kangaeru

For those of you who don't know, the United States is crippling the international economy.

Think about that for a second...we are CRIPPLING the international economy.

You look at the Iraq war like it means something--it's just a side show, meant to distract the masses from the real underlying events going on. But that's how truly wise men go about their business...undetected because of their preconceived distractions.

Okay so I probably sound a little looney right now, like this belongs in conspiracy theories or something. That would be true...if these were theories without extensive evidence to support them.

The extensions through which the U.S. subjugates third world nations are known as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) . The IMF was a bank set up after World War II which was meant to allow ruined countries to make low interest loans so they could rebuild. The WTO is the international 'trade police' and is comprised of the largest countries in the world. If you want to join the club, you have to agree to play by their rules, or you can trade with none of those countries--which is pretty all of the major global economic players.

So, a poor country wants to join the club. They want to take out loans from the IMF so that they can invest into their industries and enter the global market with some competitiveness. In order for a country to receive a loan from the IMF, they must conform to mandatory structural adjustment programs. SAP's typically forced countries to cut a lot of spending, specifically on public health, education, transportation, etc. They weak labor laws and give more strength to employers, they force governments to end subsidies of protected domestic markets.

Take Haiti for example. Rice is the main staple food of their country, and in 1986 they imported only 7,000 tons of rice a year, their domestic industry creating supply for the majority of people. After pressure from the WTO and the U.S. to end the government's protection of the rice farmers, citing it as being unfair, the government conceded. Around the same time this happened, the U.S. instituted a national farm bill giving a wide range of American farmers U.S. government subsidies--in the case of American rice farmers, 40% of their profits came from the U.S. govt. So...of course, Haitian farmers couldn't compete with the foreign rice flooding the country, and the amount of rice imported to the country rose to 192,000 tons at a cost of 50 million dollars a year to the economy.

The purpose of structural adjustment programs on the surface is to make third world countries economy's stable enough so that they will be able to attract foreign investment, and pay off their debt (with interest) to the IMF. What really happens is that these SAP's sabotage a country's ability to independantly support itself--it comes to rely on international suppliers for all of its staple products like food, cooking oil, etc, and multinational corporations for labor supply. We have all heard of sweatshops, and that is the kind of conditions many of these workers are forced to live in. If they try to protest, they're marched back to work by the army. If they try to unionize, they're assassinated. If they try to quit and find work elsewhere, they're black listed and can't find work anywhere. They're paid only enough to sustain their lives so that they can come to work and toil the next day. This is the economic freedom which the U.S. spreading throughout the world--we're destroying the lives of millions of people all so we can live saturated in our own indulgences.

The funny thing is, we're cannibalizing our own country. All of our firms are going to countries where labor is cheaper and products can be made for less, and then they're shipped here. The same cheap flood of imports which we use to ruin other country's economies is exactly what is happening to us, although we are so huge it is going to take time for the effects to show to the point where people can see it everyday.

For example, in 1994 GM built a large production facility in Mexico, for Suburbans. In 1994, the price of a Suburban was 21-25k U.S. dollars. In 1996, when the Mexican production plant produced 84,500 suburbans compared with the 85,000 built in the U.S., the price of suburbans rose to 25-31k. The average pay of the U.S. plant workers was $18.96 an hour--in Mexico, the plant workers were paid $1.54 an hour. So why did the price skyrocket?

There is a growing trend in the world of CEO's hording all of the profit and passing none of it on to the consumers. In 1970 the average CEO to average employee pay of fortune 500 companies was 49 to 1. By 2002, this number had risen to 354 to 1. Can you imagine that? For every 1 dollar you make, your CEO makes $354. It's just mind blowing.

This is global capitalism...or global imperialism, if you want to call it that. Since the days of Old Europe, stronger, more economically and militarily advanced countries have subjugated weaker smaller countries, making them specialize in the exportation of only one product, and making them buy all of their products from the mother country, holding them economically hostage. What do you do if you're Jamaican and your ONLY profitable export is bananas, and all of a sudden there's a global drop in the price of bananas. All of a sudden, you're making half of what you used to, but everything you still HAVE to buy to sustain your life is now double the real cost of what it used to be.

This is why people truly hate our country. Because we control the WTO and IMF, which are run by a 'largest piece of the pie' majority rule. The United States holds about 17% of the voting power, and together with Europe and Japan combined, these three major areas hold over 85% of voting power. So if the most powerful countries in the world are the ones influencing the policies which directly affect them, how can you not expect a conflict of interest to arise? But that's the whole point, that's how they like it. And there is nothing anybody can do to stop them.

When the North American Free Trade Alliance talks happened in Miami, FL, 50,000 + people showed up to protest it. They were met by 5,000 riot police with tear gas and rubber bullets. People died from catching rubber bullets to their ears or eyes, but you never heard about any of this. It looked like some kind of scene out of a science fiction movie in with a neo-facist government supresses it's peoples' right to free speech...it's the Tinnamen square of U.S. history, but NOBODY knows about it.

Because we're always distracted.

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Dont be afraid to change who you are for what you could become