it's more powerful than the US military !!

in his book, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", John Perkins documented how something seemingly innocuous and a bit boring like the World Bank has often been used more effectively than the military as a tool of imperialism ... he showed how poorer countries were squeezed until they had to make ill-advised loans from the World Bank and when they couldn't meet their payments, they were forced by the US to "go along" with whatever evil was being demanded ... this often included support for US policies in the region or in the UN and various corporate-friendly, anti-citizen projects ... the scheme is really little more than a form of international blackmail ...

With the appointment of Wolfowitz to head the World Bank and the appointment of Chalabi, the US puppet, as Iraq's Oil Minister, bush and his oily corporate friends are almost all set to start their "legal" exploitation of Iraq's oil resources ... the insurgency in Iraq has been manufactured by bush in exactly the same way the pre-war intelligence was manufactured ... bush is not "losing the war"; it's going just the way he wants it to ... Iraq is being brought to its knees ... there are no jobs; there is no oil revenue; the people are starving and have no drinkable water and no electricity to cool themselves in the current 115 degree heat ... soon, the borrowing will begin ... and soon, all that black gold, and the money to start pumping it, will be pouring out of Iraq and going to certain friends of bush ...

Please read the full article shown below so that you'll understand the role the IMF and the World Bank (and Wolfowitz) will play in what's going on in Iraq ... don't just focus on the military and issues like withdrawal ... economic exploitation is every bit as powerful as military occupation ... each is a key component of empire-building ...

source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0531-33.htm

<skip> From the legislatures to the streets, citizens in many of the countries that borrow from the World Bank have vigorously opposed the policies it demands --privatization of basic services like water provision, health care, and education; massive public-sector lay-offs; drastic trade and investment deregulation; dismantling established protections for workers. Now a man already notorious around the world for his leading role in the Iraq war has been appointed by President Bush to lead the World Bank. It makes the link between U.S. military and economic policy clear: they are two sides of the same coin.

For the billions of people living in the countries marginalized by contemporary economic and political structures, the actions and motivations of the United States look pretty simple. It will do what is necessary to control whatever resources it considers essential, and it will use the available political, military, and economic tools to ensure that its dominance is never threatened, and in fact extended however possible. People in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have long seen that the culmination of any intervention by the United States and its allies in their countries, whether economic or military, is the re-structuring of their economies to serve foreign and corporate interests. Sometimes that means preserving unsavory regimes; occasionally it means overthrowing them. Most often it requires less violent means -- the enforcement of economic contracts by international institutions like the World Bank.

The World Bank has long been a vital part of building and maintaining a global economy that uses poorly-paid workers and farmers in poor countries to maintain the comfort of consumers in rich ones. The World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have long exploited poor countries' debt burdens to impose the policies that maintain this system. The most vulnerable people in the world are in essence paying off debts for failed policies and projects and the whims of old dictatorial regimes which they never wanted nor benefited from. <skip>

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you mean i wrote all that stuff and nobody replied ...

well, no problem because i have a subscription to:

Kick-bot ...

...tool in getting a message across. Then there were the Memorial Day holidays that competed for cyberspace as well, I guess. Well, now there are two of us who are aware and you just doubled my exposure through your link and hopefully I had some impact with you. Now, let's hope this goes nuclear! Thanks for the link.

Works.

It's not all for good, I assure you.

Think of "aid" as leverage, as coercion and as of blackmail.

It gives you a clearer idea about how the richer and poorer nations of the world use these institutions against the developing world.

,...economic exploitation, they will either arrange an assassination or wage war.

Worse, it is the nasty corporacrats who now have the power of the richest country on earth at their disposal.

The "bad guys" are in charge. They are hurting us all!!!

REJECTED the GLOBAL corporate giveaway embedded in that 500 page *bushit
doc! :bounce: :woohoo: :bounce:

Google "Luddism" and think about it...

Of course Wolfowitz is the perfect person for the job. He was wrong on everything Iraq. Bush loves to promote backwards. What a dickwad.