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tv   Documentary  RT  December 7, 2013 5:29pm-6:01pm EST

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great wealth and that's a strategy that a number of not just african countries but countries in throughout the world that have done very well by. so i wouldn't look at it in the narrow perspective of just been able to reimburse death debt but in fact as a way of generating wealth and generating opportunities for growth and through growth progress on poverty reduction. everywhere where the i.m.f. imposes structural adjustment involving the extension of land devoted for export led agriculture the greater the number of people going hungry. only twenty percent of africa's population has access to drinking water and contrary to widely held belief there is no lack of water in sub-saharan africa however the policies put in place by the i.m.f. in the aftermath of structural adjustment plans have only aggravated the
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difficulties people experience in accessing water sources. lack said access to drinking water in this village is an acute problem and it is because of these structural adjustment programs because the state has considerably reduced its budget for the water sector and has not provided the economic and financial resources to create or improve existing water sources use them. so the situation is drastic when it comes to what term i feel my bucket of water because there is no point to hope for running water which you have only a few hours during the night not every night and sometimes you can go for five or six days without any but i think so everyone looks for a place where there are wells those who can go to the us go to the river and make do with that.
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the reason that the heavily indebted poor country initiative was. thought to be desirable was in fact by me in the international community it was that it was very clear that the. poor countries were drowning under the amount of debt that they had and so every year they would borrow money and they would use that same amount of money to pay back old debts and the net result was that it was really nothing remaining in the middle. names wolf and so on played a very significant historical role did you by launching the heavily indebted poor countries initiative. and by making the governments of the o.e.c.d. countries understand and admit that it wasn't possible to continue to perpetually
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refinance african debt even with subsidies which in fact is what amounted to gradually stopping it all but within a system that kept african countries in a situation of political financial dependence which was politically economically and culturally highly damaging for everyone on the a multinational. we have put in place another process of reform which this time instead of stunting growth which has often been the case with structural adjustment programs encourages growth we began by preparing a strategy document to reduce poverty which emphasizes social aspects this is not necessarily the case with structural adjustment programs it is a range of reforms that takes into account social aspects which largely seem beyond structural adjustment programs. but i will not tell you about the details and about
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how difficult it was to set up something that was completely new at the time. that the results in the countries that have already benefited from this debt relief have been positive we have seen that these resources have been reassigned in large part to human development activities. the board to swipe clean. no alas no if you look at what we vote in two thousand that is to say just after the introduction of this new policy of wiping out that movie and two years of adjustments and then in two thousand and six. after all this here is after some cancellation measures you notice that the debt for the poorest was reduced by one point four percent so i see who are making fun of him an example of how developing countries economies were
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caught in a vice like scenario where on the one we are told that our debt will be reduced so that we won't have to get into debt again and on the other hand we have no money in our accounts so we should make do with a little money we have i don't give a damn about the conditions for cancelling the debt when they say we will cancel the debt you will now have health care and education but how will we have it when in order to cancel the debt they make you a forest code a mining code in an investment which no longer allow you to be sovereign in your national resources we see this how much plundering of mineral resources goes on forests environmental destruction the very confiscation of some public companies confiscation i say so how will the government have money to take care of social affairs even if we cancel the debt so it's really
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a masquerade when they talk about reducing poverty the world bank program that the debt forgiveness programs of the world bank and the i.m.f. promote these days in the u.s. government and the others are shams for the most part because they're telling these countries and the african nations particularly recently have suffered under this that ok we'll forgive your debts but you have to accept these conditionality. yes you know you have to open your doors totally to privatisation by our corporations you have to sell off all your assets to our corporations your utility companies your water and sewerage system companies your telephone companies your schools your jails are going to sell all that off to our corporations sick of it is this if you amputate a person's limbs that's how explain it they cut off one of your limbs here one there and then they say to you you are free but you are free sir so we fought against poverty but when you asked the question but how am i going to eat if i have no arms how am i going to walk much of it they say to us no no we will come with
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a spoon and we will feed you is that what you call freedom. the so-called heavily indebted poor countries initiative allows states that have respected i.m.f. recommendations to obtain a cancellation of a share of that debt. which logically should give them a boost in terms of budgets. and reality though he only makes it possible for a new financial actors to step into the breach and make outrageous speculations which have been nicknamed vulture funds. for that you need to the process of vulture funds is quite straightforward in fact . unless mn fund you buy it tends to a hundredth of the value of a debt contracted ten years ago it is now twenty years old and everyone thinks that it will never be reimbursed if you go before the court and demand the full reimbursement of the debt in addition to interest and areas this means that you
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have a grotesque situations where for example kensington a fund based in the cayman islands coincidentally two million of deaths from congo brazzaville and afterwards went to demand one hundred twenty million before the courts you know there would sixty times the national some what it of course do they said your rights to credit is always right it is the contract that wins out over the constraints that the country in question makes period. we have been victims of vulture funds we have been lynched by vulture phones and we have almost lost our dignity as a sovereign country because of these vulture funds so these funds have made it possible to capture the oil cargos destined for export on the high seas these vulture funds have hunted down. i'm going to tell you a story that is my predecessor arrived in washington for the annual assemblies of
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the i.m.f. and the world bank there he saw a man bring him an arrest warrant which would send him to prison in the united states. my predecessor had officially come to take part in these general assemblies . but this man had come in the name of the vulture funds it was a nightmare for us we knocked on all the most important doors of the world to ask for help to solve this problem so overwhelming it was for us it didn't happen we took things in hand we sat down with these people and we talked today we are rid of these people but it's true it hurts but if i had one piece of advice to give even if i am badly placed to give advice. that every country should avoid anything to do with these people especially control its debt so that it doesn't find itself on the second markets by the vulture funds which make money on the
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backs of so-called weak states. but the paradox is also that thanks to this small church we discovered congo brazzaville in particular . the secret accounts of. but i think the issue of buying and selling debt is. in market. because as oppose to for example. dead mean worth nothing sometimes that can be traded at a discounted rate and that is acceptable commercial practice what we don't want is to have speculation that artificially inflates the value of the debt cyclical the club that creates a lot of problems. many difficulties and do we have to think about limiting the use of these instruments for highly indebted countries.
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self the workers mark their lives for the pension account there's cash that you can be used to leverage in times of a synthetic obligations on wall street so that money has to be stolen clearly whether you're in the u.k. or detroit whether in your birmingham manchester sheffield or betrayed your pensions are up for grabs from the shysters on wall street led by the chinese there's a number ten and number eleven of boris johnson they want to take your money and they want to turn it into all kinds of flora and fauna the rivet is spinning the globe redwood giving him income for doing nothing but when it does. right on the street. first street. and i think picture.
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on a reporter's. instrument. to be in the know. on the.
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tenable situation. of a new mining code imposed by the world bank the country which before. is no longer but a minority shareholder. and is a perfect example of an organized hold up on the country's gold. despite months of secret negotiations. which contaminated the region with. used in the treatment of precious metals. without their faces covered for fear of losing their job. somali i can't talk about it. concerns us the workers in the mine and the locals is that we haven't earned
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anything for ten years. we don't live here there's nothing to drink here there's no drinking these little boxes which you see surrounding us. this is where the work of the mine live in these boxes here. where does the money from the mine go. i really don't know they're a big caymans within the government. all of the west gives them goes into. the. mining exploitation company. to film in his village despite ministerial authorization.
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if the taboos confessing to us that women regularly stuff a miscarriage is here and that the contaminated water from the ground supply is surely responsible for all of the evils and the dust causes serious respiratory problems especially for children. today we speak about the plundering of resources in congo because the world bank in its h i p c program initiated different reforms especially the forest code in the mining code permits for mining exploitation were granted the world bank with their experts to help congo and in all of these authorizations from mining exploitation almost all of the authorizations have to be reviewed because there was systematic
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pillaging of resources and the world bank watched on we were told that the world bank was a development bank wrong it's of bank of under development it has to be said it's clear. the big outside is china china has two point five trillion dollars in currency reserves and china is now present in africa latin america and in other asian countries where it offers extremely high sums for new loans. china has committed to invest six billion euros in projects in the democratic republic of congo these are aimed at the development of road infrastructure schools hospitals as well as the revival of the mining sector. in exchange the chinese will have access to six and a half million tons of refined copper two thousand tons of cobalt and three hundred seventy two tons of gold this minerals for projects barter agreement to surprised
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western countries and the i.m.f. and the world bank in particular both of whom were on the verge of cancelling the democratic republic of congo's debt these two institutions have set as a precondition that the contract be reviewed downwards. and so negotiations have been extremely hard with it has to be said with being blackmailed by representatives presidents of european countries have told us. here cheney's contracts we get treated at death you don't give them up. to make it we're happy to say that. the government and its chinese partner very hard to take a second look at that package and have indeed improved it so now we'll be benefiting from both debt relief and additional resources for infrastructure which
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it so desperately i think china understands that africa is a continent. has for many of the things that it needs particularly natural resources it has the potential of being a significant market because it's under a million people now that in twenty fifty it'll be close to two billion people today they are certainly at a stage which resembles a lot like what was practiced by france in the seventy's and its own commercial relations with africa we will also review operations which resemble the line for line what could have been done china is welcome india is welcome brazil is well come friends as well you know it's a place with tremendous potential. my experience was. that until i arrived at the bank
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the word corruption had never been used by a president of the bank it had never been discussed at the board and the reason was as i was told by the general counsel was that unfortunately many member countries and corrupt governments and what you didn't want to do was to offend countries that were corrupt even some of the big company countries were thought to be corrupt and i. decided that i didn't care whether any of my members were corrupt or not but that i was not going to run an institution that was giving money. knowingly to corrupt governments deposit but i think that it is no accident that we began to speak about corruption after the fall of the soviet union before them on the cause
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at that time but we couldn't really speak about this sort of thing without risking moving to the other side i think we changed the moral stance and it's. but i can tell you it wasn't easy. and not every country even today. regards that contribution as ring constructive and by the way not every country to . administer this anti corruption practices. there are many countries. that use it as a competitive tool. i won't name the countries but they must be known to you. and some pretty large countries. sure thing the but corruption here is a way of life even that's how people live because you can work for the big
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companies of these countries one of us take for example our customs company of. gumbo when you go to our feeder you will find really old fashioned buses but the people who work there travel around in all some jeeps really you would see people who work at a feeder with all some houses these people build skyscrapers but there's something fishy going on at a feeder where do they find what they earn because they only work at a feeder of course so are optional rules here. is to sit past conceived and it seems as if the fight against corruption works for low level corruption only. but as soon as you reach the government with that in the head of state the prime ministers the ministers it no longer works for vista geishas or start and presidential personal richmond
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political financing and then the richmond to friends is no longer tolerated i could not complete and i'm claiming that this is right not only naff reka. but. i know in that context we. worked with our membership to improve situations that make for better governance. economic governance and in public financial management in other areas that we work with. our membership i think we we think there's been considerable progress in in focusing. progress in. corruption in a number of countries. when we treat people as corrupt we're not there to clear their name if they are corrupt they are corrupt but the truth is that this
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corruption was supported by the great powers at the time of the cold war it's the same today no african leader keeps his money at home not in congo the ivory coast brazzaville. they always keep it in switzerland spain in the united states it's true too in south africa and in morocco not only in europe. africa should seek inspiration from the example of ecuador in two thousand and seven eight this latin american country proceeded with the audit of its debt to determine the illegitimate and odious debt there is a whole series of contracts and we see it in the african case. absolutely
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unacceptable including from the point of view of international international law both of which are particularly rendered void. the purpose of the audit is to identify what must not be paid and it's on the basis of an ordered that the government of ecuador decided to no longer pay illegitimate debt. and i believe that if we don't want to be a martyr it's true. even by the time has come for us to take action the congolese have to understand that it doesn't have to be like this i'm sitting on a gold mine and diamonds on wood and coal to. an electrical energy like being a say and despite it all we have no electricity. i am
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standing alongside an oil palm and despite that we import palm oil and i'm in a country where there are thinned leaders who have spoken out the lakes simon combine grew kimbo. and loom. but the problem is that people are disengaged today but i'm not despairing. things will change.
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they look like bound to. the ocean. people are suffering the consequences. how much more poison. behind this there is what we call the callet bank on which there is a deposit of plutonium left by security test which caused. despite previous
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cleaning efforts there remains a deposit of a little less than two kilos of plutonium stuck in the rock the coral reef about ten metres down. a never ending legacy. we speak your language i mean some of the will not advance. news programs and documentaries and spanish matters to you breaking news a little too much of angles to these stories. you hear. true altie spanish to find out more visit. do you think that you as a representative of the. gazan government and government in general could achieve that easing off live for the palestinian people through all the way they
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communicate through the way they present themselves to do want to kill me and they need we need respect to live from all of the kind of governments good and bad to recognize this government which recollected a from the people actually i am presenting to from the palestinian people themselves respect our choices respect i what i would believe is our need someone runs. deliberate george is on a big journey to structure. one hundred and twenty three days. through to see my number two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand killings. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face.
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olympic torch relay. on r t v dot com. you have to remember that israel if there were a company award for gross traumatic perform. inspire a country israel would win every year it's real theater. not to know who is the star of the theater so are some of the few moments ago now we have to distinguish between rhetorical position from its actual position israel wouldn't be investing billions and billions of dollars into building this wall if it wanted territory beyond the wall if i go back to. you know i mean if i had a hard time doing it's not go ahead go ahead. i'm sorry but if it's not just the wall and the west bank and gaza they're in. syria actually because syria poland
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they're drilling gas they're taking somebody else and gas and oil. crude lumber taurine was able to build most sophisticated. fortunately doesn't sound anything mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and. this is why you should care only. wealthy british style. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy
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with my. no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser reports. anti fracking a rage in. romania clashes erupted between police and locals who are furious at the prospect of american energy giant chevron drilling for shale gas nearby we report from the scene of the violence plus. we don't. believe just this. european politicians poor oil on the flames of the protests in ukraine as they reiterated their support for the crowd's anti-government sentiment. and as the world continues to grieve over the death of nelson mandela south africa's future and how dark shadows from the past lead to some whites to fear for their lives.

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