Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
World Bank Chum into the Global Food Crisis Frenzy
World Bank Chum into the Global Food Crisis Frenzy: The Four Horses Ride Again
by C. L. Cook
The World Bank today charged out of the
wilderness at the fourth International Conference on African
Development (TICAD) in Tokyo to announce its 1.2 billion dollar (US)
top up of a loans fund aimed at the heart of Africa, (including a few
juicy throw-away grants to poverty-poster children in Haiti, Djibouti,
and Liberia) with promises of more to come.
Well they had to come back, and honesty be told,
we all know they had never really gone away; from the darkened wings is risen again the four-headed monster to the world's miserable, the
World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Food
Programme (WFE), and the Food and Agricultural Association (FOA), joined by
a conglomeration of various other UN and EU international poverty pimps doing business under the rubric of "international institutions."
Drawn to the media limelight like so many fish brought to the
surface by the full-mooned brilliance of the growing Global Food Crisis
(GFC), the organizations that proved the agency of incalculable
suffering and misery around the planet over the last few decades are
back.
Amazingly though, the tools the paragons of economic prowess
proffer as cure to the ills of the backward blacks of Africa and the
Caribbean are the same loans-for-social-sacrifice instruments known at
the peak of IMF/WB influence as Structural Adjustment Programs
(SAPs).
In a performance worthy of the Reagan era, today the
World Bank's current numero uno, president Robert Zoellick outlined his
gang's plan for Africa's future, as the Voice of America quotes him;
"[T]he assistance being provided Liberia is intended to
help boost agricultural production in the country, by providing farmers
all the requisite support they need to grow more food. Haiti, the World
Bank President announced, will also receive similar support.
Mr.
Zoellick disclosed that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and other international
institutions are drawing up a comprehensive program to determine an
efficient and effective approach in dealing with the situation."
The Situation
In
the guise of rescuers of economic basket cases around the world, these
international operators lever national disasters into promising
opportunities for perpetual control over the lives and livelihoods of
the "beneficiaries" of their largess, once those suckers are duly
saddled with impossible loan repayments.
It's a phenomena recently
outlined in great detail in Naomi Klein's best-seller, 'The Shock
Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,' (an expansion, among other
things, of points emphasized at every rally against globalization since
at least last century's 'Battle of Seattle') and made grotesquely lucrative
in places like Iraq, Louisiana, and more recently, Burma.
The principle
is surprisingly simple: Find someone desperate enough to agree to any
terms for survival, then make them an offer they can't refuse. As Klein
chillingly informs; these disasters need not be nature's
doing, nor need they be waited for, necessarily.
The
Guardian's Julian Borger reports the World Bank will "fast-track"
monies, "bypassing the normal vetting procedures." Among the normal
procedures left behind seems to be any sense of shame, or propriety.
Borger quotes the redoubtable Zoellick;
"The fast-track World
Bank money would be available immediately, bypassing the normal project
vetting procedures, and would help fund safety net support for the
hungry, in the form of school feeding programmes or food-for-work
schemes. Zoellick said priority would be given to pregnant women and
infants, who were most vulnerable. The money would also be spent on
seeds and fertiliser for farmers for the next few harvests."
Work for Food Schemes?
So,
220 million of the 1.2 billion is destined to feed the pregnant and
infants in the form of "grants" for now, the bulk of further aid
presumably coming later in the form of loans, certainly not of the
sub-prime variety; and in a new twist, "work for food schemes."
Zoellick's a little short on the details of that one, but we can all
but hope the WB will learn from the failures of the UN's Food for Oil
programme.
This time, as in the past, the spotlight is trained
on Africa and benighted Haiti. Following years in decline, especially
in the Americas, the figurative smell of blood in the water
accompanying the recent spike in oil and fuel prices affecting most the
world economy's hardest done-by, president Zoellick seems poised to
pounce to solve problems largely created by the system he sits atop.
The invocation to stir good Zoellick from his Swiss perch seems
Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's plea for assistance. Just
the enticement to gain the doorway. Johnson Sirleaf will doubtless discover:
Some guests never leave once invited in; not without a good measure of
blood.
Whether Work for Food, Food for Oil, or Blood for Oil,
today's backdated gesture by the World Bank and its old order coterie
reveals just how far from reality these global string-pullers have drifted:
There is no more "there" there fellas. The blood is all gone.
But, Zoellick persists;
"This
is not an issue like HIV/AIDS where you need some research
breakthrough. People know what to do, and we need to get the resources
out quickly to where they are needed."
Another scheme kicking
around is the idea to introduce "management tools such as hedge funds
and insurance schemes to protect poor countries and their farmers."
Makes you want to weep for the humanity of it.
The nabobs of the world's
economy will meet in Rome next week to chart this and scheme that.
Robert Zoellick laid out his organization's game plan, saying;
"As
we go into the Rome meeting next week it is crucial that we focus on
specific action. Along with our partners, these initiatives will help
address the immediate danger of hunger and malnutrition for the 2
billion people struggling to survive in the face of rising food prices,
and contribute to a longer-term solution that must involve many
countries and institutions."
Doubtless that "longer-term solution" will be short in coming.
Liberia: World Bank Pledges Us$10 Million to Country At TICAD
The Analyst (Monrovia)
29 May 2008
World Bank Boosts Aid To Fight Hunger
By VOA News
29 May 2008
World Bank's $1.2bn fund to feed the poor· Rapid response facility to help developing countries Liberia, Haiti and Djibouti receive first three grants
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
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