Crashing and building, leaving the poor guy behind, as usual...as we see it.

     The world of men is and always has been filled with gaps, incongruities, irritating contrasts. Some of them close to pathetic. For example, the idea that the "system" can be saved by pouring millions of dollars into the hands of those very interests who participated in the carnaval of speculation that led to the present financial crisis. While at the same time backstaging the luck of the estimated one billion human beings around the globe that are submerged in a sub-human existence and the threat of starvation.

     Curious, indeed. For decades the International Monetary Fund has been preaching (to the poor Third World countries) the virtues of increasing interest rates and budetary belt tightening, opening up local markets to international capital, etc. That is, policies very similar to those advocated by the conservative Bush Administration in the U.S. and similar governments in Europe. The idea that the State should play a key role in the development process was taboo. Development was considered the exclusive priority of private capital. If a poor country wanted to develop it should do everything possible to bring in foreign investment, do away with legislation considered not favorable to foreign capital, such as limitations on the right to send profits back to headquarters...

   Curious indeed. Although the IMF continues to back the same basic policies, now they admit that some measures of "fiscal stimulus" are needed to get things rolling again. IMF technicians also recently accepted that it was an "error" to proceed with financial deregulation, and now admit that at least some "supervision" is necessary to set the world economy back on the right track.

   And then, the question of security. In a world of super rich and super poor, the question raised in the U.S. and "developed" economies is basically how to protect the wealth of those who have, not those who have not. The whole concept of the struggle against terrorism, though justifiable in view of the need to defend the rights of individuals, would seem to cover up a greater desire of the powerful: concern for the security of the interests of the powerful, lack of interest in that of the poor and downtrodden. In a certain sense this has been evidenced in the great concern for U.S. and European deaths in the war against Iraq, much less interest in the destruction of the war and its consequences for the common person; likewise, in the confrontations between Israel and Palestine, as if the death of an Israeli is "worth" more than that of a Palestinian.

   Finally: inspite of the apparently more open and transparent policies of Barack Obama in the U.S., the CIA seems to click in the same old beaten track. For example, accusing countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Argentina of representing a risk of stability in the area. The real message behind that declaration of the super spy agency was to reaffirm U.S. opposition to government's whose economic and social policies differ substantially from the vision of the U.S. concerning how countries should behave economically and socially.