Fwd: [a16-dc-planning] Aristide on IMF and World Bank

["Chris Doss" <itschris13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: Goodfood4@xxxxxxx
>To: a16-dc-planning@xxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [a16-dc-planning] Aristide on IMF and World Bank
>Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 09:33:26 EDT
>
>
>     "We are not against trade," says former Haitian president
>Jean-Bertrand Aristide, "we are not against free trade, but our
>fear is
>that the global market intends to annihilate our markets. We
>will be
>pushed to the cities, to eat food grown on factory farms in
>distant
>countries, food whose price depends on the daily numbers game"
>of the
>global marketplace.
>
>     In a book being published next week, "Eyes of the Heart,"
>Aristide
>explains that the austerity programs championed by the IMF and
>World Bank
>offer "a choice between death and death" in poor countries. For
>instance:
>"Haiti, under intense pressure from the international lending
>institutions, stopped protecting its domestic agriculture while
>subsidies
>to the U.S. rice industry increased. A hungry nation became
>hungrier."
>
>     On a planet with half of the population -- 3 billion people
>--
>living on less than two dollars a day, Aristide writes, "the
>statistics
>that describe the accumulation of wealth in the world are
>mind-boggling.
>... Behind this crisis of dollars there is a human crisis: among
>the poor,
>immeasurable human suffering; among the others, the powerful,
>the policy
>makers, a poverty of spirit which has made a religion of the
>market and
>its invisible hand. A crisis of imagination so profound that the
>only
>measure of value is profit, the only measure of human progress
>is economic
>growth."
>
>     Often, major U.S. media and foes of corporate globalization
>seem
>to be speaking entirely different languages. Journalists and
>their usual
>sources like to talk about "economic growth" and "opportunity."
>But the
>protests in Washington are demanding "global justice."
>
>_________________________________________________
>
>Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His latest book is
>"The Habits
>of Highly Deceptive Media."

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