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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #33-98 Global Corporations: Vehicles of Control
August 19, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9833.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact:-

Richard Grossman: What corporations are now doing around the world they accomplished in the United States of America a hundred years ago. And what they have been perfecting all through this century in this country is what they are seeking to do globally today. What else is GATT or NAFTA or the MAI -the Multilateral Agreement on Investment but the logical next step to constitutionalize the corporation everywhere?

Phillip Babich: High level negotiations have been under way for three years to expand the reach of transnational corporations in the global economy. According to many activists and scholars, this trade treaty, known as the Multi-Lateral Agreement on Investment, is the latest development in a century's old quest to solidify corporate control over the planet's resources. On this program, Making Contact's Globalization Desk takes a look at this trend and its impact on fundamental human rights. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact.

This history of corporations dates back to the 15th century, according to Richard Grossman, co-director of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy. In 1407, King Henry IV of England chartered the company Merchants and Adventurers, granting it monopoly control over certain exports. The Russian Company, the Spanish Company, and the East India Company followed, acquiring control over trade routes and resources. Grossman says that these companies were the predecessors to today's corporations.

Richard Grossman: What was the purpose of these and other global corporations of those days? Well, in hindsight we can be very clear that their mission was to buy cheap, to sell dear, to limit or prevent competition, to vacuum out resources, to display fierce violence and to perpetuate violence to people, species, and places, to destroy existing cultures and social relationships, to replace independence with dependence, to eradicate people's sense of their own histories, to get people to internalize the corporations' values, myths, and world views, to create a class of bureaucrats and civil servants to serve their needs, to define people as subjects, objects, property, invisible or anything else they wanted to define them as, to control all dispute resolution, to raise armies and navies and wage war, to write laws, including laws and doctrines which legalize and institutionalize the corporations' destructive and dominating acts, to enforce laws, to impose punishments, including executions; in other words, to govern. And to govern dictatorially but with guile.

From these hundreds of years of experiences, can't we deduce the nature of the corporate fiction? These corporations didn't just create some excessive harms, they didn't just occasionally exploit, they didn't just drive bargains, they were, by definition, by their nature, oppressors. It's an old story, isn't it? The cults of the few tyrannizing the many. And the many, what about them? Who were they? They were the violated and the dehumanized, the oppressed, the people blocked from being and acting fully human, from participating in their own governance, from defining their own lives, their own work, their own values. Today the majority of the people in the world are oppressed by the few, and the oppressive vehicle of choice is, guess what, the global corporation.

Phillip Babich: Richard Grossman speaking at a conference sponsored by the International Forum on Globalization. The spread of economic globalization is aided by a host of international and national agencies and institutions. Among them are the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations, and a web of so-called development agencies which work to lower trade barriers and attract foreign investment. David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, is president and founder of The People Centered Development Forum, an organization that advocates sustainable and equitable development. He is also former advisor to the United States Agency for International Development, a key government agency that promotes globalization.

David Korten: For some 30 years I worked as a member of the Foreign Aid Establishment and yes indeed, we brought economic growth to the Third World. In most poor countries now, you can fly in a big jumbo jet into a modern, international airport, drive into the city in a Mercedes Benz limousine, on crowded superhighways, stay in a five star hotel, and shop in elegant, air conditioned shopping malls that carry all of the latest consumer and designer models. Yet for those of us who chanced to look beyond the facades of development, we saw a very different and deeply troubling picture. We saw millions of people living in dehumanizing destitution, environments being stripped bare of life, and the social fabric of once rich cultures being ripped asunder. Something seemed to be going badly wrong. As I reflected on this and began to try to put the picture in perspective, my unease turned to horror when I realized it was happening not only in the poor and presumably backward countries that my Western arrogance had compelled me to go forth to save, it was also happening in the Western countries as well, including in the country that I had long assumed was the model for the rest of the world to emulate, even here in America.

Phillip Babich: According to Richard Grossman, the U.S. Constitution originally limited corporate power, but as time marched on, that changed.

Richard Grossman: By the end of the 19th century, the corporation had waged a counter-revolution, had transformed the laws, and was on its way to becoming, to being, what corporations had been revealed to have been for the previous 300 years. With the wealth and power, they constitutionalized corporate rights and authority over property, and over the decision making of what counts. In other words, they became able to act as legal persons and created the fiction of the market where investment, production, and work decision-making, the basic decision-making that shapes our lives and our communities, were declared beyond the authority of the people. So that even when the excluded classes of people, the African Americans, native people, women, men without property, after a century of struggle had become people, had won their rights, the corporations and the culture were powerful enough, the corporate culture was powerful enough, to transform all of us into consumers.

I go through this because it's vital in our road to consciousness and in our engaging in authentic action to understand that what corporations are now doing around the world they accomplished in the United States of America a hundred years ago. And what they have been perfecting all through this century in this country is what they are seeking to do globally today. What else is GATT or NAFTA or the MAI -the Multilateral Agreement on Investment but the logical next step to constitutionalize the corporation everywhere; through guile, to legalize the property rights of corporations over everything that really counts. Given this reality and given this history, we need to ask ourselves, critically, what is the nature of our alleged democracy in this country today? Can we say that we have a democracy? Can we say that we the people are politically free, that we govern ourselves, when corporate fictions not only wield power and authority under law, but they also have oppressed so many people into unconsciousness?

Helena Norberg-Hodge: Three year old children cry when they go to school because they don't have the right label running shoes or because they don't have blue jeans.

Phillip Babich: Helena Norberg-Hodge is director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. She spent 20 years living among the Ladakhi people on the Tibetan plateau, a culture that had been virtually untouched by the global economy before she arrived.

Helena Norberg-Hodge: Women in the remotest villages of the Tibetan plateau apologize because they don't speak English. They say, "We're like animals, we don't speak the language," and they mean English. I've also seen that in China the same blue eyed, blonde Barbie dolls are being introduced, again, for 3 year old girls to play with, as they are in Ladakh, as they are in Africa, as they are in Sweden. So everywhere around the world, children are being subjected to the same role models: blue eyed, blonde Barbie dolls for the girls, Rambos with machine guns for the boys. And what this is leading to is a dramatic polarization of sexual roles, and the imposition of a mono-cultural identity that means that no one is right.

So in Ladakh, again, I've seen how in a very short period, over about ten years, the beauty ideal has changed. These Tibetan people tend to be fairly short, they tend to have fairly dark skin and dark eyes, dark hair. Now the beauty ideal has changed to wanting to be taller, have lighter skin, have a bigger nose. In China, we know that women who can afford it, many of them are operating on their eyes to make them look more Western. All around the world women are using blue contact lenses and bleach to make their hair blonde. This is not just some trivial issue, it's a very deep issue to do with loving and accepting ourselves the way we are.

Shereen Meraji: You're listening to "Making Contact," a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard on over 130 stations in the United States, Canada, Haiti, and South Africa, and around the world on Radio for Peace international short wave. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program or you would like to learn how you can get involved with "Making Contact," please give us a call, it's toll free, 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs.

Phillip Babich: Proponents of economic globalization have been dealt a couple of setbacks over the past year. The U.S. congress defeated Fast Track Authority, which would have granted the president new power in cutting trade deals, and this spring the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development backed off of a plan to pass the Multi-Lateral Agreement on Investment. For more on these developments we present this perspective from Miyoko Sakashta who's with the Foundation for Deep Ecology.

Myoko Sakashta: People around the world are building a diverse movement with the message that corporate rule and economic globalization must end. Grassroots resistance to globalization has come in many different forms from labor strikes in Europe and the United States to the Zapatista uprising in Mexico when NAFTA took effect in 1994. Should we allow corporations to be the architects of our future? Trade treaties such as NAFTA and GATT have seized decision making power from local governments and turned it over to private, transnational corporations. Now there's a new treaty in the works, it's called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment or the MAI. Originally proponents of this trade agreement sought its passage at the World Trade Organization, but that effort was blocked by Southern countries, primarily India and Malaysia. Now the MAI rests in the negotiation rooms at the club of the 29 wealthiest nations in the world, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, otherwise known as the OECD.

Last April was the target date for the MAI to be signed, but a decentralized, international movement emerged to derail it. More than 600 organizations from 68 countries sent letters to the OECD explaining their opposition to the MAI. Demonstrations and debates popped up all over the globe and a paid editorial in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune supplanted the media blackout on the MAI. These actions demonstrated that there was a strong opposition to the MAI coming from a broad coalition. It also helped to educate politicians, reporters, and the public about the broad implications of the trade agreement. Grassroots activism and local political action were widely credited for pressuring the OECD to postpone their negotiations. Why is this agreement so controversial? The MAI is a far reaching, legally binding document that would grant transnational corporations unprecedented power to invest in foreign countries. It has support among corporate heads, investors and financial institutions, but many communities see the agreement as another step towards economic colonization.

The MAI would allow corporations to challenge any federal, state, and local laws which limit private investment, it subordinates the rights of sovereign nations to make restrictions on foreign companies, furthermore, it gives private corporations the legal standing to sue governments if that country's environmental or labor standards stand in the way of profit. For public interest groups, it's been a challenge not only to make the dense text of the MAI understandable, but to raise awareness about the accord's implications. To encourage public officials to learn about the MAI, concerned parties in the United States have written inquiries to their elected officials and they have organized public debates about the MAI. Where opposition is strong, some governments have even established MAI free zones. San Francisco, California, Olympia, Washington, and Geneva, Switzerland are among various cities that have passed such resolutions.

Delaying the MAI is a small victory for citizen groups opposed to globalization and it's not the only one. Last Fall, Fast Track legislation, which would have forced the U.S. congress to vote up or down, with no amendments, any trade deal cut by the president, was defeated. But we can expect both of these issues to rear their ugly heads again. Fast Track will reappear during discussion of the African Free Trade Bill this fall and the OECD is anxious to continue negotiations on the MAI in October. It's a critical moment for continued public action. Communities all over the world are planning demonstrations, press conferences, lobbying efforts and other actions to send the message that the MAI will squash local sovereignty. When the OECD negotiators arrive in Paris to begin talks, they will be met by a diverse collections of concerned communities who are not willing to let corporations govern the world. I'm Miyoko Sakashta.

Phillip Babich: Joining us now in the studio is Anuradha Mittal, policy director at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. Thanks for joining us on "Making Contact."

Anuradha Mittal: Thank you for having me here.

Phillip Babich: Well, with regards to globalization, where do you see this train heading?

Anuradha Mittal: That's an interesting question. I think first, in terms of globalization, I see it going two ways. One of them is let's talk about economic globalization or, as Richard Grossman talks about, the global corporatization. We are going to see the corporations and the vested interest moving in the direction of trying to get more and more power, as much as they can. But a lot that, you know, some of the people have been talking about, and which is becoming much more exciting for us, is the globalization from below. And that's one thing we are going to see also happening at a very intense pace. Communities across borders, communities ranging from inner city communities of the United States to peasants and farmers and campesinos across the world will be uniting too. So that's the kind of globalization that will also be taking place.

Phillip Babich: Before we hear more about that type of globalization, I'm wondering if I can get your reaction to something we heard earlier in the program. Richard Grossman had said that the oppressive vehicle of choice is the global corporations. Do you think he's overstating the case?

Anuradha Mittal: No, I don't think so, because it's very easy to talk about international financial institutions, that the evil forces are the OECD's Multilateral Agreement on Investment or it's the World Trade Organization. We have to recognize that these are abstract bodies. The people who are designing...I mean the first time Multilateral Agreement on Investment was actually written up for World Trade Organization, it was written up by the vice-president of American Express. So what he is saying is not kind of making up something or trying to blame somebody else for what's happening, he's stating who the real forces are behind this globalization, and that's the corporations.

Phillip Babich: Often development is the key phrase or key justification for moving into so-called developing countries or Third World countries. What, typically, does development mean?

Anuradha Mittal: Now that's another very good question because I would hate to give up the use of the word, but the way it's being used by whether forces of World Bank or whether by USAID, it has come to mean, as it has been pointed out before, airstrips and new warplanes and -I mean the government of India, for example, is boasting of increasing its budget, its defense budget, so we would think that's development. Or we talk about the latest plazas being opened up in India or in other Third World countries; at the same time, the communities, the peasants, the farmers might be committing suicides because the crops have failed. So development has come to mean higher buildings, more and more concrete plazas, being able to buy Barbies or being able to buy Pepsi and Coca-Cola even when you had the local drinks; that's come to mean development, unfortunately, for most of the communities.

Phillip Babich: And what's wrong with that? I mean, so if people have the opportunity to go shopping in a nice modern mall, buy Levi’s 501, bottles of Coca-Cola. Is there a judgment to be made about that?

Anuradha Mittal: Well I think that I would like to ask the listeners, is democracy all about choice? And if you mean by choice, does it mean the kind of choice I have when I go to buy my toothpaste, that I can choose between 16 or 17 different brands of toothpaste, or is it about choice as a community, what I'm making for myself. So when you're taking other people's sovereignty with agreements such as MAI, Multi-Lateral Agreement on Investment, or the agricultural accords of world trade organization, are taking other people's choice in terms of what kind of bio-diversity I want, what kind of seeds I wanna grow, what kind of plant...crops I wanna grow. If that choice is being taken away, I'm sorry, that is no democracy and that is no further development for any country or any community.

Phillip Babich: How quickly do you see this happening? In countries that you've visited and worked with, how quickly is this globalization happening?

Anuradha Mittal: Well the strength is not new. And I come from the country of...you know, I'm an Indian from India. And we saw this process when the East India Company came to my country in the last century and took over my country. It came in as a trader, offering us choices. And before we knew it, a sound, stable economy was completely dismantled and then politically taken over to become a colony of the English. So this process has been going on, and though we all celebrate the fact that many of us gained independence in the 40's and 50's, that independence is a joke because what we find happening now is, you know, that might of happened, but most of us have been given the same prescription from the World Bank or whether it's the IMF, what it's going to mean, you know, to be able to survive in the next century. So though Indian government, for example, adopted the new economic policy in the 1990's, structural adjustment programs, depending on cash crops, and all that stuff had started happening in the 70's and in the 80's.

Phillip Babich: I'm curious, often times globalization is kinda couched in terms of it being inevitability, that this is bound to happen, the economy's gonna grow, Renate Ruggiero, secretary general of the World Trade Organization says, in fact, we should be structuring ourselves, organizing ourselves, or setting up policy to be able to prepare for this inevitability. Is this inevitable at all, do you see?

Anuradha Mittal: No, I don't think so. I mean I can say it as a matter of fact that yes, for them it might seem so, because these forces have been at work as I mentioned before, the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Bank, the IMF, they have been setting up the path for the World Trade Organization. But then, if you look back, there's always when you would think that colonization of most of the world was inevitable. But hey, they did get their independence back; did we ever think South Africa is gonna be what it is today? So nothing is inevitable. I mean, I just wanna say future depends with people who are not cynical, who are not standing on the sidelines, you know, future belongs to people who have a passion, and there are too many people out there who have a passion to change things and make a future for themselves.

Phillip Babich: Maybe you can pick up on that and talk about some of the globalization you mentioned earlier that's happening at a local, grassroots level.

Anuradha Mittal: Well, I would first of all start with our campaign that the institute has been involved in, a campaign called Economic Human Rights: The Time has Come. And it becomes very important right now, because this year, 1998, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration which not only lays out civil and political but also economic and social human rights. And when I say economic and social human rights we're talking about a right to adequate standard of living, we're talking about workers' right to organize to be members of trade unions, to have decent jobs, we're talking about right to social security, right to adequate food, housing, employment benefits, we're talking about all those rights which, unfortunately, no trade agreement talks about today. So on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary we are working with a coalition of over 180 organizations across the country that range from immigrant groups to labor groups to think tank groups to farmer communities, just a very diverse group of people have come together to say the time has come for economic human rights. And it is also very interesting, this is a concept and a phenomena that has been used by communities around the world such as in India or Brazil or the Philippines.

But United States is one country, and in fact the only G8 country which has not ratified the International Covenant for Economic Social and Cultural Rights. It is a covenant which would make it an obligation for the government to make sure that everyone in the country has an adequate standard of living or the right to be able to feed oneself. I'm not talking about the government, you know, making people lazy, I'm talking about government making conditions so that people are able to feed themselves, have decent wages, have livable wage jobs. And this is the only country which, among the industrialized countries, which has the highest rate of child poverty, this is the country which has the highest disparity between the rich and poor among industrialized countries, this is the country which has 41 million Americans with no health care, this is the country which boasts about, you know, booming economy, and has 31 million people going every year hungry, this is the country with the highest rate of child poverty, and this is also the country, as I pointed out before, which has not guaranteed people their economic human rights. So as this country is moving forward with this agenda of newer liberal economic policies, pushing for MAI, pushing for more and more inner trade liberalization, we are saying fine, go ahead do it, but make sure that people's economic human rights are first fulfilled and their needs are met.

Phillip Babich: How are those rights denied? Actually, how exactly does that work? Maybe you can talk about either this country or other countries where people no longer have that choice or have that right.

Anuradha Mittal: Well, a good example would be let's take from international conferences, you know, the World Conference on Habitat that took place in Istanbul in 1996. It was a bit of a joke, but U.S. stood alone in rejecting the right to housing. When I say rejecting right to housing, it is not to people in Third World or elsewhere, it rejected the right to housing to its own people. Or 1996 in Rome at the World Food Summit, head of U.S. delegation, Melinda Kimball, said there's no way U.S. would respect the right to food or agree to the right to food because then it would mean that welfare reform is in violation of international laws. So when policies such as welfare reform are implemented, when reports are coming out saying that 1 in 97 released from welfare will ever find a livable wage job, that is a denial of the right to an adequate standard of livelihood. You have not just cut off the strings and let person loose, you also know they honor jobs, at the same time you're moving forward to trade agreements which are taking jobs overseas. It's all a rush to the bottom, and you're leaving your own citizens, to whom you have an obligation, hungry, without health care, without any benefits, out on the street. Who's gonna take care of you? It should be the government that you put into power.

Phillip Babich: However, if one picks up the newspaper, though -aside from about a week ago; there was a big drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but- apparently the economy's just doing fantastic and unemployment is low. How does that jive with what you're saying?

Anuradha Mittal: Well, President Clinton also reported in his State of the Union address the highest home ownership. Well, the question here is what about the 8 million Americans who are homeless? What about 101 San Franciscans who died last year because they were homeless out in the cold. So we are talking about an economy which would benefit just about everyone in the world, not just the well-to-do Americans.

Phillip Babich: Maybe you can talk about how people can get involved with the Campaign for Economic Human Rights.

Anuradha Mittal: Well, one way is to call us at Food First and the number to call is 510-654-4400. And I also want to mention on September 23rd, 1998 we are taking this case to the congress. We are organizing a congressional hearing on human rights implications of increasing poverty in the United States. So if you are in D.C. or would like to get involved in the in the campaign, to give us a call at Food First.

Phillip Babich: We've been speaking with Anuradha Mittal. She's the policy director at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. Thanks for joining us on "Making Contact."

Anuradha Mittal: Thank You.

Phillip Babich: And that's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at economic globalization and its impact on human rights. Thanks for listening. This show has been a production of our globalization desk. And special thanks this week to Stephanie Welch, who provided recorded portions. Nora Haldeman and Shereen Meraji assisted with production. I'm Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts, or if you'd like to make a comment or suggestion for future programs, that's 800-529-5736. Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Phillip Babich is our managing producer. Our senior advisor is Norman Solomon. Peggy Law is our executive director. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio. For everyone at "Making Contact," thanks for listening.