Wotjek: ``And when did exactly a bunch of protesters alone manage to tear down the system that had not already been torn down by a war (e.g. Russia after 1st world war) or foreign occupation (e.g. China after 2nd world war) or do so without a massive help from foreign governments (e.g. Vietnam aided by the USSR and China)?''
Other people have already responded on this part well enough. I was at work today, so I am just getting back.
Wotjek, I think you are reacting to something other than what I wrote, since my post was basically just a long distance thank you note to the DC crew. I see nothing but positive results from protest, demos, spontaneous and not so spontaneous street actions. Seattle and now DC send a clear message to neoliberalism. It says your pro-capital trickle down imperialism abroad and domestic economic policies are absolute bullshit.
You advocate reforming the WB and IMF? Well, please, you have to be joking.
My memory is going so some of this is probably wrong, but it seems to me the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were set up specifically to promote capitalism as if it were foreign aid right after WWII--in particular as international instruments of containment (or imperialism, depending on your reading) against Soviet influence in the European theater and against the Chinese in the east asian theater--and to shore up the collapsing European colonies in Africa, the middle east and far east. So, in my mind they were founded for the specific purpose of promoting capitalism and colonialism.
Were these not the same institutions used thorough out the post-war and cold war particularly in Latin America to shore up the ruling elites, make a pretense at economic development, and make sure the resident bourgeois would stay in situ, while our military aid arm supplied all the material and expertise to devastate any remotely progressive or popular movement from taking root--whether they were communist or not? Are these not the same pig organizations that in the past promoted monolithic agriculture, plantations, Anaconda in Bolivia and Peru, United Fruit in Central America?
Aren't these the same jerk-offs?
Weren't they funding the whole bogus economic development cover in south east Asia before, during, and after Vietnam? Wasn't Robert McNamara the head of one these organizations after he left the defense department under Johnson? Weren't their projects routinely used as fronts for the CIA, NSA and the Pentagon?
I am pretty sure these are the same organizations, and I assume they still operate more or less along the same lines.
So, if my kid's generation wants to trash'em, I should hold out for reform, because I am a grown up?
Chuck Grimes