Mexico: Worse than You Know (2)

Monday 7 March 2005

The following article is by Alejandro Nadal a Professor of Economics at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City.

There are no examples of industrialized countries attaining high levels of economic strength without decisive government intervention. Whether through protectionist schemes, heavy subsidies, or public investments in strategic industries, all the rich industrialized nations of the world have used a set of policy instruments that the U.S National Security Strategy describes as obstacles to wealth.

The U.S National Security Strategy also emphasizes the implementation of policies based on lower marginal tax rates, on the theory that they improve incentives for investment. This is, of course, simple supply-side economics, which translates into regressive tax policies and greater inequality. The idea that lowering marginal income tax rates causes entrepreneurs to invest more has a dubious record, even in the United States. In other countries that have embraced the policy, investment has dropped significantly.

In a critical passage, the U.S National Security Strategy states that "improving stability in emerging markets is also key to global economic growth." This could be true, but then the National Security Strategy argues that what is needed are greater capital flows. This completely ignores the massive supply of capital that is now used for daily speculation in currency and bond markets. Daily foreign exchange trading exceeds 1.3 trillion dollars. These capital movements are in fact a source of instability. And there is no reason to believe that even greater liquidity would lead to more long-term investment rather than more speculation. The magnitude of capital in daily speculation dwarfs even the largest International Monetary Fund operations and should be a warning about the economic forces at play in the global arena.

Undaunted, the National Security Strategy asserts the United States must encourage the International Monetary Fund to streamline its lending policies, focusing on "sound fiscal and monetary policies." This means the National Security Strategy endorses the practice of conditionality in International Monetary Fund operations, something that has wrought havoc on the economies of many countries and brought about crises in Argentina and Indonesia, among others. Amazingly, the Bush administration believes national security depends on promoting the agenda of the Washington Consensus at a time when International Monetary Fund staffers are questioning it. Official International Monetary Fund documents  speak of placing controls on capital flows, but the president's advisers have apparently not noticed.

Returning to the question of inequality, the National Security Strategy mentions the embittered few--but "few" is an ill-chosen word. As the National Security Strategy itself points out, half the world's population lives on less than 2 dollars a day. Even in the United States, poverty is a serious and persistent problem, with 34.6 million citizens living beneath the poverty line. Inequality in the United States has increased dramatically over the past 20 years, regressing to the level of 1945. The sad truth is , that the U.S top policy makers believe poverty is a natural phenomenon rather than an outcome of their disastrous theories. The policy package endorsed so enthusiastically by the National Security Strategy is not only incapable of reducing poverty , it might as well be designed to increase destitution and social marginalization.

The United States would be a strongest military power in the world. But it is not the greatest economy any more, and it has ceased to be an economic model for other countries to emulate. Failure to understand this is probably the single greatest flaw of U.S. national security doctrine today. American economic weaknesses, together with the disarray of the arms control regime and emphasis on war as an instrument for international policy, do not bode well for the future. Arrogance, and the infantile belief that the United States has the right to remain the most wasteful nation in the world, spreads resentment and hatred. Instead of enjoying greater security, America's future generations may inherit a bitter legacy.

Mexico: Worse than You Know (1)

Monday 28 February 2005

The following article is by Alejandro Nadal a Professor of Economics at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City.

The invasion of Iraq may not be a straightforward repeat of nineteenth-century colonization and plunder (although, the story about the destiny of Iraqi oil is still unfolding). It is more related to the need to demonstrate to the world that the United States remains the pioneer of the globalized economic system. This is why national security doctrine under the Bush administration rests on the idea that there is a single sustainable model for national success at the heart of which lies no democracy, but this administration's particular brand of free enterprise, and the intention to impose American economic model on everyone else.

A great deal of attention has been paid to the amazing National Security Strategy transmitted by George W. Bush to the U.S. Congress in September 2002, and it has been widely criticized for its unilateralism, first-strike policies, missile defense plans, and emphasis on maintaining unrivalled military supremacy. But critically important sections of the document, related to U.S.-led globalization, have been overlooked.

In reality the size and durability of the U.S. deficit alarms even International Monetary Fund analysts, and bring about a financial crisis with grave consequences for the global economy. The administration's rhetoric about reducing the deficit in the next few years is simply unbelievable to anyone with a pocket calculator especially if he or she takes into account the existing Medicare and Social Security crisis.

Ignoring the current account deficit is harder to understand. The United States has been running a large and increasing external deficit. So far this foreign debt has been financed through huge capital inflows driven by a so-far-inexhaustible craving for U.S. financial assets. But if the external deficit is not reduced in the near term, it may well lead to a speculative attack against the dollar, bringing about a serious crisis in the American. After a hard landing, the dollar would probably lose its central role in the world economy.

This scenario was not considered believable until recently. But the coupling of the two deficits and the emergence of the Euro as a credible alternative currency are rapidly changing this perception.

The premise of the National Security Strategy is that a new era of economic growth should enhance American security. However, economic growth per se does not lead to greater opportunity or less inequality. This is important because if those whom the National Security Strategy calls the "deprived few" remain forever excluded from the benefits of economic growth, their deprivation will result in continuing insecurity.

Leaving aside, for the moment, how wealth is distributed, another key issue is how to achieve sustainable economic growth. The National Security Strategy asserts that worldwide economic growth is fueled by deregulated globalization, a path that has led to financial disaster in many countries. Considering the gigantic financial scandals made possible by deregulation in the United States alone, such a claim for deregulation seems ridiculous.

The National Security Strategy also advocates financial and trade liberalization, privatization, and "sound fiscal and monetary policies." This combination makes up the so-called Washington Consensus, a policy package endorsed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In buying into this package, the president's advisers seem to disregard the historical record--that since 1973, when the world of fixed exchange rates was abandoned and deregulated Globalization began in earnest, growth rates have declined, unemployment has increased, and productivity has declined in most of the world. The National Security Strategy recipe has brought about unfavorable economic performance and violent crises in both rich and poor countries.

Yet the U.S National Security Strategy proceeds fearlessly: "The lessons of history are clear: Market economies, not command and control economies with the heavy hand of government, are the best way to promote prosperity and reduce poverty."

The shallowness of this view is breathtaking. It refers of course to the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it ignores the 250 years of experience with capitalist economies showing that unfettered markets have not led to prosperity. 

Talking Back To the Global Establishment

Monday 21 February 2005

The following article is by Tom Hayden a Progressive Activist, Author and Former California Elected Official.

It is mainly a spirited carnival of the marginal, with hundreds of labor, farmer, fisher men, womens and student organizations representing the very poor. Anger churns at the fact that 300 million Indians subsist on less than a dollar a day, many surviving in roadside shantytowns just outside the World Social Forum conference grounds. Reflecting the crisis of children, 100 million Indian families live without domestic water and hundreds of thousands of children work in cottonseed production and sweatshops, the World Social Forum  featured a special conference of 2,000 children's representatives.

Overall the World Social Forum allows in-depth grassroots review, dialogue and networking through 1,200 panels, which are often cumbersome and repetitive. The emphasis is on learning and sharing the detailed lessons of diverse struggles, which range from saving the Narmada Valley from being flooded for giant dams to expanding landless people's struggles like those mushrooming in Brazil. The forum avoids the classic left-wing pattern of fighting over correct lines or specific platforms, while allowing space for networks to discuss collaboration. For example, that is how unprecedented anti-war protests were planned, involving four to five million people in over 600 cities globally.

Many panels in Mumbai are focusing on the global campaign against the World Trade Organization whose trade summit was derailed last fall in Cancun, Mexico. The World Social Forum explicitly avoided adoption of specific programs, while leaving space for activist networks to design campaigns against the World Trade Organization or the Iraq occupation. Coincidentally, U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick sent a letter to 140 governments promising to breath oxygen into a stalled U.S. trade strategy.  Brazil has mounted the first World Trade Organization  challenge to U.S. agricultural subsidies -- 19 billion dollars annually, including almost 13 billion dollars for cotton farmers -- as unfair to poor farmers, a case that may result in an unfavorable settlement for the Bush Administration during last election cycle, similar to the World Trade Organization’s ruling against steel subsidies. The weakness of the U.S. government is that it seems unable to control the World Trade Organization, a creature of its own making.

According to Business Week, the rise of India as a "back office" is "terrifying for many Americans" and becoming the "latest Rorschach test on globalization."

That is why the Jobs for Justice delegation, several dozen strong, is beginning dialogue with their Indian counterparts on cross-country organizing against the new tech outsourcing. Some 50,000 young Indians are employed in such "call centers"  in Mumbai, the country's traditional commercial center. Stress and physiological problems are rampant among these workers, who earn 160 dollars per month on all-night shifts and are often forced to practice English by holding a marble under their tongues.

How can a global talk session affect so many intractable problems? Forum organizers are planning to return the event to Brazil, perhaps holding them biennially with regional social forums during alternate years to serve the needs of more local organizing. In the meantime, the global justice activists gathered in Mumbai can be credited with bringing the World Trade Organization to the world's unfavorable attention and keeping massive pressure on many of their governments to stand up to Washington's agenda.  Indian scientist and notable environmentalist Vandana Shiva voiced a general frustration at one panel, however, complaining that the global establishment doesn't care if 100,000 get together, it has to be more than this.

However, forum veterans see steady growth in the organization's capacity to generate resistance. Nothing on this scale has happened since the Cold War, and perhaps nothing on a non-governmental level for the past century. Walden Bello, speaking for the coalition “Our World Is Not For Sale”, described the success on three levels: 1) getting developing countries to come together and say no; 2) fostering the growth of a global civil society as a new force; and 3), bringing masses of people "to nodes of elite decision-making for militant disruptive confrontations.

A decade of grassroots pressure has contributed to the emergence of the Group of 20, which includes governments like Brazil, India, China and South Africa, that opposed the U.S. agribusiness subsidies at Cancun, and the Group of 90, from smaller countries, which opposed American demands to expand the trade talks to new issues of greater corporate access to their economies. While countries like India make powerful equity arguments against the U.S. and European Union subsidies, their agriculture agenda would benefit their own nation's large agro-export industries at the expense of small farmers.

Shiva argued that, "We must not proclaim global victories while having domestic losses,". Referring to fights over the Narmada Dam and privatization, "While we build for global fights, governments like India's often are implementing these policies in its home."

Similar resistance is expressed in South Africa by "the poor " against the African National Congress over neo-liberal deregulation of water and electricity services. Even in Brazil, activists are increasingly upset by the Lula government's unexpected road building in the Amazon and concessions on genetically modified organisms. A revolution in the revolution is in the making.

In Congo, Dark Heart of Mineral Exploitation

Monday 7 February 2005

The following article is by Adam Hochschild a Columnist and Writer who writes about African resources exploitations by the West.

Congolese often say, "We'd be so much better off if we weren't so rich." The great wealth of this unhappy territory at the center of Africa has long attracted foreigners. Centuries ago, Atlantic slave traders anchored in the mouth of the Congo River and filled their ships with captives from the interior. Today's predators are African armies and European and American corporations hungering for mineral wealth. That greed has driven the civil war that has ranged intermittently over the country for the last six years, and which in the last year has heated up again.

The International Rescue Committee has estimated that there have been 3.8 million deaths in the six-year conflict. This is the largest war toll anywhere since World War II, and with 31,000 people still dying every month, no end is in sight.

The territory has a long history of plunder. After the slave trade ended, ivory and rubber made it the bloodiest European colony in Africa, the real-life setting for Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." For 23 years, it was the private property of King Leopold II of Belgium, who made a huge fortune by turning most adult male Congolese into slaves to gather wild rubber. His private army worked hundreds of thousands of men to death and shot down 20 years of uprisings. Just as today, disease took the greatest toll, ravaging a traumatized, half-starving people, many of whom hid unsheltered in the rain forest. Demographers estimate that the population was cut by half - a loss of some 10 million people - during Leopold's rule and its immediate aftermath.

In 1908, the Belgian government took over the colony, and gradually the carnage slowed and stopped. But, as in much of colonial Africa, forced labor remained, and mining profits flowed overseas. For most of the years since Congo's abrupt independence in 1960, the Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko ruled the country with U.S. support and with more than 1 billion dollars in U.S. aid. With his remote marble palace, his love of pink Champagne and chartered Concordes, and his luxury homes dotted around Europe, Mobutu and his entourage plundered the country of an estimated 4 billion dollars before being overthrown in 1997.

Afterward, Congo slid quickly into war. Seeing a huge, resource-rich country with no functioning government, neighboring countries joined in dividing the spoils. At various points, the armies of seven of them - most importantly Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe - have had troops on Congo's soil. The Rwandan army stole natural resources worth 250 million dollars in 1999 and 2000 alone, according to a UN report. Even after most foreign troops went home, their commanders retained lucrative mineral concessions and an ever-changing web of alliances: with the country's nominal national government, with three main rebel groups in the east, with local warlords, and with a wide variety of U.S. and other foreign corporations.

These foreign companies have been eagerly buying Congo's diamonds, gold, timber, copper, cobalt and coltan. Eastern Congo, scene of the new fighting, has more than half the world's supply of coltan, which is used in computer chips and cellphones, and has occasionally sold for as much, per ounce, as gold. The multisided war is driven by greed, not ideology; fighting sometimes shifts location with the rise and fall of commodity prices.

Among the many Western corporations that have been involved in looting Congo’s resources are America Mineral Fields, once headquartered in Former President Bill Clinton's hometown of Hope Arkansas, and the Barrick Gold Corporation of Canada, which until recently listed former U.S President George H. W. Bush on its international advisory board. Few of these Western companies, and Congo's African neighbors have much interest in ending the country's Balkanization. They benefit far more from a cash-in-suitcases economy than they would from a taxed and regulated one that would tightly control natural resources.

Whatever else it might do, the world needs to pay more attention to how anarchic civil wars like the one in Congo are fueled by minerals. Recognizing how diamonds have helped drive the conflicts in Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone, more than 50 nations, including the United States, recently agreed to cease trading in "conflict diamonds." The pact is relatively toothless, but it set a precedent: A recent World Bank study suggested that if conflict diamonds can be outlawed, why not conflict gold and conflict coltan?

Agreements like this could begin to cut the funding for Congo's warmakers. Such pacts would be difficult to enforce, but for many years, so was the ultimately successful ban on the Atlantic slave trade.

Free Trade: Benefit or Peril for the Environment?

Monday 31 January 2005

The following article is by Kumar Venkat a Researcher and Writer about the social and environmental impacts of technology and globalization

One of the most contentious issues surrounding globalization is the concern that free trade hurts the environment, both locally and globally. The classic argument for free global trade is that it is efficient for countries to specialize in producing goods where they have a comparative advantage, which they can then exchange for other goods. But skeptics like Ecological Economist, Herman Daly have questioned this on the grounds that the real costs of trade -- including depletion of natural resources and pollution -- are hidden and routinely ignored.

If a car is manufactured in Japan and then shipped to the U.S., there would be some local pollution in Japan due to the manufacturing process. Some natural resources -- both local and imported -- would also be used up in manufacturing the car. There would be additional resource use and pollution from transporting the car to the U.S., and even more from driving that car year after year.

Pollution from transportation and consumption of goods, as well as resource use throughout the life cycles of products, are all potentially major avenues through which global trade can damage the environment. When all these effects are combined with production-driven pollution, the final outcome could easily reverse the optimistic result that trade benefits the environment.

The argument that polluting industries will stay in capital-rich developed countries also loses steam when capital itself is highly mobile. China, for example, received 44 billion dollars in direct foreign investment in 2001. Even if companies are investing in China to take advantage of its cheap labor, an indirect consequence of concentrating on the increasing part of the world’s manufacturing in China will be heavy resource use and pollution locally. A more direct instance of the “pollution haven” effect is the routine transfer of used computers and other electronic appliances that contain highly toxic chemicals from the U.S. to countries like India, China and the Philippines. Low-paid workers in these countries work under hazardous conditions to salvage valuable materials from this fast-growing waste stream, while polluting the soil, air and water in the process.

These recent examples heighten the concern that developing countries, where the bulk of the world’s population lives, may be unprepared for the environmental consequences of globalization and global trade. Studies of air quality show that it deteriorates in the early stages of economic growth, and then starts improving when per-capita income exceeds 5000 dollars per year. If this holds for most kinds of pollution and resource depletion, then incomes will have to increase by a factor of five to ten in large developing countries like China and India before there is sufficient local demand for environmental protection. Assuming that free trade can eventually deliver this income growth, a big unknown is whether it will result in income-induced policy changes before the cost of cleaning up the environment becomes prohibitively high.

Equally troublesome is the issue of trans-boundary pollution such as greenhouse-gas emissions, where countries with widely different income levels will have to come together with a unified policy response. Between 1973 and 2001, a period in which many domestic economies were turned inside out by globalization, annual carbon-dioxide emissions from worldwide fuel combustion increased by 50 percent. By 2030, these emissions are projected to be 60 percent higher than in 2001 if no new policies are adopted. Power generation and transportation -- two sectors crucial to trade -- will account for three-quarters of this increase.

A great deal of uncertainty remains about the long-term environmental impacts of globalization. But certain evidences suggest that free trade unconstrained by environmental protection could be a way to disaster. 

Sadly, This Disaster Makes Little Difference to the Markets

Monday 24 January 2005

The following article is by Stephen King a Columnist and  Managing Director of the American Economic Organization.

How can it be? Despite all the death and destruction, the lost lives and lost livelihoods in so many different countries in south Asia, how can it be that the world's financial markets can simply shrug off this terrible tragedy? The tsunamis that have wrecked so many coastal towns and whose aftermath threatens disease and malnutrition have registered not much more than a collective flicker of an eyelid amongst the world's investors.  One reason, the most trivial, is that a lot of investors simply aren't around, it being that time of year. Next, and more importantly, this is a natural disaster that should not represent an ongoing threat: fewer people died on 11 September 2001 suspicious attacks, but the geo-political implications of that event were enormous. A natural disaster is a different story altogether: there is no need for risk premiums on financial assets to shift upwards unless the natural disaster has ongoing ramifications , it's difficult to think of any event in modern times that fits this description: that is global warming might but that's a threatened man-made disaster, not a natural one.

Finally, the sad truth is that the affected countries aren't rich. They don't have a huge command over the world's economic resources. Even if everyone can see the human tragedy, financial markets can tell relatively quickly that, apart from those most directly affected, there is not going to be a major economic tragedy. It's almost as if investors have said: "Thank God it wasn't New York or London".

This attitude reflects a process that has scarred the development of the global economy over the last 50 years. The growth of free trade and free capital flows has undoubtedly led to huge increases in income for the world as a whole but the gap between the haves and the have-nots has generally got wider. This is not to say that all the countries affected by the tsunami disaster are poor: you would never include Malaysia or Thailand in that category. Rather, the affected countries do not have the command over economic resources that an average Briton or American might enjoy.

If we consider some comparative statistics for the affected countries together with equivalent statistics for the US and the UK, it will be found that differences are huge. Thailand has come a long way in recent decades and still, on the whole, continues to enjoy very high rates of economic growth, even allowing for the 1997 Thai  crisis. But its Gross Domestic Product, measured in US dollars, is less than 1/10th the size of the UK's. As a result, the average Thai individual can expect to get by on just 2,000 dollars per annum compared with the average Brit's 28,000 dollars per annum. Thailand, though, appears not to have been the most badly affected country. Those that appear to have suffered the greatest loss of life are those that are also the poorest. Gross national income per capita in Sri Lanka is just 930 dollars per annum. In Indonesia, it's $810 per annum. And, in India, it's just 530 dollars per annum. By contrast, the average American can expect to live off  about 38,000 dollars  per annum !.

Developing countries need to "progress in creating an environment favorable to economic growth: reducing red tape and corruption; establishing a banking system that allows poor families to make payments safely and save and borrow a little bit; and running a competent legal system and public bureaucracy." Nevertheless, it is necessary to recognize that the process of globalization has been decidedly skewed, with some countries and peoples benefiting hugely, while others have been left far behind.

Of course, if there's an empire today, it's not Britain's: rather, it's America's. Yet America - notwithstanding Iraq - is a reluctant imperial power, at least relative to the ambitions of Victorian Britain. Nowhere is this more obvious than in its attitude towards foreign investment. 19th century Britain was more than happy to pour its money into foreign countries. The US has chosen not to. Instead, it has been a net recipient of investment from abroad.

Double Standard on Globalization

Monday 10 January 2005

The following article is by Robert Kuttner, an American Columnist and Co-Editor of The American Prospect.

If you get into a conversation with a billing representative of your credit card provider or phone company, you may notice a faint Indian accent. That's because the services industry is shifting more back room operations to India, where labor costs are a fraction of those in the United States. IBM, likewise, will soon move several thousand computer programming jobs to India, where programmers get far lower salaries. This decision has angered IBM employees and is contributing to a rare unionization drive at the high-tech giant, a company that once prided itself on never laying anyone off. In these cases, industry defends the moves as cost-effective and economically logical. If productive English-speaking workers in India can perform the jobs, why not move the work there and pass the savings along to shareholders and consumers? Most economists, enthusiasts of free commerce, agree that these shifts help both India and the United States.

Hold on a moment. India figures in another controversy.

Indian pharmaceutical labs make prescription drugs at a fraction of

 the cost that American drug makers charge consumers. In this case, however, it is illegal for American consumers to benefit. The politically powerful pharmaceutical industry contends that imports of cheaper foreign drugs violate patent rights and safety regulations. The industry is also battling legislation that would allow consumers to import cheaper drugs from Canada, which legally manufactures or purchases the drugs under license from the US pharmaceutical companies and conforms to US safety standards or better.  

If you notice a double standard here, you're right.

American industry wants to be free to shift labor around the globe.

And it fiercely lobbies against any restrictions, such as transnational labor standards. But when it comes to property, business lobbies

just as hard for ground rules that make it impossible for consumers to benefit from product imports that allegedly breach property rules.

The pharmaceutical industry would reply that when Canada, under its national heath program, negotiates cheaper drug prices, those drugs are intended for Canadians, not for export back into the United States.

If the United States wants a national health program with cheaper drugs for everyone, let's contest that question directly and not via the Canadian back door (and count on the drug makers to lead the opposition!).

The industry also contends that when Indian labs manufacture drugs at a fraction of the US cost, that's not just abusing a negotiated discount; it's piracy of patent rights. But hold on again. The existence of patents is an artifact of law, which in turn reflects politics. When Congress passed the first patent laws two centuries ago, it balanced the rights of inventors with the value of broadly diffusing the benefits of invention. The terms of patents and trademarks were far shorter back then.   

The extended patent protection enjoyed by the pharmaceutical industry today simply reflects that industry's immense political power. US presidents of both political parties have also done the industry's bidding by coercing countries like India to accept US conceptions of patent protection. Third World countries have resisted, both because their own people need cheaper medicines and because they need to develop economically. Let’s remember the young American Republic developed its industry by ''stealing'' manufacturing processes from mother England. And while the Bush administration's Food and Drug Administration suddenly invokes safety concerns when it comes to doing the drug industry's dirty work, it is remarkably relaxed about the safety of food imports. Many of the products grown overseas are fruits of international agribusiness, another political client of the administration.

So the inconsistent treatment of workers and of corporate products with policy in both cases tilting toward business is not based on necessary economic logic. It's a reflection of the power imbalance of business and labor.

Violence of Globalization

Monday 3 January 2005

The following article is by Vandana Shiva Director of Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology of New Delhi.

Globalization is a violent system, imposed and maintained through use of violence. As trade is elevated above human needs, the insatiable appetite of global markets for resources is met by unleashing new wars over resources. The war over diamonds in Sierra Leonne, over oil in Nigeria has killed thousands of women and children.

The transfer of people's resources to global corporations also makes states more militaristic as they arm themselves on behalf of commercial interests, and start wars against their own people. Violence has been used by the Indian government against tribal people in areas where Bauxite is mined in Orissa and in Koel Karo, where the building of a large dam was stopped.

But it is not just non-renewable resources like diamonds, oil and minerals which global corporations want to own. They want to own the world biodiversity and water. They want to transform the very fabric and basis of life into private property. Intellectual Property Rights on seeds and plants, animals and human genes are aimed at transforming life into the property of corporations. While falsely claiming to have "invented" life forms and living organisms, corporations also claim patents on knowledge pirated from the Third World. The knowledge of the world mothers and grandmothers is now being claimed as inventions of western corporations and scientists. The seeds and plants of the subcontinents’ basmati variety of rice have been claimed as inventions by a U.S. corporation called Ricetec. And these are only some examples of what that leads to the absurd situation where the Third World pays for knowledge that evolved cumulatively and collectively.

From the Women's Court, it declared that patents on life are immoral and illegal. They should not be respected because they violate universal principles for reverence for life and the integrity of a culture's knowledge systems.

No one will live by rules that are robbing millions of their lives and medicines, their seeds, plants and knowledge, their sustenance and dignity and their food. No one will allow greed and violence to be treated as the only values to shape cultures and lives. No one will take back the lives, as he or she took back the right. Every one knows that violence begets violence, fear begets fear, peace begets peace and love begets love. The modern man has to reweave the world as a place of sharing and caring, of peace and justice, not a market place where sharing and caring and giving protection are crimes and peace and justice are unthinkable.

The world has to be shaped by new universals through solidarity, not hegemony.

Women's worlds are worlds based on protection - of dignity and self respect, the well - being of children, of the earth, of her diverse beings of those who are hungry and those who are ill. To protect is the best expression of humanity. Those who have tried to transform "protection" into a dirty word, the worst crime of the global market place, see the protection of health, nutrition, livelihoods all, try trade sanctions and "punishment" by the W.T.O. and the World Bank for protestors.

To those who have tried to make the protection of life a crime it has to be said "You have already lost. You need to get out of the way so that we can protect each other, our children and life on this planet." The future does not belong to the Merchants of Death - it belongs to the Protectors of Life.

Violence of Globalization

Monday 27 December 2004

The following article is by Vandana Shiva, the Director of Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, of New Delhi.

Man thought it had put slavery, holocausts and apartheid behind - that humanity would never again allow dehumanizing and violent systems to shape the rules by which man lives and dies. Yet globalization is giving rise to new slavery, new holocausts, new apartheid. It is a war against nature, women, children and the poor. A war which is transforming every community and home into a war zone. It is a war of monocultures against diversity, of big against small, of war time technologies against nature. That is a wild Globalization.

Technologies of war are becoming the basis of production in peacetime. Agent Orange, which was sprayed by the U.S  on Vietnam, is now being sprayed on the world farms as herbicide along with Round up and other poisons. Plants and animals are being genetically engineered, thus making the world fields sites of biological warfare. And perverse intelligence is being applied to terminate life's cycles of renewal by engineering "Terminator" seeds to be sterile.

As the violence grows, the stress on societies, ecosystems and living beings is reaching levels of breakdown. Human beings are surrounded by processes of ecological and social breakdown.

Witness the events of these times which are now front page news. Millions of animals in the world are being burnt as foot and mouth disease spreads due to increased trade, consequently farmers in India are committing suicide in thousands.

All these are wars of peacetime, occurring in  daily lives and the last expression of violence in a system which has put profit above life, commerce above justice, ethics and ecology as violent technologies.

In an industrial system of factory farming globalized under free trade rules of agriculture, it was "efficient" to grind up the meat of infected sheep and cows and turn it into cattle feed. This has spread BSE disease among cattle - a disease that can be transmitted to humans.

Children should be playing with their friends. Schools are not supposed to be war zones. But a culture of guns and violence, combined with one that has focused so exclusively on commerce and economic growth and material accumulation, has left future generations uprooted and unanchored, afraid and violent. Nowadays, children are robbed of childhood. In the occupied Iraq, 12 children die every hour. In other regions, children are being pushed into prostitution or warfare - the only options for survival when societies break down. Across the Third World, hunger and malnutrition has grown as a result of structural adjustment and trade liberalization policies.

During 1979-81 and 1992-93, calorie intake declined by three percent in Mexico, 4 percent in Argentina, 11 percent in Kenya, 10 percent in Tanzania, 10 percent in Ethiopia. In India, the per capita cereal consumption declined by 12 percent for rural areas and 5 percent for urban areas. Denying food to the hungry and feeding the markets is one of the genocidal aspects of globalization Countries cannot ensure that the hungry are fed because this involves laws, policies and financial commitments which are "protectionist" - the ultimate crime in the globalization regime.

Denying medicine to the ill so that the global pharmaceutical industry can make profits is another aspect of genocide. Under the Trade Related Intellectual Property agreement of the World Trade Organization, countries have to implement patent laws granting exclusive, monopolistic rights to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. This prevents countries from producing low cost generic drugs. Patented HIV/AIDS medicine costs 15,000 dollars, while generic drugs made by India and Brazil cost 250-300 dollars for one year's treatment. Therefore patents are, literally robbing AIDS victims of their lives.

However, in the world order of globalization dictated by commerce, greed and profits, it is providing cures through affordable medicine that is illegal. India, Brazil and South Africa have been taken to the WTO Court  because they have laws that allow low cost medicine to be produced.

At the World Court of Women, it declared that laws that force a government to deny citizens the right to food and the right to medicine are genocidal.

Are War and Globalization Really Connected? (2)

Monday 20 December 2004

The following article is by Mark Engler, a Writer based in New York and a Commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus.

The forced privatization of Iraq's economy provides the most vivid link between war and neo-liberalism. Yet to determine whether this restructuring is representative of a larger trend--of a new phase of corporate globalization in which the "freeing" of markets will be more militaristically regulated it must looked at the wider state of trade and development policy under US President, George W. Bush. Activists often point to the American president himself as a bridge between globalization and militarism, as someone who vocally supports both free trade and preemptive war. However, the Bush administration's actions in the trade arena have often contradicted its rhetoric, distinguishing it from its globalist predecessors.

Globalization has always been a vague term, employed for many different purposes. Confusion over the use of the word has often muddled analysis of the state of the global economy.

In the 1990s, "corporate globalization" most frequently referred to a "rules-based" international order, designed for the benefit of multinational corporations and regulated primarily by a set of multilateral financial institutions.

Particularly since September 11, 2001, Bush's globalization policy has been quite different from what characterized the Clinton years. As in its military actions, the current administration has shown a penchant for go-it-alone nationalism in its economic negotiations. This has led to a type of bare-knuckles promotion of U.S. interests distinct from the multilateralist model of global capitalism advanced in the 1990s. As a result of this shift, as well as a concurrent global economic downturn, trade talks in recent years have been combative, tense, and often unproductive.

Actually, much of the business elite would prefer Clinton's multilateralist globalization to Bush's imperial version. Prior to the war, many corporate leaders feared that the invasion of Iraq would be bad for business. The rich--whether they are French Chinese or just about anybody--are livid about the Iraq crisis primarily because they believe it will sink their financial fortunes. When Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win over the non-American delegates, the sharpest attack on his comments came not from Amnesty International or some Islamic representative--it came from the head of the largest bank in the Netherlands !

And corporate worries persisted as the war effort went forward. After the invasion had begun, the Washington Post reported on March 23, 2003, that: "Discord over the Iraq War is putting uncomfortable strains on economic links between the United States and Europe, a relationship that many view as a basis of global success.

There is no question that the U.S. occupying authority has opportunistically used its power to impose "free market" reforms on Iraq's economy. But this alone is not reason to assume that Bush's militarism represents the new face of globalization. In fact, this assumption has produced some wobbly analysis. For example, it has been severe international grassroots pressure against the advance of corporate globalization that forced those in power to adopt a more militaristic posture.

Activists have frequently quoted the view, coming from a mainstream observer, as vindication of their arguments linking militarism and corporate expansion. The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 decision to take the fist out of hiding and wield it in a widely unpopular war significantly shook the international order that for years had provided a climate of business stability. Indeed, by privileging specific sectors of the U.S. economy such as energy companies and arms contractors, the White House has rattled the global marketplace in which U.S. financial capital and consumer-based industries must operate.

Part of the confusion surrounding the analysis of Iraq comes from sloppy use of the term "globalization." Dissenters to the neo-liberal order have long argued that they are not opposed to globalization, but are advocates of a very different type of globalization than that favored by corporate free traders or The International Monetary Fund economists; namely, a globalization of justice and solidarity. Appreciating this lesson about the diversity of globalizations also requires recognizing that the spectrum of national and business interests are not entirely united in their vision of an ideal world order.

In this case, it may be most useful to move beyond the concept of globalization altogether and look for a deeper level of connection. Ultimately, there is an ongoing need to develop coherent theories of how the struggle to control limited oil reserves will shape the future of capitalist economics.

The war in Iraq is not only aimed at tightening U.S. control of Iraq oil reserves, but it is another step in Washington's protracted efforts to manipulate and control Middle Eastern politics too.

It is also important to consider how war plays into the boom-and-bust business cycle that has long affected both the U.S. and global economies.

Are War and Globalization Really Connected? (1)

Monday 13 December 2004

The following article is by Mark Engler, a Writer based in New York and a Commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus.

To be radical, in the oldest sense of the word, is to go to the root. One strength of truly progressive analysis is that it places what appear to be isolated events in a larger context. It seeks to make connections between seemingly disparate political issues by revealing underlying ideological frameworks. And so it has been a central task, in the post 9-11 era, for activists to demonstrate how the supposed war against terror and the drive for corporate globalization are one and the same--how peace and global justice movements share vital common ground. That these two issues are connected, in a fundamental way, is an article of faith on the political left, reinforced by the fact that many participants in globalization protests have also mobilized against the Bush administration's militarism.

Many of the arguments wedding the war in Iraq with a strategy for neo-liberal expansion are not readily convincing. And, in their drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures between the Bush administration's foreign policy and the policy preferred by many business elites. Activists have good reason to look again at the Neo-Conservative hawks now in power in the White House and to consider whether they have overcome the corporate globalists of earlier years or whether they have given  them away.

Let's start by examining some of the strongest arguments for the link between the so – called war on terror and corporate globalization.

First, the White House has been eager to make big business a partner in the execution of the Iraq War and the subsequent occupation. This has been most prominently evidenced by the high-priced reconstruction contracts snatched up by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Bechtel.

Second, the U.S. president has advanced a neoliberal agenda domestically by cutting taxes for the wealthy and further destroying social safety nets. His administration has employed the rhetoric slogan of the war on terror to attack unions--most notably in the summer of 2002, when it threatened to intervene for so-called "national security" purposes in a West Coast harbour workers strike. Activists are also correct to note that the war abroad has been used to suppress dissent at home. Of the 87 billion dollars passed by Congress last October for the occupation of Iraq, 8.5 million dollars went for policing the protests in Miami opposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Moreover, Conservatives attack both antiwar and globalization protesters as unpatriotic and helpful to the so – called terrorists.

Finally, activists have seen a connection between war and corporate globalization in the privatization of Iraq's economy. Political commentators have detailed how the occupation of Iraq allowed the U.S. governing authority to restructure the U.S. economy based on strict neoliberal principles. Following what The Economist magazine called a "wish-list that foreign investors and donor agencies dream of for developing markets," Washington instituted measures providing for the privatization of 200 Iraqi state firms, for 100 percent foreign ownership in Iraqi companies outside the oil production and refinement sectors, for full repatriation of profits, and for a 15 percent cap on corporate taxes.

Not only is the interim government of Iraq prohibited " from taking 'any actions affecting Iraq's destiny' beyond the election of an Iraqi government," but, shamelessly the occupiers have assembled "every Ministry with U.S.-appointed authorities with five-year terms--well into the period of the new, elected government."

Although, these attempts to link American Neo-Conservative militarism and corporate globalization have some advantages for its profiteers, but each of them has important weaknesses too. First, consider war profiteering. Although, corporations do exhibit shameless opportunism in seizing business opportunities created by U.S. military action, this does not connect war and globalization in a deep way.

A focus on profiteering risks ignoring the stated Ne-Conservative goal of reinforcing U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and beyond, something far more significant than short-term kickbacks to corporate sponsors. Also, it assumes that the objectives of specific businesses like Halliburton and U.S. arms contractors accurately reflect the general interests of all multinational corporations, an idea that deserves scrutiny.

The Military Side of Globalization

Monday 6 December 2004

The following article is by Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and Chairman of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and a Middle East Editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project.

If the invasion of Iraq was indeed based upon the lack of other means to impose American hegemonic interests upon the country, it may portend even more serious conflicts in the future: There are two other Third World countries that share with Iraq this combination of having a large educated population, enormous oil reserves, and adequate water resources, thereby enabling their governments to embrace an independent foreign and domestic policy. Not surprisingly, these countries have also been at the receiving end of increasingly hostile rhetoric from the U.S. government. They are Iran and Venezuela.

However, it is unlikely that either has to fear a U.S. invasion any time soon for the simple reason that Iraq is turning into a total disaster.  While there is little question that some liberalization and restructuring of Iraq’s economy, after years of state control under Saddam’s dictatorship, is necessary for the country’s economic health, Iraqis resent such important economic issues being decided by an occupying power which clearly has a strong vested economic interest in their country. Indeed, along with the violence and lack of basic services, the primary grievance of Iraqis toward the U.S. occupation is the perception that the Americans are simply trying to rip them off.  

Like many Arab governments, Iraq under Saddam Hussein squandered billions of dollars’ worth of the nation’s wealth through corruption and wasteful military spending. Despite that, however, prior to Saddam’s ill-fated invasion of Kuwait and the resulting war and sanctions, Iraqis enjoyed one of the highest rankings in the Third World in terms of the Human Development Index, which measures nutrition, health care, housing, education, and other human needs.

Not only has the U.S. occupation failed to raise Iraqis up to their pre-1991 standard of living, most of them are poorer now than they were during more than a decade of sanctions following the devastating U.S.-led bombing campaign of the Persian Gulf War.

After all the enormous suffering that the United States and its allies inflicted upon the Iraqi people during the final dozen years of Saddam’s rule, the failure to improve things since his ouster has understandably led to widespread resentment. It is no accident that at a time when over half the population, many of whom are skilled workers, are unemployed, overpaid foreign contractors most of whom are doing jobs that Iraqis could do have become targets of the resistance. A poll this past spring revealed that 65% of Iraqis would prefer a largely-state controlled economy and government subsidies of basic services, while only about 7% support a free-market system where private entrepreneurs have unrestricted access to the economy.

The widespread feeling that the United States is after Iraqis nation’s wealth and putting the profits of well-connected American companies over the livelihoods of ordinary Iraqis has fueled the very armed resistance that has made any attempt at rebuilding -- by any economic model -- virtually impossible. As a result, the United States may have no more success imposing its free market utopia on the Iraqis than the Soviets had in imposing their socialist utopia on the Afghans.

A Crusade for Neo-Liberalism?

Monday 29 November 2004

The following article is by Stephen Zunes a Professor of Politics and Chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and a Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project.

Under Coalition Provisional Authority chairman Paul Bremer, radical changes were imposed upon the Iraqi economy which closely follows the designs of the infamous structural adjustment programs imposed upon indebted nations by the International Monetary Fund. These include: the widespread privatization of public enterprises, which -- combined with allowing for 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi companies and placing of key sectors of the Iraqi economy into the hands of American corporations , which primarily benefits the wealthy and places a disproportionate burden on the Iraqis poor.

The virtual elimination of import tariffs, resulted in a flood of foreign goods into Iraq with the smaller Iraqi companies weakened by over a dozen years of sanctions unable to compete thereby severely limiting re-investment into the Iraqi economy  lowering of the minimum wage and increasing already widespread poverty.

It is noteworthy that one Saddam-era law that U.S. authorities did not overturn was the ban on public sector unions.

U.S. occupation forces have violently broken up peaceful demonstrations by trade union activists.

 It is also important to note that the supposedly sovereign government of Iraq which formally took the reins of power on June 28 with U.S blessing does not have the authority to overturn these laws.

Explaining the U.S. invasion of Iraq in terms of imposing militarily what the International Monetary Fund could not impose itself, however, may only be part of the story.

 Skeptics of claims that the United States invaded Iraq for its oil correctly observe that the United States is less dependent on Persian Gulf oil than European or East Asian countries.

However, controlling Iraq which is the largest Arab country in the 2^nd Persian Gulf region, contains the world’s second largest oil reserves, and borders three of the world’s five largest oil producers would give the United States enormous leverage.

In the coming decades, in the event of a trade war with the European Union or a military rivalry with an ascendant China, having effective control over Persian Gulf oil would give the United States enormous leverage.

The invasion of Iraq, then, may represent not just a frightening repudiation of the post-World War II international system embodied in the United Nations Charter, but a return to 19th century great power politics of imperial conquest to control key economic resources.

In direct contravention of World Trade Organization regulations -- which the United States insists upon rigorously enforcing against other nations -- U.S. occupation forces have restricted investment and reconstruction efforts almost exclusively to countries which supported the U.S. invasion. Similarly, following the U.S. conquest of Iraq in March 2003, American contractors and their employees were given preference in lucrative reconstruction efforts over Iraqi companies and Iraqi nationals.

In addition, from power stations to telecommunication, U.S. designs are replacing Iraqi and European systems.

Unlike the Clinton administration’s ambitious efforts to rewrite global trade rules so as to impose a kind of free market fundamentalism on the world, the Bush administration has been more inclined to advance the more inward-looking interests of U.S.-based corporations.

The US Invasion of Iraq: The Military Side of Globalization? 

Monday 22 November 2004

The following article is by Stephen Zunes a professor of Politics and Chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and a Middle East Editor for the Foreign Policy.

With the major justifications for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq -- the former regime’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to the terrorist

Al-Qaeda network -- now discredited, and claims of wanting to created a democratic Iraq turned out to be highly dubious, this raises the question as to what actually motivated the United States to take on the problematic task of conquering and rebuilding that country? To embrace the simplistic notion that it was done simply for the sake of the profits of American oil companies ignores the fact that even the most optimistic early projections of the financial costs of the invasion and occupation far exceed any additional profits that could have been reaped in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein was certainly willing to sell his oil at a reasonable enough price to satisfy Western buyers and his standing among fellow OPEC members was too low at that point to have wielded sufficient influence to successfully push the cartel to adopt policies detrimental to American interests.

Thus this is not to say, however, that economic factors did not play an important role in prompting a U.S. invasion.

Until the buildup to the U.S. invasion, many had projected that efforts by the United States to overthrow sovereign governments -- either through covert action, through direct military intervention, or through the use of proxy armies -- was a thing of the past.  This was not a result of a greater respect for international law; indeed the supposition of being the sole remaining superpower has allowed the United States to push international legal norms even further than ever.  It was a reflection that with the neo-liberal model dominating the global economy -- enforced through international financial institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), The International Monetary Fund ( IMF) and the World Bank -- such crude forms of hegemonic domination were no longer necessary.

The International Monetary Fund through its Structural Adjustment Programs has been able to do legally and openly what in previous decades had to be done through the CIA, the Marines, or hired mercenaries. The hegemony of American capitalism and its industrialized allies had reached unprecedented levels without the ugliness of direct military intervention.

This can also explain the end of the left-leaning nationalism that was once common in the Arab world, with Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, and to a somewhat lesser extent Syria and Libya abandoning their semi-socialist policies to embrace what are referred to as

“free market reforms.” Along with that has come a significant reduction in their anti-Western rhetoric, support for terrorists and radical groups, and other measures disturbing to Washington.

 On the surface Baathist Iraq, however, was the only Arab state to largely resist such trends. With its sizable educated population, large oil resources, and adequate water supplies Iraq, if it had  wished, could have maintained an independent foreign and domestic policy.

It could not given the minority nature of the ruling regime ,its brutal suppression of the Iraqi majority, and its alliancc with the U.S during the 8 years war against Iran in the 1980 .

This is not to imply that Saddam Hussein’s regime had the potential to being a progressive model for Third World development. Indeed, his brand of Baathism was arguably the closest thing to true fascism that has existed anywhere in the world in recent decades. Despite the 12- year U.N.’s sanctions, Saddam seems misread the U.S. signs that he had already served his purpose..

As a result, the United States was determined to set up a new order where this important country would have no choice but to openly play by America’s rules. Since making an occupied nation formally part of its conqueror’s territory is not generally considered to be acceptable anymore (U.S. allies Morocco and Israel notwithstanding), a less formal system of control needed to be set up. Indeed, the U.S. plan for Iraq bore a striking resemblance to the British role in that country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, where -- rather than formally occupying the territory -- they occupied it just long enough to establish a kind of domination where, even though the Iraq was nominally “independent” within a couple of years, they could effectively veto the establishment of an unfriendly government and dominate the economy.

Globalization's Human Face

Monday 8 November 2004

The following article is by Thandika Mkandawire, Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

Concerns about the effects of globalization were nothing new to the developing world. Such fears dominated, for example, the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen back in 1995. The clear conclusion there was that development requires more than economic growth. Some features of globalization are simply unacceptable in their social and environmental costs. Despite this widespread awareness, however, there still is little indication that the goals and values governing global institutions are moving toward greater social responsibility. In education, investment and environmental conservation, the incentives have morphed into improving the options of the profit-maximizing individual. The investor has become much more important than the worker.

The "invisible hand" of the market cannot imagine a decent society for all people, or work in a consistent fashion to attain it. Only human beings with a strong sense of the public good can do that. The 1995 Social Summit had marked a watershed in international thinking. Following years when financial institutions and many government leaders had narrowly focused their attention on economic growth and stabilization, 117 heads of state or government committed themselves "to creating an economic, political, social, cultural and legal environment" for social development.

The task was to be accomplished by new approaches to financing social development and dealing with one of the major constraints for many countries in Africa and Latin America: the debt burden. The Social Summit also called for democracy and development to be more responsive to women's interests and concerns, and stressed the need to promote people-centered sustainable development.

What emerges is a fairly disturbing picture of initiatives that remain more at the level of rhetoric than implementation; and patterns of economic growth, liberalization and equality that continue to obstruct progress. Furthermore, the political pressures that are necessary for promoting social development appear relatively weak, as do the institutions that might mobilize and distribute resources more effectively.

This situation partly reflects the conditions that prevailed just before and immediately after the Social Summit: the triumph of neoliberalism, the unprecedentedly high economic growth in Asian economies, the signs of recovery in Africa and Latin America. All these tended to obviate the need for drastic reform. The experience of the latter half of the 1990s - in particular, the financial crisis that gripped Asia and again threatened Latin America, coupled with heightened poverty and inequality - revealed that several of the assumptions underpinning development strategy at the time of the Social Summit were seriously flawed or overly optimistic.

While the necessity for social protection has increased, resources allocated for this purpose are actually shrinking as a result of declining aid, cuts in government spending and tax avoidance. Continuing pressures to downsize and control spending have imposed limits on a renewed role for the state. Can actors other than the state play a key role? There have been signs that big business is taking steps in this direction, projecting itself as socially and environmentally responsible. It should, however, be recognized that there are limits to the extent to which corporate social responsibility can be enhanced through voluntary initiatives and partnerships, as opposed to stronger forms of regulation and civil society pressure.

Nevertheless, there are signs that the ideological climate for rethinking development policy is more favorable than it has been for years. Some new perspectives are gaining force. Human rights and "rights-based" development - emphasizing the primacy of human-rights law and people's ability to strengthen their claims on the state - are on the agenda.  What is evident is that globalization faces a crisis of legitimacy - and even the dominant international finance and trade organizations are beginning to question their own prescriptions and models, and to consider some of the critical elements of the Social Summit agenda.

Corporate Globalization and the Poor...

Monday 18 October 2004

The following article is by Russell Mokhiber Editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter and Robert Weissman Editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor.

US President George Bush has been issuing a public challenge to the anti-corporate globalization movement. When hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the G-8 meeting of rich country leaders in Genoa, Italy, George Bush blamed the activists, saying they were the advocates of corporate globalization who genuinely are seeking to advance the interests of the world's poor!

It's not enough to laugh at Bush's pretension of being a defender of the poor by pointing out that, through his giant tax cut, the president has overseen one of history's great transfers of wealth to the rich in U.S. history.

Unfortunately, that turns out to be a remarkably easy challenge to meet. The last 20 years of corporate globalization, even measured by the preferred indicators of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, have been a disaster for the world's poor.

Over the last two decades, Latin America has experienced stagnant growth, and African countries have seen incomes plummet. The only developing countries that have done well in the last two decades are those Asian countries that ignored the standard prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research has published compelling data comparing growth rates from 1980 to 2000 with the previous 20 year period when many poor countries focused more on developing their own productive capacity and meeting local needs.

The results: "89 countries that is 77 percent, -- saw their per capita rate of growth fall by at least five percent. Only 14 countries that is 13 percent  saw their per capita rate of growth rise.

The US based Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the growth slowdown has been so severe that "18 countries -- including several in Africa -- would have more than twice as much income per person as they have today, if they had maintained the rate of growth in the last two decades that they had in the previous two decades. The average Mexican would have nearly twice as much income today, and the average Brazilian much more than twice as much, if not for the slowdown of economic growth over the last two decades."  A follow-up Center for Economic and Policy Research study used a similar methodology to look at social indicators. Center for Economic and Policy Research  found that progress in reducing infant mortality, reducing child mortality, increasing literacy and increasing access to education has all slowed during the period of corporate globalization, especially in developing countries.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research global comparisons across time show the bottomline, combined effect of the specific policy components of corporate-friendly policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and enforced by free trade agreements. These include the following:

* Trade Liberalization

 The elimination of tariff protections for agriculture and industries in developing countries often leads to mass layoffs and displacement of the rural poor. In Mexico, for example, opening to U.S. agriculture imports has forced millions of poor farmers, who find themselves unable to compete with the American corporate gaints, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, off the land.

* Privatization

International Monetary Fund and World Bank structural adjustment policies typically call for the sell off of government-owned enterprises to private owners, often foreign investors. Privatization is regularly associated with layoffs and pay cuts for workers in the privatized enterprises.

* Cuts in government spending

 Reductions in government spending frequently reduce the ability of the government to provide services to the poor, exacerbating the social pain from rural displacement and industrial layoffs.

* Imposition of user fees

 Many International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans and programs call for the imposition of "user fees"  charges for the use of government-provided services like schools, health clinics and clean drinking water. For very poor people, even modest charges may result in the denial of access to services.

* Export promotion

 Under structural adjustment programs, countries undertake a variety of measures to promote exports, at the expense of production for domestic needs. In the rural sector, the export orientation is often associated with the displacement of poor people who grow food for their own consumption, as their land is taken over by large plantations growing crops for foreign markets.

Advancing the interests of the poor has nothing to do with the corporate globalization agenda. This agenda is driven first by profit-seeking, and second by ideology.

Where Have all the Protesters Gone?

Monday 11 October 2004

The following article is by James H. Mittelman a Professor at the School of International Service at American University, Washington.

While many observers say the anti-globalization movement is on the wane, that may not necessarily be the case.  The resistance to globalization may be found by shedding light not only on demonstrations in Washington, but by also looking beyond those public displays. What Prime Minister Tony Blair derided as the "traveling circus" of anti-globalization is not fading out; it's simply adapting to the post-9/11 phase of globalization.But is it really anti-globalization? Just as with the debate over the word "terrorism," in defining anti-globalization, the power of language matters. Language conjures up meanings and images, and accordingly, the vocabulary varies according to the positions of the strong and the weak. Recall that during the apartheid era, South Africa's white redoubt and President Ronald Reagan alike called the imprisoned Nelson Mandela a terrorist, but he later received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Similarly, the idiom anti-globalization, deployed by star columnists and celebrity economists in the West, pigeonholes diverse actions. The difficulty is that it inserts a wide variety of attitudes on globalization in two boxes: for and against. Many critics resist not because they are against aspects of globalization such as increased access to innovative technologies, more information, and new knowledge. Rather, without considering dreams about a make-believe world, they are trying to imagine possibilities for a just world, an adjusted globalization.         

The global justice movement, heterogeneous networks without a hierarchy of leaders, is merging with the peace movement. They see President George W. Bush, aided by his squad of advisors, as the commander-in-chief of militarized globalization. While the campaign against corporate power and the powerful international economic institutions continues, a prime target of protest is US military interventions in the name of globalization. 

Those who resist globalization do not reject it or adopt an across-the-board anti-globalization stance. Although core international economic institutions are seen as problematic, the resistance embraces the gains of globalization.

In April 2002, 12 graduate students, and 243 participants intrerviewed at a rally sponsored by the organization Mobilization for Global Justice in Washington.

The questionnaire was consisting of 25 items about participant attitudes toward globalization. When asked the most important reason for protesting globalization, only 6 percent of the interviewees said "to abolish the international financial institutions."

 The largest single response was to oppose US foreign policy. The majority of those interviewed regarded the US government as an active, intrusive agent of globalization.

The agenda has shifted to what can be done to control globalization so that its benefits are inclusive and its processes are more transparent, participatory, and democratic. The emphasis is on formulating concrete, affirmative proposals.

Increasingly, the protest over the dark side of globalization may be found both within and outside governments and intergovernmental organizations.

Globalization Proves Disappointing

Monday 27 September 2004

The following article is by Joseph Kahn, Columnist and Critic of Globalization. 

Globalization, or the fast-paced growth of trade and cross-border investment, has done far less to raise the incomes of the world's poorest people than the world leaders had hoped. The vast majority of people living in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East are no better off today than they were in 1989, when the fall of the Berlin Wall allowed capitalism to spread worldwide at a rapid rate. Rather than an unstoppable force for development, globalization now seems more like an economic temptress, promising riches but often not delivering, in the view of many of the leaders at the United Nations conference in this Mexican city, an industrial center. 

The thing about globalization is that if one blinks, he or she miss it entirely, it's not some kind of permanent phenomenon.

Why rich countries keep many trade barriers in place, why Wall Street is fickle when it comes to investing in emerging markets, why multinationals ignore even some poor countries that follow the right policies?

President Bush, has promised to increase America's foreign aid to poor countries, to 15 billion dollars by 2006, reversing declines during the so-called decade of globalization. European nations say they will also boost development assistance markedly.

However, no one predicts a return to the situation that prevailed before 1980, when governments accounted for the bulk of capital flowing from rich countries to poor ones.

Foreign aid, at about 50 billion dollars a year, is about a fourth of what companies now invest in developing countries each year, and an even smaller fraction of what developing countries earn from exports. But even the leaders of industrial nations say their faith in globalization was at least partly misplaced.

A World Bank survey shows that after growing furiously through the early 1990's, annual private capital flows to the developing world fell from 300 billion dollars in 1997 to just over half that level last year.

Stock and bond markets went into reverse after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, drawing more money out of developing countries than they put in. Corporate foreign investment declined only modestly, but is still below its 1997 peak.  That has left some fallen stars among middle-income countries, like Turkey and Argentina, which are now begging for both private investment and official aid. Those that only tasted the fruits of globalization in the 1990's, like most of Africa and Central Asia, never got a second bite. Perhaps aside from China, the only country that appears to have benefited unambiguously from the trend toward open markets worldwide is the United States, where a huge inflow of capital has helped allow Americans to spend more than they save, and to import more than they export.

The trend of globalization is that surplus capital is moving from the periphery countries to the center, which is the United States.

"The U.S. government's view is that markets are always right," but the truth is that markets are almost always wrong, and they have to be made right.

Globalization Has to Take Human Rights into Account.

Monday 20 September 2004

The following article is by Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Linking human rights with ethics and globalization represents a connection whose time has come. And yet the task is daunting. Every day brings further evidence of the unacceptable divide in the world; the harsh statistics of millions living in extreme poverty and enduring conflict. The increasing frustration and disillusionment with market-led globalization is evidenced by the protests at the G8, the World Trade Organization, the European Union and other summits.

The Western world think that it is at the edge of a big idea - the shaping of ethical globalization But how? What are the components, the linkages, and the energies that need to be harnessed?

Nearly 10 years have passed since the adoption of two important international declarations on Globalization and Human Rights, one by the world's governments , the other by the world's religious leaders . But, the fact is that building an ethical and sustainable form of globalization is not exclusively a human rights matter, but it must include the recognition of shared responsibility for the universal protection of human rights.

What is emerging is the need for globalization as an economic process to be subject to moral and ethical considerations and to respect international legal standards and principles.

While the World Trade Organization agreements provide a legal framework for the economic aspects of the liberalization of trade, the norms and standards of human rights balance this by offering a legal framework for trade liberalization's social and ethical dimensions.

What does that mean in practice? It means answering questions such as:  Is trade truly free and fair? The developing countries have heard many promises over the years but have too often found that, in practice, access to markets where developing countries hold competitive advantages has been denied.

Do intellectual property rules consider the cultural rights of indigenous and local communities?

Are intellectual property rules conducive to ensuring access to drugs under the World Health Organization essential drug list?

On this last question let US consider the issue of AIDS.

A lack of respect for human rights is linked to virtually every aspect of the AIDS epidemic, from the factors that cause or increase vulnerability to HIV infection, to discrimination based on stigma attached to people living with HIV and AIDS, to the factors that limit the ability of individuals and communities to respond effectively to the epidemic. The U.N’s work and that of others has shown that emphasis on the human rights of victims can make a great difference.

Human tragedies of this kind, although not normally on this scale, are often the first disturbers of moral conscience and the first prompters of moral response. Given the global range of the pandemic, only a global response will be effective.

Lack of adequate nutrition, of basic medicines, of clean water, of elementary education, of suitable employment, of equality for women, among a multitude of other privations, increase the vulnerability of these poor people to HIV and AIDS. The poverty deprives them in turn of the means of treatment and care which are available to the wealthy.

And just as poverty makes the world poors more vulnerable to HIV so infection and disease in turn increase their poverty through extra medical costs, loss of income, funeral costs and so on.  The insights of the poor, deprived and suffering are essential to the U.N's enterprise of developing a Globalizing ethic with a human rights component. People living with HIV and AIDS and their associates could be one matchless source.

A key characteristic of economic globalization is that the actors involved are not only states but private power in the form of multinational or transnational corporations. It is now the case that more than half of the top economies in the world are corporations not states, and international investment is increasingly private.

Thus, a new challenge is to ensure that such powerful actors in the Globalized economy are accountable for the impact of their policies on human rights.

With respect to human rights, corporations should ensure that they uphold and respect human rights and make sure they are not themselves complicit in human rights abuses.

In the area of labor standards, businesses should uphold freedom of association and collective bargaining and make sure they are not employing under-age children or forced labor, either directly or indirectly, and that, in their hiring and firing policies they do not discriminate on grounds of race, creed, gender or ethnic origin.

Another critical area where the private sector must play a bigger role if globalization is to benefit more people is employment generation. There are an estimated 66 million unemployed young people in the world today making up more than 40 percent of the world's total unemployed.

Powder Keg in the Slums

Monday 13 September 2004

The following article is by Jeremy Seabrook's the Author of, 'Consuming Cultures, Globalisation and Local Lives', which is published by New Internationalist.

In 1950, 18 percent of people in developing countries lived in cities. This rose to 40 percent  in 2000. By 2030 it will reach 56 percent . More than 40 percent  of these are already living in slums. The urban poor are emblematic of the 21st century. Neo-liberal policies have quickened the growth of slums, as subsidies for agriculture and nutrition have been withdrawn, effective health and education have become marketed commodities, water has been privatised and sanitation all but abandoned thanks to globalization.

Global poverty is in flight; not because it is being chased away by wealth, but because it has been evicted from an exhausted, transformed hinterland. The UN estimates of the world rural populations have reached their peak, but there will be a further 2 billion urban settlers in the next 30 years. About 70 percent of these will live in slums, adding to the 920 million already there.

The world Poor people have taken their bundles to the unwelcoming cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Few go in search of bright lights or easy pickings. Most depart in sorrowful resignation, because they have dependants - children and elderly parents - to sustain and insufficient means to do so.  The earth they farmed, addicted to fertiliser and pesticide, no longer yields a surplus to sell in the market. Water is contaminated, irrigation channels are silted up, well water polluted and undrinkable.

In India, less than 10 percent of people are employed in the formal economy, and this is being reduced by Globlization and the privatisation of state enterprises.

Other aspects of rural life had also decayed. There had been no repairs to the school building. The health centre had closed. Forests, where people had always gathered fuel, fruit and bamboo for house repairs, had become forbidden zones, guarded by men in the livery of some private semi-military company.

Poverty itself mutates during the journey to the cities. People leave places where food is produced, paradoxically, to escape hunger. When they see city markets, it seems they have indeed arrived at a place of plenty. But the cash required for food always outruns the day's labour. Vegetables dug freely out of a patch of earth now cost half a day's income.

Neighbours and relatives in the city find a precarious site where a shelter can be built out of industrial detritus - close to the bubbling black water of a stagnant canal, on the dangerous scree of a stony slope. In some cities, factory work is available; others have urbanised without becoming industrial; and from some industry has already departed. The poorest areas evoke images of flimsy makeshift settlements: cities have become refugee camps for the evictees of rural life. No one gives work. People turn themselves into rickshaw drivers or domestic servants; buy a handful of bananas and spread them for sale on the pavement; offer themselves as porters and labourers.

In the slums, latrines surrounding polluted ponds are shared by 50 families. The nearest water tap is a 15-minute walk away, and water flows only in the early hours. Money for illegal electricity connections must be paid to the prosperous family in a house on the main road. Children suffer from strange fevers. Money set aside for food must be spent on medicines to stop the shiverings of dengue and malaria. The remains of the daily meal are tied in a plastic bag from the roof to keep it from the rats that run through the night.

Security comes to mean a padlock on the door, rather than the vigilant eyes of neighbours. Uncertainty, redefines itself as insecurity of tenure, the illegality of what were to have been sanctuaries from eviction. Insufficiency is structured into the very wages which were to have been the means of deliverance, but which prove unable to procure the necessities of life.

The world must learn once more that the minimal state leads to maximum disturbance. If rural poverty is relatively dispersed and powerless, Globalization towards an urbanisation without livelihood sets up pathologies of violence and disaster.

Globalization Fails to Deliver the Goods

Monday 6 September 2004

The following article is by Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington D.C.

One of the good things about the stock market coming back down to Earth after a prolonged bubble is that it leads people to question other misconceptions about the economy. When stock prices were soaring all kinds of nonsense were heared about a "new economy," technological revolutions, and profit projections that were just too miraculous to be true.

The standard litany about the wonders of globalization could be the next myth that is ripe for debunking. For decades it have been told that increasing global trade and investment was great for everyone, with the exception of some inevitable "losers" who would hopefully retrain for new jobs.

Anyone who is old enough to have lived through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s knows that it was not uncommon for a typical American wage-earner to buy a house, support a family, and even put the kids through college with just one income. That doesn't happen any more, and these statistics are another way of expressing America's changed reality.

Interestingly, almost all of the research by economists shows that American opening up to foreign trade contributed to this massive redistribution of income. The only question is: how much? Even if one takes the smaller estimates of how much redistribution was due to increased trade -- not to mention U.S firms moving production overseas -- it is easy to show that about three-quarters of the U.S labor force has suffered a net loss due to globalization. This takes into account all the cheap DVD and CD players, clothing, and other consumer goods that America now imports from overseas. For the vast majority of Americans, the losses from globalization have outweighed the gains, in strictly economic terms.

This should not be surprising, since American political leaders have made it their mission for more than 30 years to rewrite the rules of global commerce (for example, in such agreements as the North American Free Trade Agreement or the World Trade Organization) in ways that give corporations more power and workers less.

What about the developing world? Unfortunately the official, undisputed numbers tell a very different story here, too, than the one Americans have heard from the cheerleaders on TV. The growth of income per person in the low and middle-income countries dropped sharply over the last 20 years. If one compares the last two decades  to the previous 20 years, he or she will find that these economies advanced by less than half their prior rate of growth.

As a result of globalization, most developing countries  saw reduced progress over the last 20 years in such areas as life expectancy, infant and child mortality, literacy, and education. This long experiment in corporate-led globalization has been a failure, in the U.S and abroad. As with the end of the "new economy," it is time to face up to the facts.

Is This Any Way To Run A Globe? 

Monday 30  August 2004

The following article is by Longworth a Columnist and a Chicago Tribune Senior Reporter.

On the inside are the U.S  leaders, the presidents and prime ministers and their aides, blockaded behind mesh fences and clouds of tear gas, writing the new rules of the global economy or Globalization in the atmosphere of a medieval siege. On the outside are the led, some of them on the scene, actually choking on the tear gas, others watching at home, most of them sensing that those new rules are not what they would write, if anybody asked them.

Is this any way to run a globe?

Organized global protest began only when the first rock went through a Starbucks window in Seattle. The Seattle protests not only helped defeat plans for a new round of world trade talks. In the uproar, the public first became aware that something really important -- the organization of globalization -- was going on.

Things haven't advanced much since then. Global governance, as this new rule-writing is called, is still mostly a closed and undemocratic process, done in private by experts and elites. Global protest, which is what the opposition amounts to, is public but chaotic, also basically undemocratic -- who elected those protesters, anyway? -- and almost as baffling to a public that has such a large stake in the outcome.

It's time to move on to a real debate, to open up some more chairs at the rule-writing table, and to define some intellectual battle lines.

Everyone knows what one side -- the First World governments, led by the United States, and the giant global corporations -- wants. Their agenda is summed up in what has become known as the Washington Consensus -- free trade and investment, free flow of money, deregulation, privatization, protection of property rights, low taxes. In short, free markets.

Exactly, what the doubters and protesters on the other side want is less clear. They all believe an unbelted free market sacrifices social and human rights to the bottom line. But beyond that, they want so many different things, and oppose so many different things, that the message is too muddled to be the rallying cry for their movement.

Some are environmentalists and fear that global corporations take advantage of weak environmental laws in Third World countries. Others worry about Third World workers laboring in sweatshops. Still others fear that those same workers are taking well-paid jobs from American workers.

Human-rights advocates see corporations bankrolling dictators or perpetuating poverty and inequality. There are those who want free immigration and those who want tighter borders. Some see global laws overriding local laws, or global courts superseding local courts. There are women's groups, and student groups, and groups to protect dolphins, or trees, or local traditions, or to make sure that no soccer balls are made with child labor.

All are serious issues, and each group makes persuasive points. The diversity underscores the fact that globalization is an immensely powerful force that touches every part of life. But there's no focus and in political battles, focus counts.

American people are not just talking about bumper stickers, or headlines. Basically, they are talking politics -- who writes the rules and makes the laws that frame their lives.

Until now, all this has been done at the national level, and Americans had national political forums in which competing interests fought and compromised. Now these battles have gone global, but no global forums exist in which political opponents can meet on equal terms.

Seattle opened the debate on the question. The subject of the debate is whether there is going to be some form of global democracy, and what shape it will take.

There's no doubt that there's a broad constituency ready to respond to the protesters' platform. Polls have shown that many Americans, perhaps a majority, worry about globalization and its direction.

A few American protesters, of course, are the anarchists and other violent protesters, drawn more by the promise of a dustup with the police than by the issues themselves. Others are zealous anti-globalizers who doubt that globalization is here to stay or who are ideologically anti-market and anti-capitalism.

This sort of thing distresses the more serious protesters. They fear being tarred with the brush of violence and worry that their message is being drowned out by the violence. Almost all recognize that globalization is a fact and the real debate is over its eventual form. Most favor free markets as the basis for an economy, but oppose what is called "wild capitalism," unregulated and uncivilized by democratic government and the needs of society.

Has Globalization Helped the Poor?

Monday 23  August 2004

The following article is by Mark Weisbrot Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

It has become increasingly fashionable for the U.S.  government officials and their friends to promote Washington's global agenda as a helping hand to the world's poor. Bob Zoellick , US Trade Representative at a recent press briefing, said "If one is concerned about the developing countries, both history and studies would suggest an open system is going to be the formula for them."  Even less partisan observers such assert that globalization "has improved the lot of hundreds of millions of poor people around the world." But what if it just weren't true?

Is it possible that globalization has been a losing project for most of the countries and people of the world?

It is generally considered error to even ask such questions. Everyone who has managed to stay awake through an introductory economics course knows that the world is better off when trade expands, at least in theory.

But the real world is often more complex. Over the last 20 years most countries have increasingly opened their economies to international trade and investment. They have also adopted -- under the theory that "Uncle Sam knows best" -- a host of related economic policies promoted by Washington-run institutions such as the

International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The real world results look very bad. For the vast majority of countries, the last two decades have shown considerably -- and often drastically -- slower growth than was seen in the previous 20 years. And the poorer countries have generally suffered the worst declines in the growth of income per person by globalization, the most basic indicator of economic progress.

The exceptions tend to be countries like China -- which has highly protected domestic markets, extensive currency controls, and a banking system dominated by state-owned banks. This is not to say that any of these policies would necessarily work elsewhere, or that there are no gains to be had from international trade and investment.

But there is clearly something wrong with the prevailing authority. Strategies for economic development have been abandoned, and it is generally assumed that open markets, privatization, and attracting foreign investors will do the job.

The last 20 years of globalization have also shown substantially diminished progress in health outcomes, such as infant and child mortality, and life expectancy. The same is true for other social indicators, including education and literacy. Again, the slowdown in progress is worse among the lower-income countries.

A world in which half of humanity survives on less than 2 dollar a day cannot afford to postpone development for the sake of being "economically correct," or for the special interests of transnational corporations. The expansion of trade and international markets is not an end in itself, however much it may appear that way to American corporate and political leaders.

The Bush Administration is now urgently seeking "Trade Promotion Authority" to negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas, stretching from Canada to Argentina. This would mean that Congress would have only an up-or-down vote on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, with no amendments. It's going to be a hard sell, with the U.S. economy at a virtual standstill, and no recovery yet in sight. During the economic expansion of the 1990s, it was easier not to notice the millions of jobs lost to expanding trade. Even then, the U.S. workers who lost their jobs in manufacturing usually ended up working for lower pay (if they were lucky enough to find a job at all). But now the U.S. economy is not even creating enough jobs to keep unemployment from rising.

Labor can be expected to fight Trade Promotion Authority and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. They will be joined by environmental and public interest groups who oppose granting corporations new rights -- as Free Trade Area of the Americas, did -- to sue governments directly and overturn regulations designed to protect the environment and public health.

The opposition will be accused of turning their backs on the world's poor. But the last 20 years of corporate-led globalization tell a different story: the world's poor need a New Deal. American labor and citizens' groups should ignore these self- righteous and self-serving accusations, and carry on against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, -- as well as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization -- with a clear conscience.

Globalization protestors are not only protecting American jobs, wages, and natural resources but they are also saving the rest of the world.

Voters in India say No to Globalization

Monday 16 August 2004

The following article is by John Nichols, a Columnist and a Critic of the U.S. Imperialistic Globalization Plans.

Of course, there is no greater lie than the suggestion that economic globalization done along corporate-friendly lines has been good for the world's poor. Just as this form of globalization has robbed American communities of factories and service jobs and has impoverished farmers in the United States, so it has deprived the poor of developing countries of traditional livelihoods and hope for a better life. It has to be that way because, for multinational corporations to reap the excessive profits their shareholders demand, they must squeeze the last penny out of even the poorest of the poor.

Yet, while that much should be obvious, one will still see the dupes and stooges of corporate capital pitching for free trade, market reforms and privatization. Unfortunately, while they are consistently wrong, the dupes and stooges continue to occupy stations of great influence in both major political parties and most of the major media in the United States. As a result, the lie that says globalization leads to prosperity for the poor continues to be spread.

India has been held up in recent years as a globalization success story. The country's high-tech economy and its much-talked-about "call centers" - where so many U.S. companies service their accounts - have become symbols of the sort of globalization that is, at the least, good for the poor. Critics of outsourcing point to India as the place where U.S. jobs are being shipped, with some accuracy. But supporters of globalization respond with the claim that India's rapid growth rate is creating a better future for historically dispossessed people.  

Supporters of corporate globalization were voted out of office in the most stunning political upset in the history of India.

India ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, had embraced the corporate model of globalization, willingly accepting the dictates of the World Bank, selling off even profitable state-owned firms to foreign investors, and dramatically cutting business tax rates. A small sector of the India economy did boom, and the Bharatiya Janata Party sought a new term with a campaign that celebrated that growth. Its slogan was: "India shining."

Pollsters, pundits and business analysts predicted an easy victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party. But the voters had a different view. They recognized that India's so-called "boom" has not shined on most Indians. As one opposition party slogan asked, "What did the common man get?" The answer was "nothing." And in India, where poor people vote at the same or sometimes higher rates than the rich, anger over the elitist nature of the boom proved to be decisive.

The Indian Bharatiya Janata Party was swept from office, to be replaced by a coalition led by the Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and, now, Sonia Gandhi, and the Left Front, an alliance of socialist parties that has been fiercely critical of corporate globalization. The left won its best finish ever in an Indian election by promising to stop the sell-off of state-owned companies to foreign interests, to force corporations to pay their fair share of the tax burden and to spread the wealth.

The new government will not deliver on all those promises. But there is now little question that the process of privatization will be slowed as public policies are shifted toward creating an economy that benefits all Indians.

This already has the backers of corporate globalization grumbling. The New York Times editorial page, long the champion of "free trade" and "market reforms," got busy urging the new leadership of India to maintain the economic policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

But the Times was forced to acknowledge a little bit of reality: In "a country where poor people vote in large numbers, most of them remain unimpressed" with those policies. The poor don't usually get a voice in economic decision-making. But when they are given a chance to vote, and when they take that chance, the corporate model for economic globalization invariably loses. That's because the poor, unlike the editorial writers for the New York Times, have learned to recognize - and reject - the lies.

The Rich Gang up on the Poor at Trade Talks

Monday 9 August 2004

The following article is by Kevin Watkins, Head of Research at Oxfam.

There is a Swahili proverb that says, "When elephants fight, the grass gets crushed. When elephants make love, the grass gets crushed." Watching Europe and America trample like rogue elephants over the interests of developing countries at the crucial World Trade Organization talks, that recently ended in Geneva, confirms the Swahili proverb.

Negotiators did manage to conclude an agreement for reviving a new global trade pact meant to guide developing nations more fully into the world's trading networks. Success in these talks, known as the Doha round, declared to be an ambitious move toward making globalization a more powerful force for poverty reduction.

As ever, the Geneva agriculture was at the heart of the problem. President Jacques Chirac of France worked overtime in a bid to persuade European Union countries to reject a World Trade Organization draft agreement that would phase out export subsidies.

These subsidies drive down world prices and push farmers in Africa and elsewhere out of markets and into poverty. Developing countries regard their elimination as non-negotiable, as does the United States.

To be fair, the World Trade Organization draft agreement in Geneva is hopelessly unbalanced. While prohibiting European Union export subsidies, it would only partially restrict U.S. recourse to subsidize export credit programs. These now run at over 7 billion dollars a year. There is no justification for allowing American negotiators to slip through an export subsidy prohibition net.  

Viewed from Africa, the World Trade Organization draft contains even more fatal flaws. Governments in the region have insisted from the outset on an early harvest of cuts on U.S. cotton subsidies - and for good reason. In West Africa alone they cost near 200 million dollars a year in lost earnings. Yet the proposed framework offers little more than weasel words affirming the importance of the issue.

For his part, the U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, has made it clear that there will be no new commitments on cotton. Like Chirac, it seems that Washington regards placating rich farmers as a higher priority than advancing multilateralism. Good news down on the cotton belt - bad news for the rest of the world.

Whatever their differences over agricultural export subsidies, in some areas the European Union and the United States are forging a trans-Atlantic consensus. Unfortunately, the consensus in question is deeply hostile to the goal adopted when the Doha round was launched: The development of a system of rules designed to increase the benefits of trade for developing countries.

While the European Union and the United States may preach free-market principles to the developing world, when it comes to agriculture they want World Trade Organization rules that allow them to protect and subsidize at home. Both sides insist on the right to exempt from liberalization a wide range of "sensitive products" - a euphemism for products in which developing countries have a competitive advantage. They are also working hand-in-hand to expand loopholes for agricultural subsidies. Shorn of technicalities, these would have the effect of exempting billions of dollars in farm payments from World Trade Organization cuts.

In stark contrast to their reluctance to liberalize at home, Europe and America are enthusiastic advocates for liberalization in developing countries. Notwithstanding the scale of its own farm subsidies, the United States insists that developing countries must rapidly open their agricultural markets. And along with the European Union, it wants a dilution of World Trade Organization rules that allow developing countries to liberalize markets for manufactured goods at a slower pace.

These demands are at the heart of the deadlock with developing countries, many of which fear that rapid market opening - especially in agriculture - will undermine prospects for growth, generate unemployment, and cause social dislocation. They are right. Witness the disappointing results of Latin America's embrace of rapid liberalization. The last thing the world needs now is World Trade Organization rules, that restrict the policy space needed to make trade work for the poor.

In an frightening rerun of the breakdown on negotiations in Cancún Mexico in the year 2003, the European Union and the United States have already started blaming developing countries for failure. African governments have been roundly condemned for making "unrealistic" demands on cotton (and how disobedient it is of them to call on the U.S. to apply free market trade principles). Latin America and India have been blamed for demanding better access to industrial country markets. And the entire developing world has been denounced for failing to fall into line with demands for rapid liberalization.

What one witnessed in Geneva was a failure of European and American political leadership of epic proportions. Private vested interests in agriculture were allowed to override the wider public interest in strengthening multilateralism and declared reducing poverty.

Attacks on US Change Course of Globalization

Monday 2 August 2004

The following article is by Gustavo González.

The September 11, attacks in New York and Washington, as well as the US response, have raised questions about the future of globalization and of the anti-globalization movement .

Italian Historian and Journalist, Gennaro Carotenuto and Chilean reporter and Anti-Globalization Activist Víctor Hugo de la Fuente warned of the risk that the anti-globalization movement would be demonized due to its criticism of US "hegemony''.  The reaction of many will be that which has been imposed by the media: any criticism of the empire that is  [the United States] is today seen as virtual complicity with the so-called terrorism.

If that view prevails, it will entail, an extremely serious blow to the critics of neo-liberal globalization.

The September 11 attacks, in which hijacked commercial airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon (Defense Department) in Washington, were also "the offspring of globalization."

An Italian activist and academic said: `"That is true in the sense that they did what had never before occurred in the history of the United States: they took the `war' to US territory. Although, the idea that it was an act of war, according to Bush's version, serves the system he himself presides over.'' Washington always thought it could act on the foreign policy front without any consequences at home - an idea that has been completely crushed by the September 11 events.

Globalization had accentuated the differences between rich and poor countries, which benefited only big economic interests. As long as that situation remains unchanged and there is a superpower that assumes the role of international policeman, hatred and violence, including irrational manifestations like terrorism, will continue to be generated.

The two activists concurred that the US decision to channel an international response to the attacks through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had accentuated the United Nations' loss of influence in today's globalized world.

Today more than ever it is necessary to have international bodies like the United Nations and an International Criminal Court to help resolve conflicts and to prevent the law of the strongest from being imposed.

The United Nations and the UN Security Council played a leading role was during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, because the Soviet Union still existed at that time.

One of the doubts the activists and others have raised is whether the current crisis will spawn an international system characterized by a more militarized focus for the globalization process and a stronger US hegemonic presence.

"What is clear, though, is that civil rights will be drastically curtailed'' in the context of the heightened security measures being adopted in the wake of the attacks in the United States. Some restrictions have been accepted due to the "fear and patriotism,'' but who knows how long the neo-liberal economy will put up with them.

Under these conditions, it has become much more difficult for the anti-globalization movement to take to the streets again. That was demonstrated by the tension surrounding the peace march staged by anti-globalization demonstrators in Washington, who had originally planned to protest the policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which canceled their scheduled meetings.

Bush's Globalization

Monday 26 July 2004

The following article is by Mark Engler, a Writer Based in New York City.

Since the U.S Attorney General, John Ashcroft recently warned of a possible attack on American soil, the protests taking place outside G-8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia have been overshadowed by the ghost of the so-called terrorism. This is unfortunate, because like the activists who have converged at previous meetings in Evian, France and Genoa, Italy these demonstrators carry an important message. Instead of accepting the "anti-globalization" label given them by their critics, they have challenged the terms of the debate: It is not a question of whether globalization will occur, they say, but what kind of globalization the world  will have.

Never has this issue been more significant than in the George W. Bush era. When President Bush took office, many noted his support for "free trade" agreements and his cozy relationships with multinational conglomerates. They argued that Bush was continuing the economic foreign policy of the Clinton administration-a brand of "corporate globalization" criticized for suppressing wages, increasing inequality, and weakening global environmental standards. But Mr. Bush is crafting a type of globalization marked by aggressive militarism and staunch unilateralism that differs greatly from the cooperative, "rules-based" model of international order favored his predecessor.

Basing his foreign policy on military might and U.S. power projection, he has crafted a form of "imperial globalization."

The G-8 meetings in Georgia highlight some of the important differences between Clinton's corporate globalization and Bush's imperial version. Under Clinton, G-8 meetings typically were celebratory gatherings of the world's most powerful leaders, who coordinated the neo-liberal economic policies of institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Today, the G-8 highlights simmering tensions between the White House and the U.S traditional allies in "Old Europe," whose governments object to Bush's hawkish worldview and go-it-alone bravado. These leaders continue to promote the same pro-corporate development policies at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. But President Bush's brand of corporate favoritism, embodied in no-bid Halliburton contracts, reveals a nationalist economic outlook that only exacerbates tensions.

With broad-based trade negotiations in a state of collapse and the situation in Iraq worsening, President Bush has increasingly been forced to soften his imperial approach and reconsider Clinton-style cooperation. But to cheer his recent multilateralist turn would miss a critical point. The U.S needs a globalization that embraces neither the soft hand of neoliberalism nor the punch of preemptive war.

Critics were right to point out that the corporate globalization of the 1990s benefited an international elite at the expense of the world's poor. UN Human Development Reports tells  that inequality skyrocketed throughout the booming '90's, so that the top 1 percent of the world's population now gets as much income as the poorest 57 percent. Many developing countries continue to experience escalating poverty.

A new globalization must be based on internationalized labor standards and human rights. In contrast to corporate globalization, it must measure progress based on rising minimum wages. In contrast to imperial globalization, it must reject preemptive war and support the International Criminal Court, controls on the trade in arms and other mechanisms of international law.

As the Bush administration and G-8 leaders debate the terms of the current international order, the voices of critics should not be overlooked. Now more than ever it is vital to recognize that protests in the United States, Europe, and the developing world against corporate globalization have not been rejections of international unity. Rather, they are the most hopeful expressions of a sound and urgently needed globalization.

The 'Ubuntu' of Globalization

Monday 19 July 2004

The following article is by Julian Hewitt, a 2004 Clinton Democracy Fellow from South Africa and the President of a student-run organization that operates in 88 countries.

In South Africa, there is a term, "Ubuntu," which refers to the spirit of the community. It is a shortened version of a South African saying that comes from their culture: this means that I am a person through other people, and that my humanity is tied to yours. This is probably the single most important aspect of living in a highly connected planet: and our humanity is tied together. It means we must respect each other, and we must always keep our interconnection in mind.

The United States needs to understand the meaning of these South African phrases more than any other industrialized nation. The ultimate global power, the United States creates ripples that cause big waves around the world. This happens more frequently than the average American comprehends.

When Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cuts interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, it has a huge impact on peoples of South Africa. Straight away it influences the South African financial markets which react to this news by preempting a cut or a hike by the South African Reserve Bank in response to rate changes in the United States.

In short, globalization enables Greenspan's small action relative to US markets to have a large effect on people 13,000 miles away in South Africa. Imagine how many other powerful decisions resonate with citizens of South Africa.

When the USA attacks Iraq, it heightens the religious animosity between the large Muslim and Christian communities living near Cape Town, creating security risks and tension. Hollywood movies, music, multinationals, foreign policy, farming subsidies, and import tariffs have a similar effect. These endless ripples are reaching the distant shore. But despite the critical role of the United States in world affairs, for example, many US citizens do not any thing of American Globalization.

The average American gets little information about what is happening in the world or about the role of the United States in world events. An even bigger concern is that a large percentage of those who read tabloid newspapers in the United States comprise a considerable and influential voting bloc that has, among other things, elected the current American government.

Twenty or 30 years ago, there would be nothing wrong with an American who never left home, never owned a passport, never spoke a second language and never knew the capital of Denmark. But now they live in a globalized world. We live in a world of causes and effects. They live in a world where the U.S has an overwhelming influence on global disorders.

Today, there is hypocrisy: The United States plays the key role in globalized societies, but its citizens are not globalized. Holding such a position of global influence without having a global worldview is not just naive, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to be the source of global disorders but to ignore it.

Over time, those disorders may cause waves that will slap back on American shores.

The Globalization Wars

Monday 12 July 2004

The Iraq invasion is, of course, not only about oil. What it is really about appears to be a disturbing and disturbed confluence of outdated plans for world domination, arrogance and the stunning ignorance of the man who claims to be the President of the United States. It is also an open admission that the much touted free market and American style capitalism is failing and can only be saved through massive military intervention. Even though it's not about oil, it is of course about oil, at least a little. Even if the "Iraqi people" do keep control of their oil, that wealth will be spent, for the foreseeable future, largely in the U.S.

It's about oil to fuel the US war machine. It's about the oil spigots and who controls them, and who will control them as the oil supply begins to dry up. It's about oil as the political bargaining chip of last resort, and in America's hands, oil as the key to American economic and cultural dominance of the planet's people. It's about oil and it's about the forcible colonization of everybody everywhere by Walmart and Time-Warner.

On some level, this war was planned 30 years ago as OPEC flexed its petro muscles, causing Henry Kissinger to decide

that the US must dominate the Persian Gulf or risk losing its comfortable superpower status. As the US has grown increasingly dependent upon imported oil, this concept has been deeply assimilated into America's political and military asumptions.

Global domination is now a bipartisan issue-the Democrats just prefer to do it in a lower tone of voice.

The Democratic leadership hasn't complained loudly about the war because they accept its fundamental rationale - that the US needs to control the Persian Gulf, and maintain global dominance, at whatever cost.

The Bush gang have taken the extra step of insulting the UN to demonstrate that the US, as global cop, can do what it wants, when it wants. The invasion of Iraq was intended as the moment "when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization," Thomas Barnett a professor of warfare analysis at the US Naval War College and a special advisor to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld . Says he divides the world into the "Core," the wired, capitalized, developed world, and the "Gap," the marginalized, impoverished nations of the Third World.

He writes that invading Iraq is "not only necessary" but it is "good" because "the resulting long-term military commitment will finally force America to deal with the entire Gap as a strategic threat environment."

Thomas Barnett advocates a "globalization" that entails the Americanization of the world through mechanisms like the WTO, IMF and McDonald's, all backed up by US military power. What the Free Market promised and failed to do - remake the world as franchises of America , is now to be done with Cruise Missiles steered by Global Positioning Satellites.  A nation's status as a member of the "core," entails acquiescing to this Americanized globalization, however gradually. States that do, like China, will be rewarded despite their brutal subjugation of Tibet and Sinkiang. According to Thomas Barnett neither democracy nor human rights are a necessary component of a "core" state according to Barnett. It is only necessary that such states hook in to the globalized economy.

 That's a battlefront that the U.S. neocon vision hadn't counted on--the growing resistance at home to economic and military brutality. Even less did they count on ordinary American's growing ties to the outside world .

Apart from what happens in Iraq, resisting the spread of corporate globalization, and implementing and strengthening local cultures, fair trade and alternative economics are the larger fronts in the war.

The planet wide movement of civil society is mobilizing itself against war and terror, just as it is against corporate globalization. The U.S. can expect that much of the world will be organizing against all things American, including the dollar.