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Hola a todos: 
 
Lo que sigue es la Meditacion Focal sugerida por el Grupo Focal Global de 
Meditaciones para la semana que empieza el domingo 24 de septiembre. 
 
Te queremos pedir que durante unos minutos antes de esta meditacion, 
mantengas una vision para la ayuda en la crisis en el Sudeste de Asia, en 
donde se ha producido una extensa inundacion a lo largo del rio Mekong, en 
el cual han perdido la vida al menos 160 personas, y cientos de miles mas 
estan necesitadas de refugio, comida o atencion medica. Para obtener mas 
informacion en ingles sobre ello puedes visitar 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_931000/931805.stm 
 
Hay noticias de mas inundaciones en la zona de Bengala en la India, en donde 
se estima que cerca de 10 millones de personas se han visto afectadas. 
 
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FMI Y EL BANCO MUNDIAL , ENCUENTRO ANUAL EN PRAGA 
 
SUMARIO 
 
El Banco Mundial y el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) celebraran su 
encuentro anual en Praga, en la Republica Checa del 21 al 28 de septiembre. 
Coincidiendo con este encuentro de las instituciones economicas mas 
poderosas, decenas de miles de personas tomaran las calles en Praga y en 
cualquier otro lugar del mundo el 26 de septiembre para protestar en contra 
de estas instituciones. Alrededor de 18.000 banqueros, ministros de finanzas 
y oficiales de gobierno lucharan contra barricadas y protestas para 
intentar debatir la reforma del Fondo Monetario Internacional y las 
estrategias para apuntalar el crecimiento global 
(http://foxnews.com/world/091700/imf_prague.sml) 
 
El FMI y el Banco Mundial ofrecen prestamos y asistencia financiera a los 
paises para ayudarles supuestamente en su promocion, equilibrarlos en su 
balanza de pagos y ayudarles a aliviar la pobreza. Hay la creencia muy 
extendida de que estas instituciones primeramente sirven a los intereses 
corporativos multinacionales y estimulan, mas que ayudar a paliarlos, el 
empobrecimiento y la devastacion ecologica, ya que los prestamos provienen 
de los paises desarrollados bajo la condicion de que las politicas de los 
subdesarrollados socaven su soberania y les presionen a abrir sus mercados 
protegidos hacia el capitalismo global y la inversion transnacional 
corporativa.  
 
Tales politicas incluyen normalmente cortes en los presupuestos del gobierno 
en cuanto a sanidad y educacion, la edificacion de una industria de 
infraestructura en carreteras, presas y plantas de energia y la realizacion 
de proyectos del Banco Mundial que algunas veces implica el uso de 
organismos geneticamente modificados (OGMs) en agricultura. Desde los años 
ochenta, estas politicas han ayudado a crear una red de fuga de riqueza 
hacia los paises industrializados desde los paises en vias de desarrollo, 
los cuales han pagado cinco veces mas el capital utilizado del norte del que 
recibieron, segun el organismos internacional Corporate Watch (Vigilancia de 
las Corporaciones). 
 
Por favor, manten en tu corazon y en tu mente la visualizacion, guiada por 
el Espiritu durante tu meditacion, de ayuda para todo el sufrimiento y el 
final de toda expoliacion resultante de la globalizacion economica. Que 
todas las decisiones tomadas sean tocadas por el poder del Espiritu y 
dirigidas donde sea de vital importancia para co-crear entre todos un futuro 
basado en el amor, la paz, la sabiduria, el compartir y la justicia. Que 
todas las personas conserven y recobren su integridad y su 
autodeterminacion, y que la voz de la Tierra sea escuchada en cada uno de 
nosotros por el mas alto beneficio del todo. 
 
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HORARIOS DE LA MEDITACION 
 
El dia de la meditacion sobre el encuentro FMI/Banco Mundial: 26 de 
septiembre a las 16:00 horas del Horario Universal (GMT) o en la primera 
hora de la tarde (duracion sugerida: 30 minutos), o a cualquier hora a 
vuestra eleccion durante la semana, especialmente al mediodia. 
 
Estos horarios generalmente se corresponden a las 16:00 horas del Horario 
Universal/GTM: 
 
Honolulu 06:00--Los Angeles 09:00 --Denver & San Salvador 10:: --MEXICO, DF, 
HOUSTON & CHICAGO 11:00 -- Nueva York, Toronto, Montreal, Asuncion & 
Santiago 12:00 -- Rio de Janeiro & Montevideo 13:00 -- Reykjavik & 
Casablanca 16:00 --Londres, Algeria & Lagos 17:00 --Genova, Roma, Berlin, 
Paris, Johanesburgo & MADRID 18:00 - Atenas, Helsinki, Jerusalem, Nairobi & 
Istambul 19:00 -- Moscu & Bagdad 20:00 -- Teheran 20:30 -- Islamabad 21:00 
-- Calcuta & Nueva Delhi 21:00 - Dhaka 22:00 -- Rangun 22:30 -- Hanoi, 
Bangkok & Yakarta 23:00 -- Hong Kong, Perth, Beijing & Kuala Lumpur 00:00+ 
-- Seul & Tokyo 01:00+ -- Birsbane, Canberra & Melbourne 02:00 +-- 
Wellington 04:00+  
 
+ significa los lugares en los que se adelanta un dia del Horario Universal. 
Para mayor informacion sobre husos horario por favor visita 
http://www.worldhealing.co.uk/risingearth/timezone.html 
 
******* 
 
Fuentes de informacion en español: 
 
Banqueros y manifestantes se encuentran en castillo checo 
http://espanol.yahoo.com/noticias/000923/actualidad/ap/economia-mundial-2625 
.html 
 
Praga es escenario de las primeras protestas antes de la reunión anual ... 
http://cnnenespanol.com/2000/econ/09/24/prague/index.html - size 21.4K 
 
Policía checa se prepara para manifestaciones contra FMI en Praga 
http://espanol.yahoo.com/noticias/000921/actualidad/ap/fmi-cumbre-1435.html 
 
El FMI promete aliviar la deuda de los países más pobres 
http://cnnenespanol.com/2000/econ/09/20/fmi/index.html - size 22.7K 
 
Cinco millones de brasileños votan contra acuerdos con el FMI en ... 
http://cnnenespanol.com/2000/latin/BRA/09/13/referendo/ - size 20.8K 
 
Camdessus cree que los líderes financieros andan demasiado confiados 
http://cnnenespanol.com/2000/econ/08/15/camdessus/ - size 21.8K 
 
Privatizar más, línea del FMI al futuro gobierno. Reformas laboral e 
impositiva, en el temario con México 
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/014n1eco.html 
 
Los españoles anti-globalización se manifiestan frente a su embajada en 
Praga 
http://espanol.yahoo.com/noticias/000924/actualidad/europa_press/aex-iir-969 
852720.html 
 
Campesinos brasileños protestan contra FMI 
http://espanol.yahoo.com/noticias/000810/actualidad/reuters/mundo-brasil-pro 
testas-sol-4854.html 
 
Ni vacas flacas ni gordas para América Latina, dice FMI 
http://espanol.yahoo.com/noticias/000923/negocios/reuters/negocios-fmi-latin 
oamerica-sol-7105.html 
 
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Fuentes de informacion en ingles: 
 
IMF y la Agenda del Banco Mundial: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_9925000/925126.stm 
 
World Bank Factsheet: 
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/globalization/bretton/wbfacts.html 
 
El Banco Mundial y Corporaciones 
http://www.cropwatch.org/trac/feature/planet/fact_4.html 
 
El Banco Mundial - Proteccion Medioambiental o Destruccion?? 
http://www.greenpeace.org/politics/wto/WBfinal.html 
 
Speeding Debt Relief: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_923000/923267.stm 
 
Attacking World Poverty: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_924000/924640.stm 
 
Historic Prague Braces for Turbulent IMF Meeting: 
http://foxnews.com/world/091700/imf_prague.smt 
 
Que es "Globalizacion"? Que es el Foro Economico Mundial? 
http://www.s11.org/s11.html 
 
******* 
 
Para mas informacion, por favor, revisa el material expuesto en el Grupo 
Focal de Meditacion Global en http://www.aei.ca/-cep/focusgroup.htm 
 
Si este mensaje te fue reenviado y deseas solo recibir estas meditaciones 
focales semanales, puedes suscribirte a las siguientes listas enviando un 
mensaje en blanco a: 
alertas-alta@... (español) 
focus-group-subscribe@... (ingles) 
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groupo-focal@... (portugues) 
 
Traduccion de Maite Yago 
maiteyago@... 
España 
 
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VERSION COMPLETA EN INGLES: 
 
 
Hello 
 
This is a special issue from the Global Meditation Focus Group. 
 
THE IMF AND WORLD BANK ANNUAL MEETING IN PRAGUE 
 
1. Summary 
2. Meditation Times 
3. More information on this Special Meditation Focus 
 
------- 
 
1. SUMMARY 
 
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual 
meeting in Prague in the Czech Republic on September 26-28. To coincide 
with this meeting of the world's most powerful economic institutions, tens 
of thousands of people will take to the streets in Prague and elsewhere 
around the world on September 26 to protest against these institutions. 
 
The IMF and World Bank offer loans and financial assistance to countries to 
allegedly help promote an orderly balance of international trade and 
payments and relieve poverty. However, there is a widespread belief that 
these institutions primarly serve corporate interests and encourage rather 
than relieve social and ecological devastation, since the loans are 
provided to developing countries on the condition that they adopt policies 
that undermine their sovereignty and prise open their previously protected 
economies to global capitalism and transnational corporate investment. Such 
policies often include cutting government spending on healthcare and 
education, the building of an infrastructure of roads, dams, and power 
plants, and the implementation of World Bank projects that may involve the 
use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture. Since the 1980s, 
these policies have helped create a net outflow of wealth from the 
developing world, which has paid out five times as much capital to the 
industrialized countries of the North as it has received, according to 
Corporate Watch. 
 
Please hold in your heart and mind a vision, as guided by Spirit during 
your meditation, of the relief of all suffering and the ending of all 
exploitation resulting from economic globalization. May the economic 
delegates, street protesters, and all of the world's economic players be 
touched by the power of Spirit, so that together we can co-create a future 
based on love, peace, wisdom, and sharing; may the integrity and 
self-determination of all individuals and communities be valued, and the 
voice of the Earth heard in all of us, for the highest good of all. 
 
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2. MEDITATION TIMES 
 
i) September 24-28: Daily, at the top of any hour, or whenever it better 
suits you. 
 
ii) September 26 (the Opening of the IMF/World Bank meeting): 12 noon 
Universal Time (GMT), noon local time, or at any time of your choice. 
Suggested duration: 30 minutes. 
 
Note: The opening ceremony on the 26th is expected to take place at 10am 
Prague time (08.00 UT) followed by an address by the IMF and World Bank. 
The annual discussion is expected to take place at 3pm Prague time (13.00 
UT). See www.amp2000.cz/meeting.html 
 
Differences from Universal Time are as follows, and are in Daylight Saving 
Time where applicable: 
 
Honolulu = -10 hours / Los Angeles = -7 hours / Denver & San Salvador = -6 
hours / Mexico City, Houston & Chicago = -5 hours / New York, Toronto, 
Montreal, Asuncion & Santiago = -4 hours / Rio de Janeiro & Montevideo = -3 
hours / Reykjavik & Casablanca = 0 hours / London, Algiers & Lagos = +1 
hour / Geneva, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Johannesburg & Madrid = +2 hours / 
Athens, Helsinki, Jerusalem, Nairobi & Istanbul = +3 hours / Moscow & 
Baghdad = +4 hours / Tehran = +4 and a half hours / Islamabad = +5 hours / 
Calcutta & New Delhi = +5 and a half hours / Dhaka = +6 hours / Rangoon = 
+6 and a half hours / Hanoi, Bangkok & Jakarta = +7 hours / Hong Kong, 
Perth, Beijing & Kuala Lumpur = + 8 hours / Seoul & Tokyo = +9 hours / 
Brisbane, Canberra & Melbourne = +10 hours / Wellington = +12 hours 
 
To confirm your time difference from Universal Time (GMT) please visit 
www.worldhealing.co.uk/risingearth/timezone.html 
 
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3. MORE INFORMATION ON THIS SPECIAL MEDITATION FOCUS 
 
i) The role of the IMF and the World Bank 
 
ii) The Impact of the Policies of the IMF and World Bank 
 
iii) Commentary 
 
This section is for those who wish to understand in more detail the 
situation of this week's Meditation Focus. For those who wish to read on, 
we would encourage you to view the following information from a positive 
perspective, and not allow the details to tinge the positive vision you 
wish to hold in meditation. Since what we focus on grows, the more positive 
our mindset, the more successful we will be in manifesting a vision of 
healing. We provide the details below because we recognise that the 
knowledge of what needs healing can assist us to structure our awareness to 
maximise our healing effect. 
 
 
i) The role of the IMF and the World Bank 
 
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank were created at the Bretton 
Woods Conference in 1944. The IMF seeks to maintain an orderly balance of 
international trade and payments by regularly assessing economies and 
making short-term loans to those with balance of payments difficulties. The 
World Bank Group is comprised of five agencies that make loans or guarantee 
credit to 177 member countries. It aims to help countries reduce poverty by 
making long-term loans to governments for projects such as dams or bridges, 
or to back economic reform programmes. The two agencies determine whether 
developing countries get access to aid money and how it is spent. 
 
Every year the World Bank and its regional counterparts lend $45 billion to 
the so-called developing world. World Bank policies serve corporate 
interests in five key ways: 
 
* Large corporations receive lucrative contracts for World Bank projects. 
* Roads, electrical grids, dams and power plants are built to lay the 
groundwork for further transnational investment. 
* The World Bank is absorbing the ecological question into their agenda. 
* Making loans conditional on the privatization of national industries, the 
removal of barriers to foreign investment, the gutting and privatization of 
social and environmental services, and the redirection of economies toward 
exportation. 
* Lending to or investing in transnational corporate projects. 
 
Decisions at the World Bank and IMF are made by a vote of the Board of 
Executive Directors, which represents member countries. Unlike the United 
Nations, where each member nation has an equal vote, voting power at the 
World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation's financial 
contribution. Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States 
has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercized an effective 
veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power 
within the institution, which, through the programs and policies they 
decide to finance, have tremendous impact throughout local economies and 
societies. Furthermore, the President of the World Bank is by tradition an 
American, and the IMF President is a European. 
 
 
ii) The Impact of the Policies of the IMF and World Bank 
 
Many agree that from the 1980s onward, these institutions were able to 
dictate macroeconomic policies and effectively wrest sovereign control of 
entire economic sectors from Southern governments, prying open previously 
protected economies to escalating transnational corporate investment. 
 
The IMF and World Bank's control of the debt issue preserves their power to 
impose unpopular austerity policies, which are required by the World Bank 
and the IMF as a condition of loans. These policies (Structural Adjustment 
Programs) often include high interest rates and reduced access to credit, 
which result in slower economic growth as well as increased poverty and 
unemployment. Other adjustment policies include cuts in government spending 
on healthcare and education, increases in the cost of food, healthcare and 
other basic necessities, mandates to open markets to foreign trade and 
investment, and privatization of state-run enterprises. In most Sub-Saharan 
African nations, governments spend four times as much on debt repayment as 
on healthcare, despite the rapid spread of HIV and AIDS. 
 
Structural adjustment has exacerbated poverty in most countries where it 
has been applied. Since the 1980s, it has helped create a net outflow of 
wealth from the developing world, which has paid out five times as much 
capital to the industrialized countries of the North as it has received. 
Structural adjustment is also causing widespread environmental degradation. 
This is shown by the following three examples: 
 
* Most of the World Bank's investment has been in the energy sector, with 
about 80 percent of these loans financing continued construction of 
carbon-intensive, coal-burning power plants. 
 
* After granting Nicaragua a loan in 1994, the IMF supported the expansion 
of the logging industry, causing an increase in Nicaragua's already high 
rate of deforestation (370,000 acres/year). 
 
* World Bank projects involve the use of genetically modified organisms in 
food and agriculture. 
 
Source: 
 
IMF and World Bank Agenda: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_925000/925126.stm 
 
World Bank Factsheet: 
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/globalization/bretton/wbfacts.html 
 
The World Bank and Corporations: 
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/planet/fact_4.html 
 
September 26 Call to Action: 
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/headlines/2000/321.html 
 
The World Bank - Environmental Protection or Destruction? 
http://www.greenpeace.org/politics/wto/WBfinal.html 
 
Speeding Debt Relief: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_923000/923267.stm 
 
Attacking World Poverty: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_924000/924640.stm 
 
Historic Prague Braces for Turbulent IMF Meeting: 
http://foxnews.com/world/091700/imf_prague.sml 
 
Globalisation and the World Economic Forum: 
http://www.s11.org/s11.html 
 
 
iii) Commentary 
 
The IMF and World Bank are global financial institutions set up to promote 
the growth of global capitalism. They are therefore ideologically biased, 
so that any talk of debt relief, while appearing on the surface to be a 
gesture of goodwill, is in fact accompanied by conditions that undermine a 
country's self-determination and benefit a corporate elite. 
 
This crisis of dependency and exploitation, which is causing social and 
ecological devastation, dates back to 1970s, when loans were given 
irresponsibly by commercial banks and borrowed recklessly by foreign 
governments, most of which were not popularly elected and which no longer 
hold power. The advent of the debt crisis, which occurred in the early 
1980s due to a worldwide collapse in the prices of commodities that 
developing countries export and to rising oil prices and interest rates, 
forced these countries into a position where they were unable to make 
payments. So in stepped the IMF and World Bank. 
 
On a spiritual level, money represents energy, and banking systems based on 
unsustainable rates of interest effectively steal people's energy, leaving 
them devitalised and disempowered. The IMF and World Bank seem to exploit 
the debt situation on behalf of multinationals, yet their policies are not 
actually forced on anyone, but agreed to by the developing world because 
they seem the only way out for these countries. We suggest that the 
underlying crisis is not actually one of financial poverty, but of a 
poverty of love. It is not a crisis for those in debt - it is a crisis for 
everyone, rich or poor, for we are all interconnected. By working together 
as co-creators, the countries of the world have the means and the power to 
eradicate all poverty and to revitalise and enrich the human spirit, for 
the good of all. What is required is a shift of viewpoint, away from the 
underlying assumptions that are grounded in divisive materialistic values, 
and towards the spiritual values of love. 
 
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN PASSING THIS ON TO OTHERS 
 
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