Framing and economic empire building

Digby, always a must read, has two recent posts that are essential.

The first looks at an issue near and dear to many of your, Dear Readers, hearts -- "framing." What's sobering is that while liberals, progressives, moderates, etc., try to wrap our heads around this issue, conservatives (or, as we should now be calling them, according to Dibgy, "radicals") are two or three steps ahead of the game. They are now actively training the messengers, using the growing number of College Republicans, to sharpen talking points and massage the language used when talking about things like the flat tax ("fair tax") and the "nuclear option" to end filibustering of Bush's worst judicial nominees ("constitutional option"). The discipline they inflict on their members is something even the most PC-obsessed liberal can never match.

The other post addresses a book that I hadn't even heard of before, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." The book is by a consultant in international development who uncovers the means through which the World Bank has been used -- at least in the past -- as a means of encumbering countries in crushing debt, enriching American corporations (our pals Haliburton and Bechtel, in particular) and the power elite of the country, but providing little benefit for the rest of the country's population. Meanwhile, the crushing debt, which the country can never pay off, is then used as leverage by the U.S. to get that country to agree to house a U.S. military base, to get the country to support the U.S. in a vote in the UN, etc.

Economic imperialism, in other words.

I said earlier, "in the past," since under James Wolfensohn -- the outgoing head of the organization -- the World Bank has changed it's modus operandi in recent years. But with Wolfowitz now slated to head the World Bank, it's use as a tool of American projections of power is sure to be restarted.

Writes Digby,

Wolfowitz is a true believer that the way conditions in the world will improve is through American power. Others are simply greedy. But it doesn't matter. The result is the same.

Whatever small amount of progress has occurred since Perkins was working in the field is now going to be turned back in order that American has the strength to strong arm countries into giving us their oil and allowing military bases and any number of other things we wish to take. (And, of course, we need the money for Halliburton and Bechtel and the others.)

I read somewhere recently, maybe even in my comment section, that the neocons are achieving their goals one by one while our howls of protest just fly out into the void. I once compared them to sharks, lethal predators who never stop swimming --- they just circle menacingly and systematically bite off one item of their agenda after the other.

Wolfowitz in charge of the World Bank is simply another phase of the plan. Their project is going swimmingly. As they were convinced that Iraq would be a cakewalk, they are convinced that all this hatred we are creating is irrelevant, that our awesome power can overcome anything.