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Calling All CounterPunchers!
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Calling All CounterPunchers!
Annual Fundraising AppealWe interrupt your regular reading habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch needs your financial support!
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Today's Stories October 29, 2008 Arno J. Mayer October 28, 2008 James G. Abourezk Andy Worthington Gary Leupp Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Gregory V. Button Ralph Nader P. Sainath Martha Rosenberg Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 27, 2008 Michael Hudson Barbara Rose Johnston John Dinges Mike Whitney Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power Alan Farago David Michael Green Andy Worthington George Wuerthner Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day October 24 / 26, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Ishmael Reed Mike Whitney Don Santina Scott Boehm Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Binoy Kampmark Linn Washington Jr. Nicole Colson Bernard Chazelle Brian Jones Christopher Brauchli Benjamin Dangl Val Strange Steve Early David Macaray Allison Kilkenny Richard Rhames Jim Bell Kris De Welde Barry Clemson Adam Engel Mark Scaramella Tuli Kupferberg Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 23, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Todd Chretien John Ross Peter Morici Mats Svensson Marlene Martin Robert Jensen / Margaret Kimberley Deepak Tripathi David Morris Website of the Day October 22, 2008 Brian Cloughley Heather Gray Jeff Birkenstein Ralph Nader DC Larson David Swanson Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth Larry Everest Robert Fantina Martha Rosenberg Stephen Martin Website of the Day October 21, 2008 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig Roberts Corey D. B. Walker Steve Breyman Eric Toussaint Wajahat Ali Robert Weitzel Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing Patrick B. Barr Omar Barghouti Website of the Day October 20, 2008 Michael Hudson Anthony DiMaggio Tariq Ali Uri Avnery Bill Quigley Ben Rosenfeld David Michael Green William S. Lind Chris Genovali Stephen Martin Howard Lisnoff David Yearsley Website of the Day October 17 / 19, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Pam Martens Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whtney Michael D. Yates Suzanne Smith Carl Boggs Ralph Nader Fidel Castro Dave Marsh Saul Landau Jo Guldi Kevin Zeese Larry Everest Steve Early David Macaray Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Helen Redmond Dan Bacher Wajahat Ali Farzana Versey Vladimir Frolov Kim Nicolini Poets Basement Website of the Day October 16, 2008 Mike Whitney Jonathan Cook Ayesha Ijaz Khan Alan Maass Chuck O'Connell Mary Lynn Cramer P. Sainath Andy Worthington Peter Gelderloos Stephen Martin Douglas Valentine Website of the Day
October 15, 2008 Steve Conn William P. O'Connor Robert Weissman Jonathan M. Feldman Ron Jacobs Conn Hallinan Justin Podur Karl Grossman Dave Lindorff Eric Walberg Martha Rosenberg Uri Avnery Monica Benderman Website of the Day
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October 29, 2008 IMF Advice to South Africa Akin to Last-Century Washington Rape, Not the Promised French KissStrauss-Kahn Strikes Again!By PATRICK BOND NEWS ITEM: Nicolas Sarkozy dismay as Dominique Strauss-Kahn in sex scandal A “one-night stand” and an angry husband have endangered the career of the French head of the International Monetary Fund and dismayed President Sarkozy as he seeks to put a French stamp on a new world financial order. The news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 59, is being investigated in Washington over an alleged fling with a former subordinate has unsettled Mr Sarkozy, who has been working with him to form a new Bretton Woods pact on financial regulation... The President was furious that Mr Strauss-Kahn... had risked a chance to restart his career and to help France internationally, by living up to his old name as un grand séducteur — the term used by Le Journal du Dimanche yesterday. (The Times, October 20 2008, by Charles Bremner) NOT A NEWS ITEM: Practically no public awareness, and hence no dismay, in financial advice scandal. A long-term relationship between Dominique Strauss-Kahn's IMF and subordinates in the Treasury of the South African government have advanced the career of Pretoria's finance minister, Trevor Manuel. Washington's stamp on South Africa, so as to promote the old world financial order, could not be more obvious, yet is hardly investigated in South Africa.* The fling should unsettle Nicolas Sarkozy, who says he has been working for "the end of American capitalism", but it won't. The French president should have been furious, but apparently is not, that Mr Strauss-Kahn has risked a chance to restart the South African economy and to help France's image internationally, by allowing the IMF to live up to its old name as un grand séducteur — of the Washington Consensus, i.e. old-style looting of vulnerable Third World economies. On 22 October, the IMF filed several lengthy reports, which have just become available on the internet (http://www.imf.org/external/country/ZAF/rr/ but hidden way down near the bottom of the page). These reports are pored over regularly by the kinds of people who started the world's financial catastrophe, to give them more ammunition against the world's poor and working people, women and environmentalists. What do they say? Here's the essential IMF six-pack:
Here are excerpts from the main IMF report issued last week, confirming the logic of old Washington, not new Paris:
What do South Africans say in reply? Because most of the media - especially upper middle-class white financial journalists - apparently intend hiding this scandalous affair, we only ever hear one South African talk about the IMF: finance minister Trevor Manuel. He does not accuse the IMF of stamping the Washington Consensus on South Africa, partly because he has often been suggested as a candidate for a top IMF or World Bank job. When allegedly trying to democratise the IMF at their annual meeting in 2003, for example, Manuel - then head of the second most powerful management committee in the Bretton Woods Institutions - confessed he had made no effort at all: "I don’t think that you can ripen this tomato by squeezing it." As a result, a series of neoliberal and neoconservative leaders have moved in, such as Paul Wolfowitz (whom Manuel in 2005 called a "wonderful individual... perfectly capable"), Robert Zoellick and Strauss-Kahn. Similarly, when Manuel was asked by the Financial Times a few days ago about the impact of the financial crisis on South Africa, he told his constituents to tighten their belts: "We need to disabuse people of the notion that we will have a mighty powerful developmental state capable of planning and creating all manner of employment. It may have been on the horizon in 1994 [when the governing African National Congress first came to office] but it could not be delivered now. The next period is likely to see a lot more competitiveness in the global economy. As consumer demand falls off there will be a huge battle between firms and countries to secure access to markets." Washington's seduction has worked, and if a job opens up at the Bretton Woods Institutions, it will be a seamless transition from one seducer to the next. * The one exception to the lazy, booze-addled SA business-journo corps who bothered to report this story, was Felicity Duncan at Moneyweb Patrick Bond is the director of the UKZN Centre for Civil Society: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs. He can be reached at pbond@mail.ngo.za
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