The U.S. government had been planning to topple the Egyptian President for the past three years – that’s according to diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks. The files show Washington had been secretly backing leading figures behind the uprising. Reportedly some fifty people have died and hundreds more injured in nationwide demonstrations since Tuesday. Protesters have returned to Cairo’s central square this morning reiterating calls for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Earlier the president dismissed his government, but refused to quit. Unrest in Egypt comes weeks after a month of chaos in Tunisia, which saw 80 deaths and the president being toppled before fleeing into exile. Investigative journalist, Webster Tarpley, told RT, Washington wants to put new leaders in power in the Arab world to follow the U.S. agenda.
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Last week, Democrats in the House and Senate came to a conference agreement on the final language for the Conference Report. The agreement provides billions in non-defense funding, including $108 billion to expand the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) loan programs, which was not included in the House bill. The $108 billion was agreed to by the President in April when he and other members of the G-20 created a plan to increase IMF supplemental funding by tenfold and broaden the role of the Fund.
We can only assume the $108 billion is separate from the $105.8 billion. The $108 IMF funding is described as a buy back, or loan guarantee.
According to Thomas.gov the IMF funds are to help Pakistan, although the IMF has come under fire as being the actual cause of global poverty by both Progressive–like Senator Bernie Sanders who voted to strip the IMF funding–and Republicans such as Ron Paul.
Republican Jim DeMint tried to strip out the IMF funding in the Senate bill by introducing Amendment 1138:
The DeMint amendment failed although Robert Bennett voted for the amendment. Orrin Hatch did not vote. There were 30 nays and 64 yeas.
John Perkins author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, has done a number of interviews where he claims the money being loaned out by the IMF and World Bank is used for infrastructure projects that go to companies like Halliburton, Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR, and Bechtel. The ruling elite in the country take a cut for accepting the offer, and then the citizens of the country are left holding the debt.
Progressive John Pilger has made 35 documentaries from 1970 to 2006. His films have been distributed in the UK, Australia and Canada, but have not been released in the US. Pilger’s 2006 documentary The New Rulers of the World takes a look at the effect the World Bank and IMF had on Indonesia.
The US Senate on Thursday voted to preserve $108 billion dollars in financing for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help it deal with the global economic crisis, as part of a war funding bill.Senators rejected on a 64-30 vote an amendment proposed by Republican Senator Jim DeMint to strip the IMF funding from a supplemental 91.3 billion dollar defense bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
The final vote on the defense bill, which provides additional spending for the current 2009 fiscal year that ends on September 30, was expected later Thursday.
The legislation’s provisions for the IMF include 100 billion dollars for the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB), a credit instrument providing the multilateral institution with additional resources to deal with exceptional risks to the stability of the international monetary system.
