From: Sean Johnson Andrews
I would also mention that ANSWER isn't the only group organizing for tomorrow. In fact,I think the day was originally chosen by a local group called Mobilization for Global Justice, a group that usually organizes marches in Sept. around the IMF/World Bank meetings, which are also this weekend. That's where I heard about the marches first.
Indeed, as you pass 17th and Penn, please give a big LBO salute to the Bretton Woods Institutions' annual meetings. Inside, the SA finance minister Trevor Manuel - who at the spring meetings called Wolfowitz a 'wonderful individual' - will be chairing the Development Committee, which once again will not do anything on the WB's democratisation. Not that a rejigging of quotas would mean anything. The movement to shut the WB/IMF down by defunding it continues apace (http://www.worldbankboycott.org), with a big conference next week in Havana where Latin American movements will be ratcheting up the pressure on the many silly Washington/London NGOs who still dance with the BWIs. For those in Washington, some excellent side-movement propaganda:
(Two good global eco-social justice connections.)
Contacts: Basav Sen :: 202 997 0479 / basav at igc.org Hope Chu :: 303 667 6613 / hope at 50years.org Tia Swett :: 202 360 0027 / swettalthea at yahoo.com
Theatrical March to Protest IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings Demonstrators Link Global Economic Policies, Iraq War
Washington DC activist group Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ) is planning a theatrical, colorful march and rally to protest the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
WHAT: GLOBAL JUSTICE FEEDER MARCH AND RALLY WHEN: Saturday, September 24, 2005. Rally starts at 11:30 a.m., March steps off at 12:30 pm. WHERE: Rally in Dupont Circle, March to join the anti-war march. Speakers in Dupont include: ?Victor Geronimo - lawyer, journalist and labor organizer from the Dominican Republic; ?Fr. Thomas Kocherry - priest and activist working with tsunami survivors from India; ?Nompumelelo Magwaza - youth organizer and poet from South Africa; ?Brian Anders - Empower DC, a low-income peoples? organization working for affordable housing and childcare in DC.
With anti-war demonstrations in Washington DC taking place during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, and a key architect of the Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz, at the helm of the World Bank, the time is right to cast the spotlight on the connections between militaristic US foreign policy and the global economic policies of the IMF and World Bank, which are inextricably intertwined.
"The US is using Iraq as a laboratory for its destructive neoliberal economic agenda - which The Economist called ?the wish-list of foreign investors' - which reduces impoverished countries to providers of resources and cheap labor for multinational corporations," said MGJ spokesperson Hope Chu, "The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the occupying U.S. administration prior to the Iraqi elections, decreed the privatization of all state enterprises and the elimination of all trade barriers." The CPA also facilitated the entry of the World Bank and IMF into Iraq. Today, these institutions want to end food and fuel subsidies, which are a lifeline for poor Iraqis. The beneficiaries are multinational corporations, who can sell their goods freely in Iraq and take over formerly state-owned industries.
The policies imposed by the US in Iraq are identical to the policies imposed by the World Bank and IMF on borrowing countries, notes Catherine Benedict, an activist with MGJ: "From privatizing water in Ghana with no regard for poor people?s access to clean water, to forcing open Haiti?s market for rice resulting in the further impoverishment of poor farmers, to eliminating subsidized food distribution in India, the World Bank and IMF facilitate corporate exploitation of poor countries. The goals and results of illegitimate US military interventions, and of the equally illegitimate global economic system enforced by the IMF and World Bank, are very closely related."
On September 24, the Mobilization for Global Justice will protest the corrupt global system created and sustained by the U.S. government, the IMF, and World Bank, which concentrates economic and military power in a few countries and whose agents run riot across the globe, extracting essential resources, exacerbating climate change, and impoverishing the majority of humanity.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SEPTEMBER 23, 2005
Joint Release: Global Justice Ecology Project and 50 Years Is Enough Network
CONTACT: Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project-mobile 802.578.0477
Sameer Dossani, 50 Years Is Enough Network-mobile 202.340.0216
Protests Planned for DC as Hurricane Advances Toward Coast Iraq War, Global Warming Induced Hurricanes and World Bank Linked
Washington, DC--Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to descend on the nation's capitol this weekend to protest the Iraq War. Protests are also planned for the World Bank, which is holding its annual fall meetings.
More and more people are beginning to connect global warming to the war and to the World Bank as a second massive storm prepares to pound another U.S. coastal area.
"What we have in Iraq is a war for oil to fuel an economy that depends on more and more oil as fossil fuel-driven global warming intensifies," stated Anne Petermann, co-Director of Global Justice Ecology Project. "This is an untenable situation-one that people in the U.S. and the world must start to address," she continued.
Climatologists are coming to consensus that the increased severity of storms, as witnessed in Katrina and now Rita, is a direct result of the global warming-induced rise in the temperature of ocean water. Continued increases in fossil fuel emissions, they warn, will lead to more and increasingly severe weather-including droughts, floods, hurricanes, blizzards. The United Nations estimates that global warming related catastrophes have claimed over 500,000 lives in the last decade alone.
The World Bank will be meeting this weekend in Washington, DC and one of the items on their agenda is global warming.
The G-8 meetings in Scotland this summer put the World Bank in charge of identifying solutions to global warming. "The World Bank is probably the agency most responsible for developing fossil fuels in the world. They have ignored the recommendations of their own Extractive Industries Review to get out of fossil fuel development, and now the G-8 wants to put them in charge of finding 'solutions' to global warming? It's ludicrous," said Sameer Dossani, Director of 50 Years Is Enough Network.
Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq war, is the new head of the World Bank, which spent $28 billion since 1992 on developing fossil fuels, 80% of which was exported to G-8 countries. "Essentially, the World Bank wants to make money from causing global warming and then they want to make even more money as the world's broker in the trading of fossil fuel emissions. It's incredibly cynical," 50 Years Is Enough Network's Dossani added.
Climatologists warn that the devastation that has occurred on the Gulf Coast is just the tip of the iceberg. We have only seen a one degree rise in the temperature of the world's oceans at this point, where a three to five degree rise is predicted by the end of the century, leading some to argue that Global warming is a much greater threat than terrorism. "We need to get out of Iraq and away from this oil-driven economy and focus resources on addressing global warming before its too late," said Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050924/5305d93e/attachment.htm>