Africa's interest payments on foreign debts are now four times greater than its expenditures for health care. It is an all too typical case of how the rich use debt as an instrument of control to expropriate the resources of the poor. It is very interesting if you take a logical extension of the structural adjustment policies, it suggests that the World Bank and IMF consider the ideal to be a country in which all assets and resources are owned by foreign corporations producing for export to generate foreign exchange to repay international debts. Their ideal country has no public services and all its domestic needs are met by goods and services imported from abroad and paid for with money borrowed from foreign banks. And they have the audacity to insist that this is all for the benefit of the poor.
Resistance is essential, but resistance alone is also a losing strategy.
We must claim the initiative to transform a world dedicated to the love of money to a world dedicated to a love of life. Magazine which John mentioned, a publication that documents the growing momentum behind deep change and tells how we can each connect with the countless positive initiatives being taken by people everywhere to create a world that works for all. So let's look for a moment at alternatives to world rule by the Bretton Woods institutions. Here we face a very critical global reality. For all its deficiencies, the United Nations has generally aligned with the cause of human rights, human development, and the environment.