G-8 the World

The bullshit-meter almost exploded last week as the self-satisfied leaders of the G-8 countries pontificated about the problem of "global poverty." They had little of interest to say, for very good reason: global poverty exists because the G-8 leaders, and the financial and business elites they represent, want it to exist. The purpose of global poverty is to create a vast pool of cheap labor that the transnational corporations can exploit. Many Asian and African countries, along with those of East and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, compete with one another as to who can provide the cheapest labor. Corporations shut down their plants in the U.S. and Europe and set up shop in some part of the world where they can pay their workers 50 cents an hour. Workers here and in Europe, terrified of being thrown out of work, respond by settling for low pay.

This state of affairs did not come about by accident. Following the end of the Cold War, governments of the West pursued a ruthless campaign to facilitate the work of the corporations. Countries would borrow money from the Western banks. Inevitably, they would get into trouble with repayment whether because of the collapse of prices of primary commodities or the sharp rise in the value of the dollar or the devastation of their currencies following a speculative attack. Then the IMF?effectively a U.S. government agency representing the interests of the West's bankers and creditors?would offer to lend money, but with "conditionalities." Countries would have to pledge to follow the courses set by the IMF: cuts in public spending, currency devaluation, free trade, price liberalization, deregulation and privatization. Such programs implied wholesale political transformation. What the people themselves wanted was of no importance.

Countries would sign "letters of intent," promising good behavior. The IMF would watch sternly to make sure that the promises were kept. The slightest suggestion of backsliding?refusing to throw the requisite number of people out of work or maintaining electricity subsidies to keep old people warm?and the IMF would cease disbursing the loan.

Privatization of state enterprises went hand-in-hand with debt repayment. How else could a country repay its debt other than through sale of its assets? The buyers would be the banks themselves, or industries they had ties to. Thus economic control of nations passed into the hands of Western financial elites. To earn foreign exchange, debtor countries would have to open themselves up to foreign investment and become exporters of cheap goods for Western markets. Manufacturing for the national market would cease. Since so many countries were now manufacturing goods for the same saturated markets of Europe and America, competition as to who could produce the cheapest became ever more intense. As a result, export revenues diminished and debt repayment became that much harder. Instead of rising, wages declined. Which led to the migration of labor from poor to rich countries. So, while corporations were moving to areas of the world where labor was cheap, poor people were streaming to the U.S. and Western Europe at a rate faster than ever before.

Resistance is hopeless. Denial of IMF accreditation means no loans from anyone. Moreover, behind the IMF stands the U.S., ready to use bombs or CIA-sponsored subversion if IMF ministrations do not do the job. Closely tied to the U.S. government are the so-called nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which direct hatred against a recalcitrant country to make sure public opinion is ready to support harsh measures when needed. The latest victim of an orchestrated global campaign is Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, once a revered figure in fashionable liberal circles, is now the object of almost hysterical vituperation. His sins are hardly worse than any other African leader's. He wants the veterans of the guerrilla wars against the white minority regime of Rhodesia to have some land. Whites own most of the land in Zimbabwe. The government obviously does not have the money to buy out the farmers. Mugabe has stubbornly refused to turn his country over to the control of the "international community." Instead of cutting government spending, to the fury of the IMF, he hands money over to veterans of the wars against Rhodesia. "Let that monstrous creature get out of our way," Mugabe once said of the IMF. Zimbabwe would not kneel down to pray to the IMF, he declared, to confess its sins as if it were God. "...[W]e are a sovereign country, and we must not humiliate ourselves to that extent."

For talk like this, punishment is severe. Mugabe has been cut off from all loans. Recently the International Crisis Group, a George Soros-funded outfit treated with hushed reverence in the media, issued a report announcing the need for "a strategy for change not unlike that undertaken by the international community in Yugoslavia. Regional states, the Commonwealth, the EU and the U.S. should seek to persuade Mugabe to allow the scheduled presidential election in 2002 to be conducted freely and fairly? If Mugabe will not permit free and fair elections, the international community should apply sanctions that impact on the political leadership..."

In other words, the "international community" should step in, subvert the electoral process of a sovereign country and then, if the result goes the wrong way, proclaim that it was a fraud and impose sanctions against the recalcitrant political leader. This is a strategy the U.S. uses with some frequency against countries deemed insufficiently "pro-Western." The U.S. Congress has just passed a bill that imposes travel restrictions on Mugabe if "he does not end the lawlessness in the countryside."

Interestingly enough, Soros has extensive business interests in Zimbabwe. His Quantum Quota fund has a substantial holding in Plantation & General, a London Stock Exchange-listed tea company, which owns large plantations in Zimbabwe. Soros is also said to fund the Zimbabwean service of Voice of America through his Open Society Foundation. The last thing Soros wants is a lot of grubby veterans of the guerrilla wars getting their hands on land that by right belong to international landowners and giant agribusinesses. Mugabe will surely soon be on his way to an international tribunal.