Fw: [corp-focus] A Dozen Reasons to Come to DC for April 16

["Sharon Sullivan" <herbals@moscow.com>]

I thought there might be some interest within this group to know about the
upcoming "public policy debate" to happen in Washington DC soon.  So, I
forward this from an e-group:

Sharon Sullivan
e-mail: herbals@moscow.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>
To: <corp-focus@venice.essential.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 2:58 PM
Subject: [corp-focus] A Dozen Reasons to Come to DC for April 16


> A Dozen Reasons to Come to DC for April 16
> By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>
> The next citizen showdown against corporate globalization will be on April
> 16 and 17, when thousands of people come to Washington, D.C. to protest --
> through legal demonstrations and/or civil disobedience -- the politics of
> the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. For details on
> events, see www.a16.org. Here's a dozen reasons why you should join the
> protests:
>
> 1. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs have increased poverty
> around the world.
>
> Structural adjustment -- the standard IMF/World Bank policy package which
> calls for slashing government spending, privatization, and opening up
> countries to exploitative foreign investment, among other measures -- has
> deepened poverty around the world. In the two regions with the most
> structural adjustment experience, per capita income has stagnated (Latin
> America) or plummeted (Africa). Structural adjustment has also contributed
> to rising income and wealth inequality in the developing world.
>
> 2. IMF/World Bank "debt relief" for poor and indebted countries is a sham.
>
> Many poor countries must devote huge portions of their national budgets to
> paying back foreign creditors -- often for loans that were made to or for
> dictators, wasteful military spending or boondoggle projects. The money
> used to pay back debt subtracts from essential expenditures on health,
> education, infrastructure and other important needs.
>
> The IMF/World Bank plan to relieve poor countries' debt burden will leave
> most poor countries paying nearly as much as they currently do. And all of
> the debt relief is conditioned on countries undergoing years of closely
> monitored structural adjustment.
>
> 3. The IMF has helped foster a severe depression in Russia.
>
> Russia in the 1990s has witnessed a peacetime economic contraction of
> unprecedented scale -- with the number of Russians in poverty rising from
> 2 million to 60 million since the IMF came to post-Communist Russia. The
> IMF's "shock therapy" -- sudden and intense structural adjustment --
> helped bring about this disaster. "In retrospect, it's hard to see what
> could have been done wrong that wasn't," says Mark Weisbrot of the Center
> for Economic and Policy Research.
>
> 4. The IMF helped create and worsen the Asian financial crisis.
>
> The IMF encouraged Asian countries to open their borders to "hot money" --
> speculative finance invested in currency, stocks and short-term
> securities. That was an invitation to trouble. The Asian financial crisis
> resulted from the hot money brokers' herdlike decision to leave Asian
> countries en masse.
>
> Once the crisis hit, the IMF made things worse by requiring structural
> adjustment as a condition for IMF loans. The result was a surge in
> bankruptcies, layoffs and poverty. In Indonesia, poverty rates rose from
> an official level of 11 percent to 40 to 60 percent, depending on the
> estimate. At one point, Indonesia's food shortage became so severe that
> then-President Habibie implored citizens to fast twice a week. Many had no
> choice.
>
> 5. The IMF bails out big banks.
>
> The IMF bailouts in Asia, like those in Russia and Mexico, directed money
> to those countries largely for the purpose of paying off loans to foreign
> banks. Thanks to the IMF, the banks escaped significant losses for
> imprudent lending decisions. Citigroup, Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan
> were among the beneficiaries of the "Korean" bailout.
>
> 6. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs devastate the
> environment.
>
> Structural adjustment demands an increase in exports and foreign exchange
> earnings. As a result, explains Friends of the Earth, "Countries often
> over-exploit their resources through unsustainable forestry, mining and
> agricultural practices that generate pollution and environmental
> destruction."
>
> 7. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs contribute to the spread
> of HIV/AIDS.
>
> Here's how Dr. Peter Lurie and collaborators explained the problem in the
> journal AIDS: The displacement of the rural sector under structural
> adjustment programs -- as imports undermine local farmers and the shift to
> large-scale plantations for exports further displaces the rural population
> -- contributes to migration and urbanization. Many men leave rural
> villages for work in big cities or in mines, contract HIV/AIDS from casual
> sex partners or sex workers, and then spread the disease to spouses in
> their home village. The displacement of children and young women into the
> cities has led to a sharp increase in commercial sex work and heightened
> rates of HIV/AIDS.
>
> 8. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs harm women.
>
> Cuts in budget spending, mandated by structural adjustment programs, leave
> women to pick up the pieces -- with government services eliminated, women
> are forced to provide informal social supports for the sick and disabled.
> The IMF/Bank emphasis on exports has pushed women farmers to switch from
> growing food for family consumption to crops for exports -- and left them
> poorer in the process. The high interest rates associated with structural
> adjustment have made credit less accessible, undermining the viability of
> small women-owned businesses.
>
> 9. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs and Bank project loans
> have led to deforestation worldwide.
>
> The export orientation demanded by structural adjustment policies has led
> to more forest cutting. And World Bank forest sector loans to countries
> around the world have done nothing to improve the situation.
>
> "Although the [1991 Bank Forest] policy had dual objectives of
> conservation of tropical moist forests and tree planting to meet the basic
> needs of the poor, Bank influence on containing rates of deforestation of
> tropical moist forests has been negligible in the 20 countries with the
> most threatened tropical moist forests." Who said that? The World Bank's
> own Operations Evaluation Department, in November 1999!
>
> 10. World Bank policies have displaced millions of people around the
> world.
>
> World Bank loans for dams and major infrastructure projects routinely
> require removal of massive numbers of people from their homes and
> destruction of their communities. In addition to the emotional hardship of
> leaving their land, the displaced people almost always find their quality
> of life diminished after the move. The Bank itself agrees. A 1994 report
> from the World Bank's Environmental Department found that, "Declines in
> post relocation incomes are sometimes significant, in certain cases
> reaching as much as 40 percent for people who were poor even before their
> displacement."
>
> 11. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) provides
> corporate welfare for environmentally destructive projects.
>
> The IFC finances and provides advice for private sector ventures and
> projects in developing countries in partnership with private investors.
> Among its private sector partners: ExxonMobil, BP, Coca-Cola,
> Kimberly-Clark and Marriott. There's no reason for a public development
> institution, supposedly working to fight poverty, to lend its support to
> these well-endowed multinationals. Making matters worse, many of the
> private sector projects supported by the IFC, especially in the oil and
> gas sector, are environmentally destructive.
>
> 12. April 16 is a chance to make history.
>
> While massive protests against IMF and World Bank policies are commonplace
> in the developing world -- from Jordan to Indonesia, Venezuela to Zambia
> -- the IMF and World Bank are not accountable to populations in those
> countries. In contrast, there has never been a demonstration of more than
> a few hundred people to challenge IMF and Bank policy in the United States
> -- the largest and most influential shareholder in the institutions.
>
> That's going to change on April 16. The thousands of people who will
> attend the April 16 protests will forever change the political context of
> debates on IMF and the World Bank -- the best hope for billions in the
> developing world who have been subjected to the IMF and Bank's brutal
> policies with no recourse.
>
> Special bonus reason to come to D.C.: With large puppets, colorful
> pagaentry, militant protests, Emcee Michael Moore at the legal
> demonstration on the Ellipse, and lots of great music, the protests will
> be a fun-filled festival of resistance.
>
>
> Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
> Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
> Multinational Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action, one of the
> sponsors of the April 16 Mobilization for Global Justice. Mokhiber and
> Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits
> and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999,
> http://www.corporatepredators.org)
>
> (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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