September 26th Collective : Stop the IMF in Prague!

Crickey! This section has taken almost a year to get round to editing! Talk about slack. If anything essential is missing, then email ZeroZero.

INDEX

Resources about the IMF

Why stop the IMF? from Schnews.

What happened in Prague - accounts from a variety of sources.

ZeroZero Photos from Prague - Pink and Silver group

Events Around the World

Archived page of international participants for S26 2000 Global Day of Action

Prague and Beyond

Links to good sites!

Music and missiles

Things soon turned violent as anarchists began to tear down barriers near a rail line that runs under the road bridge. There was the repeated sound of tear gas being fired, and black smoke as riot police raced to the spot. Soon there was also black smoke rising, as BBC camera crews filmed what appeared to be petrol bombs thrown by the demonstrators. The air was filled with the sound of police helicopters, firecrackers, and ambulances, while the lone sound of a trumpet playing "We Shall Overcome" wafted over the proceedings.

Ring-side seat

A little later, demonstrators managed to penetrate within 100 yards of the Congress Centre itself by using a small tunnel under the rail line. They occupied the Vysehrad metro station, which had been closed by the authorities for the day. Some protesters daubed slogans on the station with spray paint while others shouted "fascist democracy" as another set of riot police moved smartly down the steps of the station. Hundreds of delegates left the Congress to watch the proceedings from a bridge linking the conference centre to one of the main delegate hotels, the Corinthia. They were soon to get an even closer view of the protests. As we watched, another group of a few hundred demonstrators managed to reach that hotel, unnoticed by police.

Bystander hit

Led by a women dressed in bright feathers, and marching to the sound of drums, they advanced on the hotel before the outnumbered police made a stand on the Metro steps.

As delegates watched, some began throwing missiles, one of which hit a woman watching from the balcony. As the riot police arrived, some demonstrators tried to overturn cars and waste bins to block their way. But they were soon overcome, as the riot police charged and split them into small groups. Several people, including at least one woman, were hit repeatedly by the police as they fell. As the light began to fade, the protests appeared to subside, and it looked like the delegates would get home to their hotels in the evening.

But it was not quite so simple. The police opened the metro line, while keeping their barricades across the road bridge. But as we boarded the train we discovered that it was not stopping in the city centre. Instead, thousands of delegates were sent by buses from the end of the tube line to a heavily guarded assembly point, from where we eventually boarded another bus for the hotels. But it was not quite so simple. The police opened the metro line, while keeping their barricades across the road bridge. But as we boarded the train we discovered that it was not stopping in the city centre. Instead, thousands of delegates were sent by buses from the end of the tube line to a heavily guarded assembly point, from where we eventually boarded another bus for the hotels. As we sped through the deserted streets, it was clear that the protesters had proved once again that, despite their small numbers, they had been able to make an impact on the world stage.

The World Bank and IMF fail the world's poorest people by siding with western donor governments, says Jeffrey Sachs

Many of the protesters in Prague may not have mastered the economics of globalisation, but they certainly understand the politics. Their complaints about the International Monetary Fund and World Bank destroy any pretence that these are global institutions with more than 180 member countries. The truth, of course, is that they are the instruments of a few rich governments, which hold a majority of the dollar-based votes and would rather pretend that all is well in the world than ask their taxpayers to address the urgent problems of the poor.

The US is the most egregious of the lot. A country that has an annual income of $10,000bn (6,850bn) scrapes together about $1bn of development assistance for sub-Saharan Africa - 100th of 1 per cent of its national income. In Nigeria last month, US President Bill Clinton had the temerity to trumpet the US's token support of $9.4m - 3 cents per American - for the estimated 2.5m sufferers of HIV/ Aids in Nigeria. If he had stayed at home and spared the expense of the trip, he probably could have doubled the amount.

The IMF and World Bank have been mouthpieces of this deceit, with their charade of analysing the "debt sustainability" of the poorest countries. These analyses have nothing to do with debt sustainability in any real sense, since they ignore the needless deaths of millions of people for want of access to basic medicines and nutrition. Money that could be directed towards public health is instead siphoned off to pay debts owed to western governments and to the IMF and World Bank themselves.

When push comes to shove, the IMF and World Bank side with the creditor interests of the rich countries, even when such policies violate the most basic precepts of market economics. Take the "success" of the Korean bail-out operation. Under the IMF deal, the creditor governments forced Korea to guarantee the repayment of bad debts owed by private Korean banks to private US, European, and Japanese banks. The Korean people are paying billions of dollars in taxes so that their government can make good bad private loans.

The truth is that we need the Bretton Woods institutions - but as truly global institutions representing all of their members, not as creditor collection agencies designed to shield taxpayers in rich countries from bad news about world poverty.

The IMF has a very important role to play in monitoring global financial markets. It even performs the vital function of providing short-term emergency funds to maintain liquidity in international markets and to member countries facing financial panics. It has absolutely no business trying to run dozens of impoverished countries, mainly in Africa, from 19th Street in Washington.

The IMF knows very little about economic development challenges, from disease to tropical agriculture to environmental degradation. Advocates for the poor accept that export-led growth raises incomes of the needy, when based on a steady shift to higher technology goods (as in China and elsewhere in Asia). But the IMF's policy recommendations have left Africa every bit as dependent on primary commodities as that impoverished continent was 20 years ago.

The World Bank is equally ineffectual. To shield US taxpayers, it pretended for 20 years that public health disasters in Africa could be solved by "cost recovery" measures imposing higher fees on the poor. It stood by paralysed as HIV/Aids became the greatest pandemic in history and as malaria swept across the continent.

The Bank says poverty alleviation is its main business but directs most of its lending to creditworthy countries not in need of public-sector support. It preaches good governance to the poor countries, but has itself been unable to set meaningful priorities.

The simple truth is that we do not need a public-sector bank at all for the problems of the poorest countries. We need a World Development Agency that would use grant funding to help spur technological solutions to the problems of the poor, and would provide grants to deliver urgently needed healthcare and education. The World Bank has about $30bn of capital, generating about $2bn in income each year, which could be used to support programmes in technology, disease control, and related areas.

This money should be supplemented by substantial new grants and capital contributions by donor governments. Increased funding is also urgently needed by specialist agencies such as the World Health Organisation. The bank lending operations of the Bank could be spun off, indeed privatised.

Globalisation underpinned by global ethics is the best hope for the poor. An IMF focused on global financial markets and a World Development Agency devoted to the poorest peoples could yet make a valuable contribution to the world. Neither is yet on offer in Prague.

The writer is director of the centre for international development at Harvard university

Protesters, many armoured with padding and wielding sticks, closed in to within metres of the congress centre, pelting police and stray delegates with a hail of bottles, rocks and Molotov cocktails. The scene was reminiscent of the so-called 'Battle in Seattle', where violent demonstrators halted a meeting by the World Trade Organisation, the first in a spate of disruption at meetings of international financial organisations. Police tried to force the rioters back with water cannon, tear gas, dogs, thunderflashes and even threw cobblestones as they were at times overwhelmed by hundreds of masked youths shouting anti-globalist slogans. Early on, several police were set alight when a Molotov cocktail exploded among them. Their colleagues extinguished the flames using a water cannon. The worst threat to those at the conference occurred when protesters stormed a hotel just across the road from the congress centre. They pelted financiers and journalists with stones until police pushed them back with dogs and truncheons. Officials said one Russian and one Japanese delegate were hurt.

UNDER SIEGE

Security officials said the activists, who had pledged not to use violence and to blockade the delegates inside the building until they abolished the World Bank and the IMF, had managed to put the congress centre under siege.

``The centre has been cut off. All roads (accessible by cars) are blocked by protesters,'' said the congress centre's traffic and security officer Lubomir Brychta, adding that he hoped police would open a corridor out later.

A delegate inside the conference centre said those inside were not allowed to leave the building at all. Host Czech President Vaclav Havel, who led the bloodless revolution that toppled Communist rule in 1989, condemned the clashes and called on protesters to end the violence, his spokesman said in a statement. Officials said at least 65 people had been injured, mostly police. Many were hurt by projectiles, and emergency services also treated burns from the petrol bombs. A British journalist was also hurt. There were no reliable estimates of the number of demonstrators arrested, but Reuters correspondents in the city saw dozens detained.

PROTEST ORGANISERS DISAPPOINTED

Police called reserves from all over the country to add to the 11,000 officers already guarding the city, and the umbrella protest group INPEG, which organised marches that began Tuesday morning, said it disagreed with the violence.

``We're really disappointed... We were really hoping for a non-violent protest on the basic issues of the IMF and the World Bank... but instead now the focus has shifted to the streets of Prague,'' said INPEG organiser Chelsea Mosen.

At the back of the congress centre, a water cannon drove through ranks of activists who wielded sticks, rocks, and bottles. Police helicopters clattered overhead. One protester smashed the back window of a limousine with a stone as the car raced inside the venue's perimeter, and elsewhere others rained down rocks on waiting ambulances, which eventually fled the crowd. Other groups roamed the streets randomly smashing windows of stores and hotels and torched at least one car. But many more marchers, most of them foreign, kept their cool, waving banners that demanded the cancellation of debt to poor countries and the shutdown of the IMF. Some shouted ``No Violence, No Violence.''

Police said there were up to 9,000 activists, less than half the 20,000 organisers had hoped to attract to Prague. The rest of Prague was unusually quiet with schoolchildren enjoying an extra holiday officials proclaimed recently in anticipation of trouble hitting the streets of this picturesque city. But to one local the disturbances represented a business opportunity. He set up a makeshift stall next to the closed Vysehrad metro station and was selling cold beer and snacks to police and delegates -- at a 100 percent mark-up.

THOUSANDS finally made it to Prague to demonstrate against the latest round of international finance meetings this week, with the familiar pitched battles being fought between riot police and a section of activists attempting to reach the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) buildings.

By Tuesday night, the Czech government was said to be considering an Army response. According to Prague Post six armoured personnel carriers, six troop trucks, two fire engines, two Mi-17 helicopters and two W-3A Sokol helicopters were on standby. Around 3,000 were said to be in running battles and over 500 have been arrested. About 10,000 protesters in all reached Prague. Meanwhile inside, James Woolfonsohn, World Bank chief, stretched sincerity to its limits when he acknowledged protesters' complaints about the damaging effects of globalisation in the developing world, by telling the seried ranks of billion-dollar suits inside that tackling poverty is what they are all about. Perhaps the real problem was best inadvertently exposed by Frits Bolkestein, the EU commissioner for the internal market and taxation, when he said in the Wall Street Journal (in advance of his Prague speech) on Monday: "Culturally, the opponents of globalisation see a process that shapes a world in which many features are alike. Every major city has a McDonald's; every major hotel gets CNN; every major cinema shows American films.

"This is why many people think of globalisation as a byword for Americanisation, for which free trade and the current world market economy is a mere vehicle." The broad range of the protests, which were in the main conducted peacefully, suggests he recognises the underlying threat that a broad and persistent mobilisation like this potentially represents. Even Oxfam were represented on the streets. The ten days ofevents, organised by the Initiative Against Economic Globalisation (INPEG) -- a broad network of Czech anarcho, environmental, ecological and other groups -- began on 20 September. There was a Union of Communist Youth contingent with the Czech Communist Party leader Miroslav Grebenicek. Demonstrations, information campaigns, an art festival and a counter-summit are all aimed at grabbing the world's, especially the West's, attention. Predictably, the alternative platform was ignored in the mass media, but increasingly activists are using the Internet to file news for all with access to access. This sense of siege has an impact when capitalist crisis bites and the glaring contradictions of the widening wealth divide incite more and more to popular action. The combination of overproduction, oil price crisis, failure to address the developing world's needs and persistent ever-richer transnational dominance is provoking a reaction.

The millions being spent by the Treasury to lift the Euro value is yet another missile whizzing through (not MI6) but Chancellor Brown's pro-IMF open market and privatisation defence in the face of these protests. No big-wig meet goes unnoticed now, wherever it is, as Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor Brown would have noted when they passed the large Brighton Prague solidarity demonstration outside Labour Party conference this week. However much attempts are made to discredit the anti-capitalist actions as either simply excuses for violent rampages or as a force unsupported by the silent majority, the reality is different. In the Czech Republic a poll carried out by the IVVM agency concluded, according to Radio Prague, that "the vast majority of Czechs agree with many of the statements made by anti-globalisation demonstrators." It said, for instance, that 91 per cent accepted the rich-poor divide was widening; while 90 per cent said the same for the developed and the developing world divide.

 That degree of sentiment also implies domestic discontent as a so-called transitional economy! Another big-wig meet took place last Saturday, between the finance ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Estonia. They were supposedly agreed, yet again, that it would take just 3-5 years to satisfy the Maastricht criteria for joining the EU. What may be transitional is the connection dawning in many of these countries that EU membership will seal their fate as marginalised economies, compounded also by Nato's costly embrace.

"Hundreds of undercover police operated among demonstrators in Prague" from LN by exceprted and translated by Marie 9:08am Thu Sep 28 '00

Below is a *rough* translation of excerpts from an article in Lidove Noviny's special supplement "Unrest in Prague, balance sheet of damages" ("Nepokoje v Praze, bilance skod," Thursday, 28 September 2000). The original is available at any trafika for two crowns, or on the web at http://www.lidovenoviny.cz original title: "Na demonstrantnich v Praze pusobily stovky policistu v civilu" authors: Lucie Tvaruzkova, Jana Ciglerova pages: Lidove Noviny reports on the use of undercover police dressed as militant demonstrators, among them the so-called agents provocateurs documented by Citizens' Rights Watch (CRW). CRW reports that agent provocateurs participated in the violence. The police contest this information.

The spokesperson for CRW, Dusan Stuchlik, says, "On Tuesday on Opletalova Street, we saw men in civilian clothes who mixed with the crowd of demonstrators, arrested some people, packed them into vans and left with them."

The chief of police operations, Radislav Charvat, confirmed that undercover officers were on the streets. "Yes, there were some 100 of them there. They had the job of monitoring the movement of the crowd." He denied that there were agents provocateurs among them.

The editors of Lidove Noviny saw with their own eyes on Tylovo Square a member of the police, before arresting activists, himself take some kind of stick and smash at a commercial display.

CRW also repoted  similar information yesterday, releasing photos and videos recoridng undercover police participating in plundering the town. Stuchlik said, "We have footage of some thirty-year-old men smashing windows at McDonalds and then walking without problems behind the police cordon."

He continued, "They walked across the square, proceeded to the police cordon, pulled something from their pockets and the police at the cordon let them through with no problems. At the same time, from the same place, the police ejected journalists, the CRW and others."

In the opinion of legal experts, the scattering of agents provocateurs infringes upon the law. Says lawyer Vaclav Vlk, "If it's true, it would indicate provocation. That is classified as a criminal offense infinging the jurisdiction of the public authorities ... Undercover police have the right to arrest. They must however show their service badge, insignia or at least call out: Czech Republic police." The undercover police that Lidove Noviny followed, however, did not observe these rules. The majority of those detained reported that they only were told "Drop! Draw!" ("Padej! Tahni!") The majority of the undercover police in the centre of Prague were wearing dark pull-overs with hoods, denim jackets and heavy leather boots. Their faces were covered with black bandannas. The majority of militant protestors were similarly armored.

(The following is an insider’s blow-by-blow account of the World Bank- IMF Annual Meeting in Prague on Oct. 26-28, 2000. The author, a senior World Bank staff member who is a long-time contact of Focus on the Global South, requested anonymity for obvious reasons.)

Coming into Prague was impressive because they had the system all set up. Right at the airport you were accredited. As soon as you stepped out of the plane, you were fast- tracked out of customs. Everything was so systematic. Everybody got into fast track. And you got escorts. As you know, they closed all universities that week. And one reason was to get students to act as escorts and guides to delegates. For the whole week. Very good looking escorts. Extremely good looking. In fact, I dated one of them later.

Deceptive Calm

I have to say that my impression was there was no inkling at least among the people I was in touch with of what was going to come. In fact, the dominant reaction from IMF-WB delegates was that the police were overreacting. I got there Saturday the 23rd,. On the 24th and 25th, nothing was happening. Lots of activities but everybody still felt nothing would happen. I think among the delegates and among the private bankers no one was really expecting anything to happen that coming Tuesday. The debate between [James] Wolfensohn, [Horst] Koehler, and the NGO’s that President [Vaclav] Havel organized on the 23rd was not well publicized. People I was with had not heard about it. There was a daily schedule called “Emerging Markets,” and it was listed there, but it wasn’t played up. Only those like me, who had been tipped off before coming to Prague, understood its significance. I told my boss I wanted to attend, but he said there were more urgent things to pay attention to. Anyway, Saturday and Sunday were so uneventful that everybody felt it would stay this way throughout. Really calm.

A Kafkaesque Tuesday

Then all of a sudden you had this very dramatic turn of events on Tuesday. Tuesday was the opening day. On Monday, the security system warned that something might happen the following day. But even when the security system started issuing flyers to the delegation rooms, no one believed it. We were warned by the flyers that if we were going to the Congress Center on Tuesday, we would have to be prepared to stay there for a while because a protest could lock in delegates at the Center. But even then I had the sense that no one took that seriously. And I believe that because everybody came to the opening ceremonies the next day. Had it been taken seriously, some people would probably not have shown up. I saw ex-World Bank presidents there coming in with their spouses and big time private bankers, and nobody it seems had taken these warnings seriously.

Then close to noon, all of a sudden you had this announcement that the transport system was shutting down. Usually you had these shuttle services between the Congress Center to the hotels every 15 minutes, but all of a sudden these services were shut down. The bridge leading to the main entrance was blocked, and the two other entrances to the Congress Center were also blocked by riot police, who were now very visibly at the center. But the action was still taking place at quite a distance from the Center. In any case, we couldn’t leave. One incident was reported. A young delegate from the Japanese government wanted to go out and he just stepped out and tried to go through one of the side openings. They said he was beaten up and sent to the hospital. All of us were warned not to transit in and out, not to even attempt to walk out.

There was no clear sign or indication of what would happen next. I saw ex-World Bank presidents walking around not knowing what to do. I asked one former president how he was doing, and he told me that his wife had managed to skip coming to the Center by joining the Prague tour but he was left behind. He didn’t know what was happening. When I told him about the protests, he became totally disoriented.

In any event what was happening was everyone was waiting to get out. They had long run out of numbers in the program. At around 7:30 p.m., there was a sudden oral announcement. Everybody should go straight to the metro. The metro had been stopped all day. Now, they told us that the metro had been opened and we all had to go, quickly. What happened was they got this special train to get the delegates to the very last station on the line, where buses were waiting to take the delegates to the reception at the exhibition hall. We were brought in to this big exhibition hall--I don’t know what you call it. But when we got there, we were surprised to see that the protesters were already there. This big exhibition hall was supposed to be secure but to our great surprise the protesters had beaten us to the place. And the authorities had not planned for this. When the reception was over, they just wanted to disperse all the delegates, so they ended up bussing us to different parts of Prague, where we were left to our own devices. Many of the people with me were really, really worried, but I was having fun. We finally got to our hotels around 12 midnight. But we still had not known the extent of the protests, and of course once everyone got to the hotel, everyone tuned into CNN and  that’s when welearned about McDonald’s being trashed.

Pleasure or Pain?

I was staying at the Renaissance near the Old Town. I had this friend who was staying at the Hilton about 10 minutes away who was still with me, and I just wanted to make sure he got to his hotel safely. So I took off my suit and got into my jeans and more comfortable wear. But he was still in this suit and had this bag with a big IMF logo. While we were walking to his hotel which was 10 minutes away, we met a group of French protesters who started harassing us. Actually if I was actually threatened with physical harm, I would have called out your name and screamed I’m a friend of one of your leaders. I was ready to do that.. The guy I was with comes from a Third World country, but I told him that saying that you’re Third World wouldn’t work, not with your IMF badge. Fortunately, there was a restaurant nearby and I shoved him inside. We had a couple of beers and waited till the French protesters went away and we snuck out.

On the way back from his hotel, I ran into another problem. Two prostitutes sidled up to me, and the one to the right of me started rubbing my buttocks. I guess they knew I was a delegate. I don’t think they were Czechs. They looked like Italians. Maybe they came in with the Italian protesters, since we heard that the Czech security had driven most of the regular prostitutes out of the city. So that evening, it was a question of who got to the delegates first, the prostitutes or the protesters. If you were lucky, you got pleasure. If you were unlucky, you got pain. In any case, we never got to the price. I ran away: who knows, they might have been protesters in disguise!

Whose Side Are You on?

The following day, very few people went to the Congress Center. Most stayed away. They just stayed in their hotel rooms. They didn’t even want to go out. But those who did still went out in their suits. I couldn’t figure that out. Those of us who were brave enough to go to the Center had to go by a completely different route. Our bus stayed at the back of a tram and it followed this all the way. This was fine with me because I hadn’t seen the sites of Prague, and the city was beautiful. At the conference center, I got to talking to the student guides. They really didn’t know what was happening. These kids actually didn’t know who to side with - the protesters or the delegates? They just wished the whole thing would end. By the way, I noted this attitude even with the police. Whenever I asked the police for directions, they very seldom answered me. I had a sense that they were just as wary of the delegates as they were of the protesters. I think one personal dilemma that both the students and the police had was that they were too young to have experienced the protests of late eighties and didn’t know what to do about it.

As you know, the meeting got cut by a day. During the press conference the next day,they denied that the protests were the reason. They actually said the reason was that things had run so efficiently that they were able to compress everything into two days. The press laughed at this.

End of the Affair

The real conclusion was the press conference the following day, the 28th. At this press conference, both Wolfensohn and Koehler were there to field questions and answers. There was a corps of press reporters keen to pounce on them. The questions from the first were quite pointed. Ranging from very specific to very basic. For instance one reporter from India asked Wolfensohn and Koehler that they had been accused of  causing so much misery in the Third World and what did they have to sayabout that. Wolfensohn said, I don’t think I am responsible for all that, and if you think so, you’re misinformed. But the whole conference was dominated by questions about the protest and not issues. Which means, at least from my perspective, that the objective of theprotests had been achieved. They had really distracted the proceedings.

A number of the press people said the annual meeting was obsolete and out of control and what did the IMF and WB want to do about this. Wolfensohn responded that although they could have virtual meetings, the personal interaction was still quite important. So that the Bank would actually continue to have annual meetings. Wolfensohn and Koehler insisted that they had “gotten through” to the NGO’s and pictured the Saturday debate at Prague Castle as a big success for them. On the other hand, from my experience watching Wolfensohn for several years, he appeared to be very tired. It seems he had run out of things to say and even his statements to the press were very uninspired. He didn’t look like the “Elvis” Bono described him to be. He appeared to be much less enthusiastic. He was repeating many of the old formulas. Maybe the futility of it all had finally gotten to him. As for Koehler, he was upbeat and very light. No, light is not the word. He appeared to be very na?ve, that’s what I want to say. I don’t think it’s just his lack of mastery of English. He was talking like a college student about the issues, repeating the same line about him not being a banker but somebody with a heart. Both of them said that the violence had come from a very, very small minority, and that the majority of the protesters were really there because they had something to say. And there were a lot of legitimate arguments being made by them. And that the WB and the IMF would now pay greater focus to their concerns. It was very difficult for me to distinguish between reality and rhetoric because all the time Wolfensohn was playing with his watch. From my vantage point, in the end, the agenda had been taken over by the protesters. I think Prague created quite an impression with the World Bank-IMF bureaucracy, although this is a much more entrenched bureaucracy than the WTO. I sensed that after Prague, the words of civil society will be taken much more seriously, but whether this will mean real dialogue we still have to find out.

The Desert Beckons

The next two annual meetings will be in Washington and the third one will be in Dubai. And the head of the Dubai organizing committee said that the temperature would be higher in Dubai than in Prague! He was saying basically that prior to the Prague proceedings, he didn’t foresee problems in Dubai, but after this, there has to be some rethinking. So it’s three years away but the impact is already there. I have a feeling that when the WB-IMF bureaucracy assesses Prague they will wind down the annual meetings. Because their only function is for governors to deliver their speeches, and more and more governors now simply submit written speeches. So I think more  and more theywill turn it into a virtual meeting.

And they will probably try to separate the unofficial events from the official meeting. Because what is most significant about these meetings are the informal business parties. There were at least 15 lavish parties given by the commercial banks for the delegates. Very, very lavish. For many delegates, those were the prime events of the conference. The actual official functions were just pro forma. If I were a protester, by the way, I would have gone to these venues because they were not secured at all. These were the events that everyone went to in the evenings. These were very open venues. And they were listed in the schedule. Now, that would really have stopped the real business of the conference.

West Asian delegate: They have succeded. What they wanted to do they have done. We are prisoners here. All over the world they will see that. They wanted propaganda, they have it. It's growing all over the world.

Banker from New York: The protesters are right of course. We are just interested in the money. The World Bank and IMFare just helping people like us to cream it in. Isn't it great?

IMF empoyee: I don't care about anything much... apart from how good the food is when I go out on missions to third world countries. you must be very bored if you are interested in the world bank.

Southern delegate: They are doing a very good job. In India every protest has 100,000 people. Here we have only 5,000 but they are doing a wonderful job. Iam very proud of them.

Young Czech: These people, the protesters are scumbags, bastards. They are smashing up cars, windows, ambulances I have heard. Ihope they get beaten up, smashed, thrown in the river.

World Bank Inspection Panel Chairman: The only thing the world bank is afraid of is publicity. And here we have publicity being created.

Czech Congress Centre employee: The situation is very difficult - thw mob is very close by to us here.

English World Bank employee: This is weird isn't it, here we are in a gilded cage...

US delegate: This is great. a bit of action. but the Czechs don't know how to handle it, they are over reacting

French journalist: I wouldn't be surprised if President Havel had not had a word with someone high up in the police force to lay off for a while and make sure the IMF/World Bankers get abit shook up...

European delegate: Meetings have been cancelled. people were unable to come in from the city for meetings so they had to be cancelled.

European journalist: It looks like we will be here all night. I've staked out a patch of shag carpet and I'll not tell you where it is.

Southern delegate: These protests are the inevitable result of economic policies being imposed on the world like a religion. thatcherism has led to this. G7 governments and especially the US are responsible. in the G7 countries responsible there are still some safety nets for the poor but in the south, which has almost no voice, there is less and less for the poor. that's why it's great to see the young Europeans doing this. fighting is the only way. in the end this is all about power. we fight every day inside the World Bank. they are fighting for one day, it's great to see them here. these protests definitely help us in our fight.

Spain - Barcelona

Yesterday, 26 of september, between 19.00 and 20.30, a group of about 100 people, called up by anarchist groups from Barcelona, blocked the doors of the headquarters of TELEFONICA (Spanish telephone company) in Barcelona, in Calle del Portal del Angel.

The action took place in a peaceful way, with no problem, and lots of propaganda was given out to passers-by. During the blocking no-one entered the offices.

The action is framed in the current campaign against world capitalism represented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and in solidarity with all those who, in Prage and anywhere comfront powers of global capitalism and estates.

WEALTH, ANARCHY NOW.

Berne, Switzerland

from :A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E

About twelve activists of the anti-WTO-coordination and the anarcho-syndicalist group FAUCH occupied the Czech embassy in Berne, the capital of Switzerland, today at 1 pm. They hung out banners demanding the release of all the people arrested around the demonstrations against IMF and World Bank in Prague and protested against the human right abuses of the Czech police. The Czech embassador and the officials of the embassy remained locked out of their offices for about two hours while the occupiers chanted their slogans and read out their statements to the people of the area and urged the embassador to pass the message on to Prague. Before leaving the building they held a press conference from the embassadors' office balcony.

The occupiers also demanded that the huge park of the embassy be opened for the residents of the neighbouring estate which mainly consists of council houses. They left the offices untouched - just Havel's portrait in the embassador's office got surrounded by red and black flags. All the occupiers got checked by the Swiss policewhen they left the embassy. According to the czech embassador it depends on the Czech foreign minister whether they will be faced with a charge or not.

Stop the IMF in Oxford!

On N9, Oxford Global Action undertook its first protest, against the IMF in Oxford. Despite what seemed like targetted censorship of our posters, around 60-80 people turned up to protest against the IMF on the steps of the examination halls on the High Street, where the ex-IMF head was to give a talk. Many people turned up dressed for a party and TV cameras and the local press had obviously heard about the event.

Banners attacked the IMF and factsheets which had been prepared in advance advised the potential audience of the facts about the IMF. Speeches were given on the steps of the examination halls before the demonstrators tried to enter the talk. The university police refused entrance not only to the demonstrators, but also to many who had travelled many miles to hear the talk (one person travelled from Amsterdam to hear the talk and was refused entrance!). After some pretty physical work, with lecturers, students, activists and members of the public working together to force the doors open, we stormed in: the principle of free speech and the fact that this was a public lecture ensured that everyone had good reason to hear this 'great mans' words.

Unfortunately, the police had already closed some metal gates which led to the hall itself, so we hung around the entrance hall. After some time, a number of people went back to have a rally on the front steps, and finally a small number of demonstrators managed to get into the lecture (getting in with a number of self-important people and lecturers). The lecture would have been a comedy experience, except fro the fact that Camdessus seemed to be serious about "development is another word for peace", "the IMF has succeeded wonderfully", "humanising globalisation", and "the IMF has the potential to stop all wars!". What a load of crap - luckily the factsheets had been given out and most of the audience were looking carefully at the real facts. Difficult questions were asked which were simply shrugged off [he lied in his answers] and then we all retired to a private function with free red wine, food and lots of university proctors and 'special' people.

As everyone gathered round the madman, asking him arse-licking questions, a couple of demonstrators approached him to ask some rather more realistic questions. The university police were most concered and this concern was warranted, when unexpectedly, two glasses of red wine soaked Camdesses and left him looking like he'd been physically assualted. The liberal and polite atmosphere changed to one of shock, and the police quickly threw the activist to the ground and removed the rest of the 'subversives'. Fortunately, a good photo of the mans red-wine-soaked-head was taken before leaving. The university officials were most concerned, as this was the most important talk they had organised all year! I don't think many of us will be allowed to do an MA at Oxford <grin>.

All in all, a successful demonstration: the leaflets left everyone thinking that the talk *sounded* good, but was actually a load of nonsense; the carnival atmosphere got good attention, and the red wine incident ensured that everyone knew that the IMF can't get away with its crimes and blatant lies anywhere. SHUT DOWN THE IMF!

During the month-long preparation for the Prague protest some relevant questions came up. Do we expect that some cosmetic reform, if accepted by these world bodies, will wipe out the ills of globalisation? Simultaneously the proponents of globalization are claiming that this is the only way for economic well-being and sustainable development. There cannot be a greater lie than this. Even the 1998 statistics of WB reveals a different picture.

The 1998 statistics show that one-sixth of the worlds population enjoy 80% of income and 57% of world population in 63 countries share 6% of world income-that is about $2 per day. The number of extremely poor people in South Asia increased from 495 million in 1997 to 552 million in 1998. And in sub-Saharan countries in one year, it has increased by 48 million. I would like to remind you at this point that in this world there are 354 billionaires and thousands of multi-millionaires.

Even in rich countries there is a growing practice of merging of big companies resulting in unemployment(about 10%). Only in the U.S. unemployment decreased. And it is a well-known fact that GATT was signed to bring life to the U.S. economy. Globalization of the economy has opened the door of globalisation of poverty.

In her best-selling book, "Economic Horror", Vivian Forrester rightly commented that economic neo-liberalism has introduced a new paradigm- "Increasingly it offers the  most vulnerable in our society a quite new choice-poverty at work or poverty on dole." In terms of human value the worst thing happened. In market-dominated society people have been converted into a commodity. The usefulness of the working mass is counted in terms of their contribution to the profit mechanism.

The grandeur of great promises, the marvels of material and intellectual achievements of the industrial age must be visualized in order to understand the trauma that realisation of its failure is producing today. The industrial age has indeed failed to fulfill the great promise-unlimited production, absolute freedom and unrestricted happiness, because of its psychological premises, that is, radical hedonism which postulates that:

1. happiness can be achieved by fulfillment of any material or sensual desire;

2. in order to fulfill those desires, egoism, greed and selfishness have to be encouraged.

This, according to hedonist belief, will lead to harmony and peace. It is well-known to the world that radical hedonism is the philosophy of rich people and has been adopted by the neo-liberals. Under the influence of such psychological premises we cannot expect that the economic oligarchies will change their system.

With the new rules of the trinity (WTO, WB and IMF), free flow  of money, goods and services should be allowed but not free flow of labour.  If we look at the statistics in developing countries, investment has increased by about 500% in the last 8  years, but unemployment generation has increased by less than 1%. Each day about $800 billion to $1 trillion changes hand in the stock market without generating any employment.

Who supports this system? Firstly the members of the corporate class which comprises people such as corporate managers, lawyers, consultants, public relations specialists, financial brokers and wealthy investors, and secondly the people who get direct benefit from this system-the new upper middle-class in developing and underdeveloped countries. This system directly benefits 20% of the population and indirectly another 20%. Those are the people who control the political power, economic power, mass media, educational and cultural institutions. And the 60% of the population who suffer due to this system has no power, no voice. They wait with the hope that trickle-down economy may fall a few drops as a concession one day.

Now the question is what should we be trying to achieve? In economic terms it is common sense to expect that guarantee of minimum requirements of life for all should be the economic goal of any just economic system. It is also a fact that material wealth is not unlimited. A just economic paradigm must design its policy based on the above 2 principles. To meet the above demands the following steps need to be taken, which I believe, will not be supported by the economic oligarchies:

1. Scrap the policies of SAP and also TRIM, TRIP and  GATS; and WB, IMF and WTO should function under our world body to help different socio-economic zones to achieve  economic self-reliance. Economy should be production-oriented and not export-oriented.

2. Industry should be based on availability of raw material, and local consumption should get priority rather than export.

3. Except in exceptional cases only capital goods which are needed to develop basic industries, and high-tech goods can be exported and imported.

4. Big corporations and banks should be compelled to pay 25% of their net income to meet the social cost. Tax should also be levied on money exchange. This will generate billions of dollars and can be utilized in education promotion, health care, and ecological protection.

5. In all spheres of economic activities-farming, industry, trade, and services, a cooperative system should be introduced. Individual ownership should be encouraged in the case of small-scale farming and industries.

6. Income tax for low-income people should be eliminated in favor of taxes on resource extraction, international money exchange, luxury goods, and upper-level income. The best will be if the highest income does not exceed 20% of the lowest income for the time being.

7. Economic communities will benefit from the free flow of goods, money, services and labor, only if the countries with same economic standards combine to form one economic unit-like EU, ASEAN, SAARC, ANDEAN, African countries, etc. Free market between countries of unequal standards(like NAFTA)  will be detrimental for the people of both the countries. East Europe should form a separate economic unit and not join EU. Only after developing its economy to Western standards can they join EU. One day the whole world can become one economic unit but not as long as unjust distribution system and gap between rich and poor countries exists.

8. Killing of whales, elephants, gorillas, birds and other endangered species should be banned. Also destruction of rain forest and of the eco-system should be banned.

9. Suppression of language and culture should be opposed.

It is inevitable that neither the trinity (WB, IMF, WTO) nor their supportive governments can accept this recommendation. So the question comes-what next? The only alternative is to organize grassroots peoples' movements. We should not forget that communism collapsed due to people's movements and we also saw the collapse of the dictatorial regime of Marcos of Philippines by peoples' movement.

Simultaneously wherever possible we should form economic cooperatives or communities or communities mobilizing small farmers, industry-owners, and traders. A few such projects already exist.

Each NGO also can take responsibility to establish economic projects for the benefit of the local people. Such efforts also exist. The only thing needed is to expand such efforts. I finally propose on this occasion to form a platform to coordinate our activities throughout the world. This can be termed as globalisation of people's effort. We can give any name to this platform, such as -universal social forum or neo-humanistic forum or any other. I agree that after the collapse of Commintern and the ineffectiveness of Socialist International this protest shows a new dimension to create anti-thesis against concentration of wealth, unjust system and neo-liberalism. I strongly believe that this will in the near future blossom  into a revolution - a revolution of a new paradigm.

But we should remember that economy as content of life is a deadly illusion. If we want economic democracy to take its root, it is essential to be aware of the cultural environment and political system that promotes it. Psycho-economic exploitation precedes economic exploitation. The economic system reflects the psychology promoted by the cultural and political system. Hence if we have any vision for revolution we must be aware of this phenomenon. The psychology of "to have" needs to be changed into psychology of "to be".

We cannot solve today's problems with the ideas of 19th century. Socialism needs to be redefined to fulfill the social, economical, political, cultural and spiritual needs of human society. Lastly, I would like to emphasize that as we are eager to restore ecological balance and to live in harmony rather than in conflict with nature. We should also make an effort to bring harmony within our physical, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of life.

If we do not alter the framework of the social  system and the international order, which are based on force and exploitation of weaker sections of society and backward nations, world peace will remain a hopeless dream.

Proutist Universal
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