World Bank declares itself above the law

Written on March 27th, 2017 in politics Comments Off

Published on Systemic Disorder, March 22, 2017.

The World Bank has for decades left a trail of human misery. Destruction of the environment, massive human rights abuses and mass displacement have been ignored in the name of “development” that works to intensify neoliberal inequality. In response to legal attempts to hold it to account, the World Bank has declared itself above the law.

At least one U.S. trial court has already agreed that the bank can’t be touched, and thus the latest lawsuit filed against it, attempting to obtain some measure of justice for displaced Honduran farmers, faces a steep challenge. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of legal proceedings, however, millions of people around the world have paid horrific prices for the relentless pursuit of profit.

A trail of evictions, displacements, gross human rights violations (including rape, murder and torture), widespread destruction of forests, financing of greenhouse-gas-belching fossil-fuel projects, and destruction of water and food sources has followed the World Bank … //

… Bank’s own staff cites failures: … //
… More than 3 million people displaced: … //
… Funding that facilitates global warming: … //

… Loans to pay debt create more debt … repeat:

Ideology plays a critical role here. International lending organizations, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, consistently impose austerity. The IMF’s loans, earmarked for loans to governments to pay debts or stabilize currencies, always come with the same requirements to privatize public assets (which can be sold far below market value to multi-national corporations waiting to pounce); cut social safety nets; drastically reduce the scope of government services; eliminate regulations; and open economies wide to multi-national capital, even if that means the destruction of local industry and agriculture. This results in more debt, which then gives multi-national corporations and the IMF, which enforces those corporate interests, still more leverage to impose more control, including heightened ability to weaken environmental and labor laws.

The World Bank compliments this by funding massive infrastructure projects that tend to enormously profit deep-pocketed international investors but ignore the effects on local people and the environment.

The World Bank employs a large contingent of scientists and technicians, which give it a veneer of authority as it pursues a policy of relentless corporate plunder. Noting that the bank possesses “an enormous research and knowledge generation capacity,” The environmental and social-justice organization ASEED Europe reports: … //

… Markets do not sit in the clouds, beyond human control, as some perfect mechanism. They impose the will of those with the most who can not ever have enough. Markets are not ordained by some higher power — everything of human creation can be undone by human hands. Our current world system is no exception.

(full text).

Links:

Tens of thousands march in Yemen against Saudi-led airstrikes (VIDEO, PHOTOS), on RT, March 26, 2017;
(also on YouTube, 1.06 min);

Körpersprache Analyse: Angela Merkel bei Donald Trump, 9.11 min, hochgeladen von RedeFabrik – Kommunikation & Rhetorik, am 18. März 2017;

Talk about Capitalism and White Supremacy – Cornel West and Richard Wolff, 25.29 min, uploaded by The Laura Flanders Show, July 28, 2015 … a conversation about capitalism with two brilliant minds, Cornel West and Richard D. Wolff, together in a rare joint appearance. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, and author most recently of Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown 2010- 2014/ Dr. Cornel West has written or edited dozens of books, including classics like Race Matters, and Democracy Matters. His most recent is Black Prophetic Fire, written in conversation with Christa Buschendorf. Also in the show, activist Manju Rajendran tells us about a small business that is successfully operating under an anti-capitalist economic paradigm. And Laura raises questions about the record-setting settlement with BP over drilling disaster in the Gulf Coast;

Audio: Was den Menschen Böse macht, Auslegung der Geschichte vom Sündenfall – Eugen Drewermann, 77.31 min, hochgeladen von Geist und Psyche, … Votrag am Benediktinerhof in Holzkirchen/Bayern, am 6. Sept 2008;
Eugen Drewermann: auf YouTube-search; auf de.wikipedia; on en.wikipedia; dans fr.wikipedia;

Why Thomas Paine’s Common Sense Is Important – Chris Hedges and Cornel West (2014), 83.05 min, uploaded by Way Back, Dec 12, 2014 … Thomas Paine (February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English and American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary;

Racism in America: Small Town 1950s, Case Study Docu Film, 30.15 min, uploaded by Way Back, June 10, 2012 … racism in the United States has been a major issue since the colonial era and the slave era. Legally sanctioned racism imposed a heavy burden on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans. European Americans (particularly Anglo Americans) were privileged by law in matters of literacy, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure over periods of time extending from the 17th century to the 1960s. Many non-Protestant European immigrant groups, particularly American Jews, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, as well as other immigrants from elsewhere, suffered xenophobic exclusion and other forms of discrimination in American society … (full long text);

… and this:

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