THE MASSES ARE ASSES

Don’t believe most of the stuff you see in the movies. Hollywood is controlled by chickens and concentration camp guards. History books are no better. Most historians are ass-kissers and tenure seekers.

-- Oliver Stone

IMF's FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION

It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten.

But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life.

He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.

Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury...

DR. EVIL AND THE STATE OF THE UNION

As President Bush was preparing to give his State of the Union speech last week, White House counselor Karen Hughes told reporters that it would contain some shocking news. “We have learned that up to 100,000 people have been trained [as] killers in the camps of Afghanistan and are now spread throughout the world,” Hughes said. The 100,000 figure came from the final drafts of Bush’s speech, warning about “dangerous killers” who have spread throughout the world “like ticking time bombs.”

But NEWSWEEK has learned there was considerable consternation within the U.S. intelligence community over the president’s numbers. As initial reports of the speech moved on the wires, CIA officials hastily informed the White House that their own estimates of Al Qaeda terrorists trained in Afghanistan were no more than 15,000 to 20,000—less than one fifth the number in Bush’s estimate. Just hours before speech time, the State of the Union was revised to “tens of thousands of trained terrorists” who are “still at large.”

IMF, WORLD BANK HAVE FAILED

NEW YORK: Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent Harvard University professor, on Sunday accused the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United States of pursuing policies that have caused the deaths of millions of people around the world.

"People die by the millions in silence because of poverty" and "this is the responsibility of the IMF and the World Bank," he told a gathering at the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting of corporate and political leaders.

"We have 25,000 people die every day for identifiable reasons."

He charged that the "IMF and the World Bank have failed," citing economic reform programs imposed on poor countries by the two institutions in exchange for financial support.

But he laid much of the blame for their failure on the United States, which he said wields substantial influence over the Fund and the Bank and is "the biggest obstacle" to efforts aimed at increasing their assistance to the most impoverished countries.

BLAIR AND BUSH NOMINATED FOR NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Tony Blair and George W Bush have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting terrorism and securing world peace.

Right wing Norwegian MP Harald Tom Nesvik said he nominated the two leaders for the coveted peace prize, despite their role in ordering troops into Afghanistan.

"The background for my nomination is their decisive action against terrorism, something I believe in the future will be the greatest threat to peace," Nesvik said. "Unfortunately, sometimes you have to use force to secure peace."

U.S. TREATMENT OF AFGHAN PRISONERS VIOLATES GENEVA CONVENTIONS, U.S. LAW

The U.S. may be violating international rules in the inhumane treatment of Afghan soldiers taken prisoner in the war against Afghanistan, said members of the Green Party of the United States. According to reports, prisoners have been shackled, shaved in violation of their religion, blindfolded, held in open-air cages exposed to the elements, subjected to intense interrogation that borders on torture, all of which violate the international Geneva Convention on the treatment of war prisoners.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who promises "a legal decision soon" on the status of prisoners (Pentagon briefing, Thursday, January 24), has claimed that the prisoners aren't soldiers, but civilian "unlawful combatants." According to Rumsfeld, this disqualifies them from the protections of the 1949 Geneva Convention rules and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the U.S. in 1992, on the treatment of prisoners of war.

"Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention provides that should there be doubt as to whether an individual enjoys PoW status, they shall be treated as such until their status has been determined by a competent judicial tribunal." Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Greens also note that the Bush Administration isn't likely to rescind its order for secret military tribunals.

"More and more, the only pacts the U.S. considers itself bound to honor are the free trade treaties designed to benefit major corporations," said Jane Hunter, vice chair of the Green Party of New Jersey and an international management consultant. "The result is international instability and a blow to our valued international reputation on matters of democracy and human rights."