koyaanisqatsi fahrvergnugen

Nominee to World Bank Top Slot, Bad News for Poor Africa
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503280989.html
The New Times (Kigali)

March 28, 2005

Henry Munene
Nairobi

President Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to the helm
of the World Bank has touched off protests from all
around the world. ****ysts see Wolfowitz as likely to
water down the global challenge of making poverty a thing
of the past in Africa and the third world in general.

These misgivings about the aptitude of this card-carrying
White House neo-con comes as a result of his record as a
die-hard defender of the US foreign policy interests
almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Noreena Hertz, the
author of IOU: the Debt Threat and Why We Must Defuse It,
recently described President Bush's choice of World Bank
chief thus: "Wolfowitz is hardly even a champion of the
values on which the bank was founded. He is neither well
placed to help it meet its early goal of helping countries
rebuild, nor its later one of poverty alleviation."

Hertz, who is also a professor of global political economy
at the University of Utrecht, is among critics who feel that
Wolfowitz will at best help the US to now go the whole hog
in hijacking the Breton Woods Institutions* to selfishly
serve her national interests.

Concern about him stems from the fact that he was among
the White House neo-conservatives that fuelled the US-led
invasion of Iraq and that during his stint as the
US Ambassador in Indonesia during the reign of the
corruption-ridden Suharto administration, he scarcely
criticized the despotic regime so long as the Foreign
policy interests of his country were not in jeopardy.

His unwavering subservience to the US interests is also
seen in the fact that he helped to block countries that
were opposed to the invasion of Iraq from bidding for
contracts to reconstruct the country after the bloody
ouster of Saddam Hussein. He has also been said to be
of the opinion that Iraq should meet all the costs of
the reconstruction despite the contracts having been
mostly awarded to such companies as Hurliburton
(whose former chief executive office is **** Cheney,
another White House neo-con hawk who rose to
vice-presidency in the era of George W. Bush (Jnr).
Never mind also that the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
that supposedly led to the invasion on Iraq have turned out
to be, as wags are putting it, 'Weapons of Mass Deception'.

With Wolfowitz as a key White House advisor, the US has
of late embarked on effecting tax cuts for the rich at
home and reducing aid to poor Americans as a strategy of
fixing the world's strongest economy. The global behemoth
that is the US has also reportedly cut off aid to
countries that do not exempt her from being accountable
to the International Criminal Court. ****ysts feel that
even though Britain has announced that it would embark
on a program to make poverty history in Africa during
its presidency of the European Union through debt relief,
and given Tony Blair's Loyalty to his counterpart across
the Atlantic, it is highly unlikely that this will be
possible. Not with Wolfowitz in the driving seat.
****ysts even fear that just like it happened with
Turkey in the days of Iraq invasion, lending from the
World Bank will remain a carrot-and-stick affair with
those supporting US policy on various issues benefiting
while rebels might even be blacklisted on
less-than-principled grounds.

This fear stems from the fact that the US does not
seem to be in any hurry to reduce poverty in the
third world, at least going by the fact that it
continues advancing trade subsidies to its sugar and
cotton producers even when it is amply clear to all
and sundry that these subsidies distort world trade.

It remains also to be seen whether, under Wolfowitz,
the bank will continue its policy of basing its
lending on environmental considerations, as the
James Wolfesohn's regime at World Bank had tipped
it would.Environmental concerns is also an area
where the Bush administration has fared poorly.

With all these bleak predictions emanating from
pro - poverty eradication quarters all around
the world, Wolfowitz is bad news for Africa and
the entire Third World indeed.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503280989.html

Relevant Links:
Central Africa
http://allafrica.com/centralafrica/

United States, Canada and Africa
http://allafrica.com/usafrica/

Rwanda
http://allafrica.com/rwanda/

International Organizations and Africa
http://allafrica.com/io/

Nominee to World Bank Top Slot, Bad News for Poor Africa
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503280989.html

_|-|_|-|_|-|_|-|_

* Up to the Middle of the 19th Century, international
finance was surviving with flexible exchange rates and
rather informal markets. Then England introduced the
Gold Standard and other countries followed suit up to
WW I. After the breakdown of world trade and finance
during the Great Depression and WW II, the rebuilding
of the international financial infrastructure started
with the creation of the Breton Woods Institutions,
which have been responsible for worldwide liquidity,
exchange rates and macroeconomic monitoring (IMF) and
project and program financing of reconstruction and
development (World Bank Group). Other institutions
supporting worldwide financial rules and regulations
include the Bank for International Settlements (BIS),
The London and Paris Club of Creditor and Debtor
countries and more recently the World Trade
Organization (WTO).
http://www.videolexikon.com/view_106-02-902-0903-010.htm


See also: "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:
How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor
Countries Out of Trillions" by John Perkins http://www.johnperkins.org/ http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

prescott bush

The Wall Street Journal on Texas Congressman Tom Delay:
http://online.wsj.com/public/us

"By now, you have surely read about House Majority Leader
Tom DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't
entirely clear as to what those troubles are--something
to do with questionable junkets, Indian casino money,
funny business on the House Ethics Committee, stuff down
in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means is that
Mr. DeLay has an 'odor': nothing too incriminating,
nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that
could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade
if it gets any worse.

"The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor
issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself.

"The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power
in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big
government, has become the living exemplar of some of its
worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be
innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains
credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange
with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.

"Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never
considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers
his former staffers Michael Scanlon and [Ed] Buckham
achieved after leaving his office had something to do with
their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich
as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators
like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering
with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this
or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he
promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become
its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

"Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics
or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point.
His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of
principles that brought him into office, and which, if he
continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out."
http://online.wsj.com/public/us

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

SECRET U.S. PLANS FOR IRAQ'S OIL
BBC News World Edition
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight (London)
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=417&row=0

Why was Paul Wolfowitz pushed out of the Pentagon onto the
World Bank? The answer lies in a 323-page do***ent, secret
until now, indicating that the allies of Big Oil in the
Bush Administration have defeated neo-conservatives and
their chief Wolfowitz. BBC Television Newsnight tells the
true story of the fall of the neo-cons. An investigation
conducted by BBC with Harper's magazine will also reveal
that the US State Department made detailed plans for war
in Iraq -- and for Iraq's oil -- within weeks of Bush's
first inauguration in 2001.
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=417&row=0
********************

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's
oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle
between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced
US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb
Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan
for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a
hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon,
on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives
and US State Department "pragmatists."

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained
by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned,
drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks"
of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the
September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury,
says he took part in the secret meetings in California,
Washington and the Middle East. He described a State
Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed
potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the
Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by yet
another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion
in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's
oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives
intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel
through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret
meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly
after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.
Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil ****yst, now a
fellow at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he
told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam,
claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the
US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate
the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your
country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy
billionaires who want to take you over and make your life
miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities,
pipelines, built on the premise that privatization
is coming."

Privatization blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took
control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a
month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US
occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that:
"There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources
or facilities while I was involved."

The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil
executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil
company preferred by the industry.

Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation,
told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to
privatise Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as
a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America
should have gone ahead with what he called a
"no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree
with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer.
It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by
Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom
of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned
oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was
completed in January 2004, Harper's discovered, under
the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute
in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an
attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing
ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry
prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because
it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatization.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil
companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Jaffe said "There is no question that an American oil
company ... would not be enthusiastic about a plan that
would privatize all the assets with Iraq companies and
they (US companies) might be left out of the transaction."

In addition, Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are not
warm to any plan that would undermine Opec,
"They [oil companies] have to worry about the price of oil."

"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company,
and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil
prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told
Newsnight, "Many neo conservatives are people who have
certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy,
about this that and the other. International oil companies
without exception are very pragmatic commercial
organizations. They don't have a theology."

A State Department spokesman told Newsnight they intended
"to provide all possibilities to the Oil Ministry of Iraq
and advocate none".

Read the story in greater detail in the April issue of
Harper's magazine - out Tuesday at your local newsstand.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller,
"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." View his writings at
http://www.GregPalast.com.

Leni von Eckardt contributed investigative research
for this project.

For interviews, email us at contact(at)GregPalast.com http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=417&row=0


"Those who do battle with monsters
must take care that they do not
thereby become a monster.
Always remember that when you
gaze into the abyss, the abyss
gazes back on you."
-- Freidrich Nietzsche
http://www.counterpunch.org/

Betrayed (1988)
Directed by: Costa Gavras
Featuring: Debra Winger, Tom Berenger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094731/

The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
Directed by: Volker Schlondorff
Featuring: Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099731/

Nine**** Eighty-Four (1984)
Directed by: Michael Radford
Featuring: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087803/

Titus (1999)
Directed by: Julie Taymor
Featuring: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120866/

The House of the Spirits (1993)
Directed by: Bille August
Featuring: Meryl Streep, Glenn Close,
Jeremy Irons, Winona Ryder
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107151/

SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER...AND SPRING
http://www.sonyclassics.com/spring/

"The Story of the WEEPING CAMEL" http://www.thinkfilmcompany.com/weepingcamel/

woody brison

Yo, Prescott, and all your sock puppets,

Would it be too much to ask that you cease to crosspost all this
rubbish to twenty newsgroups at a time, not one of which it is on-
topic in, and in which there is not one person who is in the
slightest interested?