is a part of you but not “you”. (Unless of course you’re Peter Seller’s arm in “Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” a wonderfully powerful examination of global insanity created and accepted by the consensus reality.) Interestingly, it appears that for the last six thousand years, the ego has gained more and more control over the human psyche; to the point where today it remains dominant nearly all the time. In fact, there is growing evidence that ancient man didn’t “think” or experience reality in the same way we do today. But since we know of nothing else, of no other way to be, we assume this is normal and natural. My studies indicate it hasn’t always been normal for the ego to be primary, front and center, crowding out our greater awareness, pushing it into the background. (I’ll expand on this in the next article.)
Of course, at times you do want a dominant ego, such as when a car is about to strike you, the ladder is about to fall or someone is waving a gun in your face. You want and need that part of your consciousness to dominate, when any hesitation might kill you. But not when you’re sitting in the board room or on the throne in the bathroom. Servants don’t dominant the master but instead follow the masters bidding. BTW, please don’t get hung up on the word “control” because it’s not about control of the ego as much as understanding, awareness and perspective of the ego and your consciousness.
The next step in understanding your consciousness (once you understand the separation of “you” and your ego) is to understand that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there is no clear division of the conscious mind separated from the unconscious mind, with the ego mixed into the mess. Instead, understand that there is only a totality called consciousness (including the collective consciousness, which will be discussed in the next article) and the ego is constraining your view of your own total consciousness in the same way a massively large but completely dark warehouse might appear to you if all you have is a small flashlight which only illuminates a very small area. Now consider that your ego, which is usually controlling the direction and intensity of the flashlight, is a hyper alert, very frightened and extremely strong child wandering through the pitch black vastness completely alone.
Clearly the child is not in the mood to explore and understand. In fact, the child will deliberately ignore anything that could possibly be threatening, frightening or even confusing. You will be blind to many things because your ego will simply not illuminate it for you. Even if the ego recedes into the background, it still very effectively filters “reality” or “truth” if you’re not aware of the ego and its methods. You can’t see what you don’t know about or what you’re not aware of. (This reminds me of that wonderfully obtuse but factually correct statement by Donald Rumsfeld. “You have your known knowns, your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns.”) Your ego is a crisis manager and is always on high alert and not rational or logical under any circumstances. In fact, the term “rational or logical ego” is the ultimate oxymoron.
The ego’s fight or flight survival instincts, when allowed to be the dominant emotion, is not very well suited to exploration and understanding of the darkened area of your consciousness, which requires curiosity, insight, reflection, sensitivity, etc. However, the ego is very well adapted to deal with crisis, hunger, severe physical stress and so on, making the ego an excellent crisis manager. The ego, which is always on high alert though not always dominant, will “see” things such as scary shapes or movement and “hear” noises that for the most part will be a complete fabrication. Now switch on the overhead flood lights, illuminating the entire warehouse, and suddenly all those previously frightening shapes and sounds turn out to be easily recognizable familiar objects. While I don’t know how to (fully) turn on my mental flood lights, I’m absolutely convinced that if we were able to switch the lights on, we would laugh heartily at our own foolishness and insanity, for it would all make sense once we could see the big picture. We’ve all seen those picture grabs that are nearly impossible to decipher (like a circle with rods radiating outward) until we pull back to see the entire perspective (a Ferris or bicycle wheel) and suddenly it all makes sense.
While I’m a long way from this level of awareness, significant progress can still be realized if I understand that I’m no longer compelled to allow my ego to dominate and distort everything all the time. Just as important, knowing the past is littered with distortions and lies perpetrated by the ego, I must begin the process of re-examination and reflection. In addition, once I understand what the ego is and its role in my existence, I can more easily see through the ego’s distortion and subterfuge. While my ego still throws the occasional temper tantrum in the middle of the supermarket, I’ve learned to recognize the warning signs and not take it personally, pun intended. Even if I’m unable to stop the ego tantrum, I can still quickly escort my ego outside and lock it in the car. Understanding the circumstances that color my perception will go a long way towards dealing with it. The scary monster creeping up behind me is very often my ego.
In truly dysfunctional individuals, where the ego is extremely dominant and in constant tension with the conscious mind, I suspect the ego deliberately sabotages the individual to create crisis after crisis in order to “feel” needed and useful. While the ego might be an excellent crisis manager, once we recognize that the ego sees the world from an extremely narrow point of view, we shouldn’t ever expect the ego to act like a mature adult, applying reason and insight to lessons learned in order to modify future behavior. The ego is the one tiger that will never change its stripes. This might explain why some people seem to be extremely self destructive yet when carefully questioned, report that they’re completely clueless about their behavior.
Understanding the ego and its effect on human behavior helps explain, or at least helps one understand, all kinds of bizarre human behavior. Remember, the ego doesn’t make moral judgments as we understand “moral” to be (right or wrong, just or unjust, good or bad) but simply “sees” the world from its own narrow point of view, that of harm or no harm to itself or to the entire consciousness that it’s a part of. Actually, the ego sees itself as a separate and distinct entity rather than a part of the bigger whole. The ego sees itself as THE captain of the ship and everything else as passengers and cargo that the ego is responsible for. Thus, the ego sees itself as besieged on all sides by danger and oppression, under constant assault and in continuous survival mode. Psychopathic or sociopathic behavior is more understandable when seen through the eyes of the controlling ego. If the ego has completely taken over the conscious being and is continuously and permanently in control, from the point of view of the ego, it’s constantly fighting for its very existence and anything goes. The insanity of the psychopath/sociopath makes perfect sense when you understand that the ego is permanently in the psychopath’s drivers seat.
Circling back to the concept of a lightly held worldview, I’m not actually abandoning everything I know and believe each time I let go. Instead I’m simply changing my perspective. Each time I come face to face with a fact or idea that I might have previously rejected as impossible or unbelievable, instead of meeting it with “no” and rejecting it outright, I can first try “why not”. It requires letting go of my defensive position, my ego, my fight or flight crisis management reflex and trusting that I can emotionally and mentally withstand a shock to my belief system, that the new information is valuable to me rather than threatening. The thing is, once I let go, there is no shock to the system because there’s nothing there to resist. If you don’t “own” your belief system, there is nothing to lose when it must be released for reconditioning. It can be difficult at times to leave the old conditioning behind and it shows when I write “I believe” because those words implies ownership of a belief system. Habits are obvious indications of conditioning.
Think about that old joke, how it’s not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop. By removing the need to withstand assaults to your rigid belief system (because it’s light and flexible and easily released) there’s no sudden stop. It’s as if you’re a screen door, barely affected by the gust of wind passing through. It’s really remarkable how many doors you suddenly find open once you stop pounding on the closed door in front of you and look around. By letting go of the desperate urge (created by the ego) to control or restrict the information flow, suddenly we recognize that no idea or concept can harm us (manifested as fear and anxiety) unless we oppose it. It’s never a question of being able to learn new things; the problem lay with letting go of the old stuff.
This is why children are more easily trained and so impressionable. They’re an open book, with very little old baggage to overcome and plenty of open space to be filled. Worse (and this realization has brought me to tears a few times) we, you and I, our society, are teaching our own children’s ego to be dominant and to control, to lie and to cheat. Because the ego has no mechanism to distinguish between right and wrong, while the higher consciousness might better understand the difference between a “white” lie and full blown deceit, the ego simply sees this incoming information as tools to be used, usually against the consciousness and its human host, your son or daughter.
I’ll never forget the day a few decades back when I was trying to explain to my 4 year old son (to answer his question) the difference between a small lie and a big lie. My son was completely bewildered and I could see it in his eyes. I realized then and there that I was creating my very own Frankenstein’s monster. I was teaching my son how to rationalize and justify and game the system, to accept the conditioning, to be part of the hive mentality. And even when I fought against this insanity, society was more than willing to pick up the slack. While we’re training our child about hot stoves and thin ice, we’re also teaching the ego how to lie, cheat and deceive. As we are (in) forming the child’s consciousness, we are (in) forming the ego. This is a difficult rabbit hole to go down, to recognize that you’re harming your child, but it does deserve serious thought.
Well meaning people have tried to assure me that I was just doing what I thought was best to reinforce and validate their denial (no I wasn’t, I recognized what I was doing but I was too weak, lazy and conditioned to fight my own conditioning all the time) or that if I didn’t teach my child, he would not have been as well adjusted as he obviously was (being well adjusted to a sick and insane society is not a good thing) but I’ve made peace with myself on this matter. Just realize that anyone travelling down this road must deal with this speed bump eventually. However, with regard to learning about yourself and your consciousness, you can be a wide eyed and fearless little child again; open to new ideas and concepts, resilient and adaptable, a dry sponge waiting to be filled with water. It’s a matter of willingness, not ability or intelligence. In fact initially, when you’re first learning this process, thinking often gets in the way because the conditioned egocentric intellectual process is the old rut you’re stuck in and something to be avoided. You don’t want to push yourself into the same rut you’re pushing yourself out of.
I often think of life and our perception of reality as a jigsaw puzzle. There are countless puzzle pieces in front of us and from the moment we’re born (I suggest it starts before birth) we begin assembling the pieces into a coherent picture. While most of the more complex puzzle construction takes place during the training and conditioning phase we call our education, our basic concepts and beliefs are cemented into place by 5 or 6 years of age. Think of the children as Zombies in training. We are conditioned, well before the officially structured conditioning ever begins, to believe that the world (reality) is finite, quantifiable and static. Obviously the consensus view of how the pieces fit together is predetermined by society long before you’re born and very often the pieces don’t fit together very well. Because we trust those around us to know better, we simply accept what we’re told, that the ill fitting pieces are natural and to be expected. As we grow older and develop more independence, while we can clearly see there are pieces left over even when our education is done, we’re assured by society that these pieces are inconsequential, not needed, unimportant and immaterial. And quite frankly, society tends to ostracize those who ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. So as we navigate our lives, when outlier or incompatible information pushes to the top of the froth, we follow our conditioning and compare these stray and orphan pieces against our ever changing list of socially acceptable facts. The vast majority of the time we simply discard them when they don’t fit our view or that of society.
Let’s look at this a little closer. How many times over the past 12 months have you been reading a book, newspaper, magazine, trolling the Internet, listening to a news program, whatever, when something leaps to the center of your attention and immediately prompts a “What the hell” response. Here’s a stray puzzle piece that for whatever reason has been thrust into view. It doesn’t fit anywhere in your personal puzzle but there it is, commanding your attention and demanding resolution. But this piece is “out there” and for some reason you may feel a little uncomfortable, fearful, angry even. While it’s just one little piece of the puzzle, it feels threatening to you. How dare this puzzle piece jump out in front of you and disturb your peaceful day. Or maybe not, maybe you have no feeling either way. But still it doesn’t fit. So what do you do? Do you spend the next 3 hours re-examining your belief system or this puzzle piece in an honest attempt to understand the outlier. Of course you don’t, because the piece doesn’t fit. Out it goes, usually never to be seen again.
I cannot overemphasize how powerful the impulse is for the conditioned person (again, the Zombie) to stay within societies boundaries and discard the outlier puzzle pieces. Interestingly, the type of information (how contrary it is to the consensus opinion of society) is not always the sole or even principal determination used by the person when deciding what to do with it. The credibility of the purveyor of this information is often more important. For example, if the source of the information is suspect, the piece can be (more) easily discarded. However, if the source is extremely credible, the conditioned person faces a crisis of confidence. While they trust the source, the information is very disturbing. The ego sees this emotional stress and conflict as a crisis and struggles mightily to compel the person, through fear and anxiety, to reject the puzzle piece and return to emotional stability. If the person rejects the information, the ego will turn down (but never off) the fear and anxiety.
Even the credibility of the information itself is sometimes immaterial. The person often doesn’t even want to look at it very closely because doing so will simply make the crisis more difficult to deal with. It’s not the information that’s threatening as much as the person’s view of how that information will affect their position in society. If society is telling them that anyone who accepts this information will be rejected or ostracized, the information is downright dangerous to the person. The deeper the conditioning and the more the person has surrendered his identity to society and its conditioning, the deeper the crisis will be. This is the reason why so many people go through life with closed minds, seemingly certain they know precisely what’s right and wrong. In many ways, these people are protecting themselves from emotional crisis, though they would never admit that to themselves or to others because this insight is emotionally threatening. The dog is chasing its tail in a positive feedback loop.
If the leaders of a society wish to manipulate the population (duh) this explains why the leaders (we’re not just talking politicians here) would lie to their citizens, something I’ve repeatedly talked about on ZH. If the person (the conditioned mind) in crisis is confronted with information they desperately wish to reject, but the information or source is extremely credible, the person needs emotional help to discard the information. The ego is pounding on the person in the form of fear and anxiety to drop this hot potato, to resolve the crisis. The person is desperate for emotional cover to relieve their suffering. If they reject the information in order to stop the emotional pain and be accepted in the eyes of society (which is extremely important to the conditioned person) then they must personally reject the information and the source.
But they know deep down (though not always consciously) that they should at least look at the information more closely and quite possibly embrace it. This is what’s causing the crisis, the knowledge that it could be true. The conditioned mind always knows what the “truth” is and this exerts (additional) pressure on the conditioned mind, even if the conditioned mind is not aware of it. The person needs to receive permission to do what they want to do, which is to reject the information in a manner that allows them to relieve the emotional pain (denial will help them feel better about themselves) and still assure them of society’s acceptance. In other words, in this case they wish to reject the info in a personally and socially acceptable manner.
By the way, it doesn’t matter if “society” is not aware of this person’s crisis. It’s all about how the person see’s himself in relation to society. I will stress again that we’re talking about the conditioned mind here, the so called Zombie. People will reject information while alone at home just as quickly as they would in a public setting. To even be in possession (intellectually or physically, it doesn’t matter) of the information is often very threatening. I’m reminded of the Japanese person talking on the outdoor payphone and bowing while talking. In the person’s mind and manner (meaning in the consciousness) the other person is physically there. This is an important dynamic to understand and it helps explain the “phantom limb syndrome” many amputee’s experience. Experiments have shown that when you see a movie of someone lifting their arm, the part of your brain that controls your own arm lights up in the same manner as it does when you actually lift your own arm. The actual electrical impulses that would move the arm are blocked by another part of the brain (I think it’s your consciousness that blocks it) which apparently knows the difference between pictures and “reality”. But your brain doesn’t perceive any difference between the picture and the real thing. I guess this also explains the multibillion dollar pornography business, doesn’t it? :>) Perception is reality, at least to your brain.
When the politician (as the social leader) lies to the conditioned person (a social animal) about the information, the politician has in effect just given the conditioned mind the good housekeeping stamp of approval to do the same. Accepting the lie is good and acceptable to society because Daddy (society’s leader) says so. We’re talking about infantile responses here when examining the conditioned mind. The political leader, the “official” head of the society, has just told the person exactly what they want to hear. Daddy said it’s not true, the source is mistaken, crazy even, ignore that man behind the curtain, Daddy’s the great and mighty OZ. The conditioned mind can now safely reject the information and remain in good graces in society. Since society is willing to accept the lie, the person can do so as well. In effect, it isn’t a lie anymore because society (by way of society’s leaders) says it isn’t a lie. To the person reading this description of the dynamics of this personal and public subterfuge, it sounds incredible, unbelievable even. Yet this insanity goes on all the time, often in very subtle ways. You and I do this but since our ego won’t let us see ourselves clearly, deliberately obscuring our own self deceit and then papering it over with denial (and then denying the denial) we often remain convinced that others may do this but we don’t. But of course we do.
Let me also assure you that these dynamics are thoroughly understood and utilized by private parties (corporate advertising, sales organizations, etc) and government entities. Consider the entire alphabet soup of overt and covert government agencies here, including more and more private contractors doing the dirty work for the government these days. What exactly do you think is going on when you hear the term “psychological operations” and who do you think those “psyops” are being directed towards? Do you remember those mind control “experiments” conducted by the US government in the 50’s and 60’s, which were piggybacking on the work done by the Nazi doctors? (But let’s not go there, that’s on society’s no-no list.) The key for those who wish to manipulate and control the population is to maintain and extend the conditioning of society. I’ll give you one guess what the principal tool is and how this is accomplished. I’ll even give you a hint; the word contains the letters “T” and “V”. I’ll cover this more thoroughly in part 2 when I talk about control mechanisms.
The puzzle piece itself may be perfectly formed and acceptable in another time or place, or with another person, easily taken in and absorbed. But for this conditioned person, here and now, and for whatever reason, it’s discarded. Why? If you wish to overcome your conditioning, what’s wrong with simply seeing it as a stray puzzle piece that doesn’t yet have a home in your worldview or belief system? Rather than trashing it, you can place it back on the table for future reference. It really is that simple once you recognize that you’re creating the problem here, not the puzzle piece. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been able to pick up puzzle pieces months or years later that finally seem to fit, greatly contributing to my personal growth. I’m certain if I’d trashed them, it’s very likely they’d never be available again. This is because the more pieces I discard the deeper I surrender myself to societies conditioning. Each time we discard something, we must force ourselves deeper and deeper into denial in order to live with ourselves. The damage is cumulative and creates a growing dysfunction and neurosis. We must first deny it ever happened and them we must deny we ever denied it ever happened. This level of mental and emotional deceit can back up and needs to be cleared out occasionally or serious psychosis will develop. What happens when the toilet becomes jammed and won’t flush away life’s waste? A crisis is what happens.
As individuals and as a society, we’re growing more emotionally unstable each day. Witness the dramatic increase in school and work shootings & suicides over the past 30 years, to name just one example. Haven’t you ever wondered where this insanity is coming from? Doesn’t a little siren go off in the back of your head every time someone goes “postal”? Our insanity is increasing, which explains a population growing more obese, more dependent on drugs and distraction to make it through each day. It stands to reason then that the most disturbing puzzle pieces, and thus those most likely to be rejected by the conditioned mind, are those that pertain to society itself. To recognize that society’s leaders not only lie to us but may be trying to harm us (something that is obvious to the less condition mind) is nearly unthinkable. Similarly, recognizing that your spouse is sexually abusing your children or your father is molesting the neighborhood children is also extremely difficult to accept. To the conditioned mind, it is literally unimaginable. The ego will throw up a nearly impenetrable barrier to shield the conditioned mind from this information. How many times have you left a bad relationship and said something like “I never saw it coming” or “How could I have been so blind”? Your ego shielded you from the (coming) emotional trauma by blinding you to reality. Everyone else knew for months your spouse was cheating on you. Why didn’t you?
Sadly, this tendency is conditioned into us from birth and builds upon itself in an out-of-control positive feedback loop that acts as a control mechanism. While some might claim this is natural or just human nature to do so, I think just the opposite. I believe that the control mechanisms, the training and conditioning combined with social peer pressure and its positive feedback loop has been so completely assimilated into our very fabric and perception that it has become indistinguishable from reality, thus it is reality and by extension normal or natural. Perception, when fully and unquestionably accepted, is reality. In every sense of the word, we create our own realty on the fly, in real time, simply by the decisions we do or don’t make, the beliefs we maintain, which in turn are filtered by our rigid worldview, which is then reinforced by society and promoted by what I call “bad actors”.
Our rigid worldview is reinforced and encouraged by everything we interact with on a daily basis, enabling us to grow mentally lazy and intellectually stagnant. We’re assured by science that our material world is measurable, quantifiable, consistent and stable. We’ve been assured that most of the secrets of the universe have been teased out and independently confirmed, that matter and energy follow iron clad rules of physics and the few small inconsistencies will soon be worked out, as soon as that fancy new CERN collider in Geneva is fired up and working at full power. So how do we deal with some genuinely strange (scientific) puzzle pieces that are only now becoming widely accepted and that seem to be directly related to consciousness?
For instance, a scientific experiment confirmed that subatomic particles can instantly “communicate” across vast distances. In other words, “communicate” faster than the speed of light. This flies in the face of everything we think we know and breaks every rule we’ve been taught. Or my personal favorite, the now established fact that by simply observing something, we affect it. Matter can’t be accurately measured because it’s changed simply by being observed. When we “observe” something, what we’re really doing is directing our consciousness towards it, bringing the observed into of sphere of awareness. So does this mean our consciousness is a form of energy that can influence or even change other forms of energy (matter is energy in a different form or energy state) thus bringing full circle my constant refrain that perception is reality? If our consciousness is energy, then can it be destroyed (energy and matter are never destroyed, only changed in form or frequency) can it “die” when the human body dies? Clearly this information warrants careful study with an unbiased eye. Or do we just chuck these outliers out the window and sleep better now that we’ve maintained our rigid worldview? Is this a science, physics or consciousness puzzle piece? The rabbit hole really is bottomless when you get up a head of steam.
As much as I would love to believe that there’s a magic pill or a dynamic leader or a puzzle piece of information that would change all of this if only my neighbor would swallow it, vote for it or read it, the inescapable conclusion is that there’s no magic cure in the wings, waiting to be applied to fix what is broken. However, the unraveling has only just begun and I actually possess what I consider to be a realistic expectation that this mess will not completely implode into a seething roiling fireball of destruction. How does it end? I don’t really know but I will hazard a guess sometime down the line. If we’re honest about this, we all want our baubles and trinkets and a good paying job as well. We want everything to change and nothing to change. We want our cake and we want to eat it too.
So where does this leave us? Well, depending upon your point of view, either you’ve just wasted a chuck of your time reading this or your perspective is a little bit broader than it was earlier. As I stated at the beginning, if we’re ever going to understand why we’re frozen in place while our country is carted off piece by piece, we need to throw conventional wisdom out the door and look for alternative explanations. Every time I devote some time examining this question, I find myself falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. One link leads to another which leads to another which leads to another. But I do have some ideas I’d like to share with you next time.
How do you disempower a corrupt system? By empowering yourself.
How do you awaken a sleeping population? By awakening yourself.
How do you heal a toxic society? By healing yourself.
Neil Kramer
I wish to address one housekeeping item. There have been requests for me to include web links in my articles and I’ve made a deliberate and conscious decision not to. If you think about it for a moment, bibliographies, footnotes and web links are all intended to validate and legitimize the writer. All of the ideas and concepts I’ve discussed in this article can easily be found and I urge you to do so. Just be prepared to be snowed under. But I resist leaving a trail of bread crumbs for a number of reasons, one of which is primary and explained below.
There is no doubt in my mind that my biggest and most exciting discoveries and insights came from unexpected clicks of the mouse. More than a few times I’d start an evening of research with a specific subject in mind. But after a few clicks of the mouse, I’d quickly find myself deep in the weeds and far off the beaten path. I would rarely make it back to my original destination and that was just fine with me. If the reader really is interested in exploring further, the journey must be entirely yours and yours alone. I’ve found that when venturing off the beaten path (and I assure you the answers are way off the consensus reality path) it’s best if you find your own way.
My hope is that whatever you learn be yours, from your own hand, your own research, irrefutable in your mind and thus immensely valuable and indispensible to you. The purpose of the journey is not the destination but the journey itself. Each trip is unique and your experience is a product of the path you take. I’ve studied the Masters long enough to see the wisdom in their methods so I’ll simply repeat what they teach. I’ll point you in the right direction but the rest is up to you.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this exploration, coming to a theater near you.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
What Do Empires Do?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/13-0
Michael Parenti
CommonDreams
Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:30 EST
When I wrote my book Against Empire in 1995, as might be expected, some of my U.S. compatriots thought it was wrong of me to call the United States an empire. It was widely believed that U.S. rulers did not pursue empire; they intervened abroad only out of self-defense or for humanitarian rescue operations or to overthrow tyranny, fight terrorism, and propagate democracy.
But by the year 2000, everyone started talking about the United States as an empire and writing books with titles like Sorrows of Empire, Follies of Empire, Twilight of Empire, or Empire of Illusions--- all referring to the United States when they spoke of empire.
Even conservatives started using the word. Amazing. One could hear right-wing pundits announcing on U.S. television, "We're an empire, with all the responsibilities and opportunities of empire and we better get used to it"; and "We are the strongest nation in the world and have every right to act as such"---as if having the power gives U.S. leaders an inherent entitlement to exercise it upon others as they might wish.
"What is going on here?" I asked myself at the time. How is it that so many people feel free to talk about empire when they mean a United States empire? The ideological orthodoxy had always been that, unlike other countries, the USA did not indulge in colonization and conquest.
The answer, I realized, is that the word has been divested of its full meaning. "Empire" seems nowadays to mean simply dominion and control. Empire---for most of these late-coming critics--- is concerned almost exclusively with power and prestige. What is usually missing from the public discourse is the process of empire and its politico-economic content. In other words, while we hear a lot about empire, we hear very little about imperialism.
Now that is strange, for imperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is what empires do. And by imperialism I do not mean the process of extending power and dominion without regard to material and financial interests. Indeed "imperialism" has been used by some authors in the same empty way that they use the word "empire," to simply denote dominion and control with little attention given to political economic realities.
But I define imperialism as follows: the process whereby the dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear their economic and military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, natural resources, capital, and markets-in such a manner as to enrich the investor interests. In a word, empires do not just pursue "power for power's sake." There are real and enormous material interests at stake, fortunes to be made many times over.
So for centuries the ruling interests of Western Europe and later on North America and Japan went forth with their financiers---and when necessary their armies---to lay claim to most of planet Earth, including the labor of indigenous peoples, their markets, their incomes (through colonial taxation or debt control or other means), and the abundant treasures of their lands: their gold, silver, diamonds, copper, rum, molasses, hemp, flax, ebony, timber, sugar, tobacco, ivory, iron, tin, nickel, coal, cotton, corn, and more recently: uranium, manganese, titanium, bauxite, oil, and--say it again--oil. (Hardly a complete listing.)
Empires are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial nation but enormously costly to the people of the colonized country. In addition to suffering the pillage of their lands and natural resources, the people of these targeted countries are frequently killed in large numbers by the intruders.
This is another thing that empires do which too often goes unmentioned in the historical and political literature of countries like the United States, Britain, and France. Empires impoverish whole populations and kill lots and lots of innocent people. As I write this, President Obama and the national security state for which he works are waging two and a half wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan), and leveling military threats against Yemen, Iran, and, on a slow day, North Korea. Instead of sending medical and rescue aid to Haiti, Our Bomber sent in the Marines, the same Marines who engaged in years of mass murder in Haiti decades ago and supported more recent massacres by proxy forces.
The purpose of all this killing is to prevent alternative, independent, self-defining nations from emerging. So the empire uses its state power to gather private wealth for its investor class. And it uses its public wealth to shore up its state power and prevent other nations from self-developing.
Sooner or later this arrangement begins to wilt under the weight of its own contradictions. As the empire grows more menacing and more murderous toward others, it grows sick and impoverished within itself.
From ancient times to today, empires have always been involved in the bloody accumulation of wealth. If you don't think this is true of the United States then stop calling it "Empire." And when you write a book about how it wraps its arms around the planet, entitle it "Global Bully" or "Bossy Busybody," but be aware that you're not telling us much about imperialism.
Michael Parenti's recent books include: Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); Democracy for the Few, 8th ed. (Wadsworth); The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), Superpatriotism (City Lights), The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press), and God and His Demons (forthcoming). For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com at 11:48 AM 0 comments
Fascists Were Driven Out of Occupied Lands; So Will US Imperialists. Contrition?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Fascists-Were-Driven-Out-o-by-Jay-Janson-100203-137.html
February 4, 2010
By Jay Janson
All imperial occupations eventually end (though usually not before a ghastly massive pound of indigenous flesh is exacted along with the plunder originally intended).
Modern history has seen the various empires come and go, each having been the dominant military of its particular time enabling it to conquer and occupy the lands of others.
The Ottoman Sultans and Austrian Emperors, proud of their military prowess and ability to put down revolts, probably had difficulty imagining the extinction of their empires and their being reduced to Turkey and Austria, two small nations among a thousand others.
The sun never set on the Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish and English empires' occupations as they successively replaced each other as number one overseas European military power.
None were able to sustain their occupations (the northern part of Ireland and the Malvinas or Faukland Islands being the two large exceptions, remnants that will surely soon be freed from British control naturally).
Czarist Russia had managed better, for its conquered and occupied peoples were not overseas but neighbors, as was the case of the nascent imperial United States occupying the lands of nations native to North America.
The British were forced to leave India and China and were driven out of Kenya by requited homicidal violence against its vulnerable live-in exploiters. They were driven out of their American colonies two centuries earlier. The end of the fading French empire's occupations, rescued temporarily by the U.S., came with Laotian, Vietnamese and Algerian wars of independence.
The Deutsches Reich, and its collaborating Japanese Empire risen to first rank world power occupiers (thanks to American capitalist investment) usually lost control of occupied nations to popular partisan guerilla forces before the actual arrival of Allied troops.
The American empire's claim, "We seek no territory beyond our own,'' though hardly a political deception ever taken seriously abroad, served well at home to hail American exceptionalism as its armies roamed the earth and its merchant based society gained control of half the world's wealth and natural resources.
Today's U.S. wars of occupation and its having put most nations under its doctrine of right to bomb are evidence of an unproclaimed but murderously real American Empire of banking institutions and far flung world wide net of a hundred and seventy-five military installations.
From the seed of the appallingly ignorant racist pseudo philosophy of Manifest Destiny "justifying' a belligerent and primitive use of its navy, (as when Commodore Perry sailed into a Yokohama harbor and threatening to open fire), and its gunboats (on Chinese rivers and elsewhere) to force trade agreements, a nascent American commercial empire grew and converted itself into a more planted and seemingly permanent form of foreign hegemony beyond its intermittent occupations.
With its powerful military, the United States has managed to occupy nations at will throughout its history, witness the dozens and dozens of invasions and both short and long (decades long, in the case of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic), in Latin America, in the Philippines and recently in other Far Eastern and Middle Eastern countries.
But limitations on its use of military cropped up early on and have continued to augment themselves.
In the 1920s, it felt obliged to withdraw two U.S. armies from revolutionary Russia, and found it too troublesome to continue its occupation of the Dominican Republic.
In the 1930s, Roosevelt felt it wise to withdraw the Marines from a nineteen year occupation of Haiti to herald in his defensive "Good Neighbor" policy;
In the 1940s, the newly forming empire American bankers and captains of industry helped build boldly attacked the U.S. navy in both the Pacific and the Atlantic.
In the 1950s, it was driven from North Korea;
In the 1960s, Eisenhower was unable to defeat a revolution against the French colonial backed Laotian government in spite of bombing that country more than any nation in the history of air attacks, and the quick defeat of a U.S. invasion of Cuba was its first in Latin America.
In the 1970s, came the defeat in Vietnam after thirty years of funding war and the death of fifty-eight thousand American warriors (the millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians are not considered of consequence).
In the 1980s, Carter's failed Operation Eagle Claw air commando raid against the Iranian revolutionary government cost him the election, and after an early invasion of Lebanon, Reagan withdrew after losing nearly three hundred servicemen to two suicide truck bombers.
In the 1990s, after it ordered some wild shooting it up in Somalia, it was faced with deadly citizen rage, and Clinton withdrew U.S. forces.
In 2000 the destroyer USS Cole was disabled in Yemen, and later saw its forces continually under attack in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq.
As all empires, the United States of America has obedient satellites and pressured allies willing or forced to participate in its occupations, in its aggrandizing of wealth and resources, some earning imperial gratitude or remuneration for engaging in proxy wars of occupation or providing troops or tribute for the empire's own military initiatives.
Presently, Ethiopia in Somalia, NATO in Afghanistan and Columbia in South America and an "international community' arrayed ready to aid an another attack on Iran are are examples prominently lauded in imperial news media.
Dramatic instances of broad and compliant acquiescence to U.S. moves within nations are manifold: its taking over from the British in Greece; the colossus' roaring blitzes of Panama, tiny Grenada, the Dominica Republic; its CIA funding and participating in civil wars all over the former colonial Third World, as in Angola; its overthrowing of democratic governments in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Chile and Haiti, handling of pan-nationalists like Cheddi, Jagan, Nassar and Nkruma, and seeing to the installation of proxy indigenous occupiers; its almost infantile lies to justify invasions and bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen to cite only a very few during which little or no formal disapproval was voiced - perhaps the most striking of which was Washington having Saddam Hussein invade and war for eight years against upstart and oil rich Iran.
Part of this in international "cooperation' scenario is the U.N. being designated to provide medical aid and other humanitarian services in U.S. occupied countries, and to clean up afterward. The Empire easily dominates the U.N. Security Council and uses the U.N. name and organization to its own purposes. The U.S., during the absence of the Soviet Union on the Council, bombed, invaded and occupied Korea under the U.N. flag.
American bombings, invasions, occupations and control of many peoples across the world by economic leverage and covert destabilization and promoting civil wars will end someday relatively soon. In the meantime how many Americans will continue to be well adjusted to living with it and ignoring their responsibility for the crimes against humanity of their government. A government which proclaims that killing its designated bad guys everywhere, huge collateral death notwithstanding, is useful and necessary to the protection of the Empire's home nation.
At best, empires are amoral in their treatment of occupied populations . There were a few notable exceptions in the ancient world - that of a reformed and repentant great emperor Ashoka turning to Buddhism comes to mind.
Though today Germany and Japan have their small neo-fascist fringe groups on the margin as elsewhere, the general feeling in the public at large is now one of contrition for the atrocities committed in the name of their nations during brutal occupations accepted by their forefathers, who failed to prevent their country from falling under fascist domination. German and Japanese citizens feel some national complicity, not the innocence that most of their grandparents professed as they proclaimed themselves simply co-victims. Pride in their nations history as been diminished for its violent occupations of other nations.
One supposes that one day, a generation after all the U.S. troops, ships and planes have exited all the places they didn't belong doing things that imperial armed forces do, children in America will have a similar feeling and pangs of conscience, a bit of shame for the disappointing behavior of Americans that went before them.
Posted by greathierophant@yahoo.com
Judyth Vary Baker is My Best Friend! Her website is http://www.judythvarybaker.com
As Mistress to Lee Harvey Oswald, She Has A Great Story to Tell That Will Change History!
Allen is a Very Good Friend of Mine and Has Unselfishly Made These Movies You Can Watch for Free
The American Matrix: Age of Deception
IMF and World Bank Announce US$12.3 billion in Debt Relief for the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Press Release No:2011/004/AFR
Contacts
International Monetary Fund
Alistair Thomson
(202) 623-6312
AThomson2@imf.org
The World Bank
Melanie Zipperer
(202) 468-9841
mzipperer@worldbank.org
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 1, 2010—The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) have decided to support US$12.3 billion in debt relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The decisions by the Board of Directors of both institutions[1] will generate total debt service savings of US$12.3 billion, which include US$11.1 billion under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, and US$1.2 billion under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief from the IMF will total US$491 million and from the World Bank’s IDA US$1,832 million, with the remainder expected to come from bilateral and commercial creditors. As a result of this relief, the DRC will no longer face a heavy debt service burden in relation to its revenue and foreign exchange resources.
The Boards determined that the country has implemented the policy measures (“triggers”) required to reach the completion point, a stage in which debt relief from both the HIPC Initiative and MDRI becomes irrevocable. The triggers included satisfactory implementation of the country’s poverty reduction and growth strategy, maintenance of macroeconomic stability, improvements in public expenditure and debt management, and improved governance and service delivery in key social sectors such as health, education and rural development.
“Reaching the HIPC completion point demonstrates the significant progress that the DRC authorities have made over the past several years in strengthening macroeconomic policy management and performance following a devastating decade-long conflict that destroyed the country’s economic and social infrastructure,” said the IMF’s Mission Chief for the DRC, Brian Ames. “The conditions for reaching the HIPC completion point provided the authorities with a policy reform framework that guided their efforts to enhance macroeconomic stability, address weaknesses in public financial management and economic governance, and reform the social sectors. Progress in each of these areas also sets a solid foundation for advancing the country’s development agenda going forward,” he added.
“We recognize the government’s huge efforts toward reaching Completion Point. This could be a turning point in DRC’s long troubled history,” said Marie-Françoise Marie-Nelly, World Bank Country Director for DRC. "Going forward, strengthening the rule of law, improving governance – especially in the oil and mining sectors – and improving the business climate are essential next steps to benefit the most vulnerable Congolese citizens,” she added.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo becomes the 30th country to reach the completion point under the HIPC Initiative. The completion point marks the end of the HIPC process for the DRC, which started in July 2003 when the Executive Boards of the IMF and the World Bank agreed that it had met the requirements for reaching the decision point, at which countries start receiving debt relief on an interim basis.
ANNEX (Note to Editors)
The HIPC Initiative. In 1996, the World Bank and IMF launched the HIPC Initiative to create a framework in which all creditors, including multilateral creditors, can provide debt relief to the world's poorest and most heavily indebted countries to ensure debt sustainability, and thereby reduce the constraints on economic growth and poverty reduction imposed by the unsustainable debt-service burdens in these countries.
To date, 36 HIPC countries have reached their decision points, of which 30, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have reached the completion point.
The MDRI
Created in 2005, the aim of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) is to reduce further the debt of eligible low-income countries and provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Under the MDRI, three multilateral institutions – the World Bank’s International Development Association, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Fund -- provide 100 percent debt relief on eligible debts to qualifying countries normally at the time they reach the HIPC Initiative completion point.
For more information on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, please visit: http://www.imf.org/external/country/COD/index.htm or www.worldbank.org/drc
For more information on debt relief, click:
http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/hipc.htm,
http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/mdri.htm and
http://go.worldbank.org/83PZB7FH80.
How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program(SAP) Destroyed Africa
Update July 10 2009-
NewsRescue: This should be Obama’s focus in Africa on his Ghana, second African visit
Article-
Herbert Jauch , Labour Resource and Research Institute
Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) have been implemented in many ‘developing’ countries since the 1980s. They were designed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank
and imposed as a condition for
Poverty in Africa {Img: sfgate.com}
further loans. Below is a brief background of the events that led many countries to accept SAPs. It describes how SAPs are being implemented and what results they have produced over the past 20 years. This article also gives a short analysis of the roles of the World Bank, the IMF and the local political elites in this process.
Structural Adjustment and the Debt Crisis
SAPs were born as a result of a debt crisis that has hit especially developing countries since the 1980s.
This debt crisis has its origin in the early 1970s when oil-producing countries that had united in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) increased the oil price to gain additional revenue. Most of these profits were invested with banks in industrialised countries. These banks, in turn, were interested to lend this money to developing countries to finance the purchase of products from the industrialised countries. In this way, the loans given to ‘developing’ countries helped to stimulate production in the North (see Toussaint and Comanne 1995: 15). At that time. both private and public institutions encouraged the South to borrow. Even the World Bank ‘preached the doctrine of debt as the path towards accelerated development’. As a result, huge amounts were borrowed by the political elites, often wasted on luxuries, ‘white elephant’ projects or stolen by corrupt officials (Usually stooges, selected by the exiting colonial powers to lead these failed African states). Very little was invested productively with a view of achieving sustainable economic growth (see George 1995: 21).
During the 1970s loans were given freely at very low interest rates but this situation changed dramatically in the early 1980s. The USA pushed up interest rates drastically in an attempt to stop inflation. ‘Developing’ countries that had taken out loans with US banks now had to pay huge interests. The major lending banks in Europe followed suit and the debt crisis was born (see George 1995: 21). ‘Developing’ countries were unable to repay their loans and were forced to take up new loans to pay the interest.
In 1980 the total debt of developing countries stood at US$ 567 billion. Between 1980 and 1992 these countries paid back US$ 1662 billion. However, because of the high interest rates, the debt increased to US$ 1419 billion in 1992 – despite the repayments! The rising interest rates forced developing countries to take out new loans to avoid bankruptcy.
Debt repayments drain about US$ 160 billion each year from ‘developing’ countries. This is about 2.5 times the total development aid that these countries receive!
Since the 1980s, debt repayments are a major mechanism of transferring wealth from the South to the North. The former French President Francois Mitterand admitted this when he said in 1994:
‘Despite the considerable sums spent on bilateral and multilateral aid, the flow of capital from Africa toward the industrial countries is greater than the flow of capital from the industrial countries to the developing countries’ (see Touissaint and Comanne 1995: 10-12).
Despite the fact that ‘developing’ countries have long paid back their initial loans, they are still highly indebted and are dependent on new loans. This paved the way for the IMF and World Bank to come ‘to the rescue’. They were given the task to make sure that ‘developing’ countries will continue paying their debt by offering new loans – to countries who accept certain conditions: structural adjustment.
Related: Summary of Nigeria IMF-SAP debt progression
The role of the IMF and World Bank
Initially the idea behind the World Bank and IMF, also called the Bretton Woods institutions, was widely supported. The Bank was given the task to rebuild first Europe and then other countries after the Second World War. The IMF was supposed to facilitate trade and to make short-term loans available to countries with temporary balance of payment problems (see George 1995: 19).
Today the IMF and the World Bank are much more powerful than its founders could have imagined. Both have over 170 member countries whose power is determined by the amount they pay in subscriptions. This system of ‘one dollar – one vote’ has meant that the rich industrialised countries control these institutions today (see the description of the IMF and World Bank attached). The IMF and World Bank are far from democratic and their policies are shaped by their principal shareholders – the powerful industrialised countries.
The IMF and World Bank today have a strong influence over economic policies in many countries. The inability of many countries to repay their debt has made them dependent on new loans. The IMF has the power to declare countries credit worthy – or not. To get the seal of approval countries have to accept the conditions of structural adjustment programmes. They have to restructure their economies according to IMF/World Bank guidelines – otherwise they will have virtually no chance to get loans from private or public creditors anywhere (see George 1995:19-21).
The Implementation of Structural Adjustment Programmes
SAPs are built on the fundamental condition that debtor countries have to repay their debt in hard currency. This 
A first feature of SAPs is therefore a switch in production from what local people eat, wear or use towards goods that can be sold in the industrialised countries. Since the 1980s dozens of countries have followed these policies simultaneously. They often exported the same primary commodities, competed with each other and then suffered because of declining world market prices for their commodities. Between 1980 and 1992, ‘developing’ countries lost 52% of their export income due to deteriorating prices (see Touissant and Comanne 1995: 12; George 1995:22; Bournay 1995: 51).
SAPs have 4 fundamental objectives according to which they are shaped:
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Liberalisation: promoting the free movement of capital; opening of national markets to international competition.
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Privatisation of public services and companies.
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De-regulations of labour relations and cutting social safety nets.
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Improving competitiveness (see Toissant and Comanne 1995:14)
Based on these objectives, SAPs prescribe nearly always the same measures as a condition for new loans. These are:
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reduction of government deficit through cuts in public spending (cost recovery programmes);
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higher interest rates
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liberalisation of foreign exchange rules and trade (deregulation);
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rationalisation and privatisation of public and parastatal companies;
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deregulation of the economy, for example:
- liberalisation of foreign investment regulations
- deregulation of the labour market, e.g. wage ‘flexibility’
- abolishing price controls and food subsidies
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shift from import substitution to export production (see Isaacs 1997: 135)
These measures forced countries on a path of deregulated free market economies. The IMF/World bank basically determine countries’ macro-economic policies, they take control over central bank policies and over public expenditure through the so-called ‘Public Expenditure Review’. SAPs promote the principal of cost-recovery for social services and the gradual withdrawal of the state from basic health and educational services. Under its ‘Public Investment Programme’ the IMF even decides what type of infrastructure should be built while an imposed system of international tender ensures that public-works projects are carried out by international construction and engineering firms (see Chossudovsky 1995: 59).
Although several countries were skeptical about such neo-liberal policies (designed along the ideas of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations) they were forced to abandon socialist or even social democratic ideas. In this way, the debt crisis has provided the IMF and World Bank with a very effective instrument of disciplining rebellious countries. Debtor countries are kept in a ‘strait-jacket’ which prevents them from implementing their own economic policies (SEE George 1995:21; Chossudovsky 1995:57).
The Results of Structural Adjustment Programmes
Despite the IMF and World Bank claims of SAP successes, it is widely acknowledged that SAPs have failed to achieve their goals. They have not created wealth and economic development as unregulated markets did not benefit the poor and failed to protect the delivery of social services. The IMF/World Bank believe that the elimination of protective tariffs will make domestic industries more competitive. In reality, domestic manufacturing often collapsed and imported consumer goods replaced domestic production. Other results of SAPs were:
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Privatisation allows international capital to buy state enterprises at very low costs.
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Tax reforms under SAPs (like VAT) place a greater tax burden on middle and low-income groups while foreign capital receives generous tax holidays.
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Deregulation of the banking system leads to very high interest rates which makes most goods unaffordable to the majority.
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Elimination of subsidies and prize controls, covered with devaluation lead to price increases and reduce real earnings in the formal and informal sectors.
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Free movement of foreign exchange allows foreign companies to repatriate their profits. It also allows the ‘laundering’ of ‘dirty money’ from offshore banking accounts.
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Cost-recovery programmes in the health sector increased the inequality in health care delivery, reduced health coverage and increased the number of people without access to health care. Diseases like cholera, malaria and yellow fever are on the increase again.
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Various NGOs funded by international aid agencies have gradually taken over government functions in the social sector.
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Cuts in public sector employment (for example 300 000 civil servants were retrenched in Zaire - now DRC - in 1995), coupled with bankruptcies of local companies has led to large increases in unemployment.
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Liberalisation of the labour market leads to the elimination of cost of living adjustment clauses in collective agreements and to the phasing out of minimum wage legislation.
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Export orientation in agriculture is eliminating subsistence crops and accelerates the exodus of the unemployed towards the cities. (See Touissant and Comanne 1995: 9; Chossudovsky 1995:58-64)
Even in those countries that are singled out as success stories, SAPs imposed severe hardships on the poor. In Uganda, for example, the government obediently followed the World Bank/IMF policies and implemented far-reaching liberalisation such as:
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Privatisation of government institutions
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Reducing the size of the civil service and the army
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Liberalisation of foreign exchange
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Decentralisation of services to local authorities
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Cuts in government spending on social services
Despite some (statistical) economic growth, these policies resulted in:
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Drop in formal sector employment to less than 14% of the economically active population
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Retrenchment of more than half the civil service (170 000)
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Lack of equipment and medication in government health facilities
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Collapse of small enterprises
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Declining co-operative movement
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Trade Unions lost 60% of their members since 1990
SAPs had a detrimental effect on social services. In the education sector, for example, they led to:
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Increasing class size (student-teacher ratios)
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Increasing school fees as part of cost-recovery programmes
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Reduction in the number of teachers and/or wage freezes
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Introduction of ‘double shifts’
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Drop in the standard of public education due to deteriorating facilities
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Increase in private schools for the wealthy
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Increasing inequalities in the standard of education between poor and rich communities
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Lower enrolment at schools as the poor have to choose between feeding their children and paying for school uniforms, stationery and school fees.
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Finance-driven education reforms under SAPs often reversed the gains made by African countries after independence.
SAPs meant that most countries had to make major cuts in their education budgets and the world-wide rate of illiteracy began to grow again after a long period of decline (see Bournay 1995: 51). The poor and vulnerable groups in society are always the hardest hit by the SAP measures. SAPs have had a particularly negative effect on women because:
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Privatisation of social services like health and education makes these services unaffordable for the poor. As a result, women are often forced to take on these responsibilities, for example tacking care of the sick.
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Cuts in education services lead to an increase in illiteracy among women and girls. Under SAPs, the drop-out rate for girls is increasing.
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Reduced spending on health leads to an increase in maternal deaths.
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The elimination of food subsidies coupled with falling (real) wages reduces women’s buying power.
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Unemployment is increasing as a result of public sector ‘restructuring’
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‘Labour flexibility’ may result in more jobs for women at the expense of men. These jobs, however, are usually poorly paid and insecure.
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The reduction of formal sector jobs drives women into the informal sector.
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In Zambia, the hardships caused by SAPs led to an increase in divorces. Men left their homes because they were unable to look after their families. As a result, more women were forced to look after their children on their own.
Picture representation
SAPs in Southern Africa
The results of SAPs in Southern Africa were similar to those of the programmes elsewhere. The effects of these policies are visible in all countries of Southern Africa, although the manifestations are different. In Angola, the war sponsored by the CIA and South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s has devastated the country. Virtually the entire industrial production base was destroyed and Angolans have to fight a daily battle for survival. In the late 1980s the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) enforced SAPs resulting in what was described as “wild capitalism” (Brittain: 3-7). These policies have done nothing but exacerbate the already devastated economic and social structures of Angola.
In Zimbabwe and Zambia, SAPs placed severe hardships on the population while failing to lead to the promised economic recovery and reduced unemployment. ESAP, the abbreviation for ‘Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes’ is now seen as the abbreviation for ‘Ever Suffering African People’, as these programmes resulted in popular protests and food riots after subsidies for basic food items were withdrawn. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has pointed out that ESAPs worsened poverty and that export orientation further disadvantages small-scale communal farmers who still have no adequate access to suitable land (Goncalves: 6)
After 5 years of SAPs, Zimbabwe’s external debts had increased dramatically due to heavy SAP-related borrowing. It now stands at more than 100% of the GDP and the domestic debt is even higher. Due to currency devaluations the real foreign exchange value of exports in Zimbabwe declined by 2,7% a year while it had grown by 9% before SAPs were introduced. Economic growth was slow and 60 000 workers were retrenched (Saunders: 9; Goncalves:70).
In 1995 the IMF suspended the lending programme and called for even bigger sacrifices to be imposed on the population. SAPs forced the government to concentrate on budget deficits at the expense of creating employment and improving social services. Unemployment stands at 50% in some sectors and only 16 000 jobs are created per year for 220 000 school leavers. Since the early 1990s 130 companies were liquidated and a process of de-industrialisation is underway in a country that once had a relatively self-contained and integrated economy (Saunders: 8-11).
Zambia took the most dramatic steps to fully implement ESAPs and has seen whole industries disappear as protective measures were dropped. External debts are strangulating the country and between 1990 and 1993 the Zambian government spent 35 times more on debt repayment than on primary school education! (Goncalves: 7)
Mozambique is often regarded as one of the poorest countries in the world with foreign assistance accounting for two-thirds of its GDP. After 20 years of South African sponsored war, the state has virtually been destroyed and is presently trying to establish some kind of political stability.
During the 1980s the Mozambiquen leadership tried to find a way of protecting social achievements when dealing with external financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. This did not last long and a process of ‘recolonisation’ unfolded. Privatisation hit every sphere of the country’s social and economic life: banking, cotton industry, agriculture, health and education.
Today Mozambique is dominated ” not by the agents of a colonial power, but by the technically sophisticated and politically disinterested economists of the IMF , the World Bank and of bilateral aid agencies whose prescriptions are determined by economic analysis” (Plank).
They portray Mozambique’s subordination as a natural consequence of global economic trends. A Mozambiquen MP admitted that “our budget is really set by donors at the annual Paris conference” (Saul: 12-17). Privatisation which was meant to improve efficiency and reduce budget deficits often results in massive retrenchments. According to Mozambique’s trade union federation OTM, of the 502 companies which were privatised since 1989 only 25% are still operational and 37 000 workers have been retrenched (Goncalves: 6).
Under pressure form international donors, the Malawi government removed fertiliser subsidies in 1995. As a result, small-scale farmers could no longer afford fertilisers or were forced to sell their food stocks. This poses a serious threat for the country’s food self-sufficiency.
Although Namibia and South Africa are not heavily indebted and were not forced to implement SAPs, there are indications that these countries are following similar policies. After decades of sanctions and partial isolation, South Africa is re-integrating into the global economy. This is changing its domestic economy which had been characterised by protective tariffs and import substitution. It now has to face global competition. As a signatory to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), South Africa has started to dismantle tariff barriers. The government sees this as a necessary step to make domestic industries internationally competitive. The macro-economic plan known as “Growth, Employment and Redistribution” (GEAR) shows many similarities with the structural adjustment policies of other countries.
So far, the harshest effects of trade liberalisation are experienced by workers in South Africa’s clothing and textiles industry. 80% of workers in the clothing sector and 50% of those in the textile sector are women. Between 1991 and 1997, 50 000 out of a total of 200 000 workers have lost their jobs. South African companies were unable to produce goods as cheaply or at the same quality as competitors from South-East Asia and had to close down. The industry proposed a more “flexible” labour force (i.e. wage cuts) to tackle the crisis, and some companies have initiated plant-level restructuring accompanied by retrenchments, casualisation and decentralisation of production (Macquene). Another prominent feature in South Africa is the privatisation of state assets similar to what has happened in other African countries as part of SAPs. Despite opposition from the labour movement, the South African government seems to follow the demands of national and international capital to speed up the process of privatisation.
In Namibia, the government is still spending a large portion of the national budget on social services like education and health, but there are signs that cuts are imminent. The Ministry of Education, for example, has already cut down on expenditure for school hostels by reducing and sometimes even abolishing the subsidies. Several hostels were privatised and the Ministry now wants to implement a programme known as “staffing norms’. This programme aims to achieve a uniform teacher-student ratio across the country and claims to achieve the following: financial sustainability; enhanced educational quality; and equity among regions and schools. The Ministry targets teacher learner ratios of 1:40 for primary schools and 1:36 for secondary schools by the year 2002 (NANTU 1997:13).
Other signs of structural adjustment policies are the government’s commitment to sweeping privatisation which is justified as a means of making state-run and state-owned companies more efficient. ‘Commercialisation’ is mentioned almost daily in the media and has become the ‘religion’ of economic policy. The Namibian government is also determined to reduce the size of the civil service and believes that economic development can only be achieved through foreign investments and export-led growth. These are definite signs that structural adjustment has arrived.
SAPs and Globalisation
Cheated! SAP destroyed Africa's Hopes
Overall, SAPs have reversed some of the gains made by ‘developing’ countries in their attempt to find an autonomous development process that would suit local conditions. The rolled back some of the achievements made by African states in the post-colonial era (see Goncalves: 6-8). Countries like India, Mexico, Algeria and Brazil are now returning to their former dependency on and subordination to the industrialised world (see Toussaint and Comanne 1995: 17). Chipeta points out that this is no accident as ESAPs were not designed to promote genuine economic development. “Each policy is designed to fail so that the implementing country can enter into another programme”. In other words, an implementing country becomes permanently locked into ESAPs which are designed by the industrialised blocks to shape developing countries according to their needs (Chipeta: 11).
SAPs as a part of the broader process of globalisation have increased the manoeuvring space for Transnational Corporations to an unprecedented level. They could utilise the opportunities created through privatisation and the general economic liberalisation. However, it is important to point out that the political and economic elite of ‘developing’ countries has also played a crucial role in the adjustment process. These elites often used the initial loans for their own benefits. They continued a life in luxury while telling their people to tighten their belts. Even under structural adjustment they were hardly the ones who suffered and sometimes even benefited from SAPs. When public services deteriorate or disappear they can afford private schools and hospitals. They often benefited from privatisation by obtaining functioning enterprises at give-away prices and they benefit from low labour costs as a result of labour flexibility. Susan George has accurately summed up the results of SAPs and globalisation when she wrote about the global apartheid economy:
‘The Bretton Woods twins have become the managers of a global apartheid economy in which the transnational elite from both “North” and “South” plays the role of the “whites”; a shrinking and anxious middle class the role of the “coloureds”; and finally, at the bottom, the vast sea of wretchedness made up of “blacks”, whatever their literal skin colour’ (1995:23).
The failure of SAPs have often led to violent protests that were often repressed with great brutality. The IMF/WB have ignored all critics for years and even today continue to argue that the situation would have been worse without SAPs. In recent years, they tried to respond to public criticism by moving towards adjustment ‘with a human face’. They are now prepared to look at a very basic safety net and have allowed some countries (e.g. Egypt) to maintain some subsidies on essential food products. However, the basic philosophy and the believe in the unregulated free market have remained unchanged (see Bournay 1995: 52).
Conclusion
Although the relative share of the ‘developing’ countries’ debt in the world’s debt has declined, the people of those countries still have to suffer under structural adjustment programmes. They still have to pay a heavy price to ensure that the debt is paid. The same is now happening in the former countries of the Soviet bloc that are also forced to undergo structural adjustment. Debt is even becoming an issue in the rich industrialised countries as people there are now also experiencing austerity measures that are similar to structural adjustment. Industrial countries justify cuts in social spending as necessary to reduce the public debt. Toussaint and Commanne pointed out that: ‘While austerity measures imposed in the North do not have tragic consequences equal to those in the South and East, the results are nonetheless destructive’ (1995:18).
The World Bank and the IMF have repeatedly come under sharp criticism over the failure of their SAPs. Under mounting pressure, Social Dimension Funds (SDFs) were introduced in recent years to cushion the blows and hardships of ESAPs. However, they have been ineffective and insufficient to offset the damages caused. ‘Adjustment with a human face’ did not address the fundamental flaws of SAPs but the Bank and the Fund still believe that the solution to the world’s problem lies in continued liberalisation of economies. They still believe that SAPs short term pain will lead to long term gain. Rhetorical commitment to ‘poverty alleviation’ did not change the SAP principle of systematically withdrawing the state from delivering social services. According to the IMF and World Bank, these services are meant to be cost effectively managed by ‘civil society’(see Chossudovsky 1995: 64). During a seminar in Namibia in 1998, IMF officials confirmed that:
‘Structural Adjustment programmes have become the main vehicle for the IMF’s support in Africa.’ Reinhold van Til, IMF
‘Under structural adjustment, Ghana and Uganda ‘experienced a sharp improvement in competitiveness, trade, investment, and economic performance.’
‘The ‘right’ economic policies will automatically lead to economic growth and prosperity. Investors will reward countries with good economic policies and punish those with bad ones.’
‘Liberalisation of the trade system is a key element of reform if Africa is to take advantage of increasingly global patterns of production and trade….this must be accompanied by a liberalisation of exchange rates.’ Robert Sharer, IMF
Government intervention must be limited to ‘areas of market failure and to the provision of the necessary social and economic infrastructure’ Alassane D. Quattare, IMF
In theory, SAPS are meant to assist countries to return to economic recovery. In practice the opposite has happened. SAPs have destroyed any chance to achieve sustainable economic development that would meet national priorities. Chossudovsky pointed out that the ‘…IMF-World bank reform package constitutes a coherent programme for economic and social collapse…They destroy the entire fabric of the domestic economy’ (1995: 66).
Whenever SAPs fail, the IMF and World Bank blame the host government which they accuse of incompetence or insufficient motivation. ‘IMF riots’ have happened in more than 30 countries, sometimes in the form of violent protests against the hardships caused by SAPs. The host country’s governments were always left to deal with the uprisings that were often brutally suppressed. However, initial protests against SAPs were hardly followed by a systematic initiative to build the political capacity to replace SAPs with a different development strategy. Even the political leaders of ‘developing’ countries have become quiet on the debt issue and are no longer campaigning for the cancellation of the debt. In most cases they have become a corrupt elite that is no longer interested in establishing a new and more just world order. It will therefore be left to those organisations that represent the increasingly impoverished majority to actively campaign against structural adjustment policies and to develop alternative policies that will be able to solve our problems.
It must also be mentioned that the wars and conflicts in Africa only started after the seventies, and after the impacts of the enforced adjustments discussed above.
As they say in Nigeria- ‘Monkey dey work, Baboon dey chop’.
