|
The Source...
Below,
you'll find extensive information on leading mortage refinance rates
articles and products to help you on your way to success.
2 books
How to Raise a Super Kid and
S.H.E. Self Healing Energy and for ebooks
starting at $3.00 click
The World Bank And The Spread Of The American Empire
By Dene McGriff, Fri Dec 9th
The World Bank and the Spread of the American Empire By DeneMcGriff I must confess to being a “cog” as in the “cog” in amachine. Did I know I was? Nope, but I have gradually come tosee that I was a “cog” in the building of the American GlobalEmpire. Please don’t get mad at me for my confessions, for Icertainly didn’t realize it at the time. In fact, most of us areoblivious to what is really going on around us. I certainly was,but the more I look into my past, the more I realize my role –as apparently innocent as it appeared to be. I spent most of mylife in international work but little did I know what I wasreally involved in. I was a little cog in a great big machinethat was creating the greatest global empire in the history ofthe world. We didn’t carry guns, just a briefcase and a laptop!We were the new empire builders! Please let me explain.Background America has been building a vast global empire forthe past century. By the end of WWII, it was the undisputedleader with only Russia and its satellites standing in the wayof global hegemony! A couple of quick little wars in Korea andVietnam showed the futility of winning by conventional means.But a much more serious war was on whose goal was to turn theentire world into client states of America – tied to us by ourapparent generosity and good will. How did this process work?The end of World War II left Europe and Japan in shambles (thedeveloped world). How were they to be rebuilt? What was thestrategy? Very simple, we opened our markets to them. Weinvested in their business and infrastructure. But what of therest of the undeveloped world? How were we going to bring theminto the Twentieth Century? In true American form andefficiency, we launched a multi-pronged attack. The Peace Corpsent out young people throughout the world to identify anddevelop projects. These were the best and the brightest. Theywere bilingual, sensitive cross-culturally and became the sourcefor great expansion of international business, international aidand development and the CIA. The Peace Corp spawned the birth ofcompanies known as “the beltway bandits” – consulting companieseager to help the government spend USAID, World Bank, IMF andother monies. I worked on and off for these consulting companiesover a period of 25 years. Christian relief and developmentagencies also got involved in the act (World Relief, CatholicRelief Services, World Vision, Food for the Hungry, etc.) aswell. I worked with two of them as well. These minions of “dogooders” (myself included) fanned out across the globedeveloping relationships, identifying needs, writing grants andbusiness plans to bring economic development to the“undeveloped” world. I personally worked all over Central andSouth America, the Far East (Thailand, Indonesia and thePhilippines), Africa and the Middle East. All this time, I hadno idea I was a part of the machine Phase I The back drop of allthis is that the developed world – Europe, Japan, America andCanada represented about 20 percent of the world population.Latin America, Africa and the rest of Asia, India, Pakistan andSoutheast Asia represented the other 80 percent. They neededinfrastructure – water, power, transportation, industry,bridges, dams, technology. How were we to get that to them andwhere would this all lead? The seductive part is that out goalwas so good. Most people were dying from diseases caused bydrinking bad water. Cholera, typhoid, malaria – so many diseasescould be taken care of just by improving sanitation. Agriculturecould be improved, natural resources exploited, industrydeveloped, housing improved, etc. So the army of volunteers,consultants and corporate executives spread throughout the worldlooking for opportunity. But who would pay for it? Thesecountries certainly didn’t have excess money to pay for costlyinfrastructure! The same foundation that was laid to rebuildEurope and Japan was used – the IMF and World Bank, the UnitedStates Agency for International Development (USAID), the InterAmerican Development Bank, the Asia Development Bank, etc. USAIDis a part of the State Department and works closely with, if notfor the CIA (as I found out the hard way). The “political” and“economic” officers and attaches of our embassies were almostalways CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Reports produced –whether on health care, agricultural development, education,population control (known as “woman and child health”) – allended up in CIA reports. There was a tremendous amount ofoverlap between the different agencies and the companies workingwith them. As development occurred, USAID tended to phase outand World Bank took over and “bilateral relationships” wereestablished with developing country governments. Here is how itworked. Acquaintances were made, and friendships establishedespecially through the Peace Corps and Christian missionarieswho were there as “scouts” for the empire. They were followed byconsultants who would be hired by USAID to identify needs, anddevelop specifications for a project. This would result in anRFP (Request for Proposal) which would go out in formalgovernment digests. Consulting companies or businesses wouldthen develop proposals in response to the RFP. There wouldusually be a committee consisting of USAID employees andcounterparts in the host government that would go through aselection process. Eventually, it would be awarded to a US firm.I personally worked on hundreds of proposals and numerousprojects. Here is an example of how it works. In 1985, I wasselected as team leader to evaluate a $27 million healthinfrastructure project that had been awarded to WestinghouseHealth Systems. This was the mid term evaluation of a multi-yearproject. It was an exciting time – machine gun fire and mortarsgoing off constantly up in the mountains above the Holiday Innwhere we stayed. I spent the better part of the summer there.The Salvadoran people were gracious and hard working. The folksstaying in the hotel either worked for a consulting company, theCIA, paramilitary or adoption agencies. There were even a coupleof Russians. It was quite an eclectic mix. There were four otherpeople on my team looking at different aspects of the project.Westinghouse was providing training, buying medical supplies,ambulances, etc. Two really important things came out of thestudy. The first and most important is that only about $2million was a grant. The rest, about $25 million, was a loanthat had to be paid back. I found that this was quite common.Most of our “aid” was really in the form of loans – hundreds ofmillions in all that had to be paid back! The other is that thehealth budget for the country didn’t increase by $27 million. Infact it didn’t increase at all. I asked the Minister of Healthwhy not? They spent it on other things – mainly guns. Thisaspect of the report became very controversial as the report hitCongress. They tracked me down in Kingston, Jamaica to ask meabout it. It turns out that the USAID health and populationofficer in charge of the project told Congress it was additionalmoney to the budget. He was furious with me and later got caughtdoing deals under the table and ended up going to jail for a fewyears. When you look at the billions of dollars spent in thesedifferent countries, you quickly see that 90 or more percentwere in the form of loans – loans that had to be paid back! Thebest thing to happen
was a natural disaster, an earthquake,typhoon or flood which led to cooperation and later projects torebuild. This isn’t to be cynical about the recent tsunami butthat is how it worked. I will come back to the details in laterarticles but the debt became an unbearable load to thesedeveloping countries. The infrastructure projects were soldbased on optimistic estimates of GDP growth that never quitehappened. A few of the elites in the government and business gotwealthy, but there was marginal benefit for the people. Ahistory of default and restructuring of loans followed, but werenever paid. Just like our credit card debt, they were lucky tokeep up with the interest but never quite got to the principle.They could work off some of the debt by giving concessions toAmerican business, voting with the U.S. in the United Nations orproviding other benefits to America. In some cases, thesituation was so critical debts were just written off. Butgenerally, this is not the case. The American global empirespread by enticing the developing world into projects that wereextremely high cost. I used to feel guilty knowing that I wasmaking as much in one day as the local professionals workingwith me made in a month. At one time, my billing rate was over$400 an hour! We knew they would default on the loans. We wouldjust restructure them and time them tighter into our littleempire. Christians played an unknowing role in this first phaseof development. The role of Summer Institute of Linguistics orWycliffe Bible Translators is well known and documented thatthey were used by the CIA and promoted American businessinterests. But let’s just talk about my experience. (Please see“Thy Will be Done” by Charlotte Dennett) In 1979, I went to workfor World Relief of the National Association of Evangelicals(NAE). I wrote the first grant funded by USAID to start ourdevelopment activities (in contrast to relief). I worked forCleo Shook who had just left the Carter administration as anUnder Secretary of State. Cleo, like many missionaries, in the1950s had gone to Afghanistan but couldn’t stay as a “ChristianMissionary.” He became the CIA eyes and ears in Afghanistan andlater Iran, started the Peace Corps with Sergeant Shriver, andthough a wonderful Christian, was an emissary for the empire.Phase II The first phase was to do basic community andinfrastructure development. The next phase was the expansion ofthe global empire by exporting jobs to cheap labor markets. Ihave been in sweatshops in Indonesia, the Philippines, andNigeria (back in the mid ‘80s) We were trying to convince theplant managers that they would get better work productivity ifthey provided health and family planning services to theworkers. TIPPS, Enterprise and a whole host of other USAIDprojects were aimed at helping the private sector. Anotheraspect of this was privatization. The concept was that theprivate sector could do a better job (with the profit motive)than the public sector. Whole sectors were being privatized –transportation, health, utilities, etc. Instead of being“privatized” by local business, multinationals would come in andtake over resulting in much higher costs than before. But thiswas the democratic, capitalistic thing to do. I worked onprojects like this in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Jamaica andother countries. I helped the Colombian government develop a“managed competition” system in the mid to late ‘90s with theidea of privatization and cost control. The result was adisaster for the bankrupt public system – the “safety net” forthe poor. Today we see jobs going overseas by the millions. Ourdevelopment efforts have been in part successful in that thereis a relatively healthy, well fed, educated work force willingto do our jobs for one tenth the wage. Do our elites really carethat they are displacing American workers? Not really. Do theycare that eventually they may lose their domestic market? Notreally. It’s pretty small compared to the rest of the world (weare only 5 percent of the population). America may have itsbudget and trade deficits. The average American family may befalling deeper in debt, but so what? Isn’t that the overallstrategy of the elites? To bankrupt countries and individualsand make them totally dependent and obedient to the elites. Ifyou have been reading my material for some time, you know thatI’m not much of a conspiracy theorist but this seems pretty wellorganized. The difficult part with deception is that it is sooo…good. It can really fool you. We act on the information we have.Sure, a lot of well-meaning people have been involved inspreading the empire without even realizing it. What we havedone has apparently been done with the best intentions, but themost terrible result. The government, the media and the powerfulcorporate interests are ready with their own explanation. Idoubt that very few connect the dots and see the connections.One has to ask themselves, why does the world so hate us? Peopleare not as dumb as we may think. I have run into taxi drivers inBuenos Aires who are clearer on the role of America in the worldthan the average American. Get your passport updated and travelsomewhere. Talk to the people and you will see. It got soembarrassing being an American; I would either speak Spanish orsay I was Canadian. Some Call it Conspiracy There is a worldwidenetwork of elites. Is there a conspiracy or is it all justcoincidental? No country in the world has developed a trulyglobal economic and military empire as we have. Is this thatgreat “last days” nation that will dominate the earth? Oneshould not be so quick to predict her demise. It took more thana hundred years to get here and we will not be that easilydeposed. The American elites are truly global. Just as they haveprovided credit to the nations to enslave them, they havesupplied ample credit to the American households to consumebeyond their means – resulting in our ultimate slavery to thesystem. It matters not that the billions the GEs, Becthels andHalliburtons make in Iraq – it goes into the elite coffers – notyours and mine. The fact that we are being impoverished bycredit debt and continually refinanced mortgages; the fact thatour currency is losing value, prices are rising, wages are flat,the economy is stagnating – the elites are doing the same thingto us as they did to the rest of the world. The rich are gettingricher and the poor are getting poorer. Just look around at yourfriends, their parents and their children and you will see whatthe statistics tell us. We are becoming a third world, debtorsociety with a few at the top who have “made it.” Should we besurprised? Not if we read our Bibles. There is a system in placeto get us to believe that black is white and white is black,that we are the good guys helping the world, that we have thebest system and only mean the best for everyone. If we believethe lies told us on a daily basis, we will surely be deceived.Go to complete article
About the author:The author has 30 years international development experience andhas worked in 40 plus countries around the world. He holds twoMasters Degrees and is a PhD Candidate with specialization inbusiness, and international finance, and is founder ofwww.the-tribulation-network.com.
|
