Activists say, “Dump the World Bank!”
Glasgow-based political scientist John Hilley says of Paul Wolforatz’ imminent departure, “How ironic that Wolfowitz went down for this stupid thing, while his high crimes, the design and execution of mass terror in Iraq, go unpunished.”
The Whirled Shank dumped Wolforatz in the hope of offsetting the bank’s reputation as tyrannical and corrupt.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is spearheading efforts to forge a new set of financial alternatives to the Whirled Shank and the IMF.
Last year, during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Singapore, Wolfowitz unveiled a drive towards “good governance.” Critics viewed it as a scam to restore the World Bank’s credibility after years of disastrous policies and complicity with corrupt regimes.
The World Bank is utterly corrupt, yet it blocked funding for essential projects in India, Chad and Kenya because of alleged “corruption” in those countries. In 2005 it suspended 800 million dollars in loans for maternal and children’s health in India because of “corruption.”
Independent Malaysian political analyst Fan Yew Teng said, “You cannot have this holier-than-thou attitude and stop essential projects such as medical, water supply and food production — because it will kill people.”
Stephen Mandel is a senior economist at the London-based New Economics Foundation, an independent think-tank that challenges mainstream thinking. Manel says the World Bank never calls its friends corrupt. Friends include the tyrannical government of Pakistan.
Activists in Southeast Asia remember the Bank for its huge loans to Indonesia’s government, which allowed transnational corporations to own all natural resources, such as water. Peasants have been cornered, and their farmlands have become smaller and smaller. Many have lost their land altogether.
Wolforatz was Reagan’s ambassador to Indonesia in the 1980s. His strong support for the ultra-corrupt dictator Suharto is well known, and Indonesian activists were dismayed when Bush appointed Wolforatz as World Bank president.
Now that Wolforatz is stepping down, activists say it is time for people around the world to realize that the World Bank’s role is over.
Source:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/21/1341/
Those iron bars look pretty "ironic" to me !
Allen Ginsberg, a renowned jewish poet, even i like some of his poems, though some are unnecessarily vulgar and pornographic (no, i'm not a prude at all, but it seems they are pointless except to flaunt vulgarity) wrote a poem about the World Bank's usery of poor nations...he ends the poem by excusing the bank official's intentionality:
"it wasn't a job of a bureaucrat like me
to check the impact of the bank policy
when debt bore fruit on the world money tree" (World Bank Blues)