Recently Pakistan agreed to take a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That country’s economy was on the verge of collapse and the $7.6 billion dollars they are borrowing will help pay for fuel and food for the 140 million people who live there.

You may already know that Pakistan is a member of the Nuclear Country Club – they have “the Bomb” – and the country has been notoriously unstable even when the economy was growing. The corrupt government of Pervez Musharraf had been a fragile but important firewall between the 97 percent of Pakistanis who are Muslim and their Taliban brethren but he is gone now.

Recent events in India should be taken as a hint that any American or Brit who plans on vacationing in a largely Muslim country should have their insurance paid up. Followers of Islam worldwide, for some reason, seem to feel that the U.S. is at the forefront of a new Crusade against Islam. The International Monetary Fund is viewed by many as a handmaiden of the Great Satan.

IMF loans, like any loan, come with strings attached. The IMF’s strings have a tendency to strangle the people in the countries whose leaders have accepted these loans. These strings are privatization, deregulation and deep cuts in social spending.

Privatization means signing the rights to water, minerals, electricity and roads to private companies. The country will be unable to benefit from its own natural resources as foreign nationals strip them from it. Deregulation means there will be no laws requiring profits made on the privatization will be taxed or kept in the country. A corporate mothership can suck the country’s resources dry and will be free to deposit every cent of its profits into a Swiss bank account. Cuts in social spending means that any money the receiving country is somehow able to make after being gutted will be spent on paying off interest to the IMF. Spending on health care, housing, food assistance or education will incur penalties.

Why does the IMF insist on these three conditions? Because the IMF is a front for the interests of Western multinational corporations. These multinationals are the parties who snap up the resources at low cost, deposit their non-taxable profits in offshore accounts and eviscerate social services, leaving nothing but the hollow gutted shell of what was once a self supporting country. In case you are missing the subtleties in this arrangement, by Western, I mean, primarily, American owned, based and operated.

So why would any country in its right collective mind agree to an IMF loan?

Sakib Sherani, chief economist for Pakistan, said the bailout will help reassure investors and wealthy Pakistanis spooked by the slide of the rupee. Investors. Wealthy Pakistanis.

President Asif Ali Zardari said the loan was “a difficult pill, but one has to take medicine to get better.” Other recipients would liken taking an IMF loan to drinking poison.

Usually the 99 percent of the population who have to sacrifice food for their children and water for their crops do not take kindly to the “structural adjustments” required by the IMF. In most reasonable societies, the aggrieved populace takes to the streets, carries signs, burns effigies and throws rocks. Western consultants are then called in, munitions are bought, rabble rousers begin to disappear, screams are heard coming from the now closed hospitals, bodies are found in the street, the general population learns to shut up if they know what is good for them and we can go back to eating our Corn Flakes and reading the Wall Street Journal. Hey, it worked in South America …

It should be fairly apparent by now, that Muslim societies have a tendency to be not so reasonable. I can respect that. I would hope that if some alien culture decided to come into the Great State of Maine and suck the life out of it, I would be unreasonable in my defiance of the overlords. I might do all sorts of unreasonable stuff to throw them off their breakfast and give them some indigestion. And if I had some nukes? I might get very irrational.

Recently Pakistan agreed to take a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That country’s economy was on the verge of collapse and the $7.6 billion dollars they are borrowing will help pay for fuel and food for the 140 million people who live there.

You may already know that Pakistan is a member of the Nuclear Country Club – they have “the Bomb” – and the country has been notoriously unstable even when the economy was growing. The corrupt government of Pervez Musharraf had been a fragile but important firewall between the 97 percent of Pakistanis who are Muslim and their Taliban brethren but he is gone now.

Recent events in India should be taken as a hint that any American or Brit who plans on vacationing in a largely Muslim country should have their insurance paid up. Followers of Islam worldwide, for some reason, seem to feel that the U.S. is at the forefront of a new Crusade against Islam. The International Monetary Fund is viewed by many as a handmaiden of the Great Satan.

IMF loans, like any loan, come with strings attached. The IMF’s strings have a tendency to strangle the people in the countries whose leaders have accepted these loans. These strings are privatization, deregulation and deep cuts in social spending.

Privatization means signing the rights to water, minerals, electricity and roads to private companies. The country will be unable to benefit from its own natural resources as foreign nationals strip them from it. Deregulation means there will be no laws requiring profits made on the privatization will be taxed or kept in the country. A corporate mothership can suck the country’s resources dry and will be free to deposit every cent of its profits into a Swiss bank account. Cuts in social spending means that any money the receiving country is somehow able to make after being gutted will be spent on paying off interest to the IMF. Spending on health care, housing, food assistance or education will incur penalties.

Why does the IMF insist on these three conditions? Because the IMF is a front for the interests of Western multinational corporations. These multinationals are the parties who snap up the resources at low cost, deposit their non-taxable profits in offshore accounts and eviscerate social services, leaving nothing but the hollow gutted shell of what was once a self supporting country. In case you are missing the subtleties in this arrangement, by Western, I mean, primarily, American owned, based and operated.

So why would any country in its right collective mind agree to an IMF loan?

Sakib Sherani, chief economist for Pakistan, said the bailout will help reassure investors and wealthy Pakistanis spooked by the slide of the rupee. Investors. Wealthy Pakistanis.

President Asif Ali Zardari said the loan was “a difficult pill, but one has to take medicine to get better.” Other recipients would liken taking an IMF loan to drinking poison.

Usually the 99 percent of the population who have to sacrifice food for their children and water for their crops do not take kindly to the “structural adjustments” required by the IMF. In most reasonable societies, the aggrieved populace takes to the streets, carries signs, burns effigies and throws rocks. Western consultants are then called in, munitions are bought, rabble rousers begin to disappear, screams are heard coming from the now closed hospitals, bodies are found in the street, the general population learns to shut up if they know what is good for them and we can go back to eating our Corn Flakes and reading the Wall Street Journal. Hey, it worked in South America …

It should be fairly apparent by now, that Muslim societies have a tendency to be not so reasonable. I can respect that. I would hope that if some alien culture decided to come into the Great State of Maine and suck the life out of it, I would be unreasonable in my defiance of the overlords. I might do all sorts of unreasonable stuff to throw them off their breakfast and give them some indigestion. And if I had some nukes? I might get very irrational.