The International Forum on Globalisation and Public Citizen
Not surprisingly, they bitterly attack the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), (of which I have the privilege of being a director), as well as Public Citizen. The former, they tell us is “dominated by the extreme Right” [36] and just about all its active members are targeted.
- Maud Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, (who with Tony Clarke, has led the battle against corporate control in Canada), is a nationalist and a racist because she complains that Canadian education is being taken over by American corporations, and opposes “cultural homogenisation” [37]
- Vandana Shiva, one of the most tireless and brilliant activists today in the battle against genetically modified foods, patents on life and the destruction of traditional agriculture, is also a racist because she has had some contact with members of the nationalist Hindu government in India – whose policies, by the way, are difficult to distinguish from those of the previous government.
- David Korten’s “imagery comes close to that of fascism” [38]. He has also dared state that his particular approach is “the only one that would be able to get the Republicans out on the street and mix with more progressive activists.” Krebbers forgets that nearly half of the US electorate votes Republican. Are they all to be outlawed too? Korten further states that the world is overpopulated – which of course it is, and grossly overpopulated too – and wants to reduce the world population from six to one billion people. “How this is to be done” Krebbers comments with his usual unpleasantness “he has wisely not yet revealed” [39], intimating that Korten is secretly planning the mass sterilization, or perhaps even the extermination of the world’s surplus inhabitants.
- Lori Wallach, who led the alliance, that included environmental groups, church groups, and the AFLCIO, that killed Clinton’s proposed fast track to negotiate further free trade agreements with South America, and that spearheaded the successful battle against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), is also under vicious attack because she included Republican Senators in her alliance, and accepted funding from Mr Milleken, the textile magnate, who has previously given money to the Heritage Foundation, and other right wing groups. [40] This is apparently untrue, but even if it were, would it not be a good thing that Milleken should be putting his money to good use? Is there any reason to believe that Public Citizen’s policies would have been adversely affected by accepting this money? Would it have been more ethical for Lori to have obtained the funding she needed from the World Bank, Monsanto, or even the Clinton administration?
- Susan George too is under attack (even though she is the President of the most highly respected Left Wing think tank in Europe) [41] because she correctly stated that without including the Right Wing Republicans in her alliance Lori Wallach’s initiative would not have been so successful.
- As for Mike Dolan of Public Citizen, he is, among other things, “a chauvinistic American” [42] so much so that this evil man actually wants people in America to eat mainly local produce. Krebbers and his friends forget that by encouraging a country to import cheap goods from abroad they are spelling the demise of all its small producers – and it is of course much worse in a poor country where the small producers make up the bulk of the population. Nor would the poor in the countries from which the food imported by the USA is derived benefit. In most Third World countries between 50 and 80 percent of the good agricultural land is already used for export crops, which means that there remains little land for producing food for local people, who are thereby condemned to malnutrition and in many cases famine.
- Krebbers and his friends also attack Ralph Nader, the most selfless and totally committed man I have ever known and one of the few figures in the USA who is respected by almost everybody, including his opponents. His sin is to be the President of Public Citizen, whose trade department is run by Lori Wallach. Also “he has remained silent on abortion, homosexuality and migration.” [43] So has Fabel van de Illegaal remained silent on deforestation, nuclear power, genetically modified crops, ozone depletion, and global warming, the last of which is by far and away the most serious problem we face today to the point of dwarfing all others.
- Nor is Jerry Mander spared by Fabel van de Illegaal. He is guilty of “technophobia”, a serious crime because “technology has made our lives very much more comfortable” [44], which coincidentally or not is also what the most polluting industries say when attacking the environmentalists who oppose the use of the technologies around which these industries have developed.
- Trade unions are also targeted by Fabel van de illegal, in particular the US Transport and Steel Workers Union, because they are only concerned with the interests of American working people rather than with the battle against capitalism and patriarchy. Even the moderate AFLCIO is lambasted by Krebbers, for whom it is hopelessly right-wing because it also joined the alliance against Clinton’s fast track and the MAI organized by Lori Wallach.
- Fabel van de Illegaal even goes so far as to lambast José Bové, the incredibly courageous French peasant leader who is one of today’s most effective activists against corporate control, “for adopting free trade as a primary target,” which, they tell us, of course, is “based on a new Right analysis”. [45]
- Even the French Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, does not escape Fabel van de Illegal’s vitriol, because his refusal to sign the OECD’s proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) which effectively killed this totally disgraceful proposal, was only motivated by “French nationalism” [46], which, of course, is precisely how it was interpreted by the WTO and the corporations that control it.
Who then is not a “racist”, “nationalist”, “fascist”, or “proponent of patriarchy” ? Presumably only the self-righteous, holier-than-thou members of this absurd and utterly pernicious cult of political correctness, and of course, the unjustly maligned giant transnational corporations, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, that alone seem to have escaped the venom of Fabel van de Illegaal.
It is indeed, extremely difficult to understand the motivations of these people. What are they really trying to achieve? They tell us that their raison d’être is to fight racism. But is it really by attacking me and now my colleagues, the members of the IFG, in so vicious and dishonest a manner that they can best achieve this goal? Would they not be best spending their time and money by researching what are the specific social conditions which led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the fascists in Italy in order to prevent a recurrence of these conditions and hence a resurgence of the extreme Right?
If they were to do so, of course, they would discover that in Germany one of the important factors involved was the terrible poverty in the late 1920s and early 1930s which was partly caused by the first World War, also by the reparations imposed by the victorious allies, and even more so by the crash of 1929, and the hyper-inflation that followed. This would lead Fabel van de Illegaal, if they were honest, to reconsider their attitude to “the supposed globalisation”, for the highly competitive and automated global economy as is convincingly argued by Jeremy Rifkin (another member of the IFG) in his book The End of Work [47], can only give rise to unprecedented levels of unemployment in the industrial world. Already about 20 million people in Western Europe are said to be unemployed, and many of them are now in dire financial straits, especially with the dismantling of the welfare state so as to reduce costs to industry in the highly competitive conditions to which the global economy gives rise.
But this is nothing compared with the unemployment and poverty that it will create in Third World countries. The WTO that spearheads “the supposed globalization” insists on opening up Third World agriculture to Western TNCs, also of opening up their markets to highly subsidized imported goods, including food, which must have catastrophic effects. In India for instance there may be five hundred million small farmers, who often farm no more than a few acres. There is no way in which they can survive if the WTO has its way, and if they go so will the small businessmen, shopkeepers, artisans, service castes and street vendors who totally depend on the farming community for their livelihood.
What we will be seeing is a shift of hundreds of millions of people to the cities. India could then be faced with cities of 30, 40, 50 or even 100 million people, the vast majority of whom would be living in indescribably sordid slums, where there would be unemployment, misery, and destitution on an unimaginable scale. Under such conditions the victims would almost certainly look for scapegoats and it is as likely as not that they would pick an ethnic group they see as different from themselves as they did in Germany in the early 1930s. Already increasing poverty in India has led to growing strife between the Hindus and the Moslems and this strife cannot but increase when poverty and unemployment, already desperate, worsen still further.
It is not only in the nearest conurbations that victims of this appalling tragedy will seek refuge. Vast numbers of them will also be forced to migrate to strange, distant, and not necessarily welcoming lands. The still affluent West, where the amenities to assure their welfare are already under stress, will be increasingly overwhelmed. Unfortunately, as this occurs, so will they be ever less welcome and their future welfare, in spite of the brave efforts of such organizations as Fabel van de Illegaal, will become ever more problematic. Surely it must be the priority of Fabel van de Illegaal, to prevent such intolerable conditions from occurring.
What I have said is evident to all thinking people with any knowledge of the situation in such countries as India, and of course China, and it makes it even more difficult to understand why Fabel van der Illegaal are spending so much time and money attacking and seeking to discredit precisely those groups, such as the IFG and Public Citizen, that are taking the lead in seeking to prevent precisely those conditions from occurring that would be most likely to contribute to real racism and ethnic conflict. This being so, one cannot avoid questioning what are these people’s true motives and where they get their money from to fund all their research, and their endless polemical publications?
In seeking to answer this question one cannot avoid noting that Krebbers and his friends, either by coincidence or by design, are promoting precisely those conditions that most favour the immediate interests of the transnational corporations. Let us not forget that the WTO has been set up for one purpose only, which is to remove all possible constraints on the activities of the TNCs so that they can become literally free to do whatever they want, i.e. what is most profitable to them regardless of its human, social, ecological, and moral implications.
To fulfil its appointed task, the WTO has imposed on us a veritable cobweb of overlapping regulations designed in effect to outlaw any government measures that interfere with the immediate interests of corporations. Any measure designed to protect the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the old, local communities, local economies or the natural world from corporate depredations are bound to violate one, if not many, WTO regulations such as those falling under the heading of “National Treatment”, “Technical Barriers to trade (TBT)”, “Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Standards (STS)”, [48] “Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS)” or the “General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)”.
However, even if such a measure does not violate a WTO regulation, on the basis of Article 23.3 of the GATS, the government can be sued by a corporation for a sum equal to the profits it feels it would have made if the measure had not been passed. It can be argued that this would not be so if there were scientific evidence that the measure was necessary to protect the environment or human health. However, whether such evidence exists or not would be entirely decided by scientists controlled by the WTO, and their decision could be predicted in advance.
What it means in effect is that it becomes illegal worldwide for any government to pass any measure that would reduce the profits of corporations. It means that corporate profits have precedence over any human, social, ecological, or moral consideration. Do Krebbers and his friends go along with this? By opposing the battle against “the supposed globalization” it would seem that they do.
In addition, by trying to discredit the IFG’s goal of moving our society in the opposite direction, i.e. towards the development of a locally-based economy, the Fabel van de Illegaal would be doing the TNCs an equally great service for they do not merely seek to expand horizontally by taking over distant markets that were previously closed to them – like those of India and China – but also to expand vertically by killing off small companies at home and taking over their markets.
Thus the USDA recently proposed a new law which would make it possible to classify as “organic” food that has been genetically modified, nuclear irradiated, and that contained high levels of pesticides. In addition, it would have become illegal for any NGO to set stricter standards than did the USDA. It is obviously quite outrageous that the US Department of Agriculture should have even proposed a law of this sort.
Clearly the USDA had been lobbied by the agrochemical industry, which could not bear the thought that the four billion dollar market for organic foods which was increasing at the rate of 20 percent per annum, could remain out of their reach. They had to take it over, and how better than to get Dan Glickman, the head of the USDA, to do the job for them? Fortunately over 250,000 people wrote furious letters to Glickman, who was forced to change his mind, though it appears that he still plans to satisfy the requirements of his sponsors – this time by more subtle means.
Consider another example. The Commission of the European Union, which is known to be controlled by the European Round Table comprised of the CEOs of the largest corporations based in Europe (as has been amply documented in The Ecologist) [49] has issued a new directive which imposes extremely costly and largely useless installations on all open-air markets on the totally dishonest pretext that they are not hygienic. It is quite clear that the Commission knew well in advance that few local councils could possibly meet the enormous costs involved, and hence that these markets would have to close down. In this way their businesses could be taken over by huge supermarket chains, with which the commission is unquestionably in collusion.
It is to be noted that the same totally dishonestly expedient has already been used to close down all sorts of small enterprises such as local butchers, abattoirs, cheese makers, bee keepers, organic chicken producers etc. Even school kitchens (or rather “food technology units” as they are now referred to) are now being closed down on the same pretext, so that their business can be taken over by new fast-growing catering companies, that will feed out children with low grade devitalised industrially-produced food. In opposing our efforts to defend the local economy it is these shameful policies that Fabel van de Illegaal seek to promote and it is the transnational corporations whose sordid interests they are slavishly serving.
Krebbers and his friends are also doing the multinationals a tremendous favour (as does Nicholas Hildyard and his friends of The Corner House) on another count. They qualify as racist the deep desire by normal people everywhere to preserve their cultural pattern; that which distinguishes them from other social groups and provides them with an identity. This very human desire is a grave impediment to the expansion plans of corporations in the film, television and media industries as well as the food and drink industries. The TNCs want to impose a single culture on the world so that they can make sure that everyone, everywhere in the world uses mobile phones, watches violent and sadistic American films on television, drinks Coca Cola, eats MacDonald’s hamburgers, and otherwise helps to maximize the market for the products of Western multinationals.
Worse still, by attacking the institution of the family on the grounds that it is patriarchal they are further contributing to the achievement of this same end. Economic development has always involved, above all, the usurpation by corporations and the State of functions that were previously fulfilled by the family and the community for free – and that are then monetized, commodified and in the former case sold via the market. Corporations are still viewing with greedy eyes functions that are still fulfilled for free by families and communities in the Third World.
The Chairman of Campbell Soup pointed out not long ago how important it was to open up the Mexican market, which would occur with the passing of the NAFTA treaty. “Consider”, he is supposed to have said, “that in Mexico there are still 38 million families that make their own soup!” [50] Of course, it would not take long, as I am sure is proving to be the case, for these families to disintegrate under the terrible pressures of economic development in such a way that their members, now disembedded from their families and separated from each other, would be forced to buy industrialised, ready-made and packaged Campbell’s soup.
Also by attacking the institution of the community, as Krebbers and his friends do, they are also playing the game of the TNCs by helping to justify the takeover or “privatisation” of all those functions previously fulfilled for free by this other key social system, such as the maintenance of social order, the performance of religious rites and participatory democratic government – further contributing to the poverty and misery that this gives rise to.
Furthermore, by likening the view of the natural world as something sacred that we must preserve at all costs to the Nazi cult of “blood and soil”, they are playing still further into the hands of the transnational corporations by discrediting an increasingly important section of the environmental movement – and let us not forget that it is environmentalists who provide one of the most effective oppositions to the TNCs’ agenda.
In addition, to deride and vilify the idea that the natural world is governed by laws which cannot be violated with impunity, is to go along with reductionist scientists who have demoted such laws to the inferior status of “statistical regularities” and have thereby liberated humanity so that it is free to create its own laws and to determine the course of its own evolution and hence of its own destiny. This is exactly the message required to rationalize our modern individualistic and competitive society – the global free-for-all that is leading to the rapid destruction of our planet to satisfy short-term economic and political interests.
It may well be that my suspicions are unjustified. In any case, I suggest that Fabel van de Illegaal spend a little time in trying to understand what are the true causes of our planet’s worsening problems. I also suggest that if their hearts are so full of pent-up hate, that they vent it on the governments, the international agencies, and the TNCs that between them are making this planet ever less habitable, not on those, who, whatever their failings, are desperately seeking to assure its continued habitability in the face of ever increasing odds.
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