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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: March 24th, 2022
  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoAsk Lemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml•North Korean Pleasure Squads: are they real?English
    31·
    8 months ago

    When reading books written in the imperial core, about the enemies/targets of imperialist nations, I would keep this in mind:

    Former CIA case officer John Stockwell: Well for example, in my war, the Angola war, that I helped to manage, one third of my staff was propaganda. […] We would take stories which we would write and put them in the Zambia Times, and then pulled them out and sent them to a journalist on our payroll in Europe. But his cover story, you see, would be what he had gotten from his stringer in Lusaka, who had gotten them from the Zambia Times. We had the complicity of the government of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda if you will, to put these false stories into his newspapers. But after that point, the journalists, Reuters and AFP, the management was not witting of it. Now, our contact man in Europe was. And we pumped just dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists–in one case we had the Cuban rapists caught and tried by the Ovimbundu maidens who had been their victims, and then we ran photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country of the Cubans being executed by the Ovimbundu women who supposedly had been their victims.

    Interviewer: These were fake photos?

    Stockwell: Oh, absolutely. We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists, you know eating babies for breakfast and the sort. Totally false propaganda.

    Interviewer: John, was this sort of thing practiced in Vietnam?

    Stockwell: Oh, endlessly. A massive propaganda effort in Vietnam in the '50s and in the '60s, including the thousand books that were published–several hundred in English–that were also propaganda books sponsored by the CIA. Give some money to a writer, “Write this book for us, write anything you want, but on these matters, make sure, you know, you have this line.”

    Interviewer: Writers in this country? Books sold and distributed in this culture?

    Stockwell: Sure. Yeah. English language books, meaning an American audience as a target, on the subject of Vietnam and the history of Vietnam, and the history of Marxism, and supporting the domino theory, et cetera.

    Interviewer: Without opening us up to a lawsuit, could you name one of them?

    Stockwell: No, I could not. The Church Committee, when they found this out, demanded that they be given the titles so that the university libraries could at least go and stamp inside “Central Intelligence Agency’s version of history,” and the CIA refused because it’s been commissioned to protect its sources and methods, and the sources would be the authors who wrote these false propaganda books, some of whom are now distinguished scholars and journalists.

    Source (video interview)

    Also note:

    • It’s a recognized problem in south Korea that “time and time again, conservative outlets and foreign media circulate and reproduce rumors [about DPRK] based on questionable sources … retractions and apologies are rarely ever provided when the reports are shown to be false” and “Sometimes, the South Korean government itself has been the epicenter of false reports … The situation has been made worse by defector groups aggressively proliferating claims from unverified ‘North Korean sources,’ as if attempting to draw attention to themselves.”

    • South Korea’s national intelligence service (NIS) forges documents to frame people and tortures them into false confessions as well as pays defectors for sensational stories and harasses and silences people who say positive things about DPRK (and takes away their passports so they can’t go back, even when they came to south Korea against their will)

    • UN human rights researchers who have worked directly with defectors from DPRK have written about how testimonies are made unreliable by cash incentives paid by the NIS and other organizations: “North Korean refugees are well aware of what the interviewer wants to hear. … The more terrible their stories are, the more attention they receive. The more international invitations they receive, the more cash comes in. It is how the capitalist system works: competition for more tragic and shocking stories. … In my 16 years of studying North Korean refugees, I have experienced numerous inconsistent stories, intentional omission and lies. I have also witnessed some involved in fraud and other illicit activities. In one case the breach of trust was so significant that I could not continue research.”

    Edit: So, to summarize – Former CIA case officers have discussed how they pay academics and journalists to write thousands of books about foreign communist enemies that contain whatever content the author wants as long as it pushes certain specific lines; the CIA regularly plants false stories into foreign newspapers and gets them circulated around; the NIS (formerly the “KCIA”, formed on the US-backed side during the Korean War to combat communists) is known to forge documents, extract false confessions, pay people to lie or embellish to the point that mainstream south Korean liberal media and UN researchers say it’s making it too hard to tell what’s true; defectors with sensational stories receive payments and get book deals and international speaking tours while people with positive things to say get arrested and surveilled by intelligence agencies…So, keep that info in mind as you consider what’s going on with these books.

  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoUS News@lemmygrad.ml•Back in 2009, Brookings Institution published a policy paper that outlines plans to provoke a war with IranEnglish
    5·
    8 months ago

    The New Atlas touches on and reads some quotes from this paper a bit in this video: https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=MWzF5NvFdOs&t=2507s (@41:54)

    A very normal quote from the paper:

    …it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

    An example of what’s discussed in the New Atlas video:

    [Brian Berletic speaking about the paper] They also laid out the the whole Iran nuclear deal, they didn’t mention it by name, but they were talking about a deal they would propose to Iran, deliberately sabotage, blame its failure on Iran, and then use that as a pretext for military aggression. So it says, “in a similar vein any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper International context both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to and minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support, however grudging or covert, is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer”–and they’re talking about a widespread conviction–not an understanding of a fact, but the belief in a US fabricated lie–so they say to “strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer, one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down” because, for the wrong reasons they admit in this paper–and many other policy papers, including from the Rand corporation–that if Iran ever did have nuclear weapons they would be used solely as a deterrent.

    It says, “under those circumstances the United States or Israel could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians brought it upon themselves by refusing a very good deal.” I mean remember shortly after this paper was published, under the Obama Administration the Iran nuclear deal was proposed. Eventually it was signed, it was implemented, the Iranians adhered to it, and then under the Trump Administration it was the US unilaterally withdrew from it, blaming Iran, just as the Brookings institution spelled out. And the Biden administration was supposed to reinstate it, but of course that was never going to happen because that was not the plan as laid out by the real policy makers of US foreign policy, these unelected, corporate-funded think tanks.

    These think tanks produce these policy papers, teams of lawyers craft parts of these policy papers into bills, the bills go with lobbyists to Washington to be rubber stamped–many people in Washington don’t even read them–and then the bill is sent to the corporate media to sell these policies to the public. It’s very important to understand how the US really operates where foreign and domestic policy really stem from. Not your elected representatives, unfortunately. The fact that this Brookings institution ploy to propose sabotage, unilaterally withdraw from and then use a deal with Iran as a pretext for military aggression transcended the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administration. This demonstrates the continuity of US foreign policy regardless of who sits in the White House and whoever is running Congress.

  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoShit Reactionaries Say@lemmygrad.ml•but do they serve in occupation army?English
    7·
    8 months ago

    With Whom are Many U.S. Police Departments Training? With a Chronic Human Rights Violator – Israel

    Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state as well as the DC Capitol police have all traveled to Israel for training. Thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials here in the U.S.

    These trainings put Baltimore police and other U.S. law enforcement employees in the hands of military, security and police systems that have racked up documented human rights violations for years. […] Public or private funds spent to train our domestic police in Israel should concern all of us. Many of the abuses documented, parallels violations by Israeli military, security and police officials.

    Israeli forces trained cops in ‘restraint techniques’ at Minneapolis conference

    Officers from the U.S. police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law enforcement officers.

    In a chilling testimony, a Palestinian rights activist said that when she saw the image of Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck, she was reminded of the Israeli forces’ policing of the occupied territories.

    Neta Golan, co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM), said: “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

    “They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics—two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived—and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the U.S. and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.”

  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoComradeship // Freechat@lemmygrad.ml•How was Isn'real created?English
    10·
    9 months ago

    I am also learning details about this so I will just share what I’ve been looking at. Some of these I haven’t fully read yet, so keep in mind I am just showing you the same things I am learning from in the moment.

    How Palestine Became Colonized - Video/documentary overview by Empire Files

    Palestine, Israel, and the U.S. Empire - Audiobook released by Liberation School, looks like episodes 3-9 probably deal with what you’re asking; I haven’t listened to it yet

    Palestine 101 - Series of history articles by Decolonize Palestine

    Historical details/quotes from "Palestine 101"

    The [Ottoman] empire would eventually collapse after its defeat in the first World War […] It was during the final few decades of this dramatic collapse that a certain Austro-Hungarian thinker, Theodor Herzl, was planting the seeds of a new political movement that would change Palestinian history forever.

    Convened in the Swiss city of Basel in 1897, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. […] While there were other Zionist and proto-Zionist movements preceding this which had settled in Palestine, such as Hibbat Zion, the Zionist congress was the first to organize and marshal the colonization efforts in a centralized and effective way.

    In the wake of its defeat in WW1, the Ottoman empire was dissolved and its regions carved up and divided among various European colonial powers. In the Levant, Palestine and Jordan fell under the mandate of the British, while Syria and Lebanon to that of the French. The British entered Jerusalem in 1917, and Palestine officially became a mandate in 1922.

    The mandate of Palestine provided a golden opportunity for the Zionist movement to achieve its aims. The British were far more responsive to Zionist goals than the Ottomans were, and had earlier produced the Balfour Declaration promising the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine […] The British had no genuine sympathy for the plight of the historically oppressed Jewish people; Rather, they saw in the Zionist movement a mechanism through which British interests in the Levant and Suez could be realized.

    Emboldened by the Balfour Declaration and supportive British governors, the Zionist movement ramped up its colonization efforts and established a provisional proto-state within a state in Palestine, called the Yishuv. While the Yishuv’s relationship with the British had its ups and downs, the British provided the Zionists with explicit as well as tacit sponsorship which would allow them to thrive. Meanwhile, they would harshly repress any Palestinian movement or organization while turning a blind eye to Zionist expansion, which by the end of the mandate enabled the conquest and mass destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and neighborhoods.

    Deconstructing and debunking Zionism - Another article; I haven’t read it all yet, I just skipped to the section “What are the origins of Zionism?”

    Historical details/quotes from "Deconstructing and debunking Zionism"

    Herzl’s WZO was created in 1897, and identified Palestine as the site of the future Jewish state. With its support, Zionist settlers began to migrate to Palestine. The WZO attempted to gain support for their project from the Ottoman Empire, but their efforts were in vain […] With the outbreak of WWI, […] Zionists found official support for their project from the British Empire. The British, then fighting the Ottomans, sought to colonize whatever territories they could seize from the evidently decaying empire.

    In 1917, near the close of the war, the British issued the Balfour Declaration. Supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was clearly a component of the aim of claiming the formerly Ottoman-held territories, and would have world-historic consequences. Much of the supplementary support behind the Declaration from British gentiles was motivated by Evangelical Protestantism, which viewed it as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and, significantly, an antisemitic desire to solve the so-called “Jewish Question” by encouraging Jewish people to leave Europe. Settler migration into Palestine grew significantly following WWI, and Israel as a settler-colonial nation began to emerge.

    Under British rule in Mandatory Palestine, native Palestinians began to be displaced by the settlers, being excluded from the labor force and the purchase of land and property, which Zionist settlers confined to other settlers […] From 1936 to 1939, Arabs revolted against British rule and Zionist settler-colonialism.

    The British then issued the 1939 White Paper, restricting further Jewish immigration into Palestine. After WWII and the devastation of the Holocaust, Europe was convinced that their “Jewish Question” could only be answered by pushing Jewish people out of Europe and into a colonial outpost. And significant sections of the Jewish population were convinced the same

    Zionists began to migrate into the settlements in even higher numbers, in defiance of the White Paper. Zionists even began to revolt against British rule, seeking to establish Israel as a state. By 1947, the UN created a plan to partition Palestine into two independent states and a neutral Jerusalem, though it failed to implement it. In response to the passage of the plan, the 1947–1948 civil war broke out between Zionists and Palestinians. By 1948, the state of Israel was established.

  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoShit Reactionaries Say@lemmygrad.ml•You f*cking Zionist Bozo !!!English
    10·
    9 months ago

    Gaza Fights for Freedom (2019) - Documentary

    How Palestine Became Colonized (2016) - Documentary

    Massacres were indispensable to creation of the Israeli state - Article

    Letter from Gaza: ‘We prefer to die standing than to give up’ - Article

    Electronic Intifada - Journalism outlet

    Palestinians get killed when they do nothing, they get killed when they protest peacefully. Western libs continue to fund and ignore the deaths of Palestinians regardless. Palestinians are being murdered en masse now for those who have taken up arms, but their reality has been that they are murdered en masse regardless anyway, because the plan is to remove them (edit: that is to say, “responding” to their resistance is just a pretext, an excuse to kill/remove Palestinians will always be found, no matter what the narrative around it is). Some random liberal who openly admits not knowing much about the situation and refusing to support Palestinian liberation because an organized resistance is too scary for liberal bystanders to think about really means nothing to Palestinians. Westerners, settlers, liberals can debate all they want about it and be sad that Palestinians aren’t dying more quietly and politely, but it’s a basic reality that people who are being oppressed are going to resist. And when your plan is to remove a people and you silence and kill off and ignore all of their peaceful resistance efforts (of which there always have been and are many, but it’s ignored), all that remains is organized militant resistance. If you remain ignorant of it now or only care to genuinely listen to one side then you truly do not give a fuck about stopping violence, you just want to keep having dance parties next to concentration camps.

    I’m not going to respond further but good luck in learning, I hope you mean it.

  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoComradeship // Freechat@lemmygrad.ml•I just heard that the DPRK is PatSoc. Thoughts?English
    10·
    9 months ago

    The “patsoc” ideas which promote patriotism in the imperial core and reject decolonization are much different from the socialist patriotism which is anti-imperialist and decolonial. DPRK does uphold socialist patriotism, which is regarded as part of its internationalist duty of completing the Korean revolution by focusing the majority of its attention on Korea, to make sure their revolution is successfully carried out, and which is specifically against promoting national chauvinism, and rejects racism.

    DPRK’s emphasis on looking inward for solving its problems and on self-reliance come from Korea’s specific conditions. Specifically, Korea has been a battleground for world powers for much of its existence and historically had strong ideological currents of subservience to larger powers influencing its politics, which posed obstacles for progressive/revolutionary movements in Korea since feudal times and into the modern era. After DPRK was formed, it also had to deal with the issue of different influential strains of thought among socialist countries, including its powerful neighbors, Russia and China, during the Sino-Soviet split. The opening of China and the fall of the Soviet Union led to further inner debates. DPRK’s emphasis on focusing on its own conditions is a necessity for it to avoid dogmatically following other states’ lines and thus committing errors in its own revolution, not a blanket rejection of foreign ideas.

    I am still learning about Songun, but from what I have read so far, it seems to have its roots in the Cuban missile crisis where US aggressions were ramping up, and finally came to the fore as policy during the Arduous March, when the US was trying to use the economic upheavals after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the US attempting to end DPRK by intentionally starving its people to death. It was determined that in order for Korea to complete its revolution and defend socialism, it would be necessary to heavily prioritize defense due to DPRK being under constant mortal threat from imperialism. Edit: Also, with DPRK’s more recent nuclear developments, I believe the policy of Byungjin (parallel development of military and economy) has returned to the fore, though I may be wrong about that. I’d appreciate being corrected if someone knows.

    Kim Il Sung on socialist patriotism, preventing chauvinism, and rejecting isolationism

    In educating the working people in socialist patriotism, care should be taken to prevent the growth of tendencies to national chauvinism and restorationism. One may be apt to head for chauvinism on the plea of building an independent national economy by one’s own efforts and promoting national pride. If we steer in the direction of chauvinism as Regent Taewongun pursued a policy of national isolation, we will come to reject international exchange and advanced science and technology from other countries and, accordingly, hinder the development of our country. Likewise, it is wrong for us to dislike reading foreign books and feel disinclined to learn foreign languages on the grounds of building an independent national economy and establishing Juche in science. It does not always follow that one is infected with revisionism because one reads foreign technical books and that one becomes pro-Japanese or pro-American because one learns Japanese or English. When learning foreign languages we must not lay stress on any one of them but study Russian, Chinese, English, French and other languages. The point is to learn them for the good of the people and for contributing to the rapid development of the socialist motherland, without engaging in flunkeyism. Besides inspiring the working people with national pride, we should educate them better in the spirit of internationalism. Thus, we will fight resolutely against the imperialists and Right and “Left” opportunists, in unity with the peoples of the socialist countries, and in close unity with many other peoples of the world.

    quote about preventing dogmatism in solving problems in the revolution without mechanically copying others

    From the work “Modern Korea” by Kim Byong Sik

    For countries such as Korea, where the working class has conquered power and established a dictatorship of the proletariat, it is vital to the success of the revolution to work out correct theoretical propositions concerning the transitional period: How to understand the significance and nature of the transitional period, how to set the various tasks of the transitional period according to its different stages, and how to analyze inter-relationships between the transitional period and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

    Despite the importance of these questions to the revolution, there has been insufficient clarification and various deviations have been committed, with the result that immeasurable damage has been done to the practical struggles for socialist and communist construction. This urgent problem – the task of solving correctly, theoretically, the question of the transitional period and the dictatorship of the proletariat- was accomplished by Kim Il Sung, in detail, on the basis of the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism.

    His ideas and theory were developed in his work, Questions of the Transitional Period from Capitalism to Socialism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In this work, he said:

    As with all other scientific and theoretical questions, questions of the transitional period should be solved on the basis of the Juche idea of our Party. We should never try to solve these questions dogmatically by becoming slaves to the classical propositions on this question, nor should we be influenced by subservient ideas and follow others in the solution these questions.

    In the interpretation of classical propositions it is essential to understand the historical circumstances and the premise on which the classical works were based. Only on this basis is possible to understand the content of classical propositions and to grasp their revolutionary meaning. If the historical circumstances are ignored, it will lead inevitably to a one sided and dogmatic interpretation or to a revisionist interpretation that seriously distorts the revolutionary content.

    Specifically, if a classical proposition is applied mechanically to a changed situation, without considering the historical circumstances and theoretical premises related to the proposition, not only will a fundamental error be committed in the theoretical solution of the question but a decisive error in practice will also result. Thus, to solve the problems of the transitional period and the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is necessary to base ourselves firmly on the revolutionary propositions of Marxism-Leninism and, at the same time, to uphold the Juche idea of applying them creatively to suit the constantly changing and developing actual conditions of the revolution.

    I recommend this essay on ProleWiki, The Cleanest Farce: How “Experts” Distort the DPRK, and the page about Juche which has sections about Juche’s relationship to dialectical materialism and to Marxism-Leninism specifically. Tl;dr is that ML is seen as a correct revolutionary idea but that it, being very old by now and being formulated in the world’s first successful socialist revolution, it lacks certain concrete details about socialist construction in the present day and also (naturally) has a different context than Korea’s revolution. Therefore it is regarded as a basically correct idea for revolutionaries to follow, but that following it dogmatically is an insufficient application of it, and all countries will need to forge their own path to suit their own conditions as they are confronted with the task of socialist construction and defending the revolution in the present conditions. Juche takes the dialectical materialist view of the world, and it is just dealing more with how people can have a certain attitude and point of view to successfully carry out revolution.

  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoProleWiki@lemmygrad.ml•We need your feedback on a new library featureEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago
    1. It seems fine to me as a concept, as it doesn’t strike me as much different than any book which has multiple introductions as different publishers pick it up over time. There could also be a page somewhere, “About ProleWiki introductions” which is linked at the start of each of these intros. The page could explain the overall method behind how and why these intros are written and when the implementation of this feature began, for transparency.
    2. Possibly.
    3. Unsure on this. I think more detailed opinions and interpretations might be better placed in an essay, perhaps books in the library can have a section at the beginning after the contextual introduction, or on a related page, in which editors may add links to opinion/interpretation essays on the work, perhaps limited to essays which were specifically written and submitted as introductions for the work (rather than just any essay about the work), or with section headings separating introduction essays from other types of essays on the work. However, as I said, I am unsure.
    4. Somewhat concerned, but as it hasn’t been implemented yet, I want to see what happens in practice with a few works.
    5. Nothing comes to mind right away but I will keep this question in mind next time I access a work on the library.
    6. “Introduction to the ProleWiki edition”, possible link to “about ProleWiki intros” page suggested above, the intro itself, ending with the date it was written and names of its author(s). Footnotes could start with “(PW)” or something similar.
    7. (1) In general I am happy to see things like this being tried out, whatever the results may be. (2) This makes me curious as to whether things like comprehension questions (such as for self study or study groups) could also be appended to some works in a similar way, if there is interest in it and if the introductions concept seems to be working smoothly? As well as other forms of extra material that might appear in the end of a book, I am curious whether there is interest in that type of thing or other extra material (beyond what can already be accomplished as essays which are not specifically linked or included in a work).
  • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mltoGenZedong@lemmygrad.ml•Studies show that IMF borrower countries experience higher rates of poverty.English
    8·
    9 months ago

    As a former senior economist of the IMF once said:

    Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.

    You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: - will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellow men condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?

    (Davison Budhoo’s IMF resignation letter. PDF, archive.org)

    more quotes

    As from today I refuse to accept the Fund-imposed censorship on our activities in the Third World. I have also stopped obeying your directive that reports and memoranda and other printed matter that document these activities be regarded as unexceptionally confidential and “hush-hush”.

    In guilt and self-realization of my own worthlessness as a human being, what I would like to do most of all is to so propel myself that I can get the man-in-the- street of North and South and East and West and First and Second and Third and Fourth and All Other Worlds to take an interest in what is happening to his single planet, his single habitat, because our institution was allowed to evolve in a particular way in late twentieth- century international society, and allowed to become the supra- national authority that controls the day-to- day lives of hundreds of millions of people everywhere. More specifically, I would like to enlighten public opinion about our role and our operations in our member countries of the Third World.

    I can get people to begin to comprehend the universality and the depth of our perversion - I would have achieved something rare and precious for the starving and dispossessed two-thirds of mankind from whose ranks I come, and for whose cause I must now fight.

    Our policy package for Trinidad and Tobago-i.e. the conditionality that we are demanding for any Fund program […] can be shown, even in a half-objective analysis, to be self-defeating and unworkable. That policy package can never serve, under any set of circumstances, the cause of financial balance and economic growth. Rather, what, in effect, we are asking the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to do is to self-destruct itself and unleash unstoppable economic and social chaos.

    We manipulated, blatantly and systematically, certain key statistical indices so as to put ourselves in a position where we could make very false pronouncements about economic and financial performance of that country. In doing so, we created a situation whereby the country was repeatedly denied access to international commercial and official sources of financing that otherwise would have been readily available. Our deliberate blocking of an economic lifeline to the country through subterfuge served to accentuate tremendously the internal and external financial imbalances within the economy

    As the country continues to resist our Deadliest Medicine that would put it in a position to enter into a formal stand-by arrangement with us, we continue to resort to statistical malpractices and unabashed misinformation so as to bring it to heel. Among several misdeeds, we have influenced the World Bank, apparently against the better judgement of its own mission staff, to come out in support of our trumped-up policies and stances for the country

    What we have done and are doing in Trinidad and Tobago is being repeated in scores of countries around the world, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. Sometimes we operate with greater restraint, sometimes with less, but the process and the result are always the same: a standard, pompous recital of doctrinaire Fund “advice” given uncompromisingly and often contemptuously and in utter disregard to local conditions and concerns and susceptibilities. It is the norm now rather than the exception, that when our “one-for-all and all-for-one” Fund cap doesn’t fit the head for which it is intended, we cut and shave and mangle the head so as to give the semblance of a fit. Maybe we bust up the head too much in Trinidad and Tobago, but have no illusions that the way we operate through- out the world - the narrow and irrelevant epistemology underlying our work, the airs and affectations and blases and illusions of superiority of our staff vis-Á-vis government officials and politicians in the developing world, our outrageous salaries and perks and diplomatic immunities and multiple “entitlements”, the ill-gotten, inadvertent power that we revel in wielding over prostrate governments and peoples- can only serve to accentuate world tensions, expand even further the already bulging ranks of the poverty-striken and destitute of the South, and stunt, worldwide, the human soul, and the human capacity for caring and upholding norms of justice and fairplay.