The UN, The IMF, and the Chimera of World Peace
by Mark Evans
On the 24th of June, several friends and I attended The 1995 Children's
World Peace Festival in Celebration of Fifty Years of the UN, at East Fort
Baker, on the Golden Gate, just south of Sausalito. It was a warm, sunny
day, and a festive atmosphere was fostered by the casual, New Age ambience
of the musical acts and speakers, from the stage in the meadow to the adjacent
Circle where each attendee could gather two free crystals. The crowd, made
up of children of all ages, basked in the sun by the bandstand and alternately
prayed and chanted, in perfect mediumistic fashion, in response to the "Great
Invocation" and swayed and danced to the more up-tempo bands, while
"Guardian Angels" in white T-shirts and Red Berets benignly stood
guard, directed traffic, and manned all check-points.
At one point, a cherubic choir of multi-cultural young people sang a We-Are-The-World
type of song, exhorting their hearers to take the pledge to "Support
the web of life." Late in the afternoon Graham Nash, now a solo act,
came out and sang a song about the need to have a code when you are on the
road, and another, dedicated to the UN, about the children of Oklahoma City,
who were blown up because someone was trying to make a point about something.
Earlier in the afternoon, my friends and I circulated among the thin crowd
with a video camera for a while, seeking a single solitary soul who knew
anything about the International Monetary Fund (IMF). What we found confirms
what we already knew about such audiences, to wit, that almost nobody attending
such a gathering knows anything about the reality of the two sister, core
institutions of the United Nations-the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. This is not surprising, since the clientele at such gatherings,
although well-meaning and not apolitical, are generally economically illiterate.
The United Nations, as everyone should know, was founded in San Francisco
fifty years ago, after the War. What most people nowadays do not realize,
unless they are old enough to remember the war-time propaganda or collect
old books as I do, is that the phrase "United Nations" first came
into use in December of 1941, just after Pearl Harbor. At that time it was
used interchangeably with the phrase "The Allies," which it came
to supplant. The "Allies," of course, were the British Empire
and-after Pearl Harbor-the U.S., who were fighting against the "Axis
Powers," in particular, Germany, which occupied "Fortress Europe."
After Nelson Rockefeller was dispatched by FDR to Caracas, Venezuela, to
organize the Organization of American States (OAS), most of the South American
republics also joined the "United Nations." While in Caracas,
Nelson also saw to it that the "Axis" was supplied with enough
oil from Standard Oil, via the Azores, to keep the war going as long as
necessary. (See Charles Higham,Trading With The Enemy.)
So there was a direct continuity between the Anglo-American alliance and
the formal, global agency, the UN, which was founded in San Francisco and
established in New York City on land donated by the Rockefeller Foundation
in the immediate post-war period. The "last great hope of mankind"
was, in reality, a "soft" front for the globalist, empire-building
aspirations of Anglo-American imperialism. And that is precisely the reason
why the U.S. and Britain ensconced themselves into permanent seats on the
top-heavy UN Security Council. The imperialist nature of the Security Council
is not a secret; it is also axiomatic that the ends of imperialism are economic.
The fundamental contradiction of the UN is that the World Bank and the IMF
are a front for a consortium of international, privately owned, commercial
banks.
The principle at work here is actually fairly simple: First World finance
capitalists have written the monetary rules for the rest of the world to
play by. Since the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694, bankers
have granted themselves a monopoly over "credit" and "money."
In essence, you either accept the Monopoly Money that the big boys issue,
or else you don't play the game. No Third World nation can purchase the
technology or the products of the First World with their own government-issued
fiat currency. To industrialize, to trade, and buy and sell on the world
market, Third World nations must use the "hard" currencies of
the G-10 nations, or Swiss Francs.
The G-10, for those who are new to this, are Britain, Germany, France, Italy,
Canada, the U.S., Japan, Sweden, Holland, and Belgium. "Hard"
means that these nations have acquired the bulk of the monetary gold in
the world. Roughly 85% of this hoard is kept under the runway of the International
Airport in Zurich, Switzerland. In reality, the Gold-Standard is so much
hocus-pocus. First World banks, on account of this collective gold hoard,
are franchised by the UN World Bank to lend "credit money"-in
today's terms, mere "computer- blips"-to the debtor-nations of
the Third World.
Under the "Fractional Reserve" system by which the international
banks conduct business, they are allowed to lend out in loans ("credit
money") as much as 26 times the amount of "reserves" they
have "on deposit" in their vaults. The "capital pool"
of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are private corporations-the
Prime Banks of the G-10 and Switzerland.
Historically, the Exchequer, the finance ministry under the British Crown,
began to go into debt to the Bank of England almost as soon as it was founded
in 1694. Foreign wars were fought at great expense to the Treasury, and
the cost of these wars was added to the National Debt. The stockholders
of the Bank-the owners of the "consols"-began to receive tidy
quarterly dividends from the interest on the ever-expanding National Debt.
This system, established in London in the 1690s with the founding of the
Bank of England and the Stock Exchange, is called Capitalism and represents
the transition from the old, medieval feudalism, based on fealty and ground-rent,
to the new, modern feudalism, based on monopoly and interest-bearing debt.
During the overt period of the British Empire, from roughly 1750, until
1946, the Bank of England functioned as a looting instrument in the interest
of the bond-holding class, not only to Britain's internal economy, but to
the macro-economy of the Empire, as well. After World War Two, with the
establishment of a new set of "international" institutions, the
center of gravity was transferred from the Bank of England to the World
Bank/IMF.
The commercial banks of the City of London, which had owned and controlled
the stock of the Bank of England, became a portion of the "capital
pool" of the new twin entities. Subsequently, in a purely symbolic
move, the post-war Fabian-"Socialist" government of Clement Atlee
"nationalized" the empty shell of the Bank of England. The IMF
then replaced the Bank of England as the vehicle of debt-collection.
From that time forth (owing in part to the antiquity of its industrial base),
the economy of Britain began to gradually slide deeper and deeper in debt
to the IMF, which also became the new, streamlined instrument for global
economic looting. Today, in 1995, with the purchase of Barings Bank (one
of Britain's historic "prime" banks) by a Swiss conglomerate,
the Continental (i.e., German and Swiss) banks are ascendant. The financial
capital of the world has moved from London to Switzerland.
On paper, a thorough description of the World Bank and the IMF is very complex.
There are the "subscriptions" to the Fund itself and the votes
conferred in proportion with each subscription (this aspect alone gives
the First World hegemony within the Fund); there is the gold-tranche and
the various credit-tranches, and so on. It is not in the scope of this article
to demystify the elaborate veil of window-dressing that covers the perverse
heart of the beast. It is enough for the lay-person to understand that behind
the facade of the UN World Bank and the IMF, international commercial banks
are lending computer-generated "credit-dollars" at usurious rates
of interest-rates that the Third World debtor nations cannot repay.
Initially then, the borrowing nation goes in debt to the World Bank-in reality
to the private bank-corporations which constitute its "capital pool."
Then the IMF steps in to refinance the original debt. This is like getting
a second mortgage. Then, after the nation becomes so thoroughly in debt
through the "miracle" of compound interest that it cannot pay
even the interest on either mortgage, the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) steps in to call the debtor-nation on the carpet in Geneva.
First World debtor-nations (like Britain) are quite naturally exempt from
this kind of humiliation.
Ultimately, the Third World debtor-nations are forced by GATT to cough up
raw materials-their own precious national resources-in order to pay this
fictitious, interest-bearing, unpayable "debt" that was originally
generated out of nothing in privately-owned, First-World bank corporations.
If progressives are opposed to imperialism and neo-colonialism, they should
be aware of the neo-colonial function of the IMF and GATT, both founded
in 1946, two of the chief institutions of the United Nations.
Another inherent contradiction between the illusion of "wonderfulness''-the
UN as it is presented in such venues as the 1995 Children's World Peace
Festival-and reality, is the role of the international banks in fomenting
and financing wars and civil wars around the globe-especially in Asia, Latin
America, and mineral-rich Africa. The UN party-line is that wars are caused
by nationalism and ignorance. While these factors are clearly present in
all conflicts, no ongoing war can be waged for more than a few weeks without
financing -and financing comes from banks. The really ugly aspect of this
picture is that the international armaments industry-euphemized in the 'teens,
'twenties, and 'thirties as the "Merchants of Death"-interlock
with some of the same international commercial banks which form the capital
pool of the IMF, the agency of the UN, the institution supposedly dedicated
to the cause of "world peace."
The present debacle in Bosnia, formerly a province of Yugoslavia, is a current
example of this essential contradiction. First World arms-merchants (and
their attendant, interlocking bank corporations) have exploited the historic
ethnic antagonism between the Croatians, Serbs, and Bosnians to capitalize
on a ghastly little civil war, while apportioning the sales of death-dealing
armaments in a gentlemen's agreement between them-Britain, Skoda (arms-central
of the Czech Republic), and Russia arming the Serbs, while Germany and Austria
arm the Croats. Bosnia, kept under an arms embargo for a long while, could
only buy weapons on the black market-most of them from the Islamic bloc.
In consequence, Bosnia has been ground like corn between the twin millstones
of Serbia and Croatia.
And what is the role of the UN in all of this? Far from being "weak,"
"inept," or "lacking teeth," as the mainstream media
portrays it, it is doing just what it was designed to do, acting as a "soft"
cop, presiding over another "managed conflict"-in effect, a supervised
war of attrition. Meanwhile, the big boys, the German bankers, who through
the Bonn government precipitated the break-up of Yugoslavia by immediately
recognizing the independence of Croatia when it was announced in 1991, are
cleaning up, and acquiring just as much equity in Croatia as they can gobble
up (a sizeable spread along the Adriatic coast for starters) in payment
for the arms that were supplied to wage the war.
In point of fact, from its inception, the UN has presided over a series
of disastrous and bloody neo-colonial conflicts. There was the UN "police
action" in Korea in the early fifties and the rape of Katanga province
by UN forces in the bloody Congo war of the early sixties. Even the U.S.
presence in Vietnam-an imperialist presence if there ever was one-was sanctioned
by the UN Security Council and the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO),
an agency of the United Nations. In short, from the UN presence in Somalia
as room-moniter for the oil interests, to the UN sanctions against Iraq,
which have effectively murdered thousands of children by depriving them
of medical supplies, to its nonaction and silence (equaling complicity)
in the face of the Chinese depredations in Tibet and the CIA-sponsored war
in Angola (in which one and a half million people have died), the contemporary
record of the UN as global "peace-keeper" is pretty dismal.
When these realities are related to the illusion-the cherubic children's
choir exhorting the hearers to "Take the pledge to support the web
of life"-the discrepancy is enormous. On one hand, the ideal of internationalism-of
love and brotherhood/sisterhood and a world beyond national chauvinism and
warfare-is undeniably a good and positive vision. On the other hand, as
long as finance capitalism, directed from Switzerland, continues to rule
the planet, and individual nations and states are denied their natural rights
to control their own economies and own their own resources, the UN can never
bring "world peace."
In 1994, Global Exchange of San Francisco promoted a series of symposiums
around the slogan (regarding the IMF) "Fifty Years is Enough."
We agree. But in truth, the slogan should be "Three Hundred Years is
Enough," for that is the term and tenure of finance capitalism, the
neo-feudal system evolving out of the Bank of England, which supplanted
the old feudalism. We need to move on. The progressive agenda should state
that the people of each nation be granted their sovereign and inherent powers
over their own destinies through "home rule" of their own economies,
natural resources and industries. Nations, including this one, should be
allowed to regulate their own cash money systems. For until the day when
the hegemony of the international bankers shall be broken, the neo-colonial
system of which the UN is unfortunately a part, will continue to exploit
the people of the world, causing untold suffering, pain, and death.
References are available upon request