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starvation program in the Ukraine in the 1930s and Mao's starvation of the peasants in the '40s. Its purpose was to starve the population into total submission to the government, for it is the government which decides who will eat and who will not. Yet, right up to the time Mengistu was overthrown, the World Bank continued to send him hundreds of millions of dollars, with much of it going specifically to the Ministry of Agriculture, the very agency in charge of the resettlement program.1
In the late 1970s the same story unfolded in Communist
Vietnam. There were resettlement programs, forced collectiviza-tion, concentration camps, atrocities, and tens of thousands of dissidents escaping to the sea only to drown in overcrowded, leaky boats. Throughout it all, the regime was generously funded by the World Bank.
Laos has jailed thousands of political prisoners; Syria has massacred 20,000 members of its opposition; Indonesia has up-rooted several million people from their homelands in Java; the Sandinistas in Nicaragua murdered their opposition and terrorized the nation into submission; Poland, while a puppet state of the Soviet Union, brutally suppressed its trade-union movement; China massacred its dissident students and imprisoned its religious leaders; and the former Soviets slaughtered civilians in Afghanistan while conducting a relentless espionage war against the entire free world. Yet, these regimes have been the recipient of literally billions of dollars from the World Bank.
How can the Bank's managers continue in conscience to fund such genocidal regimes? Part of the answer is that they are not permitted to have a conscience. David Dunn, head of the Bank's Ethiopia Desk explained: 'Political distinctions are not something our charter allows us to take into account.'2 The greater part of the answer, however, is that all socialist regimes have the potential for genocide, and the Bank is committed to socialism. The brutalities of these countries are all in a days work for serious socialists who view them as merely unfortunate necessities for the building of their utopia. Lenin said you cannot make an omelet without 1. James Bovard,
2. 'Harnessing World Bank to the West,'
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cracking a few eggs. George Bernard Shaw, one of the early leaders of the Fabian Socialist movement, expressed it this way:
Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.
REASON TO ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE
The top echelon at the World Bank are brothers under the skin to the socialist dictators with whom they do daily business. Under the right circumstances, they could easily switch roles. What we have seen is merely a preview of what can be expected for the entire world if the envisioned
The IMF/World Bank is the protege of the Federal Reserve. It would not exist without the flow of American dollars and the benevolence of American leadership. The Fed has become an accomplice in the support of totalitarian regimes throughout the world. As stated at the beginning of this study, that is one of the reasons it should be abolished:
GETTING RICH FIGHTING POVERTY
While the top leaders and theoreticians at the IMF and World Bank dream of world socialism, the middle managers and political rulers have more immediate goals in mind. The bureaucracy enjoys a plush life administering the process, and the politicians on the receiving end obtain wealth and power. Ideology is not their concern. Socialism, capitalism, fascism, it makes no difference to them as long as the money flows.
Graham Hancock has been an astute observer of the international-aid 'industry' and has attended their plush conferences. He knows many of the leading players personally. In his book,
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no complicated projects to administer and no messy accounts to keep, the venal, the cruel and the ugly are laughing literally all the way to the bank. For them structural adjustment is like a dream come true. JSJ0
sacrifices are demanded of them personally. All they have to do—amazing but true—is
In India, the World Bank funded the construction of a dam that displaced two million people, flooded 360 square miles, and wiped out 81,000 acres of forest cover. In Brazil, it spent a billion dollars to
'develop' a part of the Amazon basin and to fund a series of hydroelectric projects. It resulted in the deforestation of an area half the size of Great Britain and has caused great human suffering because of resettlement. In Kenya, the Bura irrigation scheme caused such desolation that a fifth of the native population abandoned the land. The cost was $50,000
Livestock projects in Botswana led to the destruction of grazing land and the death of thousands of migratory animals. This resulted in the inability of the natives to obtain food by hunting, forcing them into dependence on the government for survival.
While Nigeria and Argentina are drowning in debt, billions from the World Bank have gone into building lavish new capital cities to house government agencies and the ruling elite. In Zaire, Mexico, and the Philippines, political leaders became billionaires while receiving World Bank loans on behalf of their nations. In the Central African Republic, IMF and World Bank loans were used to stage a coronation for its emperor.
