Nations Controlled by Debt: The World Bank (All the World's a Stage: Part III)

In this lecture and the next, we take a look at International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, free trade agreements, and how their power over tribal, national, state, provincial, local....all forms of government....has grown limiting the peoples' ability to protect their homes and communities. These global forces form an economic global elite who use these IFIs and global trade organizations to influence the policies and economics of nation-states including the United States.

Part III here focuses on the World Bank, its formation, mission and impacts. Themes include the the role the "war on poverty" plays in actually increasing economic distress through things like national debt peonage and more. While the focus is on the impacts on Indigenous peoples, the lessons discussed can be applied to all peoples.

"Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples Resistance to Globalization," edited by Jerry Mander and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, is an excellent source for those wanting to learn more about many of the topics brought up in this lecture.

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Have you ever wondered why people work so hard to make so little? Why finding time to be with your family or involved in your community or engaged with our democracy is so difficult? According to anthropology, this loss of time is a direct result of a socially engineered, large-scale society based on industrialism. In a long view of human history, anthropologists tell us the heart of being human is having time with family, community and the land for easygoing foraging/cultivating/hunting in convivial company with ample time for creative pursuits.

When we are taught instead to view ourselves and others as "workers" (thanks to Western thinkers such as Karl Marx and Adam Smith), we lose the heart of what it means to be human. But how does this happen? In this lecture series we take a look at social engineering, forced participation in the cash economy, debt peonage and how global financial institutions force regulations on entire nations that undermine sovereignty and coerce economies into the global marketplace. We wrap up with a lecture on Indigenized economics -- this most common of economic systems in human history offers solutions to many of the labor and environmental issues we face today, issues that come from our industrial economics whether those economies are capitalist, socialist or communist.

This is Part III of a five-part lecture series created for educational purposes. You can find the others here:

Part I: Social Engineering:    • Social Engineering (All the World's a Stag...  
Part II: Creating Wage Workers:    • Creating Wage Workers (All the World's a S...  
Part III: The World Bank:    • Nations Controlled by Debt: The World Bank...  
Part IV: The WTO & Free Trade:    • The Corporate Takeover of National Soverei...  
Part V: Indigenized Economics:    • We Need Indigenized Economics NOT Socialis...  

You may also be interested in reading my essay on social engineering to destroy self-sufficiency in Anishinaabeg Akiing or the Northwoods: "Listening to the Trees: Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Industrialization and the North" published in "Honor the Earth" (ed. Phil Bellfy) and available here https://aimeecreedunn.wixsite.com/hom...

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