Monbiot on the IMF

What will be passed off as a democratisation is in fact a way of ensuring the poor global majority continue to have no say

George Monbiot
Tuesday September 5, 2006
The Guardian

The glacier has begun to creak. In the world's most powerful dictatorship we detect the merest hint of a thaw. I am not talking about China or Uzbekistan, Burma or North Korea. This state runs no torture chambers or labour camps. No one is executed, though plenty starve to death as a result of its policies. The unhurried perestroika is taking place in Washington, in the offices of the International Monetary Fund.

Like most concessions made by dictatorial regimes, the reforms seem designed not to catalyse further change, but to prevent it. By slightly increasing the shares (and therefore the voting powers) of China, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey, the regime hopes to buy off the most powerful rebel warlords, while keeping the mob at bay. It has even thrown a few coppers from the balcony, for the great unwashed to scuffle over. But no one - except the leaders of the rich nations and the leader writers of just about every newspaper in the rich world - could regard this as an adequate response to its problems.

continued... The Guardian