As the man said, the IMF is the modern equivalent of colonialism. What the multinational corporations and their national sponsors have figured out is the old company store philosophy.

Keep people, or a country, in debt, and they will have to work for you and buy from you, at your wages and prices.

There is no need to occupy them in the traditional colonial sense, with all the headache, worry and overhead. Just keep them in debt.

For an Indonesian politician to point this out is hardly tailored for Muslims. It's true for all third-world countries.

However, one result of the anti-Muslim rhetoric spreading across the US will be tragic.

Instead of using this period where the US is the only superpower to gain allies, strengthen trading arrangements, and assist weaker countries gain financial stability it is acting increasingly like a rogue nation. Winding up on the short end of large votes, the US has turned down the

Land Mine Treaty,

Biochemical and Toxic Weapons Convention,

Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty. Signed by 164 nations and ratified by 89 including France, Great Britain, and Russia; signed by President Clinton in 1996 but rejected by the Senate in 1999. The US is one of 13 nonratifiers among countries that have nuclear weapons or nuclear power programs. In November 2001, the US forced a vote in the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the Test Ban Treaty,

Refused to participate in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-sponsored talks in Paris, May 2001, on ways to crack down on off-shore and other tax and money-laundering havens,

UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms, (the US was the only nation to oppose it),

1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (the only countries that have signed but not ratified are the US, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and Principe),

the ABM treaty, and others.

In the aggregate, taking all of these as an indicator of national intent, it indicates a direction. If the US is to be a world leader it probably needs to be aligned with more that Libya, Syria, and so on.

What may happen is that other countries will turn to China as a counterbalance to the US, and they will create another superpower.

Friends come and go, and enemies last forever. It seems to me the only friends the US has in the Middle East is Israel, and some of the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian leadership. And we're busy demonizing the Saudis.

Grim.

Arf