Some random, rambling, hostile thoughts on the WB, IMF, WTO, NATO, terrorism, drug wars, and globalizing the police-state.
The letters of complaint against the WB seem to me to be more along the line of old fashioned liberal whining that big business is getting too greedy. (Fucking, Duh!)
The US Treasury is just one door of shame (RH Wade's letter). It seems to me much of the US executive branch cabinet should be hauled into the mix here, especially the Dept of Agriculture and Commerce. The Dept of Agriculture is administering all those frankenfoods, genetically engineered crops, pesticides, hormones, etc, while the Commerce Dept manages all the high tech sales and contracts in computers, communications, police-state hardware, etc. And lets not forget all the executive branch security apparatus: FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.
The other letter (from D Wall) provides a certain historical hint, by mentioning the changing policies from the 60s/70s when McNamira was heading it up.
What's wrong with these letters is that they fail to make it explicit that the WB like the IMF and WTO are merely extensions of US foreign policy that are managed strictly for the benefit of US elites. These are international means to manipulating numerous local domestic policies and coordinate them for the interest and benefit of US corporate/governance.
So, while the various anti-globalization minions gear up for the IMF meeting in DC, lets remember that all these international organizations are like NATO the direct heir of the US foreign policy of containment from the 40s/50s. They were devoted to prove (by any and all means necessary) that socialism didn't work---because they were going to destroy whatever economic/governmental means they could, that might help make it work. (Let's also remember that the only reason the EU got a limited break on this anti-socialist US line, was because most of their anti-nazis underground resistance movements were communist and when they emerged ready to govern after the war, the deal was coalition governments with socialists---it was that or face revolutions and civil wars. In this sense the parliamentary system was installed to prevent that domination, and had little to do with so-called US interests in political democracy.)
The WB, IMF, WTO, and NATO are all part of the same post-war US foreign policy apparatus of carrots and sticks (money and guns). In their original design, there was perhaps some naive US belief that controlled business development would bring economic benefit to the masses---some limp version of trickle down. Let's remember here that progressive liberals actually designed these systems. But that idealism must have been abandoned sometime during the mid-Eisenhower, early Kennedy-Johnson era struggles in the Middle East, South East Asia and Latin America. This is when we went after each and every developing socialist reform and resistance movement in the world, demonized them as communist guerrilla movements (pawns of the USSR/China/Cuba) and then backed military thugs to kill them all. Pinoche is probably the most famous example---because Allende was probably the best and most promising example of how to accomplish a marxist-socialist reform government in Latin America during the period.
So, these days instead of going after communism, these international economic development organizations have simply taken up their cudgels against any government public service and publicly held infrastructure---and especially those most needed like public utilities, communications, transportation, and education.
Once these are eliminated, there really isn't much left for government to do, except exercise its police powers to oppress its people. The real plan here is for everybody to live under a system of total US capitalist exploitation, walled up in a universal panopticon---the great police-state apparatus---see LA news footage of the endless freeway chases or COPS or world's most violent videos on cheesy Fox (yes I love watching them).
That's the vision-thing as the old twat mouth George I used to say. We are lucky that George II is too stupid to understand any of it, but we are unlucky that his taste in appointments goes to the nastiest and meanest fuckers he can find--or that somebody told him about. (I am not convinced he could find his own ass to scratch--but that is another matter.)
Then finally, we have to go after the whole package, not just these US imperialism economic coordinating councils. The whole package includes the US military and its privatized weapons-prison-industrial-complex---those wonderfully inventive panopticon makers.
This is the real point to going after the Israelis. Linking Zionism to racism is something of a smoke screen (I agree with Brad Mayer here), since it masks the whole US military-State Dept involvement with the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, and makes it possible to carry out mass extermination in slow motion. I am guessing here, but I suspect the real reason for quiting Durban in a huff, was so the US delegation could avoid being formally notified by the conference in public of the US-Israel violations of various international and US laws regarding the use of military weapons against civilian populations, i.e. war crimes.
While its all well and good to beat-up on the globalized instruments of US economic policy---we have to remember these are backed up with the US military and policing apparatus (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc), i.e. the sticks. And these definitely need some attention. NATO is an obvious choice target of protest, as are the still existing US military bases around the world. But its the private weapons-industrial-complex that really needs some public examination because these are the bastards that are driving the development of the universal police-state apparatus and its hardware deployments.
Again the Israelis have made themselves the perfect example of where this stuff is going and what it is intended to accomplish. The Arab news video footage of the Palestinian father and his boy killed as they huddled against the wall gives you some idea. Notice that the Apache helicopters were more or less worthless in a real combat zones, but are mighty effective at blasting civilian political offices.
The whole US propaganda campaign on international terrorism/drugs provides the US policy justification for developing, manufacturing, and deploying this entire police-state hardware package. This is the neoliberal stick-package that goes with the neoliberal carrot-package of privatizing all public services thereby releaving governments of any public duty other than the police-state details of oppression, incarceration and slaughter.
Chuck Grime