Asia Times: Revenge of the developing world?

THE ROVING EYE
A bailout and a new world
By Pepe Escobar

WASHINGTON and SAO PAULO - The George W Bush administration's US$700 billion no-accountability scheme, globally, informally dubbed "cash for trash", is making all the headlines. Simultaneously, there's the small matter of the United Nations General Assembly sanctioning the troubled birth of a new, multipolar world. As a 21st-century counterpart to the Dadaist Manifesto, this chain of events is priceless.

One just had to listen to the speeches. Brazilian President Lula da Silva passionately expounded the new political, economic and commercial geography of the multipolar world. He praised the Union of Latin American Nations (UNASUR) - the first treaty uniting all South American nations in 200 years. He blasted supranational economic institutions that now have no authority - and no policies - to prevent "speculative anarchy".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy correctly described the Wall Street meltdown as the biggest crisis since the 1930s. He is proposing to "rebuild" capitalism - in fact, in his original French, to "moralize" capitalism, not subjected to wily market operators, with banks financing development and not engaging in speculation, and with firm control of credit agencies. Sarkozy described speculators as "the new terrorists". US Republicans of course call Sarkozy's plan socialism - as if the Ben Bernanke-Hank Paulson bailout scheme was not no-holds-barred socialism for the wealthy.
UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon urged the democratization of the UN. This would mean in practice a new International Monetary Fund and a new World Bank - both still controlled by the US and Western Europe.

And then Bolivian President Evo Morales nailed it. The new multipolar world should get rid of imperialism and colonialism. Evo stressed there's no possible social peace under hardcore capitalism - the global masses would heartily agree. Of course Evo didn't fail to recall the longtime, concerted Bush administration campaign against him - once dubbed "the bin Laden from the Andes" by a former US ambassador. He stressed there was not a single word of condemnation by the US of relentless right-wing terrorism in Bolivia, unlike all the nations of South America talking with one voice via UNASUR. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI26Ak02.html

I plan to read all the speeches this week end.

The Washington Consensus is dead - I'll be spitting on that coffin.

So right! Total moral bankruptcy.

Monkeyboy saying to President da Silva "if you're not not my friend you're my enemy" was ill considered to say the least.