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Winter 1999-2000 CivAb home
Americans have for the most part been slow to recognize that there might be drawbacks to the gene meddling that multinational corporations have been describing in glowing terms as a way of providing enough food for the world's expanding human population. They didn't react to the news that these corporations were buying out all the big seed companies. They meekly accepted the use of the bovine growth hormone to make dairy cows produce more milk and before that the injection of growth hormone in the cows they were going to eat. Few knew that the corn, soy, potatoes and tomatoes they were eating may have contained genes from other species of plants or animals.
Most of us just ingested without question whatever the biotech multinationals decided we should eat. Even when Monsanto triumphantly flaunted its power by announcing its terminator gene, which would prevent farmers from saving seeds to use the following year, there was remarkably little opposition in the mainstream press although it was a hot topic on the internet and in the alternative press.
It was world wide rather than American opposition that caused Monsanto to announce that it was shelving its terminator technology because it didn't want to jeopardize its success in selling its GM soy seeds (50% of crop in the US and higher in Brazil and Argentina).
The turnout of 50,000 demonstrators at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle is, therefore, a very encouraging development. Not all the demonstrators were protesting genetic manipulation, but all but a few were asserting the need of individuals to retain freedom to make their own decisions on what is best for the earth and its inhabitants as well as their own bodies.
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After writing & publishing the article above, we received the following leaflet:
WORLD DOMINATION BY CORPORATIONS
The forces of globalisation and 'free' trade are growing and dominating our lives increasingly. They are in our food, in our homes, in our education, in our government. However, globalisation is not a natural process. It is the result of actions of certain entities which all work in one direction: the creation of a completely liberalised world market, into which every corner and country of the world is integrated.
These entities are quite easy to identify: a distinct group of 'world leaders' of industrialised Northern countries; an army of unaccountable bureaucrats in institutions such as the European Union, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to name but a few.
These institutions have over the last half of the 20th century been busily creating the economic climate which allows big corporations to expand and increase profits wherever possible to the detriment of people, animals and the environment. The ruthless 'free' system of trade rules and agreements has been developed to enable multinational companies to take over local markets, consequently destroying local communities and environments.
There is growing opposition to economic globalisation, which only benefits multinational business elites while increasing numbers of people are going hungry, unable to afford basic health care and education, and forced to cope with environmental destruction.
It is no secret that the world's leading business and governmental elites meet regularly through forums like the Trilateral Commission and the World Economic Forum. Behind closed doors and through a process of consensus building and deal making, business and governmental elites are able to work out common approaches to economic integration and harmonization of various tax and regulatory measures. Effectively, an unelected and unaccountable global elite has managed to take control over the instrument of governments who now only act as a show piece to give the illusion of democracy.
These new centres of power have evolved without attracting the attention of the general public. Most of us would struggle to string together more than a couple of coherent sentences about the WTO or North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and yet these institutions wield enormous power over the global economy and thus over the lives of every living thing on the planet. The transference of power from nation-states to the multinational corporations has gone so unremarked that the richer nation-states and the multinational corporations allied together feel confident enough to ensure that the onslaught of global capitalism is given full legal protection. A safe journey has been carefully prepared which will ensure the oppression of billions of people around the world and will inevitably result in further social and environmental destruction. This legal protection comes in the form of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MIA).
The propose MAI is the latest step in the globalisation of the world economy. MAI is a new treaty under preparation within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The club of 29 rich industrialized countries, including the 15 EU countries will be a treaty between signatory nations that will bring about a further opening up of markets. The aim is to provide a single new framework for the regulation of international investments. The MAI will provide multinational corporations with a wide range of new rights which will include bestowing upon then the the same juridical status as states, forbidding all controls on the movement of capital, banning governments from setting any conditions on foreign investors, forcing states that want to introduce new social or environmental legislation to pay billions to foreign investors, and making it aomost impossible for parliaments to introduce new rules to limit the scope of action of multinationals and speculators as well as forcing them to eliminate all existing rules within the nest few years.
Corporations will have the right to take national, regional and local governments to a special MAI court in order to challenge legislation, demand financial compensation and force access into largely every sector of the economy. This may lead to absurd situations of cash-strapped local government being vulnerable to legal action directly from huge companies which have far greater resources. The MAI is a bill of rights for multinational investors, but whilst it delivers new rights and freedom to investors, there are no responsibilities or obligations placed upon them.
For national governments to sign away their own power seems, at first, highly unlikely. On the other hand, perhaps it betrays the true nature of the relationship between government and industry in the rich nations. Could this be why there has been no consultation?
Negotiations at the OECD began in 1995. Throughout they have been conducted in absolute secrecy with minimal media coverage. In the quest to create what one OECD spokesperson describes as "the constitution of a single global economy", democracy has become an expendable notiion. Instead we have powerful corporate bodies ruling as a goverment - one unconcerned with social, labour, and environmental issues. Increasingly it is where the real power to affect global change is wileded, unaccountable to the masses who will have to endure its tyranny.
Thankfully, the MAI negotiations were not concluded by the deadline of May '97. Ironically, this is because of governments' desire to protect particular sectors of their economies. Few governments , except it seems the UK's, are actually daft enough to believe their own rhetoric about free markets. The extra time has enabled opposition to mobilise against the Agreement. A coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations has formed to try to stop the negotiations. In the UK the World Development Movement, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and WWF have begun a dialogue with the Department of Trade and Industry and the OECD. Focusing on environmental and labour issues, they are highlighting the dangers of deregulation. A chief concern is that as capital is given greater mobility, countries are put under pressure to provide the most favourable conditions to investors. Continued
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The phenomenon, dubbed "a race to the bottom" is not new. Across Europe, countries have been dropping corporation tax, and deregulating the labour market for years in an effort to attract foreign in
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