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Two faced land of the free

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

Cameron Walker

Members of the Bush Administration regularly claim that the aim of American foreign policy is to spread ideals of democracy, freedom and liberty around the world. However, the actions of the US Government in its dealings with other nations regularly seem to contradict this.

We were all told the war on Iraq was to bring democracy to a nation suffering under Saddam Hussein. In the first year of the American occupation of Iraq, the nation came under the authority of the Coalition Provisional Authority and its American head Paul Bremer. During this time Bremer decreed 100 orders or changes Iraq had to make to its’ economy.

Instead of helping Iraqi people rebuild from decades of war these changes all strengthen American corporations at the expense of ordinary Iraqis. For example, Order 39 allows for 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories and also decrees that corporations may take 100% of their profit out of Iraq, instead of investing it in the local economy, which is in dire need of development. (Palast Greg Adventure Capitalism’)

Order 81 prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving seed from year to year. Instead they must fork out large amounts of money to buy new seed from American agribusiness corporations, such as Cargill. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in 2002 97% of Iraqi wheat farmers saved their seeds. This process helped avert famine during the harsh sanctions on Iraq in the 1990’s. As the British magazine the Ecologist points out:

“The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice, Iraqis don’t know which wheat works best in their own conditions, and would be better off with some new, imported American varieties. Under the guise, therefore, of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally reengineer the country’s traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness.” (Smith Jeremy Order 81’)

No Iraqis were involved in making these decisions. They were forced on the war-wrecked nation in such an un-democratic way it would have made Saddam Hussein proud. An insider implementing the US government’s economic policies in Iraq told the American journalist Greg Palast: “They have [Deputy Defence Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming out saying it’s going to be a democratic country … but we’re going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn’t vote for.”

The one of the few Saddam era laws retained by the American occupation forces in Iraq is the law that restricts union organising in public sector industries. Since 2003 Iraqi unionists have been busy actively opposing American moves to sell Iraqi industries to American corporations. As Hassan Juma’a Awad, a leading member of Iraq’s General Union of Oil Workers says:
“It was our duty as Iraqi workers to protect the oil installations since they are the property of the Iraqi people and we are sure that the US and the international companies have come here to put their hands on the country’s oil reserves”.

Iraqi unionists have had some big victories but also have had to suffer great costs. A general strike broke out in Basra when the British tried to install a notorious mayor who was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. Oil workers forced US Vice President Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton to employ Iraqis to complete reconstruction work in one city where unemployment was as high as 70%, instead of importing Kuwaiti oil workers. (Bacon David Interview with Hassan Juma’a Awad’)

Unions suffered persecution under Saddam. Today they face repression by both the American occupying forces and the remnants of Saddam’s regime that make up part of the murderous insurgency’. Some unionists have been kidnapped and murdered.

While the US is bringing democracy’ and free market capitalism to Iraq at gunpoint, it is also using huge amounts of effort to undermine the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Chavez, described by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as “a negative force in the region [South America]”, won a landslide election victory in 1998 and was again popularly re-elected in 2000. In 2004 he won a recall referendum on his rule with 58% of the vote, which was declared free and fair by foreign observers including former US President Jimmy Carter.

In 2002 opponents of Hugo Chavez launched a coup in which the president was briefly overthrown and held under house arrest. The head of the Venezuelan Federation of Business, Pedro Carmona Estranga, appointed himself President.

Most nations around the world condemned the coup as anti-democratic and called for Chavez to be released and returned to office. The USA failed to condemn the coup and became one of the few nations in the whole world to recognise the coup government of Carmona. After a huge public outcry on the streets of Venezuela Chavez was returned to power.

In 2005 the pro-Bush US evangelist minister Pat Robertson said on his TV program, The 700 Club’ that the US should assassinate Chavez.

Why do the US government and its allies hate Chavez so much when he is a seemingly popular democratic leader? Well he has raised taxes on US oil companies and increased the price of oil exports to pay for large social programmes for the poor in urban slums, known as barrios. He vocally criticises US “free trade agreements” in Latin America as new world imperialism and also criticised the war on Iraq.

Despite its rhetoric the US government is quite happy to put corporate profit ahead of democracy.

SOURCES

Bacon David (September 2005) Interview with Hassan Juma’a Awad’ The New Internationalist, p33, issue 382

Hari Johann (August 26, 2005) Awaiting the hit’ in oil rich rogue state’, The New Zealand Herald, pB4

Palast Greg (October 26, 2004) Adventure Capitalism’

Smith Jeremy (February 2005), Order 81’, The Ecologist

MORE ARTICLES ON CHAVEZ

The Rise of America’s New Enemy by John Pilger

White House and Media Escalate War of Words Against Hugo Chavez by Scott Harris

Tags: agriculture, capitalism, corporations, democracy, economy, free trade, Iraq, sovereignty, unions, United States of America, Venezuela, war
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Peace and Conflict, Politics | No Comments »

Neo-colonialism ratified at Pacific Islands’ Forum

Friday, November 4th, 2005

Omar Hamed

Today Pacific Island nations at the Pacific Island Forums have welcomed and endorsed the Pacific Plan, a blueprint for neo-colonialism in the south Pacific.

wto

The Governments of Australia, the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, and representatives of Palau and Tonga. New Caledonia, French Polynesia Timor-Leste and Tokelau endorsed the Pacific Plan which is mainly based around implementing a number of trade liberalisation agreements notably Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER).

Professor Wadan Narsey, the Director of Employment and Labour Market Studies at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji has a good and brief summary of these different agreements in the Pacific Magazine.

Particularly concerning was the news that Pacific leaders have adopted a roadmap that paves the way for, “Expansion of market for trade in goods under the South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement (SPARTECA), the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER), and through trade arrangements with non-Forum members.

Integration of trade in services, including temporary movement of labour, into the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) and the Economic Partnerships Agreement (EPA).” A clear reference to WTO GATT and GATS agreements.

wtokills
The recent round of talks this week has angered some NGOs concerned at the speed with which these trade agreements are taking place. Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner, Lagi Toribau said in a press release at the end of the conference that “Despite the rhetoric about security in the Plan, it currently fails to deliver true security for Pacific Island communities, such as health, food and real energy security”.

Oxfam New Zealand Executive Director, Barry Coates was at a meeting of civil society groups in Papua New Guinea to launch a report on Vanuatu’s accession to the World Trade Organisation called “Make Extortion History” and to seek a freeze on trade negotiations. He said on the Oxfam website that “Small Pacific countries have much less to gain than most other nations from joining the WTO, due to factors like the wide dispersal of their populations and the great distances to markets. They of all countries should be allowed to try and find ways to use international trade as a means to enhance their development. Instead, they are subjected to intense pressure to open up their economies for the benefit of foreign exporters and multinationals.”

Oxfam New Zealand have been watching the Pacific Plan for some time now and their report “Make Extortion History” and a number of Pacific focused reports about the effects of economic deregulation and New Zealand’s extortion in the pacific are available online.

Although NGOs wanted more time and more consultation John Howard and Helen Clark pushed through the Pacific Plan. “I believe the work that is being done to build a region-wide consensus about what the priorities are will in turn then influence national plans and give people guidance on how to take that development further,” stated Clark pushing ahead priorities that Professor Jane Kelsey has linked with a strategy of colonialism and exploitation in the South Pacific. Kelsey in her reader friendly A PEOPLE’S GUIDE TO PACER, The Implications for the Pacific Islands of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations points out that “Pacific people were excluded from debating these developments because of the secretive way that trade negotiations are conducted and the willingness of governments to buy into that anti-democratic process. Regional NGOs, especially PANG, challenged the lack of transparency andâ€š civil society input when they discovered what was happening in 2001. Their voices were ignored.”

Kelsey has also been involved in a number of other studies of recolonisation in the Pacific and her major reports concern the Economic Partnership Agreements and PACER.

Dev-Zone, an Aotearoa NGO resource Centre on international trade and development, and the Global Education Centre’s sister organisation, has a number of different resources available on their website concerning trade in the Pacific.

In the lead up to the Hong Kong WTO conference in December Kelsey has said in a press release for the Action, Research & Education Network of Aotearoa (ARENA) that, “Those of us whose governments are making these outrageous demands (through PACER, PICTA and the WTO) need to find ways to challenge their role in that process.” Kelsey further highlights the need for sustained campaigning around the WTO conference in regards to the behaviour of the WTO and the role New Zealand and Australia play in the South Pacific.

For further articles about the Pacific Plan check out Arena and Scoop.

This Article and Photos were published on Indymedia on October 28, 2005.

Tags: Activism, colonisation, corporations, economy, free trade, government, Greenpeace, NGOs, Oxfam, Pacific
Posted in Activism, Articles, Economics & Trade, Politics | No Comments »

Hunger, poverty and the real agenda of the IMF and world bank

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

Cameron Walker

Created out of the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) claim to have the noble aims of helping third world nations to finance the building of infrastructure and to bridge balance of payments difficulties. However, many claim both institutions help ruin the economies of Third World nations through forced structural adjustment programmes, which are a condition to any loans or aid from them. Many also claim that the policies of both institutions directly benefit powerful multi-national corporations.

The draconian terms of the structural adjustment programmes often include the elimination of tariffs on imports, the forced privatisation of state owned assets, the removal of subsidies to local producers, the reduction of crop diversity and the forced export of crops to a small number of foreign buyers. These policies often lead to much poverty and injustice.

In 1999 the Bolivian city of Cochabamba privatised its public water supply under the intense pressure of the World Bank. The citizens of Cochabamba then as a result faced water bill price hikes of $20 a month. In a nation where the minimum wage is under $100 a month this was absolutely disastrous. What is even more shocking is that after privatisation the citizens of Cochabamba ended up paying more a month for water than people who live in the wealthiest suburbs of Washington D.C.

The policies of the World Bank and IMF are largely blamed for causing Malawi’s 2002 famine. The strings which were attached to an IMF loan package to Malawi included the privatisation of the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, removal of agricultural subsidies to small farmers and the deregulation of price controls on staple foods such as maize. Between October 2001 and March 2002 the price of maize increased by 400 percent as a result of these policies. In 2002 Malawi spent 20 percent of its national budget on debt repayment to Western creditors. This is more than Malawi spent on health, education and agriculture combined.

The foreign debt of many Third World nations will literally take hundreds of years to pay off. Indonesia’s foreign debt for example is $262 billion. This is 170 percent of Indonesia’s gross domestic product. Every day poor nations pay $100 million to Western creditors in debt repayment, mainly to institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. Since the 1980’s the policies of these institutions have led to developing nations paying out five times as much capital to rich industrialised nations as they have received in aid.

Decisions at the World Bank and the IMF are made by a vote of the board of executive directors, which represent member states. The voting process does not reflect proper democracy because voting power is determined by the amount a member state contributes to the institutions. This means the U.S.A has roughly 17 percent of the vote and has a dominant voice on policy and at times has exercised the power of veto. The World’s seven largest industrialised nations have 45 percent of the vote at the World Bank and IMF. As a result of this the policies of the World Bank and IMF often directly benefit industries based in Western industrialised nations. The company which bought Cochabamba’s water supply after it was privatised was Aguas del Tunari, part of International Water Limited, a British based company half owned by the American engineering giant, Bechtel. U.S. treasury officials have estimated that for every $1 the United States contributes to International development banks, U.S. exporters win more than U.S. $2 in bank financed procurement contracts.

It would seem to be common sense for poor nations to be encouraged to be self sufficient in food production; common sense seems to be contrary to World Bank and IMF policy. Some poor nations have had to endure having their crop diversity limited and then being forced to export the few crops produced to Western Nations. In the early 1990’s the famous investigative journalist John Pilger pointed out that forty percent of arable land in Senegal is used for growing peanuts for Western margarine and in Ghana fifty percent of arable land is used for growing cocoa for export to make Western chocolate bars. Both of these nations suffer malnutrition yet export most of their crops; a scene reminiscent of Ireland under British Imperialism during the potato famine of the 1840’s.

It is easy to come to the conclusion that the World Bank and IMF’s true agenda is very different than the one they sell to the public. They claim to help poor nations but really aid multinational corporations at the expense of Third World nations. These two institutions need to be greatly reformed to be any use in helping tackle one of the greatest problems of the early 21st Century, poverty.

References

Burgo, Ezequiel and Stewart, Heather ( 29/10/2002) The Guardian

Pilger, John (1994) Distant Voices London: Vintage

Pilger, John (2002) The New Rulers Of The World London: Verso

LEARN MORE

World Bank/IMF Factsheet

Tags: banks, corporations, democracy, economy, free trade, international law, investment, justice, poverty, privatisation, sovereignty
Posted in Aid & Development, Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Politics | No Comments »

Globalisation — what are the negative impacts?

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

Andrew Colgan

What is Globalisation?
Globalisation is the buzz word on everybody’s lips in the 21st century. But what does it mean? It basically means the world is getting smaller in just about every sense, except for geographically. Exchange is becoming more rapid, travel more feasible, communication faster and more accessible, advertising and media more widespread and movement of money more free-flowing.

Globalisation’s winners and losers
But globalisation is causing huge problems. Those who appear to be in control of the process (transnational corporations (TNCs), multilateral institutions and governments of wealthy industrialised nations) don’t seem to have the interests of everybody in mind. Consequently, economic and financial globalisation is happening at a rate disproportionate to all other developments. Economists and world leaders speak in terms of revenue, exchange, capital movement, structural adjustment and interest. Such concepts as emotion, cultural identity equality, environmental protection and social benefit seem to be foreign and are left out of the equation.

Some problems caused by Globalisation
The resulting problems are huge, and hit women, children and those on the periphery (especially in poorer countries) the hardest. These problems include:

Exploitation in employment — as well as appalling wages and working conditions, in many cases women and children are abducted and forced to work in oppressive factories or as sex workers.
The rise of the HIV / AIDS pandemic, displacement and longer working hours resulting in the orphaning and abandonment of children.
Neglect of the sick, illiterate, disabled and elderly as governments’ priorities shift towards economic growth and servicing of public debt.

The role of International institutions
The fate of many poorer or “developing” nations lies in the hands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Claims that Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) are in the best interest of those poorer nations, and not simply for the benefit of the wealthy creditors of these International Financial Institutions (IFIs), are dubious at best. The liberalisation of trade by the WTO has meant a removal of tariffs. Now only governments which can afford to pay subsidies can protect their producers. The complexity of international trade often makes it difficult to understand how huge disparities come about. Some excellent examples are given in a Christian Aid video called “Nuts”.

The problems with Transnational Corporations
Transnational corporations (TNCs) are quietly gaining dangerously unaccountable political power in both rich and poor countries. For example:

Finland is home of the mobile phone company Nokia. This company is so big that it accounts for 2/3 of the stock exchange, 1/5 of all exports, a significant proportion of the country’s tax revenue and employs over 22,00 Finns. By threatening to remove production to another country, Nokia effectively holds the Finnish government to ransom and so has a great influence in its political decision making.
Wal-mart is a huge American department store. Its clothing range is produced in factories in Bangladesh, taking advantage of the fact that there are no minimum wage laws there. Wal-mart is 55 times the size of the entire Bangladesh economy. By threatening to remove production to another impoverished (and therefore cheap) country, it has negotiated a deal with the government so it no longer pays a single cent of taxes.

The widening gap between the rich and poor
Despite extensive plundering of the world’s natural resources, this wealth has been shared less and less equally and extreme poverty remains. The gap between rich and poor is growing on a local and an international level:

The richest 20% of the world’s population enjoy 86% of its resources while the poorest 20% must survive with a little over 1%.
The 225 richest people in the world have the equivalent income to the poorest 2.25 billion.
The world’s 3 richest people have fortunes equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the world’s poorest 36 countries.
200 million children never start school (3/4 of these are girls). The amount needed to send these children to school each year is less than the amount spent on cosmetics in the USA and less than half the amount spent on ice-cream in Europe.

The Homogenisation of a Global Youth Culture
The growth of advertising and the entertainment media is contributing to the rising of a homogenous global youth culture. In New Zealand it is now estimated that we see on average over 3000 advertisements every day. Young people are made to feel insecure through “image advertising” and then told consumption is the answer to their insecurities. The result is a rise in individualism and a lack of compassion and care for others. People are encouraged to care more about money and image than family and community. Perhaps this plays a part in the high youth suicide rate in New Zealand. The other adverse effect of this global youth culture is that we are seeing people all around lose their unique cultural identities in pursuit of a branded western culture. In many ways, diversity is fighting a losing battle against globalisation.

LEARN MORE

Try googling any of these subjects and you’ll find heaps of articles and discussion — but here’s a selection to start you off…

Sweatshops
Corporation Watch — exposing sweatshops
Article in A World Connected
The feminist perspective

Child labour
Human Rights Watch
UNICEF

Trafficking
Human Rights Watch
United Nations

HIV and AIDS — stats, info, aid agencies etc
Young People and AIDS
UN Report (June 2005) on the impact on young people

International Financial Institutions (IFIs)
Watching the IFIs
US Network for Economic Justice

Debt
Jubilee Debt Campaign
Article in Global Issues on Debt

Corporations
Corporation Watch — holding corporations accountable
Corporate Watch

TAKE ACTION!

Read an article on this by the same author, Andrew Colgan : Youth Response to Globalisation

Tags: Aotearoa New Zealand, banks, children, consumerism, corporations, free trade, gender, globalisation, HIV/AIDS, labour legislation, Media, poverty, schools, trafficking, youth
Posted in Articles, Culture & Society, Economics & Trade, Global Headlines, Human Rights & Social Justice, Media, News, Politics, Take Action | No Comments »

Delicious Dilemma - The Issue with Coffee

Monday, August 8th, 2005

Coffee Graham Smout

Mmmmm! That smooth Espresso taste, but where does it come from and what hardships do people go through to give you the coffee that you know and love?

Coffee is produced in Latin America, the Caribbean, in Asia and in Africa. The main producer is Brazil which produces about a quarter of the world’s coffee.

Since the early 1950’s, these countries have been persuaded by buyers to give up farming more traditional crops in favour to producing coffee. This has lead to overproduction, plummeting market prices and sweatshop working conditions.

Coffee prices in 2003 were at an all time low. The market price for 500g of coffee was NZD $0.80 but the same amount of coffee sold for about NZD $15.00 in the shops!

Despite the incredibly harsh working conditions, producers receive none of this massive profit margin.

Buy fair trade
As a consumer you have a choice. You can either buy “free trade coffee” for a cheaper price, and which has been produced under sweat shop conditions, or you can pay a little more and buy “fair trade coffee”.

Fair trade coffee allows farmers to receive enough money from their crops for them to survive and not fall into poverty.

A recent survey has shown that around half of the coffee producers in Guatemala only receive about NZD $6.00 a day for picking about 45 kilograms of coffee!

Fair trade requires that all producers earn at least NZD $5.00 for every kilo of coffee produced.

So next time you decide to grab a quick espresso or mochachino, think of those poverty stricken farmers and buy “fair trade coffee!”

LEARN MORE

Global Exchange: Fair Trade Coffee
Trade Aid: Fair Trade

TAKE ACTION!

Find Fair Trade suppliers in your area :Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand: Fair Trade Product Finder and
Trade Aid: Where to buy fair trade
Next time you drink coffee, make sure it’s fair trade. If they don’t have it in your local cafe… ask that they start serving it. Do the same in your supermarket — ask the management to stock fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate for starters.
Buy a bar of Fair Trade chocolate as a present.
Show your support for Fair Trade by encouraging friends and family to buy Fair Trade products.
Fair Trade is more than coffee and cocoa. Many products are being made under fair working conditions. Check out more of our articles on fair trade.

This article was written as part of Global Focus, a collaborative project of Tearaway Magazine and the Global Education Centre. It was first published in Tearaway magazine and is reprinted here with their permission

Photographer: Eva Lawrence

Tags: agriculture, coffee, fair trade, free trade, poverty, sweat shops
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Take Action | No Comments »