| Amsterdam, 12 October 2000
Dear reader,
Prime minister Mohamed Mahathir of Malaysia
granted himself a raise of 22% to make up for a pay cut in 1997 of
10% because of the Asian Financial Crisis. Now he is going to earn
about 5000 dollar a month, not much compared with for example
the 10.000 $ a month salary of members of the Organising
Committee of the 2004 Olympic Games. These greedy elitepeople agreed to take a cut of 50% because even their fellow leaders
found a salary of $ 20.000 a month too extravagant.
But what about the pay cuts most poorer Asians had to endure
during the Crisis? Are they compemsated?
I was in Thailand in 1998 and I saw many half finished office
buildings. Work had stopped and the workers sacked. And I read
more facts in the paper.
A truck driver was left with 6000 baht after a pay cut of 2000 baht
(1 baht is about $ 0.025). His wife lost her work. Because you
need at least 10.000 baht to live a decent life, their son had to
leave school as did more than ten percent of the Thai school
population. Do you think the driver ever got a pay raise of 40% (22%
does not make up for the pay cut), that his wife found again some
work and that the son rejoined school and recouped his losses in
education because he did not attend school for two years?
What to think about the 300.000 Thai kids that were forced
to enter the working force to replace the more expensive adult
people (to make goods that often are sold on the Western market)?
Have all the girls that
were forced into prostitution returned home? Have they forgotten
their horrible experiences?
What to think about all the child prostitutes that had to find
some money so their parents could live?
According to official figures a million Thais passed the
poverty line of $1 a day - in the wrong direction. This will add
considerable to the figure of one out of four kids that are short
and underweight - and because of that fail to get any decent
education.
Will any of them be compensated for the lost years, the lost food,
the nightmarish time?
I cite out of a report of Mr Shivakumar,
published in the World Bank's Social Monitor: "Thailand's
economic crisis had hit the poorest hardest by significantly
reducing employment and real wages of people with education."
Also the upcoming middle class was hit. He continues: "Other
researchers have found more children abandoned by families hard hit
by the crisis, more child labour, more school dropouts, more child
prostitution, more child beggars, more suicides, more crimes and
more drug trade." He forgets to add that poverty is an
important reason why Thailand has already more than a million people
with HIV.
But is Mohamed Mahathir the culprit? Should we
point our arrows at him? No, I think he is only partly to blame.
The big culprits are living in the West where the big money is, where they
even profited from the crisis. Before the crisis they gave loans
against a staggering percentage and earned much money. During the
crisis maybe they lost some money but that loss was compensated by
lower prices for primary products (timber for example) and the
possibility to buy factories very cheaply. When I went to
Thailand I met a man on the plane who told me that he was going to
open a factory in Thailand to make wooden toys for Western children.
The wages were so low that he could make a high profit in a very
short time.
Mohamed is not the prime suspect. You find the
big scoundrels in the West. Though the economy in Asia was going
down the economy in the West flourished. The brain drain was
strengthened and the West was and is absorbing the cream off the
Asian human capital. So it is guaranteed Asia will never reach a
level that can be compared with the economic level in the West.
The prime suspects are the Western leaders. Many of them are
unknown. They reign in silence in the background where they reside
in big offices far from the spotlights of the media. Maybe you
know the name of the president of the United States, maybe you even
know who leads the French, the German or the British government. But
do you know who leads the IMF, who prepares the plans of the World
Bank, who denies the poor farmers the right to export their
agricultural products because of the rules of the WTO? Maybe you
even do not know what abbreviations like WTO or IMF mean. In these
institutions reign people that are saying that "the crisis in
Thailand has led to many severe, UNFORESEEN and sudden
impacts…." Clearly the leaders of these mighty institutions
did wrong because they did not foresee the horrible outcome of their
policies for millions of poor people. These incapable
managers continue their secluded, happy and comfortable life
irrespective of what happens to the masses of the world.
Do not demonstrate anymore on the streets, do not fight
anymore against the police when you do not agree with the policy of
the IMF.
Do attack directly the people who are guilty. You can read some more
about this idea in chapter 14 of The Scarists, Power
by attacking individuals.
And do attack them in their home, just as the child of the truck
driver was attacked in his private life when the Crisis, caused by
the leaders of the IMF, denied him the possibility to get a decent
education.
Yours truly, Joost van Steenis
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